Warriors of Poseidon 04 - Atlantis Unmasked

moment of threat.
     
    Anyone who hadn‟t trained for battle for ten years.
     
    “We find the incident in Miami to have been extremely regrettable, of course,” Ethan said, all but radiating compassion, concern, and a certain gravitas that made her think of politicians or judges.
     
    If this man ran for political office, he‟d win by a landslide. What a poker face.
     
    “However, none of my pride brothers or sisters were involved. In fact, we were all at our headquarters, enjoying a very large celebration last night. We‟re planning a wedding, you see,” he confided with a modest grin on his face that won over every woman watching. The man was flat-out gorgeous.
     
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    Evidently he won over the reporter, too, who completely threw his previous line of questioning out the window and practically started bouncing up and down. “A wedding?
    Is it yours? Who is the lucky woman? We at MDTV will want to cover the social event of the season!”
     
    Just then, a tall, tawny-haired woman dressed in a ranger uniform banged the door open, stormed out, and shoved Ethan. Hard. “If you think I‟m wearing white lace on my six-foot-tall body, you‟re—” Suddenly she broke off, noticing the reporter and camera.
    “What‟s going on?”
     
    Sam whistled, nodding his head at the woman on the screen. “That‟s my kind of woman.
    Gorgeous. All fire and temper. Bet she‟s a spitfire in bed.”
     
    Grace shushed him. “I want to hear this. Maybe we should meet this Ethan and his ranger fiancée and see what they know.”
     
    But the station cut out of the interview into a breaking news update. One of the men killed in the attack had just been identified as Carson Fuller, a “Miami real estate tycoon.”
     
    Sam snorted. “Tycoon, my ass. Typhoon is more like it. Fuller has a habit of doing dirty land deals and always coming out on top. Word in Georgia is that he‟d gone into a new arrangement with a group of vamps. Maybe even Vonos himself.”
     
    Grace clicked her computer off and shut the cover, her mind racing. “Wouldn‟t that be interesting? If Vonos is behind the experiments with the rogue shifters, and this Fuller happened to cross him on some land deal, then how easy it would be to have him murdered. But they said drug dealers. Was Fuller into drugs?”
     
    “Nah, he was all about the real estate. What he sold was clean and legal. It was just his methods that weren‟t.”
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    Grace felt Alexios before she heard or saw him. A tingling sensation climbed up her spine, and she actually shivered. If she didn‟t get this under control soon, she was going to embarrass herself even more than she had last night.
     
    “Whose methods?” Alexios asked, standing in the doorway, a forbidding expression on his face. He folded his arms across that broad chest and gave Sam a narrow-eyed glare. “Don‟t you have work to do?”
     
    Sam grinned at him and casually put an arm around Grace‟s shoulders. “Oh, me and this li‟l gal were just discussing vampires and kitty cats,” he said, putting a lot more Georgia than usual in his voice. “Nothing for you to worry your pretty little head about.”
     
    Sam had spent most of the past three days poking at Alexios in ways the old soldier clearly found to be very funny, but Grace had no idea why. All she knew was that she was getting tired of it.
     
    Alexios didn‟t move a muscle but suddenly seemed to loom large over the room. He pointedly stared at Sam‟s arm as if he‟d like to cut it off with one of his daggers.
    “Perhaps, as your ally , I should be involved in strategy discussions.”
     
    Grace suddenly, finally got it, and she didn‟t know whether to laugh or cry at her own cluelessness. For some strange reason, Sam was trying to make Alexios jealous and—even more bizarre—it seemed to be working.
     
    She shoved Sam‟s arm off her shoulder and glared at both of them. “Cut it out. Right now. I don‟t know what kind of stupid game you‟re playing, but I‟m not in the mood to be the monkey in the middle.”
     
    She rounded on Sam. “You‟re old enough to be my father, for Pete‟s sake. What are you trying to prove?”
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    Sam grinned and spread his arms wide in a “who, me?” gesture, then jerked his head toward Alexios. “Hey, he‟s old enough to be