He stripped out of his jacket, hung it on the peg by the door. “Should I brace myself?”
“Will you sit down, please?”
And that was a big fat
yes
if he’d ever heard one. He came to the couch, sat facing her. She didn’t stand up, or even join him on the couch. Anxiety stirred in his stomach. A woman like Goose would have mastered all the unspoken ways to use body language to assert authority, and the fact that she stayed on the floor below him spoke to her intense desire to keep him off the defensive. His heart pinched.
Either she was about to rock his world with some really,
really
bad news—maybe she
was
into Einar after all?—or she was making one more last-ditch effort to play the tired old we-can’t-be-together-because-I’m-after-your-family card.
Not that he could blame her for trying Door Number Two one last time. Hauling all your shit into the bright light of day for an unforgiving inventory was no picnic. Rush knew this firsthand, and he sympathized. But was she really so desperate to avoid it that she’d encourage him to crucify her on the cross of his family loyalty instead?
Only one way to find out.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m ready. Hit me.”
GOOSE SWALLOWED hard and gazed up at Rush. He sat leaning forward on the couch, elbows on knees, his long, tough fingers linked loosely between them. He gazed at her with a steady patience that put a sharp strain on the controls under which she generally locked her more dangerous appetites. She damned Lila for even putting the idea in her head that sex would set her free. She damned
him
for suggesting the same thing.
Because ever since he’d walked away from her in the moonlight, she couldn’t even look at him without remembering the feel of his mouth on hers. Without reliving the way his big hands raced hot and demanding on her skin.
Without considering his quiet assertion that she was some kind of fraud. That her dedication to stamping out her worst impulses was born of cowardice rather than altruism.
And she certainly couldn’t look at him now, sitting right there on the couch above her. Not when it was so completely clear that he’d consider it his pleasure—no, his
honor
—to help her toss some of that emotional baggage overboard. That he’d be more than happy to reacquaint her with her body and everything it knew how to want. And maybe even introduce her to a few things she had never even thought to want.
She drew in a deep breath and snatched at the shreds of her self-control. If she was going to take him up on that offer—and that was a huge
if
she was still deeply conflicted about—she wouldn’t do it while lost in lust. If she said yes, she would say it from a place of cool, reasoned decision. It was one thing to embrace your more carnal nature. It was another thing entirely to turn off your brain and let your body—markedly unreliable in certain situations—call the shots.
So if she was going to get through this night without taking a bite—just one little bite—out of that gorgeously solid shoulder of his, Rush was going to have to help. Which meant she was going to have to remind him why spending their evening doing anything more than talking was a really, really bad idea.
It was time to come clean. At least partially.
“So I’ve been thinking,” she said. “About this situation of ours.”
“Which situation?” he asked. “The counterfeiting? The black magic? Or the fact that I kissed you last night, and somewhere between ‘oh my God’ and ‘no thanks,’ you kissed me back?”
Heat spiraled out of her core, settled heavy between her legs, in her breasts. Okay, this wasn’t a good start. “Um, the first one. And the second.” Though God knew she’d been thinking about the third, too.
He made a vaguely disapproving noise, like he could sense the basic cowardice that kept option number three off the agenda. But all he said was, “You have a suspect?”
“Yes, but I need your help before I can move forward.” Her hands wanted to fidget, so she clasped them neatly in her lap. “And please, I need you to understand that I wish like hell I didn’t have to ask you this.”
He leaned forward, his eyes warming with . . . sympathy? “Goose. You’re doing your job, and you’re doing it with honor. I appreciate that, and I’ll do whatever I can to make this easier on all of us.”
She blew out a breath. “Say that again in five minutes,” she muttered.
He cocked a brow. “You think I won’t?”
“Why would you?”
He reached out and tugged on a lock of hair her hat couldn’t contain. Hair that was already starting—God help her—to wig out. “Yarrow’s a very troubled young girl, Goose. You think I can’t appreciate that what you’re doing will ultimately benefit her?”
Her heart stopped for three solid seconds, then thudded back to life. Jesus, she hadn’t planned to go quite as far as the Yarrow situation tonight. She stared at him in openmouthed shock. “You know about Yarrow?”
“It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots you’ve been drawing me, Goose. You think she’s the one making herself at home at the Stone Altar, don’t you?”
She frowned at him. “Why would I think that?”
He stared at her this time. “Because of what you said the other day. About her needing to reject love?”
She closed her eyes. “Oh God. Lila. Black magic would be a big slap at Lila. An ugly one, too. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“But you’d clearly thought of something.” She opened her eyes to find him giving her a sharp appraisal. “What was it?”
She shook her head. “No, let’s follow yours through for a minute. What about your theory that the two are connected—the altar and the smuggling? How on earth would Yarrow be connected to importing supernotes?”
“I made a few phone calls after our conversation in Hornby Harbor the other day. It’s Yarrow’s story to tell, and I won’t get into all of it, but I will say that part of the reason her parents moved her up here was to separate her from a bad influence. Some college dope dealer. Apparently he was in pretty deep with a Minneapolis-based gang.”
Goose’s agile brain made a few quick leaps. “The Fire Eaters?”
“Yeah. I figured you’d have heard of them. Korean, mostly first generation. Based out of Minneapolis’s Jordan neighborhood.”
She gave him a speculative look and he hunched his shoulders. “What, you think you’re the only one who knows how to use the Internet?”
“I’d clearly be wrong if I did.” She cocked a brow. “Go on, Mr. Font of Information.”
“I don’t have much else. Just that most of them speak Korean in the home and have relatives—close ones—still in Korea.” He spread his hands. “It seemed to fit with what you told me about supernotes.”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah, I can see it. Most of the supernotes in circulation today
have
come out of North Korea. And getting them from there to here in any significant quantity certainly requires people with the language skills and the connections to wheel and deal in both countries.”
“And who have a certain disregard for the rule of law, I imagine.”
“You’d imagine right. Gangs do bang-up business in supernotes.”
“So if Yarrow really is still in contact with this kid moving drugs for the Fire Eaters?”
“Then, yeah, it’s possible the gang is also aware of her exile to a geographically advantageous location for their business. Airport security has gotten too rigorous since 9/11 to allow the importation of supernotes in any real quantity through mules flying directly into the country. Mostly the money enters the U.S. via Canada or Mexico, in our experience. Which means the smugglers are always looking for porous places on the borders.”
“Places like Mishkwa.”
“Exactly.”
“And yet that’s not the news you were gearing up to break to me.”
“No.” She hesitated. “Not that your theory isn’t a good one.”
“But it’s not the one you arrived at.” He passed a hand over his scalp, looked at her from under concerned brows.
“No.” She caught her hands trying to fly away again, and tucked them under her thighs.
“Your theory required my cooperation. A favor?”
“Yeah.” She fought back the urge to smile reassuringly. Fake smiles would only make him angry and she was already dangling by a thread here. So no smiling, but it left her feeling naked. She didn’t know what else to do with her face, how else to prevent it from showing him all the anguish and reluctance inside her. Better to just blurt it out before he could spend too much time trying to read it from her expression. “You have a key to Einar’s place, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And a standing invitation to use it?”
“Sure. He’s a pilot, runs his own charter flight company. His schedule changes at the drop of a hat.”
“I need to search his cabin without his knowledge,” Goose said. “Preferably the next time he’s away from Mishkwa overnight. Will you invite me to do it?”
“To search Einar’s cabin? Why?”
“I don’t need a search warrant if somebody with routine access invites me in.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t mean why do you want me to invite you to do it. I meant why do you want to do it in the first place?”
“Because I think he’s importing supernotes into the country in his cute little plane, and if I could find evidence of that without a search warrant, I could wrap this whole thing up in a neat little package without creating a big ugly scene.”
Chapter 20
SILENCE SPUN out, thin and fragile as glass threads. He didn’t move, didn’t shift. He hardly breathed. A quick blink was the only sign that she’d surprised him. “You’re looking at
Einar
? For smuggling supernotes into the country?
And
for the Stone Altar?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he has opportunity and motive for both.”
Rush leaned forward, pinched the bridge of his nose. “Explain.”
“Does the term
Paganpalooza
mean anything to you?”
“Paganpalooza?”
“Yes. As in a giant, multiday festival aimed at pagans.”
“This is about
that
?”
“No, I think it’s about more than that. Because I think Einar
wants
more than that. You know what you said about Mishkwa the other night, how it strips away all the artifice and pretense? How it seems to force people into getting in touch with what they really are?”
His eyes went the color of smoke. “Yeah.”
“I think
that’s
what he wants to sell. That, along with his credentials as the crown prince of it all. Jesus, can you imagine? Take Joel Osteen—or any of those toothy televangelists—give him a dark, sexy, edgy twist and you’ve got about what Einar’s envisioning. Himself at the helm of a multinational corporation that makes a killing off people’s desperate need to find their own truth. To pursue the dream that getting back in touch with nature in its rawest, purest form will cure what ails them.”
“It sounds like Pagan Disney.”
“It is. And that’s no low-rent dream, either. Not the kind of thing you can finance flying a puddle jumper and selling chickens.”
“He sells fish, too.” He said it absently, though. His focus had gone inward.
“There aren’t enough fish in Lake Superior to bankroll what he’s dreaming of.”
“No.” He shot her a troubled look. “And the black magic? Where does that fit in?”
“He doesn’t just want money, Rush. He wants power, too.”
“Power over what?”
“Over the coven. Over the island. Over the people who populate both. Over the hundreds, thousands more who’ll
want
to populate both.”
“He has it already. He’s a priest, Lila’s second in command. When she retires, the whole enchilada is his. He doesn’t need power; all he needs is patience.”
“I’d have agreed with you last week. Then I went to esbat.”
“Esbat.” He frowned. “What happened at esbat?”
“The prodigal son came home,” she said softly. “Didn’t you notice?”
“Notice what?” But he’d sat up, folded his arms over his chest.
“The way they welcomed you.” She touched his knee, ignored the way sparks of awareness shot up her arm and landed in all her most interesting—and interested—places. “I don’t know why you haven’t taken up your hereditary role within the coven since you’ve been home, but they’ve been waiting for you. Aching for you, if the reception they gave you the other night is any indication.”
He drew back. “That’s overstating it a little, don’t you think?”
“Rush.” She tipped her head, gave him a stern look. “Your aunt teared up when she welcomed you into the circle. Everybody wanted to touch you, greet you, physically pull you into their midst and circle around you. They
embraced
you, Rush. You didn’t just drop in on esbat; you came home.” She studied his closed face. “And you’re not the only one who isn’t exactly over the moon about it, either.”
“Over the moon.” He glared at her. “Aren’t you the funny one?”
“Aren’t you even going to ask who?”
“I’m not an idiot, Goose.”
“You see it, then? What a threat you are to Einar’s master plan?”
He remained stubbornly silent.
“Rush, come on. How’s he going to transform a sleepy little island coven into a personal fortune if he has to get your stamp of approval to do it?”
“I’m not running for high priest, Goose.”
“You might want to tell that to Lila. She’s hoping you and Einar will dredge up enough brotherly love to share and share alike when inheritance time rolls around.”
“Oh, crap.”
“Crap, indeed. Lila told me herself that she intends to bequeath the coven to you and Einar jointly. In the hopes that, rather than murdering each other, you’ll find a way to co-chair the coven into the foreseeable future. Apparently pagans place particular value on duality. Balance. The power of two.” She cocked a brow. “Anything sound familiar so far?”