"Anything you say. This is my mess, I'm sure as hell going to do whatever I need to in order to clean it up."
Rio heard the vague clatter of a keyboard in the background. "I'm contacting Andreas Reichen in Berlin." There was a few seconds' pause, then Gideon started talking on another phone line back in Boston. He came back to Rio in no time. "I've got pickup for you and transport to Reichen's Darkhaven, but it might take up to an hour for his contact to reach you."
"That's no problem."
"Confirming now," Gideon replied, deftly handling the logistics like hauling Rio's ass out of trouble was nothing but cake. "Okay, you're all set. I'll call again when the transport is in place."
"I'll be ready. Hey, Gideon...thank you."
"No problem at all. Good to have you back, Rio. We need you, man. Things don't feel right around here without you."
"I'll report in from Berlin," he said, thinking that now probably wasn't the time to tell Gideon that he wasn't coming back into the fold.
His date with death had been postponed, but as soon as he had this current situation under control, he was checking out for good.
Chapter Seven
Dylan sat quietly on the bed and watched as the dark stranger confiscated her computer and camera, then rifled through the rest of her belongings. She had little choice but to stay out of his way. Her slightest movement drew his attention every time, and after the mind-boggling, warp-speed maneuver he'd pulled when he blocked her from reaching the hotel room door, she hadn't found the nerve to attempt another escape.
She had no idea what to think of him.
He was dangerous, no question. Probably deadly when he wanted to be, although she didn't think murder was foremost on his mind at the moment. If he wanted to harm her, he'd had plenty of opportunity already. Like when she'd been trapped underneath him on the floor, very attuned to the fact that she'd had more than two hundred pounds of hard, muscular male on top of her and little to no hope of throwing him off. He could have wrapped those big hands around her throat and strangled her, right there on her hotel room floor.
But he hadn't.
He hadn't acted on the other impulse that had so obviously occurred to him either. Dylan hadn't missed the way he'd looked at her, his eyes fixed intensely on her mouth. The very male response of his body as he'd straddled her had been swift, unmistakable, yet he hadn't laid a finger on her. In fact, he'd seemed about as alarmed by his arousal as she'd been. So, he apparently wasn't a cold-blooded psychopath or a ra**st, regardless of the fact he'd stalked her all the way from Jicin to Prague.
So, what did that make him?
He moved too fast, was far too precise and agile, to be some kind of crazed survivalist or a garden variety vagrant. No, he wasn't either of those things. He might be filthy and ragged, one side of his face scarred from some horrific event she could only speculate on, but underneath all the grime he was something...else.
This man, whoever he truly was, was huge and strong, and dangerously alert. His keen eyes and ears missed nothing. His senses seemed to be tuned to a higher frequency than was humanly possible. Even if he was half insane, he carried himself like he was well aware of his own power and knew just how to use it.
"Are you military or something?" she asked, guessing aloud. "You talk like you could be. Act like it too. What are you, some kind of special forces? Ex-military, maybe. What were you doing on that mountain near Jicin?"
He shot her a glare as he stuffed her computer and camera back into her messenger bag, but he didn't answer.
"You know, you might as well fill me in on some of what's going on. I'm a journalist" - well, admittedly, that was a bit of a stretch - "but I am a reasonable person. If those pictures are sensitive or classified or a matter of national security, just say so. Why are you so concerned about people seeing what was in that cave?"
"You ask too many questions."
She shrugged. "Sorry. Hazard of the job, I guess."
"That's not the only hazard of your job," he said, slanting her a look of dark warning. "The less you know about this, the better."
"You mean, about the 'hibernation chamber'?" He stiffened visibly, but Dylan kept going. "That's what you called it, right? That's what you told your friend Gideon. Some kind of shit is about to hit the fan because I took pictures of this hibernation chamber thingy and the, uh, 'glyphs' as you called them."
"Jesus Christ," he hissed. "You shouldn't have been listening to any of that."
"It was kind of hard not to. When you're being held against your will and pretty damn certain you're going to be killed, you tend to pay attention."
"You're not going to be killed."
His cold, matter-of-fact tone wasn't exactly reassuring. "Sounded to me like you thought about it, though. Unless 'scrubbing' someone means something different to you than it does to everyone else who's ever seen a mafia movie."
He scoffed, giving a curt shake of his head.
"What was in that cave?"
"Forget it."
Not likely. Not when he seemed so protective of the information. As in, do-or-die protective. "What do all those weird symbols on the walls mean? Is it some kind of ancient language? Some kind of code? Just what are you so desperate to hide?"
He came at her so fast, she didn't even see him move. She blinked and suddenly he was bearing down on her, the broad bulk of his body towering over her, making her shrink back on the bed.
"Listen to me and hear me well, Dylan Alexander," he said tightly. The sound of her name rolling off his lips was jarring in its intimacy. "This is not a game. It's not a puzzle for you to piece together. And it sure as hell isn't a story that I'm going to permit you to tell. So do us both a favor and stop asking questions about something that doesn't concern you."