“You have no idea who you are involved with, Annja. Ben Ravenscroft doesn’t like to lose. Nor does the man who just buried you.”

“No kidding? That guy must have been a real treat in the sandbox when he was a kid.” A stomp of her leg sifted dirt tucked in the folds of her jacket to the snowy ground. “Ben Ravenscroft?”

“You don’t know about him?”

“Serge mentioned the name Benjamin. I have a feeling you know everything I want to know. Which always seems to be the case with you and me. Why is that?”

“Come with me,” Garin offered.

Annja followed his gesture across the cemetery. A black limo idled on the street outside the fence.

She glanced at him. Not a nice man, but fierce. A force one must reckon with. Devil’s bounty hunter was an appropriate summation. Give the man a flaming chain whip and he’d ace the role.

Garin Braden was her nemesis. A nemesis who infrequently appealed but mostly disgusted. She did not trust him, yet on occasion she relied upon him. Or rather, took the generous assistance he offered because it was either that or be abandoned on a remote island or left behind to flee machine-gun fire.

She’d kissed him once—no, that wasn’t right. He’d kissed her.

She was still kicking herself for that one.

And yet, the man did possess an irresistible charm. All she could figure was it was something about good girls and the bad boys they liked to change.

Not that Garin would ever change his ways. Rich, powerful and smart, he was involved in many alliances and business associations that would make Annja cringe. He played the world as if it were his to master.

He, like Roux—another five-hundred-year-old immortal who had appointed himself a sort of mentor to Annja—had insinuated himself into her life. Whether or not she liked them in it.

Both men were inscrutable. Yet the things Annja did know of them were like valued jewels she kept filed in the For Further Research section of her brain.

Of the two, she trusted Roux first, if barely.

If Annja stood in his way to getting something, Garin Braden would not stop at harming her. And she knew he desperately wanted Joan’s sword.

She’d met Garin and Roux after finding the final piece of Joan of Arc’s once-shattered sword, and fitting it to the other pieces to become whole again. Garin and Roux believed their immortality was tied to the sword that had remained in pieces, scattered throughout the world since Joan of Arc had been burned at the stake. Roux had spent centuries gathering the pieces together again.

Now, for reasons no one completely understood, Annja wielded the sword—in one piece. Garin believed the sword threatened him. Though there was no way to prove it. But a few years had passed since the sword had become whole. He hadn’t dissolved to ash or shown negligible signs of aging or loss of strength.

And he couldn’t simply take the sword from her. He’d tried, as had others. If Annja didn’t want someone to touch the sword, it would disappear. Yet, if she wanted to allow someone to look at it, she could hand it over, and it would remain solid, tangible. It all seemed to be tied to who she trusted and who she did not.

For Garin to ever hold the sword intact, Annja assumed she had to gift it to him.

And that would never happen.

So, in the meantime, when he was not making her life miserable, he was pulling the rug out from under her with surprising acts of kindness.

This is what made placing him solidly on the enemy list difficult. He was so damned charming, and he knew it. The man had an international harem. He was an alpha male, arrogant and dangerous. And yet, Annja couldn’t stop herself from staring at him as if he was a celebrity and she wanted his regard.

But she was not a fool. She wasn’t going anywhere with him.

“Thanks, but I think I’ll walk.” She strode across the snow-dusted grass, feeling her shaky legs protest. They needed a good rub down to get the blood flowing through them again. The heavy, cold dirt had zapped her strength.

“You can’t go home, Annja. Serge has already been there. It’s not safe.”

“Then I’ll go to a hotel. City’s full of them.”

He knew Serge had been to her loft? He must have followed her here. So why hadn’t he stepped in when Serge had been tucking her in for a dirt nap?

Because he had probably been amused by the whole thing.

“Let me put you up for a few days.” He came to her side.

Annja spat dirt from her mouth.

“I might be able to fill in some missing information,” he teased.

“At what price?”

“Annja, dearest.”

“Oh, please. You know damn well, that I know damn well, the only reason you’re ever nice to me is because you want something. You want the skull?”

She cringed. Oops. Had he known about the skull?

“You don’t have it, so that’s not going to help me much.”

“Have you been following me?”

“I never reveal my methods.”

“Yeah? Well, thanks for the rescue, but I’ll see you later.”

He hadbeen following her. He did it often. The man had ways of tracking a person even she couldn’t comprehend.

Annja stepped off the curb behind the limo and her ankle twisted. Slapping the trunk as she went down, her palms didn’t meet the rough wet tarmac.

Garin lifted her with one arm around her gut and swung her to stand against the trunk.

“You’ll never make it home on foot. And I know for a fact Ravenscroft has a man watching your loft.”

“I don’t even know this Ravenscroft guy. Is he the sniper?” Annja asked.

“Sniper? No. Stop being so stubborn, Annja. You don’t trust me? I’ll give you that. My apartment in Manhattan is large. The guest room is at one end. You don’t even have to see me, if you don’t want to.”

Propping her palms on the trunk, she shook her head. “This is just wrong.”

Yet all that man looming over her did a number on her racing heartbeat. There was something appealing about being rescued by a man who had once been a real knight.

“You can call your protector Roux,” he added snidely.

“I don’t need Roux’s help, and I don’t need yours.”

“But you do need a shower. What’s this?”

He plucked something from her hair and Annja closed her eyes, cringing. “Not a worm, not a worm, please, not a worm.”

He tossed the find over his shoulder.

“Was it a worm?”

His smile came across as warm, inviting. “I’ll never tell. Come.” His offered a broad hand, palm up. “Take a ride with the devil, if you dare.”

He called it as she saw it.

But if he was right, and a man was watching her loft, she couldn’t risk returning. Who was Benjamin Ravenscroft? If he wasn’t the sniper, that added yet another player to the game, and she’d lost count.

Maybe a call to Roux was necessary. Not to ask him to come rescue her, but to feel him out, see if he knew what Garin was up to. Because the man never appeared in her life by accident.

“You know about the skull?” she asked.

“I may.” He opened the back door and waited. “We’ll talk after I’ve made you comfortable, yes?”

Playboy that he was, he embodied old-world manners.

And she could use a shower. Neediness reared its ugly head.

Blowing out a surrendering breath, Annja crawled into the backseat and slid across to the far door. Garin reached in to brush away the dirt left in her wake before joining her.

15

“Block my calls for the next hour, Rebecca.”

Ben swiveled on his chair and pressed the button on his desk that brought up the computer screen and pushed out the slim keyboard drawer to a perfect height for typing.