Free Life Blood: Cora's Choice #1 by V. M. Black Page B

wanted anything else.
    Perhaps more that I’d wanted anything else, even now, when he was miles away.
    And that terrified me.
    The microwave clock read two o’clock.  I had four hours—only four hours until the appointment that would determine whether that “see you” was a prediction or an empty promise.
    Four hours before I saw Mr. Thorne again.
    Well, then, I thought, I’d better get my sleep.

Chapter Twelve
     
    A t precisely 6:32 PM, the Bentley stopped, and the chauffeur walked around and opened my door.  I knew because I checked my phone one last time before turning it off and shoving into my coat pocket.
    “Thank you,” I murmured.  I realized that this might be my last time in the car—in any car.  I still didn’t know the chauffeur’s name, and now I might never learn it.
    I shut down that line of thought as I got out.  I was not going to die.  Not tonight.  It was a knowledge that was deeper than reason.  One that I had to cling to.
    I hadn’t paid attention to the city passing in front of the car window, too distracted by my own whirling thoughts.  Now I found myself in front of dense hedge of hollies, easily fifteen feet tall, with only a passage wide enough for a flagstone walk between them.
    I turned back to look at the chauffeur.
    “It is Mr. Thorne’s Georgetown home, Ms. Shaw,” the man said with a small bow before I had a chance to ask the question aloud.
    “I see,” I said, even though I didn’t.  Mr. Thorne directed medical procedures from his home?  It was absurd, but I couldn’t manage to be surprised about anything he might do.  I walked up the path even as I heard the Bentley door shut behind me. 
    No going back.
    The house, half glimpsed between the hedges, revealed itself to me as I passed through.  I stopped, needing a moment to take it in.  Rich—I’d known that Mr. Thorne must be a very rich man.   But this went beyond all my expectations.
    I stood at the edge of a formal walled garden, the immaculate lawn clipped perfectly between the boxwood-edged paths that crossed precisely in the middle of the space where there was a wide fountain, empty and silent now for winter.  Beyond that was the house, its façade made of marble so pale that it glowed in the city lights that reflected against the night sky. 
    It was a massive baroque reimagining of Palladian style, complete with a half flight of stairs leading up to the main floor and a wide porch, like a Roman temple, behind the row of great columns.  Here and there, a window glowed.  I wondered just how big the house was—ten thousand square feet?  Fifty thousand?  It must date from the age of the Robber Barons, if not before.  I could hardly believe that such a home still lay in private hands, even in Georgetown.
    I blew out a long breath.  I was glad that I’d spent even longer deciding what to wear this time than I had for the last meeting.  I was going in for a medical procedure, I knew, and an unpleasant and likely fatal one at that.  That the last thing that mattered was what I wore.  But I couldn’t make myself go in my college girl jeans, so I chose my nice gray pants and a silky black turtleneck.  Now my only regret was that I hadn’t asked Lisette if I could borrow her swing jacket, too, again before she left.
    There was no helping it now.  I squared my shoulders and mounted the steps to the great double doors.
    One swung open before I could knock.  A distinguished-looking gentleman with silver hair and a dark suit greeted me with a cordial nod.
    “Ms. Shaw,” he said.
    “Let me guess,” I interrupted, unable to help myself.  “Mr. Thorne is waiting.”
    The man—an honest-to-goodness butler? I wondered—treated me to an indulgent smile.  “Indeed, Ms. Shaw.  And he will see you now.  Come this way.”
    I stepped inside the foyer, a vast landing before a set of marble stairs that rose up in front of me, wide enough for a dozen people to mount shoulder-to-shoulder.  On