by Zoe Chant
And it was time to do just that—assuming they were here. Maddox picked up a pebble, weighed it in his palm, then tossed it out the cave mouth into the fragrant desert night. It skittered among the bushes.
There was no obvious reaction, but he heard soft rustling off to the right, as of someone readjusting themselves.
Damn. Sometimes he hated being right.
He glanced back to where he'd left Verity; his dark-adapted eyes caught a glimpse of her face and the glimmer of the white patches on her skirt. Looked like she was staying put. At least that was one thing he didn't have to worry about. He crept to the cave entrance and for a moment he stayed there, marshaling his strength. He was exhausted and cold; his feet hurt, his hip hurt, and blood had dried to sticky crusts on his flank and thigh. All he wanted to do was lie down for a week.
You can rest when your mate is safe, he told himself. He lunged out of the cave, shifting as he went.
The sight of a bull erupting from the cave mouth was enough of a distraction that when someone else's gun went off near him, he was already past where they expected him to be. There appeared to be only one sentry, and Maddox kicked him in the chest, sending him tumbling down the hill. There was a yelp and a series of painful-sounding thumps.
Maddox shifted back and dropped to a crouch, just as gunfire sprayed through the brush, coming from somewhere farther up the hill.
Maddox ducked behind a boulder. The shooting stopped, and he heard someone say somewhere, not too far away, "Where the hell did that thing go? It's too big to just disappear!"
"Forget about the damn cow," Ducker's voice said. "That could've been a distraction. Does anyone see Murphy around anywhere?"
Static crackled from further down the hill, where the guard had landed in a tangle of brush. The other voice said, "Jim's not answering his radio."
"Dammit," Ducker snapped, and called, "Mr. Murphy? Are you there?"
Maddox didn't answer.
"You are resourceful. I thought for sure the cave-in would have taken care of you. Remember that job offer? It's still open."
"I wouldn't work for you if you held a gun to my head," Maddox called back.
"Ah, but what if I held a gun to her head?"
Sheer panic almost made him spring to his feet—probably with lethal results. But then his conscious mind got the better of his fear for Verity. He hadn't heard anything from the cave. She must still be in there. Ducker was bluffing.
Two could play that game.
"She's dead!" he called back. "I got out of your cave-in. She didn't."
"Then it's just you, a man alone. You won't escape, you know. You're badly outnumbered."
Maddox glanced down the hill. Flashlights swept back and forth: more of Ducker's people, closing in on him. He might be able to make a run for it as a bull, but that would mean abandoning Verity. He'd rather die.
But if they think she's already dead ...
"How about I surrender," he called. "We can discuss that job offer over beers, somewhere warm."
"Throw your weapons away and stand up."
Maddox stood up, hands raised. "I'm not armed."
"I still wonder what happened to your clothes," Ducker remarked. He came strolling down the hillside above the cave. He wasn't armed; he didn't need to be. The gunmen on either side of him took care of that.
Maddox forced himself not to look at the cave, not even to think about the cave for fear of giving himself away. Just stay out of sight, Verity, no matter what you hear.
"It's a really long story," he said. It went against every instinct to keep himself still, not to try to fight or resist. "Let's have a cold one and talk about it."
"Or I could shoot you where you stand," Ducker said calmly.
"Maddox! No!"
Damn it.
Verity appeared in the entrance to the cave, clutching the board like a baseball bat: a furious avenging angel, incensed on his behalf. "Leave him alone!" she shouted, to the night in general since she had no idea which way to look.
Maddox lunged toward her, expecting at any moment to feel the impact of a bullet, but nothing happened. He landed barefoot next to her. When he put a hand on her arm, she whipped around and swung the board at his head. Maddox caught it with shifter-fast reflexes.
"Verity, it's me!"
"Oh," she gasped, and dropped the board, putting her arms around him.
"You could have been safe," he told her, moving to put his body between her and the approaching gunmen. "All you had to do was wait in the cave 'til we were gone."
Her answer was quiet, pitched for his ears alone. "There is no safety for me without you."
"Charming," Ducker remarked. His squeaky-new cowboy boots skidded down the last little slope; he stumbled and one of his men had to steady him. Then he appraised them from a few yards off, his thumbs tucked into his belt. "What a charming scene. I really don't know what to do with you two. I've made every offer to resolve this peacefully."
Maddox couldn't help snorting with bitter laughter, and Verity snapped, "Like setting my shop on fire and throwing dynamite at us? If that's your idea of a peaceful solution, I'd hate to see what you consider a violent one!"
Ducker looked more entertained than upset, as if he was amused by a kitten hissing and snarling at him. Maddox had an urge to turn Verity loose on him with her board. She'd change his mind pretty quick.
... and also get herself shot.
Which was likely to happen to them both in the next few minutes. Maddox had no illusion that Ducker planned to let them go. It made all the sense in the world that he wouldn't. They both posed a threat to him in different ways, and he was never going to get a better opportunity to get rid of both of them with no one the wiser.
They weren't both getting out of here—but, Maddox thought, maybe he could get Verity out. If he shifted quickly, blocking the entrance to the cave ... he wouldn't last long, but she could run deep into the tunnels and hide. She was good enough at navigating down there that she might be able to escape a search and come back up when it was safe. It wasn't a good plan, but it was the only one he had.
"Verity," he said softly. "Listen, when I start moving—"
"Don't you dare suggest sacrificing yourself for me," Verity snapped back. "Did you miss everything I said earlier? Or the part where your life wouldn't even be in danger if not for me?"
"I don't want a life without you in it."
"Touching," Ducker remarked. He gestured to his men. Maddox held Verity and kept himself between the gunmen and her. Even if she wouldn't leave him, he could at least protect her for a little while by shifting, and maybe take some of them with him too. It was possible that once he was dead, they'd have second thoughts about killing an unarmed blind woman.
"I'm sorry," Verity whispered.
"I'm not," he whispered back, and got ready to shift. If he was going down, he meant to go down fighting.
But nothing happened. Instead, Ducker was looking around, and so were some of his men. Verity tilted her head as if she was listening. And then Maddox heard something too, a strangely out of place sound out here in the middle of nowhere. Some kind of engine noise, deep and low, shivering the ground under his feet—
The helicopter came skimming over the top of the hill, its rotor-and-engine noise suddenly deafening, along with a brilliant light that stabbed down at them and froze Ducker and his men where they stood. The helicopter circled above them, and a voice on a loudspeaker announced, "This is the FBI. Lay down your weapons and put your hands on your head."
"What on Earth?" Verity gasped, her arms tightening around Maddox in a convulsive clasp.
A second helicopter was coming in from the other direction, and Ducker's men started dropping their guns; they weren't getting paid enough to get in a shootout with the police. Ducker stepped back, his mouth tight, and folded his hands over the top of his wind-whipped gray hair. "This'll never stick," he snapped over the roar of the helicopter above them. "I have the best law firm in this state on
retainer. I'll be out by this afternoon and I'm coming for you, Murphy. You and your woman."
"You know what?" Maddox said, his eyes tracking the second helicopter. It had lowered to hover above the rocks of the hillside, and a door in the side slid open so that a tall, graceful figure, dressed in a black suit, could jump out to land gracefully beneath the whipping rotors. "I really don't think that's going to happen."
The second helicopter lifted off again, and Darius Keegan strolled across the hillside, through the surrendering gunmen, looking completely unconcerned, carrying a canvas shopping bag with a bright orange cartoon cat on it. He passed Ducker without even bothering to look at him, to Ducker's spluttering indignation, and stopped in front of Maddox and Verity.
Maddox hadn't seen Darius in almost a year. The dragon shifter looked good—certainly better than when Maddox had last seen him, bruised and bandaged after fighting for his life. Now he looked tanned and healthy, holding his head high with all his old pride, though perhaps a little less swagger; it was a deep, casual confidence that Darius wielded these days. Loretta had been good for him.
With no hesitation, as if meeting naked former employees on a mountainside was an everyday occurrence for him, he opened the bag and held it out. "Your size," Darius said. "You might want to have pants on when you talk to the authorities."
"I'll bleed on it," Maddox said. Being confronted with Darius in his crisply tailored suit made him even more aware of his own bloody, filthy condition. Being naked hardly mattered; he was covered in such a layer of dirt and other filth that it hardly showed.
"Indeed," Darius said dryly, and gave the bag of clothes an impatient shake. "Because buying more cheap menswear is an expense I can barely afford. Put it on."
"How did you know he was going to need it?" Verity asked as Maddox leaned down stiffly to pull on a pair of pants. Now that the adrenaline was ebbing, his hip had locked up and all his various hurts were making themselves known in a major way.
"Let's just say that in a situation like this, people like us prefer to keep a spare set of clothing handy. Even if my kind doesn't have that problem."
Verity's sightless eyes flew wide. "You're—like him? No, wait." Verity was no fool. "You're the person he told me about. You're the—" She lowered her voice, though there was little chance of being overheard over the noise of the helicopters. "The dragon."
"Maddox," Darius said in a cool tone.
Maddox straightened up and buttoned the pair of brand-new jeans; he was unsurprised to discover they were a perfect fit. "She's my mate. I have no secrets from her."
"So I see." Darius didn't sound particularly upset about having his secret revealed—though with him, it was often hard to tell; he could be perfectly cool right up until the point when the claws came out. Maddox kept a wary eye on him, but it was with perfect politeness that he took Verity's hand and brought it to his lips, unconcerned about its filthy state. "A pleasure. I'm Darius."
"Verity Breslin." She drew her shoulders up and held herself proudly, and Maddox felt his heart swell and brim over with love for her. If it had been entirely up to him, he would have liked Darius's first sight of her to be sometime when she wasn't bedraggled and covered with dirt after being buried alive in a cave-in. But at the same time he realized Darius was actually seeing her at her best: proud and undaunted and brave and beautiful.
"You won't make this stick!" Ducker shouted, and Maddox looked around with the startled realization that he'd almost forgotten about his enemy. There were men and women in FBI jackets all over the hillside now, and Ducker had been slapped into handcuffs, which gave Maddox a deep satisfaction. "You can't touch me. I'll have all of your badges. As for you two—" He managed to cut himself off, apparently not yet far gone enough to threaten their lives in front of a bunch of FBI agents, but the look he gave Maddox and Verity promised retribution.
Darius leaned close and murmured, for their ears only, "You know, he could have a convenient little accident."
It was tempting—the idea of eliminating the threat to his mate, and to any future family they might have. Tempting. For just a moment. But that wasn't the kind of life he wanted to live. Not anymore.
And so Maddox shook his head firmly. "No. That's not me, not now. And it's not you either," he added, and saw from the look on Darius's face that he'd struck a nerve, especially when he went on, "I don't think Loretta would want you making offers like that anymore."
"True," Darius sighed regretfully. "Oh well." He watched Ducker being escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs. "Back in the time of my father, we would have gouged out his eyes, broken all his limbs, and cast him naked into our deepest caverns for daring to lay a hand on someone under the clan's protection."
"Yeah, that's kinda out of style these days."
"I suppose I'll just have to do this the human way, and drown him in lawyers. Spending the rest of his life in prison as his business empire is nibbled away by lawsuits ... that's a hell of its own sort, I suppose." He turned to Verity and took her hand again, guiding it to his arm. "And now, I expect you two would like to get out of here. The inevitable FBI questioning can take place in a more congenial location, if we hurry before they get any ideas."
Maddox retrieved Verity's hand from Darius's arm and placed it firmly on his own arm instead. Verity smiled, and her fingers tightened in a brief squeeze. "I think that sounds good. Especially if someone could pick us up a couple of burgers."
As they began walking back to Darius's helicopter, picking their way carefully across the rocky hillside, Darius smiled. "I think that could be arranged."
Chapter Twenty: Verity
For most of her life, Verity had rarely slept in. Even without the visual cues of sun and sky, she was usually up at dawn, bustling about her neatly kept kitchen to start her day.
So it was with a sense of disorientation that she drifted awake, unable to tell if it was early or late. The bed was soft and deep and unfamiliar. A hotel in Phoenix, she recalled, paid for by Maddox's friend Darius. They'd ended up here after giving the FBI endless repetitions of a carefully edited version of the past few weeks' events—true in all regards except that any bulls who appeared in the story must be stray cattle from nearby ranches and nothing else.
She felt her way past Maddox's sleeping warmth to the bedside table and her phone, thumbing down the volume so it wouldn't wake him when it told her the time. It was early evening; they'd slept the afternoon away, and she was hungry.
Maddox groaned beside her, and she felt him roll over. They were both finally, blessedly clean. After checking into the hotel, they'd showered and then fallen into bed, both of them exhausted and, for Verity's part, aching in muscles she hadn't even known she had. Maddox, she suspected, was worse off, not that he would admit it.
Her skin itself cringed from the idea of putting her filthy clothes back on to go out and get food. Maybe this was the kind of hotel that had room service, something she only knew about from books but had never actually experienced.
"Good morning, beautiful," Maddox murmured, his voice rough with sleep. Big, callused hands brushed her loose hair away from her face.
"Good morning yourself." She leaned into his kiss, and then the touch of his hands on her body. Eating, she decided, could wait for awhile.
An hour or so later, after another shower luxuriously shared under the hotel's ample hot water, they were up and about. Wrapped in fluffy bathrobes, they sat on the floor and Maddox read the hotel's room service menu aloud to her. She decided on pasta, and he had two of the largest steaks on the menu delivered to their room, along with a bottle of wine.
"Are you sure Darius won't mind?"
"He'll deal. He's not as loaded as he used to be, but he's still not poor. And I'm about to start gnawing on a chair leg."
"In that case, why don't you add some pie to that? If they have pie."
They did have pie, with ice cream, and she and Maddox were just licking the last of the vanilla ice cream off their spoons when there was a
knock on the room door and a voice through the door said, "Aunt Verity?"
Verity jumped up to answer it, and the next thing she knew, she was being tightly hugged, bathrobe and all. "This is so wild!" Bailey exclaimed. "I've got a suitcase here with some of your clothes and stuff, by the way. Hi, Mr. Maddox!"
"Hi," Maddox said, from the floor.
"How did you know where to find us?" Verity asked. By the time they'd gotten out of the FBI's interrogation room, she had been so exhausted and overwhelmed that the idea of calling Bailey hadn't even occurred to her. And with her phone still missing—she expected Ducker had probably thrown it away—Bailey had no way to get in touch with her, either.
"One of Mr. Maddox's friends called us. He told us where you were, and we talked Luke's grandma into letting us drive down to pick you up and also bring you some things, since you had to go away so suddenly. Is Mr. Ducker really in jail?"
"Yes, he is. Do you want to hear the story?"
They ordered more food for the kids, and sat around on the floor and talked. Verity edited the story slightly to remove the most alarming parts, as well as all references to shifters, but Luke and Bailey hung on every word.
"So what happens now?" Bailey asked, her spoon clinking in her ice cream bowl. "Are they gonna, like, throw the book at them, or what?"
"You've been watching too many cop shows," Verity told her. "But, yes, Sheriff Hawkins is cutting a deal to testify against him." They had encountered him briefly at the FBI building, though they hadn't spoken to him; she'd recognized his voice down the hall, that was all.
"Is he going to come back and be sheriff again?" Luke asked, sounding unhappy with the prospect.
"I doubt it. I think his law-enforcement days are over, at least in Silvermine."
"Yay!" Bailey crowed. "This means Maddox can be our new sheriff!"
Maddox let out a snorted, startled laugh, and Verity said, "Bailey, that's up to Maddox, I think."
"But you're still running for sheriff, right?" the girl said. "If Mr. Hawkins is out of the race, then it's just you, and it's past the deadline so you can't withdraw, because that'd leave us without a sheriff at all and that would be really bad, right?"