Letting her lips curl into a seductive smile, she leant toward him, flitting her palm up his thigh. “I can think of another reason to pull over.”
Declan burst out laughing, eyes sparkling with mirth. “Oh, lovey. As tempting as the offer is…I’m not that stupid.”
Regan pulled her hand away. Well, tried to. Declan’s fingers closed around hers before she broke contact, threading through them to hold her hand exactly where it had been on his thigh. She scowled at him. And at the sudden urge to inch her hand higher up the muscled hardness of his leg to the bulge of his crotch. “Yes you are that stupid.” She gave a pathetic, little tug against his hold. “If you won’t let me help you, that’s exactly how stupid you are.”
“Ha! You’re a fine one to be lecturing me on receiving help. I’ve been kicked and thumped by you more times than I can recall since I started trying to help you.”
Regan stared at him. Laughter laced his words and his fingers melded so perfectly with hers for a moment she wanted to lean over and kiss him deeply. “OK, Paddy,” she said instead. “What is your plan? I think you owe me that much. At least give me a say in what we’re going to do next.”
Regan thought she saw a bleakness tighten his features seconds before he smiled at her. “I’ve always wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef.”
“You’re not serious?”
Declan’s grey gaze fell on her. His expression was serious, but Regan suspected it had nothing to do with the fourth natural wonder of the world. “Here’s the thing, Regan,” he said calmly. “We can’t run forever. Every second you’re with me, you’re in danger. Every second Epoc’s alive, you’re in danger. The only way I can keep you safe is to remove Epoc from the equation.” His fingers closed more snugly around hers and his eyes shimmered silver. “I can’t do that if you’re with me.”
Regan’s mouth went dry. “So, you’re planning to do what?”
He shook his head and turned back to the road. “I’m assuming you left a note for your brother back in the mansion?”
Regan started at the unexpected question. “Why…?”
“Because he’s your brother,” Declan answered without looking at her. “Because you love him, trust him.”
Regan licked her lips, unsure what to say.
“I knew you would. But it complicates things.”
“In what way?”
“I told you earlier, Regan. Epoc owns the cops.”
A sharp snort of disbelief shot from Regan’s nose. “You think Peter’s one of Epoc’s lackeys? You truly are stupid.”
Dark grey eyes flicked to her. “Not Peter.”
Regan blinked at Declan’s calm statement. The sound of an unfamiliar, arrogantly poised female on the other end of a phone connection echoed in her head and her heart thumped into her throat. Oh, God. Was Pete in danger now too? “What do you mean? Is my brother—”
Declan shook his head. “I don’t know, Regan. But I’m not the trusting type. I have to take you somewhere no one will find you. Not until I’m finished with Epoc.”
“And what? Lock me up? Chain me to a wall?”
Stiff silence answered her incredulous question.
“You’re not serious?” Regan asked. Again.
“I lost Maggie to Epoc. I’m not losing you too.”
“Lose me? Am I property now?”
Declan’s eyes flashed with impatient irritation. “You know what I mean.”
Regan tugged her hand from his grasp and folded her arms across her chest. “Excuse the cliché, Paddy, but I do know how to take care of myself.”
Jaw clenched, Declan planted his foot harder to the accelerator and the Jag roared forward with an aggressive growl. “Against a human,” he said, stare fixed on the road, “I don’t doubt it.”
Anger—like a simmering volcano—bubbled up in Regan’s chest. “I’ve sent you reeling twice.”
“More than twice, Regan. Every time we touch you send me reeling.”
The low statement caught Regan’s breath. Heat flooded into her cheeks. Between the junction of her thighs. “Declan…” she began, unsure what to say.
“Which is why I have to take you some place safe,” he continued without looking at her, his knuckles growing whiter on the wheel. “So you can keep sending me reeling for the rest of forever.”
She gazed at his hard profile, at the hawkish nose, the messy tumble of ink-black hair brushing the brooding forehead, at the lips capable of making her weak at the knees and the jaw chiseled from granite. She wanted to kiss that jaw, wanted to caress its unforgiving hardness with her fingers and tongue, wanted to taste his sweat on her lips as she took away every moment of pain in his heart.
He’d opened her eyes to a world she’d never dreamed existed and now she wanted to do the same for him—show him there was a world without pain, without anger and blood and death. Fresh heat pooled between her legs and she pulled in a swift breath. Oh no. She was in love with him. In just one day. Irretrievably in love. She closed her eyes for a moment, shocked by the realization. Mad, Woman. You’re mad. Maybe, but that fact didn’t change a thing. Nor would she have it so. She’d deal with it all later, once she and Declan were safe. Opening her eyes, she placed her hand on his thigh once more. “Let me help you, Declan. Please.”
Silence stretched between them as the Jag ate up the road. She stared at him, waiting. Praying.
Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, he turned those stormy grey eyes of his on her, his face unreadable. “No, Regan. I can’t—I won’t risk it.”
Cold heaviness fell over her. She withdrew her hand, glaring at him. “You are stupid, Declan O’Connell. Stupid and stubborn.”
He chuckled—low, bleak and wry. “Then I guess the stereotype is…” A brutal spasm suddenly rocked his body and, like someone had reached into his stomach and yanked out his soul, he collapsed forward.
“Declan!” Regan screamed, grabbing at the wheel. The car lurched wildly to the right, flinging both her and Declan to the side. A solid thwack filled the car, bone on glass, as Declan’s head smacked against the side window. Cutting heat ripped across Regan’s neck, her seatbelt slicing at her flesh. She scrambled forward, desperately trying to gain control of the still-speeding Jag even as her seatbelt tried to flatten her back into the seat. “Declan?” she shouted again, fighting with the wheel. Blood oozed down his shattered side window in bright red streams, following the cracks like iridescent ink. Oh, God. Declan.
An ear-splitting horn blasted over the screaming tires and Regan snapped her head around in time to see a semi-trailer roar past them, so close she saw the dead, splattered insects on its metallic, cherry-red paintjob. The sucking force of its wake yanked the wheel from her hands in a violent spin, burning her palms and almost popping her right shoulder joint. The Jag lurched to the left and they were off the road, barreling through grass and eucalypt saplings, the rapid sound of dirt and stones spitting up into the car’s undercarriage like bullets peppering a tank.
Regan cried out, reaching blindly for the spinning wheel, her seatbelt sawing at her neck. Metal creaked and squealed and, just as she closed her fingers around the wheel, the car came to an abrupt, jarring halt, smacking her forward into the dash.
White agony exploded in her head. Disorientated and confused, she pushed herself upright. Releasing her belt buckle, she slipped free, the narrow band of synthetic material lashing her neck one last time as it snapped back into its housing. Sucking in a ragged breath, she peered at Declan’s slumped form through a hazy fog of pain.
“When you come to, you are in so much trouble,” she mumbled, disconnecting his belt buckle. Gingerly, she twisted in her seat and opened her door, stumbling out of the car. Legs wobbly, head spinning, she gazed at the scrub and mutilated vegetation behind the Jag, following the path of destruction up to the bitumen. Her stomach clenched. How were they alive?
She turned slowly and staggered behind the Jag, leaning against it as she made her way to the driver’s side. Pain th
robbed in her head but she ignored it. She had to get Declan out of the…
“Oh, shit.”
Frozen, she stared at the Jag’s crumpled hood, wrapped around an immature tree like it was trying to devour it. Her heart leapt into her throat. After the tree, there was nothing. Just a drop-off. If it weren’t for the eucalypt both she and Declan would be dead.
“Oh, Paddy,” she growled, turning away from the chilling sight. “You are in so much trouble.”
She opened Declan’s door, gravity grabbing at his limp form and pulling him from his seat before she was ready. She caught him seconds before his shoulder hit the ground and, hooking her arms around his back, dragged him from the car.
Crouching beside his still form, she checked his pulse. Weak, but there. Looking about, Regan chewed on her bottom lip, ignoring the growing ache in her neck, shoulder and head. Rationality told her to flag down a passing motorist and get them both to a hospital, pronto. She probably had a concussion and who knew what was going on with Declan.
Yet at the very moment the thought of getting help surfaced, the sound of an unfamiliar female voice sounded in her head. The same arrogant, condescending yet almost desperate voice she’d heard on the end of Peter’s work-line. Tell me where you are and I will come get you.
Was Declan right? Did Epoc have plants everywhere? She closed her eyes for a second. Be safe, Pete. Be safe and watch your back.
Opening her eyes, she listened to the cars tearing along the freeway, oblivious to her and Declan down the embankment. She could go up there now and have help in sixty seconds or so, but what if the person she flagged down was one of Epoc’s grunts sent after them?
She scrubbed at her face, ignoring the pain the action caused. “C’mon, Thomas. Think.”
Looking up, she surveyed the area around her. They were approximately fifty-five minutes north of Sydney, which put them almost at the Central Coast. Hobby farming territory.
She knew the mentality of hobby farmers well. Rich city men, over-stocking their supplies just because they could, keeping every veterinary drug legally allowed whether needed or not in an attempt to out-do their neighbor. They were over-zealous, over-the-top and never there. Exactly what she needed.
Curling her fingers around Declan’s wrist, she hitched his arm around her shoulders, gritting her teeth. Bloody hell. He weighed a ton. White blossoms of pain flared in her head and she groaned, heading away from the broken Jag, the drop-off and the road. Damn, she was going to make him pay for this. For a very long time.
Fresh pain exploded in her head and she suppressed a moan, hitching Declan’s limp form higher up her shoulders as the world swam in and out of focus.
If they had a very long time, that was.
Something deep in her gut told her falling in love with a werewolf shortened one’s lifespan. Considerably.
Chapter 9
Peter walked into the mansion, every fiber on edge. He pulled in a deep breath, detecting lavender, furniture polish and the faint ghost of expensive cologne. He crossed a foyer larger than his living room, scanning the opulence around him, looking for anything out of place, anything that may give a clue to what he wanted to know. Nothing however, told him Reggie had been there.
“Detective Thomas?”
A tiny woman appeared through a massive, white marble archway to his left, her petite, grey-suited frame positively dwarfed by the excess around her. She crossed the floor between the arch and Peter in long, confident strides, the sound of her sensible heels a drum tattoo in the silent house. She drew closer, and Peter made out a smattering of freckles across a pixie-like nose under light brown eyes completely free of make-up. Beside him, Yolanda gave a most inaudible snort. “Dressed by Wal-Mart,” he heard his partner snarl under her breath, German accent thicker than normal.
Peter glared at her and she curled her lip at him.
“Detective Thomas?”
He turned back to the tiny woman and for the first time noticed the Glock in its holster beside her left breast.
You’re slipping. Vischka’s more under your skin that you realise.
“Yeah, I’m Thomas.” He held out his hand. “You’re Huddart?”
Detective Huddart nodded, shaking his hand. “Please, call me Jackie.”
Behind him, he heard Yolanda growl. Low and soft.
Jackie Huddart raised her eyebrows, studying his partner with obvious indifference before seemingly dismissing her altogether. “Did you know your sister was missing, Detective?”
Peter’s chest grew tight. Yes he did. And what had he’d been doing? Fantasizing about a femme fatale like a bad Hollywood gumshoe.
Huddart nodded her head again, obviously not needing an answer. “She’s left you a message upstairs.” Without pausing to see if he followed, she turned and climbed the large staircase dominating the foyer, tiny frame moving up each step with fluid, compact grace.
A hand fell on Peter’s shoulder, followed by Yolanda’s warm breath on his ear. Unreadable blue eyes held his. “Well?”
The contact got his feet moving. In what seemed like three giant steps he stood beside Huddart in a luxurious bathroom twice the size of his own bedroom, towering over her and staring at a message written in some sort of black marker on the wall-to-wall mirror over the sunken bathtub. He swallowed, throat tight and mouth dry.
Det. 45217
Heading Nth
Not hurt
Rex?
Peter read the message again.
“Do you know who Rex is?”
Peter traced the hastily written words on the mirror, recognizing Reggie’s relaxed penmanship. “My sister’s pet lizard,” he answered Huddart. “If anyone called my Area Command and mentioned Rex, Command would know immediately Reggie was somehow involved.”
“Ahh, that explains how Sydney City Dispatch knew the message was from your sister then.” Huddart nodded. “The question mark threw us. We thought it may have been code for something.”
He gave her a quick glance. “Do you know when it was written?”
The petite detective shook her head. “The neighbors across the road contacted us fifty minutes ago. They saw the owner’s XKR Jaguar exit the garage, driven by a male, between the ages of 35 and 40, black hair, Caucasian. They were a little bit suspicious because the owner is bald, in his sixties and apparently in New York.”
The click of six-inch heels on tile announced Yolanda’s arrival. As did the musky scent of her perfume invading Peter’s breath. He turned to her, body wanting to respond to her enigmatic presence. He controlled it. But with far greater effort than it should have required.
A cool, blue unreadable gaze flicked over him before she focused her attention on the mirror. “Kohl?” she asked, although it sounded more like a statement.
Huddart nodded. “Looks that way.”
Peter read the message again. Not hurt.
What did Not hurt mean? Reggie was okay? A willing part of the whole thing? Was he missing something? And what did the mention of her lizard mean? Was she trying to tell him something, or just thinking about everyone else—including the bloody reptile—before herself again? “Do we have a track on the Jag yet?”
“Not yet. Area Command is still trying to contact the owner. He’s proving a little tricky to track down. The car has a GPS based security system but we need the access PIN.” A shadow of sorrow crossed Huddart’s otherwise detached expression. “It shouldn’t be long.” She paused. “Do you know who has your sister?”
Peter’s chest clamped tight. The Irishman? McCoy? He shook his head. “No.”
He turned to see Yolanda’s reaction to his answer.
And found the doorway behind him empty.
“Do you know why someone would abduct her?”
Huddart’s question snapped his attention away from his partner’s unexpected absence. “She’s trodden on some powerful people’s toes.” He shoved his hands into his pockets, stare fixed on Reggie’s message.
Not hurt.
Heading Nth.
“Such as?”
Peter huffed out a sigh. “Anyone who conducts animal testing knows who my sister is. She’s had more than one cosmetic company CEO in—”
Huddart’s cell phone burst into life and, pulling it from her jacket, she held up a pointed finger to Peter: “One moment.”
Chest heavy, nerves strung, he left the petite detective to her call and exited the bathroom, heading back toward the stairs. Reggie had trodden on some powerful people’s toes. When it came to animals, she didn’t hold her tongue. She’d had more than one so-called professional animal breeder stripped of their license, had more than one animal shelter employee sacked for cruelty and that was in her day job. What she did in the wee hours of the mornings, in the dark, cold rooms of the city’s science labs and cosmetic factories had caused many a powerful businessman or politician to scream for her arrest. Or blood. They had no proof it was her releasing their test subjects, but they had their suspicions, fed in part by Reggie’s extremely verbose opposition to their actions. The list of people whom she’d annoyed was long and illustrious, but abduct her? Storming along the corridor, he dragged his fingers through his hair.
McCoy.
O’Connell.
The two names echoed in his head. Did one of them have her? Did both? He clenched his fists. The Forensic boys had phoned through the urine results as he drove to the mansion, reporting the samples as indeterminate, possibly animal. Which meant sweet fuck-all in helping him find Reggie. Locating the Jag was paramount. As soon as the McMahon Highway Patrol located the Jag he’d—
“I do not care.” Yolanda’s low growl from the bottom of the staircase cut the thought dead and he frowned at her tense back. “Just do your fucking job,” she continued into the shiny black cell phone rammed to her ear, “Or I will rip your fucking balls off.”
“Who was that?”
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