a Touch of Intrigue

by L. j. Charles

  Pierce lifted the phone out of my hand, pocketed it. “Annie’s been monitoring it. You’re clear.”

  “But the bowl. I…” The pain started, dull, on the edge of my shoulder blade. I turned in a circle. “I’ve been here, Pierce. I remember…” And a shaft of pain shot from my neck into my head. I grabbed on, sinking to the ground.

  Pierce dropped to his knees, wrapped me in his arms, and ran his hands over my head. It helped. But my tears flowed until the pain subsided into a manageable ache. I shifted position, and sniffed. Tynan pressed a handkerchief into my hand. “Lean your forehead against me, Everly.” There was something in his voice, like barely leashed anger. It scared me.

  I dropped my head to his chest, and he slipped his hand under the neck of my shirt. “Tell me when I hit the spot where the pain starts.”

  His touch was soothing. I closed my eyes and relaxed into the moment—until he reached a tender spot just next to my shoulder blade. “Ouch! There.”

  He turned me so he could see my back, then lifted my shirt, and sucked in a loud breath. “Implant.”

  NINE

  I WRENCHED FREE OF PIERCE’S hold, twisted to see my back. Absurd. I knew I couldn’t see without benefit of a couple mirrors. “Implant? As in they’ve been tracking me?” Wave after wave of shivers crept under my skin. “Fred?”

  Pierce nodded.

  “Get it out! Now!” I’d lost any remnants of sanity, and tipped into total hysteria.

  He held me loosely, letting me pound on his chest while I worked out some of my frustration. And then I realized what I was doing, stopped, and jumped back. “Oh damn. I’m so sorry.” I reached toward him, and immediately jerked my arm back. “Did I hurt you?”

  “Yeah, you did.” He grinned. “I’m proud of you, Everly. I’ll have a bruise or two, but—”

  Guilt slammed into me, and I carefully traced my fingers over his chest. “It was…I lost control. That’s not okay, not when I’m trained to protect myself. To stay focused and in control.”

  He grabbed my hand. “It was emotional, not planned. You automatically pulled your punches. And now I know I can trust you.”

  I shook my head, trying to make sense of his words. “What?”

  “Whitney and A.J. did their job. Your mind has programmed the difference between lethal and pissed off.”

  It took a minute for me to juggle my brain cells. “Are you saying that because I wasn’t in fight mode I somehow knew it was safe to lose control for a few minutes?”

  Pierce gathered me into a hug. “Bigger than that. I know I can trust your gut reaction in any situation.”

  He was proud of me. Praising me. My insides glowed with all kinds of happy. “Still, I should have hit the ground or a tree, anything but the guy I love.”

  His kiss landed on the top of my head. “Payback’s a bitch. Wait for it.”

  I leaned away, looked into his eyes. “That’s going to suck, ’cause you know, I don’t look good in bruises.”

  “Never heard you complain when we spar.” He fingered the skin near my shoulder blade.

  I froze. “Better get back to the house so you can cut that thing out of me.”

  His arms tightened around me. “Not the best plan.”

  Wriggling free, I tossed my hair out of my face. “There is no other plan. It has to come out and there’s no one else I trust to do it. Besides, you’re a real doctor, not that you’ve practiced lately.”

  Pierce’s face turned into a blank mask, the one I hate.

  “You have been practicing medicine.” I made it a statement because I knew he couldn’t respond. Tynan didn’t ever leak confidential information, even, or maybe especially, to me.

  “Gotta keep my hand in.” It was a non-answer, but more than I’d expected.

  “So why don’t you want to cut this thing out of my back?” I was holding my temper back, waiting to hear his reasons. Pierce was smarter than most of the population, and I wanted to have all the details before I pressed him into doing minor surgery. Never mind that the implant would be coming out no matter what he thought, even if I had to dig it out myself. Surely someone had designed a curved knife that I could hook over my shoulder, and using a mirror…

  “Consequences.” Pierce broke my thought bubble, and I wiggled my hand in a keep-talking gesture.

  His sigh bounced against the heavy humidity. “Could be fatal to take it out.”

  Fatal. As in it could kill me. My stomach lurched. “You’re thinking it might have poison attached to it, a killer dart, what?”

  “Fred’s resources are extensive. And questionable.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, and there was a high probability Fred had tampered with the device, so I moved on. “Aukele might know about things like that, and be able to tell us how to neutralize it. Millie and Harlan might know as well, so we’re back to finding all of them, stat.”

  Pierce slid his hand down my arm, held my hand. “Surprise first.”

  Snarky words backed up in my throat. I sorted them into a response that was more dignified than my inner two-year-old thought was appropriate, then sucked in a breath. Pierce clapped his hand over my open mouth. “The surprise will help track them.”

  I uttered my best imitation of his huh-maybe-we’ll see grunt, but he’d triggered my curiosity. “How about a hint?”

  “Patience, Belisama. Stay close.”

  The path had narrowed into an almost invisible trail, so I took his warning seriously. My impatience grew with every step. I’d never find my way back to the house without a guide, and that just wouldn’t do. “I need to learn every inch of this land, etch an indelible map in my head, because I can’t be getting lost every time I leave the house.”

  Pierce glanced over his shoulder. “You won’t forget this path.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. The trail was smothered in dense foliage that we had to scramble over or skirt around. “This is worse than one of Grandfather’s mazes because there aren’t any energetic clues for me to follow. And we’re going to have to clear it.”

  “We’re leaving DNA behind. After today, your fingers—”

  “Will be my guide. It’s kind of embarrassing I didn’t think of that.” I immediately reached out, running my hands over the bush next to me. An image of Pierce splashed on my internal screen, but he was wearing different clothes, and there were traces of two-day-old stubble on his face. Questions and a hearty dose of suspicion batted around in my head. “When were you here?”

  Pierce stopped, turned to face me. “Working with Kahuna Aukele. I told you.”

  Confusion clouded my thoughts. “But when? And why didn’t you tell me about—”

  “Stop, Everly. Think.” He grasped my shoulders. “I was working. Couldn’t break my cover. Aukele accepted my crazy schedule and trained with me when I could grab a few hours, but I didn’t know it was your property until yesterday.”

  I huffed out a sigh. He had a point, but still. “It…hurts. You were on island and didn’t come home. To the condo.”

  “Working. Cover.”

  “I know. I get that.” I wrinkled my face. “Damn it. I hate sounding all girly, but those weeks without you weren’t easy.”

  Tynan’s thoughts must have drifted, because his eyes had blanked out.

  I jerked my hands free. “What are you thinking?”

  His stared at me, looking deep. “It’s time for you to go on a mission.”

  “What?” What the hell was he thinking? “We have a mission right here. Find Millie and Harlan. Track down my grandfather, and figure out how to detox my mother’s formula. It should keep us busy.”

  He nodded. One crisp dip of his chin, then started walking while he talked. “After this. By yourself. Come on, surprise first.”

  I didn’t say it, but the surprise had lost its appeal. My curiosity had switched to ferreting out what kind of assignment he was talking about. At best, I’d been cast as unavoidable backup on our missions, mainly because they’d been connecte
d to my screwed up life.

  Pierce stopped suddenly, jolting my attention back to the present. And the surprise.

  We’d come to the end of the trail, and he led me into the beginning of another maze, totally different from the one surrounding the perimeter of the property. “Want to lead, Belisama?”

  I edged around him to get a better take on the situation. Unlike the trail we’d just navigated, this path was clearly defined, and it tweaked my scouting instincts, except I wasn’t picking up on any Aukele-type energetic landmarks to follow. “Yeah, I do. It’ll be a challenge because Grandfather didn’t mark this one.” I glanced at him. “You do know the way, right?”

  He shrugged. “Mostly.”

  “Not encouraging, Pierce.” I brushed my fingers over the nearest bush and a faded image of a young, and very pregnant, Loyria Gray flashed on my internal screen, and then vanished. “Mom.”

  “Figured she’d spent some time here.” Tynan motioned me to take the lead. “The rest of the surprise is in the center of the maze.”

  I didn’t need more encouragement than that, and headed down the narrow path, both hands skimming the bushes and shrubs lining the maze. Images played like an old-time video that rolled in slow motion. The pictures were sepia, and lasted only seconds before fading away. They were difficult to follow, partly because I latched on to every fleeting glimpse of my mother as though the images were precious jewels. And they were. I’d never seen pictures of her when she was my age, and it was comforting to learn how much I looked like her. Except for the red hair. Hers was luxurious brown. I made a few wrong turns, but recovered when I stopped to focus on the path instead of getting lost in the past.

  Memories. I skidded to a halt, spun toward Pierce. “These images are all from when she was pregnant, but they feel off somehow. And why isn’t my head exploding in pain?”

  Pierce took his time answering. “Because you weren’t born yet. No memories.”

  He’d made another of those Tynan-inspired points. Damn, but I loved this man. “There’s something skewy about the images. She had to be at the end of the pregnancy because she couldn’t bend down without leaning around her belly.”

  Both of his eyebrows arched. “Sounds normal.”

  “No there’s something…” I tried to run through the images again, but they’d disappeared. Evaporated. Usually my memory held on to what my fingers learned. A dull ache nagged under the implant in my back. “That’s odd. When I tried to sort through my memory, the pain started, but it’s hardly noticeable. And nothing is showing up on instant replay.” A knot settled in my stomach. “I always have access to instant replay. And most of the time family memories bring debilitating pain.”

  Pierce skimmed his hand along my shoulder blade. “Like I said, you weren’t born. Not your memories.”

  “That makes sense, but there’s still…” A sunbeam broke through the cloud cover, blinding me. I yanked my shades from the top of my head to cover my eyes. Sun. High in the sky. I snapped my fingers. “That’s it. I was born in late August.”

  Pierce blinked at me.

  “That image of my mother had to be from the fall.”

  He blinked again.

  Frustration needled my patience. “My mother couldn’t have been pregnant in the fall. I’d been born at least two months earlier.”

  “Hawaii. Not much difference in seasons.”

  I blew out a sigh. “It just looked different. Wrong light for the peak of summer. Forget it. The images showed up in vintage sepia, so I’m probably just imagining things. Seeing pictures of my mom from back then has made me loopy.”

  He laid a comforting arm over my shoulders. “Or, could be this is a magic place.” There was only a hint of teasing in his voice.

  “Not magic, but it’s possible Aukele has, I don’t know, created the images. If my grandmother could leave holographic messages for me, why not my grandfather?” It irritated me.

  “Don’t know. I haven’t seen him do anything like that, Everly.”

  “Right. Me either. I’ll just appreciate the images for what they were and move on.”

  It wasn’t more than a few minutes before the maze ended, opening to a clearing of sorts. The sight of several odd plants mingled with the typical Hawaiian vegetation brought me up short. I squatted down, shoved my sunglasses back on top of my head, and rested my fingertips on the ground. The energy knocked me flat on my backside.

  Pierce had led me to Loyria Gray’s living laboratory.

  TEN

  I BENT TO TOUCH A leaf on one of the plants in my mother’s garden. I’d hoped to see a solid picture of her, one that showed her in vibrant color instead of the sepia tones I’d picked up on the trail leading to the garden. Turned out that was a bad plan. An overwhelming rush of déjà vu spun through me and I jerked my fingers back. “This isn’t going to be easy,” I said, holding my hand out to Pierce. “Help me up, please. I’m dizzy from some kind of flashback.”

  He tugged me into his arms. “Could be a good sign.”

  “I’m not sure.” I mumbled the words against his chest. “If I’m incapacitated every time I touch one of the plants, I’ll never be able to figure out how to detoxify her formula.”

  A low grumble vibrated in Pierce’s chest. “We have three leads to follow: Aukele, Millie and Harlan, and Fred.”

  I sorted through the options, and a single thread of hope sprang free. “Do you have a training session scheduled with Aukele?”

  “No. He contacts me with the details shortly before we meet.”

  “Well, that sucks. Fred it is.”

  Some of the color drained from Pierce’s face. “Aukele would be easier.”

  The subtext behind his words made it clear he wanted me light years away from Fred, but that wasn’t an option. “My grandfather is never easy, but I can try sending a request through the Hawaiian underground, at least I think I can. Remember the pedicure you sat through?”

  He twitched. “Unforgettable.”

  I grinned. “The nail technician who passed me that note about my grandmother, I bet she could get word to Grandfather. It’ll take a while though, and Fred can probably be back here in minutes.”

  “Possibly. You just ordered him off your property. Bringing him back before the two-week deadline expires would negate the deal you made with him.” Pierce’s face had settled into worry lines.

  “And that would put Cait in danger. Crappy plan though it is, sending a note to Aukele is our only choice.”

  Pierce’s breathing went still, and if he were a wolf his ears would have pricked.

  My head emptied of thought, and adrenaline hit my blood with a whoosh of energy. I scanned the area, all six of my senses on high alert. My intuition kicked wide open, but I didn’t pick up on a single threat. “What?” I whispered.

  “Mo mháthair.”

  He’d panicked about his mother? “Siofra? Is something wrong at home?”

  “She can help.” Pierce’s words were spaced and strangled.

  I slipped my arms around his waist. “No. We can’t bring her into this mess. It’s already killed my parents, and I want your family in our life. Your living, breathing family.”

  He kissed the top of my head. “Total agreement on that. But she’ll…know, and be pissed as hell we didn’t ask for her help.”

  I leaned back and searched his eyes, not at all sure what I was looking for. “How? She knows about the formula, but what could she possibly do? My mother only shared it with Millie, and we aren’t even sure she has what I’ll need to diffuse the toxicity of the stuff.”

  His chest heaved in a sigh. “Circle of Nine, medical background, healer. She can help, and I can get them here in twelve hours, give or take.”

  “Them?” I dropped my forehead to rest on his chest, and soaked in his strength.

  My man let out an impatient snort. “My parents are a set. Mo mháthair will know the danger, and be all over it.”

  I stifled a chuckle. “Like father, like son. Overp
rotective to the max.”

  Pierce grabbed my shoulders, lifted me on tiptoes to meet his mouth, and kissed me, long, deep and hungry. I had no breath left when he let go, and stumbled into my own footing. “So, are you going to contact them? I’m really uncomfortable—”

  “Yeah. I am.” The call was complete and arrangements made in less than a minute. The second call, arranging for the flight, took a slightly longer, probably a full minute.

  “You’re…” I rolled my hand in the air. “Decision made. Plans coordinated. Action. Do you ever doubt—?”

  “Not until debriefing. Can’t. Doubt kills.”

  And that was my cue. “Sounds like it’s time to tell me about Tap.”

  He took my hand. “While we walk.”

  I waited, giving him space to find the words. No point rushing a man who spoke fluent grunt, and barely managed to string five articulate words together during a conversation.

  “Tynan Ailill Pierce. Tap.”

  It was a start. “I sort of figured that part out. But there’s more to it, something to do with your covert style when you worked for Fred.” I glanced at him, sideways. “I’m just guessing here, could be way off base.”

  “You got it right. I tapped in fast, got out.” His hand tightened around mine.

  I wasn’t sure how much to probe, but the tension pouring from him begged for release. “And?”

  “It never took me more than one tap. One try. Caught my team’s attention, and they started calling me Tap.”

  There was more. It took me a minute to find the words to help him get there. “You’re good at tapping into unknown situations, too. You know, in the planning stage of a mission.”

  “Yeah. I did that. Until I fucked up. Missed a critical point. Lost some good men. Bailed out of Fred’s…group. Went solo.” The tension in his voice had faded to weariness.

  I stood still, yanked him into my arms. “Those guys knew the odds, just like the team you brought in when I was treed by Brody Williams at Sand Island.”

  Pierce hugged me tight against him. “Different. They’d volunteered. Knew A.J. and Williams.” He tipped my chin up, stared into my eyes. “It wasn’t your fault or your fight, Belisama.”