Green: The Beginning and the End by Ted Dekker Page A

jabbed at the door. “But there is him. And as long as there’s someone out there with this foolish notion, particularly someone who can read minds, we can’t possibly be safe.”
    “Why?” Janae asked. “If there is no blood?”
    “Because there once was,” her mother said. “What he said is partially true. We did take a vial of Thomas Hunter’s blood and kept it safe for several years. But we feared an event exactly like this, so I sent it to our old lab in Indonesia, where it was destroyed. Neither the lab nor the blood exist today.”
    “But as long as this fool thinks it exists, he’ll be a problem,” Kara added.
    “So you want me to what? Distract him?” she asked, but she was thinking, Oh my goodness, what if Billy’s right?
    “Is that a problem?”
    “No. I think he could be the distractible kind. He really can read minds?”
    “Please, Janae. Keep him close, but keep your guard up. He could be a rather dangerous character.”
    Let’s hope so .
    Janae picked up the loaded tray, refusing Betty’s assistance to carry the lunch. She left the kitchen and wound her way down the hall to the guest quarters.
    There were things Mother trusted her with and things she did not. Send Janae de Raison into any plant or laboratory in the world that was slipping, and she would return it to full production within a week. But at times Mother treated her with the same scrutiny she’d showed her enemies. Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.
    Monique and Kara had no intention of trusting Janae with Billy. They intended to keep both as close as needed to monitor every move.
    The large white door that led into the guest suite was closed. She thought about knocking but decided against it. Balancing the tray on her left hand, she turned the knob and pushed the door open.
    The guest atrium was round, surrounded by windows that overlooked manicured lawns and the jungle beyond. A gilded dome rose at the room’s center, supporting a huge iron chandelier. Thick lace drapes swept across the top of each window and hung to the marble floor.
    The furniture was mostly old English, wood painted in antiqued creams and browns, nothing too dark. Monique preferred light colors to dark stain here in the tropics, unlike her house in New York, which made ample use of cherrywood and mahogany.
    No sign of Billy. He was either in the bathroom to her right, down the hall that led to the bedrooms, or in the parlor that doubled as a library. Janae considered the bedrooms with some interest but quickly decided that he would probably be more interested in books than beds even after a long flight. She angled for the library.
    Her bare feet padded lightly across the tile. Giovanni had given her a full manicure and pedicure yesterday in New York, painting her nails a delectable deep ruby red that still looked dripping wet. Her short black dress was formfitting but loose below the waist so it could sway across her thighs.
    She’d earned a black belt in jujitsu by age seventeen and had kept it up as a form of exercise over the eight years since. “You can seduce many men with a pretty face,” Monique used to say. “You can get them slobbering with a pretty face and a powerful body. But you can turn most men into idiots with a pretty face, a powerful body, and a bank account that earns enough interest to pay for jet fuel.”
    So far Mother had been right, although she’d missed one: a potent mind was a more powerful aphrodisiac than all of the others combined.
    She found Billy in the parlor with his back to her, staring at a bookcase loaded with leather-bound books. His fingers traced their spines slowly, as if he expected to read their contents like he’d read her mind. Her family had always been fascinated by books, and it appeared Billy might also be.
    “Hungry?”
    He spun around, startled.
    She walked to a leather ottoman and set the tray down. “Hope you like peanut butter and jelly with caviar. A taste I picked up in Poland