And if she was…then he’d have to figure out if he had it in him to kill her despite his growing affection for Marcus. But he prayed that he wouldn’t have to choose between his dead family and Marcus.
A loud knock on the door had Ethan jerking upright. His heart sped up and he sat frozen on the floor for a moment. He had a dark feeling he knew exactly who was standing at his door.
Slowly, Ethan pushed to his feet. He steadied himself, fingers pressed into the cool metal surface of the fridge door, before he walked to the small foyer. He took a deep breath and worked hard to wipe all expression from his face.
Opening the door, he found Carl standing on the other side, shifting from one foot to the other as if he couldn’t contain his nervous energy.
“Carl, what are you doing here? I told you it wasn’t safe for you to stop by,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, well, you haven’t been returning my calls or messages the past week, so I thought it was a good idea if I stopped in and checked on you.” Carl shoved his way past Ethan and strode confidently into the living room like he was entitled free passage to Ethan’s apartment.
Grinding his teeth together, Ethan closed the door and silently followed behind him. He was getting sick of Carl and his holier-than-thou attitude. The man wasn’t his father, and Ethan was pretty sure he didn’t know shit about vampires. Ethan was a little disgusted at how he’d looked up to him when they first met a few years ago. At least he’d finally come to his senses about Carl and the League.
“What’s going on with you, Ethan?” Carl said as he flopped down in the big comfortable chair in the living room.
Ethan remained standing, his arms folded over his chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You! You’re not calling or reporting in any useful information. You’ve been happy to tell us what he ate, even though we all know he’s not really eating food, and that he’s up walking around the house during the daylight hours.”
“Something you said he’d never be able to do,” Ethan quickly countered.
Carl gave a shrug. “So we were wrong about that one little thing. It’s good information to have. The point is that you were hired to be his moving coordinator. That means you’ve got to have the information on where he’s moving to and when. Why the hell haven’t you told us yet?”
“I don’t have it!” Ethan shouted, hoping that it made the lie more convincing. “He’s got another assistant. She’s handling the actual movers. I box things up, close up rooms. I give her details on what needs to be moved and she tells the movers.”
“And you don’t know the moving date?”
“Nope,” Ethan said, shaking his head. “I have just been given a deadline for when I need to have my work done. He could be moving the next day or a month after that. I don’t know.”
“And the rest of his family?”
Ethan shrugged. “I’m not involved in any of that stuff. He has me working on his house.”
Carl narrowed his eyes on Ethan as he scooted to the edge of his seat. “And yet he takes the time to eat lunch with you every damn day.” His voice was low and soft, making the hair on the back of Ethan’s neck stand up. “What do you talk about?”
“Not much. The weather. What I’m studying in school. Different things happening in the news. Nothing personal.”
Swearing softly, Carl shook his head and stood up. “This is fucking unbelievable. You were supposed to be our big break in getting full details on an entire family of vamps, and you’ve been completely useless.”
Carl’s words stung, but Ethan bit his tongue, hating the burning embarrassment he could feel in his cheeks. He didn’t like the idea of being a failure at anything, but if it kept Marcus and his family safe, then it was worth a little humiliation.
“The job turned out to be different than we all thought. He’s careful. He doesn’t trust me with his personal information,” Ethan said.
“Or you’re not trying hard enough. You’ve clearly got several hours out of the day when he’s not awake and roaming the house. You should be spending that time going through his papers. He got a private office?”
“Yes.”
“Why haven’t you gone through the papers in there?”
“He keeps it locked at all times along with his bedroom. I told you. He’s careful.”
With his hands on his hips, Carl swore again and started pacing the room. “I should have known better than to give you this job. I thought you’d be an easy hire since you’ve got that innocent face, but I didn’t realize that you’ve got zero brains in your damn head.”