Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
“ C ome back here!” I whipped a pillow at the door. The footsteps stopped and then started to thud toward me, every footstep reducing the tension in my shoulders. It made no sense that I was happy he was coming back. He’d said he hadn’t killed Gentry, but I bet he knew who did.
“Yes?” he asked, cracking the door open but staying on the threshold.
His pants hugged his body, and his black shirt was opened one button too low.
With the leather jacket thrown over a shoulder and his hair hanging to his shoulders, he had the kind of build that if you take their shirt off you pass out from their sheer beauty.
Yeah, he looked good. Not the Tyre kind of bulk, but the sleek muscular form that sent tingles where no sensible woman should be getting them in my current situation.
Rockstar muscled leanness with a strength and danger that undulated without being showy.
Then there was his voice. Why the hell was I thinking these things when I should be thinking about how to convince him to take me home ?
“Please. I have so many questions. Don’t leave me alone.” I forced my voice to crack pathetically. I’d already established a frontal attack was idiocy. The best I could do was to keep him talking until I could think straight enough to come up with a decent plan.
His lips pursed as if he wasn’t buying it. “I will come to talk if you promise to stay on the bed. Do we have a deal?”
I nodded, and he came in but locked the door behind him. Great, it was an electronic lock. The only way out of here was with a key code or on a stretcher.
“Fine. Let’s start with an easy question. How about you tell me your goddamned name?” My head pounded.
“You can call me Vald .” He was still wearing the fucking sunglasses.
“Vald? Like V-a-l-d? What are you, some kind of vampire?” I cackled hysterically. “Bet it stands for Vladimir.”
“It’s W-a-l-d, as in Waldemar. It is a family name. Heritage is important to my family. And no, I am not a vampire. They are mythological creatures.”
The purr of his voice dissolved parts of me. It was ridiculous, but there it was. We are all slaves to our desires, and it was not a rational moment. “Why were you at Gentry’s? Did you see who killed him?”
“I came too late to retrieve the poisoned item. You picked up the pen.”
“Yeah, and it was in my purse. Wait, what were you doing at The Signet? If you were waiting for me at the club, how did you know I was going there?”
“You talk to yourself. I have very good ears. My car is very fast.” His smile curved up on one side. I would get those sunglasses off him if it was the last thing I did.
“Okay, I’m tired of your snappy answers. Why not tell me the whole damn story, from the pen through to the exploding ring part. Start with what the hell happened in the club that landed me in your trunk.”
Wald studied the frosted glass window, crossing his arms as he leaned against the wall. His shirt clung to muscled arms that my eyes were now glued to. The gloves were a weird attraction. I wanted them off as much as the sunglasses. “The less you know the better off you are.”
“You mean poisoned? Stuffed into a trunk? How about I decide what I need to know?” It wasn’t really a question, but I was extremely aware I was not quite in a position of control.
“I suppose, because you’re safe now and we are waiting, I could answer some of your many questions.” He half smiled, which I definitely shouldn’t have liked as much as I did.
He rubbed one gloved hand over his bare forearm.
“I don’t know your Gentry personally. I came for the pen.
You took it. You went to the club. I heard you tell the man that you were going to talk to the band.
I went backstage first, to wait for you, but I ran into an old acquaintance, and we had a discussion. ”
“Yeah, discussion my ass. You were doing more than that.”
He cocked his head. “We all have secrets to keep, yes?”
“No, no, we don’t. How the hell did you know Gentry even had a pen? Your story reeks.”
“Telling you only exposes you to more danger. You don’t need to know. You’re healed now.”
“Come on, you asshole, you’d better lay it down. I’m in freakin’ Spokane because of you.”
He shook his head.
“Then at least explain the ‘heal’ me part. With details.”
He paused, rubbing his chin as if he were thinking of not replying. “I have some knowledge of herbs, and my touch is special.”
“Well, that’s as clear as a damned tar pit. What exactly does special mean?” I toyed with a rough edge of a tear in my leggings. Maybe I could sew it up.
“I have a healing gift, and I work as what you might call an herb doctor.”
“You’re not big on details are you? Fine. That’ll do for now. What about the exploding ring?” I rubbed my eyes. The room got slightly less fuzzy.
“The man you saw had it, but it didn’t belong to him. I was attempting to get him to tell me about it when you interrupted us.” He shrugged on the leather jacket over the black-collared shirt. He must have changed. My mind wandered back to the club.
“You said the porcelain blocked something about the ring. Or did I dream that?”
“The porcelain and the water, yes. When you took it, I could find it again.”
“But not touch it? That makes no sense. Explain.” With my head pounding, retaining detail was tough, but knowledge was power, and something would be my ticket out of here even if I couldn’t see it yet.
“The ring is of my family, but it is sought after. If the metal is touched, I am visible to the others. They would be able to find the ring.”
“And you don’t want these people to find you because?”
“Because I killed my sister Donia, which severed her tie to the ring. Now it is looking for a new keeper.”
“You killed your sister?” My throat went dry. The stone-dead silence sent goose bumps everywhere.
“It was an unfortunate accident.” His lips puckered as if he’d bitten on something sour, but the words reverberated through my head.
I was locked in a room with a murderer in some remote location. No one knew where I was, I was sick, and possibly dying or drugged, depending on who you believed. I swallowed hard. “Okay, I’ll come back to that. What do you mean, the ring has a keeper?”
“This ring is a family piece. It is always cared for.”
“I don’t suppose you’re going to explain that?”
He gave me his half-sided grin which made me want to slap him.
“Fine, then tell me how it exploded.”
“It did not explode. Your purse was incinerated. The ring doesn’t like to be contained.”
“So you knew it would explode, and you still let me put it back into my purse?” I shouted, but this time my head wasn’t throbbing as much. Maybe the drug was working. Maybe he was telling the truth.
“Yes.”
“Where is the piece of shit ring now?”
“In my pocket,” he said, patting his chest.
“Your pocket?” I imagined the room blowing up.
“Not to worry. It is safe there. It is not zipped up, and there is a porcelain lining.”
“You have a porcelain-lined pocket? Never mind. Why didn’t you put it in there before, instead of in my purse?”
Wald’s scowl turned his jaw to chiseled stone. “Because the man you saw me with brought his associates with him when he came back. They believed I would keep it with me. They would never imagine it was in your purse.”
“You sacrificed my purse to save your ass?” I was losing my mind, but keeping whatever control I could, would get me through whatever this was.
“Tell me more about this gang. What hood are they from?” I was sitting on the edge of the platform bed.
The floor was a kind of ash-gray wood and immaculate.
My floors had never been this clean. You could probably eat off it.
“Not a gang. They are agents working with my sister, who seek the ring.”
“I thought your sister was dead,” I muttered, examining the tears in my leggings. The abrasions didn’t look too bad now. “How can your sister be dead and hiring people?”
“No, the sister I killed cannot die.”
“Whoa, that so doesn’t make sense. What are we talking about? Some undead creepy thing? Zombie? Wait, don’t tell me that part. I don’t really need to know.” Blood throbbed in my ears. He hadn’t moved from the wall, and he was still looking far too smug.
“Not undead. My family is ancient.” Those goddamned sunglasses blocked any expression which would help me read him.
“I’m not following. Where are you from?”
“Near here. In the forest.”
“The forests of Spokane?” I laughed. The broken sound echoed in my head like it wasn’t my voice at all.
“Our family home is in the forests near here. But our ancestral seat is much farther east.”
“Ancestral? Okay, old money. Awesome. Exactly how far east?”
He paused. “Norway.” His lips pressed together again. Apparently, he disliked that place even more than he disliked the associates.
“Wow. Okay, so way east.” Not Russian. I was dealing with a Norseman.
I laughed again, hoping it was a side effect of the drug which made this seem ridiculous.
He wasn’t blond, but he certainly had the height.
Maybe his eyes were blue. Was that a stereotype?
There must be brown-eyed Norwegians. I was looking at one.
“Right, family, Norwegian descent. Your local family home is in the forest. Got it. Go on.”
“That’s enough for now.” He straightened as if to leave. I needed to keep him in the room.
“Wait. Is the time up yet?” I was feeling better. I actually hadn’t felt that bad for a while now.
He shook his head without even checking.
I sucked in a few shallow breaths. I was getting out of this. I would be going back to my horrible, awful, but safe normal life. “At least tell me about the snake antivenin? I’ve never heard of an antidote that makes it so you can’t touch the victim. Who put it on Gentry’s pen?”
“I did not say snake venom. The antivenin has properties that enhance sensations. Your skin exudes it at the end of its travel through your body. If I touched your skin right now, then I would react .”