Return of the Warrior, page 6
“I am.”
As he pulled out of the parking spot, he knew she was watching him carefully. Then she glanced back at the man on the ground.
“What did you do to him?”
“Not much. A maneuver I learned in my training.”
“Your hands are deadly.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you kill the guys you call the Poisoned Ones?”
“I was getting used to Luke’s body.”
Sidney made a strangled sound, then gave him a direct look. “Where are we going?”
“I’m thinking.” Luke was the one who answered, wracking his brain as he tried to come up with a hiding place.
SABRINA RAN DOWN THE hall to the front door and caught up with Dan just as he was about to step outside. They’d been on their way to dinner when the phone had rung. He’d told her to ignore it. She’d had a premonition that she should answer, so she’d gone back to the kitchen.
Dan studied the look on her face. “What’s wrong?”
She clasped her hands in front of her, trying to keep them from shaking.
Seeing the reaction, Dan quickly crossed to her, holding her close. “You’d better tell me.”
“I want to. But it’s hard to explain. I mean, it sounds damn weird. Or it would if you weren’t a member of the 43 Light Street group.”
“Something nobody else would believe?” he asked, his deep voice and his strong arms comforting her.
She hitched in a breath and let it out. “Sidney Weston is in trouble. She works for that importer, Carl Peterbalm.”
“The guy the Light Street Detective Agency is investigating?”
“Right.”
“And you’re sure she isn’t involved?”
“She’s not. She called me earlier while she was unwrapping a shipment of antiques. One of them was a box. She described it to me, and it sounded like an artifact from the Moon cult. She never would have done that if she was helping Peterbalm import stolen merchandise.”
“Okay. But what’s the Moon cult?”
“A religion from the ancient world. I was going to look at the box tomorrow because it could be the proof you need to nail Peterbalm. But gunmen broke into the office. It sounds like they would have gotten the box, but Sidney had called in a computer guy, Luke McMillan, because she was having problems. He got her out of there safely. Well, not just him.”
She stepped far enough away so that she could meet Dan’s eyes. “Before the gunmen arrived, some kind of mist floated out of the box and knocked Luke out. When he came to, he said he was an ancient warrior sent to protect the box.”
“Oh brother.”
She searched his face. “You think that’s a delusion?”
“You talked to Sidney, and you believe it’s true. That’s good enough for me.”
She felt some of the tightness in her chest ease. “Thank you.”
“Like you said, some weird things have happened to the Light Street group.” He thought for a moment. “You’re saying that this warrior is sharing Luke’s body?”
“Something like that.”
They stared at each other.
“Like us,” he said slowly.
She felt a chill skitter over her skin. “My Lord, I wasn’t even thinking about that,” she breathed. When she and Dan had met years ago, they’d discovered they were the reincarnations of lovers separated by death two hundred years earlier. “But they weren’t controlling us,” she said to Dan. “I get the feeling this warrior guy has some control over Luke’s body.”
Dan’s eyes narrowed. “Think about what that must be like. That could drive you crazy.”
She winced as she took in the full implications of Luke McMillan’s predicament.
“I hope he’s got the strength to deal with it.”
“Yes,” she answered, praying that Luke wouldn’t fall apart—not while he and Sidney were in danger.
Dan kept his gaze on her. “Is there anything else I should know?”
She swallowed. “Unfortunately. I think they may be on the run from the police, too.”
“Why?”
“They ran away from an accident scene.” She focused on the details of the conversation with Sidney. “When he found out she was talking to me, he took the phone away from her. But before he turned it off, I could hear him in the background. And he didn’t sound like a computer guy.”
“He sounded like an ancient warrior?”
She considered the question. “Well, as much as a modern man could sound like that.”
“So what are we going to do about it?”
“Sidney called me because she thinks they need help. But he doesn’t.” She turned one hand palm up. “We have to find them.”
“Yeah. But if he’s not cooperating, I don’t think she’s going to call you again. And what if we can find them? Is the warrior going to kill us before we can get it through his head that we’re trying to help?”
Sabrina thought about that. “I guess we need a team of tough guys from the Light Street Detective Agency and Randolph Security.”
LUKE DROVE DOWN THE alley, then turned right and onto one of the narrow streets. He took several turns, aware that Sidney was watching him.
“You don’t know where you’re going?” she accused.
“I’m looking for something,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Different license plates for this car.”
“Huh?”
“We’re in a stolen vehicle, in case you don’t remember that scene a little while ago. If that guy turns in a description of the car to the cops, I want different plates.”
“More stealing?”
“Sorry.”
He pulled to a stop beside another junker car and waited for several minutes, watching the houses on either side of the alley, trying to see if anyone was looking out the window or standing on a porch.
Finally, he reached for the handle, then turned back to Sidney.
“Can I trust you to stay in the car this time and warn me if you see anyone coming?”
“Yes.”
He gave her a long look, then watched her slump down in her seat.
Mercifully, Zabastian had been silent for several minutes. But as Luke climbed out of the car, the warrior sent him a thought.
She’s cooperating for the moment. But you must learn to control her better.
Annoyance shot through Luke. I’m not the boss of her.
A woman must listen when a man speaks.
Not in this world. In the twenty-first century, women are the equal of men.
You must be making a joke!
Stick around, and you’ll find out.
Luke squatted beside the car, keeping one eye peeled for trouble and hoping he wasn’t going to get shot when he started working on the license plates.
Chapter Five
To Luke’s relief, he was able to remove the license plates in the dark and exchange them without incident. With thanks to God for small favors, he drove away from the scene of the new crime, his mind still scrambling to think of a place to hide out.
“Where are we going?” Sidney asked again.
As if by magic, an address leaped into his mind.
“We can go to the house of some friends. Ginny and Tom Hanover. They were some of my first customers. I’ve been fixing their computers for years.”
“Won’t we put them in danger?”
He shook his head. “I had dinner there a week ago, and they told me they were going to spend a month in Mexico.”
“And they don’t mind lending you their house?” Sidney pressed.
“I hope not.” The answer came out more sharply than he intended, and he knew this situation was getting to him. His life was out of control, and every time he turned around, he got into a worse fix. He wished he’d never opened that damn box.
Then Sidney would be in bad trouble, Zabastian was kind enough to remind him.
“Yeah.”
“What?” Sidney asked.
He sighed. “Just talking to myself again.”
She tipped her head to the side, staring at him. “You mean, you’re talking to the warrior? And you said it out loud.”
She looked like she didn’t expect him to be straight with her. But he answered with a simple, “Yes.”
“And you and I…” She swallowed, then started again. “I’m talking to Luke McMillan now.”
“Yes.”
“So what’s it like? Channeling?”
“It’s not exactly channeling. I’m not communing with someone who’s dead. His spirit was in the box.”
“Can you explain that?”
He sighed. “I’m not equipped to explain it.”
She reached out and carefully laid her hand over his. “Can he feel that?”
“Yes. He feels everything I feel.”
“How do you know?”
“I can tell when he’s reacting.”
“And he’s listening to this conversation.”
“Of course.”
“Is he critiquing our discussion inside your head?”
“He’s been quiet for a while.”
Before Luke could enjoy that state of affairs, he felt the warrior getting ready to assert himself.
And Sidney didn’t help by asking, “What’s he thinking now?”
Luke struggled to keep the warrior’s pointed observation silent. But Zabastian forced the issue by muttering, “That you should learn your place.”
She folded her arms across her chest and turned to face him. “That’s what he’s thinking?”
“I’m afraid so. But he’s operating on assumptions he learned a thousand years ago when social conditions were quite different. If you remember your ancient history, women weren’t exactly equal partners back then.”
She glared at him. For several moments she kept her lips pressed together. Then she said, “Okay, Zabastian. You’re here now. But you never explained how you ended up in that box.”
Luke was as interested in the answer as Sidney. He kept his eyes focused straight ahead of him, and listened intently to the words he spoke. “I was being punished.”
“For what?”
“The Master of the Moon is very strict about how his servants behave.”
Luke knew the man hated to say more. But at the same time, he seemed compelled to admit his sins. Since Luke had been carrying this man’s consciousness around inside himself for the past six hours, he felt the warrior’s internal struggle.
The answer rose up from deep inside the man’s psyche. “I killed a woman,” he said.
Sidney gasped, and Luke felt his own jolt of shock. He’d been in the ancient warrior’s mind, but only on the surface. From the first, he’d considered the guy a badass. He hadn’t known how bad.
Sidney shifted her body so that she was leaning as far away from him as she could get in the car. “Care to explain that piece of information?” she said.
“She was a woman named Devona, a priestess in the Temple of the Moon. She was new to the sacred sisters, and she was impatient to acquire more power for herself. She saw that Alana was in line to be chief priestess, so she poisoned her.”
Luke felt the warrior’s pain reverberating inside himself. But that was only part of the equation. The sentiments he heard inside his head were from another, more violent time, an ancient age when the rules of life were different from today’s. But whatever the rules had been, the warrior had violated the laws of his society.
Sidney was watching him, watching the play of emotions across his face. “You loved Alana?” she said, her voice not quite steady.
“Yes,” the warrior said, his voice soft. “We were very close. She called me to her, and she died in my arms. She suffered for many days, and she had time to think about who had hurt her and how it happened.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. “She remembered that Devona brought her a drink the night before she got sick.”
“That’s not much evidence.”
“It was unusual. That was why Alana noted it. When she told me what Devona had done, I…went crazy.” His voice grew hard. “I am a warrior. I am trained to act. I forced Devona to confess.”
“So you think that a confession under torture is valid?”
He made a harsh sound.
“Maybe you were wrong,” Sidney said.
“I was not wrong!”
“Then you killed her?”
“Yes. But I should have let the priests take care of her punishment. They were angry that I had overstepped the bounds of my…commission.”
Luke wasn’t sure he could have asked any more of the warrior, but Sidney apparently still had questions.
“And they put your spirit into the box?” she asked. “For all that time?”
“I have been out of that box seven times over the years. Each time I have defended the sacred object.”
“And then you went back into your prison?” Sidney whispered. She reached over and laid a hand on him again. Luke could feel her warm fingers on his forearm.
“Yes. I must go back until I have served out my sentence.”
“How will you know?”
“The priests will decide.”
“When you’re in the box, are you sleeping or are you aware of time passing?”
“I feel each second dragging by.” He sighed. “It is a heavy burden.”
“That must be horrible.”
“I committed a crime, and I must live with the consequences,” he said, his tone stoic.
Sidney was looking at him with new eyes. “Was Alana your lover?” she asked.
“Making love with her was forbidden. She was a priestess and I was a warrior.”
Sidney nodded. “I’m sorry that the two of you couldn’t…find happiness together.”
“We lived by the Way of the Moon.”
Luke heard the pride in the man’s voice. His own voice, he realized. He hadn’t understood Zabastian very well. He still couldn’t completely figure out the man who had invaded his body, but Sidney’s questions had helped unlock some of his secrets.
“Both men and women serve the Way of the Moon?” Sidney asked.
“Now it is only men.”
“Why?”
“Because the priests took over all the duties when the order went underground.”
“Why?” she pressed.
He gave her a quick look, then focused on the road again. “Because women are more ruled by their emotions than men.”
“That’s not always a bad thing,” she murmured, and Luke could sense her emotions rising now. She was silent for several moments, and Luke waited for her to make some cutting remark.
But perhaps she was more interested in getting information than in challenging the warrior. Or perhaps she was also understanding him better. “Have you told any of this to anyone else since you went into the box?” Sidney asked.
“No. Nobody else ever wanted to know.”
“I’m sorry,” Sidney murmured.
“Why?”
“It added to your loneliness.”
Luke felt his stomach muscles clench, and Sidney nodded.
After speaking so frankly, Zabastian sank back into himself. Maybe he was sorry he had revealed so much about his past and his punishment.
Or maybe it was a relief to get it off his chest. He was silent as they drove up Charles Street, to the northern part of Baltimore where the houses were large and situated on wooded lots. He found the street and made sure nobody was following him as he turned into the driveway and steered the junk car around to the back of the property.
SABRINA PACED THE LENGTH of the living room of the Roland Park house where she and Dan Cassidy lived.
When she heard him put down the phone, she whirled, her gaze going to his face.
His grave expression had her crossing the room and clutching his arm. “What did you find out?”
“Well, you were right about the car accident. A car belonging to Luke McMillan crashed into a concrete barrier in the warehouse district near Greektown. Before that, they almost hit a truck. The driver’s voice was shaking when he called the cops.”
“And Luke and Sidney were gone by the time the police arrived?”
“Yes.”
As she tried to imagine what had happened to make them leave the scene of an accident, Dan asked, “Could Luke have been drunk? On drugs?”
“I don’t know.” She swallowed hard. “But maybe…you know…maybe the, uh, warrior could have been driving.”
Dan made a frustrated gesture with his hand. “I don’t know. I don’t know Luke. And I don’t know if what he told Sidney is even true. I mean, he could be mentally unstable. Or he could be fencing stolen merchandise for Carl Peterbalm.”
Sabrina winced. “No.”
“How well did Sidney know him?”
“She’d talked about him before. I know she liked him.”
Dan made a rough sound. “He could be a charming sociopath.”
“She told me how hard he worked at his computer business. And she made it sound like he was shy with her. That doesn’t sound like a sociopath to me.”
“How did he happen to show up at her office tonight?”
“I told you, the computer broke, and he came to fix it. Are you cross-examining me?”
“I’m trying to get the facts straight.”
Sabrina clasped her hands in front of her. She loved Dan, but when he started interrogating her, she could understand why people made lawyer jokes. “Are the police looking for them?”
“Well, they’re on the radar. But the cops have a lot of other stuff to worry about. So a one-car accident isn’t going to be near the top of their list.”
“Is that good or bad?”
He sighed. “I wish I knew.”
She read the strained expression on his face. “What else?”
“Hunter, Nick and Jed went over to the Peterbalm offices,” he said, referring to three of the men who worked for Randolph Security, which was tightly allied with the Light Street Detective Agency. “They found the office in a shambles. And in the garage they found shell casings and places where bullets plowed into the cement columns.”
Sabrina’s face contorted. “So that part’s accurate.”
Dan nodded.
“Can you start a search for Sidney and Luke in the area where the car was wrecked?”
