Touch of Madness (17 page)

I pretended to think about it, thanked her for her time, and hung up. Sliding the phone into my pocket, I started up the car and pulled away from the curb.

“Where now?” Tom asked.

“Amanda’s mother has power of attorney. She’s a partner in a law firm downtown. I figured I’d stop by her office and see if she might be able to squeeze us in between appointments. If she’s still speaking to me, that is.”

“Ah.” Tom turned to look through the back window. In the mirror I saw Carlton give a cheery little wave before blowing us a kiss.

“God, that man is annoying,” Tom announced, but there was a hint of amusement in his voice.

“Better watch it. You sound like you’re beginning to like him.”

“He’s a vampire, Katie.” Tom’s voice was thick with scorn.

“Yeah. I know.” I did know. But in the silence of my own mind I had to admit that there was a little part of me that found Carlton fascinating and amusing. He was irreverent, clever, and scary as hell. It was a titillating combination. A companionable silence stretched between Tom and me. I was grateful for it. So many people simply can’t stand not having some noise, be it music, talking…whatever. After years of living to a hard rock soundtrack I was finally able to have moments of blessed quiet.

I concentrated on driving. There was plenty of traffic on I-25, despite the fact that it was a weekday morning. Nowadays there almost always is. The city is growing. The government tries to keep up, but the infrastructure wasn’t built to support as many people as we’ve got and more keep coming. I love the city, but I don’t love the traffic.

“Why do you suppose he did it? I mean, he was a professional athlete. He had fame, money, everything! It doesn’t make sense!”

“Don’t look at me. I’d rather die than have one of those damned things in my head.”

“So would I. Not that it would ever be an issue.” Tom looked over his shoulder, watching Carlton’s car slipping smoothly in and out of traffic. “It doesn’t make sense,” he repeated the words, speaking more softly this time.

“Well, if you really want to know, ask him.” I pulled onto the Speer exit and headed over the bridge to downtown. Our tail kept up with us with ease—right up until it was time to find on-street parking. I was able to get a metered spot on Tremont by waiting for someone to pull out. But it was the only spot available for blocks in either direction. Carlton was either going to have to keep circling the block or pull into a parking garage. Either way, there was a good chance he’d lose us. I didn’t mind. I might be starting to like Carlton personally, but his constant presence in the background was getting annoying.

Small, hard pellets of snow began falling as I was sliding coins into the parking meter. I put in enough for the full one hour. If I could get in and out of the office quickly I’d be all right. More likely, I’d get a parking ticket. The City of Denver makes damned good money off folks trying to get business done downtown. The new mayor had fun with it during his campaign and has made a little progress. But the fact is that it costs money to run a city. The traffic fines provide an income stream.

I was thinking about that for the first five floors of the elevator trip. The next twenty-five were spent remembering. I’d known Victoria Ryan since I’d been in high school. Amanda’s mother was very much an older version of Amanda: short, stacked, with dark hair and perfect features.

I remembered her being smart, but not brilliant. She was steady, someone you would rely on in a crisis. She’d been at every gymnastics meet her daughter competed in, every ball game Amanda cheered at or played in. I’d heard she was called “the dragon lady” by her opponents and was a stone cold bitch in the courtroom, but I’d never seen that side of her. Couldn’t say I was sorry to miss it.

When I first was starting up my business I did some courier work for her firm, which was how Amanda and I had met back up as adults. She’d been manning the reception desk over the summer. I’d gotten the vague impression Victoria had disapproved of my becoming best friends with her daughter. The courier work had definitely dried up. But nothing had ever been said. As commuters exited on the various floors it occurred to me that I wasn’t looking forward to this meeting at all. Amanda blamed me for Dylan’s death. It was quite likely Victoria would, too.

“Why the hell am I doing this?” I muttered the words under my breath.

Tom leaned into me, his expression sympathetic. Giving me a quick one-armed hug, he whispered. “Because you love your brother and it’s the right thing to do.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “but you’d better keep reminding me of that, otherwise I’m liable to chicken out.”

The elevator stopped and the last of the commuters had stepped off. The next time the doors opened we’d step into the middle of Logan, Ryan, Leary, and Meyers, P.C., one of the premier law firms in Denver, occupying both the thirtieth and thirty-first floors of the building.

“Mary Kathleen Reilly, you have never chickened out of anything in your life,” Tom teased. He’d taken off his sunglasses somewhere along the way. It gave me a chance to Looking into those chocolate brown eyes, I felt a little of the tension ease out of my shoulders. I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Tom was here. It would be all right. The worst thing that could happen would be that the receptionist would call security and I would be escorted from the building. Embarrassing, but far from fatal.

The bell rang and the elevator doors opened. It was time to beard the dragon in her lair.

12

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The view from the thirtieth floor of a skyscraper is phenomenal. Tom and I had been escorted by the receptionist into a small conference room. The entire west wall from the waist up was windows, giving a glorious panorama of the Rocky Mountains in the distance. The clouds weren’t even this high up—I could see their tops, slumming around the twenty-third floor. The ground seemed very far below. The pedestrians scurrying to work weren’t much bigger than ants, cars and trucks were the size of the Micro Machines I’d given Bryan for Christmas when he was five. I sat in a very comfortable burgundy leather chair, one of four spaced evenly around a circular conference table of highly polished cherry wood that matched the built-in bookcases and window ledges. The drapes were a geometric pattern in burgundy, teal, and gold in a shade that exactly matched the plush carpet. There was an original painting on the east wall. It was nonobjective: white mostly, on a glossy black background, but with splashes of vibrant teal, red, and lavender in a simple cherry frame.

Tom settled into the chair directly across from me, turning slowly to take in every detail of both the room and the view.

“Nice, very nice,” he observed.

“Thank you.”

Victoria Ryan stepped into the room carrying a sealed brown envelope. She hadn’t changed much in the years since I’d seen her. There was a little more gray in her hair, but it looked good on her. Her body was still trim and toned beneath the red power suit. The blouse she wore was snow white silk, her jewelry heavy and gold. It was all very impressive, understated and businesslike, with one exception. On her lapel she wore a large pin. Jeweled and enameled it was just a fraction away from gaudy. It was in the shape of a traditional Chinese dragon. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. She smiled and said. “Do you realize you are only the second person with enough nerve to laugh at the joke?”

“Who was the other?” Tom asked.

“A U.S. District Court judge.”

She dropped the envelope onto the table between Tom and me, but didn’t sit down. Instead, she walked over to the windows, her high heels sinking deep and silently into the carpet. She stared outward, but not as though she was actually looking at the view.

“My daughter said you’d be coming here.”

“She did?” I didn’t bother to hide my surprise. “When?”

“Shortly after Dylan’s death.” She turned and looked at me, her expression carefully neutral. “I love my daughter.”

“I know.”

“I wish I was one of those mothers who could rationalize everything, tell myself that anything Amanda does is all right, simply because it’s her doing it.” Her eyes met mine, and it was a hard look. “I’m not.”

There wasn’t much I could say to that, so I kept my mouth shut. Tom must have agreed with me, because he seemed to be doing his absolute best to remain invisible.

She sighed and turned back to the window. “We disagreed about her obsession with you and her involvement with the parasites. It put a significant strain on our relationship.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She turned, giving me a small smile. “I believe you actually mean that.”

“I do. As I recall the two of you were very close.”

“Yes.” She crossed to the table and primly took her seat. “We were.” Sadness touched her eyes, and her shoulders drooped a little beneath the padded jacket, but only for a moment. I watched as she very deliberately put the pain aside and took back up the armor of business.

“At any rate, she said you’d be here, and here you are. I was asked to give you this envelope and tell you that she’ll be waiting.” I reached for the envelope, but she set a manicured hand on top of it, holding it in place. “There’s something I feel I need to tell you, but I’m not sure how to word it.”

“Just say it.” Tom softened the words with a smile. She looked at him, then at me, and I saw recognition of our relationship in that look. It was as though until that moment, I’d been alone in the room as far as she was concerned, but now Tom and I were a couple, or even a team.

“Amanda blames you for Dylan’s death, Kate, and for everything else that happened that night. I think…I’m afraid it may have unhinged her. I tried to convince her to get help, but all I succeeded in doing was to drive her further away from me. But judging from how she was behaving the last time we spoke, I’d have to say that, where you’re concerned, she might well be dangerous.”

I thought of Amanda’s attack on me at my apartment and gave an involuntary shudder. Amanda was unhinged all right, and more dangerous than her mother even imagined.

“I know.”

She stared at me for a long moment before giving a small nod of acknowledgment. “Please don’t kill her, if she’s still sane.” She paused and I watched her blink away a moment of wetness. “I have to ask you for that. She is my child.”

She took her hand off the envelope, rose in one fluid movement, and cleared her throat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have another appointment. I’ll have Rachel come back in a few minutes to show you out.” She paused at the door. “Be careful, Katie.” She was gone before either of us could answer. I shifted my gaze from the closing door to the envelope in my hand. My stomach was tight with nerves, and there was a fine trembling in my fingers. I undid the clasp and used a fingernail to slit open the flap. Inside there were a sheet of paper with a handwritten address, a printout of a map, and directions. It was a trap. Sure as God made little green apples, Amanda had laid out a trap for me—months ago, and she’d had all this time to perfect it. The question was, what was I going to do about it?

We walked out of the building to find Carlton double-parked next to the rental car and signing autographs. We had to wade through an actual crowd to get to the vehicle. Tom was shaking his head in disbelief. I couldn’t blame him. It was just…surreal.

I wanted to hate Lewis Carlton. I mean, he’s big, he’s scary, and he’s a vampire. And still something about him appealed to me. Under other circumstances, I’d probably be friends with him. A part of me wanted dealing with the Thrall to be black and white. But the fact was that the parasites infested people. Sometimes the host’s mind was even strong enough to briefly override the influence of the hive. Morris had done it. Nor was Carlton the first person I’d known to willingly accept a parasite. Dylan had made the same choice. Amanda would’ve if she could. Hell, she’d even tried. I didn’t know what was wrong with her that she couldn’t be a host, but I’d seen the results. I couldn’t understand why Dylan had agreed to be infested, but I couldn’t hate him for it either. In the end, he’d died saving Tom and my brother Joe.

Don’t think about it, Reilly. Think about what you’re going to do about Amanda. I had options. First, I could call Brooks, tell him that I had a good idea who took the eggs and where they were. Problem with that was, Amanda was completely insane, and, according to the hive, a big, strong bad-ass who’d wipe the floor with the nice police officers.

Second, she’d issued a direct challenge. If I didn’t meet it, the Thrall could use it as an excuse to revoke my Not Prey status. I like my status. Admittedly, part of it is ego. But more than that, being Not Prey makes them deal with me as an equal. It’s kept them from simply hunting me down and killing me as a threat. Granted, there have been times when it’s been a damned nuisance. But more often than not it’s been a good thing.

I thought about all of this on the long, silent ride back to the apartment. Only a few blocks, but the drive seemed to take forever.

I turned the car into the drive, stopping at the parking gate to punch in the access code. Carlton pulled to the curb. His window rolled down and I heard him call my name.

“Reilly!”

I leaned out the driver’s side window. “What?”

“You going anywhere for the next couple hours? I could stand a bite to eat, and I want to switch vehicles.” He nodded toward the bank of ominous clouds rolling in over the mountains. A snowstorm was headed this way, and from the looks of things it was going to be a beaut.

I looked at Tom to get his opinion.

“It’s going to take more than a couple hours to work up a plan. I vote we let him go.”

I didn’t disagree, and a little privacy might be a nice “Go ahead and go.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” He smiled to take the sting out of the words.

“I’m not trying to ditch you, Carlton. I honestly don’t care if you follow me around. It’ll take us at least two hours to come up with a plan of attack—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He opened the door and climbed from the vehicle with amazing speed. “What exactly did you find out that you’re talking ‘bout a ‘plan of attack’?”