Page 134 of Blood Stone

Garrett didn’t answer.

“You’re pissed with me?”

He kept walking.

Roman caught at his arm. “Wait.”

Garrett waited. He simply looked at him.

“What don’t I get?” Roman asked.

“You so did not want to tell Kate. Having her find out about me, first, put nearly all the pressure on me. Then you just had to step up and say ‘me, too’ and your bit was over.”

Roman’s eyes widened almost comically. “You motherfucker. You think I set you up forthat? That I would drop the bomb onKatelike that? Some anonymous tip off that screwed with her head so much she’d pig-stick you to test it?”

“Is that how she found out?” Garrett started walking again.

“I don’t know. We didn’t get that far. It has to be something like that for her to suddenly be certain enough to ram a knife in your innards and figure you wouldn’t die.”

“She’s got guts,” Garrett told him. “What if she had been wrong?”

“Guts or good information? I figured…”

Garrett glanced at him. “Who?”

Roman shoved his hands into his pockets and glanced at Garrett from under his brow. “I though Nial might be trying to push the chess pieces around a little faster.”

Garrett considered it. “It would be a good strategic move under certain circumstances, but Nial isn’t that heartless. He wouldn’t do it without warning us.”

“Would his wife?” Roman asked. “A woman looking out for another woman?”

“Her name is Winter,” Garrett told him, irritated.

Roman gave a semi grin.“Iknow that. I’m surprised you do. You can barely remember your secretary’s name…or that they’re not called secretaries anymore.”

“Keep telling you. I’m not that man anymore.”

Both of them could move silently when they needed to, so their footsteps barely sounded in the pre-dawn air as they passed silently along the street. Finally, Roman sighed. “I’m starting to understand that,” he acknowledged softly. “I guess the world can change if Calum Garrett can.”

* * * * *

Garrett was just out of the shower when the tap came on his trailer door. It was still pre-human hours, so Garrett answered it, tying his robe hastily, fully expecting Sebastian or perhaps Nial.

Kate bit her lip. “Roman took off,” she said. “Some time in the middle of the night. He’s not back.”

Garrett glanced around the hangar. There was no one within visual distance to see Kate at his door, so he drew her into the trailer quickly and shut the door. “He’s fine,” he assured her. “I’ve seen him.”

She stood by the armchair, her fingers digging into the leather. “I think he’s upset.”

“Why?”

She pulled open her shirt, which was, for a change, a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up. His pendant sat inside the shirt. “He found it last night and put it next to my bed. And he wasn’t around when I woke up. Does he know something about this, Micheil? Does the design mean something?”

Toointuitive. Too close to the mark. Garrett weighed up and discarded a dozen lies in the space of two heartbeats, then realized he’d hesitated too long.

“Itdoes,” she confirmed. “That’s why you told me to be discreet about wearing it. Is it some sort of Scottish Claddagh thing, Micheil? Am I bonded or some shit like that because I took it from you?”

He started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. The strident wariness of her voice, along with the hodgepodge of cultural references, all while she was standing there in jeans, shirt and boots, looking lovely, fresh and so very modern and independent, spilled over the top of his humour meter and he had to let loose.