Page 22 of Vicious Hearts

CALEPH

When Attila arrives, we’re on our third day out at sea. The chopper touches down on the upper deck and he emerges from the cabin in his fatigues and boots, a baseball cap pressed low over his eyes. He’s grown out his facial hair, giving him a light smattering of brown hair above his lips and across his chiseled cheeks. He’s a damn good-looking bastard.

He claps me on the back in a brotherly hug, then walks with me across the deck until we reach the salon. He grabs a handful of shelled salted peanuts and throws his head back as his hand goes to his mouth. I sit quietly watching him as he crunches the nuts between his teeth and looks around the room.

“This is nicer than Moonlight Dancer,” he says, referring to one of my yachts currently moored in France. “I’d forgotten just how nice it is.”

“This one’s newer,” I tell him. “Has all the bells and whistles.”

Attila is cursed with a very short attention span. He’s one of the most intelligent men I know, but it’s rare that he can carry a conversation past two or three sentences. A hazard of the job, I guess. He gets easily distracted and flits from one conversation to another. His private life is the same. His style also. He tires easily of the old and ushers in the new without one look back. He can’t even stand being in the same country for long enough to set down roots.

One of the only things I know that can hold his attention past a bar of soap is work.

“Your plan worked,” he says, his eyes fixed on me.

“You have what I need?”

He reaches into his jacket and removes a manila envelope, holding it up in the air for dramatic effect.

“This is gold.”

I have no doubt that what he has in that envelope is enough to kill a few careers. No doubt at all. He slaps the envelope down on the table and waits for me to pick it up. I’m in no hurry as I continue to watch him carefully. He’s been my best friend since we were fourteen, thick as thieves in that way that only best friends who understand each other’s darkness can be. But there’s something unsettling lurking in the depths of his soul. His smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes when he looks at me.

I’m about to ask him what’s wrong when an excited little hellion on wheels bursts into the salon, interrupting the silence.

“Caleph, I’ve been looking every…”

Ariadne steps into the room waving around a sheath of papers, then stops short when she sees me sitting with Attila and stares. Literally stares. At Attila. I’m used to this with him. I may be a handsome devil, but he’s other worldly, a proverbial magnet for all types. His eyes swing to mine in surprise as realization dawns on him that I have a woman he’s never met on the yacht. He looks back to the intruder and stands to his full height, offering his hand. Which is so unlike him. Attila looks at her with an unusual amount of interest, almost captivated by her presence. Ariadne very nearly stumbles as she moves forward and takes his hand, looking up at his huge frame next to her tiny one.

Attila stands at 6feet 4inches, a giant of a man with the build of a lion.

“I’m Attila,” he introduces himself. I’m parts amused; parts conflicted by the interaction as I watch her stutter through her own name.

“Attila…like Attila the Hun?”

“More like Attila the Hunter,” he amends, laughing, and I know he says it jokingly, but a shiver runs through Ariadne, as though she knows the truth behind his words. She doesn’t know enough about my world to know what to expect. Not really. She’d probably be surprised to hear he really is known as Attila the Hunter.

When she apologizes for interrupting and leaves us, Attila sits back in his chair and spreads his arms wide across the back, his inquisitive gaze boring into me.

“Why is the journalist who wrote that article about you on your boat? Hell, why is she even above ground?”

“Because you had your job to do. And I had mine.”

* * *

Attila declinesmy offer to stay overnight on the yacht, and I almost breathe a sigh of relief. For someone who has the attention span of a fish, he could not stop talking about Ariadne. At first furious when he realized who she was. Then switching the conversation to how pretty she was. He alternated between the two warring emotions until I told him to change the subject, or I’d throw him overboard. For a badass who listens to no one, he was quick to shut up after that.

“So he’s a friend of yours?” Ariadne asks, as we sit having our dinner later that night. Ever since Attila was here and brought to my attention all her glowing attributes, I haven’t stopped stealing surreptitious glances at her. She is pretty, in a petite sort of way. She’s earthy and magnetic and has an irresistible charm, which adds to her beauty. And I’m only now noticing all these things about her.

“You mean your Google search didn’t turn up anything about him?” I ask her. I know it’s the first thing she would have done, just like a good journalist. Run to her computer and googled his name… then when she didn’t find anything, she’d Google his name with mine in the same sentence and wait for the results as the Google engine gnashed its jaws trying to spit out at least one result to make her happy. She’d still come up empty handed.

I watch as she purses her lips in disapproval. She doesn’t like that I accuse her of doing underhanded things that shedoesdo.

“So how many of you are there?” she asks.

“How many of us…?”

“How many of you in this secret society where you all walk around like ghosts?”

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