CHAPTER FOUR
Present Day
Dante felt the woman next to him stretch languidly, her white-blond hair glowing in the last vestiges of candlelight. He’d found out the night before that her blond had come from a bottle, but for a little while . . . for a little while he’d been able to imagine another woman’s face, another woman’s body pressed beneath his.
He stared at the ceiling and stayed as still as possible in the hope that she’d think he was sleeping. The bedroom was large, sleek, and modern, and the bed sat as big as a lake on a raised platform with gunmetal satin sheets. The art on the walls was big and bold, slashes of bright color from early-twentieth-century artists. The sitting area had a chaise and two chairs upholstered in a soft, shimmering gray just a few shades lighter than the bedsheets. Two of the walls were floor-to-ceiling windows so he could look out over the Dallas skyline.
Normally he enjoyed the room, but it was becoming rather claustrophobic with her pressed against his chest. She’d more than outstayed her welcome. The woman walked her fingers up his chest, and he bit back a sigh, still feigning sleep.
He had to figure out how to get her out of his condo and on her way back to wherever she’d come from. He should’ve known better. He did know better. But when he’d walked into the upscale martini bar downtown, he’d immediately been drawn to her. Her back had been to him, but there were so few women whose hair was that particular shade of blond.
His heart had knocked once in his chest, and he’d almost turned around and walked back out to his Porsche, but he’d found himself approaching her instead. Wondering if it could really be her. Hoping it was. Praying it wasn’t.
He’d known the second he stood behind her that it wasn’t Liv. The woman’s perfume was cheap, her facial features not as refined. But instead of turning away, he’d taken the bar stool next to her and offered to buy her a drink. And as they talked, he could almost hear the lilting British accent, and it got easier to pretend her eyes were blue instead of dark brown.
The woman’s wandering fingers crept beneath the sheets and wrapped around him, and he bit off a curse as his body responded immediately. Fully awake now, he grabbed her hand and pulled it away.
“You’ve got to give me some time, darling,” he told her, kissing the back of her hand gently. “I’ve got work early in the morning, so you should head home before it gets too late. I’ll call you tomorrow evening and we can have a nice dinner.” A good-bye dinner, he thought. He kissed her forehead for added emphasis when he felt her stiffen at the rejection.
She leaned up and pouted down at him, her soft breasts pressing against his chest. “It doesn’t feel like you need time,” she said, slithering out of his grasp and hitching her leg across his hip. “What kind of work has you up so early on a Saturday?”
He could feel her wet and ready for him, and his hands went to her hips to move her off him. Damn his traitorous body. But then he felt something in the room that was more effective than any cold shower. He never heard her—she was too good for that. But he felt her presence. It was reminiscent of the day she’d recruited him at the Marquis de Carmaux’s party almost two years ago. He hadn’t known her name then. Sometimes he wished he still didn’t. But her appearance was just as effective.
“Sorry for interrupting playtime,” Eve Winter said, lounging against the bedroom door. “But you’re going to need to leave now.” Eve stared right at the woman, who was frozen with shock.
“Who the hell are you?” the woman asked.
“I’m his girlfriend,” Eve said, deadpan.
The idea was so comical he almost laughed. He didn’t see her often, but she never changed. She was to The Gravediggers what M was to James Bond. She called the shots, and although she technically answered to The Directors, Dante had always felt they were too afraid of her to deny her too often. Eve could be . . . persuasive.
She always wore black—this time a slim skirt that ended just above her knees and a form-fitting turtleneck. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her face and hung down her back in a long ponytail. She wore her signature red lipstick and a pair of black stilettos that looked like they could be weapons. Knowing her, they probably were.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me,” Eve said. “You’ve got five seconds to get out of bed and into the elevator, or I’m going to throw you off the balcony. Then everyone will know you’re not a real blonde.”
There must have been something in Eve’s expression that made a believer out of the woman, because before Dante knew it, she’d scrambled out of bed, gathered most of her clothes, and was sprinting through the condo to his elevator, not bothering to get dressed first. He heard the ding as the doors slid closed, and then there was nothing but silence.
“Well,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll be receiving an interesting letter from the condo association. I’m almost positive it’s against the rules to run through the building naked.”
Eve shrugged. “She’s gone, isn’t she? I believe that’s what you wanted.”
“And how the bloody hell would you know that?” he asked, rolling out of bed and heading into the bathroom so he could get dressed.
The black bathroom floor tiles were broken up by smaller bronze tiles, and the pattern continued into the large walk-in shower and around the sunken jetted tub. For a touch of irony, the Degas of the bathing nude that Dante had stolen the night he died was displayed over the tub.
He hadn’t expected Eve to give him privacy, and she proved him right by following him. With any other woman, he would’ve preserved some modesty and shown basic manners. With Eve, he knew the effort would be wasted.
“Doesn’t it get old?” she asked. “Fucking these bleached-blond wannabes and knowing they’ll never measure up?”
He shot her a seething look before spitting toothpaste into the sink and rinsing his mouth.
“You’re all heart, Eve,” he said. “Do you have any feelings at all, or are you a robot?”
“What place do feelings have in our lives?” she asked, arching a perfect brow. “You’ve been in the game a long time. Do you think we can do the things we do and see the things we see, and go home with a conscience at night?”
“And yet, Elias and Deacon are curled up beside their women tonight,” he said, not bothering to hide the bitterness. He turned on the shower and decided he needed a few minutes alone—at least long enough to get rid of the scent of stale sex. Eve had obviously come for a purpose. She never showed up in person without one.
He walked straight into the blistering hot shower.
“The others aren’t like us,” she said. “There’s still part of them that believes good conquers evil. And that love triumphs over everything.”
“And what do we believe?” he asked, using a little more force than necessary to scrub his body.
“We’re realists,” she said. “We understand that good rarely wins for the sake of good. Even those who believe they’re good win because they’re a little bit evil. We believe that there’s darkness in everyone. And we believe that you do what you can to prevent global catastrophes on a daily basis, until you can’t anymore. And then you walk away.”
“Bollocks,” he said. “You don’t believe that any more than I do. You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, Eve. I understand you better than the others, which is, I’m sure, why you grace me with these impromptu visits. But you and I are selfish creatures by nature. We want control. We want the power over our own destinies. You get that by playing a game of chess with human lives. I get it by outsmarting man and machine and taking people’s most treasured possessions right out from under their noses, and helping those who are often overlooked.” He rolled his eyes and rinsed his hair. “Or at least, I used to. Now I steal for the ‘good of mankind.’ ”
“You sound so thrilled about it,” she said.
“Sometimes I wonder how much good we’re doing, whether we’re just putting out fires the government manufactured. No one wants to be a puppet.”
“I’m no one’s puppet,” she said. “At least you still get to enjoy the occasional heist. I could’ve stopped you completely.”
“If you had, I would’ve jumped off that turret and let you fish my dead body out of the Mediterranean. It was the only reason I agreed to your proposition.”
That had been the deal: that Dante Malcolm would die and be reborn as a Gravedigger—one of a group of elite agents with special skills whose sole mission was to fight global terrorism, at a level the military or other agencies weren’t capable of maintaining. They had no fixed budget and no chain of command other than Eve. They were autonomous and could take whatever steps were needed to get the job done. They had endless resources and technology and weapons that were much more advanced than those the military or its contractors had access to. They were a small unit—only five—but they did the job of entire platoons. It came down to training and skill. They were the best of the best. And Eve had hunted down each of them individually, just like she had him, and recruited them for the job.
They were all dead men walking. He even had a death certificate. And his significant holdings had been passed to his closest surviving relative, who happened to be his mother, though she’d become a recluse since his death, refusing to show her face in society since her only son had been outed as Simon Locke, the international art thief.
Eve had known everything about him. She knew his secrets as an MI6 agent, and she knew his secrets as Simon Locke. She’d even known the real Simon Locke who’d passed him the torch and how he was enjoying retirement in Antigua with his new wife.
There was nothing that could be kept from her. But she’d promised to keep his secrets if he agreed to work for her. She’d told him he’d only get one chance to make a choice. Otherwise, he’d have to take his chances, knowing there was someone out there who knew everything about him and could reveal it all at a moment’s notice.
His biggest fear was being locked in a cage for the rest of his life. So he’d said yes, and listened to her plan to end his life. She’d given him the suit that had the technology for him to fly without a parachute. He’d been terrified Liv would feel it while he was making love with her, but he’d made sure to keep her hands contained so she couldn’t touch him.
It had been simple. Just as Eve had promised. What she hadn’t explained in great detail was what would happen after he reached the bottom of the cliff. He hadn’t known that his body would have to be found and that he’d be officially pronounced dead. She hadn’t told him about the serum—that debilitating injection that felt like hot lead running through his veins until it slowed his heartbeat to almost nonexistent. She hadn’t told him that he’d be put in a coffin and shipped across the ocean to another country, with the identity of an American who’d been unfortunate enough to die overseas, or that he’d be buried six feet under until the others like him dug him from the ground. She didn’t tell him that the mind would wake first, long before the body did, and he’d be trapped, screaming in his head until his body started to function again. Screaming in his head while it felt like thousands of hot needles were being pushed through his skin.
If that’s what death was like, he preferred never to do it again. He couldn’t imagine that hell would be as bad. But he was a Gravedigger, and he’d learned what it meant to rely on others as if his life depended on them—because it did. He’d gained a brotherhood he’d never experienced before. Working intelligence with MI6 and thieving were solitary jobs. But what he had with The Gravediggers was different.
What they did was important. And he’d found out very quickly that although Eve was in charge of them, she wasn’t one of them, which made keeping secrets from them all the more difficult. They were his brothers, and he’d lied to them every day so he could live a double life and continue to use the talents that fed his soul.
And day after day, his conscience ate away at him, so it was sometimes difficult to face them without the guilt strangling him like vines choking the life out of a tree. There was a reason he kept himself separated, living away from the compound.
He turned off the water and grabbed a towel from the heated bar, drying off quickly and wrapping it around his waist before he exited the shower.
“I did you a favor,” Eve said. “I know you inside and out, Lord Malcolm. You’d have continued for a while, getting everything you wanted. But eventually you’d have become bored. You like that added element of danger, the potential of getting caught. It’s what feeds your desire to keep going back for more.
“It wouldn’t have been long before you told Liv the truth. Part of you wanted to tell her. You even toyed with the idea of prolonging the double life, settling down with a white picket fence and slipping out the back window in the dead of night. But how long would it have taken until things started to crumble? Until Liv found out and had the pleasure of arresting her husband? Or did you think you could persuade her to come over to your side?” she asked, brow arched.
He knew she was right, and it made him all the more furious. “Don’t try to play me, Eve,” he said. “You don’t know me. I’ve spent my career manipulating everyone I’ve ever met, even if there was no need for it. First, because intelligence work required it. And second, because Simon Locke required it. You can spin this tale of how miserable I’d be if I’d chosen another way of life, but the truth is you recruited me because you need me. No one else can do the things I do for you. I know that. And you know that. I also know how valuable I am to this organization, so maybe you could save the brainwashing and tell me why you’re here.”
She stared at him with cold black eyes, and he wondered if he’d overplayed his hand. When he’d said she played chess with human life, he’d meant it, and she wouldn’t hesitate to take any of them out—handpicked or not—if she felt they no longer served a purpose.
“There are things worse than death.” Her face was smooth, expressionless, and he felt the cold chill of fear course through his body. “You should pray you never find out what they are.”
His life had always been simple. Everything had always come easily to him—work and women—which was why he’d loved the challenge burglary presented. It was something he had to work at. Perhaps that’s why he had loved Liv so much—the longer their relationship had lasted, the more effort he’d had to put into it. But instead, he’d chosen the easy way out.
“Put some clothes on—we’ve got work to do.” She turned to walk out, and then stopped and looked back at him. And then at the Degas hanging over his bathtub. Her mouth quirked in a smile. “Nice painting.”
Lucifer couldn’t hold a candle to Eve Winter. He could almost smell the sulfur as she walked away.