Rocked by Love (Gargoyles, #4)(31)
The problem with this little strategy of hers was that Kylie’s personality didn’t lend itself to extended snits. Sure, she had a temper, but it tended to flare hot and fast and burn itself out before she had a chance to build up to holding a grudge. She occasionally thought someone deserved to have her carry one with their name on it, but quite frankly, she found it to be a big waste of energy. There were so many more interesting and entertaining things to do in the world. Why would she want to expend all that energy on hating someone when she could just ignore them?
With Dag, she only managed that for a few minutes. Her determination suffered its first crack when he looked as if he intended to evict King David from his chair. Considering that the cat had been sitting in the chair for way longer than the gargoyle, and that the cat hadn’t pissed her off in the last few hours, no way was Kylie going to let that happen, so she had been forced to speak to warn him off such a stupid move.
The crack got larger when he managed to ask her the completely civil and surprisingly nonarrogant question of what she had found in the files. Given his history so far, she had expected him to demand that she tell him everything so that he could decide what was important or not, or to simply take over from her and pat her on the head like a good little human. If he had tried it, she had been fully prepared to bite his fingers off. She almost felt cheated when she didn’t have to.
But the final crack in her armor of annoyance appeared when King David gave the Guardian his formal stamp of approval. Oh, it was a subtle thing, but the cat had taken a good long look at Dag and decided the warrior would be allowed to stay. From the King, that amounted to a ringing endorsement.
Okay, so King David left a lot of things to subtext, but given that he hadn’t bitten, scratched, hissed at, or sprayed urine on Dag, his reaction to the giant male absolutely constituted approval. Other men and women who had ventured into Kylie’s house hadn’t fared nearly so well in the past.
By the time she had skimmed the contents of the first document Dennis Ott had written and saved on the thumb drive, most of her anger had dissipated. Honestly, she knew the kiss should never have happened. For all intents and purposes, she and the Guardian were coworkers, and even she knew that office romances were a bad idea. Better to keep things on a professional level so that everyone knew where they stood and no one got hurt.
But, damn it, she wanted to be the one to make that mature and logical decision. She didn’t want it thrust on her when the one who kissed her went running from the scene of the crime as if he’d just eaten a piece of bad sushi. That was not how a woman wanted someone reacting to one of her kisses. She wanted him to burn for her, to be consumed with her memory day and night. She wanted a man to try and move heaven and earth just to keep her safe—
The words jumped off the page at her, and Kylie felt her eyes go wide. Bouncing twice on her balance ball, she called out to the Guardian. “Oh, wow. Dag? I think I might have a clue as to why Ott decided to turn against the Order.”
“What do you see?”
“I think they killed his girlfriend.”
Dag surged to his feet and shredded the distance between them in one long stride. “Show me,” he rumbled.
“This document?” She pointed at the screen. “It’s like a diary almost. Entries aren’t dated, but they’re all written in the first person and appear to discuss both events in someone’s life and that person’s thoughts and reactions to those events. Some are only a few sentences, some several pages long. I started at the most recent and scrolled backward, but this name caught my eye.” She highlighted “Annie Mulhollow” in a streak of yellow. “I recognized it. It’s one of the three full names on the spreadsheet.”
Dag pressed one palm against the desktop and leaned in to read the text that filled the screen. “But wouldn’t that make the girl a member of the Order?”
“Here.” Kylie scrolled forward. “Keep reading.”
She followed the text right along with him, but she had already scanned ahead. Those speed-reading classes in grade school had certainly come in handy tonight.
The journal entry read like a cross between a memoir and a manifesto. It began with the story of two young college students, plagued by curiosity and a deep dissatisfaction with the average middle-class lives they had been born to. Although they had every advantage—loving families, places in a respected university, friends, and each other—they still felt as if they should have something more. That inner restless greed had made them the perfect targets for a charismatic upperclassman who promised them not only excitement, but the chance for power and achievement beyond their wildest dreams.
The young man, referred to only as Alistair, had introduced the couple to a secretive and exclusive world that operated in shadows, and whispered seductive tales of wealth, power, and influence that could all be theirs for the taking. All they had to do was join. All that was required was to do as they were told.
When it started, Dennis wrote, it had seemed like a joke, like something out of a movie, all Skull and Bones meets the Hellfire Club. Sure, there were weird, elaborate ceremonies where the established members chanted the names of “demons” and called on the dark ones to grant them power, but no one really believed in any of that stuff, and the benefits rocked.
The “club” provided more than illicit thrills, it chipped in to cover the shortfall when the university raised tuition for the spring semester and Dennis didn’t quite have the money to cover the bill. When Annie’s car got stolen and wrecked, the club bought her a new one, one ten times better than the one she lost. Plus, the booze and drugs flowed like water, and it was really good shit. Sometimes, after Dennis drank from the ritual chalice, he almost swore he could see the faces of the “demons” his new friends liked to talk about so much.