by Nancy Gideon
The engine roared to life.
“Hang on,” MacCreedy shouted as he put foot to floor, speeding away from the curb in a shriek of burning rubber.
Then all Jacques could hear was the ragged catch of his own breathing and a soft whisper in his ear.
“I love you, Daddy.”
Twenty-six
Explain ‘gone.’”
Susanna watched as a vein pulsed to life on Damien’s forehead, contrasting with his level tone.
“You’re telling me they just walked into a facility where I have paid a fortune for the best possible security and out again? I don’t care about your employee.” His voice spiked in fury. “He’s going to wish he had died.”
Jacques had Pearl.
Relief made her giddy.
He was here. He’d come for them.
“I want them found. I don’t care what it takes. Alive! Do you hear me? Get something right.”
Damien ended the call, his hands shaking. His narrowed stare met Susanna’s. Her features remained carefully neutral. “He won’t get far,” he assured her. “And he won’t come for you. We’ll be blanketed with security in a matter of minutes. If he’s smart, which I highly doubt, he’d just take his bastard brat and run.”
Susanna allowed a chill smile. “I hope he does. Then they’ll both be out of your reach and you’ll have nothing to threaten me with.”
He seethed over that for a moment, then reminded her with a silky venom, “I’ll still have you, my dear.”
She laughed, making that vein beat all the harder. “Do you think that matters to me? Do you think I care what you do to me as long as they’re safe?”
“I care.”
The low rumbling voice brought her head snapping about.
In his black leathers, he looked very much like he had that first time she’d seen him: big, fierce, brutally powerful. Only what burned in his eyes wasn’t defiance, it was determination. Though his pistol was trained on Frost, his stare was for her.
“Pack whatever you need for the two of you,” he told her.
She rose up, her heart fluttering in her breast. “I’ll get my bag. I have everything else.” Her welling eyes entreated. “Don’t I?”
“She’s in the car with MacCreedy. Hurry.”
She bolted from the chair, but instead of rushing by him for the stairs, she paused to place her palm on his firm middle, rubbing over the hard ridge of his abs to assure herself that he was solid and real. And hers.
He spoke to her softly without taking his eyes off Frost. “I apologize for letting you leave New Orleans without telling you I didn’t want you to go.”
She stretched up for a quick taste of his lips, whispering against them, “I love you. I always have.”
Jacques’s brows lowered dangerously as he touched the colorful mark on her face. “Did he do this?” His hot, laser-blue gaze shifted to Damien Frost, glinting as red as the blood about to be shed.
Reading his own death in that glittering stare, Damien sneered, “Kill me and you’ll never know one second of freedom. You’ll be hunted down relentlessly like the animal you are.”
Jacques’s facial bones sharpened, growing more prominent, more bestial as fierce instinct rose, feeding the violent need to rip apart this fool who dared harm his mate. He smiled, displaying sharp teeth. “It would be worth it.”
Susanna stroked his tense jaw to distract him from potential carnage. “No. Leave him. Jacques!”
His fiery glare touched hers.
“Promise you won’t harm him.”
“You don’t owe him anything,” he spat out.
“But to you, I owe everything. Trust me. Jack?”
“All right.”
She raced for the stairs.
The two men stared at each other.
“What could you possibly offer her?” Damien sneered. “Look at you, you bulky, graceless, square-headed beast. What interests could you share with her, you with your IQ on the same level as that chair? Look at all I’ve given her. Yet instead of being grateful for having more than she deserves, she throws everything away for a brute like you. Why?”
“I used to ask myself that. Apparently I’m everything she wants and needs.” He shrugged. “You’re the smart one. Go figure.”
“What kind of man would demand a woman like that leave all this for a life as a fugitive? All that potential, wasted. All that promising work she could have been doing, thrown away, for what?”
“Freedom.” Then stronger, “Love.”
Frost stared at him blankly.
“Concepts you would never understand,” Susanna told him as she reentered the room with her bag over her shoulder and medical satchel in hand. “I’m ready to go.” Then she paused, gaze riveted to the floor at Jacques’s feet. “Are you hurt?”
Damien wrinkled his nose in distaste as he viewed the bright splotches of crimson. “You’re staining my carpet. Dare I hope it’s something fatal?”
“Merely inconvenient,” Jacques assured him.
But Susanna was staring at the hole in the back of his coat, her eyes going wide and glassy. She slipped her arm about his waist beneath the heavy drape of leather and found a huge, spreading patch of dampness at his belt line. And for the first time, his steady stance faltered.
“Let’s go.” Her tone was low and urgent.
“You won’t get out of this subdivision,” Damien warned. “They’ll bring you back in chains.”
Susanna observed him coldly. “At what cost to your reputation? What will this fine, upstanding community think when they discover how you’ve made fools of them all these years with your pretended mate, knowingly harboring a hybrid child?”
Damien blinked at a logic he’d never considered.
“Better you take the information I’ve left you with your precious public opinion intact, and say good riddance to us.”
He glanced from the computer, so brimming with promise and potential wealth, to the troublesome female clutching at her paling bestial lover. “Good riddance.”
“Nothing fatal,” Susanna pronounced, studying the metal slug held in the prongs of her probe.
Jacques released the breath he’d been holding to groan, “Feels like it should be.” He took another tentative breath after Susanna completed her packing and binding. Not too bad. Not nearly as painful as the thought of living without them.
He let her button him into a clean white shirt, breathing in the fragrance of her hair.
“She’s so beautiful, Anna,” he murmured, still unused to the way his chest seized up at the thought of his daughter. It was a wonderful distress.
The same kind of distress that shimmered in his mate’s dark eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk either of your lives. I’m sorry for so many things.”
He cupped the back of her head in one hand so he could kiss her brow. “None of that matters now. None of it.” He reached behind him, wincing slightly as he pulled a folded piece of paper from his coat. “She drew this for me. Before I met her.”
Susanna studied the drawing of a man behind a high counter, and a table where a girl and a woman holding a baby sat.
“I’d guess that’s my bar and the big, square-headed fella is me.” He chuckled, then asked quietly, “Did you tell her anything about me?”
“No. She just knows things.” She searched his face for signs of repulsion or dismay. Would he reject those Chosen qualities?
He smiled. “Good. She can help me find my keys when I’m late for work.”
“Can I come in now?” a small voice asked from the other side of the curtain.
Susanna pointed sternly to the mattress and helped Jacques lie back. Then she opened the fabric divider.
Pearl bounded in, hopping up on the bed with an exuberance that had Jacques grimacing happily.
“Hey, baby girl. Don’t worry. I’m going to be fine.”
“I know.” Not the least bit of doubt showed in her expression.
Susanna placed
a calming hand on her head. “Your daddy needs his rest, so don’t pester him too much.”
Jacques patted the space beside him. “Why don’t we both get some rest. You can keep me company. There’s room for two.”
Pearl kicked off her shoes and curled up against his side.
Susanna tucked a thin blanket about them, saying softly, “I’ve got something I need to do but I’ll be back in a minute.”
As she left, she heard Jacques ask, “What color should we paint your room?”
“Red.”
A chuckle. “We’ll see. Is that a baby brother or baby sister in your picture?”
“Brother.”
“Yeah? What’s his name?”
“Tito.”
A pause, a hitch of breath, then a quiet, “Nice name.”
It had taken all Giles St. Clair’s powers of persuasion to coax Charlotte to join him for a crack-of-dawn breakfast. She sat restlessly across the table, picking at her eggs, her eyes darkly shadowed, her color wan with worry. He didn’t ask any questions. He could see the answers in her tense, denying posture. So he poured her coffee, put a thick smear of jelly on her toast, and constantly prodded her to take another bite.
Giles had spread the cover-up that Max had been seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, that he and lawyer Antoine D’Marco would be acting as temporary liaisons as Max ran his business from a secluded hospital room. So far, no one was questioning the story.
Awkwardly thrust into a position of authority, Giles almost wished the wily and deceitful Francis Petitjohn was still among them. But it was the least he could do for Max, mumbling a few words here and there to keep his company going. As for his other, less than human interests, Silas MacCreedy would act as proxy.
And that left Charlotte alone, adrift, and unattended.
All he could offer was silence and support. And breakfast.
“I just talked to Mac a bit ago,” Charlotte spoke up. “He said they should be landing soon with Jacques and his family.”
“Good to know. Be good to have them back.”
He liked the bulky Shifter with his booming voice and his surprisingly feisty doctor girlfriend. It would be good for Ozzy to have a new friend out at the house to distract him from his loneliness. And MacCreedy had proved to be a stabilizing presence and rock solid ally. All of them would form a strong circle of community about his boss. And maybe that would be enough to bring him back.
Charlotte’s cell rang. She was grateful for the chance to escape Giles’s insistent mothering, hoping for some sensational news, like a grisly murder, to drag her from her sorrow.
“Lottie?” came a faint voice she hadn’t heard for far too long. “It’s Mary Kate.”
Susanna placed her hand upon Silas’s shoulder. He opened his eyes, and removed one of his earbuds to look up in question.
“Hi. Everything okay?”
“Yes. Thank you. For everything.”
He smiled as she took the seat across the aisle. “That’s what friends are for.” Then his expression grew more serious. “You know Frost isn’t going to let you go, don’t you? He’ll eventually blow through whatever he gets from trading the information you left behind, and want you back to earn him more.”
“It doesn’t matter what he wants. He’s not going to get it.”
Her hard tone piqued Silas’s interest. “Yeah? And how are you going to stop him?”
She opened the onboard portable computer and brought up a document from the flash drive she’d secreted in the hard binding coil of a notebook from her purse. She passed the netbook to him.
“A little something I composed on my flight up to Chicago. I was about to send it.”
He started to read, a slow appreciative smile curving his lips.
It was an e-mail addressed to the governing board of the project she worked for.
It’s with sincere regret that I write this message but I cannot in good conscience allow you to be betrayed as easily as I have been by our enemy, Damien Frost. He has deceived me regarding his intentions, pretending to be a respected member of our Community and supporter of our Purist Movement. Only recently have I discovered his true allegiance to a rebel faction that would bastardize our race with their tainted heritage.
Damien forced me to be his envoy in New Orleans by threatening our daughter’s life. When I was unable to make contact with an organization suspected of plotting an uprising or to find any evidence of unrest, he devised another plan to gain your trust and through it, bring about your collapse. It is only upon being freed of his vile domination by a faithful bodyguard who gave his life for mine that I’m able to come to you with this truth.
Damien Frost will bring information he claims to be my work and he will try to sell it to you as the solution to our problem of ethnic impurity. This is a lie. The files he plans to sell are infected with an undetectable virus that, once in our operating system, will breach our security and destroy all the data we’ve collected in an act of unconceivable terrorism. I urge you to use caution in your dealings with him.
Please do not attempt to find me. My failure to support his plans and now my betrayal of them has placed my safety and that of my daughter at unacceptable risk. By the time you read this, I will be out of the country and forever out of his reach.
I remain faithfully,
Dr. Susanna Duchamps.
“Brilliant,” Silas mused. “If they believe you, they arrest Frost and destroy your data. If they don’t believe you and access your data—a big surprise?”
“A mild surprise, but unpleasant enough to do the job, discrediting Damien either way. The information I left on my computer was useless. His influence will be destroyed. He won’t have the means to come after me. He’ll be lucky if he gets out alive, which will be better than he deserves.” Her gaze flashed up to Silas’s. “He was turning Pearl over to Research.”
Silas flinched. “Far better than he deserves.” He pressed Send on her e-mail and shut down the computer.
Susanna exhaled, all the tension draining from her with a shudder.
“We’ve got another hour or so,” Silas told her. “Go get some sleep.”
As Silas plugged in his earphones and settled back in his seat, Susanna returned to the rear cabin, where the soft light brushed over the two slumbering figures. Her emotions took a tender twist at the sight of a small hand resting upon the hard, massive chest. Her mate. Their child. Both safe.
She sat on the edge of the bed, brushing her hand over Jacques’s head, then over their daughter’s silky hair. Jacques’s eyes blinked open. He smiled and murmured, “I love you.” Then he drifted off again.
What more could she ever want?
With a tender sigh, she joined her family on the bed, where they’d left room for three.
For more from Nancy Gideon’s seductive Big Easy preternatural world, read the first novel in her steamy new spin-off series
Don’t miss Nancy Gideon’s intoxicating Moonlight series featuring the forbidden romance between Detective Charlotte Caissie and shape-shifting former mobster Max Savoie
MASKED BY MOONLIGHT
CHASED BY MOONLIGHT
CAPTURED BY MOONLIGHT
BOUND BY MOONLIGHT
Available from Pocket Books
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