Lover Arisen (Black Dagger Brotherhood #20)(40)

With a sound of disgust, Keri turned the cell around.

Erika went over. “May I?”

With a nod, Keri gave the phone up, and Erika’s breath stopped in her throat as she expanded the photograph. The lighting wasn’t great, and there was a faint blur to the thing, as if the hand of the person who’d snapped the image had been shaking a little. It was impossible to get a sense of scale, and she couldn’t read any printing on the mottled leather cover.

But an instinctual revulsion made Erika more than ready to give the phone back.

“It smelled so bad when he brought it in,” Keri muttered. “Herb was obsessed, though. It was his new baby. I mean, he always got worked up about what he collected, but that book was over the top. I couldn’t stand to touch it. He couldn’t seem to stop running his hands over it.”

Erika glanced at the security camera mounted up in the corner. The night of the murder, all monitoring systems in the penthouse had mysteriously gone on the fritz.

So they had nothing about who killed Herb and took his book—

“Did he tell you anything about it?” Erika grimaced and rubbed one of her eyebrows. “Like where it had come from?”

“I never paid attention to any of that stuff.” Keri shrugged. “Herb bought a lot of things, and I didn’t care about any of them. Neither did he, after a while. It was the same with our marriage, too, as it turned out.”

As the woman’s hand went to the base of her throat again, Erika thought about the last time she had come here to speak to her.

“May I ask you something else?”

“Anything, Detective.”

“Do you remember that dream you told me about?”

“Which dream—oh, you mean the one with the man from the video with the watches?” The flush that hit Keri’s face made her glow like she was facing a romantic sunset. Then she seemed to pull herself out of a very private reverie. “No, I haven’t. But I… every time I go to sleep, I hope he’ll come back to me—hey, are you okay? Erika!”





CHAPTER THIRTEEN




Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd there she was.

As Nate opened the front door to Luchas House, he had a roll of plans under his arm, a very pissy Shuli on his ass, and a fragile hope he would cross paths with the female he had really come to see… and yes, yes, Rahvyn was sitting on the sofa in the living room. She had her legs tucked under her, a copy of the Caldwell Courier Journal in her hands, and the second he walked in, she lowered the newspaper and looked across at him.

Like maybe she had been waiting for him to come.

She was tired, he thought as he cleared his throat and tried to remember how to talk.

“Hi. I mean, hello—hi.”

“Hello,” she said softly.

Her smile was hesitant, as if she weren’t sure about her reception—and she was always like that with everybody, not just him. He’d never understood why, and he worried over the reasons. She might have been the first cousin of a member of the Black Dagger Brotherhood… but there were shadows behind her eyes. Deep, dark shadows.

“How are you, Nate?” she asked as she sat up and pulled at the thick black sweater she had on.

Even though he wanted to reply, he could only look at her. Her silver hair was long and shiny in contrast to the hand-knit cabling, and her jeans were dark and fresh, her face free of makeup. She looked utterly perfect to him. Painfully so.

And yes, he could have listened to her say his name for the rest of his life and still not gotten enough of the sound. Maybe it was her accent. All of her words, not just the proper nouns, were tinted by what others said were “Old Country” vowels. To the point where some of the older females who worked at Safe Place got a nostalgic look on their faces whenever Rahvyn spoke—which was rarely and always quietly.

Say something, idiot, he prompted himself.

“We’re building a gym.” He put the roll of blue construction plans forward like it was an all-access pass to the house. “I’m here to drop these off so everyone can check them out. If they’re approved, we can start tomorrow.”

She smiled more widely. “Oh, that’s wonderful. Hello, Shuli.”

“I’m paying for it,” the other guy muttered.

“And helping with the building.” Nate looked through into the kitchen and didn’t see anybody—which was great. Maybe he would have to wait. “It’s the least we can do to help here.”

Rahvyn put her palms out. “Well, if you need another set of hands—”

“Yes, yes, we do. Great, that’s just great.”

As Nate rushed in with the yes-please-thank-you on that, he tried to plaster some nonchalant on his face. Otherwise, he was liable to look like he’d won the lottery: If she was volunteering, not only could he spend time with her, but she had to be staying. Right?

Wouldn’t that be awesome.

“Are you going to leave the plans?” Rahvyn asked. “Because there is a staff meeting going on downstairs and I do not believe anyone is going to be available for a while.”

“You know, I think I’ll wait.”

“They just began. But I can tell them you were here?”

Trying to be casual, and not a heartbroken loser, he shrugged. “Oh, okay, I guess I can leave them on the kitchen table—”