Page 86 of Gluttony
The moment she thought it, she realized they already knew. That’s why Iman was here.
He gave her a disarming smile, picked up her bag with one hand, and placed his other at the small of her back. Body language was clear: She didn’t have a choice, anyway.
Twenty-Seven
Tony inhaled the night air,closed his eyes and crouched low on the top of the Lazarus House roof. Above him the starry sky provided both the cover and the light for their shadow activities. Below, the always noisy city street gave him a soundtrack. The rev of cars, the angry shout of a pedestrian clashing with a cyclist, the distant siren of an ambulance.
“Music to my ears,” Parker mumbled beside him, scarf and hood down like Tony.
Tony grunted in amusement.
In the dark, the gray of their suits made them virtually invisible to the naked eye. Lazarus House with only a dozen floors wasn’t the tallest building in the neighborhood, but it was their building and made for an excellent starting point. From their radius, the architecture grew from brick historical to slick and tall. Tony edged closer to the rim of the building and looked down. A whoosh of air rushed to greet his face, and he inhaled again, savoring the feeling of coming home. Or it could be the garlic from the restaurant that watered his tongue. Hungry already.
Heaven’s patrons left the establishment with full bellies, while Hell’s anorexic and jewel encrusted desperados lined the sidewalk, milling like bugs. Across the street, the Nightingale Securities building squatted between two taller buildings. The city council trees looked like cheerleader pom-poms. The people walking under the street lights had no clue they were being watched.
Tony could crouch there for hours just watching the world go by, studying the unguarded actions of people. His gaze shifted to movement in front of Nightingale, and he tensed, eyes narrowing.
“Is that Bailey?” Parker mumbled, catching the same thing.
“She’s meant to be home,” Tony grumbled. He went to lift his hood to bring the internal speaker close to his ear, intending to ask AIMI to give her a message but then stilled. “Who the hell is that?”
A handsome stranger dressed in a slick designer suit kissed her on the mouth. A low growl rumbled from the base of Tony’s throat. He could do nothing but watch as the bastard put a proprietary hand on Bailey’s lower back. Tony stared as the stranger picked up her bag as though he had the right to care for her, and then he took her away. And Bailey let him. What was she thinking? She didn’t appear coerced or uncomfortable. She looked social, chummy, intimate. Anger bubbled in his blood.What the fuck?
He stood swiftly, tugged his scarf up and lifted his hood, then he light-footed across the roof, trailing her. His eyes never left the couple still so connected, their bodies touching as they walked.
“Tony,” Parker warned. “Leave her.”
Prickles attacked his neck. He shook his head. No fucking way.
Tony leaped silently from his roof to the next building, firing the grappling hook mid flight. It connected with the brickwork, a dozen levels up and then retracted, pulling Tony’s weight high on the lead. He zipped passed residential windows, catching glimpses of families at their couches, faces flickering with light reflected from television screens. Like a ghost, he kept going. Cresting the top, he detached the grappling hook and scooted to the ledge of the flat roof, one eye on the street below, tracking Bailey.
Two more building hops, and fifty floors up, he almost lost sight of her with the distance making her small, but he couldn’t risk sticking to the side of the building. That’s when people saw you. With his lungs halting, he watched as his mate stopped at a black shiny sedan. She spoke with the man briefly and then she got into the car.
Friend, lover, colleague... all?
The implications whirled in his mind. Tony’s breath heated against his face-scarf and dragged into his lungs. His heart pounded in his chest. City sounds morphed into a roaring crescendo, as cold as the air buffeting his face. He froze, limbs locked, as the car drove away, taking with it his rock-solid faith in his woman.
Parker, having come up next to him, stood stoically now that it was clear Tony didn’t intend to continue following her. He couldn’t track her without her cell phone, and he’d seen enough.
“I’m sure she has a good reason. He’s probably just a friend,” Parker suggested.
Bailey had no friends except for the Nightingale team. That man had kissed her like an old lover.
Parker must have caught the twitch in Tony’s eye because when their gazes clashed over their scarfs, his brother’s eyes crinkled around the edges, and he said, “You need to bring the pain?”
Tony gave a sharp nod. Hell yeah.
Parker responded with a sweep of the city horizon. “Which way?”
Focusing inward on his sixth sense, he zoned in on the direction with the strongest concentration of sin—the south. Whether that was the creature, or some poor bastard who’d beat on his wife because she’d told him he’d had enough for one night. There were a few things people got wrong about lust and gluttony. Lust was when you wanted the person, before you had them. Gluttony was when you couldn’t stop. For too long the citizens of Cardinal City had been serving up deadly amounts of gluttony, with no recompense for their actions. He flexed his fists, feeling the heat respond to his mood.
“AIMI,” he said. “Activate wing suit.”
And then he jumped.
Wind rushed his face, his stomach dropped as the ground rose up to meet him, and then he spread his wings and flew.
Twenty-Eight
