Except he didn’t really trust himself on any of that, and it made him wonder if maybe Helania knew something about him that he didn’t. Maybe that was why she didn’t want his young.
Approaching the Mercedes, he shook his head as Fritz got out from behind the wheel. “No, I’ve got my door. Thank you.”
The butler’s face fell, sure as if Boone had called into question his mahmen’s worth.
For an older male, the butler could move quick—then again, he seemed to do a lot of things fast. On the way over here, he drove as if traffic laws and speed limits were so other people were less in his way.
“Where is your female?” the butler inquired politely as he held open the rear door.
I don’t know where she’s gone, Boone thought to himself. Even when she’s right in front of me.
“She’s coming.”
Hopefully.
A moment later, she did. Just as he settled in the far seat, Helania walked out the building’s front door. She hesitated when she saw the uniformed butler and the S 65, but then she squared her shoulders and walked over on the shoveled paths. She was in jeans and the parka she’d worn the night they went to Remi’s, and her boots were ankle-high and well-used. With her hair pulled back and no makeup on, she seemed fresh and natural.
As well as someone he needed to protect—and he knew that she didn’t want that from him.
“Greetings, mistress,” the butler said with a wide smile. Then he bowed lower. “It is my pleasure to be of service. I am Fritz Perlmutter.”
“Um . . . thank you?” she murmured.
“Please,” Fritz said cheerfully, “take a seat and we shall proceed with alacrity.”
As Helania got in, Boone looked away. “This won’t take long.”
Fritz jumped in behind the wheel and turned around to them. “I shall put the partition up now! Please attach your seat belts and let us go.”
While the black glass lifted, panels also came up on all the windows, blocking the views outside the car. Great. He couldn’t pretend to be looking at the snowy landscape. But this was part of the security around the Brotherhood’s training center. Someday, maybe he and the other trainees would get unfettered access. It hadn’t happened yet, however, and even if it had, Helania was not cleared to know where the facility was.
Trying to do something with his hands—other than compulsively crack his knuckles—
Boone pulled his belt around his chest, and as he clicked it into place, there was a lurch and the subtle roar of a very powerful engine.
So, how about those Mets, he thought to himself.
“By the way,” he said, “Butch has set up an evidence room at the training center. After you’re finished at the clinic, he’d like you to stop by and see him.”
“Okay.”
As his phone vibrated in his leather jacket, he wanted to thank the Scribe Virgin for the valid distraction, but as he took it out, he frowned. Rochelle had texted him, but he’d have to look at the message later. He couldn’t focus on anything right now.
“Were you able to stay at your house during the day?” Helania said. Boone’s heart pounded at the unexpected sound of her voice, and he glanced at her reflection in the divider’s pane of smooth glass. “Yes. I slept there. The King gave me a total of fourteen nights before I can go elsewhere.”
“Where will you stay after that?”
“Craeg and Paradise offered me their spare bedroom. But I’ll find something on my own.”
There was a time, little more than twenty-four hours before, when he would have wondered if he could stay with her. That window of opportunity had closed, however. And as she herself had said, he didn’t know how to get back to that space.
“I’m really sorry about your sire—”
Boone jacked around and raised his voice. “Okay. We need to stop with the bullshit here. You and I have waaaay too much going on between us for you to be making any comments about my living situation or my goddamn dead father. I realize I am not handling this well, but to be honest with you, I don’t understand what’s wrong. I honestly don’t. I don’t get this mood you’re in, but frankly, that fact that I do not understand it is just a reminder that I really don’t know you. We had fantastic chemistry, and I was really looking forward to exploring that with