Page 18 of Rock and a Hard Place

I hurried back down to collect the few boxes we’d brought back. The top of one of the boxes was open, and I grinned when I saw the assortment of coffee-making paraphernalia inside. The woman really liked her coffee.

I put the boxes next to the couch in my personal living room, deciding to let her find homes for everything on her own. I didn’t want to dig through her stuff.

Then I went to my home office to check my email for the video feed from her building that Eamon had forwarded. Looking at the footage, she was right. I really had just missed the two wolf shifters.

They looked like low-level gangsters to me, not the ones calling the shots. Surely, The White Claws had not only sent these two measly grunts to collect their stray.

I zoomed in on their faces and took a screenshot, sending it to some contacts to see if anyone recognized them. Then I went through the feeds from the various cameras again, following the guys out the door until they got picked up by the cameras in the parking lot outside.

Bingo!

I’d have zeroed in on the car and the older Asian man in a suit even if the two thugs hadn’t been walking straight toward him. He had to be the one in charge. The gleaming Bentley stood out like a sore thumb. The guy’s suit looked custom-tailored, and there was a fancy gold watch on his wrist, though the footage wasn’t clear enough to show the brand.

You’d think they’d try to be a little more discreet instead of renting a Bentley while they were here. But I guess if he was used to being carted around in a Rolls Royce, a Bentley was slumming it.

I would’ve expected the Bentley to draw a lot of attention since it obviously didn’t belong in the building’s parking lot, but every passerby ignored it, almost like it wasn’t there. Hell, I’d walked right past it myself. There was definitely magic involved.

The man was clearly upset that Lillian hadn’t been home. He drove off but left the other two posted in front of her building. As I’d expected, they were waiting for her to return, watching the entrance and the lobby. I was glad I’d ushered her straight into my Urus.

I called Eamon, and he picked up almost right away. It sounded like he was in the middle of a workout.

“Hey—want to help me pick up the rest of Lillian’s stuff from her place? I think the guys who knocked on her door might still be outside her building. I thought we could do our own sleuthing and see what we’re up against.”

“Yeah, why not.”

We took one of the company SUVs this time, both because they did a better job at hiding in plain sight and because they had more room for her things. Sure enough, when we arrived at the building the two were sitting on a bench outside, watching the door. Occasionally, they glanced up to Lillian’s window on the fourth floor.

“I’ll do my thing,” Eamon said. His form flickered, and in the blink of an eye, a teenager with a cap and a backpack stood in his place. That was one of the handy things about being a demon: he could make himself look like anything he wanted. The cap and backpack didn’t actually exist; they were his soul stuff, shaped to look like them.

With his phone in hand, he made his way over to the benches in front of the building and plopped himself down on the bench next to the two goons. He might look like some kid playing a game on his phone while waiting for his friend, but he was actually recording their conversation. With him in place, I entered the building’s underground car park using Lillian’s key fob.

I kept the lights off when I opened her apartment door, and I avoided the windows, just in case the two were looking.

There were only two more boxes of her belongings left, but there were also about a dozen large plants which had to be brought down two at a time. The smaller ones were arranged on trays so I could bring a bunch down in one go. She’d already emptied the water from the reservoirs, so it was simply a matter of getting everything down to the parking lot and into the SUV without losing all the little round clay balls in the process. I was careful, but even so, by the time I took my last look around her apt, there were little clay balls everywhere.

The rest of the stuff, she’d said, wasn’t important to her. She wasn’t particularly attached to her furniture since it was just whatever she’d been able to afford when she first moved in as a starving student. She hadn’t had the chance to upgrade any of it yet.

It was fine. She had all the furniture she needed over at my place, except for maybe a wardrobe and some extra storage for her things. We could go shopping for that together later. It would be fun. She definitely wouldn’t need her bed or sheets because she’d be sharing mine, and unlike last night, I planned on fully enjoying her presence there, tonight and every night thereafter.

Was I taking advantage of the situation? Maybe, a little. I was trying my best to be a good guy in all of this, but it was proving remarkably difficult. Lillian was one tempting little morsel, and it would take the self-control of a saint not to take a bite. Despite my best intentions, I knew myself too well. I’d have her screaming under me by the end of the night.

I couldn’t wait.

There was only one more item to bring down, a charming little three-tiered cart. It held all her indoor gardening supplies, including a bag of unused LECA, some twine, a watering can, and various bottles of colored liquids.

One of the labels read:ExtremeGro-Grow Big or Go Home!Another bottle said:ExtremeBloom-The Bud Buddies!The hydroponics nutrients were clearly designed to appeal to cannabis growers. There were other things, too, like PH adjustors, micronutrient boosters, and pest control sprays. It seemed a very strange and unnatural way of growing, but I had to agree that her plants all lookedextremelyhealthy.

I pushed the cart out of her door, locking it behind me, then decided to take the tiny elevator since I had the cart. The door opened just one floor down, and a lady with a stroller took one look at me and the cart and offered to take the next one instead. Good. I didn’t think there was room enough for both of us. I got all the way down, loaded up the SUV, drove out of the parking garage and picked up Eamon, who was still in harmless kid form.

“Catch anything useful?”

Eamon held up his phone. “My Mandarin isn’t good enough. I sent it to a buddy of mine to translate.” His phone chose that moment to buzz. “Hopefully that’s him now.”

According to Eamon’s buddy, these two were surprised they’d run into any resistance at all. Lillian was supposed to be an easy retrieval. Her adoptive parents were not famous, nor were they rich, and they said they were no longer close to her. She didn’t have a large social media presence; in fact, she had none at all. And according to everything they had on her, she was single despite claiming to be engaged.

More importantly, she no longer had a job or a home. She also had a bunch of student debt. Surely, she’d want to leave all this behind for a better life with a rich husband.

The two thugs had called her ugly since the photo they had of her didn’t fit the typical Asian beauty standards. They’d even said that she should be grateful to have a man to marry so she wouldn’t be alone anymore. That part really pissed me off. Lillian was fucking gorgeous.

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