Page 38 of Black to Light

“Of course I want you on it full time,” he muttered from next to me. “You think I gave them your name and had them run a security check on you… or would risk you being involved at all… just to bring you down here to talk to a few people?”

He gave me a sideways look with his tiger-like eyes.

His black hair fell down over one side of his forehead, somehow emphasizing his high cheekbones and his long jaw. The sunlight lit up one side of his face, making him look even more inhuman, even more beautiful.

“Grumpy,” I scolded mildly.

He snorted, glanced at Nick in the rearview mirror, and didn’t answer.

Black brought the car around to a row of parking spaces between the two buildings. A sign by the path said the registration desk was straight ahead.

I read the green writing that marked the row as “badged visitor” spaces. Presumably they had a place for non-badged visitors as well, but that wasn’t us, and anyway, from what that guard said, they didn’t get a lot of casual visitors here.

“Those two assholes who came to the office this morning were cagey as fuck,” Black muttered, likely in response to at least some of what I’d been thinking. “But they were clear about one thing. They believe Rucker’s murder has something to do with a new breakthrough tech he was working on… something they think is so valuable and unique, others would kill him for it. Whether or not they’re right, they made a big fucking deal about this new wonder-gadget of theirs, and said it was being worked on primarily at this facility.”

“What is it?” Nick asked. “The tech?”

Black lifted a shoulder. “No idea.”

I frowned. That definitely hadn’t felt true.

Black cleared his throat. If he heard me, his expression didn’t change.

“You’ll both have to sign a bunch of crap before they let us in,” he went on, his voice gruff. “They made it pretty clear they don’t want us knowing anything about what they’re working on here, and don’t plan to tell us anything, or let anyone else tell us anything, but they’re worried we might figure something out on our own, anyway, if we so much as darken the doors of their precious labs. So it’s NDAs all the way down.” He gave me a sideways smile. “Along with generous threats to sue if we so much as talk in our sleep about anything we saw.”

I gave him a curious look.

That part felt true.

I could feel his genuine annoyance with Rucker’s people’s lack of transparency.

Why hadn’t he just read them for the information, if that was case?

Again, I distinctly got the feeling there was something he wasn’t telling us.

Maybe a few somethings.

Not now, doc,whispered through my mind.Wait and see if I’m right first.

I blinked, then let my eyes slide from his face.

He’d turned off the car.

Without giving me a direct look, he snapped the latch on his door and exited out the driver’s side, pulling himself off the seat and stepping down in one fluid movement.

Nick grumbled under his breath, but he’d already unbuckled his seatbelt, too. He shouldered on a black trench coat while I watched, shoved dark sunglasses on his face and a hat on his head, before putting on leather gloves and snatching a thick, black umbrella off the floor by his feet. He opened it right as he opened the door.

Despite everything he had to do before he could emerge into the sunlight, Nick still managed to beat me out of the car.

I sat there a few seconds longer, wondering why I felt so uneasy suddenly.

It wasn’t about my decision to work for Black––I felt fine about that

It was the case.

But why? It was just a murder case. We’d worked dozens of those before.

And yeah, the clients were stupid not to involve the cops from the get-go, but I knew Black could probably use his sight to moveusout of the spotlight for that.

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