Page 163 of Blood Stone

“Then open the stupid door and stop pretending you resent the fact,” she told him.

He pulled the door open and stepped aside for her. Kate climbed the steps and looked around as Roman followed her inside. The trailer was empty, with the utter stillness that told her Garrett wasn’t here, not even in the bedroom.

Her innards tightened hard and it was then she realized how much she had been counting on finding Garrett brooding in his trailer.

“Where else could he be?” she asked, her voice emerging very close to a whisper.

“You’ve probably got better information than I do,” Roman replied. “We’ve been deliberately keeping our public details separate from each other here and now.”

“To help keep your personas legitimate?” she asked.

Roman frowned, as he lifted the small handful of papers on the antique desk and thumbed through them. “I’d give anything to say yes, but that sort of expertise we acquired a long time ago. It’s second nature now. Fact is we were too pissed with each other to even talk.” He glanced at her and grimaced. “You weren’t the only one that wanted a piece of his hide and a pound of his flesh.”

Kate put a hand on her hip. “So by encouraging me to pay him back, you were really settling your own score?”

“Something like that.” He glanced at her again. “He left me,” he said abruptly.

“The way I heard it, you shoved a musket against his chest and told him to fuck off forever.”

His jaw rippled, but he didn’t answer.

“Twoyear olds,” Kate breathed. “Girls would have pulled each other’s hair, screamed and rolled in the mud and been best friends ever since. You have to learn totalk, Roman.”

He rubbed at the back of his head, his gaze somewhere between her waist and her knees. “There was a bit more to it than that.”

“No, there wasn’t. You had a tantrum. And Micheil is just as stubborn and just as…maleas you. So he walked away withhisnose in the air, just like you. And you both out-stubborned each other for two hundred fucking years.”

Roman took a deep breath. “Well. Yeah.”

Kate shook her head. “Yeah.”

Roman’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “Good thing you came along, huh?”

She relented. “I should shoot both of you now and save myself a ton of misery.”

“Waste of lead,” Roman told her. “Shooting doesn’t kill us.”

She sighed. “So where else would he be? Has he got a hotel room stashed somewhere in the city?”

“He’s a frugal Scot. He’s not going to run up a hotel charge while he’s renting this monster as well.”

“True.” She looked around. “He’s sulking, Roman. Where does Micheil tend to go when he wants to pout?”

Roman grinned. “Don’t let him hear you accuse him of pouting. He’ll just pout harder.” His grin faded. “Open spaces, like the glens in the highlands. Especially if there’s running water nearby.”

“In L.A.?” She rolled her eyes.

Roman lifted his hand. “Wait,” he said, moving his head like he was tracking noise.

“What?”

“Someone’s coming.”

Kate listened, but could hear nothing. She realized that Roman was picking up something at the edge of his range of hearing, that she couldn’t possible hear, yet. So she waited and listened.

Then she heard it. Footsteps, light and quick, sounded on the concrete outside the trailer.

The door opened without any sort of attempt at a knock, or even a try at the handle to see if it was locked. It was wrenched open and flung aside. The two men that Kate knew as David and Terry climbed up into the trailer, looking around. They were Annette’s husbands, Kate realized. She reached for the names. Nathanial and Sebastian. Nial. She wasn’t sure which was which, but the one she knew as Terry had short hair now and it was a lot closer to blond than the dirty brown she was used to.