Chasing Silver (14 page)

Cesar grunted. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to.

“He’s expecting us to come after him.” Tian began to pace. “But I bet he’s not expecting Gabriel’s crew.”

Cesar smiled. “Sealing the deal with a hit?”

“Something like that. You still want that girl?”

Cesar’s eyes flashed in the dim light, and his smile widened. “Fair’s fair, Tian. See how she likes getting knifed in the back. And the front.”

Tian nodded. “Right.” His black mood lifted as he dialed, and by the time he heard Gabriel’s familiar deep voice on the other end of the line, he was almost chipper.

She liked watching Nathan sleep.

It was more than the freedom to stare and appreciate how gorgeous he was. It was getting to witness a few moments when his guard was down. To see the man he could be if the world didn’t force him to wear such heavy armor during his waking hours.

She knew about armor.

His mouth was softer. Remy knew from his kisses how gentle he could be, but beyond the physical, when life happened and he stared down the barrel of his gun and dared anybody to even think about fucking with him, he had a tendency to keep it tight. It was the same impenetrable line he had drawn around his life, keeping outsiders out and only Isaac in. And Remy in too, now, it would appear.

The faint lines around his eyes weren’t as deep, either. In his sleep, Nathan let go of the strict control that made him so effective at his job. She couldn’t tell if he dreamed, but regardless, it was enough to give him a few minutes of peace from the specters of his past. Knowing who and what some of them were made all the difference in appreciating what he gave her.

Propping up her head, Remy ghosted her fingertips over the scar at the base of Nathan’s throat. It astonished her that he had admitted as much as he had. Maybe enough time had passed and the need for a confessional was too great. He might consider her safe. A stranger who wouldn’t judge.

But she did judge. Not him. Not even Isaac, whose antagonism was now more than understandable. Remy passed judgment on this Susanna who had stripped five years from Nathan’s life with the calm slice of a knife. It was one thing to do what was necessary to survive. Remy’s past was certainly littered with its share of violent crimes. However, she drew the line at emotional manipulation.

Kirsten was a chilling master at that. It was another reason why Remy hated her so much.

Without thinking, she bent and brushed her lips over Nathan’s, needing the warm reminder of his breath fanning across her cheek. She almost moaned at the contact, but instead of deepening the caress and risk waking him, she let her mouth slide along his jaw, nuzzling his cheek with hers in as faint a touch as she could manage.

Nathan surprised Remy by wrapping his arm around her, pulling her tight against him. He turned his head, finding her mouth without opening his eyes and kissed her softly. “Good morning.”

“Hey. I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

He shook his head. “No, Isaac is already up. I can hear him in there. He’ll be knocking on the door any minute.”

“Then let him knock.”

She had heard Isaac, too, but she wasn’t in a hurry for another face-to-face. However, if Nathan knew Isaac was up, that meant he had been awake much longer than the few seconds after her kisses. She wondered if he was aware she had been watching him.

“How did you sleep?”

Nathan’s free hand slid down her ribs to rest on her hip. “Not too good.”

In spite of his touch, Remy stiffened. “Why? And don’t tell me I snore because I know for a fact I don’t.”

He kissed the corner of her mouth. “You do snore, but that’s not what I meant.” Smiling at her gasp of indignation, he added, “I had all these dreams. Like the other night, except worse.”

“Dreams?” She squeaked as he rolled on top of her, pinning her to the mattress with his long length. His morning erection pressed into her stomach, and when he took her wrists to lift them over her head, a fresh surge of arousal rushed through her veins. “Do I want to know what happened in these dreams?”

“I could show you.” Running his tongue along the curve of her neck, he slid his free hand between them, skimming past her stomach to the damp juncture of her thighs. One finger teased the tip of her clit. “But you have to be quiet.”

She answered him with a silent nod. As she curved her legs around his hips, her gaze went to Nathan’s mouth and the soft set of his lower lip. Delectable. Tempting. Too tempting. It took only a slight lift of her head to catch it between her teeth and even less for him to respond, his tongue hot and languid as it pushed past hers.

Nathan continued kissing her as he settled the head of his cock against her slick opening. He was just beginning to thrust forward when a soft knock on the door stopped him.

Frustration flashed in his eyes before he shouted over his shoulder, “You’re lucky I can’t reach my gun!”

“And you’re lucky I even bothered to knock!” Isaac shot back. “Manuel called. He’s faxing some stuff he wants you to look at, said it might be important, so get your ass out here.” There was a pause. “And make sure it’s dressed. I’m not as interested in what you look like naked as Remy is.”

She was smiling by the time Nathan shifted his attention back to her. “I’m not sure anybody could be as interested as I am.”

Nathan smirked. “Some day, I’ll tell you about the night he was,” he said, then called out, “We’ll be right out!”

Isaac was waiting for them on the couch, a jelly doughnut in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. He had red frosting on his upper lip, but he seemed too engrossed by what he was reading to notice.

“You bought doughnuts? Did you get any chocolate ones?” When Isaac didn’t respond, Nathan lost interest in breakfast and peered over the other man’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“Look like fairy tales to me.” He passed back one of the pages without looking around. Even when Remy sat cross-legged on the corner of the couch, reaching across his legs to grab a doughnut from the box, Isaac didn’t stop reading. “I thought you said you were getting intel on a coin.”

Nathan frowned. “I was.” He scanned the page, noting the fuzzy picture on the bottom. “And it is about the coin.” His eyes widened as he continued to read. “And I think it might be the intel we need.”

“What does it say?” Remy asked around a mouthful of food.

“It’s the legend of the Silver Maiden.”

“The who?”

Nathan shook his head. “Not the who, the what. It’s what the coin is called. According to this, there are actually two, or rather, two sides. The one in our possession is the front side.” He began reading from the page. “The Silver Maiden is made of pure silver and was forged by hand on the banks of the Silver River, appropriately enough. Nobody knows who made it or when, but the story is that a young woman was carried across the Silver River and forced into slavery by the men who mined the river for its riches. It was discovered she had a certain talent as a silversmith, and so they took her out of the kitchens where she had spent most of her life, and put her to work with the silver.

“She saved the tiny shavings of silver, keeping them well hidden so nobody could accuse her of stealing, and she labored over the hot fires, smelting and molding the silver into bars. Finally, when she was old, and very sick, she took the bits and pieces she had scraped together and melted them down. She created a mold for the coin she intended to make, both sides carved painstakingly, but frightened she would be caught, she couldn’t melt all her silver at once. She melted enough for one side one night, and the other side the next week, creating a pair of coins instead of one.”

Nathan took a deep breath and looked at Remy before continuing. “She intended to use the coins to buy her freedom. They would hold a certain value beyond the price of the silver because she was a Priestess before she had been enslaved. It doesn’t say to which god. It just mentions a popular and powerful cult. Apparently, the iconography of the coin was inspired by this cult, and she hoped it would create enough local interest to exchange for her freedom. She also anointed the coin with…oils of some sort. Perhaps the essences of flowers? It’s not specific. And tears. Once it was completed, she prayed over it for a full day and night.”

“Prayed for what?” Remy asked.

“Her freedom. She prayed the coin would take her away. But she had been a captive for too long, and the followers of her god had been scattered and killed through the years, until the cult had been all but forgotten. Nobody recognized her coin, and nobody was interested. She knew she was dying, but she wasn’t willing to give up on her plan. She wanted to take her last breath as a free woman.”

Remy straightened. “Did she?”

“Hand me the next page.”

Isaac did so without speaking or betraying any of his thoughts about what he had heard so far.

“But as the days passed, she realized her final wish would not come to pass. They did take her out of the sweltering heat where they melted down the silver, but they didn’t grant her freedom. One morning, she was sent to gather fruit from the riverbanks. They gave her a sharp knife to cut through the brush. She never returned. When her captors realized she was missing, they sent a few men to look for her, but they couldn’t find her. After searching for three days, they found the coins, the bloodied knife, and the tracks of an unknown beast. The second coin was stained with her blood.”

“So…what?” Isaac asked. “After all that she just died? What a great story.”

“Or she turned into the beast,” Remy suggested.

Nathan’s voice was as subdued as hers. “She finally got the one thing she wanted more than anything. Her freedom.”

Isaac gaped at him. “You don’t believe this bedtime story, do you?”

Nathan caught Remy’s eye before looking down at the pages in hand. “I don’t know.”

“I do.” Because it made sense. Finally, a piece of the puzzle slipped into a place that fit, and Remy was starting to see the big picture.

When both men turned curious gazes toward her, she refused to look away. They didn’t understand. They weren’t the ones who had found themselves dumped in the middle of a warehouse in a place and time that shouldn’t have been possible. While Nathan was giving her the benefit of the doubt for now, Isaac had no reason to believe in anything but what he saw with his own two eyes.

Once upon a time, Remy would have been the same way. But once upon a time hadn’t even happened yet.

“He needs to know the whole story, Nate,” she said, her voice even.

Nathan shook his head. “No, I don’t think he does. Not right now. Not until we know more, at least.”

“How much more do we need?” She snatched the sheets from him, then rose from the couch to cross to the small box on the shelves where he was keeping the coins. Pulling out the large silver coin, she held it up next to the sketching on the fax. “They’re the same. And it fits. It all makes sense now.”

Nathan crossed the room and took her arm. He pulled her aside, his voice low. “Isaac is going to need every piece of evidence you have, and even with that, it’ll be a hard sell.”

“And your apartment isn’t big enough for you to think I didn’t hear that.” Both of them glanced back to where he sat on the couch, leaning forward, hands clasped in front of him as he rested his forearms on his knees. His shrewd eyes were narrowed, his annoyance visible. “So either you two drop this right now or come clean. The choice is yours.”

Remy looked up to Nathan. “Weren’t you the one telling me last night I had to trust him?”

The tightening of his mouth was the only response she needed. Pulling from his light grasp, she dashed for the bedroom to retrieve her torn clothes, then returned to perch on the arm of the couch. Though Isaac shifted to face her, Remy held on to the garments. It wasn’t yet time to offer them as evidence.

“You’re not going to find anything on my fingerprints. And you’re not going to find anything on Kirsten, either. Because those records don’t exist.”

A muscle twitched in his tight jaw. “That sounds like fed doubletalk to me. And if you’re a fed, then I’m Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

“I’m not.” Remy took a deep breath. “Everything Kirsten told you about me was true. Being in D.C., part of the gang, her chasing me. The only thing she didn’t tell you was none of that has happened yet. Somehow, some way, because of this coin…” She flipped it so that it landed in Isaac’s lap. “…I went from running across a senator’s lawn in 2084 to crashing Nathan’s showdown with Tian in 2010.”

The room was silent for an exhaustive minute while Isaac stared at her. Then his bark of laughter split the calm.

“You know, if you didn’t want to tell me, you could’ve just said so. Not that I don’t appreciate the good laugh, but I get a little tired of people thinking they can jerk my chain.”

Nathan stepped forward. “She’s not jerking your chain. I know how it sounds. But think about it. Have you been able to find any trace of Remy’s existence? Any trace of Kirsten’s? Think about her ID card. Yeah, it looked fake, but how did it feel? It’s lighter than other cards, isn’t it? And look at her clothes. I know you have quite the impressive collection of fashion magazines, do these clothes look like anything you’ve ever seen before?”

At Nathan’s words, Remy thrust the clothing into Isaac’s lap, watching as he took each piece, rubbed the fabric between his fingers, and held it up for inspection. His frown deepened. He even went so far as to turn her shirt inside out to look for the label, though what he read there imprinted on the material obviously didn’t make him happy.

Abruptly, Isaac tossed the clothes aside and rose from the couch. Grabbing Nathan’s elbow, he dragged him away from Remy, though he made no attempt to keep his voice lowered. “What the hell has gotten into you? You used to be the smart one. Since when do you start buying into cons like this?”

“I know it’s unbelievable, Isaac. But it’s not just her clothes, or the way she talks, or the fact she doesn’t exist. She has a chip embedded in her skin, Isaac. Have you ever seen or heard of anything like that? It’s right on the back of her neck.”

Without prompting, Remy leapt from her seat and positioned herself between the two men, scooping her hair out of the way to expose her nape. The room was dead silent for a moment while she waited for someone to do something. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nathan lift his hand and rest a fingertip right over where the chip was, holding it there until Isaac sighed and did the same.

“What the…?” he muttered.

She didn’t give Isaac time to start another argument. “We can show you the warehouse, too. The one where Nathan found me. Third floor. No way in. No way out.” Letting her hair fall, she turned around and jerked her chin at the coin he’d left sitting on the couch. “Except through that.”