“And now I learn the same evil man who tried to kill my son is responsible for killing two others. That you know about. And now, now he has my husband.”
She stared at everyone, rage twisting her features. “Tell me, please, anyone, how any of this will ever be okay again?”
Whirling around on Sean, she jabbed a finger in his face. “I wanted a happy child and grandchildren to spoil. I get a world full of things I didn’t know existed and never wanted to know about, and now my husband’s life is in danger.” Tears spilled down her cheeks as her voice broke. “I just wanted grandchildren,” she sobbed.
Sean engulfed her in a hug as she cried. He decided to focus on the only point on which he could reassure her with any certainty. “Mom, Emery and I can adopt, you know. And we might. We haven’t really talked about it.” He glanced over her shoulder at Emery, who looked frozen.
Great, thanks for the backup.
“Really?” she mumbled against his chest.
He could count on one hand with fingers to spare how many times he’d seen his mother break down like this, and all of those times involved a death of a close friend or beloved family member.
And none of them a fraction this severe.
“Mom, this really isn’t the time to talk about it, but yeah. Children aren’t out of the question for me and Em, but we just got together a couple of months ago. We’re young, and we’re not in a hurry to have kids. We want some alone time first.”
She nodded but didn’t lift her head from his chest.
“So please don’t cry. Not about this. I can’t promise you grandkids, but don’t count any out yet.”
With that breakdown out of her system, it seemed she was able to calm down a little. Louise helped Sean get her into one of the bedrooms, where he left her in Louise’s care while he returned to the living room.
* * * *
Nearly an hour had passed from when Sean and Wyatt picked up Marisela. Sean knew they needed to act quickly, before Erik either moved or killed their dads, based on what Marisela had told them.
Apparently, Lina and the dragons had a trick or several up their sleeves.
Rick studied a Google Earth picture of the neighborhood Wyatt brought up on his laptop. “Lina, call Callie. Get her here right now, if you can.”
“Where is she?” Sean asked.
“Maine,” the three of them said, their focus still on the laptop.
“Um, sorry, but we don’t have time to waste on waiting for more people,” Sean said. “We need to get moving in minutes, not a day or two.”
Lina smiled even as she whipped out her cell phone. “Oh, she’s fast. You just wait.” She waited for the call to connect. “Hey, it’s Lina. I need a favor, big-time. Another Mom rescue situation. Can Blackie spare you for a little while? As in right now? Yeah, cool. Thanks.” She hung up. “There. Problem solved.”
“What are you talking about?” Sean asked. “It’s our dads, not our mo—”
A woman appeared in the living room, a few feet away from Lina.
As if she’d always been standing there. Just a blink, and she’d appeared.
The air exploded out of Sean’s lungs. This time, he didn’t wait to see if there was anything to catch him. He let his knees give way and hit the floor, hard, on his ass.
The thought crossed his mind that maybe he needed to go snag one or a dozen of his mom’s Xanax.
And he gave thanks she was safely back in the bedroom and hadn’t witnessed the woman’s arrival. Considering how badly he was taking it, he knew it might be just the last straw to irretrievably shatter his mom’s sanity.
He knew it had shaken his own.
The woman smiled and hugged Lina. “Hiya, girlie.” She then hugged Rick and Jan.
Sean looked over his shoulder and saw Marisela clinging to the back of the couch, her eyes no doubt as wide in shock as his own were.
“So,” the newcomer said. “What’s the 411?”
“Who…who the fuck—”
“Sean,” Lina said, “Callie. Callie, Sean and everyone else. Like you yourself said, there’s no time to waste on polite introductions.” She turned the woman around by the shoulders and pointed at Marisela. “There’s your decoy.”
Marisela sat back with a terrified meep! that Sean wasn’t sure was in English or not, but didn’t need any translation.
Wyatt also looked alarmed. He started toward the woman, but Lina grabbed his arm. “Whoa, it’s all right. She needs to get her looks down. She’s not going to hurt her.”
Callie had been carrying a small backpack as a purse. She set it down and slowly walked around the couch to Marisela. “Is this what she was wearing when they last saw her?”
Marisela stared up at Callie in fear, but managed to shake her head.
Callie offered her a hand, waiting until Marisela took it and stood.
Callie looked her up and down. “Think to me what clothes you were wearing,” she said.
Trembling, Marisela closed her eyes.
Callie nodded, then the air around her shimmered.
Everyone except Lina and her men let out a startled cry when there were suddenly two Mariselas standing there.
“I need her to talk to me, to say something,” the new Marisela said in Callie’s voice.
Marisela the Original opened her mouth, swallowed, and tried again. “Hello.”
Callie kindly smiled. “Do they know you speak English?”
She shook her head.
“Okay. Say anything. Speak a children’s rhyme to me in Spanish. I need to get a feel for your voice in Spanish.”
Marisela thought for a moment before she said something that Sean thought was a poem about the moon, but he wasn’t sure. “Ahí está la luna, comiendo su tuna. Echando las cáscaras, en la laguna.”
Callie cocked her head. When she next spoke, the transformation was complete, her English now heavily accented. “Is this better?”
Everyone nodded. “Perfect,” Rick said. “Let’s get moving.”
Now knowing which house it was, and that it wasn’t directly on the water, Sean, Emery, Gus, and Wyatt headed back to Thatcher’s to take the boat out and wait at the canal for Lina’s signal. Louise and Helen stayed behind at the house with Marisela, Laura, Christopher, and a couple of other shifters who’d arrived to help. Denby and Ambrose would park over on the key and swim in, hopefully able to help kill Erik.
If Erik was even there.
Sean decided not to ask any more questions. His brain felt numb, overloaded, about ready to shut down.
He completely sympathized with what his mom was going through now.
As he understood the plan, Lina was going to lure Esparza and his men away from the house, telling them she found Marisela, and that she was wounded and refused to have her call the police for help. Hopefully, enough of Esparza’s men would leave, allowing Wyatt, Gus, Rick, Jan, and the others to rescue Joseph and his dad.
The rescued men would then be rushed to the water by the shifters and to the awaiting boat.
Apparently, once Callie’s role was fulfilled and they gave her the signal, she would simply disappear, the way she’d appeared before them.
I really don’t want to think about that part right now. It made him queasy, and he already had enough worries on his plate as it was.
I’m sooo going to have to have another looong talk with Emery when shit settles down.
No, he’d never trade Emery for anyone, but his nerves were completely frayed.
What if there’s stuff even Emery doesn’t know?
Now that was something he definitely didn’t want to think about. Before all the dolphin-shifters-are-real stuff crashed into his life, he didn’t even believe in aliens. He thought Roswell was a weather balloon, and crop circles were well planned hoaxes.
And now?
Well…
Here there be dragons…
And whatever the fuck Callie was.
Chapter Nineteen
They dropped Rick
off first near a secluded spot close to the store. He would shift and fly to the house and wait for Jan in the backyard, ready to give assistance to the other shifters, if needed. It was nearly dark when Lina dropped Callie and Jan off at the convenience store. They would hide out in the back, Callie already shifted to look like Marisela had been beaten up. Lina’s men weren’t happy Lina was going alone, but the risk of Esparza recognizing either man as a shifter was too great. Plus, as Lina pointed out, a woman would be far less threatening to Esparza than a man.
Lina took a pic of Callie with her cell phone and had it ready to show Esparza.
She practiced her story as she drove to the house. She knew she could go Goddess on their asses and fry everyone if necessary, but hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Yet.
She pulled up behind the three cars already in the driveway and left the engine running. After looking around, she walked up to the door, taking a deep breath before she knocked.
A scowling man smelling of fresh gun oil answered the door. “What?”
She hoped she came off looking and sounding nervous. She held up her hands, showing her cell phone. “Dude, look, I don’t want any trouble. Me and my boyfriend, we pulled into the convenience store to get some beer, and there was this girl—”
The door was yanked open and another man stood there. Lina suspected he was Hector Esparza.
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Dude, I was just telling him.” She held up the cell phone, showing him the picture of an apparently wounded Marisela. “This girl, she said her brother lives here. She said someone robbed her. I offered to call the cops and she said no, she’s not here legally, and to come tell her brother. She’s really upset, said she has to get back here.”
When Hector grabbed her arm, Lina suppressed the urge to blast him with a fireball. She pretended to cower. “Dude, please. I’m not supposed to be driving. I got a suspended license. Okay? I don’t want any trouble. She said some guy fucking mugged her. My boyfriend’s still at the store with her. She wouldn’t get in the car with us and we didn’t feel right leaving her alone. Okay? Please? As far as I’m concerned this never happened.”
Hector’s face contorted in rage. He shoved Lina back outside and slammed the door in her face as he began screaming in Spanish to his men.
Lina had almost made it back to the car when Hector yanked the front door open again and stalked toward her. Fortunately, the guy didn’t have a gun in his hands.
“No cops,” he said, jabbing a finger at her. “We’ll be right there.” He headed for one of the cars
She got into her car and pulled out, pausing long enough to see two other men run out of the house and get into another car. None of them were Erik Chait.
That meant, according to Marisela’s account, there were at least two men still in the house guarding Joseph and Sam, and possibly a third if Erik was there.
She headed back to pick up Jan, already on the phone to Wyatt. “Go right now. At least two, possibly three still in the house. Don’t know if Erik is one of them.”
Esparza and his men pulled into the parking lot right behind him. When the man Lina had suspected was Esparza ran up to Callie and began shouting at her in Spanish, she had her confirmation.
Jan gave the men a wide berth and got into the car with Lina. Lina peeled out, heading away from the store and around another side street where she could park so Jan could shift and go join Rick.
“Anything happens to Callie, you realize Blackie will fucking kill us, right?” Jan asked her.
“I’m more worried about something happening to the others,” Lina said. “There’s at least two at the house. Maybe three. Get moving and help Rick.”
Jan leaned in and gave her a kiss before quickly stripping. He stepped out of the car and shifted, flying low over the mangroves in the growing dark to avoid being seen.
It didn’t take him long to get his bearings. Wyatt and Gus, shifted, were already dragging themselves out of the water across the road from the house and heading as fast as they could through the yard. Emery, shifted, waited in the water.
The dragons landed in the backyard of the target house behind a huge, unkempt bougainvillea bush and shifted back to human form, ducking down to remain unseen until the alligators could catch up.
“I’d feel better with a gun,” Rick muttered.
“I’d feel better with clothes,” Jan countered.
* * * *
Once alone with Esparza and his men, Callie continued her sobbing, forcing herself to cling to the man as if she was happy to see him. She babbled apologies to him in Spanish, begging him not to make her hurt Sam.
“Who did this to you?” he asked in Spanish.
She described a fictitious, young, tattooed, white teenager and his Hispanic accomplice. She told him they were standing at the edge of the parking lot when she walked up and dragged her back behind the building and mugged her.
“Which way did they go?”
She pointed south, in the opposite direction of the house. As she’d anticipated, Esparza sent one of his men running that direction after the nonexistent assailants.
He might not have had any compunction about abusing his sister, but he damn sure wouldn’t let anyone else get away with it without his permission.
Typical. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “They took the money. I didn’t get to shop yet. I’m sorry.”
“Stop,” he ordered. “I should have known better than to send you out.” He handed her off to his other man. “Take her back to the house.”
The guy shoved her into the backseat of the car, then he got in and headed toward the house.
When the guy parked in the driveway and shut off the engine, she sat up in the middle of the backseat and put her hands on his neck. She conjured the spirit of her true formerly Immortal nature, the Cailleach, one of the former Triad, youngest sister to Brighde and Baba Yaga.
“Nice knowing you,” she said.
She squeezed.
By the time she mentally tracked Esparza, she realized his car was almost back to the house and the alligator shifters were just making their way across the yard on the other side of the road.
Sir’s going to paddle my ass for getting this involved. She wasn’t a true Immortal anymore. An ill-placed bullet or other wound could kill her just as it could anyone else.
They had to catch her first, though. And she couldn’t help that she loved helping her friends out.
It also allowed her a chance to dish out some well-deserved karmic justice.
Especially considering what she’d seen Marisela had endured at Esparza’s hands.
Wyatt would be good for her, help heal her soul. She was a good woman caught up in bad circumstances, which had just turned around in her favor. How much in her favor, Marisela had no clue yet, but soon would.
I love happy endings. Happy, happy, happy.
It would be well worth the spanking Sir gave her for staying longer and doing more than she needed to.
Callie transported herself from the car and appeared at the side of the house and walked around front just as Esparza pulled his car into the driveway. “What are you doing out here? I told you to go inside.” He looked over and saw his man slumped over in the front of the car, his head no longer attached to his neck. “What the fuck happened to him?”
She popped out, then in again, directly in front of him with her hand around his throat. “Oh, nothing.” She shifted back to her true form, her green eyes nearly black. “Just a little love note from your sister, asswipe.”
She squeezed.
* * * *
Erik stood pacing in the bedroom. He didn’t like dipshit Hector sending his sister out for food. It was stupid, no matter how he’d assured Erik that she would return.
There’s no way Emery could know where we are. He’d been so careful, using Jack Malloy’s name and credit card to rent the house, and using an untraceable cell phone to call, shutting it off after.
He thought he heard a car pull up and park out front, but nobody came in. From the master bedroom, where they were holding the men, he couldn’t see the front of the house. And they had taped the cheap blinds closed, anyway, to prevent the possibility of anyone sneaking a peek around the edges from the outside.
He looked at Hector’s two men sitting in the bedroom with him. “One of you go check. I’ll stay here with them.”
The men looked at each other, the older of the two nodding his head at the other one.
Rolling his eyes, he left the bedroom.
Erik had a bad feeling that was growing worse by the minute, no matter how much Esparza had assured him his men had everything under control.
He was so close to finally getting what he wanted. What he deserved. What should have rightfully been his.
So. Fucking. Close.
He’d take great pleasure killing Emery’s little bitch of a human mate in front of him before he killed Emery. That would have to wait, until he was sure Marisela was pregnant.
Needed a blood heir to the line.
Esparza would get what he wanted, Erik would finally have the safety he needed and could finally go back to living in the States instead of being hunted like a dog—happy endings for everyone.
Well, everyone except Emery.
The betrayal that a human being had been chosen over him had burned through Erik’s soul. He knew he’d have to kill Emery.
He’d just make sure Emery suffered as much as possible before he died.
Chapter Twenty
When Wyatt saw Callie take out Esparza, he knew they had to move fast. Despite the dark, it wouldn’t take long for someone to notice. He and Gus both shifted into two-footed mode and sprinted across the road.
She stepped around Esparza’s body with a grin. “Sorry I didn’t leave him for you.”
“No worries, hon.”
She produced two guns. “Here you go, boys. Tell Lina to call me when it’s over and let me know how you made out.”
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