Taken by Surprise

by Anna Argent

  He wasn’t sure how he would manage it, but now wasn’t the time to worry about such things. When the time came, he’d do what he needed to do to see to her safety. If that meant coming back here to find more Builders to help defeat the Raide, then that’s what he’d do.

  “She checked out, didn’t she?” Radek asked, sparing her a quick glance.

  “She just needed some rest. She’ll be back.”

  “It’s kinda creepy. The lights are on, but no one’s home.”

  “Shut it, Radek. She can hear every word you say. So can I. And I’m more than willing to kick you out and make you walk.”

  Radek grinned. “No, you won’t. You’re enjoying your cuddle time with her too much, and if you kick me out, you’ll have to drive.”

  “I’m not cuddling her. I’m keeping her from hitting her head because you don’t know how to drive a fucking truck.”

  “Profanity, Talan?” Radek shook his dark head in mock disappointment. “She really has gotten to you.”

  “I swear, you’re the only warrior I know who takes the time to chat while lives hang in the balance.”

  Radek shrugged. “Life is short. Might as well enjoy the ride. Besides, my true joy comes from irritating the piss out of you. It’s how you know I love you, man.”

  “Just shut up and drive,” growled Talan.

  Radek chuckled as he headed south toward the closest campsite. There were no signs that anyone had followed them, but rush hour traffic slowed their progress to an infuriating crawl.

  After a few miles, they were able to speed up. By the time they pulled up the long, snowy driveway, Zoe still hadn’t said a word.

  Radek left the truck running as he got out. “I’ll go in and check the place out. Stay here.”

  Talan scanned the surrounding darkness for signs of danger. The whole area was blanketed in pristine white, with few signs of passage. There were no tracks in the snow except the ones the truck had made as it climbed the driveway.

  The little house had long ago been abandoned. Talan, Radek and Warrian had taken the time to find and fortify a few places where they could seek shelter and rest. There was nothing fancy about the aging, isolated home and its sagging roof, but it was equipped with perimeter alarms, weapons, food and water—everything they’d need to hide while he figured out their next step.

  “You are not dying, mister. And that’s final,” said Zoe, surprising him with her sudden outburst.

  Gone was the distant look that had previously haunted her eyes. The pink color that had faded from her cheeks was back, and there was fire in her voice that told him she hadn’t given up.

  “Welcome back,” Talan said.

  She looked around in confusion. “Where are we? And when did we stop?”

  “You shut down for a while.”

  “I what?” Some of the fear he’d seen earlier began seeping back into her gaze.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s completely normal. Builders do it all the time.”

  “Do what all the time?”

  “Go… somewhere else.”

  Some spark of recognition flared to life. He saw it in her face—in the way her eyes widened and her lips parted slightly. When she spoke, her voice was faint. “My dad used to do that all the time. He’d just… vanish, like he’d left his body. It freaked me out.” Guilt drew her brows close. “Did I freak you out?”

  “Only a little. It’s one of the reasons Builders are never left alone to protect themselves.”

  “I’ve never needed a keeper before now.”

  “You’ve never had to run for your life before now either.”

  She looked around. “Where are we?”

  “Campsite. Radek’s making sure it’s safe. Once he’s done, we’ll go in and you can get some rest.”

  “Not until I figure out what the riddle means.”

  “Still no clues?”

  She shook her head. “…under the beacon to end all fun,” she repeated the riddle they’d found inside the bank box. “It’s not ringing any bells. Sorry.”

  “It’ll come to you. Just give it some time.”

  “How much of that do we have? We’re already being hunted. They nearly caught us today.”

  “I won’t let them reach you.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  He studied her for a moment, gauging how much strain he thought she could handle before shutting down again. They couldn’t stand any more delays, but he knew better than to think she’d simply let the mater drop. “We may have a few hours. If the winds keep up, it could be longer. Our scent is being blown south right now, away from our escape route. If Krotian brings in more Dregorgs, they’re not likely to catch us soon.”

  “But eventually?”

  “Yes. Eventually they’ll pick up our trail again. But not right now.”

  She nodded and squared her slim shoulders. “Fine. A few hours. It’ll have to be long enough to figure out the riddle.”

  And if it wasn’t, he’d move her again. And again. However long it took, he’d stick by her side and make sure she was as safe as she could be under the circumstances.

  The thought didn’t even bother him until he remembered that the longer they took, the more people would die. Like it or not, he had to do whatever he could to help her find that sphere and go back where she belonged. Fast.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Zoe read the notes her father had written in the notebook. Each page knotted her stomach tighter. Each word pulled more tears from her eyes. Reading this collection of ideas, stories and warnings was like having him with her once again, just out of reach.

  She couldn’t ask any questions, but she could hear his voice in her head. His words both encouraged and frightened her. His drawings sucked her in and made her mind spin at a furious speed in an effort to keep up with his intellect.

  By the time she was done, she was exhausted and limp. She barely had the strength left in her to close the notebook cover.

  A steaming cup of hot tea was thrust in her field of vision.

  “Drink,” came Talan’s insistent command. “You’ve cried so much you’ve got to be dehydrated.”

  She didn’t have the strength to argue. The hot cup felt heavy in her shaky hands. The liquid was sweet, and the heat of it eased her raw throat. She shoved out all thought except the mechanics of getting the tea in her stomach without dropping it or burning herself. Even that was a challenge.

  Late afternoon sun shone through the windows. The day had passed, but she had no memory of it happening.

  She sat on a worn, stained couch upholstered in fabric from the sixties. Her legs were curled up under her and a blanket was tucked around her shoulders. She didn’t know how it had gotten there, but she had a good guess.

  Talan towered over her, his fists braced on his lean hips. Concern darkened his eyes and hardened his mouth. “Are you able to talk or do you need to sleep first?”

  Sleep seemed like a distant, unreachable land she would never see again. Her head was stuffed too full to even think about closing her eyes. She knew if she did, thoughts of her father would overcome her, and the tears would start falling again.

  Her head already hurt from crying. And she’d completely humiliated herself in front of Talan. Radek was nowhere to be seen, but she cared less what the shirtless man thought of her than what Talan did.

  She hated that she’d let him see her cry.

  “I can talk,” she said, her voice rough from tears.

  “Good. Start with telling me what was in the book.”

  She felt the hot prick of tears sting her eyes and had to bite the inside of her cheek to hold them back. “Ideas for inventions he wanted to build. Stories of my mother and grandparents. Warnings of war and hopes for my future on Loriah as one of the Builders.”

  “Any hint about where we can find the beacon to end all fun?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry.”

  “Was there anything in there that might help us defeat the
Raide? Weapons, defenses, strategies?”

  “There were a couple of concepts I didn’t understand completely, but they didn’t seem to be anything that important. Maybe the one to stabilize perishable food might help.”

  “Getting supplies to the front lines isn’t as hard as it once was. There are so many fewer warriors to feed. We’ve had to pull back to strategically placed fortified encampments to protect vital areas. Like our colonies of Builders.”

  Where she would one day live.

  The very concept of living in the middle of a war was so alien she had trouble wrapping her head around it even when she wasn’t exhausted and strung out with grief. It threatened to strip away what little control she’d managed to find, so she simply shoved the thought in a box, closed the lid, and ignored it.

  He pulled out his phone and glanced at it. “Radek has found the group that was tracking us. He’s leading them away.”

  “How?”

  “I gave him the shirt of mine you wore. Your scent will draw them, and Radek will make sure it’s in the wrong direction.”

  “He’s buying us time to find the other half of the sphere.” Zoe looked up at him as she uttered her guess. Lines of tension left deep grooves around his mouth. A bleak kind of helplessness hovered around him, making his usually smooth movements twitchy. He kept moving like he wanted to reach for her, but pulled back each time.

  Too bad. Touch from a man like him would have gone a long way toward clearing away all the emotional clutter in her head.

  She needed to think clearly. She needed to dissect the riddle and figure out what her father had been trying to tell her.

  “Are there any Imonite words for beacon, end or fun that might help us figure out the riddle the way we did with balance?”

  He didn’t have to answer her. She could see the shadow of failure in his eyes. “You’re exhausted. You should sleep for a while. Maybe then the answer will come to you.”

  “What about you? I at least got a couple of hours last night, which was more than you had.”

  He patted his vest. “I’m fine. I carry liquid sleep with me.”

  “Enough to share?”

  “Not with you. After the way you reacted to what was supposed to be a completely harmless tracking element, I don’t dare dose you with anything else. You should just sleep.”

  “That’s not likely to happen anytime soon—not with everything that’s slamming around in my head right now.”

  “You could try. I prepared an air mattress for you in one of the bedrooms. It’s not much, but the bedding is clean, and I heated the room.”

  No way was she going to go lay in the dark and stare at the inside of her eyelids. She knew what she’d see and how it would make her feel. Tonight had already been filled with enough grief for her to spend any more time wallowing in it.

  “Thanks, but I think I’m going to work for a while—maybe adjust the reader so that it can scan what’s on the half of the sphere we have. There might be a clue there.”

  “You’re too tired to keep going like this.”

  “Can you adjust the reader I built?” she asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Then I need to. It doesn’t matter how tired I am. Sleep isn’t coming anytime soon, and if there’s something on the part of the sphere we have that can help us, then it’s worth a shot, don’t you think?”

  “You push too hard.”

  “Work will help level me out.”

  “Or make you fall over from exhaustion.”

  He moved slightly. It was more a slight shift of muscle than it was an action, but she saw his intent to reach for her.

  She went still, unsure what he would do. She could tell from his expression that he wasn’t pleased with her decision to work, and she really didn’t know him well enough to be sure he wouldn’t do something rash, like drag her back to the room he’d prepared for her and lock her inside.

  Zoe watched him, looking for the smallest sign of his intent. She didn’t doubt for a second that he had some way to get what he wanted—what he thought was right.

  “Are you going to stop me?” she finally asked.

  “If I did, I’d hurt you. And that’s not something I can tolerate.”

  “Good,” she said. “That was the right answer.”

  He turned his back on her and walked away toward the kitchen. She didn’t know what he was doing, and two minutes after she’d laid out her work in front of her, she no longer cared. Curiosity swept her up, consuming her. She welcomed its embrace, flinging herself headfirst into the puzzle.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Talan watched her work for a few more hours before he finally lost the battle between comforting Zoe and protecting her.

  Even from across the room he could see she was beyond merely exhausted. Her hands shook as she fiddled with the data reader, trying to alter it to function in a way it wasn’t designed for. Dark smudges nestled under her eyes, giving her a fragile appearance. Even her hair looked tired, hanging limply around her shoulders without its usual gloss or bounce. There were signs of her grief still lingering in her face, even though the tears had stopped long ago.

  Reading her father’s journal had been hard on her, but she’d attacked the job with a sense of urgency that told Talan she knew the stakes.

  He wanted to hold her. Soothe her. His hands were those of a warrior, more suited for battle than tenderness, but with Zoe, it was no hardship at all to be gentle. And the couple of times he’d forgotten himself and let his harder side roam free, she’d seemed to like that too.

  As he watched her hands move, he could see the keen intellect of her Builder’s mind in action. Her fingers were long and slender, and even shaking, they were more skilled than any of the Builders he’d known.

  She paused in thought and slid a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

  He knew what the skin there felt like—how slick her hair was between his fingertips. He could recall every vivid detail of their time together, and how easy it was to let his work fall away and simply be with her.

  As memories wafted through his mind, the brightest ones were of her in his arms, the sounds she made as he claimed her. And just like that, the rest of the world dimmed in comparison to those stolen moments.

  Talan wanted her again in a way that took him by surprise. He’d had plenty of casual affairs over the years, moving on without thought or effort. But Zoe was different. He couldn’t shed her, couldn’t stop longing for her. He was hard and aching, but wanted to protect her from everything—including himself.

  The longer he was with her, the harder it was going to be to let her go. He knew that now, but it changed nothing. The job was still the same. His goal was still the same. His actions had to remain the same as well.

  The house was closed up tight, allowing little natural light to filter in. The lantern she was using to work flickered as its power center failed. Talan went to her side and laid his hand across the top of the device, feeding it energy from his cells. The light flared bright in response to the fierce emotions roiling through him. He hadn’t meant to disturb her, but she startled and looked up at him with eyes red with weariness and grief.

  Even so, she was so damn beautiful it made the breath lock in his lungs.

  She blinked her brown eyes at him in surprise as if realizing for the first time that he was in the room with her.

  “Are you ready to sleep yet?” he asked.

  She frowned at him as if his words made no sense. “Sleep?”

  “Yes, you know that thing people do when they’re about to fall over from exhaustion?”

  She either ignored his question, or it didn’t process. “I can’t quite seem to get this thing to work right. I think there’s an electrical connection that can’t be made without the second half of the sphere.”

  “Then you’ve done all you can. It’s time to rest.”

  She shook her head. “Maybe if I find some wire and access the right ports on the open side…” />
  Talan physically removed her hands from the reader and pulled her from her chair. He caged her hands against his chest and bent his knees so he could look right into her eyes. “Enough, Zoe. Let it go. You’ve done what you could with what you have. Now you have to sleep.”

  “But the riddle—”

  “Can wait.” How much longer, he wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t keep going on like this.

  She looked down at her hands. “I like it when you hold me. It makes me feel like I’m not so alone.”

  “You’re not alone. I’m here with you.”

  “You won’t be when I leave though, will you?”

  “You know I can’t. My place is here, finding the other people like you who need to come home.”

  She nodded slowly. “They’re lucky to have you come for them. Just like I was.”

  Zoe went up on tiptoe and pressed a kiss against his lips. He was sure she hadn’t meant it as anything more than a simple act of thanks, but his body took it as so much more.

  She started to pull away, but he couldn’t let her. Not when he had her right where he wanted her.

  He tightened his grip on her hands, pinning her in place. There was a flicker of awareness in her eyes, and an instant later, her body melted against his, accepting his hold. Welcoming it.

  That small act of surrender inflamed him, making his need flare and his more animalistic urges rise up.

  He grabbed the back of her head with his free hand and held her still while he returned the kiss. Only instead of a chaste, swift peck on the lips, this was much, much more.

  He forced her mouth open with his tongue and plunged inside, tasting the sweet fire she’d been depriving him of. Distantly, he heard his own groan of need ripple out in the quiet space. She quivered in his grip.

  The only light here was the pinkish glow of the lantern. He’d done his best to heat the space, but it was still chilly. Not that he was feeling anything but the heat of his physical need for this woman. Still, he wondered whether the tremor that shook her was from cold or her own building desire.