True Bliss (4 page)

Zoya turned sharply. "Sat out of high school? Were you sick?"

He didn't owe her explanations, but what the hell. "Sick of trying to live up to expectations. I thought I was showing my old man I was master of my own fate. It's history."

A buzzer sounded on his intercom. Sebastian pressed a button and said, "Plato."

"Is there even the vaguest possibility that you told a Mr. Nose he could come to see you, Mr. Plato? Surely not."

"Wait." Sebastian cut off the line to his secretary's office. "Where did you find that guy, Zoya?"

"Hmm?" She raised her perfectly arched brows.

"My secretary. Mr. Tight-ass himself, William whatever his name is?"

"Namsuk," Zoya told him. "William Namsuk. He's very qualified. Secretaries aren't all thirty-six double D's with panty allergies."

Sebastian knew when to grin. He grinned at Zoya now. "Not nice, my love. And I haven't earned that kind of reputation."

She shrugged and went back to watching a jet traverse a transparently blue July sky. "William's Bellevue to the eyeballs. Born here. Grew up here. Went to grade school here. He did go to the University of Washington, so he has been out of town, at least as far as Seattle."

"As I said, Mr. Tight-ass himself. Only answers to William— don't call him Bill. Is it even vaguely possible I told a Mr. Nose he could come to see me? Surely not."

"Did you?"

Sebastian flipped the intercom switch again. "Hey, Bill. Send in Mr. Nose."

" Shame on you," Zoya said when Sebastian cut the connection again. "Still a mean little boy inside that handsome hulk, hm?"

He couldn't refute the jibe. And right now he didn't care.

The door opened to admit a rumpled little man in khaki. Lean, blond and good-looking, William Namsuk paused long enough to aim a disdainful glance at Sebastian, then closed the door behind the newcomer.

Patting his numerous pockets, Nose shambled across the room. "That guy out there's gonna hurt hisself," he said. "He's so uptight he's gonna choke t'death."

Sebastian avoided Zoya's eyes. "I wasn't expecting you, Mr.—"

"Nose. Just call me, Nose." A guffaw revealed tobacco-stained teeth. "My old lady reckons that with a moniker like mine I should 'ave been one of them wine sniffers. I tell 'er I'm very good at what I do sniff, thank you very much."

"Sit down," Sebastian said. "Don't let me keep you, Zoya. I'll get back to you on this." He tapped the press release.

"Oh, I can wait, darling." Her voice dripped with amused curiosity. "I'll just look out the window until you're finished with, er, Nose."

He had to get her out of the room before Nose said something Sebastian didn't want to share with anyone—yet.

"Ashtray?" Nose asked. He located a mangled pack of Camels in a sagging pocket over his left thigh, extracted a bent cigarette, and clamped it between his teeth.

"Sebastian?" Zoya made as if to rush at Nose. Smoking wasn't part of her regimen for perfect bodies.

"Leave this to me." Sebastian caught her arm and ushered her gently, but firmly from the room. He gave her his best attempt at a conspiratorial grimace, murmured, "Boyhood acquaintance. Good heart, but always a bit disturbed," and closed the door on her, "Oh!"

Nose had lowered his scrawny frame into a black lacquer chair shaped like a tall, springy Z, with an apparently unsupported burgundy leather seat. With a grimy thumb, he produced a flame from his lighter and set fire to shreds of tobacco drizzling from his cigarette.

Sebastian stuck his hands in his pockets and strolled to lean against the edge of his desk. "From now on you're someone I knew when I was a kid."

Nose took a deep drag, exhaled slowly and squinted at Sebastian through the smoke. "Sure. Old buddies, right?"

"Someone I knew when I was a kid. Vaguely. You heard I was back in the area and came looking for some sort of job."

"Anything you say." The cigarette bobbed. "In other words, you don't want anyone to know about our business?"

"Right."

"Always fancied a nice office in a ritzy building like this."

"Yeah. How—"

"What're you offerin'? Need someone to take the place of that nancy boy out there?"

Rolling in his lips, Sebastian contained a chuckle. "Sure. You'd fit right in. How are your keyboard skills?"

Nose waggled his fingers. "Just turned down the Seattle Symphony." He removed the cigarette, flicked ash into the zen garden on the desk, and unbuttoned a big pocket on his right thigh. "Fve got most of what you're looking for." A brown envelope, bent in half, came into view.

"Did you verify the answer to the big question?"

" 'Course. That was the simple part. You already had it right."

"I thought I did." And he'd made some giant decisions based on being almost sure he was right. "I wanted absolute verification." He couldn't go forward without being certain—and even now, even being certain, he still had to question why he was rushing toward the craziest, most impulsive move he'd ever made.

Nose studied him impassively. "Your verification is here." He tapped the envelope, then held it out. "D'you know what you're messing around with here?"

Did he? "Maybe. Maybe not. Why don't you tell me?" He took the envelope.

"Powerful people."

Mildly confused, Sebastian frowned. "I'm powerful people, too." Not that he saw the connection between powerful people and his business in Washington State.

"These powerful people don't let anything get in their way." Nose sniffed, and ground the Camel out among the precisely placed rocks in the formerly perfectly raked sand in the zen garden. "Nothing ever proved, you understand. But from where I'm lookin' it begins to look like anyone who gets in their way takes a long hike."

Sebastian crossed his feet and leaned toward the other man. "What are you talking about? What does ... Sorry, Nose, I think of myself as sharp, but you're leaving me in the dark here."

"Ain't so difficult to understand. The person you're interested in has connections to people in high places. Those people in high places always get what they want. Maybe it don't matter, but seems to me that if you was to get in their way, or mess with

something—or someone—of theirs, you might end up like some others have."

"And how is that?" Sebastian asked softly.

Nose's sad, brown eyes shifted beneath shaggy, dun-colored brows. "I dunno for sure. But I haven't been able to verify their recent whereabouts. Or any whereabouts at all."

Small hairs rose along the length of Sebastian's spine. "I'm not paying you to have an imagination."

"Imagination? Not me, old buddy—old vague acquaintance, that is. Not a shred of imagination in this body. Ask anyone. They'll tell you. Nose ain't got no imagination. Anyway, I'll leave you to look over that little lot."

"Okay. Okay, yeah, do that." The envelope was bulky.

"You want me to keep digging?"

A metal butterfly clasp held the envelope shut, but the flap wasn't stuck closed. "Is there anything else to dig for?"

"Oh, sure. Always is. But it's up to you. Say the word and we'll call this a done job."

"No." He had no right to be digging up other people's business. But he would dig anyway. "No, if there's more, find it. Stay on top of it. Okay?"

"You've got it. I'll be in touch." Nose opened the door.

Maryan came in as the private investigator went out. She said nothing while she watched Nose leave.

"Who was that?" She wrinkled her straight nose. "He looks like a bum."

"Some sort of computer type." He'd have to be careful or he'd be telling lies he didn't have to tell. "You know what slick dressers those guys are."

Maryan glared. She let her well-worn briefcase slip from her fingers and thump on the carpet. "That dog of yours makes an ugly front office statement."

"Beater likes watching people come and go."

"He's an ugly mutt."

Sebastian smirked. "You're right. That's part of his charm."

"He doesn't like me."

Time to change the subject. Sebastian jutted his chin in what he hoped was a playful way and waved. "Hi, Sis. Good flight?"

"Lousy flight. Lousy town. When I saw Mt. Rainier, I thought I was going to throw up. Everything's so goddamn clean here it makes me want to spit on the sidewalks."

"You don't like it here."

"And you've got a goddamn lousy sense of humor."

Sebastian smiled thinly. "I do try. And I didn't ask you to come to Seattle."

"Someone's got to see what the fuck you're up to." She marched around his desk and threw her tall, thin body into his chair. Her badly crushed, red linen suit might as well be burned. Her short brown hair with its silver streak at one temple was gelled back and did nothing to soften the unhappy lines around her eyes and mouth.

Sebastian knew a twinge of guilt. "You worry too much, Sis. And you look beat. Kick your shoes off. How about a—"

"Gin. Over ice. No vermouth."

He made the decision that this was one time not to mention that she drank too much. "Coming up." A freestanding, cylindrical pillar of steel contained the bar. A single finger's pressure, and it spread open, jawlike, from an invisible seam.

"When I finally realized how far you were taking things here I knew I'd better find a way to get us out, and quickly. What d'you think you're playing at?"

Maryan had always been there for him. "Knock it off, Sis, there's a good girl." She'd come through when he'd been a lost kid of not even twenty and there'd been no one else to turn to. Without her he'd have had a harder time making it through college and through more rough times than he wanted to remember.

"Is it true?" Her voice assumed the brittle quality she rarely used on Sebastian.

Slowly, he poured gin into an etched crystal glass.

"Is it?" She coughed. "Hurry with that, will you?"

Sebastian brought her the gin. "Sounds like you picked up a bug on the plane."

"We ought to be expanding the airline."

Sometimes his adoptive sister's propensity for subject-hopping irritated Sebastian. "The airline's on target and in good hands." He believed in as much autonomy as possible for the men and women who ran the essentially separate divisions of Raptor.

Maryan closed her eyes and drank.

"I'm going to have a car brought around for you. It'll take you to my place. Sleep till tomorrow. You look as if you need it."

Her dark gray eyes snapped open again. "I asked you a question."

"You're pushing, Maryan. I don't like it when you push, you know that."

She bared her small teeth. "I want this place closed down. I want it closed and I want us out of this town—out of this state— now."

He tolerated a great deal for the sake of a lot of old times. "If you want to turn right around and fly out, be my guest. Don't try to tell me what to do." Willing his temper under control, he tossed ice cubes in a glass and covered them with water from a pitcher. "You don't even sound rational."

"Don't tell me I'm irrational."

"Then don't be irrational. This project's been underway for more than a year. Is it rational to sail in and demand we pack up and walk away?"

"After what I found out today, yes."

Sebastian didn't bite at her lure. "Even if backing out wouldn't cost us millions, I wouldn't do it. I know you don't like Washington. I do. I'm staying here, Maryan. Get used to it."

She coughed, sputtered, and wiped the back of a hand over her lips. "Staying? What do you mean, staying?"

"As in I intend to live here again. I like it here."

"Since when?" She set the glass on the desk and gripped the arms of the chair. "You hated it. You know you did."

"I didn't always hate it," he told her quietly. "There was a time when I thought Seattle was the most special city on earth."

When Mary an was really angry, her gray eyes became the color of old silver. They were old silver now. "I followed you out of Seattle. I left everything behind to follow you, to help you make a new beginning when you didn't have anyone else. I've always been there for you."

"I'm grateful for that." Losing his cool would only cause one of their rare, ugly scenes. "But we have lives to live now. We have for a very long time. I don't need babying. And I am the boss, Maryan. I am Raptor Enterprises."

"I'm your partner."

"One of my partners. One of my junior partners." And, although she had a good mind, they both knew she would never have risen to the position he'd made for her if she hadn't been his sister.

"I gave up my own life for you!"

"Please—"

"I asked you a question. Is it true?"

"Is what—"

"Don't bullshit me, Seb. You've bought a house right here on the eastside, haven't you?"

"The grapevine's been busy."

"Oh . . ." She flapped a hand. "Of course I'd find out if you bought a house. You detested the eastside."

"When I was a kid, for God's sake."

"I know about Hole Point, you know."

Sebastian stood quite still. He leveled a stare into his sister's cold eyes and raised the water to his lips.

"I know! She's there. She owns the place. And you drive right through Medina to get to it." Her big-knuckled finger shook when she pointed it at him. "You lied when you said you weren't coming here because of her. You lied, dammit!"

The door flew open and banged against the only wall in the room. A bronzed, bleached, musclebound man strode toward the desk. "Sweetie? Maryan, sweetie? What's going on in here?"

"Hi, Ron," Sebastian said. He put down his glass. For once

he was delighted to see Maryan's latest, and, at a two-year tenure, longest-surviving lover.

Ron York ignored Sebastian. "I heard you scream, pet."

"I told you to wait outside for me." Ron's "pet" glowered at him. "Get out."

"Is he picking on you again?" Twenty-five to Maryan's thirty-eight, Ron hovered over his cushy meal-ticket and cast an accusing stare at Sebastian.

"She's overwrought," Sebastian said pleasantly. "Good thing you showed up, Ron. I've got to pop out. I'll have William arrange for a car to take you to my house."

"Don't you leave me like this," Maryan shrieked. "Don't you dare."