Page 25 of Blood Stone

Chapter Six

Garrett fished his phone out of his pocket and turned it on. He was intrigued to see it was a direct message on Twitter that had buzzed against his chest, and tapped it to open and read it.

@DoveAngel I surrender. Name terms. The Standard main bar. Tomorrow. High Noon.

“Pull over,” he called to the driver, working the menus to set up a direct response back.

MacDonald looked up from his briefcase full of paperwork as the limousine swerved with smooth competence across lanes of traffic over to the stall lane and slowed to a halt. “Problem?”

Garrett carefully slid his finger across the screen, composing his reply. “The reverse. A problem just resolved itself.”

“The woman?”

Garrett frowned, hearing Sebastian’s voice in his mind. “Kate,” he said. “Her name is Kate.”

“That one,” MacDonald agreed.

Garrett looked at the finished Tweet. @Lind’stream The Standard, High Noon it is. Your lunch date can be your second.

He hesitated, annoyed with himself. Why was he deliberately dragging Roman into this? Then, with an impatient clench of his jaw, he hit ‘send’ before he could change his mind or dither any longer.

Then he switched over to normal phone output and pressed Nial’s speed-dial button.

“Kate has buckled,” he said, when Nial answered.

There was a minute pause. “She lasted four days and one move longer than I thought she would,” Nial replied. “Tough lady.”

“I warned you she had balls.” Garrett grimaced. “I knew she would cave with this round, though.”

“Because it threatened her movie?” Nial replied. “Why not use that straight out of the gate, then?”

Garrett stared out the window at the stream of cars, trucks and holiday vans whizzing by at seventy five miles an hour, all outnumbered by big long-haul rigs and their loads, sometimes three or four of them nose to tail.

“Why use a bazooka when a handgun might do?” And he kept his face away from MacDonald in case the prevarication showed, because that wasn’t the whole truth. The truth was, he had been reluctant to hit Kate Lindenstream with the overwhelming leverage he knew he could pull by yanking her movie out from under her. It felt like hitting a man when he was down and he was supposed to be on the same side as Kate, although she had no idea there was such a thing as sides, or factions. Her only enemy was him, as her reference toHigh Noonclearly indicated. She wanted her showdown and her pound of flesh.

Kate Lindenstream would find a way to make him pay for what he had done to her these last ten days.

But for right now, he had her over a financial barrel and she knew it. That was why she was surrendering and willing to talk terms.

She was a realist.

“Well, it took a bazooka, after all,” Nial told him. “More and more, I like her. I think you’ve found us a winner, Garrett.”

“I’m glad you think so. I have to face her over lunch tomorrow.”

Nial chuckled. “We all have to take one for the team here and there. Cheer up. Imagine Roman’s face when he realizes you’ve attached yourself to his girlfriend’s picture, after all.”

Garrett couldn’t help it. The laugh squeezed out of him, dry and hard.

* * * * *

Kate caught her breath as she accustomed herself to the feel of sitting on Adrian’s lap. His well-muscled thighs were firm under her ass. Her shoulder brushed against his.

He settled his hands around her waist. She was wearing the industry uniform, jeans. She barely remembered throwing them on this morning. Her mind had been so engrossed in the overwhelming concerns Garrett had been heaping on her head for the last few days, it had been hard enough to find sleep. Dragging herself out of bed a bare handful of hours later to discover what new disaster may have occurred had taken all her energy. Dressing had become purely automatic.

She had kept up appearances in front of everyone else, though. She had smiled and joked. No one outside a tight circle of trusted people knew what was happening. If anyone caught a whiff of disaster, it would spread like wildfire.

Kate shuddered to think what would happen if the media got hold of this. The tabloids would scream she was broke and on the street in one hundred point font, and scrounge up the worst photos they could find of her, where she looked the most pathetic.