by Em Ashcroft
Being the professional soldier and defense expert, he formulated several plans on the way, but he knew they’d have to play it by ear. All he could depend on was himself, Trinity, and Chris. “Can you use a weapon?” he asked her.
“Well enough,” she said shortly. “You can’t live in Texas and not know how to handle a firearm. Do you have a spare gun?”
Vaughn snorted. “Just a few.” He’d stowed a box of useful weapons before they’d left, pausing to grab them from his own rental car. The four-wheel drive had seemed a better bet than the city car he’d rented.
At last, he could slow down and take in the terrain.
The Old Court House was a run-down building at the end of what must once have been a small settlement. He’d checked it out on the map, and Trinity had read a few details out to him. Finding cover would be difficult since the Old Court House stood in its own grounds, but it was set in the middle of a ruined settlement. It had belonged to a place meant for oil workers, but the well had run dry and the inhabitants had packed up and moved on. It made for interesting terrain. At least the place was near the highway, so the sound of a car engine wouldn’t alert their quarry. Not if he left it on the main road.
He parked up and got out of the vehicle, nodding to Chris, who was doing the same thing. He went to the back of the car, opened the trunk, and systematically tooled up. Chris joined him, raising a brow but accepting the hunting knife Vaughn handed him.
When Trinity joined them, Vaughn handed her a gun. “Can you use this?”
“Yes.” Her attention went to Chris, who nodded. When they’d been dating, he’d ensured Trinity could fire a gun. He’d taken her out to the desert and done some target practice. “You can’t live in Texas and not know how to shoot,” he’d told her and made good on that.
Notably, Vaughn didn’t ask Trinity if she had a permit. He probably didn’t want to know the answer. She could have reassured him on that score, but she got the feeling he didn’t much care about the answer. She’d get the gun anyhow, and the slim knife he handed her in a sheath that she strapped to her waist.
“I’ll lead,” Vaughn said, and Chris didn’t argue. Vaughn had the most to lose. Added to that, he had the best experience in these types of terrain. Chris had been a cop in the urban jungle of Chicago before he came to Goldclaw, so Vaughn’s military experience seemed the most relevant. “We come at him from two directions. You concentrate on Driscoll, and I’ll work on getting to Nathan. We’ll concentrate on getting Nathan awake. He’s worrying me. He must have had a hell of a dose of that fucking stuff.”
“An opiate,” she said. “I felt it. But he’s had more than one dose, and it’s getting to him. I can’t find a spark, not one.”
“Keep trying,” Vaughn said, grim faced.
Nathan was still alive and still completely silent. But they were closer physically now. They must reach him soon. Otherwise, he might sink into the kind of oblivion he would never emerge from. That, above all, terrified Trinity.
Nathan motioned right, using a sign language Chris seemed to understand. Chris touched her elbow, and she followed him.
They had to take a circuitous route to get to the first of the buildings. Vaughn would circle around and come to them from the opposite direction. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was functional.
Houses were scattered around, some in a serious state of disrepair. Others looked normal until the general dilapidation and the lack of tiles on the roof grew obvious. Bleakness ruled here. Not one house was in a decent state and the floorboards in all of them were suspect. Termites, ants, birds, and other wildlife had finished what humans had started, and the place was falling back into nature. Like the adobe houses of the early settlers, they’d be gone without a trace soon.
They’d studied the plan of the place in the car, and Chris had the terrain mapped out more securely on his phone. Although it was still daylight, he turned down the brightness and held it in his hand. As silently as they could, they moved from house to house, getting nearer to the jail where Nathan was lying.
Nothing. Not a spark stirred her consciousness. Desperately, she pushed out, tried to find his mind, his presence, but apart from the knowledge that he wasn’t dead, she felt nothing. Desperation filled her. He had to be alive. She wouldn’t accept any other outcome.
She stumbled and caught herself as Chris turned back to help her. He motioned to the gaping doorway of a house, the ceiling gone but the floors miraculously intact.
They passed through the house silently, or as silently as they could. Trinity suspected Chris could cope with that much better than she could, but with her clumping around like a baby elephant, there wasn’t much point.
Crouching under the window at the front of the house, they could see the jail. So close! Outside the dilapidated building stood a car, a brown SUV with only a little road dirt on it. It didn’t compare to the few rusting, abandoned corpses of cars they’d passed on their way here. Driscoll had left the thing out in the open. Didn’t he care who saw him?
Probably not. They were miles from any inhabited place. The settlement was around a mile from the road, the jail backing onto it. Nobody looking at the place from the road would be able to see the car.
“Drop your weapons,” a voice behind them said.
Oh, shit. Slowly they turned.
Driscoll stood behind them, his big, ugly handgun trained on Chris.
Chris met his gaze solidly. “Then what?”
“She comes with me. You stay here. I don’t give a fuck what you do.”
Trinity saw a way. Let me go. You know he doesn’t want to hurt me.
I let you down.
No you didn’t.
Vaughn chipped in. What’s happening? I’m standing in an empty cell here.
Then I’m going, she said decisively. The one thing we have going for us is that he doesn’t know we’re bonded. He doesn’t know how deep we can go.
A silence told her she’d made her point. When Driscoll cast a glance in her direction, his gaze perceptibly softened. Enough to convince her she should go with him. “Don’t do it, Chris. I’ll go.” She met Driscoll’s gaze. “Just leave him alone. If you hurt him, I won’t come.”
Driscoll stared at her for a few seconds until Chris dropped his gun on the scarred floorboards, the clunk echoing dully.
Driscoll waved his gun. Chris unfastened the hunting knife and found the small firearm he had strapped to his calf. When Driscoll waited, he divested himself of another two knives.
“Pick ’em up.”
Silently, Trinity did as Driscoll told her. Vaughn settled into her mind, burrowing deep. I won’t leave you, honey. Never. I’m coming right after you.
Driscoll motioned Trinity out of the house. Once in the open air, he gestured to the car. “Drop the weapons here. We won’t be needing them. Get in the driver’s seat and start the engine.”
The knives and the guns, including the one she carried, fell in a useless heap.
Trinity didn’t hide her gasp when she saw Nathan. He was bundled into the back seat, his legs shoved up to his chest in order to fit his tall frame into the vehicle. He was making like a stone. Oblivious.
“Start the car.” Driscoll slammed into the car and nudged her with the gun before laying it on his side of the dashboard, well out of her reach. He’d left all the others behind. He must be very confident that Nathan wouldn’t wake up or that she wouldn’t lunge for the weapon.
Because of what he believed.
She followed his instructions, driving away from the jail and the settlement and toward the main road. They drove in silence but not for long.
Driscoll sprawled over his seat, sitting so he could look at her and occasionally direct his attention to Nathan. It wasn’t long before she heard Vaughn in her head. There’s an airfield about ten miles away. He’s going there. We’re taking another route, but we’ll be there. Don’t break the speed limit, honey. Give us a chance.
She sent him a brief acknowledgment.
She wanted to keep her attention on Nathan, try to find something.
They were barely two miles away now. If he didn’t come around soon, she’d have to go wherever Driscoll was taking her. Mexico, maybe.
“You know, don’t you?” he said abruptly.
“Know what?” She didn’t want him to say it. She wanted to remain as she was, remembering her parents.
“That you’re my daughter.”
He’d said it. She wanted to kill him. “I have a father, or I did, before you killed him.” She had to say it. Whatever it cost her, she wanted him to know how she felt. “I saw you come out of the house. I heard the shots. I saw—”
“You saw me coming out of the house and telling my men that was enough. You saw me with a gun. You didn’t see me shoot anyone, did you?”
“No. But you’ve killed people.”
“I didn’t kill your family. Want to know who did?”
He could be drawing her into a trap. “Who?”
“Marcie.” Marcie? “Your wife?”
He snorted in disgust. “Yeah. I married Marcie because I had to. No, I didn’t get her pregnant. It was a business deal. Her father had something I wanted.”
Marcie Driscoll had been beautiful, if poisonous. The perfect trophy wife, Trinity had always thought.
A spark flickered in her mind, and she almost sagged with relief. Immediately her attention went to Nathan. He was far more important than her past. That had gone. The revelations she’d just heard staggered her, but Nathan, that was what she wanted.
Immediately Vaughn was there, in her mind, sending her strength and showing her what to do. Another presence made itself felt—Chris. They worked on that spark, blew it into life, worked together to revive him.
Shit, he’s got enough drugs in him to fell a horse! Vaughn said. Maybe tigers take more. We need to get him around enough to shape-shift. Keep working on him, Trinity. Let Driscoll say what he wants.
As he was doing now. Marcie, he was saying. Oh yes, his wife. “She insisted that I got rid of all my girlfriends.”
“Including my mother?”
“Nah. Your mother was a no-good hooker who dumped you on me at birth. I wanted to keep you, but Marcie wasn’t having it. She didn’t believe me when I told her I didn’t know who your father was, and I knew for sure she’d get a DNA test done. Then you’d be dead.” The way he spoke about his wife, and casual deaths, chilled Trinity. She wasn’t surprised to learn her mother was a street worker. Her father, the man she still regarded as her father, had been reticent about her origins, claiming he didn’t know. They couldn’t have adopted her formally. As a petty criminal, her father wouldn’t have stood a chance with the welfare people. So it stood to reason she’d come from outside the system, probably something to do with his associates.
But something inside her died. Her childhood dreams had gone for good now. She used to tell herself she was a princess, brought up in secret, and one day her father the king would claim her.
No, she was the daughter of a gangster and a whore.
And precious to me, Vaughn said softly.
Shit, she’d forgotten he could hear. Or maybe it was better that he learned the truth about her now.
Driscoll continued to talk. “So I put you with your father and pushed a few jobs his way. He wasn’t too good, but that was the only way I could get money to him. Especially when Marcie got it into her noggin that she wanted kids and she couldn’t have any. It was her, absolutely.”
“Am I your only daughter?” It choked her to say that word, but she had to.
“I think so, but I have a couple of sons. If you think about it, you can guess who they are.” Henchmen, she guessed, people he kept close. Tough guys. He had a few men around the right age, or he had before he was jailed. He’d sold his organization out in exchange for a shorter jail term.
He sounded conversational. This was so not how she’d expected this reunion to go. Until recently, she’d assumed he wanted to kill her as the last witness to the slaughter of her family. But he claimed he’d come to stop them just now, and as much as she hated to admit it, that worked with what she knew about him. He was a stone-cold businessman, and he’d told her father more than once that he didn’t believe in unnecessary killing.
“If you murder somebody’s father, then you’re instantly the villain. But if you rob a bank, you’re a hero.”
It made him a criminal in her eyes. Especially when she recalled that he’d run the organization with a ruthlessness that had ruined many lives. He’d cut and sold drugs that killed people or turned them into human wrecks.
“Anyhow, Marcie knew you existed, so she hunted you down, especially when she knew the drink and cigarettes were killing her. She got a bad heart, but she wouldn’t give up any of her nasty habits.”
Trinity thought of Marcie, the trophy. True, she was nasty, like Driscoll said, and she had a vindictive streak a mile wide. But with a husband who barely noticed her and treated her like shit, she might have needed a way to escape. But then, she knew what was coming. She’d never think of Marcie so charitably again.
“She set out to find you, and she did. Just before she died, she sent those men to your home. I arrived too late. Because I stayed to count the bodies, they caught me.” His warm smile chilled her. “But I knew you were alive. Somewhere, somehow, you were alive. I didn’t even care when you gave evidence against me. I’d have told you then, but they put you in witness protection, and it’s taken me this long to track you down. Take the next right turn.”
She nearly missed it, but the signpost clearly indicating the airfield showed her the way to go.
I’m awake.
Trinity had to stop herself turning around and throwing her arms around Nathan. She sensed his confusion, the wooziness and nausea he was feeling, but she also felt his incisive presence returning. Nathan was forcing himself awake. And as Vaughn outlined what was happening, he didn’t move a muscle. She knew because she checked him in the rear view mirror. Even his breathing remained controlled. She couldn’t see much, only the upper line of his body, but he didn’t move a muscle. Not a twitch showed that he was awake.
“What are we doing now?”
“We’re dumping lover boy at the airport and flying out. I want a chance to get to know you, Katrin. I called you that, you know, after my grandmother. She was a real matriarch, kept us all in line.”
The small road opened up into a well-kept, private airfield, about as different from the settlement they had just left as possible. A few aircraft were parked up by the main building, but Driscoll instructed Trinity to drive straight to the plane on the runway.
“I don’t have my passport.”
Driscoll chuckled. “You’re so cute. Now listen to me. When you know me better, you’ll understand, but until then, I guess I can’t trust you completely. But you’re my girl, my blood, and I want to give you what I couldn’t while Marcie was alive and while I was in jail. When I found out where you were, I knew the cops would move you on, so I had to get busy. For an old guy, I didn’t do badly, did I?” He chuckled. “You won’t have anything to come back for, believe me. This man, he’s nothing. We’ll get you plenty like him, and better. I’ll introduce you to some real men.”
Cold swept through her. He didn’t intend to let Nathan go. He’d never intended that. He’d kill him. He didn’t know Nathan and Vaughn were her breedmates. But if he’d been watching the house, he knew both of them were in there and Nathan was her lover.
She couldn’t let that happen. The thought sent chills of horror right through her. And if she didn’t do anything, she’d be one breedmate down. That was not acceptable. Losing Nathan would kill her.
As she drew up by the aircraft, she heard Vaughn. We’re inside the plane, in control of it. We have cops in the main building, waiting their chance. So don’t rush, and don’t panic. We’ve got you, baby.
Never had anything sounded so good. A wave of relief swept over Trinity, the result, she knew, of the last
day of strain and exhaustion. Not long now. Then she’d never have to see this loathsome man again.
But they weren’t free and clear yet. Driscoll could still kill Nathan before anybody had time to act.
“Time to go, girl.” Picking up the gun, Driscoll nudged it at her and took a look at Nathan. He hadn’t moved, but Trinity had a fraught moment before he turned away. “Get outside the car and wait for me.”
Nathan had his head against the door that Driscoll opened. He slumped back. Waiting for her chance, Trinity stood silently waiting.
Driscoll glanced at her. “Go inside the plane and wait for me.” He kept his gun trained on Nathan.
He was going to kill her breedmate. She didn’t need him to tell her. She read the intent on his face.
With a flash of movement, Nathan moved back, lifting his legs over his head, and vaulting from the car. A shot came from somewhere behind her, but whoever it was had shot over their heads.
“Drop the weapon!” Chris yelled.
Driscoll lowered his gun, his finger tightening on the trigger. Nathan soared through the air and up. With the fluidity of a cascade of water, he shape-shifted, his tiger roaring its relief at being released. Driscoll shot, but already Nathan was moving to the side. He poised and leaped, a great cat determined not to miss his target.
He did not. As Nathan’s cat landed on his prey, claws extended, Driscoll shot again. The sound shattered the sounds of yelling from the main building and the aircraft before them. Vaughn, shifted into his panther, landed and turned in one swift move, but he didn’t pounce. There was no need. Nathan was in the process of tearing Driscoll apart.
Even in his tiger form, Nathan retained the knowledge of a top surgeon. One slash across the throat, and Driscoll was effectively dead, although he continued to move until Nathan walked away.