the pavement started that would lead her to the warehouse and office.
Every time she glanced towards the water, night peeled back and shed
layers, growing bigger, black-flaked ashes falling into her eyes and
making her see things only little girls with hair bows feared.
Her jacket vibrated, making her find a way to walk with no feet on
the ground. She winced as she came down, angering her ankle by
keeping her body upright on only the outside rim of her sneakers. On
the second jolt from her pocket, she remembered her cell phone was
set to vibrate.
Gillian let the phone flounder. The smell of fish was strong enough
she was sure the phone wasn't the only thing flopping around and
54
waiting to die. Getting to the phone meant releasing the choke hold
on her thumbs and delaying getting to the door of the warehouse.
Once inside, she could barricade herself behind the door and refuse to
come out until morning or if a helicopter landed on the roof and
offered to deposit her right into her bed where a teddy bear and
comforter waited along with a nice bottle of white wine cooling in the
refrigerator.
True she wasn't going to look at her watch which meant showing
stark white skin against the night; but, taking into account how long
the bus normally took and the faster than normal walking pace, it
couldn't be later than 9:30. Her stomach didn't care about the math
and let all the blood go straight to her legs as instantaneous fuel.
Her mind wasn't the slightest bit helpful and recollected the last
three police blotters in the local paper, tallying the average time for
person on person attacks. Yep, just as her stomach was trying to tell
her. She was statistically in the window of potential threat, and
proving her parents right in telling her math was useful in daily life.
Sure, useful to the sales of Xanax and alcohol, not to the improvement
of sanity.
She took a deep breath and let her nerves fill her ears with
pounding so she couldn't latch on to the odd swish of the grass behind
her. Vacationing on a farm growing up, she knew the sound a farm
cat made lurking in the grass, but she wasn't on the farm nor were
there farm cats here.
Pounding blood was the better alternative, and Gillian was grateful
her heart fluttered. The extra warmth from palpitations provided a
barrier against the dankness creeping up her legs with every step on
the mildewed planks. She broke into a run when the shaky planks
ended, dashing the few hundred feet necessary to the warehouse's
fusion lights.
Watering eyes served no handicap in thrusting her hand into her
pocket in extracting the key she had at the ready. Blinking, she
jiggled the key into the lock and ratcheted the door open, slamming it
behind her in a solid, gratifying thud and throwing the bolt in place.
The warehouse lights were already on.
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This time the throbbing in her temples did nothing to conceal the
steady thump of approaching feet. Her nerves must have turned up
the amplitude of hearing, because the creature coming around the
bend sounded ten feet tall and made of molten steel solidified into
bipedal form.
She pressed her back into the door, trying to merge with the paper
thin metal. Gillian wanted to curl into a little ball with her arms and
legs clutched into her torso, but she was afraid to take her eyes off the
doorway opposite her that lead into the main warehouse.
It was 9:30ish. Who the heck was here at this unholy hour? For
that matter why in the world did she feel a need to be here? Maybe her
sister was right about being overly committed, or was that
committable? Any more time in this place after dark and she was
going to commit herself for the padded cell protection against the
dark.
The lights of the warehouse weren't doing much for her sense of
safety. Garish on the outside, the lights gave shadows too much
leniency in being seductively evil in looking like places to hide.
No one stayed late even on pickup nights. The drivers had the
combination to the delivery bays and all the boxes were clearly
delineated by destination, day staff was unnecessary. It didn't matter
that she was here against her own reasoning. No one else should be
here and drivers didn't go this far into the building.
Drivers came in pairs and only one set of feet approached. Oh,
God, this was a burglary and one of the drivers was coming to find
and get rid of her before she could call the police; which meant, the
noises outside had been a henchman on patrol. This was a trap.
Gillian stuffed her heart back into her chest and wet her throat
enough to formulate a scream. Her chest labored to get enough
oxygen pent up for a riotous explosion of sound when her throat
seized midway into creating raucous noise.
The doorway was blotted out or was that filled to capacity with a
man-like form?
Gillian's throat overcame the shock and went for a full blast of
screams that left her huffing and panting for breath. Even bent over,
56
she couldn't take her eyes off the thing moving into the room, past the
doorway, coming closer, and closer to her.
A door behind the monster slammed, making them both leap into
each other. "No one's outside. Drivers long gone, we're safe to
leave," a deep voice reverberated that could have done bass in the
opera.
Gillian raised her head as she'd seen people on TV do, and head
butted the thing's chin as she jumped up, but its humongous hands
grabbed her by the collar and held her, almost dangling her, in the air.
"Ooph." The hands around her collar shook her like a fish from a
seagull's mouth. "Who are you and why are you playing with me?"
Gillian looked up into golden eyes with her huge, Disney-like eyes.
It took a second for them standing under the same light source for
Gillian to realize the large mass of muscles holding her was a guy, a
very large and towering guy, with long two-toned brown and amber
hair bristling up against the back of his neck. Her mouth fell open
automatically to taste the air around him, no cologne or aftershave
masked the raw identity that he filled the air with.
Her tongue wavered, but no sound came out this time through gulps
of air.
"You aren't that brittle. No one who screams that loud breaks
easily." He set her down, his arms bracing her shoulders until she
proved capable of standing.
"Patryk where are you?"
The voice filled Gillian's ears and made her ears ache from over
working to pick up every vibration.
"Just checking on the office area and making sure everything's
locked up, Sebastian. I'll be right in."
The man blocked Gillian from seeing around him, bending towards
her to obliterate any sight. She tried to crane her head around him, but
her efforts ended in a nose and mouthful of his shirt, the fabric
sticking to the end of her tongue, making her breath stutter from the
impact of h
is aroma.
Gillian squeezed her eyes and closed her lips, prying them back
from his musk that seemed to invade her nostrils with tendrils snaking
57
up her nose and wrapping around her brain with an overriding
supremacy that gave him control of her body.
She gulped back her tongue and forced it to work at something
besides choking her. Those names were familiar. She rammed a palm
into the side of her head to jumpstart thinking. Patryk and Sebastian.
"Wait, Patryk and Sebastian ... as in the warehouse owners?"
Patryk gave her a stare that made her feel naked, devoid of so much
as nail polish. She pulled her coat closer against her body to seal in as
much air as she could to act as a buffer.
He pulled his hands away from her. "You'd be the new girl."
His voice lowered to below deep, to a sound that she felt more than
heard, a sound that both made her want to flee to and from him.
It was an oddly perplexing clash of survival and something more.
This was ludicrous. She shook her head up and down not sure of
herself to do much else.
"You owe me an explanation." He turned around, giving her a long
look over his shoulder, leaving the light with her so that the last thing
she saw was his wide shoulders fading into shadows, leaving only the
tell-tale sound of his heavy boots.
"What were you doing in there? I heard you talking?"
Gillian waited for Patryk's answer, causing her breath to stutter to a
halt.
"Drivers called to confirm what time the plane leaves for Africa
with the supplies."
They had to be back in the inner warehouse now, but her ears
picked up every word they spoke. The only thing she was sure of was
that Sebastian's voice made her want to open the door and take the
creaking wood and darkness over the chance of meeting him. Her
skin prickled as if touched by a flame that could easily consume her
and spit her out as ashes for a burial at sea. The sea was only a few
hundred feet away once the measly door was out of the equation.
The reaction to Sebastian was about survival, but Patryk? It had to
be adrenaline coursing through her system making her go loopy. A
grown woman imagining monsters and wanting to know if the
58
monster's lips were coarse or soft had to be a definition of instability.
If it wasn't a definition yet, it certainly should be.
Her sister was going to have a field day. No, this was not about
being overly committed to work; it was about lack of sleep on starting
a new job and doing what it took to impress the bosses.
So much for the later. Everyone suffered on their first week, no
matter what the job; clearly she suffered a bit more than normal,
nothing to worry about. Getting out of here was the thing to do before
taking a sleeping pill or ten once safely home.
What should she do? If she turned the bolt and fled, she had no
doubt Sebastian would hear. Her shoulder's cringed at the concept,
because then he'd know Patryk had lied, meaning they'd both come
this time, not only Patryk. The murky recesses of her brain told her
that would be a very, very bad idea. The kind of bad idea horror films
were based on.
"So you confident about this place? Happy now?"
Her legs locked and her spine went rigid save the contours
necessary to try merging with the door. Gillian grimaced at
Sebastian's words; they were so guttural and harsh, and it brought up
images of nature shows were wild hyenas ripped apart a kill before the
lions could steal it.
"Stop talking and let's get out of here. You spout off too much.
Didn't you want to check out the neighborhood?"
Gillian eased back into breathing with Patryk's jab. She recognized
the sound of Patryk's boots. Sebastian couldn't be wearing any,
because his footsteps were oddly silent, even though she had heard
him talking. But there was the clear punch of Patryk hitting the
cement floor as he got farther and farther from her. Which was good,
right, hopefully that meant Sebastian was with him.
At the sound of a reluctant door whining open then shutting with
the seal of metal crushed against metal she wilted into her own door,
sliding onto the floor in a shaking heap. Now her breathing had
returned, so loud she wasn't sure she'd hear Patryk return.
Shakily, she managed to get her hand around the cell phone and
drag it to her ear. Angry at herself for doing so, she dialed her sister,
59
cringing at the deafening sound of the phone ringing on the other end.
She promised herself after tonight she would remove the number from
speed dial. Calling Liz was only a tad more comfortable than dealing
with Patryk.
"You had better be at the ER, dying, and needing a blood
transfusion. And there had better be no other donors." Her sister
answered on the fourth extended ring.
"Liz..."
"No. I just got my popcorn ready, the DVD is in the player, and for
the first time in months the kids are at a sleep over, and Brad got
someone to cover his shift, so don't Liz me unless the ER part is
right."
"I need you to come get me." Gillian's lips began to tremble with
her arms and hands. Keeping her phone and ear together didn't come
easy, but she tried muffling the ear piece to keep from spooking the
shadows into lashing out.
"Oh for the love of Mom, where are you?"
"Gillian Constance Montague."
"I'm scared." Gillian's body cowered from practiced memory.
She could hear her sister throwing things on the other end and a
not-so-private argument between Brad and her. Great, now she could
add relationship butcher to her skill set. That was not going on her
next resume, which she suspected she'd be putting together once her
heart and lungs worked in concert.
"Where will you be?"
"Outside I guess under the bright lights, but I'm going to wait
awhile before going out. Just don't honk, okay?" Gillian gulped. She
could see Liz rolling her eyes and brewing up a storm of swear words
to use on her.
The phone went dead. Gillian looked at it in her numb hand and
limply put it back in her pocket. On second consideration, she pulled
it out, made sure the sound was completely off, not even on vibrate,
and put it firmly away.
60
When she couldn't take counting the shadows and determining if
the black pools were growing closer, she slid up the door and opened
it as quietly as caked, dirty hinges allowed. Closing it behind her, she
remembered to lock it. She wasn't sure if she was locking what she
feared inside or out with her, but it seemed the dutiful thing to do.
Looking at the key, she didn't know whether to keep it or not, but if
the key was found here then Patryk would have lied for nothing, and
men didn't usually lie without reason. And the reason inevitably
would lead to Sebastian. Gillian stifled a dry heave that tried to
invade her throat.
She dropped the key in
to her pocket and waited; she really didn't
want to know why Patryk thought lying to his brother was necessary.
It wasn't like they were having a secret boss-employee tryst or
embezzling money together.
God, was that why he thought she was there? Did he think
Sebastian would think so too and lash out at her? How could anyone
think that about her?
She had wanted to make sure the shipment of supplies to Doctors
Without Borders went smoothly, nothing more. It was her first big
allotment of money from the fund she oversaw. Did Patryk think she
was breaking into the warehouse to sell the supplies? He could crush
her, kill her, just by bumping into her.
* * * *
Patryk squatted down in the marsh grass, keeping one eye on the
girl and making sure Sebastian wasn't returning from his scouting
with the other. She was either very brave or humanly stupid. She
certainly was clueless about the work location, but the way she'd
prickled when Sebastian talked indicated deep within her a set of
survival skills capable of being jumpstarted, senses that could be
tuned into the natural world, if only ... Refusing to go where his
thoughts wanted to, he settled into watching, waiting, and listening, a
normal night really, save her presence keeping him company. Her
personal perfume kept him company from where she'd brushed her
oils off on his shirt. He suckled his shirt to memorize her scent inside
and out.
61
He had no problem having her musk around him, and in that laid
the problem because if he liked the smell so would Sebastian. If
Sebastian messed up one more time there was nothing his status could
do to protect Sebastian from the clan. Rules were rules. Everyone
knew that, everyone but Sebastian.
62
CHAPTER TWO
By the time, Liz's car lights swerved into the drop-off zone, Gillian
was blubbering and grateful she hadn't put makeup on to go out. The
car lights hurt her red eyes, but she walked through their throbbing
beams to skitter over to the passenger side and wrench the door open
before slamming it shut. "Drive, just drive. Okay."
Gillian sat on her hands to keep them still, her teeth chattered and
her head whipped around to make sure the dark was staying put.