Page 102 of Warrior's Cross

“Yeah?” Blake asked wryly. “Funny that, since Julian’sdead!” he shouted in frustration.

“Where Preston is, Julian isn’t far behind. I found Preston,” Lancaster continued as if he hadn’t heard Blake’s words. “I followed him. I tried to kill him, but the fucker got away,” he practically snarled. “But I did find the cats.”

“How did you know about them?” Cameron questioned. “Are they okay?” he asked worriedly, his mind grasping for something to think about that didn’t include any form of death.

“They’re fine,” Lancaster answered as he rubbed at the scratches on his cheek. “I was with Julian when he first found them,” he added as he turned around and cocked his head at Cameron and Blake. “Found them in a ditch one night. So tiny they still had blue eyes. Had to be bottle-fed. Julian saw their ears as we were driving by. He stopped in the middle of a goddamned multimillion-pound arms deal to rescue those damn cats,” he said with a sigh. “Did not make our buyer happy,” he mused. “Those cats were the reason we had to leave Ireland. It was almost worth it to watch him feed them.”

Blake snorted in apparent amusement, and he was shaking his head when Cameron looked back at him. “At least we know he never changed anything but his name,” he muttered.

Cameron’s throat tightened as he thought of Julian. There seemed to be two entirely different people inside the man he had called his lover. Lancaster and Blake both talked about a killer, a man who was brutal and relentless and possibly downright cruel. They spoke of him with both respect for his abilities and perhaps a hint of fear of what he might have been capable of doing.

But Cameron had seen a different man. A man who was afraid of handling Cameron’s puppies because they were so tiny. A man who enjoyed pretending he couldn’t tie his tie correctly because he liked to have Cameron do it for him. A man wholoved those two damn cats so much, who lovedhimso much it nearly destroyed him when Cameron stupidly pushed him away.

“You really think he’s still alive?” Cameron found himself asking Lancaster hopefully. “Do you know for sure?” he asked in a whisper.

“I haven’t seen him,” Lancaster answered honestly, a smile pulling at his lips. “But I’ve felt his eyes on me,” he claimed confidently. “Haven’t you?” he asked tauntingly, obviously knowing the answer was no.

It seemed like they sat in that office forever before there was a sound that echoed in the warehouse. Lancaster was immediately standing once more, tense and coiled as he peered out into the darkness.

“Not exactly high ground,” Blake chastised in a wry tone. “Only light in the damn place, and you’re sitting in front of it,” he said with a cluck of his tongue. “If that’s Preston out there, you’re dead already. He was a sniper before he took to driving that Lexus, you know.”

“I’m well aware of the type of people Julian surrounds himself with,” Lancaster murmured in response. He didn’t sound at all nervous.

In fact, he sounded almost excited. “Julian won’t let him shoot me. He’s got unfinished business to tend to first.”

“Damn it!” Blake exclaimed suddenly. “Julian is dead!” he shouted again, his voice nearly cracking with the pain of saying it. “We watched him die!”

“Did you, now?” Lancaster asked in a soft, distracted voice as his eyes scanned the warehouse. He looked like a ferret, low and tense and twitchy. “You sure about that?” he murmured with anobvious smile. “You saw him bleeding. You saw him taken away in an ambulance. One that was driven by Preston, by the way.”

“What?” Cameron blurted in confusion. Blake sat staring at Lancaster’s back stupidly, a look of what might have been hope beginning to form on his face.

“Did you see the doctor who worked on him? Did you see his body after they said he was dead?” Lancaster continued. “No, because they patched him up, hid him in intensive care under a string of false names, and carted him off to somewhere else when he was able to be moved.”

“How do you know this?” Blake asked tentatively.

“It’s my job to know these things,” Lancaster answered softly as he began to relax once more, obviously having decided the noise was nothing. “I traced him as far as I could, but that doctor didn’t know where they’d taken him. I can tell you one thing,” he went on with a cocky grin as he checked his gun for perhaps the fifth time. “Julian Cross did not die the night you thought he did. He lived at least another three weeks, even if he was mostly on his back and immobile. Whether he made it past the move to wherever, I don’t know. The doctor—before he died mysteriously in a wreck last month—told me that moving him might have killed him,” he said thoughtfully as he spun back and forth slowly in the old chair. “I guess we’ll see,” he crooned happily.

There was a loud bang in the darkness, and Lancaster was once again on his feet, standing in the doorway. He was purposefully silhouetting himself in the dim light, and Cameron couldn’t understand why.

“Julian,” Lancaster said softly into the dark.

“Where are they?” a deep Irish-accented voice suddenly demanded in response.

Cameron gasped when he heard him. Julian’s voice was shockingly close, seemingly just outside the circle of light castfrom the office. It came from everywhere and nowhere, aided by the echoing quality of the cavernous warehouse. It sent chills up Cameron’s already frozen back, and he started shaking even more.

“What, no hello?” Lancaster asked Julian coldly as he remained in the doorway. Then he shook his head and sighed. “Tell me something, Cross. What did you see in this kid that I don’t?”

“This is beyond the bounds,” Julian responded calmly, the disembodied voice low and barely controlled.

Lancaster’s body went rigid. “There’s no out of bounds in this game,” he snarled in return. His head tipped, and he moved his gun to the side, pointing it into the corner. “Make a move and the kitties get it,” he warned in a flat, slightly wry voice.

“You have no idea what you’re doing,” Julian growled in a low, dangerous voice. Cameron squeezed his eyes shut against the tears that threatened. He had never heard that level of anger in Julian’s voice before, not even that last night at the restaurant. Even so shocked to hear the voice of a dead man, he was frightened by the emotion.

Lancaster’s hand tightened on the gun he held level at the cage in the corner, and then he moved his aim until the gun was trained on Cameron. “Did he really deserve a warrior’s cross, Julian?” he asked in a voice that was close to hurt.

Cameron looked at the gun, his breaths harsh as he trembled and tears blurred his vision.

The darkness didn’t respond.

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