Mortal Ties

NINETEEN

THEY were gone. At last they were gone. Thank God.

Jasper closed the door and scrubbed his face with both hands as if he could erase some of the lies he’d told. No point in dwelling on it. He’d done what he had to do.

No, that was lying to himself, a sin at least as bad as lying to others and often far more destructive. He’d chosen to put Adam’s life above these strangers’ welfare. However terrible a choice it might be, it had been his to make, and he had to admit that. If one of those strangers was his half brother, did that matter?

Not enough, he thought as he headed back to the couch where he’d snatched a few hours of sleep last night. He’d cleared away the pillow and blanket before Rule Turner and his entourage arrived. It was the first time they’d been put away since that bastard took Adam. Funny how his innate tidiness had fled ever since he got that phone call. He’d been deliberately leaving clutter around as if that would create a homing beacon for his messy partner. Adam would laugh when he saw…

God, he hoped Adam would still be able to laugh.

He sank onto the couch and picked up the card that Rule’s fiancée had left. Lily Yu. He turned it over as if he might find a clue on its blank back. She sure didn’t look like an FBI agent…she had the serious part down, but she was so little. Pretty, too, though somehow that word didn’t seem to fit. Flowers were pretty. She was…compact, he decided. As if something much larger had been crammed into a deceptively small size.

Odd choice for his brother to make. He couldn’t picture Lily Yu putting up with a partner’s roving eye, but what did he know? Nothing, really, about the lady, and not much more about the man who shared half Jasper’s genetic inheritance. No more than however many zillion others who occasionally read a gossip mag. Jasper didn’t pick them up ordinarily, but he’d been curious. Now and then he’d toyed with the idea of meeting Rule Turner. Like when his mom was dying and he learned how much Isen Turner had paid for over the years. Or when he first came out. He’d come boiling out of the damn closet, pissed at the world, and that had seemed like a great target for his anger—the overwhelmingly hetero half brother who was sure to be disgusted.

If he’d been disgusted today, he’d hidden it well. But he’d hidden everything well, hadn’t he? Jasper had seen a certain intensity, but he had no idea what the man was feeling intense about. Maybe Rule wasn’t the heedless tomcat he’d been made out to be. Maybe he used to be, but had changed. Now and then people did.

The resemblance had startled Jasper. It had never seemed that strong in photos or on TV, but when he looked into his brother’s eyes…and just why did Rule look so damn young? He was six years older than Jasper, but he looked fifteen years younger. The best surgeon in the world didn’t give you back young skin. Could it be a lupi thing? Maybe in addition to being preternaturally strong and sexy, they didn’t age.

That was an unsettling thought. But what about this day wasn’t unsettling, grim, terrifying—

His phone buzzed. His heart jumped in his chest, loathing and longing coupling promiscuously with fear, shame, and more—a veritable orgy of feelings that had him snatching the phone up quickly, then hesitating. He didn’t recognize the number, but Adam’s kidnapper never called from the same number twice. “Yes?”

“You did well, Jasper.” It was a warm voice, friendly, with just the right touch of sympathy, the kind of voice that could coax a smile from a sullen child.

Fresh diarrhea was warm, too. And just about as welcome. This wasn’t the voice Jasper longed for. “I’ll speak with Adam now.”

“Will you?” The amusement was light, not without that tracery of sympathy.

“That’s our deal. You want me to remain confident that you’ll honor your end, don’t you? You want me to go on believing that Adam is alive and that I’ll get him back.”

“I do enjoy dealing with an intelligent man,” his nemesis said in an approving way. “And yet I suspect that hope would work as well as certainty. Maybe better. It might be helpful for me to find out.”

Fear broke out the razor blades and sawed at Jasper’s gut. “I’m not a very optimistic person. I need certainty to keep me motivated. I’ll speak with Adam now, or I’ll speak to Lily Yu.”

“The laborer is worthy of his hire, I suppose. The Bible is wrong about a great deal,” he added, “but there are nuggets of wisdom among the debris. You’ve done as you were told, and you will receive your agreed-upon pay…since Adam is in fact quite well, though not particularly happy at the moment. First, however, I have instructions about tonight.”

“Wait while I get a pen.” He did that, collecting his notebook at the same time, then listened, jotting the pertinent facts down in his personal shorthand. Jasper had long since established the habit of putting any notes about a job down in a form no one could use against him in court.

“I’m surprised by your concern,” the warm voice said when Jasper questioned one point. “Have you changed your mind about Rule Turner now that you two have met? You told me you didn’t know much about him, but what you did know, you didn’t like.”

“Oh,” he breathed, “but I dislike you so much more.”

“Do you not think it impolitic to say so?”

“Who can we be truly frank with, if not our enemies?”

A chuckle, rich with amusement. “Oh, Jasper, don’t fool yourself. You’re bought and paid for. You’ll do as you’re told, and that’s hardly the behavior of an enemy, is it?”