Page 37 of The Hunter

“Lord Thurston. At least, he is the one drawing these contracts against the lives of these women and giving them to men like me. Do you know him?”

Dorian searched through the images in his flawless memory, sifting through data like a clerk in a file room. “Lord Thurston, yes. I’ve never made his personal acquaintance, which is to his credit, I suppose. He married a St. Vincent, I believe. The St. Vincent family owns several ancient titles, including an earldom, but lives on overtaxed tenants, parceling family land, and the credit of unscrupulous men such as I.” Dorian pulled his seat out from behind his desk and claimed it. “What would Lord Thurston, by all accounts a respectable and wealthy peer of the realm, have to gain by ordering the murders of women, and likely children, from the West End to Cheapside?”

“I don’t know.” Argent tossed back another drink and set his glass down, stepping away from the Scotch with that legendary discipline of his. “I—killed his solicitor before I was able to extract that particular information from him.”

“Oh?” This was not the lethal man’s modus operandi. In fact, for Argent, this was incredibly erratic behavior. Argent might be deadly, but he was paradoxically imperturbable. He didn’t strike without reason. That reason usually being money.

“He hired me to get rid of Millicent LeCour.”

“The actress, yes, I heard.” Dorian’s sense of impending doom inflated. Something about the way Argent had said her name…

“I broke the contract, murdered the solicitor, and—” Slowly, Argent lowered himself into the chair opposite Blackwell’s desk, his impressive width dwarfing the leather monstrosity. He seemed about to speak, but the words wouldn’t pass through his tight lips.

“And?” Dorian pressed. If a man this notoriously fearless was nervous, then Dorian worried that an international incident loomed on the horizon.

“I claimed the woman.”

“The… you… what?” Dorian gaped. He couldn’t remember a time he’d been struck dumb in the last two decades. And he rememberedeverything.

“I think I want her to be mine… I’m taking her.”

The somber veracity on Argent’s face caused Dorian to wonder if he were perhaps hallucinating. “But… you gave her a choice, yes?”

“Did you give Farah a choice?”

“Of course—eventually—after a fashion. See here, we’re not discussing Farah and me, the situation was completely different from this. She’s mine. She’s alwaysbeenmine. And you—well…”

“I kill people for a living.” Argent stared at the globe on the desk with unblinking eyes.

“And that is merely the first reason that this is a very bad idea for you both.”

“I want her,” Argent stated again. His voice colored, not with passion, per se, but with something that could be painted with the same brush as need, or even desire.

“Do you… love her?”

Argent’s glacial gaze flicked about the wall behind where Dorian sat, as though he could find the answer in the expensive volumes lined on the shelves there. “I can’t kill her.”

Dorian let out a mirthless bark of laughter. “I suppose that’s more than some can say.”

“I’ve tried, Blackwell.” Argent looked at the space between them. “My hands were around her neck and then… I kissed her.”

Blackwell gaped, struck dumb.

Argent wasn’t known for his exploits as a lover. In fact, Dorian had it on good authority that Argent’s sexual tastes ran to the more… detached variety. According to Madame Regina’s whores, the assassin refused to face them, demanded they keep quiet, and never kissed, caressed, or even looked them in the eye. He finished on them, not in them, paid promptly, and left without a word. Dorian knew the secrets and proclivities of many powerful, important, and dangerous men; after a drink, a fuck, and a cuddle, these secrets would drip from their mouths.

But Argent never spoke, though he had secrets to tell. He never used the same whore twice. He had no type of female he gravitated toward. An anomalous man, this assassin, and one of his many anomalies was his penchant for telling the truth when other men would protect their pride.

“That poor woman, she must be absolutely traumatized.” Dorian had to work hard to keep his alarm for the accosted lady out of his expression.

“She kissed me back.”

“Are you certain?”

“I’m fair certain. At least… one of the times.” Argent’s expression turned pensive.

“Good God.”

“She’s agreed to my terms.”