Romani Armada by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page B

the door open. He looked in at them and addressed Justin. “Sir, with your greater hearing and sense of smell…would you mind casting about the area? See if there’s anything odd in the vicinity?”
    Justin looked shocked, then uncomfortable. He glanced at her, then away. “I…er…sure,” he said. He pulled himself forward through the cramped seating and stepped out next to Kieren. It put his back to Deonne and as she couldn’t see any higher than just above his waist unless she got out of the runabout, she couldn’t see what he was doing, or hear them unless they spoke loudly. She heard them murmuring.
    Then Kieren looked back inside the vehicle. “It’s safe enough, ma’am.”
    “I’m Deonne, remember?” she replied, with more heat in her voice than she intended. It was the third reminder.
    “Not until I’m off duty.” He stepped back as she climbed out carefully, for the runabout sat low to the ground and her skirt was tight and there was little give in the fabric.
    Justin helped her to her feet, but he avoided meeting her eyes and Deonne’s heart skipped unhappily.
    Kieren hurried them along the wide path and inside the elegant building. It was very Scandinavian in design, using lots of pale faux wood surfaces, white walls and lots of glass to capture natural light wherever possible. It was airy and simple, but sophisticated.
    The apartment was filled with eclectic furniture that went with the design of the building – sophisticated and low key…and comfortable. Someone had gone to a lot of time and trouble and spent a lot of money picking the items that filled the apartment.
    But that was a match with everything the agency did, the world over. Deonne had yet to find a lack of attention to detail or lack of care in anything they did. More and more, she wanted to find a way to capture this quality about the vampires and present it to humans. It was intriguing and different and not at all scary. But it wasn’t a purely vampire quality. It was an agency quality, which stemmed from the two executives that steered it.
    As she turned through a slow three-sixty degrees for a second time, taking in the qualities and details of the apartment, Kieren and three other men filtered over to the front door of the apartment, while Justin sauntered to the big bank of windows.
    “Should you stand by the windows?” Deonne asked, visions of laser guns, or worse, forming in her mind.
    Kieren gave a small smile. “They’re polarized and blanketed armored glass. You can see out, but no one can see in. You can gaze all you want.” He nodded. “Have a safe night. We’ll be monitoring the grounds.” He shut the door and Deonne heard the locking mechanism drop with a heavy mechanical thud. There was an electronic pad on the door, too.
    Deonne turned to face Justin. “What is eating you, Kelly? You’ve been avoiding me all afternoon and evening and why did you get all coy about Kieren asking you to check out the neighborhood for him? You were almost embarrassed about it.”
    He hadn’t moved from the windows. The apartment was on a high floor, high enough that she could glimpse the sea to the far left. To the right, the sun was setting in a small, hot ball of orange and red over the city horizon. The rest of the sky was already an indigo black, the short Arctic night just starting. It was a view worth taking in, no matter what one’s mood might be.
    Justin’s mood was indecipherable and his posture wasn’t giving her any hints. He stood with his feet apart and his hands thrust into the pockets of the simple black trousers he wore. No expensive business suit to impress clients today. But without a jacket, the trousers emphasized the length of his legs. He wasn’t extraordinarily tall, like Ryan or – heaven help her, Brenden — but he was tall enough so that she had to look up into his eyes no matter what shoes she was wearing and that suited her just fine.
    His unruly dirty blond hair was jutting forward over