It had to be a dryad thing. They must have tiny arches of steel.
She nodded toward the elevators. “Well, how did that go?”
“Good. He just wanted to be sure I was happy in my work.”
“Are you?”
“Sure. Until something kills me, but then it’d be too late to lodge a complaint. Well, unless y’all get Bert involved, but I’d really rather you didn’t.”
“Noted. So you’re definitely staying?”
“I don’t think I’d be allowed to leave if I wanted to. And I don’t want to,” I hurried to add.
“Good.” She shot a withering look at the bull pen. “Because there’s way too much testosterone around here.”
“And eavesdropping.”
Kylie shrugged. “Agents. They can’t help it.”
She perched on the edge of my desk. In her stiletto heels and short pencil skirt, she did a better job of it than I had. The boys in the bull pen agreed. They eavesdropped on me; they ogled Kylie.
“I found out from Baxter the Bastard about those Sex in the City segments,” she said.
Both monikers were her creation. The first was the God’s truth. Baxter Clayton, news anchor, was most definitely a bastard. The other was a cute and clever name for the series the aforementioned bastard was doing on New York’s high-class sex industry.
“And?”
The dryad leaned in closer. “His producer shut down the project last month. The sex industry in this town must have a lot of pull.”
“Pun intended?”
She thought a moment. “No, lucky coincidence. And it wasn’t the station that pulled the plug. The network brass axed it.”
“Oooh. Wanna bet some of those bad boys are clients?”
“I’d put money on it, though it sounds like they already have.”
“So would anyone who was going to have their business featured have known that the series had been scuttled?” I asked.
“Definitely.” Kylie gave me a fess-up look. “Why do you need to know?”
“Yesterday in the coffee shop, Rake needed to leave. Fast. He claimed it was because Baxter had been stalking him for his segment.”
The dryad sighed. “Honey, think about the goblin mind for a minute.”
“I’d rather not.”
“Too bad. Besides, if you decide to make this thing work with Rake, you’ll need the practice. Technically, he didn’t lie. I have no doubt that Baxter would have been stalking him for that segment. The total truth was that Bax wasn’t stalking him anymore. So, the question then becomes, why the sudden need to leave?”
I sat back and wished I had a wall behind me to thunk my head against. “It was obvious he didn’t want to get away from me. So we can toss out fear of commitment. Aversion to commitment maybe, but not fear. I think he saw someone he either needed to get away from . . .”
“Or chase after,” Kylie finished for me.
She hopped off of my desk. There were a couple of sighs from the bull pen. Kylie ignored them.
“Sorry hon, you’re on your own to pry that out of Rake.” She flashed a dazzling smile to a few more sighs from the boys. “But if you play your cards right, you could at least have fun doing it. And yes, that pun was intended.”
“Thanks, Kylie.”
“Anytime.”
* * *
Damnation.
About an hour later, I didn’t want a wall to thunk my head into, but I’d sure take one to use on Rake.
Kenji had gotten me into the databases I’d needed, but I’d done the digging myself.
I’d hit pay dirt all right. The operative word there being “dirt.”
The Murwood and the office building where the second murder had taken place earlier this afternoon were both owned by none other than Rake Danescu, under the name of Northern Reach Holdings. That made Jesin Nadisu—with his kilo of Brimstone and Nightshade bullet—Rake’s employee. An employee who had looked ready to faint at the mention of his boss. On a hunch, I ran a search on the office building where Alastor Malvolia’s supersized pocket dimension contained his law firm.
Yep, Northern Reach Holdings, aka Rake Danescu’s personal property.
Jesin Nadisu’s reaction could have been his morphine getting low or any number of sudden pains after having a sniper’s bullet blast through his insides, but eyes don’t lie. That wasn’t pain; that was fear. As a result, I had several urges bubbling to the surface, but the front-runner was an overwhelming need to kick Rake Danescu’s ass.
The goblin was capable of a lot, maybe even murder. Who was I kidding? Definitely murder. But what had been done to Sar Gedeon and Kela Dupari wasn’t Rake’s style. If he wanted someone dead, he’d just kill them, not make a B horror-movie production out of it. And then there was all that blood and the brimstone stink. I couldn’t see Rake getting within smelling distance of a demon, let alone partnering with one. No dry cleaner could get demon stink out of a silk suit. Plus, my gut told me that his hand would never go fishing around in a chest cavity for a heart treat to toss to his demon accomplice. “Innocent” was the last word I’d use to describe Rake Danescu, but he wasn’t the murderer.
I knew in my gut the man whose silhouette I’d seen on the other side of that open portal had been the one to paralyze Sar Gedeon and the others while his demon used his claws to go grocery shopping. That silhouette didn’t belong to Rake.