Page 104 of Whispers at Dusk
“Team,” Edmund said, looking at all of them.
“To the team!” Della cried, lifting her coffee.
“To the team!” Edmund agreed, but then he paused. “So...tomorrow...”
“Tomorrow, we start to finish the endless paperwork. Jackson Crow is sending down Patrick Law—Special AgentDoctorLaw. If anyone can get a name out of Dante, it will be Patrick. He may want Della to go back in, or he may find it detrimental. But after that...”
“On to England?” Edmund queried.
“Not right away,” Della said.
“What?”
“A trip to Castle Bran. There’s something in history we need to learn, something in the research Stoker did from afar... Remember our conversations. We caught up with him—but we might have known more if we’d gone to Castle Bran,” Della said. She looked around the table at the group.
“All right, team!” Lapierre said, and he raised his coffee cup again.
Soon after, they parted ways, and it was easy. There was no need for long goodbyes.
And finally, Della and Mason were alone. It was ridiculously late. Or early. But Angela had seen to it they had a stunning hotel room with a Jacuzzi right in the bedroom. Stripping away each other’s clothes was wonderful, like stripping off the stain of a man like Stephan Dante.
Stepping into the bubbling hot water together...
“Exhaustion should be kicking in,” Mason said. “I mean all the heat...”
“I am exhausted,” she assured him.
“Sleep...”
“Oh, really?”
“No. I’m just trying to be polite.”
Della crawled on top of him, feeling the delicious slide of flesh against flesh and the quick constriction of his muscles...and organs.
She smiled, smoothing back a lock of his hair and taking his face in her hands before whispering sensuously, “This is not the place to be polite.”
“Oh, well, then, good! The hell with it!”
They laughed. And they made love. And nothing had ever felt as sweetly like the best celebration of victory ever.
The next day, they spent hours on paperwork. But then it was complete.
They’d leave for Europe again the next day. Mason let Della know Jackson had offered him time off.
He’d asked that they have vacation time later; they weren’t sending Edmund back to England alone. Not with what they knew—and didn’t know.
Della was just closing her personal computer, making the last of her personal notes, ready to head back to the room with Mason—for sleep, real sleep, before taking on jet lag again—when Edmund Taylor almost ran into her at the exit from the station.
“Tomorrow, we’re off,” he said.
She nodded. “Tomorrow, we’re off. Edmund, we’ll get him. I’ve met Patrick and he’s a brilliant psychiatrist—and agent. He’ll see Dante alone first and let me know if he thinks I can spur him into anything or if he can get something on his own. Anyway, I promise you, we’ll do everything we can. I know England is your home and it’s natural to...”
“Want a killer there, right,” he agreed. “Thanks for last night. It was the break we needed. And thanks for—being a team!”
“I think we’re going to be a better team than ever!”
“Hope so. One day—on a vacation—I want to come back here. Love the place!” he told her.
