Last thing I saw before closing the bedroom door—Pierce, mouth open. It was almost better than tugging that bath towel loose. Almost.
I switched clothes in less than a minute, adding a hoodie over my t-shirt. “Let’s go. I’m worried about what Grady might do to Cait if he catches her snooping into his stuff. What if he has a secret room like Connor? Cait’s not ready for something like that. I mean, both of her parents being dangerously unstable, and she could get into deep trouble before she realizes it.”
“You’re protective of her.” Warmth colored his words.
I rubbed at the knot in my chest. “Yeah. It’s…I’m not sure why. I feel like this about Annie and Madigan, even you and Adam, but I just met Cait. Everything about this is weird, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”
He nodded toward the kitchen. “We’ll go out the back. Máthair is watching the cottage from her kitchen window.”
I didn’t question him. “Yeah. I figured she’d be keeping an eye out. I would. Nope, that’s a lie. I’d be hiding in the bushes, ready to tail us when we left the house. Siofra doesn’t think like that, does she?”
“She’s a mother.”
“Right. So why’s she watching and not skulking?” I stuffed my hands in my hoodie pocket when Pierce opened the back door. Sunset had brought a chill to Tuatha Dé Danann.
“My father.” Two simple words that held an entire explanation.
We hadn’t discussed any kind of plan, and it stopped me cold. I grabbed Pierce’s arm. “We don’t have any weapons.”
“Nope.”
“You’re not concerned.”
He’d started walking again. “I have hands.” Pierce’s tone was flat.
A shudder worked its way along my spine. Sometimes I forgot about the dark side of his life, not that we hadn’t been in some touchy situations since we met, but Pierce hadn’t killed anyone with his bare hands recently. Not that I knew about, anyway. “So, what’s the plan?”
“Surveillance.”
His one-word responses were a clear indication he was in super spy mode, so I shut up, monitored my surroundings, and primed my fingertips for action. No telling if some discreet intel collection would be needed, and I’d dialed down my ESP senses since we’d arrived at the commune.
When we got to the top of the ridge, scattered lights blinked through the trees at the base of the slope. “Looks like they’re just on the other side of that thicket. Do you think it’s Grady’s house?”
“Could be.” Pierce started down the slope, then reached back and offered me his hand. “Slippery. Loose rock.”
“My fingers are working, wide open, and I don’t want to shut down when we’re this close to a potentially dangerous situation.”
He wiggled his fingers. “Take a look.”
Warmth flooded me when our palms touched, and then the images came pouring through. The fights with his parents weren’t loud, ugly, and over with a burst of passion. If they had been, it would have been so much easier. Siofra and Lorcán appeared to not only believe in the Danann tenet of a gentle, peaceful life, but lived it totally and completely. Their arguments were quiet and devastating. I rubbed my thumb over the back of Pierce’s hand.
There wasn’t enough light to see his face clearly, but I was positive his expression was guarded. “The scene at the kitchen table?” he asked.
“Yeah, they’re—”
“Good, honest people who have never understood how they raised a son who kills people for a living.” Pierce’s words were spoken lightly, but his grip on my hand tightened.
“They welcome you now.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. I liked Pierce’s parents, even though they were a touch misguided about my relationship with their son.
“Yeah. But I’m permanently on the Tuatha Dé Danann equivalent of a prayer chain.”
We reached the bottom of the slope, and he let go of my hand, pointed at the house. “Wheelchair ramp. Open blinds, back right window. I’m moving closer. Stay here.”
“Bu—” I bit off my objection. My fingers would be put to better use checking on the windows with tightly drawn blinds. I watched Pierce’s shadow, just visible in the shaft of light from the window.
The night was quiet and scented with pine. I listened closely and imagined his breaths, and then synchronizing our inhalations and exhalations, I started toward the nearest window. He saw me move, and I signaled what I was going to do.
Pierce nodded, sharp, and in that instant our relationship shifted. We became partners at a deeper level, far more intense than discussing my plans and options for revenge, we were working, moving as a team. Heat spread through my chest. It was the first time in my life I’d shared that kind of a link with anyone. A soul link, maybe. I’d have to give it some serious thought once we’d…
He was at my side in an instant, yanking me behind the hedge bordering a single-story ranch style building.
Headlights flashed, and a car rolled to a stop in front of Grady’s house.
TWENTY-THREE
I GRABBED PIERCE’S ARM WHEN the mysterious car stopped in front of Eamon Grady’s house, totally unprepared for the image that flared into life on my internal screen. He saw Fion Connor sitting in that car. Saw. Her. A shiver crawled along my spine. I’d been blinded by the headlights, couldn’t see a thing. Not Pierce. His exceptional vision was more shocking than Connor’s sudden appearance. Another image flashed. The license plate. Holy shit. I hadn’t been prepared to see stuff through his eyes…in real time. Nope. The images I picked up were almost always in the past, occasionally in the future, but they’d never been in real, live, present time.
I jerked my hand back. “What’s Connor doing here?”
His upper arm slid along mine in a shrug. I shifted away a couple inches. Seeing, touching…it was like our circuits had been welded together. And without my permission. I shivered.
Pierce must have sensed it, because he shot me a sideways glance. “You okay?”
Ignoring the shivers, I kept my attention on the car, headlights off, engine stopped. “She should be in the hospital.”
“Uh-huh.” He hunkered lower in the shrubbery.
The man I’d seen talking to Nolla at the Cockington Court Manor House restaurant got out of the driver’s side, circled around, and opened the rear car door. He held out his hand, lifting Connor out of the back seat. He blocked my view of her, supporting her on her left side. I nudged Pierce. “Why’s he on her left? I shot her right thigh.”
“Cane. She’s right-handed.”
They’d moved a few steps toward Grady’s front door, and I caught a glimpse of the cane. I’d shot her in the left shoulder. “Bet it’s damned uncomfortable having that guy support her on her injured side. She’s got to be hurting. I’m absolutely positive those bullets hit her. How could she have healed enough to be walking?”
“Good question, Hot Shot.” Pierce was in work mode, his attention lasered.
The man steered Connor away from the stairs, led her up the wheelchair ramp, then pounded on Grady’s door. It opened a crack, and the scent of boiled cabbage and potatoes wafted toward me. Dinnertime. Surely Grady hadn’t invited Cait’s mother for dinner.
I shifted, trying for a decent line of sight. “Can you see if it’s Cait or Eamon who opened the door?”
“Cait.”
How did he see this stuff? “Are you—?”
“Grady was in the kitchen. Couldn’t have rolled to the door that fast.”
The door opened wide, but Cait must have been behind it, because I still didn’t see her. Fion and the man disappeared inside. “That guy was talking to Nolla at the restaurant in Cockington Village. Wonder who he is.”
Pierce had his cell out and was typing. “Checking the license.”
I stood. “I’m going to turn my fingers loose on that car.”
Pierce hesitated, then nodded. “The interior light didn’t come on when they opened the door, so you should be in the clear, but disappear if you he
ar anything.”
“Got that.”
He started to move away from me in one of those scrunched, skulking walks. “Hey.” I grabbed his shirt. “Where are you going?”
“Inside.”
My brain jolted into a full-blown stall, and by the time I was able to create words Pierce had disappeared. Of course he had. Now, when I wanted to see what was going on his mind, my ESP was silent, my internal screen completely blank. The car, Everly, check out the car.
I crept toward it, staying behind the foliage and shrubbery. No point exposing myself. There was heavy growth opposite the car, but being an excellent spy-in-training, I sucked it up and elbowed my way through with only a few scratches to show for it. It was a large vehicle, especially for Europe, and the dark blue practically faded into the night. I peeked in the windows, deciding on the most effective place to start my investigation.
There would be no point in rushing through a disorganized search, especially if Connor irritated Grady and he chucked her out on her behind. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy watching, should that scene play out. There was a large box in the back seat, so I figured it was the best place for me to start my search. I ramped up my fingertips, and checked for any witchy energy fields Connor might have used to ward the car. I didn’t sense anything, so reached for the door handle.
An image, cloudy, of the driver helping Connor into the car filled my internal monitor. There was something odd about it, besides the cloudy part. No time to spend on it now, I needed to get inside and search that box. I opened the car door cautiously, just in case the interior light flicked on. Pierce was right about there not being a splash of light when Connor and her driver got out of the car, but one of them might have done something to stop it from flicking on.
I let out a huge sigh of relief when the night stayed dark. I wasn’t reluctant to face Grady and Connor, the opposite, in fact. But I wanted it to be on my terms, when I wouldn’t be caught unawares with one, or both, of them bursting out of the house and catching me without a weapon. Not that either of them was in any shape to be attacking anyone.
One calming breath later, I set my right hand on the box, and was rewarded with a picture of Connor loading it into the car. Odd. How had she done that with her injuries? I reached deeper into the image, could barely find the injuries. The muscle in her leg was sore and stiff and her shoulder ached, but there were no actual wounds. N-O-N-E. I spelled it out in my mind, thinking it might make it more believable. It didn’t.
I shuddered. She’d been working with my mother’s formula. Could she have…? No, surely she hadn’t swallowed any of it. That would be stupid in the extreme. Fion Connor was crazy, but not stupid. Or maybe in her case they sort of overlapped.
The formula had healing properties. I’d proven that on several occasions, but Connor didn’t have a kahuna grandfather or training on ancient healing arts. Another shudder wracked my body. Could my mother have consumed some of the formula? No, surely not.
I shelved my unruly thoughts and concentrated on the contents of the box. File folders, papers. Old, but not like the ones I’d found in Connor’s desk. The paper looked different. Thinner. I braced myself, then ran my fingers over the files.
A lab, my mother, microscopes, test tubes, pages of notes, and oh, hell, Eamon Grady snarling at Connor. That image faded so fast I wasn’t positive I’d actually seen it. I thumbed through the files, but it was impossible to see what they were without any light. Dared I switch the dome light on? Nope. Better to simply steal the box. Now, that was a win-win idea. I backed out of the car, dragging the box after me, then hefted it in my arms. Heavy. Lots of paper.
I braced the box against the trunk, and closed the car door with barely a sound, then made my way to the front walkway, toward the thicket at the rear of the house. No point trying to cram the box through a hedge. Still, it wasn’t a good idea to be so flagrant about the theft. I glanced at Grady’s front door, and the porch light flashed on, spotlighting me in a blaze of thieving glory.
Adrenaline slammed into gear and my flight reflexes shot to attention. Yep, those were my feet doing a damn fine imitation of a cartoon character attempting to avoid being flattened by a steamroller. The bad news: cartoon characters always lost. The good news: I had Pierce for backup.
The walkway abruptly ended, turning into an uneven trail. I tipped, landing on all fours, and the box catapulted from my arms, spewing papers all over the ground.
“Damn it.”
“What the fuck?” Pierce stood in front of me.
“Papers. Lab. Important,” I muttered, frantically shoving files into the box.
Grady’s front door opened.
“Hey! What’s going on out there?’ It was Cockington guy.
In one smooth move, Pierce scraped the papers into the box, hoisted it on his shoulder, grabbed my upper arm in vise-like grip, and took off.
My toes spun over the ground. He was dragging me so fast I couldn’t get any traction, and kept stumbling, slowing us down.
Footsteps pounded behind us. “Hold it!” Cockington guy yelled, and then something whizzed by my ear, bounced into a tree with a loud thwack. A rock. “Was that a—?”
We’d made it to the slope before Pierce let go of me. “Slingshot. Turn right.”
I followed his order, automatically veering into the thicket. Then I slowed for a second, just long enough to get my feet under me, and took off after him. There wasn’t a path, and we dodged through trees in a zigzag pattern that I hoped would throw off the guy with the weapon.
Pierce’s parents’ guest cottage loomed ahead.
I didn’t hear any pursuit, Grady couldn’t chase us in his wheelchair, and Connor, as miraculous as her healing had been, still wasn’t in prime condition. Plus, she was old. And a witch. Which might totally negate the advantage of her advanced age. I really had to read up on witches.
Pierce was inside, and yanked me after him before I could get a full breath. “What the hell were you thinking?”
I nodded at the box. “Notes from their work on the formula. Most, if not all of them, were made during their time with my mother. In the Amazon.”
Pierce didn’t so much as grunt, and the break in his normal behavior pattern set a whole new kind of fear loose in me.
He jogged into the bedroom, kicked the throw rug out of the way, and set the box down. “No time to go through it now.”
“Is there a trap door? Someplace to hide the box?” I couldn’t see an outline or any change in the pattern of the wood floor.
Pierce didn’t bother to answer, just moved something that was invisible to normal human beings, lifted a large segment of the floor, and shoved the box into a hidey-hole. “We need to get back.” His voice was more strained than I’d ever heard it, except for the time his whole team had been murdered during a horrible mission in Hawaii.
“Someone’s life is in danger.” It wasn’t a question. I already knew the answer.
“Cait.”
TWENTY-FOUR
“CAIT’S IN DANGER? AND YOU left her? Let’s go.” I grabbed his arm and yanked. And then my fingers showed me what he’d seen. Fion and Eamon were holed up in the kitchen, Cait was being held at the far end of the house in what appeared to be her bedroom, and it was where Pierce had entered to spy on them. He’d barely gotten out before they shoved Cait into the room. My stomach hit my toes when I saw how close he’d come to being caught, but I slogged through the emotion with a couple deep breaths, then finished scanning the images.
It was by Fion Connor’s order that Cait was being held captive, and how sick was it that she’d put her lover in place as guard? The woman had a sickening doting-hate-filled relationship with Cait, and to my way of thinking, she should have been assassinated years ago. “Okay. I see she’s in trouble, but it doesn’t look life-threatening. At least not yet. I’m still not sure what I can do. You’re the one who’s experienced in extraction techniques. What have I missed?”
Pierce broke from my grasp, closed
the trap door, arranged the rug where it belonged, and then he stared at me, eyes dark with some emotion I didn’t recognize. “I want backup, Everly. Connor’s energy field knocked me on my ass, and if it happens again, someone needs to get Cait out.” He worked a kink out of his neck. “Connor doesn’t want her daughter to inherit.”
Two more bombshells. This trip had been full of them. “Why didn’t you warn me that revenge is so complex?”
“Living is complex. There’s always an uncertain balance between life and death.” It was the first time I’d ever heard Pierce sound old.
I rested my palm against his cheek, keeping my fingertips to myself. “Then we need to be sure we hang out on the side of a solid, happy life. I’ll dismantle any wards Fion Connor creates, and you can get Cait out. That’s how partners work, right? How you and Annie used to work?”
He cradled my hand, lifted it away from his face, but held on. “Yeah. You hang out in happiness better than anyone I know.”
My breath caught. Pierce’s words were sincere, almost reverent, and I didn’t know what to do with them. “I’m—”
He grinned, “Speechless?”
The intense connection between us shifted into a more relaxed, familiar place, and I tugged my hand free. “No. Maybe. Yeah.” I was desperate to change the subject. “So you must have heard Fion talking about who she wants to inherit the estate when she dies. Whoa. Is she sick? Is there a time limit on Cait’s life? Because that changes things.”
Pierce nodded. “She’s appointed the guy, Murchadh is his name, as her heir. He’s been her lover for years. Sounded like they’re planning a wedding. Didn’t sound like she was fatally ill.”
“Too bad. It makes sense, though, since she trusted this Murchadh guy to drive her here, and it would definitely make the inheritance more feasible if they were married. I think it’s the same guy I saw at the Cockington Manor House—Nolla’s boss. But why is this happening now? From Cait’s standpoint, this runaway trip was no different from the other times she’s split Torquay to visit Grady. Except for us. We’re new players in the game.”
a Touch of Revenge (Romantic Mystery - book 6): The Everly Gray Adventures Page 16