Grier followed her father's Mercedes out to Lincoln, and when the familiar pylons on either side of the farmhouse's drive appeared, she took the first deep breath since they'd left Beacon Hill. Turning right down the cracked-seashell lane, she pulled up in front of the gray-and-white clapboard and put her Audi in park. Although the heart of downtown Boston was only twenty miles away, it might as well have been two hundred. Everything was quiet as she turned off the engine and stepped out of her car, the clean, crisp air tingling through her nose.

God, how she loved this place, she thought.

The gentle, fading light of the gloaming softened the tree line that ran around the six acres of fields and gardens and bathed the clapboard in a buttery illumination. Before her mother's death, the place had been a retreat for the four of them, a way to get out of the city when they didn't go to the Cape--and Grier had spent a lot of weekends here, running through the meadow and playing around the pond.

After her father became a widower, he had needed a fresh start, and so she'd moved into the town house and he'd come out here permanently.

As her father approached from the garage where he'd docked that huge sedan of his, his loafers crunched over the little shell fragments. When she'd been young, she'd thought that drives like this were covered with a special kind of Rice Krispies. Instead of milk poured into a bowl, all you needed were feet to get the chattering sound going.

He was cautious as he came up to her. "Would you like me to get your things?"

"Yes, thank you."

"And perhaps we should have dinner?"

Even though she wasn't hungry, she nodded. "That would be lovely."

God, they were like people at some cocktail party. Well, a cocktail party that involved dead bodies, guns, and running from killers--fashionably late, in this case, meant you were dead, not just the victim of a hair catastrophe or bad traffic on one-twenty-eight.

Which reminded her . . .

Grier looked around and felt the back of her neck tingle. They were being watched. She could feel it. But she wasn't anxious; she was calmed by whatever it was she sensed.

It was Jim's men, she was willing to bet. She hadn't seen them drive up, but they were here.

After her father got her suitcase out and shut her trunk, she locked the car--and tried not to think about the fact that the man with the eye patch had been inside the damn thing. Frankly, it made her want to sell the Audi, even though it only had thirty thousand miles on it and ran like a top.

"Shall we?" her father asked, indicating the front walk with an elegant hand.

Nodding, she stepped forward and led the way up the brick path to the door. Before opening the way in, her father turned off the security system, which was just like hers, and then unlocked the dead bolts one by one. The moment they'd both cleared the jambs, he shut them in, reengaged the system and relocked everything.

No one was going to get at them here: This place made the one in town look like a papier-m?ch? pup tent when it came to security.

After Daniel's death, this house had been prepared for a siege--something she hadn't understood until now. All the clapboards had been stripped off and microthin fire-retardant panels put in place on the interior and exterior; all the leaded glass had been replaced with bulletproof panes that were an inch thick; the antique doors had been swapped out for ones that had reinforced lead frames; oxygen-monitoring equipment and heavy-duty HVAC systems had been installed; and there were no doubt other improvements that she wasn't aware of.

It had cost more than the house was worth, and at the time Grier had questioned her father's mental health.

Now she was grateful.

As she looked around at the familiar Early American antiques and the wide-plank floors and the atmosphere of casual grace, the evening ahead stretched out into infinity. Which was what happened when all you had before you was a whole lot of wait-and-see: Jim and Isaac would be getting in touch with her father at some point, but there was no telling when. Or what the news would be.

Gruesome. How gruesome was all of this.

God, typically, she thought of death in terms of accidents or disease. Not tonight. Tonight it was all about the violent and the premeditated, and she didn't like this world. It was hard enough to get through the day when only Mother Nature and Murphy's Law were after you.

She had a really bad feeling about all of this.

"Would you like something to eat now?" her father asked. "Or would you prefer to freshen up?"

So strange. Usually when she came into this home, she treated it as her own, going to the refrigerator or the coffeepot or the stove without a thought. It felt odd and uncomfortable to be treated as a guest.

Glancing over her shoulder, she stared at her father, tracing the handsome lines of his face. In the awkward silence of the armored house, it dawned on her how alone they both were. For their sake, they really needed to get back to being family from this place of being foreigners.

"Why don't I make us both some dinner."

Her father's eyes watered a little and he cleared his throat. "That would be lovely. I'll just take this up to your room."

"Thank you."

As he passed by, her father reached out and touched her arm, squeezing it ever so slightly--which was his version of a hug. And she accepted the gesture by placing her palm over his hand. Just as they had always done.

After he went up the front stairs, she headed to the kitchen feeling shaky and off her game . . . but she was up on her feet and moving forward.

Which, at the end of the day, was all you got, wasn't it.

There was just one thing missing . . . and she paused to look over her shoulder again. Then she strode into the kitchen and checked the table in the alcove . . . and the long stretch of counter where the cooktop was . . . and the foot of the back stairs . . .

"Daniel?" she hissed. "Where are you?"

Maybe he didn't want to be in their father's house. But if he could show up at the Four Seasons for a charity benefit and then at an underground fighting ring, he could damn well drag his ass here.

"I need you," she said. "I need to see you. . . ."

She waited. Called his name quietly a couple more times. But it appeared as if only the double ovens and the refrigerator were listening to her.

Oh, for God's sake, she knew her brother had always despised conflict--and that their father had made him jumpy. But no one had ever seen him except her, so clearly he could pick who he showed himself to.

"Daniel."

In a moment of panic, she wondered if he was never coming back. Had there been a good-bye on his part that she hadn't caught?

Again, no response from the appliances.

Figuring she'd have more luck putting them to work, she went over to the icebox and cracked the door, wondering what the hell she could whip up for her and her father.

One thing was for sure: dinner wasn't going to include omelets.

It was going to be a while before she made an omelet again. As darkness settled in, the headlights of Matthias's unmarked swept over the road ahead. There were other cars traveling along the same asphalt as his, other people behind those wheels, other plans in other heads.

All of it was irrelevant to him, with no more significance than a movie playing on a screen.

No more depth, either.

He had issues. Bad issues. The kind that tied his brain in knots and made that pain he'd been having on his left side fire up to the point that he struggled to keep conscious.

Shit . . . Jim Heron knew way too much about what should have been private thoughts and private knowledge. It was as if the man had tuned in to Matthias's inner radio station and heard all his songs and jingles and traffic reports.

And the fucker was right. Matthias's second in command had only truly distinguished himself after Matthias's little "accident" in the desert: In the last two years, that operative had made himself indispensible and, looking over the assignments and situations Matthias had dealt with, the guy had gradually influenced Matthias's decisions until he was all but making them himself.

It had been so subtle. Like someone slowly turning the flame up under a pot of water. His second in command had been the one to change his mind about letting Jim Heron go. And the man had been driving Matthias to kill Isaac. And there had been a hundred more examples--many of which he'd acted on.

He hadn't even noticed it happening.

God, it had started with killing Alistair Childe's son. That had been the first of the bright ideas.

Of course, the logic had been unassailable and Matthias hadn't hesitated to pull the trigger. But when he'd watched the footage of the death, the captain's weeping had touched him. Opened up a door he hadn't even known had been in his hallway.

Matthias had turned the video off and gone to bed. And the next morning he'd woken up and decided enough was enough. Time to leave the party he had started all those years ago--let the guests take over his house and burn it down, fine. But he was done.

Straw. Camel's back.

Focusing on his hands on the car wheel, he realized someone else had been driving him, steering him, dictating his exit ramps and his directional signals. How had it happened?

And why the fuck did Jim Heron know?

As his mind went laundry machine on him and started another spin cycle on the past, he decided all that mental wash and rinse wasn't material. Not tonight. Not on this road. What mattered was not how he'd gotten behind this wheel and found himself on the way to Boston. What mattered was what he did when he got there.

Crossroads was right. He felt it in his bones--the same way he had when he'd prepared that bomb years ago.

The question was, What now? Believe what Jim Heron had said. Or follow through on the anger impulse that was driving him east.

Which destination did he go to.

As he ruminated, it sure as fuck felt like he was choosing between Heaven and Hell.

P/S: Copyright -->www_novelfreereadonline_Com

***