The King

FORTY-SEVEN

Where was he?

As Sola loitered in Assail’s kitchen, fussing over the few things she’d repacked from upstairs, she kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to find him coming around the corner to try to persuade her to stay.

But he’d already done that, hadn’t he.

In the shower.

Man, for once, memories of being with him didn’t get her juiced. They made her want to cry.

“I no understand why we leave so early,” her grandmother announced as she came up from the basement. “It is not even dawn.”

Her grandmother was dressed in the yellow version of her house frock, but she was ready for the trip, her good shoes on, her matching handbag hanging off her wrist from its fake leather strap. Behind her, Assail’s matched set of guards each had a suitcase—and they did not look happy. Although, come on, they hardly had faces built for the jollies.

“It’s a twenty-three-hour drive, vovó. We need to get started.”

“We are no stopping?”

“No.” She couldn’t take the risk with her grandmother in tow. “You can drive in the middle during the day. You love to drive.”

Her grandmother let out a sound that for anybody else would have been an F-bomb. “We should stay here. Is nice here. I like the kitchen.”

It was not the kitchen the woman was fond of. Hell, her grandmother could cook over a Coleman without blinking an eye—and had.

He’s not Catholic, Sola wanted to say. He’s actually an atheist drug dealer. Soon to be wholesaler—

What if she was pregnant? she wondered. Because she hadn’t taken her pill for two days. Wouldn’t that be …

Nucking futs, as they say.

Shaking herself out of la-la land, Sola zipped the rolling suitcase shut and just stood there.

“Well?” her grandmother taunted. “We go? Or no?”

As if she knew exactly what Sola was waiting for.

Or who, as the case was.

Sola didn’t have enough pride left to try to be cool as she looked around again, searching the entry from the dining area, the archway that was used when you came from upstairs or the office, the shallow hall at the head of the basement steps. All empty. And there were no footsteps coming at a dead run, no thumping from overhead as somebody rushed to pull on a shirt and get to the lower level.

Shower time aside, how could he not see her off …

At that moment, her grandmother took a deep breath and the flat yellow gold cross she always wore around her neck caught the overhead light.

“We go,” Sola heard herself say.

With that, she picked up her suitcase and headed for the back door. Outside, a totally lose-it-in-a-crowd Ford was parked close to the house, the rental agreement in the name of Sola’s emergency identity.

The one nobody in Caldwell knew she had. And in the glove box, there was another set of documents and IDs for her grandmother.

Using the remote, she triggered the locks to disengage, and opened the trunk. Assail’s men, meanwhile, were handling her grandmother with kid gloves, helping her down the stairs, carrying her luggage, and her coat, which she had obviously refused to put on in protest.

As they settled the woman into the passenger seat and her suitcase in the back, Sola searched the rear of the house. Just as before, she expected to see him, maybe running through the main room to get to her before she left. Maybe coming up from the basement and shooting through the mudroom to come out. Maybe skidding around the corner from having been upstairs …

At that moment, something strange happened. Every window in the house had a sudden shimmer to it, the glass panes between the sills and the flat plates of the sliding doors showing a subtle twinkle.

What the—

Shutters, she thought. There were shutters coming across the windows, the subtle movement the kind of thing you’d miss … unless you were looking in at the very second it happened. Afterward? It was as if nothing had changed. All the furniture was still visible, the lights on, normal, normal, normal.

Another of his security tricks, she thought.

Taking her time opening her door, she put one foot in and craned around. The two bodyguards had stood back and crossed their arms.

She wanted to tell them … but no, they didn’t seem like they were interested in carrying a message back to Assail.

They looked downright pissed off now that they’d gotten her grandmother safely into the sedan.

Sola waited for a moment longer, eyes fixed on that open rear door. Through the jambs, she looked at the shoes and the coats in that back hall. So ordinary-looking—well, ordinary for a rich person. But the house wasn’t Middle America anything, and not just because it was probably worth five million. Or ten.

Turning away, she slid behind the wheel, closed herself in, and got a good whiff of lemon air freshener. Under which was the faint stinky haze of cigarette smoke.

“I no know why we have to leave.”

“I know, vovó. I know.”

The tinny-sounding engine jumped to what little life it had and she put the car in reverse. K-turning, she gave that open door one last look.

And then there were no more excuses to linger.

Hitting the gas, she blinked hard as the headlights illuminated the driveway and then the one-lane road that would take them off the peninsula.

He was not going to come after her.

“You make a mistake,” her grandmother said on a huff. “Big mistake.”

But you don’t know the whole story, Sola thought as she came up to a stop sign and hit her directional signal.

What Sola was unaware of, however … was that neither did she.

Assail watched the departure from the ring of trees behind the rear of his home.

Through the windows of the kitchen, he saw her standing by the table, rifling through a suitcase as if searching for something she was leaving behind.

Out here, my love, he thought. What you have lost is out here.

And then her grandmother made an appearance with the cousins, and it was clear that the female did not approve of the leaving.

Just one more thing to adore about her.

It was also obvious that the cousins were against this. Then again, they had never eaten so well, and they had respect for anyone who would stand up to them.

Not a problem with Marisol’s grandmahmen.

As Assail played witness to his female searching about as if she were waiting for him to present himself, there was a small satisfaction in her sadness. But the overriding imperative was to convince his inner beast to let her choose the path she had.

He could not argue with the self-preservation—just as he could not vow to disengage from his business. He had worked too long and hard to fade into a lifestyle of sedentary nights … even if they were spent with her. Besides, he had the worry that things were not done with the Benloise family yet. Only time would tell if there was another brother out there, or mayhap some cousin with a greedy eye and a heart of vengeance for what had been served unto his blood.

She would be safer without him.

As Marisol put her luggage in the boot of the car, her grandmother was accommodated to the front of the vehicle. And there was another pause. Indeed, as she glanced around, he felt she must have seen him—but no. Her eyes passed o’er him in his shadowed hiding spot.

Into the car. Shutting the door. Starting the engine. Turning about.

Then all there was … were brake lights disappearing down his drive.

The cousins loitered only for a moment. Unlike his female, they knew exactly where he was, but they did not approach. They retreated into the house, leaving the door open for him to use when he could stand the rising sun no longer.

His heart was howling in his chest when he finally stepped free of where he had tucked himself.

Walking across the snow, his body was loose-jointed to the point where he wondered if he would collapse. And his head was spinning ’round and ’round—his intestines as well. The only thing that was solid were his male instincts, which were bloody incessant that he needed to go out to the road in front of her, brace himself before that cheap-ass car, and demand that she turn around and come back home.

Assail forced himself into his house instead.

In the kitchen, the cousins were helping themselves to leftovers specifically cooked for them and left in foil-wrapped servings in the freezer. Their affects were as if someone had died.

“Where are the cell phones?” Assail asked.

“In the office.” Ehric frowned as he peeled a Post-it note off the package. “‘Preheat to three seventy-five.’”

His brother went to the wall ovens and began pushing buttons. “Convection?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“Damn it.”

Under any other circumstances, Assail would have found it impossible to believe that Evale was wasting his meager urge to speak on cooking. But Marisol and her grandmother had changed everything … for the short time they had been here.

Leaving his cousins be, he was not at all surprised they didn’t offer to include him in the repast. After centuries of transient existence, he had a feeling they were going to become hoarders of those foodstuffs.

In the office, he sat behind the desk and regarded the two identical phones before him. Naturally, his brain went to how he’d procured them—and he saw Eduardo first upon the ground and then Ricardo strung up against that torture wall.

Ordering his hands to clasp them, he—

His arms refused to obey the command, and in fact, his body fell back into the chair. As he stared straight ahead at absolutely nothing, it was clear that his motivation had deserted him.

Opening the desk’s center drawer, he took out one of his vials and fired up one nostril and then the other with cocaine.

The tingling rush at least got him sitting up, and a moment later, he did in fact take the phones … and hook them up to his computer.

His focus was artificial, the attention forced, but he knew he was going to have to get used to that.

His heart, black though it was, had left him.

And was on its way to Miami.