When she looked at Tyr that time, he only inclined his head.
“Are you hungry?” he asked politely. “It occurs to me that I haven’t fed you adequately.”
At that, Marion couldn’t help it.
She burst out in a laugh.
H e got them cheeseburgers, fries and sodas at a drive-thru window.
Honestly, Marion couldn’t remember the last time she’d had that kind of food, but the second the bags hit her lap, and the smell hit her nose, her stomach was growling at her angrily to put as much of it inside her as quickly as she possibly could.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so hungry.
“I am sorry,” Tyr said, watching her munch on still-steaming French fries. “I should have realized how badly you needed food. I confess, I’ve been worrying much more about keeping you alive in the less-mundane ways.”
Marion laughed, her mouth full of French fries.
She swallowed most of her mouthful, still chuckling.
“You are a weird one, Tyr,” she said, her voice verging on affectionate.
“Let me know when we can discuss options again,” he said, barely seeming to hear the humor in her voice. “I am thinking you might have more opinions, and more clear thoughts on this, once you are no longer thinking about food.”
She grunted, still eating fries, and now eyeing the cheeseburger in her bag.
“You’re not wrong about that,” she said. “But if you were hinting earlier that we should go straight to D.C., try knocking on Dad’s door direct-like and get them to let us inside, then yes. I agree. That’s seeming like the best plan to me… even with my brains scrambled on fries and cheeseburger grease.”
He nodded, glancing over periodically to watch her eat.
She looked out the McLaren’s window as he pulled onto the highway, feeling something in her body start to relax as the food hit her system.
Tyr wasn’t the only one who forgot about food during the rest of this insanity. She must have been hungry for hours, but some part of her was too busy producing adrenaline and fighting off being drugged by psychos to notice.
Now that the food was starting to reach her bloodstream, she felt almost calm.
“Yes,” she said, after taking her first, almost-leisurely bite of cheeseburger. Her eyes closed briefly in blissful appreciation, right before she turned to look at Tyr. “Yes,” she repeated. “I think we should go to D.C. Right to the White House. Immediately. As soon as possible. We could maybe try to listen to the radio on the way, see if there’s anything on there about where he is, what he might be doing… and if there’s any news of me being missing.”
Pausing to swallow, she added,
“Do you really think they’re following us?”
There was a silence.
In it, Tyr looked only at the road.
She was getting used to him now though, and strongly suspected he was thinking seriously about her question before he gave her a definitive answer.
“Yes,” he said finally, glancing at her after the pause. “Yes, I think they are. I suspect your friend in the store called the police, and they likely had that line tapped or diverted. At the very least, they would have traced the woman’s cell phone.”
Marion was still savoring her second bite of cheeseburger.
Swallowing the last of it, she stared at him.
“But how is that possible?” she said. “See, this is why I start thinking you’re nuts. The things you say… they’re just too paranoid and far-fetched to be true, even if you’re really good at sounding credible when you say them.”
Tyr seemed unmoved by this.
“I can only tell you what I know,” he said.
“But how could you possibly know that?” she said, exasperated.
“I’ve heard that man’s voice before,” Tyr said, looking at her. “The man on the phone. The one who picked up when you called, trying to reach your father’s people.”
“Where?” Marion said, frowning. “Where have you heard it?”
“On one of the videos. Lie Jie spoke to him once, along with the man you told me about. The Secretary of State… the one with the scar on his face. The man on the phone worked for him.” He glanced at her again. “I think you saw one of the clips with him in it. He was with the man with the scar. He also had short hair… only brown.”
Tyr turned the wheel of the car, stepping on the gas to pass an eighteen-wheeler truck. He didn’t glance over at her again until he had straightened the trajectory of the McLaren, aiming them down the center lane, between an SUV and a small Honda Civic.
“It was the same man,” he said, glancing over. “I recognized his voice. I am sure of it.”
Marion continued to stare at him, the burger resting on its wrapper in her lap. She hadn’t forgotten about it, but for the first time since he handed her the bag of fast food, she wasn’t one hundred percent focused on it, either.
She studied his black eyes, her mouth pursed.
“Are you telling me you heard that guy’s voice?” she said finally. “On the shop clerk’s phone? When I had that phone to my ear? And you were standing a few feet away?”
He glanced at her. “Yes.”
“Well enough to recognize him? Well enough to be sure you recognized his voice? Even though he only spoke a few words?”
He glanced at her again. “Yes.”
“But how?” she said. “How did you hear him at all? Much less hear him well enough to be absolutely certain it was the exact same guy you saw in that surveillance video? No one has hearing that good, Tyr. No one.”
He hesitated, looking at her.
For a few seconds, he looked about to speak.
Then he closed his mouth, focusing back on the road.
“Let me guess,” Marion said, frowning. “It’s complicated.”
“Or very simple,” he said, faintly exasperated now. “I know you aren’t being deliberately stubborn about this. I know you aren’t fighting me intentionally. But I’ve answered these questions already, Marion. You already know what I am.”
Her frown deepened.
She knew what he meant.
He was talking about the god thing.
“So why not just say it outright?” she said.
“I did not wish to be inconsiderate.”
“Inconsiderate?” She snorted a half-laugh. “Really?”
“Yes.”
His black eyes focused on the highway, on the maze of cars spread out in front of him under a shockingly blue sky.
When she didn’t speak, or go back to eating her cheeseburger, Tyr added,
“I assumed you would come to this conclusion on your own. Consciously, that is, when you were ready. I’ve already told you enough… and frankly, you’ve already said enough… that I know you have received adequate information from me on this topic already. You may be resisting that information, and any conclusions you’ve already drawn from it, but you know exactly who and what I am, Marion.”
Glancing at her, the sunlight flashing in his dark eyes, he added grimly,
“You may prefer to treat it as a joke for now, or to otherwise pretend it’s not real. But that doesn’t mean you’re incapable of understanding the truth. At this stage, I don’t believe any additional assistance from me is likely to prove useful. It’s better if we continue to talk around who and what I am… particularly if you’re willing to accept help from me. Really, I’m just trying to keep you alive. I don’t need you to believe me. I just need you to trust me enough that I can keep the Syndicate from kidnapping or killing you.”
Marion frowned.
Turning over the words of his speech, she honestly couldn’t decide what she believed.
She couldn’t decide if his words were meant as an insult or not, either.
Picking up the cheeseburger, she took a few more bites, chewing and swallowing each one as she stared out the window at the oncoming traffic heading north, presumably out of New York City for the most part, bu
t also leaving New Jersey.
After a few more seconds of eating and staring, she decided he likely didn’t mean his words as an insult.
That didn’t exactly make them a compliment, either.
Marion more got the impression he didn’t mean anything by them at all.
From Tyr’s perspective, he was simply making a bald statement of fact.
Pushing the weirdness of gods and superhuman hearing out of her mind, she took a few more bites of the cheeseburger, chewing slowly while she thought. Like Tyr said, the how of things didn’t really matter, not if she trusted him to get her out of this alive.
If she believed him on that part of things, the rest didn’t matter.
Not now.
For the same reason, she might as well take him at his word.
She could just assume he was telling the truth, that he really could hear the guy on the other end of the phone. Assuming Tyr was right about that, that it was one of the people from the surveillance videos, someone who worked for Secretary of State, Roy Taggert, that meant the Syndicate was definitely following them to D.C.
That meant they knew roughly where Marion was.
Okay, she could do that.
She could suspend disbelief enough to go there.
Taking the last bite of her cheeseburger, she crumpled up the greasy wrapping and stuffed it in the bag along with the empty ketchup packets and the paper that held her fries. She glanced at Tyr to find he was still eating his own burger.
Folding her arms in the thick, cable knit sweater, Marion sank into the McLaren’s comfortable seat, and thought for a moment more.
If Tyr was correct, if the man on the phone was working for Taggert, then Taggert had access to the private phone line her dad set up for emergencies.
That maybe shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did surprise her.
If Taggert could hack those lines, he might have people inside the Secret Service.
It also begged a bunch of other questions.
Like, how had he known it was Marion calling?
She hadn’t spoken a single word. She’d been using the shop clerk’s phone, not her own. Her own phone was still on St. Barts somewhere, maybe in that hallway by the dressing room in the exclusive Pirate Club.
The only thing that made sense was the phone line itself.
Her dad told her it was an emergency number, for use only in dire, life-or-death emergencies. He told her never to share that number, not with anyone, for any reason.
Maybe no one had that exact number but her, Marion.
The more she considered that possibility, the more sense it made. Given who her father was, they likely viewed her as a vulnerability. They would have given her a dedicated line. They probably had dedicated lines for more than just her.
“Do you think they have people all over the White House?” Marion said, frowning, thinking aloud. “Taggart? The Syndicate more generally?”
Tyr gave her a grim look. “I don’t know. I would guess yes.”
Marion felt her jaw harden.
“We need to get to D.C.,” she said. “If you’re right, my dad has to be in danger.”
Tyr handed her his own fast food bag, stuffing in the cheeseburger wrapper once he’d finished his food. Marion put his bag in hers and crumpled them up together, putting the trash down on the floor by her feet. She frowned as she turned her head, watching the strange man with the dark eyes as he drove.
“You’ll need to talk to him, Tyr,” she said seriously. “My dad. You’ll need to talk to him, and show him everything you showed me. I don’t mean the god stuff, but they’ll want to see all of Lia’s files. They’ll want to know who she is. They’ll want to know about Gregor, and how she got those materials. They’ll want to talk to her, and your brother. Are you and your family okay with that? With talking to my dad’s people? With talking to the Secret Service and F.B.I. and whoever else?”
He looked at her.
After a pause where he only studied her eyes, he seemed to come to his own conclusion about where her mind was at with everything.
He nodded, once, his dark eyes glowing with that deep red flame.
“We are not there yet,” he said, his voice grim. “Truthfully, that part worries me least. I am far more concerned about getting you to your father safely. I worry it will be dangerous for you,” he added, glancing at her. “…To take you to the White House. I will obviously stay with you through this. But we cannot know what this Syndicate might do, if they feel cornered. If they realize we intend to expose them.”
Glancing at her again, he frowned.
“I fear we don’t really have good choices, Marion. Not one hundred percent safe ones. I could take you to my brother, Thor. I could ask him and his wife to hide you, until I’ve spoken with your father myself.”
Marion felt herself stiffen.
“I don’t want you to do that,” she said.
“It would be safer for you.”
“I don’t care.” She folded her arms, giving him a hard look. “We’re not doing that.”
Tyr hesitated, then nodded. Gripping the steering wheel, he made a vague, concessionary gesture with one hand.
“I don’t want to do that, either,” he confessed.
He didn’t explain what he meant by that.
Marion didn’t ask.
13
Date
T yr drove fast.
Even through New York City, and the outskirts of Philadelphia and Baltimore, Tyr drove the McLaren like it was an extension of his arms and feet, moving gracefully around cars, trucks, buses, vans, motorcycles, trailers, like water flowing around rocks in a stream.
It helped that traffic was relatively light. More people seemed to be leaving the urban sprawl of Northeastern cities, rather than driving towards it.
They didn’t talk much after they finished eating.
Even so, something about the silence felt strangely compatible.
Marion found it easy to be with him.
She even found it comforting.
Even knowing people might be trying to kidnap and/or kill her right now, she felt oddly safe with him, too. Something about that struck her as almost unnerving, just how at ease she felt with this total stranger, particularly given the crazy things he’d told her.
It also crossed her mind that Tyr would likely disappear once he’d delivered her to her dad. Once the F.B.I., Secret Service, and whoever else cleared him––assuming they did clear him, and he was more or less telling the truth––Marion would probably never see him again.
Something about that made her deeply uncomfortable.
It also made her incredibly sad.
She couldn’t really explain that to herself, either.
Truthfully, she didn’t even like thinking about it.
Something about him, about the thought of him disappearing back into whatever strange place from which he’d come, hit at the hole that had lived in her heart since her mother and sister died. The last thing she needed was to try and fill that hole with some stranger––to get emotionally dependent on a guy she’d only just met, who was obviously weird, who she barely knew––but there it was.
She did feel uncomfortably bound to him.
Really, she should be reserving judgment about him totally until he actually brought her where he said he’d bring her.
She didn’t really doubt him, though.
She knew she didn’t.
That probably should have weirded her out more than it did.
Some doubt must have lingered, though, because seeing the signs leading them into the outskirts of Washington D.C. relaxed that last, vibrating tension in her mind. Watching the numbers count down as they got closer and closer to the nation’s capital, she found herself watching him more often, wondering about him, studying his profile as he drove.
They’d been driving for hours now.
The sun had just disappeared below the horizon to her right.
It weirded her out, how q
uickly the sky was darkening. That was another thing she’d avoided, living the expat life. In the places she’d been staying over the past eight or so months, she’d never dealt with it getting pitch dark out before five-thirty or six p.m.
“You really are a quiet person,” she said, as they were entering the city limits. “Or should I take this personally?”
He looked at her. His dark eyes widened perceptibly, as if she’d startled him.
“No,” he said at once. “You should not. Take it personally.”
She smiled faintly. “Okay.”
“Are you?” he said. “Taking it personally?”
Folding her arms and hugging the thick sweater to her chest, she thought about the question seriously for a few seconds, then shook her head.
“Not really,” she said. “I mean, no. I don’t take it personally. I know this is some kind of job to you. I still have no idea who you work for, but it’s pretty clear by the way you’re acting that this is work. So how can I take that personally? It’s not about me at all.”
He glanced at her.
Then, looking away, back at the road, he frowned.
“It is not only work,” he said.
She looked over, laughing. “What do you mean? What’s not work about it?”
He shrugged, his expression calm.
For maybe the first time, apart from when she had her hand on him, she was positive she glimpsed something beneath that calm. She couldn’t have said exactly what it was she saw, but there was feeling there, something he didn’t seem to be hiding so much as unsure how to express.
“I like you,” he said simply.
She blinked. “You like me?”
“Yes,” he said, matter-of-fact. “That makes it not only work. I do not wish to see anything bad happen to you.” He looked over at her. “Before I went to St. Barts, I saw you more as an object. A form of leverage. Something I wished to keep out of the hands of bad actors. I saw you purely as a risk vector.”
Her lips pursed. “A… risk vector. Wow.”
“In a way. Yes. I did see you that way.”
Gods on Earth: Complete Series (Books 1-3): Paranormal Romances with Norse Gods, Tricksters, and Fated Mates Page 41