Chapter Forty-Four
Angel watched Gabriel’s Land Rover slow down as their separate vehicles neared the Monsters border. He was escorting her personally, and she couldn’t blame him. But she didn’t envy him the mess he was having to deal with on his end because of her. Two dead Vega members and a lot of witnesses who needed to have their minds wiped clean of any evidence of a gunfight going down in her building.
Still, they’d been through worse. They were wardens, after all. And this really was the safest course of action for all of them right now.
When Angel crossed the invisible line taking her from Vega territory, she saw Gabe pull his SUV over and idle it. She continued on through, and wasn’t surprised when a new vehicle dropped into place behind her. The new escort was probably set up by Gabriel or Cain or both, and she was grateful actually. She didn’t know many of the Monsters clan members, but she trusted Jake enough at this point to truly feel none of them would wish her harmed.
Angel followed the directions on her phone to the famed Fairmont hotel, and soon she was pulling her army green Jeep into the hotel’s opulent valet drive. An overhang would have kept the sun and rain off, but at the moment, it merely shielded guests who pulled up in BMW’s and sports cars, and Angel couldn’t help but feel out of place.
The last time she’d been here, Cain had taken care of her Jeep himself. Now she was all too aware of how old it was.
When she went to open her door to get out, however, someone else was already doing it for her. She always kept her doors unlocked while she drove in case she was in an accident that knocked her unconscious. She wanted the paramedics to be able to get her out of the vehicle. But now she was thrown a little into defense mode by someone else opening her door for her. She managed to not go for her gun, but had she been any more tired or on edge it might have been a different story.
“I’m sorry if I startled you, miss,” said the young man who stood back and waited for her to get out. “I only meant to assist you out of your vehicle.” He was dressed in nothing short of a tuxedo, and white gloves covered his hands. She felt sorry for him. After dealing with her Jeep, he was going to have to replace them.
But he seemed utterly nonplussed by her and her Jeep, and in fact he smiled brilliantly at her as if – as if he knew everything. She settled him with a hard stare. “You work for Cain, don’t you?” she asked point-blank.
He laughed softly. “Miss Clemens, I think you’ll find these days a surprising number of people work for Mr. Cain in one capacity or another.” Then he straightened again and said, “Now if you’ll please come with me, I will see that you’re escorted safely to the penthouse.” He held out one white gloved hand. “Your dinner has already been arranged, and the concierge will be up shortly with your bags.”
Angel decided then and there to just go with it. She was tired. She’d had an exceedingly wonderful but admittedly tiring morning and afternoon. And then Dmitri had returned and all but buried her. Now all she wanted to do was go upstairs, take a hot, rejuvenating shower, eat something delicious – preferably chocolate – and see Jake again.
At the thought of food, Angel thought of room service, which made her realize she had no cash whatsoever for tipping.
The man escorting her chuckled softly. “Miss Clemens, I’ve been given strict instructions not to accept any form of payment or gratuity from you whatsoever, as has everyone else you will deal with during your stay.
Angel stopped dead in her tracks and shot him a wary look. Wards, damn it! She hadn’t put up any mental warding yet! In the chaos of all that had happened, she’d forgotten. And subconsciously, she wanted to save her magic for healing anyway. Already, it had come in handy in saving someone’s life tonight.
But her young companion had obviously just read her mind. She eyed him in silence – and he let her, his smile never slipping. If anything, it deepened as if he were amused. Was he a vampire? Actually, there were quite a few supernatural creatures who could read a person’s mind under the right circumstances. He could be any one of them.
But again, Angel decided to go with it. She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Okay, I get it,” she said. “So I’ll make you a deal. Stay out of my head and I won’t tell Cain you accepted a C-note from me. Got it?”
The man’s eyes widened. Then his smile broke into a shit-eating grin and he laughed. In that moment, he appeared older than his outwardly youthful appearance made him out to be. “Everything I’ve heard about you is true,” he finally said, shaking his head. “And it’s a deal.”
Thirty minutes later, Angel was coming out of one of three luxurious bathrooms with the plushest towel she’d ever felt wrapped firmly around her body. Steam coiled around her feet as she hastily padded out into the bedroom, her ears pricked.
Her phone chimed a second time from where she’d left it in the library.
“I knew I’d heard it,” she said. She had turned the notifications volume up full blast before looking around the suite and finally taking a shower, just in case. So now she could hear it even across the labyrinthine property that was the penthouse.
Angel ran across the penthouse, trying not to slip and slide on the areas that were wood or tiled, and entered the massive library to grab her phone. As it had the first time, the room astounded her, and she found herself in a daze as she strode to the table where her phone rested, plugged in.
She grabbed it and headed back to the bedroom, but on the way, the view beyond the windows of the property caught her eye. She slowed and eventually just stopped. The view from the Fairmont San Francisco penthouse suite was nothing short of life changing.
The three-suite penthouse spanned the entire floor and covered more than six thousand square feet. It contained a ballroom with a grand piano, a billiards room, an antique books-filled two-story library with a celestial painted dome ceiling and a secret escape passage for emergencies, a commercial-sized kitchen with wine storage, and a formal dining room where the United Nations charter was once created. President Truman had hosted a dinner for the signing members – right there in that dining room. The original plates from that dinner were still on display in the very same room.
But it was what was off that room that Angel loved most. It was an enormous terrace obviously made for entertaining. The terrace was illuminated at night by dozens of tiny, romantic lights and centered by a working fountain.
But beyond the terrace was the city of San Francisco in all its nighttime glory. Angel had lived long enough in San Francisco to have learned all about this penthouse suite, possibly the most famous and luxurious in the entire world and most certainly in the United States. But never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined she would one day be staying in it.
She moved to the terrace doors, opened them, and stepped out into the cold night air, despite her towel and wet hair. She gazed out at the city for long, irreplaceable moments, just taking it in. When she felt she’d properly imprinted the image on her mind, she stepped back inside, then swiped her phone on to read the text.
A blush crept hotter into her cheeks with every word.
Jake: Tomorrow is too far away. Meet me tonight instead. Transport to the labyrinth at Lands End Lookout. I’ll be waiting for you.
Angel smiled. I guess he feels the same way I do, she thought whimsically. And then her smile slipped and her stomach felt unpleasantly cold when she remembered that tonight was all there was. Angel may have just found the best thing in the world. And tomorrow, she was going to have to give it away.