by Maya Banks
Ari’s breath caught in her throat. Of course! Why hadn’t she thought of it sooner? If Ramie could track victims, perhaps she could find her parents.
But as soon as the thought hit her, she sagged, momentarily deflated. How could she possibly contact the young psychic when she’d completely disappeared from the public eye?
“She’s married to Caleb,” Beau continued. “I can’t promise you that she’ll help. Caleb is very protective of her and her gift comes at a very high price because she experiences everything the victim does. But if you have something—an object—that was a particular favorite of your mother or father, or something they used frequently, it’s possible she could locate them using that object.”
Ari’s heart leapt and her pulse stuttered, causing her breath to hitch uncomfortably.
“Cover your hair back up as you had it before and put your sunglasses back on. I’ll summon our driver to meet us in front. Usually I drive myself, but I’m not parked close and I don’t want you exposed or alone in the time it takes me to go get it and pick you up.”
Ari blinked, wondering how they’d gotten from her wanting to hire him to her going home with him and him taking over completely. But even as she found herself questioning him, she obeyed without hesitation, redoing her disguise.
When she was finished, Beau picked up the phone and dialed a number. She listened while he tersely informed the driver to pick them up directly in front of the entrance to the building. When he finished the call to his driver, he inquired as to how she’d gotten here, and when she explained about the BMW parked curbside not far from the entrance to the building, he shook his head, frowning, then placed yet another call and instructed someone to pick it up and deliver it to Beau’s home.
While she’d certainly hoped he’d agree to help her, she hadn’t quite expected this kind of reaction. It felt as though her entire world had been upended and she wasn’t in control of any aspect.
It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. But then when had she truly ever been in absolute control of her life?
As Beau rose from his chair, she did the same, suddenly nervous and unsure of herself. But, as she’d already acknowledged, she had no other choice. She knew she couldn’t trust any of her father’s men, even if they weren’t all traitors. The safest course was to assume they were all after her for whatever reason.
Which left the men—man—her father had always told her to seek out. If her father had placed his trust and her well-being into Beau Devereaux’s hands, then surely she could do the same. She’d never questioned her father’s judgment before and she wasn’t about to start now.
With a deep breath, she allowed Beau to herd her out of his office and into the lobby area where their receptionist was stationed.
“Let Quinn know he’s covering the office today, and let him know I’ll check in with him later to give him the rundown.”
Anita nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll call him now.”
Ari gasped in shock when Beau actually growled at his receptionist and sent her a scowl. Before she could think better of herself, she elbowed Beau in the ribs, frowning at him in reprimand.
“Did you just growl at her?” Ari whispered in astonishment.
To her additional surprise, instead of looking chastened, Anita burst into laughter and smiled at Ari.
“Don’t mind him. He hates that I call him sir and Mr. Devereaux. He’s convinced it makes him sound like an old fart and he doesn’t take it well that a woman older than him addresses him as sir. He insists that he call me ma’am, but I’m not to reciprocate and give him that same respect.”
Her eyes twinkled merrily as Beau’s scowl grew darker.
“He has good southern gentlemen manners, for sure,” Anita continued. “They don’t make them like they used to and Beau is definitely a throwback. But I call him sir and Mr. Devereaux just to needle him. Especially when he gets too serious. Which is pretty much all the time,” she said blithely, unruffled by Beau’s reaction.
A smile hovered on Ari’s lips despite the fact that her situation was dire and she was frantic over the disappearance of her parents.
“So you’re saying I should drive him crazy by calling him sir or Mr. Devereaux?” Ari asked in an innocent voice.
“Yep,” Anita said, still grinning unrepentantly.
Beau’s fingers curled firmly around Ari’s wrist and he all but dragged her from the suite of offices to the elevator.
“My father always said I wasn’t serious enough,” Ari said lightly as they descended. “That my heart was too soft and I was too gullible and naïve for my own good. It appears you go too far in the opposite direction so perhaps we’ll balance one another out.”
He shot her a look, his eyebrows rising, and she immediately blushed, heat burning her cheeks as she realized how what she’d said sounded.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she said hastily, nearly groaning over sticking her foot in her mouth. Yet another thing her father said she did frequently.
“Like what?” Beau asked in a mild tone.
She was sure she turned even redder. “Like we have some sort of a relationship. You know, yin and yang, that sort of thing. It was a stupid thing for me to say. But my mouth often gets ahead of my brain.”
“So which one of us is Yin and which is Yang?”
It took her a moment to realize he was joking. He was teasing her.
She laughed, shaking her head. “And your receptionist accuses you of being too serious. Maybe she’s never experienced your sense of humor?”
“I don’t have a sense of humor,” he muttered. “Ask anyone. They’ll tell you I’m the grumpy bastard of the Devereaux clan.”
“Hmmm. I guess I’ll have to wait and create an informed opinion. Where are we going?”
The abrupt change in subject had Beau looking at her in confusion.
She sighed. “I do that too, unfortunately. You’ll experience it soon enough. But I tend to blurt out whatever happens to cross my mind at the time. My parents are adept at following my train of thought but others? Not so much.”
He smiled, the action completely transforming his grim features. He suddenly looked . . . approachable. Not at all the intimidating figure he’d been in his office.
The elevator doors slid open and they exited to pass the security desk where Ari returned her badge.
Beau’s eyebrows lifted when his gaze skimmed over the pass.
“You weren’t exaggerating when you said you had multiple aliases.”
Ari shot him a serious look so he’d know she wasn’t in the least exaggerating. “Yes, I have three sets of identification. Driver’s license and passports for all three names. My father always told me that if I had need of them it was best to switch them around so that no one ever caught on to one and was able to track me. It sounded paranoid at the time and I just put it down to my father’s overprotectiveness because that certainly wasn’t anything new to me or my mother. But I honestly never thought I’d actually need them. Obviously I was wrong and should have paid more attention to the measures my father went to in order to secure my safety. It’s almost as if he knew that I’d need them one day. I just don’t know why.”
Her voice trailed off as Beau pulled her into the rotating door. She hastily felt for her scarf and glasses, ensuring they were covering what they should. She was glad for the sunglasses, because the sun was particularly bright today and she would have been momentarily blinded by the sudden wash of light.
She saw the car parked directly in front of the building, blocking one lane of traffic, and knew it had to be Beau’s vehicle. But when they started forward, someone bumped into Beau, knocking him slightly off balance for a moment.
At the same time, the glass shattered behind them and screams went up. Ari found herself shoved painfully to the cracked pavement, Beau’s body covering hers completely.
She heard his violent curse and felt him fumbling for something. She turned her head, trying to see what had happened, and terror cl
enched her insides when she saw Beau had pulled a gun she hadn’t even realized he carried.
“Stay down,” he said harshly. “Do not make a single move until I tell you.”
She nodded, not trusting her voice to even work. Her throat was paralyzed and fear was fast closing off her airway.
At this point there wasn’t much more damage Ari could do that hadn’t already been done by the video of her using her powers and so she focused on two metal waste bins that lined the sidewalk further down.
They hovered in the air and then streaked toward her and Beau before coming to rest in front of them, giving them some cover at least. When Beau realized what she’d done, he cursed again.
But if he thought to reprimand her, he didn’t take the time. She was suddenly hauled to her feet and shoved between Beau and what she assumed was his driver and they dove toward the car.
Ari landed in the backseat and cracked her head on the opposite door handle. Her already bruised body was taking yet another beating. She could feel every single one of those bruises and sore ribs screaming their protests.
“Go, go, go!” Beau barked. “Get us the hell out of here.”
The car took off, tires squealing as it shot into traffic. She scrambled up so she could look out the back, trying to make sense of what had just happened. The street was empty of pedestrians. They’d all taken cover the moment a shot was fired.
Beau yanked her down roughly so her head was below the windows.
“Stay down, damn it! Are you just trying to get yourself killed?”
Her eyes were wide as she stared over at him to where he too was crouched low in the seat.
“What happened, Beau?”
“Sniper,” he clipped out.
Dismay and confusion swirled in Ari’s chaotic mind. It was simply too much to take it all in. Too much had happened in a very short span of time, turning her world completely upside down. Her life as she knew it had undergone a drastic change.
“I don’t understand,” she said, trying to shake the cobwebs from her brain. “It seemed so important that they not kill me. They tried to drug me when, if he’d wanted, he could have killed me on the spot. So why would they try to kill me now?”
“They weren’t shooting at you,” Beau said, his expression grim.
She shot him a puzzled look, her confusion growing by the minute.
“They were shooting at me.”
TEN
ARI was eerily silent on the drive to Beau’s residence. She was pale, obviously shaken, and worse, guilt shadowed her eyes. He knew she was beating herself up for placing him in danger and that just pissed him off.
So when she shifted restlessly and turned her gaze on him, he knew before she ever spoke precisely what she was going to say.
“I shouldn’t have involved you,” she said in a low voice. “I had no idea this was so serious. I don’t understand any of it. But I couldn’t live with myself if someone was killed because they were helping me. I think the only reasonable thing to do is give them what they want. Me.”
“Shut up and stop being a goddamn martyr,” he said rudely.
He knew he was being belligerent when he should be more understanding and compassionate with her. She was clearly at her rope’s end and was on the verge of collapsing and she didn’t need him being a surly asshole to her. But it angered him to think of such a vulnerable, innocent woman in the clutches of some son of a bitch out there who planned God only knew what to do to her.
She flinched at the reprimand and he felt instant guilt when he saw the flash of hurt in her eyes. She masked it quickly, but not before he saw that his words had struck her like a dart.
“I’m not trying to be a martyr or overly dramatic,” she said in a low voice.
Sadness clung not only to her features, but to her words, and swamped her vibrant eyes, turning them from the nearly neon, electric natural glow to a more dull, sedate blue-green.
“I just don’t know what else to do. My parents are everything to me. My only family. They’ve given up so much for me my entire life. My powers impacted their lives even more than mine because they always made sure I was happy and safe and it wasn’t until I was much older that I understood the sacrifices they’d made for me.
“My mother calls me their miracle child. After my parents married they tried, unsuccessfully, to have a child. My mother was young, though, and my father wasn’t in a hurry. He would have been happy with just my mother if it ever came to that. But she desperately wanted to have a child.
“After countless miscarriages and my mother deciding to stop trying because the grief grew harder to bear with each child they lost, she got pregnant with me. I’m their only child. My mother was never able to have another. I wanted to be the perfect daughter, to somehow make up for the fact that my mother couldn’t have what she most wanted. A house full of children, love, laughter and happiness.
“They’ve always, always protected me. Sheltered me from the harsh realities of life. Maybe they didn’t do me any favors. Maybe they sheltered me too much. But I’ll always be grateful for what they’ve given me. Their love and their willingness to do anything to ensure my well-being and happiness.
“So now, when it’s them who need me, I feel utterly helpless. I don’t have the knowledge or skills to even know where to begin looking for them. So when I say that I feel like my only option is to surrender to these people, whoever they are, I’m not being dramatic and I’m not being a martyr. I’m a woman who loves her parents more than life and will do whatever it takes to have them back. Safe. Even if it means my own life.”
Sincerity rang in her words. Her utter conviction was evident in every single feature. Her eyes glowed once more but with purpose. Determination.
She didn’t deserve his censure. It was clear that Arial had never had to face the harsher realities of life, as she’d said moments earlier. She simply couldn’t comprehend that her parents would be used to get to her and it was obvious that she absolutely meant what she said when she’d firmly stated that she would do whatever it took, even if it meant trading her life for the lives of her mother and father.
That kind of selflessness rarely existed anymore. Beau was used to seeing the worst in people, not the good. His sister and sister-in-law had suffered the unspeakable at the hands of sick, twisted monsters. Evil was prevalent everywhere. In every walk of life. In those no one would ever suspect. Yet evil, the capacity for evil, existed in most everyone. True goodness, the kind that went soul deep, was a rarity. Most people wouldn’t be as selfless as Ari appeared to be, and he didn’t doubt her sincerity even for a second. She was utterly serious and that was going to make his job that much harder to keep her out of harm’s way while he and his men tracked down her parents.
“I apologize,” Beau said, hoping his words were every bit as sincere as hers. “It just enrages me that you’d value your life so little that you’d literally surrender yourself into their hands. It doesn’t have to come to that. I need you to trust me. Your father evidently trusted me and Caleb. Enough that he told you to seek us out if you were ever in trouble and he couldn’t provide help himself. So trust me not only to find your parents, but to protect you as well. And promise me you won’t do anything hasty because, Ari, you have to understand, even if you had allowed yourself to be taken, they would likely kill your parents once they had what they wanted.”
Ari paled, all the color leaching from her face until it was chalky white.
“I know this is hard to hear,” he said, lowering his voice to a more soothing note. “But you have to face reality. Whoever these people are, they clearly mean business and just as obviously think nothing about killing anyone who gets in their way, as evidenced by the fact a sniper tried to put a bullet through my head just a few minutes ago.”
“Do you think they’re even still alive?” she whispered, choked with emotion.
She looked so lost and terrified that it was instinct to pull her across the seat and into his arms. He hug
ged her, feeling the rapid pattering of her pulse against his chest. Her respirations were shallow and just as rapid as her pulse.
The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Beau. He wasn’t a hugger nor was he one who usually offered comfort. He was the arrogant asshole of the family, the one who always said what no one wanted to hear but needed to hear nonetheless. Such was the case with Ari right now.
She needed to know what she was up against and that the minute she lost her bargaining power—herself—her parents would almost certainly be eliminated.
“I think they’re alive,” Beau said, wincing inwardly as he made his statement. He hoped to hell he wasn’t lying to her. He was the one usually counted on to speak the truth, no matter how hard it was. But he found himself wanting to offer Ari at least a glimmer of hope, because if she truly thought her parents were dead she’d likely snap.
He needed her to have hope so that she used sound judgment and adhered to whatever plan Beau and his team came up with. The last thing they needed was a wild card and for Ari to go off on her own. Powers or not, she was extremely vulnerable.
And even if her parents weren’t killed the moment Ari was in her attackers’ possession, they would most likely be used to control her. The attackers would threaten her with her parents’ death to ensure her full cooperation and would forever have a stranglehold on her because she would do anything if it meant keeping two people she loved from dying.
“As long as you stay out of their reach, I think your parents will be safe,” he said. Again, hoping he wasn’t setting her up for horrific shock and disappointment. But it was the logical conclusion to arrive at since they hadn’t killed Ari and seemed determined to bring her under control. Their control, whoever the hell “they” were.
“They’ll use your parents as bargaining tools, at least for a short while. It will buy us some time to start our investigation and hopefully find them before their kidnappers grow impatient and start using more drastic measures to ‘persuade’ you.”