Page 52 of Warrior Unraveled

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Virginia couldn’t help but be impressed. Within hours after her and Wesley’s arrival at the Baltimore compound, everybody was deeply entrenched in the investigation into the attack on the council compound. They’d spread out in the command center, working the computers and phones, and monitoring messages that came in from around the world.

Virginia was working on the list of council members past and present, when the door to the command center suddenly opened. Two women entered: Leila and Tessa. They carried trays with food. The aroma drifted to her, and she realized how hungry she was.

“Time for lunch, everybody,” Leila announced.

The guardians rose from their chairs and walked to the table along the wall, where Leila and Tessa were placing the dishes, and started grabbing plates and heaving food onto them.

Virginia welcomed the break. She looked around for Wesley and saw him waiting his turn for the food. He hadn’t talked to her since reprimanding her for not using his name and calling him witch. It had been an attempt at making the other guardians believe that nothing had happened between her and Wesley.

She’d wanted to explain the ground rules to Wesley earlier so that he would understand why she had to give him the cold shoulder in front of the others, but they’d been interrupted by Aiden, and there hadn’t been a good time since.

Virginia walked to the table and stopped behind Wesley. Reaching for a plate, she leaned in and whispered, “We need to talk later.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “About what?”

Clearly, he wasn’t going to make this easy. Fair enough. She couldn’t really blame him for his icy response.

“About how things have to be from now on,” she said.

“And who decides that?”

She opened her mouth, but hesitated, not sure how to respond. The answer should have been simple: she was the one in charge. But in Wesley’s presence she didn’t feel like she was in control. She felt… insecure. He made her question her actions, her beliefs, her goals. Nobody had ever done that, and now this man, this witch, who wasn’t even as strong as her, stood up to her like nobody before him.

“Hey, guys, you’ve gotta see this,” Pearce called out from the command console where he sat chowing down on his food.

Virginia turned and marched toward him, while several of the others did the same. She stopped behind Pearce’s chair.

“It’s about Faldo.” He blew up a window on one of the screens.

“Faldo?” Virginia asked.

“An emissarius here in Baltimore.”

He turned up the volume, and Virginia concentrated on the screen. A reporter stood outside a house. Policemen swarmed the property, and two men were rolling out a gurney: it carried a black body bag.

“Shit!” Hamish hissed next to her.

“Approximately one hour ago,” the female reporter on the screen started, “the police were called to this mansion behind me, belonging to Anton Faldo, a businessman with reported ties to organized crime. Mr. Faldo was found dead by his housekeeper earlier today. Reports indicate that he was found lying in a pool of blood in his study, and the house had been ransacked. The time of death is still unclear, but a statement from his housekeeper, who has been on vacation for the past week, asserts that the victim lived alone. It’s therefore possible that Mr. Faldo was killed several days ago. As for the cause of death, the police haven’t released any details yet. However, early indications are that this was a mob hit.”

Behind her on the screen, an elderly white woman exited the house, her face tearstained. Communicating with her producer off-camera, the reporter mouthed something, then looked over her shoulder, catching sight of the woman.

“And here is the housekeeper, Mrs. uh…Jefferson.” She turned and stepped in the woman’s path. “Are you Mrs. Jefferson, Mr. Faldo’s housekeeper?”

Startled, the woman stopped, whipped her head in the direction of the camera, then back to the reporter. Somewhat shyly she nodded. “Carol Jefferson, yes.” She pulled a tissue from her coat pocket and dabbed at her eyes.

“Can you tell us anything about what might have happened to your employer?”

Her lips trembled, but she answered, “I wasn’t here. He gave me the week off. You know.” A sob tore from her chest. “Because he was supposed to be gone. This should never have happened. He wasn’t even supposed to be at home.”

Clearly distraught, the housekeeper blew her nose into the tissue.

The reporter looked back at the camera. “As you can see, Mr. Faldo’s death has come as a shock to everybody. We’ll stay on this story—”

Pearce muted the volume.

Curses bounced off the walls. Hamish exhaled sharply. “Faldo was the one who alerted us to Tessa’s needing protection.” He put his arm around his wife, who sidled up to him, tears brimming in her eyes.