Stan ran back upstairs and turned on the light. The basement was a shambles. If the freak had been chucking things at Blythe, she was probably buried alive. Chris was picking up items of clothing from the basement floor. Presumably Blythe had shifted as her clothes were lying around.
She might have thought she’d be safer in rabbit. But how much did his bunny weigh? Five pounds, ten? If she was under one of these boxes, she was hurt or worse. Neil heard a faint scrambling in one corner. Was she under those boxes? Stan tagged after him, heaving cartons, and clearing a path.
The scuffling noise grew louder. Soft grunts followed. Neil hoisted a fallen box and set it upright. Felt like it was full of rocks. Heavy rocks. Moved another, and another. Where the hell was his bunny? He tossed a filthy canvas aside.
Rabbit ears popped out of a ragged hole in the floor. Nose and big eyes followed. Neil cleared a space and grabbed her as she emerged. She snuggled close to his chest. She looked a bit cobwebby and her heart was beating like a drum. But she was bright-eyed. His brave little bunny. Stan extended a big forefinger and tickled the edge of one perky ear.
“Hands off the bunny,” Neil growled. “She’s not a pet.”
CHAPTER 27
Blythe~
Keepers from SPAR had taken Dallas and his accomplice away in an unmarked van. She, Neil, and the two wolves were now in conference. Her office, which normally seemed more than adequate, was crowded with the three men. Like Neil, Stan and Chris took up more room than they should. Not that Stan and Chris were their real names, any more than they worked as janitors. Chris had identified himself as Rory Packard, Stan as Sam Merritt, both veterans.
The attack and subsequent fights which had left her wrung out had energized the three men. They didn’t even look mussed by what had to be serious violence. It was evident that she was watching some serious male bonding in process. Surrounded by these large predators, she felt very small and threatened, although she endeavored to conceal this by sitting up tall in her desk chair.
“SPAR believes Dallas Sheppard was behind the last two attacks on Blythe,” Sam Merritt announced. “It started as revenge for his brother’s arrest, but escalated when he realized that SPAR had evidence tying him to the scene of the Mystic Bay fire. It’s even possible his dealer put some pressure on him to silence her.”
“Dealer?” Blythe was bewildered. “You think drugs are involved?”
“Paranormal arms dealer,” Sam clarified. “Austin Sheppard has spent his career relieving lonely women of their assets, and there’s evidence his brother, Dallas, has been an arsonist at least as long. But suddenly they have access to some serious paranormal firepower and they escalate. SPAR wants to know who’s supplying weapons to psychic crooks.”
“Oh.”
“Of course, SPAR is delighted to have Dallas off the street,” Sam said. “It’s our job to get psi-pyromaniacs locked up. But the psi-arms dealer is the real danger to the general public.”
“Now that we have Sheppard, he’ll spill his guts,” Rory said confidently. “Nature of the beast. A flat like that feels no loyalty. He’s got no reason not to roll on his supplier. And once the supplier realizes we have both Sheppard twins, and a wide selection of paranormal weapons, they’ll be too busy closing down operations to bother Blythe.”
“No real point,” Sam said. “The cat’s out of the bag. And SPAR’s breathing down their neck. These guys aren’t going to waste their time avenging their customers.”
“They attack me three times, four if you count my house, and then they just give up?” Blythe demanded in shocked disbelief.
Rory frowned. “Looks like the attacks in Mystic Bay and the one in front of your apartment house, and here were Sheppard’s idea. The attempted snatch and abduction in Friday Harbor was an altogether slicker exercise. No damn-fool Halloween masks. Probably the dealer was trying to retrieve the evidence, and silence Blythe, too late now.”
“So?” she asked. “What do the guys picked up in Friday Harbor say?”
Sam shrugged. “Packard and I haven’t been informed. But truthfully, I doubt they know much. Not even who hired them.”
She rolled her eyes. She was a decade too old for eye rolling, but these guys playing cops and robbers with her life had gotten her goat. “But you think after this latest setback, the dealers will just peacefully melt back into the shadows and forget about me?”
“They’re pros. This is a business. A lucrative business. They know SPAR is aware the Pacific Northwest is awash in psi-weapons and is looking for them hard. The keepers and diggers are breathing down their necks.” Packard smiled ferally. “What do they gain by snatching Blythe? Revenge for a lot of bottom feeders? Those guys we picked up are totally expendable.” He snapped his fingers.
“And what do you suggest we do while you’re mopping up this psi-syndicate?” Neil demanded. He was leaning back in his chair, apparently at ease, but there was something glacial in his eyes. Maybe he wasn’t as unaffected as she had believed.
Rory smiled. “You and Blythe should go to ground for a few days while we put out the word. SPAR’s setting it up.” He looked at his watch. “Rumor mill should be broadcasting any minute.”
“I have a business,” Blythe informed them tightly. “And a contract to honor on Saturday. I want this done and dusted so I can have my life back.”
“Plenty of time,” Sam replied easily. “You two keep your heads down until then and let SPAR do the heavy lifting. By Saturday this should be just an unpleasant memory.”
“And just where do you suggest we go to ground?” Blythe blurted.
CHAPTER 28
Molly~
After Colin had discovered she could tune glass to plant psi, he had tasked her with tuning a microscope in the botanical lab. Still flabbergasted to realize that Felix was the head of the R&D lab, rather than a lab tech, Molly had put up no argument. It sounded utterly boring, but she owed the bear a major favor for spiriting her away from Seattle and a crew of murderous crooks.
The head of collections had recoiled in horror, standing protectively in front of her machines. “No thanks, sir,” Charlotte Menotti managed.
Molly understood being protective of your equipment. If some stranger had offered to ‘improve’ her lenses, she’d have ripped out their heart and stomped on it. “I could start with some slides,” she offered.
Dr. Menotti approved. She handed Molly a four-by-four box of prepared specimens sandwiched between two thin sheets of two-by-four glass. “My last intern stained these.” Her tone implied that they meant were pretty much garbage.
After a few experiments, Molly found that tuning both sides of the slides worked best. The before and after views kept her riveted. She was used to the psi of intact plants, but there was something mesmerizing about these thin slices of leaves. Every cell glowed with a paranormal rainbow. And after she tuned the slides, tinier variations in the psi frequencies became visible.
She didn’t know how long she had been at it when Colin’s deep voice registered. “How’s it going?”
Dr. Menotti’s flutey academic reply was amused. “We had to pull her away to stretch and have a cup of tea at four. I’d have said there was precious little she could do for those particular leaf sections, but there’s a marked improvement. If you’d care to look.”
Colin pulled up a stool to her bench. “May I?”
“Go ahead. I know these specimens aren’t up to Dr. Menotti’s standards, but I’ve enhanced the fine detail in the psi spectrum.”
He bent his head over the eyepieces. “Splendid. Tomorrow I want you to work on my pollen slides.” He raised his head. “Now it’s time for us to go home so Dr. Menotti can go feed her kids.”
“It’s that late?”
“Yup. We’ll walk through the tunnels and on the way you can tell me why you’re wasting your life photographing society weddings and spoiled kids.”
“Don’t forget our sideline of ritzy real estate.”
“I can see how that w
ould fire up a real passion in a person.”
As they got to the airlock leading to the tunnel, she asked, “Is this route faster? Because I’d really prefer to walk through the gardens.” Ever since she had gotten her first camera at ten, she had spent thousands of hours photographing plants. Everything from sequoias to herbs, but not even on West Haven had she seen the kind of amazing foliage that grew here on Jutway. She itched to capture it on video.
“Sorry, the psi gets stronger after dark and while there are paths through the gardens, it’s more dangerous and time consuming to go that way.”
“Dangerous?”
“We’ve been breeding for higher paranormal compounds for years. Some of our experiments aren’t safe once the sun goes down. Others have naturalized and gone a bit feral.” His voice was matter of fact. “And we have a time constraint. I invited Dr. Mason to dinner.”
She was a bit embarrassed to meet Felix again. Her assumptions about him were mortifying. Her attraction to a kid was shaming. “Oh.” Eloquent, Needles, I don’t think.
“Yeah. He seems to have taken a real shine to you. Hard to keep staff on an island this remote. I figure it’s only a matter of time before he leaves for the bright lights of our Olympia campus. Young fella like that, he’s got needs.”
Needs? “Are you playing matchmaker?” She was torn between outrage and disbelief.
“We shifters are true romantics.”
“Uh-huh. Rolling me into your employee benefits package is real romantic, Justice.”
“I thought so.”
“You don’t think I’m maybe a tad old for your fair-haired boy-wonder?” She was thirty-two next birthday. Felix couldn’t be a day over twenty-four.
“Nah. Six years is nothing. By the time you guys are celebrating your sixtieth, you won’t even remember who’s older.”
CHAPTER 29
Blythe~
“Welcome to Seattle.” A brilliant smile accompanied the card keys. “You can register for the Dental Association conference at that desk, Dr. White.” The concierge indicated a table draped in brown linen standing in a corner of the vast marble lobby. “I’ll have your luggage sent up to your room.”
Neil accepted the key card. “We’ll sign in for the conference after we get settled.” His dark hair had been touched up with gray. From his gold-framed glasses to his shoes, everything about him now said middle-aged. Something about how he was standing gave him the suggestion of a paunch.
He set a possessive hand at her waist. “Come on, honey.”
Blythe concentrated on not falling off her heels. If Neil had morphed into a middle-aged dentist, she had turned into his trophy wife. The short electric-blue skirt was bad enough. The six-inch platform heels were actively hazardous. As they followed the bellman into the elevator, Neil’s hand moved from her waist to her elbow, forestalling disaster.
Their luggage had expanded to include three suitcases and two hanging bags. The bellman smirked at her as he ushered them through the living room into the bedroom, both dripping with orchids. He carefully placed the cases on luggage racks and hung the bags in the closet.
Then he showed them how to open and close the draperies from the remote, and where to find the TV. Pointed out the takeout menu. In her role as bimbo, Blythe contented herself with fluttering what felt like two pounds of false eyelashes. Dr. White acted like a wide-eyed hick from Spokane.
Neil gave the bellman a tip that made his, “Thank you, sir,” sound deeply sincere. And then they were alone.
She flung herself backward onto the king-sized bed and kicked off her shoes. “This certainly beats the heck out of that hot-sheet hotel.”
“It’s a more luxurious prison for sure.” He made sure the night latch was on before prowling around opening and shutting drawers. He peeked into the bathroom and whistled. “Whirlpool tub,” he announced happily.
She hopped up to take a look. Double sinks, a heated towel rail, towels longer than she was tall, fluffy robes. “Ooh, nice,” she said.
“Nothing’s too good for you, Mrs. White.”
“Why did you call this a prison?” she asked.
“Because until Packard and Merritt show up on Saturday morning, we can’t leave this suite. Unless they give us the all clear.”
She chuckled. “You can go to some cool dental lectures, Dr. White. And I can go on a spouse’s tour. There’s an outing to Nordstrom and another to the Space Needle. And that’s just what I glimpsed on my way to the elevator.”
He laughed. “What do you think would happen when a real dentist got into conversation with me about composite crowns or billing systems? And what if you ran into an acquaintance? Nope, we’re going to order so much champagne and good food, and leave the do not disturb sign in place for so long, that not just the bellman will assume that I’m on a tax-write-off dirty vacation.”
She made a face. “I thought he gave me an odd look. But we’re supposed to be married.”
“Our reservations are for Dr. and Mrs. Jerome White. I had to show ID and hand over a credit card, you didn’t. I’m afraid you’re more or less my sexpot bunny. I always wanted one of those.”
“In your dreams, Drake.”
He trapped her against the wall with his arms and kissed her. She was hot all over and squirming when he raised his head to pierce her with his eyes. Even behind glasses, his gaze was intense. “In all of them, Blythe. Every. Single. One.”
She wanted to believe him. But he was a grown man. He had spent years as a soldier. This was just sex talk. Nothing worth calling him on, but nothing a sensible rabbit ought to believe. And she was a sensible rabbit, wasn’t she? Maybe not, because when he brought his mouth back, she opened hers like a sexpot bunny and returned his kiss with enthusiasm.
But it was Neil who brought their kiss to a close. “You’ve had a stressful few days,” he said. “How about a nice soak in that tub.”
“Alone?”
“Not if you insist.”
“You know that the second I get a little steam on this makeup, the eyelashes are history?” To say nothing of the foundation, three shades of eyeshadow and enough blush for ten rabbits. She had a feeling the lipstick was already gone. She touched her hair gingerly. Yup, the hair spray holding the back combing in place was as stiff as she remembered. She had some serious big hair courtesy of a stop at a salon of SPAR’s choosing.
“We’ll hide you in the closet when room service comes.”
“Are we having room service?” Breakfast seemed a long time ago. Lunch had never happened. Had to be getting on to dinnertime.
“As soon as I figure out what a middle-aged dentist from Spokane would consider an exotic aphrodisiac.”
“Whole crab,” she informed him. “And oysters to start.”
His eyes narrowed. “I thought this was your first gig as a sex toy?” The teasing note in his voice blinked out.
“Some things a girl just knows.”
“I’ll get right on it, as soon as I’ve run your bath.” He vanished into the bathroom. “Rose petals or jasmine?” he called.
“Isn’t there a more manly fragrance?”
“Seaweed? Do you want to smell like kelp?”
“Let me see.”
He was standing over the rushing tap, scrutinizing a bamboo box filled with little bottles. She took them from him. “Seaweed is an ingredient. It’s supposed to smell like an ocean breeze.”
“We both know what the breeze off the Pacific smells like. Dead fish and rotting kelp.”
She unscrewed a cap and waved the bottle around. “What do you think?”
“Whatever you prefer.”
“Rose petals it is, big boy.”
CHAPTER 30
Neil~
Blythe was splashing in a tub of bubbles, he had room service on the way. The mood was almost set. Being on the run from thugs had never been part of his fantasies, but a Marine knew how to work with what he was given.
As far as the hotel was concerned, reservations for this su
ite had been made nine months ago for Dr. and Mrs. Jerome White. If anyone hacked into the hotel database, there would be nothing to suggest otherwise.
No reason he couldn’t use this two-day interval to woo his bride. He had a lot of daydreams to make real. When Great-Grandfather had handed down Neil’s punishment after his long-standing rivalry with his cousin had ended in Randall’s death, he had only been twenty. Not that ten years of penance in any way compensated for the fact that Randall would never fly again, never court a mate, never have dragonlings. It was only right that Neil should have to delay those milestones too.
But that had not stopped him from dreaming. Lusting. And now he had the bunny naked in the bathtub. He opened the suitcases the wolves had supplied and began putting clothes away. Their own things were in the wolves’ vehicle along with their electronics and all the equipment Blythe would need on Saturday.
Dr. White’s expensive bad taste ran to plaid pants and truly unfortunate polo shirts. Mrs. White’s to lacy thongs and fuck-me heels. The fantasy of Blythe in butt floss wasn’t new, but no man was better prepared to cope with the present reality. If he could just stop drooling, he could handle this assignment fine.
Eventually he found what he was looking for. The good dentist’s laptop. He hooked up to the internet. Up popped the hotel’s website. The merchandise the hotel offered its patrons shocked a guileless son-of-Mars. Who’d have thought hotel hanky-panky was so commonplace? Or so expensive? He selected a few things. And then a few more. Blythe deserved to be happy.
A knock at the door sent him to the peephole. The two room service men had the correct uniforms and a cart. He admitted them and watched while they bustled around setting a small table with crisp linens and nestling champagne and sparkling water in ice-filled buckets.
Their knowing smiles were far better than the knife attack he had half expected. All they wanted was a chance at the big tipper. As he had expected, the bellman had talked. He met their expectations and locked up behind them before pouring Blythe a glass of champagne and cutting her some cheese. She needed to keep her strength up.
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