Black And Blue (Quentin Black Mystery #5) (4 page)

I bit my lip, combing my fingers through my hair, which was surprisingly tame given the car’s open top. I shook my head. “You need to talk to Black about that. I’m not his agent, Nick.”

“Just his bodyguard?” Nick grunted. “Why aren’t you asking
him
about this, anyway? Didn’t you say you were driving down there?”

“He’s driving.”

“He can’t talk and drive?”

“Not the way he drives.”

I heard Nick grunt, and practically saw him roll his eyes. “Put the fucker on. I’m not taking the heat for this, not alone.”

“You did this to yourself, Naoko.”

“Put him on the phone, Miriam.”

I stretched my hand out with the phone, offering it in Black’s direction. My eyes followed his arm and hand as he downshifted, sliding the convertible behind a very tall-looking white SUV. Settling behind the other car with a smooth turn of the wheel, he slowed down. I felt more of that heat coming off him when I continued to look at him.

Fighting back my reaction, I motioned with my hand holding the phone. “Nick.” I forced my eyes back to his mirrored shades. “...For you.”

He grinned, ignoring the phone when he leaned towards me, kissing my neck.

“Stop flirting with me, doc,” he murmured in my ear. “Or I’m going to pull over.”

I pushed him back, but felt myself react to that denser pulse of heat.

“Watch the road,” I said. “And stop avoiding. I think Nick wants to chew you out for making him explain your crazy bullshit to me.”

Clicking under his breath, Black rolled his eyes, then motioned towards the glove box.

“Get the earpiece for me, would you? I don’t think the steering wheel speakers are going to like the open top much.”

He scooped the phone out of my hand, placing it on the console between the seats and hitting a few buttons to engage the hands-free. When I handed the earpiece to him after rifling through his glove box, he fitted it over his ear, then wrapped his newly-freed hand around mine, tugging it into his lap.

Before he hit on the phone, he leaned his mouth towards my ear again.

“You can be as psycho overprotective as you want,
ilya...
no complaints here. Not a one.”

When I let out an involuntary snort, he kissed me, on the mouth that time. He released me a few seconds later, but I didn’t move away, maybe partly because I felt him wanting me to stay. Before he clicked on with Nick, I bit my lip, then said it anyway.

“Tell him if I read anything fucked up off Mozar, we’re not staying.”

He grinned wider.

“I mean it,” I said, sharper.

“Oh, I know you do.” He winked at me. “And I fully plan to reward you later, doc.”

My jaw clenched harder. “Stop getting off on the fact that I’m
worried
about you and hear my actual words. You don’t need the money. And it’s
Mozar,
for crying out loud. Remember Mozar? We don’t like Mozar.”

“I like everyone.”

I let out another involuntary laugh, smacking him in the chest with my palm. “Well,
Mozar
doesn’t like
you.
He accused you of being a serial killer, Black.”

“So did Nick,” he reminded me.

“It’s not the same!” I said, shoving at his chest again. “Mozar’s actually
noticed
things about you...
relevant
things, Black. So please, don’t do this just because you’re bored after canceling a bunch of those damned defense contracts...”

He didn’t lose the smile entirely, but a tightness grew visible around his mouth.

I saw it, and immediately regretted my words.

I knew why he’d canceled those contracts, although he’d never admitted it to me outright.

He’d done it for me... in part at least.

Looking at him now, I wrapped my arms around him, shaking him a little. “I
appreciate
it, Black... a lot. But don’t turn this into some frying-pan-fire thing, just because you’re not getting your usual insanely high doses of adrenaline fix. Please.”

The tautness in his face faded. He leaned closer and kissed me again, harder that time. I managed to forget he was driving that time, too. When he pulled away, his eyes returned to the road. He touched the earpiece in his ear.

“Nick?” he said, winking at me. “Sorry. You know how Miri is... so screechy and clinging...”

When I smacked him on the chest again, he laughed.

“I guess she’s over being worried about me physically...” Black added, evading another smack from me. “...she’s back to beating on me.”

Feeling Nick’s snort on the other end of the line, I disentangled myself from where I’d been half wrapped around Black, sliding towards my seat on the opposite side of the car. Before I could get very far, Black gripped me tighter and yanked me back towards him. He never took his other hand off the steering wheel, but wrapped his free arm around my waist.

Watching and listening to him talk to Nick, I conceded defeat.

Not a small part of that was because I could plainly see Nick was right.

Black was happy to be back on the job. He’d also stayed off longer than he wanted, probably because of me, like Nick said.

I found myself thinking about the rest of what Nick said, and what he’d implied without saying it outright. Nick definitely picked up enough around Black to realize Black
needed
to do this kind of on-the-ground, real-time work. He was just one of those people. He’d never be content with full-time office work, no matter how much time he spent at the gym.

For the same reason, I needed to get over what happened to him.

I knew Nick spoke from experience, being a cop, and a military guy before that. It wasn’t exactly a secret that choosing a dangerous career contained its own set of unique relationship challenges. It was something all cops and military personnel struggled with at one time or another––the spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend who wanted them to quit their job.

If it wasn’t the immediate physical danger they faced, it was the crappy hours.

If it wasn’t that, it was the psychological baggage.

Although I wasn’t a marriage counselor, I’d been treating cops and firefighters and vets for a good part of my career, and those issues always came up. I’d been on the other end of those arguments, too.

But I wouldn’t quit my job any more than Black or Nick or Angel would––or should.

So yeah, I knew Nick was right. I knew this was my problem, not Black’s.

I didn’t have to like it, though.

Nor did it fully erase the feeling of foreboding that continued to tighten my chest.

Two

THE OTHER CITY OF ANGELS

THE OLD ONE frowned, overlooking a hazy, yellow-smoke view of downtown Los Angeles, one that stretched all the way down to a pale-blue swath of distant sea. He didn’t look away from that washed-out view as he spoke, certainly not to look at the younger, well-dressed man standing next to him.

“Absolutely not.” His voice came out flat, dismissive, as if the subject was already closed. “I have denied this petition from you before, Brick. I do not understand why you continually force me to repeat myself. You would risk all-out war with the psychics if you do this. And it buys us nothing.”

He turned, giving the younger one a hard stare.

“...You cannot handle what you would unleash, Brick. You are arrogant enough to think you can... but you cannot. And I won’t handle it for you. They are vicious animals. They are also far more dangerous and cunning than you give them credit for.”

Brick, the man standing with him, sighed. Internally, at least.

He didn’t let any hint of that sigh touch his handsome face, nor his eyes.

He was, of course, familiar with the elder’s position in regard to what he insisted on calling “the psychics.” Given who he was, and the fact that he still functioned as the head of their organization, all of them were very aware of Konstantin’s feelings on this matter. Most of them knew of the personal element there, as well, although the old man rarely spoke of that side of things, certainly not to underlings such as Brick.

Konstantin had lost a favorite to the psychics already.

Since then, he maintained they were dangerous––not to be trusted, but also not to be alienated, at least not in the current numbers they represented. Konstantin and that contemptible piece of excrement who led the seers had been the twin architects of the truce between the two races. Konstantin swore by that chickenshit document still, and not only because of the secrets they held over one another in relation to the humans.

Konstantin was an old man, though.

And despite what he was, he was only one.

Brick, however, was not old. As he stood there, pretending to listen with concern and undying patience to the old man’s every whim and fart and muttered complaint, he contemplated the fact of his own youth. He also thanked the angels above that he didn’t have the old man’s ridiculous fears regarding “the psychics.”

Brick had been born into this life with the name Betial. It was a good, traditional name given to him by his true father.

Everyone called him Mr. Brick, however. Or, even more commonly, just Brick.

If they’d known him during in a certain period of his life, they might also call him Mirror.

But there weren’t many alive who remembered that name. Most likely didn’t even remember how Betial got the nickname Brick. Many in their company had likely never
heard
his real name, so didn’t know Brick as a nickname at all.

Brick was fine with all of these things.

He’d always harbored a strange fondness for employing aliases. Over the years, he’d also found that having a non-threatening nickname tended to aid him more than harm him.

For Konstantin, however, Brick had never heard any name but Konstantin.

Konstantin had no last name, as far as Brick knew. He certainly had no nicknames.

He was just Konstantin.

If he had ever been known by another name, Brick’s searching had not uncovered it.

At the current time, they stood shoulder to shoulder by the penthouse window of a high-rise apartment building in downtown Los Angeles. A balcony stood outside those glass doors, with elaborate marble-topped stonework on both of the walls, as well as on the balcony railing itself. Gargoyles poised over fountains with wood nymphs and twisting fish made of even more expensive marble. Blooming vines hung down over a stone trellis and covered those same walls, littered with the faces of stone angels.

The whole atmosphere was very European, very beautiful, and Brick liked being out there very much... although perhaps not now, in the worst hours of the punishing sun.

Where they stood was air conditioned, silent. It was also beautiful, of course, if utterly sterile in its modern European lines and minimalist teak furniture.

The windows they looked out of had been heavily tinted––so much so, that it looked like sunset through that glass, even though Brick knew it to be closer to two o’clock.

Konstantin turned towards him, his long face strangely similar to the marble statues on the other side of that glass. “There are other ways we could do this, Brick. We have other servants, including inside the system––”