these parts would be indoors from mid-December to March.
He glanced across the BMW’s cockpit. His female was staring out the window, but he doubted she was seeing anything. She was also unable to sit still, twitching in the seat, tapping her foot, moving around the safety belt that crossed her chest.
Refocusing on the road, he wanted to go back to having a conversation about the weather with himself. But maybe he could mix it up and think about sports. The club.
Particle-fucking-physics.
What he absolutely did not want to think about was the fact that his female was going to Havers’s to deal with a family emergency.
A family emergency. As in… a group of people who, although she evidently was not related to them by blood, nonetheless counted as such as the result of her having been raised by and with them.
There was no reconciling this with her being Selena. Nope. And the fact that he couldn’t shoehorn this fact pattern into the construct of her reincarnation was shining a really fucking bright light on the number of things he had wedged and bent and twisted into vacancies in the puzzle.
And what do you know. There were more forced pieces than ones that fit—and he found himself desperately grasping at the story he had constructed for himself. For them. It was impossible to ignore the sense that it was all about to be blown to shit, and the only thing he could think of was how much he wished she hadn’t lost her purse in the chaos the night before last. If she’d just kept it with her, she would have had Rhage’s tip money. And that burner phone.
So they wouldn’t be doing this right now.
Instead, they would be driving to get her stuff at the rooming house, and then, while she got settled at the nice little Cape Cod, he would go to the club and shuffle some papers. In a couple of hours, he would come home to her and they would cook those steaks and watch a movie. And do other stuff in the dark.
He wanted that to be the plan.
Not this.
And goddamn, how selfish was all of that? Like he wanted her to not know this older female she cared for so deeply was sick?
Another thing for him to be proud of himself for. He had quite a fucking list.
“How much farther?” she asked tightly.
“Not far.”
The subterranean clinic was hidden under acres of pine trees, and accessed through four kiosks, one of which was in a barn out behind the old farmhouse that served as a shell to the human world. The other three entries and their associated elevators were scattered through the forest, and convenient for those who could dematerialize. Needless to say, for them, it was going to have to be a park-and-ride situation, so he was going to bring them in the main road to the main driveway.
About ten minutes later, he wedged the BMW in between a minivan and a pickup truck. “You ready?”
“Yes,” she said as she opened her door the six inches she could.
The fact that he didn’t care about whether his side panels were dinged was something he tried to find virtue in. But the truth was, he didn’t care about the car all that much, in spite of how beautiful it was.
He met her in front of the BMW and escorted her into that barn. Got them cleared by the security camera and into the hidden elevator. Hit the button for lower level. During the descent, they both stared at the little numbers above the doors, even though they did not light up because things had been retrofitted to the purpose they served. L to 10, all dark. He found himself wondering what this Otis had been originally designed for. An office building, he decided. Or maybe a midsize hotel.
When the doors opened, he took her over to the registration desk and stood right behind her, in case she got dizzy.
The receptionist, who was wearing a white uniform and one of those old-fashioned nurse’s hats, looked up. “How may we help you?
He waited for his female to speak. And so did the receptionist, although on her side, she didn’t seem surprised that it was taking a while. No doubt she was used to people in shock.
His female cleared her throat. “I’m looking for Larisse, blooded daughter of Salaman? I believe she came in here a couple of nights ago. For her heart?”
The receptionist’s smile was kind as she typed on