“Son, I’m sorry. I saw them hurt someone last night.”
Case in point. The only way to do business with people like that was to refuse to do so from the beginning. It was ego and greed that had driven his father to accept to so much money without the ability to repay.
“Please, son. For me. Bring the girl in.”
***
Rook glanced up at Jordan’s tall apartment building, a knife-twisting feeling in his gut. The kiss had been spontaneous—he didn’t regret it—but the nightmare that had followed him? Shit. That the kid would attack her? And in the Agora?
She’d had a very rude awakening.
Jordan seemed like someone who did a lot of hard thinking in the cool light of day, making decisions and coming to unshakeable, maddening conclusions. With every second that passed, it felt like she was moving farther and farther from him.
He’d know when he saw her.
Beside him, Coll sipped his coffee while they waited for a break in traffic to cross the street. Coll (aka Conner for the time being) had an appointment with the Lane sisters at 7 a.m. Maisie Lane had evidently told Jordan about Coll, and Jordan had asked to meet him herself. Jordan didn’t trust her little sister’s instincts where people were concerned.
Rook hoped she didn’t mind if he tagged along. All things considered, it wouldn’t hurt if she knew he and Coll worked together.
“Fawkes tells me there was a rogue incursion in the Agora last night.” Coll took another pull from his coffee.
The incursion in question was not a rogue. It was the nightmare that followed Rook around, and its name was Joshua. Joshua Kenneth Rook, little brother, deceased eleven years.
But Coll couldn’t know about that. He wouldn’t understand anyway, sticking as close to the surface of dreamspace as he did. To Rook’s knowledge, Coll had never gone deep Darkside. Never seen those kinds of nightmares or stirred them within himself. As far as Coll knew, some Reveler had simply broken into the Agora.
“I booted him,” Rook said.
“Did you track him?” Traffic broke and they both cut across the four lanes of the street.
No need to track. The signature of the rogue was his own, so Rook knew exactly where it came from. Himself. Which is why he’d switched from Special Cases to recruitment. If he stayed near the surface, in silly Rêves or orienting Jordan, then maybe the nightmare would fade away.
“Lost him at the Scrape,” Rook said, though he’d never lost anyone there, ever. Other trackers did. Not him.
Coll opened the glass door to take them inside the building. The agent posted in the atrium nodded good morning to both of them. Coll and Rook nodded back.
“All right. The Agora marshals have been warned to keep an eye out. We’ve got more and more people trying to sneak in. Had to shut down a website last week that gave step-by-step instructions on how to build a shared dreaming interface.”
“I’m glad that’s not my problem.” Rook hit the elevator button.
“Not mine either, but we are going to see more rogues. Did he bother Jordan?”
“Got a little too close. I woke her.”
Not the Rêve send-off he’d have preferred. He’d been going over and over the night in his mind, second-guessing himself.
The rules against fraternizing with marks, for example. He’d always been going to touch her eventually—that was a given—but maybe he should’ve waited, gone slow. She didn’t seem like the type to do things on impulse.
But the electricity between them—that was just how it was. She’d have to deal with it, accept it. Or, hell, he would, when she shook her head and said, I made a mistake. In the waking world she was so stubborn. So reserved.
The elevator dinged, the door slid open, and the guard posted on her floor murmured the okay into his throat mic.
Had she been scared? What if she was scared today? He just didn’t know any girls like her, so he couldn’t speculate on what her reaction might be.
The knife in Rook’s belly twisted again.
Guess he’d just have to find out.
***
Awake.
Michael had woken her up.
Which meant that super-creepy kid had to have been bad news.
But Michael could handle him, was handling him. He just didn’t want a newbie in the way, which kind of disappointed her—she wanted to see the man in action so badly—but she understood. Another time.
Please, pretty please, let there be another time. It was going to kill her if she had to wait a whole day until she could see him again.
Jordan rolled over in bed and put her face into her pillow to stifle a squeal. All of her was smiling as if she were sixteen years old again and contemplating going all the way.
Michael Reese, the sexy bad boy of her dreams. He was the opposite of her type—the type she’d carefully weighed and decided upon a couple of years ago. She still had her Must List of qualities around here somewhere, now totally irrelevant.