The following day, late in the afternoon, Assail's visitor came back.
As the sun set and the last of the dusky pink rays pierced through the forest, he watched on his monitor as a lone figure on cross-country skis stood among the trees, poles balanced against hips, binoculars up at the face.
Or her hips, and her face, as it were.
The good news was that his security cameras not only had fantastic zoom, but their focus and sight line were easily manipulated by the computer's joystick.
So he went in even tighter.
As the woman dropped the binoculars, he measured the individual lashes around her dark, calculating eyes, and the red tinge to her fine-pored cheeks, and the steady rhythm that beat in the artery running up to her jawline.
The warning he'd given to Benloise had been received. And yet here she was again.
It was clear she was connected in some way with that drug wholesaler - and the night before she had apparently been angered by Benloise, given the way she had marched out of the back of that gallery looking like someone had insulted her.
And yet Assail had not seen her before, and that was odd. In the past year or so, he had familiarized himself with the each-and-everys of Benloise's operation, from the incalculable number of bodyguards, to the irrelevant gallery staff, to the canny importers, to the man's flesh-and-blood brother who oversaw the finances.
So he could only assume she was an independent contractor, hired for a specific purpose.
Except why was she still on his own property?
He checked the digital readout on the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Four thirty-seven. Ordinarily, hardly a time to rejoice, as it was still too early to go out. But daylight saving time had kicked in, and that human invention to manipulate the sun actually worked in his favor six months out of the year.
It was going to be a little hot out there, but he would deal with it.
Assail dressed quickly, pulling on a Gucci suit along with a white silk shirt, and grabbing his double-breasted camel-hair overcoat. His pair of Smith & Wesson forties were the perfect accessories, of course.
Gunmetal was forever the new black.
Grabbing his iPhone, he frowned as he touched the screen. A call had come in from Rehvenge, along with a message.
Striding out of his room, he summoned the leahdyre of the Council's voice mail and listened to it on the way downstairs.
The male's voice was all about the no-bullshit, and one had to respect that: "Assail, you know who this is. I'm calling a Council meeting, and I want not just a quorum, but perfect attendance - the king's going to be there, and so will the Brotherhood. As the eldest surviving male of your bloodline, you've been on the Council roster, but recorded as inactive because you stayed in the Old Country. Now that you're back, it's time to start going to these happy little get-togethers. Call me with your schedule, so I can work out a time and location for everyone."
Coming to a halt before the steel door that blocked off the bottom of the stairs, he put the phone in one of his inside pockets, unlatched the lock, and slid the way open.
The first floor was dark because of the filtering shades that blocked out all light, and the huge open space of the living room appeared like a cavern in the earth rather than a glass cage perched on the shores of a river.
From the direction of the kitchen, he heard sizzling and smelled bacon.
Walking in the opposite direction, he went into the burled walnut - paneled office he'd given his cousins to use and entered his twenty-square-foot walk-in humidor. Inside, the temperate air, which was kept at a precise seventy degrees, and a humidity of exactly sixty-nine percent, was perfumed with the tobacco from dozens and dozens of boxes of cigars. After due consideration of his lineup, he took three Cubans.
The Cubans were the best, after all.
And were another thing Benloise provided him with - for a price.
Sealing up his precious collection, he reemerged into the living room. The sizzling had stopped, the subtle sounds of silver on china replacing the hiss.
As he came around into the kitchen, his two cousins were sitting on bar stools at the granite counter, the pair of them eating in precisely the same rhythm, as if there was some drumbeat, unheard by others, that regulated their movements.
They both looked up at him with the same angle to their heads.
"I'm leaving for the evening. You know how to reach me," he said.
Ehric wiped his mouth. "I've tracked down three of those missing dealers - they're back in action, ready to move. I'm making a delivery at midnight."
"Good, good." Assail quickly ran a check of his guns. "Try to find out where they were, will you?"
"As you wish."
The pair of them bowed their heads in a joint bob, and then went back to their breakfasts.
No food for him. Over by the coffeepot, he picked up an amber-colored vial and unscrewed the top. The lid had a little silver spoon attached to it, and the thing made a tinkling noise as he filled its belly with coke. One hit per nostril.
Wakey-wakey.
He took the rest with him, putting it into the same pocket as his cigars. It had been a while since he'd fed and he was beginning to feel the effects, his body lagging, his mind prone to a fuzziness that was unfamiliar.
The downside to the New World? Harder to find females.
Fortunately, uncut cocaine was a good substitute, at least for the time being.
Slipping a pair of nearly opaque-lensed sunglasses on, he went through the mudroom and braced himself at the back door.
Throwing the thing open -
Assail recoiled and groaned at the onslaught, his weight weaving in his loafers: In spite of the fact that ninety-nine percent of his skin was covered by multiple layers of clothing, and even with the dark glasses, the fading light in the sky was enough to make him falter.
But there was no time to give in to biology.
Forcing himself to dematerialize into the woods behind his house, he set about tracking the woman in the near darkness. It was easy enough to locate her. She was on the retreat, moving with speed on those cross-country skis, winding her way through the fluffy pine boughs and the skeletal oaks and maples. Extrapolating from her trajectory, and applying the same internal logic she had demonstrated on the security tapes from the previous morning, he was soon out ahead of her, anticipating right where her...
Ah, yes. The black Audi from the gallery. Parked at the side of the plowed road about two miles from his property.
Assail was leaning against the driver's-side door and puffing on a Cuban as she came out of the line of trees.
She stopped dead in the dual tracks she'd made, her poles at wide angles.
He smiled at her as he blew out a cloud of smoke into the gloaming. "Fine evening for exercise. Enjoying the view - of my house?"
Her breath was quick from the exertion, but not from any fear that he could sense - which was a turn-on. "I don't know what you're talking about - "
He cut off the lie. "Well, I can tell you that at the moment, I'm enjoying my view."
As his eyes went deliberately down her long, athletic legs in their form-fitting ski pants, she glared at him. "I find it hard to believe you can see anything with those glasses."
"My eyes are very sensitive to light."
She frowned and looked around. "There's hardly any left in the sky."
"There's enough to see you." He took another puff. "Would you like to know what I told Benloise last night?"
"Who?"
Now she annoyed him, and he sharpened his voice. "A piece of advice. Don't play games with me - that will get you killed faster than any trespassing."
Cold calculation narrowed her stare. "I wasn't aware that property offenses carried a capital punishment."
"With me, there's a whole list of things that have mortal repercussions."
She kicked up her chin. "Well. Aren't you dangerous."
As if he were a kitten pawing at a string and hissing.
Assail moved so fast, he knew damn well her eyes were incapable of tracking him - one moment he was yards away, the next he was standing on the tips of her skis, trapping her in place.
The woman shouted in alarm and tried to jump back, but, of course, her feet were stuck in their bindings. To keep her from falling over, he grabbed her arm with the hand that wasn't holding his cigar.
Now her blood ran with fear, and as he inhaled the scent, he hardened. Jerking her forward, he stared down at her, tracing her face.
"Be careful," he said in a low voice. "I take offense quite readily, and my temper is not easily assuaged."
Although he could think of at least one thing she could give him that would calm him.
Leaning in, he inhaled deeply. God, he loved that scent of hers.
But now was not the time to get distracted by all that. "I told Benloise to send people to my home at his own risk - and theirs. I'm surprised he didn't inform you of those, shall we say, very clear property boundaries...."
From the corner of his eye, he caught a subtle bunching of her shoulder. She was going to go for a weapon with her right hand.
Assail put his cigar between his teeth and caught that slender wrist. Applying pressure, and stopping only when pain deepened her breath, he bowed her body back so that she was completely, utterly aware of the power he had - over himself, over her. Over everything.
And that was when the arousal happened for the woman.
It had been so long, perhaps too long, since Sola had wanted a man.
It was not that she didn't find them desirable as a rule, or that there had been no offers for horizontal encounters from members of the opposite sex. Nothing had seemed worth the aggravation. And maybe, after that one relationship that hadn't worked out, she had regressed back to her strict Brazilian upbringing - which would be ironic, considering what she did for a living.
This man, however, got her attention. In a big way.
The holds on her arm and her wrist were nothing polite, and more than that, there was no quarter given because she was a woman, his hands squeezing to such a degree that pain funneled into her heart, making it pound. Likewise, the angle he'd forced her back into was testing the limits of her spine's ability to bend, and her thighs were burning.
To be turned on was...a gross dereliction of self-preservation. In fact, staring up into those black glasses, she was acutely aware that he could kill her right here. Snap her neck. Break her arms just to see her scream before suffocating her in the snow. Or maybe knock her out and throw her in the river.
Her grandmother's heavily accented voice came into her mind: Why can you not meet a nice boy? A Catholic boy from a family we know? Marisol, you break my heart with this.
"I can only assume," that dark voice whispered with an accent and infliction she was unfamiliar with, "that the message was not passed on to you. Is that correct? Did Benloise simply fail to convey to you that information - and that is why, after I expressly indicated my intentions, you still showed up looking at my house? I think that's what happened - mayhap a voice mail that has yet to be received. Or a text message - an e-mail. Yes, I believe that Benloise's communication was lost, isn't that right?"
The pressure on her was tightened even further, suggesting that he had strength to spare - which was a daunting prospect, to say the least.
"Isn't that right," he growled.
"Yes," she bit out. "Yes, that's right."
"So I can expect not to find you on your skis around here anymore. Isn't that right."
He jerked her again, the pain making her eyes roll back a little. "Yes," she choked.
The man relented enough so that she could grab some breaths. Then he kept speaking, that voice strangely seductive. "Now, there is something I need before I let you go. You will tell me what you know about me - all of it."
Sola frowned, thinking that was silly. No doubt a man like this would be well aware of any information a third party could garner about him.
So it was a test.
Given that she very much wanted to see her grandmother again, Sola said, "I don't know your name, but I can guess what you do, and also what you've done."
"And what's that?"
"I think you are the one who has been shooting all those penny-ante dealers in town to secure territory and control."
"The papers and the news reports have labeled the deaths suicides."
She just continued on - there was, after all, no reason to argue. "I know that you live alone, as far as I can tell - and that your house is outfitted with some very strange window treatments. Camouflage designed to appear as the interior of the home, but...they are something else above and beyond that. I just don't know what."
That face above her own remained utterly impassive. Calm. At peace. As if he wasn't muscling her in place - or threatening bodily harm. The control was...erotic.
"And?" he prompted.
"That's it."
He inhaled on the cigar in his mouth, the fat orange circle on the end glowing more brightly. "I'm only going to let you go once. Do you understand that?"
"Yes."
He moved so quickly she had to swing her arms out to regain her balance on her own, her poles digging into the snow. Wait, where did he -
The man appeared right behind her, his feet planted on either side of the tracks her skis had made, a physical barricade to the path she had traveled from his house. As her left biceps and her right wrist burned from blood returning to the areas it had been squeezed out of, a warning tickled across the nape of her neck.
Get out of here, Sola, she told herself. Right now.
Unwilling to run the risk of another capture, she shot forward into the plowed road, the waxed, scaled bottoms of her skis struggling to find purchase on the packed, iced-over snow.
As she went, he followed her, walking slowly, inexorably, like a great cat who was tracking prey that he was content only to play with - for now.
Her hands shook as she used the tips of her poles to spring the bindings, and she struggled to get her skis back in the rack on her car. The whole time, he stood in the middle of the road and watched her, that cigar smoke drifting over his shoulder in the cold drafts that funneled toward the river.
Getting inside her car, she locked the doors, started the engine, and looked in the rearview mirror. In the glow from her brake lights, he appeared downright evil, a tall, black-haired man with a face as handsome as a prince's, and as cruel as a blade.
Hitting the gas, she pulled off the shoulder and sped away, the car's all-wheel drive system kicking in and giving her the traction she needed.
She glanced into the rearview again. He was still there -
Sola's foot shifted onto the brake and nearly punched down.
He was gone.
Sure as if he had disappeared into thin air. One moment there in her sight...the next, invisible.
Shaking herself, she punched the gas again, and made the sign of the cross over her heavily beating heart.
With a crazy panic, she wondered, Just what the hell was he?
