Dragon Mated: Paranormal Romance

by Amy Faye

  They were searching. And they were searching fairly quickly. She hoped that their hiding spot was going to be good enough. But something told her that she wasn't going to be that lucky. Something told her that she was going to have to watch out for herself.

  "Mrs. Grant?"

  "What are we waiting for?"

  She'd planned on telling the woman to follow her up onto the roof. From there, Brianna could watch out. It was a risk, the risk being that she could be seen from a distance, if she could see herself. But there was nothing else that she could do. It wasn't like staying holed up inside forever was a viable option.

  But the question stuck in her craw. What were they waiting for?

  She knew the answer, but it didn't fit right. They were waiting for Nick. He was alright. He was smart, and he'd gotten this far. But at the same time… no, she wasn't going to consider it.

  "We're waiting for backup to arrive."

  "Your partner?"

  Brianna was glad that her pacing had turned her back on the woman, because it meant that, hopefully, she wouldn't see the grimace that Brianna pulled at the question. Yes, her partner.

  "Backup. Yes, hopefully my partner as well."

  "You do care about him. Very deeply. I can tell. I've got a knack for these sort of things."

  Brianna took a deep breath, counted out her tenth step and turned back. "He's my partner," she said. "Of course I care."

  "Not like that. I mean, you–care about him." She put extra emphasis on the word 'care' like it would take on some special meaning. But did she care about him? Brianna wasn't sure herself.

  He was good in the sack, she knew that much. And of course, there was also the fact that he was the only connection she had that might solve this case. It had gone way too deep now to back out. If she was lucky, then maybe there would be some sort of break, and she'd be able to pin it all on Grant.

  That way she could excuse taking his wife. It really would be protective custody, then. It only looked like kidnapping from his perspective, but the police often do things that perpetrators don't like. It's one of the reasons you don't break the law. That way she could keep her job.

  But as far as helping Nick? Making sure that he got what he wanted out of it? The thought hadn't really occurred to her. At least, she told herself that it hadn't occurred to her, and that was practically the same thing. Either way, she wasn't ready to make a decision.

  "I told you, he's just my partner," she said after a pause that was far too long to be taken at face value.

  "Of course. Whatever you say, Detective Hunt." Lana Grant winked at her, which started Brianna's heart pumping again. That woman needed to be kept in an armory for the world's protection.

  "Once backup gets here, we schedule a meeting. We'll get your husband back, I promise."

  Lana's eyes shut. "I always knew he'd get himself into trouble one of these days."

  "What do you mean?"

  Lana shrugged. "I don't mean anything, really. Just a feeling. A feeling that he wanted the money more than he wanted to stay safe."

  "Oh," was Brianna's reply. "Nothing concrete, though?"

  "Not really. Businessmen can have peculiar acquaintances, though, so I guess that's part of it."

  "Peculiar how?"

  "Just… you know. Peculiar. The only thing you really need, in business, is a little smarts and the guts to do what you know needs to be done, right?"

  "I wouldn't know," Brianna answered, but she could already feel the cogs turning in her head. Could already hear the cogs turning in Mrs. Grant's head, as well, it felt like.

  "So sometimes, you get men who go into business after leading, shall we say, a hard life. They get a little money and they decide to go straight. Or, straight enough to look good for the police, no offense."

  "None taken. Not my department."

  Nick should have gotten here a long time ago, Brianna thought. She had a nervous feeling in the pit of her gut that just wouldn't go away, no matter how much things seemed to be going smoothly, and the only thing that was going to fix it was a near-seven-foot tall smart-ass walking through the door.

  He'd been gone too long. He should have been back sooner. Or better yet, he shouldn't have left in the first place.

  Twenty-Nine

  Brianna settled into her seat on the roof and looked over at Lana Grant, who seemed as satisfied here as she had inside. Perhaps even more, now that she could sit and lay back against a wall a bit, letting the sun fall on her. The Detective–or, one-time Detective, if this didn't go exactly as planned–waited. And waited.

  And then, to her disappointment, nothing happened. There were two things that could have happened. That howling, ever nearer, could have come right over the horizon and found her, or even better, passed her by. It didn't. The next hour it was closer still. No more than a mile now, she knew.

  The other thing that could have happened, the one that she would have vastly preferred, would have been Nick showing up. Nick Roe might have been her only connection to a murder, and he sure hadn't told her that he didn't do it. But he was also the only one who had told her that at the end of it she was going to be alright.

  Grant's anger hadn't exactly been helpful, but at least she thought–she hoped–that she'd be able to survive it. Was that going to be enough? She didn't know.

  Well, there was only one answer, she decided. Only one way to make things move forward. She clicked the buttons on the burner and a minute later her personal cell buzzed. She pulled it out, making sure to do it in extra-big motions so that nobody could have missed it. Thankfully, Lana didn't miss it.

  "Fuck," she said, louder than she'd needed to. But there was no way that half-measures were at all helpful.

  "What's wrong?" Lana's voice held panic. That was good. That was what Brianna had hoped for.

  "They made us."

  "What? How?"

  Brianna pushed herself up off the ledge and started hurrying towards the door, calling an explanation over her shoulder as she moved. The explanation was simple: she didn't know, but her guys had just messaged her to tell her that they were dead in the water if they stayed where they were. Lana didn't question it.

  "Get in the car, we're going to move. Here–" Brianna took her cap off and pressed it onto Mrs. Grant's head. She was so eastern European, and yet with that pout she looked good even in a silly-looking baseball cap. It wasn't remotely fair. Complete bullshit, really. Brianna didn't have time to worry about it. She'd have to make sure that in spite of herself, she didn't try to find the time.

  They set off driving. Lana chewed on her thumb and kept her head down like she'd been told. She really was a very convenient kidnapping victim. If they'd picked up some fiery bitch, well… Brianna told herself that it didn't much matter how she acted. They'd have made it work in either case, because she didn't have any other choice.

  But if she'd been a cast-iron bitch then it would certainly not have helped. And it would have soured the hell out of her good looks. That thought almost made Brianna wish that she was dealing with a woman whose heart was hard and black and cold. At least that way, she'd be able to stop thinking of the woman as uncomfortably perfect.

  They headed east again. Past the howling. Past whoever searched. Brianna hoped to hell that she wasn't giving herself away by doing it. It was entirely possible that anyone they passed could be out looking for them. Part of the search. But that was a gamble she had to take.

  There was someone back this way that she needed to find. Her partner, Lana Grant kept calling him. Because he was a cop, and she was a cop. At least, as far as Mrs. Grant knew, he was a cop. There was no reason to set her straight on the issue. It was easier if they didn't have to try to explain the entire politics of why you'd go out to get someone into 'protective custody' with a civilian. It sounded a lot more like 'kidnapping' when you weren't careful to use the right words.

  "Is everything okay? I don't want anything to happen–"

  "Everything's fine," Brianna answer
ed. "We're moving, that's all."

  "But, back where we came?"

  Brianna frowned. "My–uh. My partner, he should have been back by now."

  "So we're going to look for him?"

  Brianna looked over at her with a look that could have been more charitable. "We are, yes."

  Lana took a deep breath. "Good. I was worried about him."

  "You don't need to worry about him," Brianna answered, scanning the horizon for cars as well as for big sons of bitches walking along the side of the road trying to follow behind. The car beeped. Low gas. "He can take care of himself, trust me."

  "If you say so, Detective," she said. Brianna shot her a glare, which the woman answered by smiling and winking. She knew her business, that much was clear. Brianna hated it. The woman knew how people worked. Better than Brianna ever had.

  Then again, that wasn't much of a challenge. Brianna was more at home in her own head. And when she was inside her own head, she was more at home when she was at her limits. That was good, because she had already found them with this damned case so many times that she wasn't sure that there were any real limits.

  She flicked the turn signal and started to ease the car back over to the right through traffic. When she pulled off the highway it was only a half-mile to the nearest gas station, in the middle of fuck-all nowhere.

  The sound of a dog–or, this far out, very possibly a wolf–howling set her skin crawling. She swiped her bank card and jammed the nozzle into her fuel tank, pulled the handle and prayed for it to hurry. That hadn't been far at all.

  A sound behind her, too close, set her whirling, pulling her pistol in a smooth motion. She took a step back, too, creating distance that she'd need if they decided to play rough.

  "Not happy to see me?" Nick looked like hell, but he was alive. She frowned. "You stupid son of a bitch. I've been waiting for you for so long I thought you might have let some idiot kill you."

  Thirty

  It was hard setting up a meeting with a guy who owned half the cops in the state, and probably almost as much of the property that was in-between uses at the moment. No matter what you did, no matter where you went, you were on his home turf and you were at the disadvantage. Brianna knew it, and she knew it well enough to figure that there wasn't much point in trying to get around it.

  She rubbed her forehead. Twenty minutes left. They had to stay out of sight that long, at least. She could manage it, but it might be close. Maybe too close, she was afraid. They were left to hope that things weren't as bad as she feared, but that felt unlikely. In fact, it felt downright optimistic. But optimism was what she had to work with. It was about the only asset she had at the moment, with the exception of a badly-bruised werewolf in her back seat.

  He was laid stretched out, on one side his knees pressing against the door. On the other side, his head rested on the armrest of the opposite door. How anyone could be so damned big, she didn't know, but if he found the cramped conditions unpleasant, he didn't say anything about them.

  "Okay, what's the plan?"

  "The plan? Trade, I guess."

  "Yeah, I guess that's about right."

  Brianna let out a breath. They were going to have to let Mrs. Grant in on things sooner or later, but the longer that 'later' kept getting pushed off, the better. Eventually they might come up with a better explanation than 'we lied' but it hadn't come to her in spite of trying to think for as long as she could.

  "And what if things get rough?"

  "Easy," Brianna said. She'd thought this part through, at least. "I'll be waiting back here with my pistol if things go really sideways, but if you need to make a quick exit, I'll be in the car. Engine running."

  He seemed to accept that. "You're going to play your part properly? No hero stuff?"

  He let out a snort. "Who do you think you're talking to here? Of course I am. I can be reliable when I feel like it."

  "Just remember you said that when the time comes."

  "Hey–fuck you," he growled.

  Lana spoke up. "What if they hurt him?" Brianna raised an eyebrow. She'd almost forgotten about their passenger. She'd been quiet since Nick had arrived. "You don't think they would, do you?"

  "Not likely," Brianna answered, hoping that Nick would have the good sense to keep his mouth shut regarding his thoughts on the matter. "Your husband, he's… well, you know. He's as important as anyone. Nobody's going to hurt him. I don't know that they could, if they wanted to do it directly."

  "You don't understand. Frank, he's very–he's sensitive, you know. Not like the papers make him sound."

  Brianna's eyes flicked down to the clock. Five minutes. "I'm sure he is. They all are. But he's tough, too. You said it yourself. All you really need to get by in his line is the know-how to get yourself situated, and the guts to do what needs to be done. You think a guy like that would let someone beat on him?"

  "No," Lana answered, though she didn't seem convinced. She was right to doubt, Brianna knew. She'd hoped to get this done, and get the White Eyes off her back. Off Nick's back. But he was just as likely as any of them to screw things up. He'd take the shot if he got one, and it was up to her to decide whether or not to step in when it happened. Brianna still didn't know whether or not she was going to.

  She had a good reason to stop him. She needed him. She needed someone who could corroborate any of her story. Even with him, his word against Frank Grant's wasn't going to be a good case.

  But with Nick gone, there wouldn't even be a trial. Not really. She'd be summarily taken out back and taken care of. Simple as that. The pressure would be immeasurable on her bosses to make sure that she didn't work again. There wasn't any way at all to stand up against that alone.

  Her best option after this, if things didn't go exactly right and Frank didn't hold up his end of things–something she knew he wouldn't do if Nick decided to get riled up–was to leave town in a hurry. Nick seemed to know a lot about leaving town in a hurry, and he could help her settle into her new life. Hell, maybe–she allowed herself a moment–maybe they could start something together.

  Maybe she'd find out that he really was important to her, like Lana said.

  Brianna was never the marrying type. She wasn't the type to get men interested in anything beyond the physical. That was fine by her, most of the time. She was used to it.

  But with Nick, it might not have been anything more, she didn't know. But she knew she wanted to find out if she got the opportunity.

  "Okay, game faces on. You ready, Mrs. Grant?"

  "I'm ready," she said. "Let's go."

  Brianna eased the car out of park and out of the field, onto the road. She needed to calm down. Everything would work itself out in the end, or it wouldn't. But this was going to be the moment of truth, and when it was done, she'd be able to figure out what to do with the fallout.

  As long as she could think on her feet, as long as she could figure out what the next thing to do was, she could keep going. It had gotten her this far, and it would get her farther.

  If she had found herself in that nightmare scenario that kept flashing through her mind–trapped in the God damn desert, her entire squad dead, and no backup coming, then she knew what she'd do.

  She'd do what she had to do. That was all she could do, and it was what was going to keep her going when things got hard. Which, she knew, was going to happen in about five minutes.

  Thirty-One

  Nick got out of the car first. That was the way they'd set it up. It was the smartest way, because if things were going to go sideways fast, then it meant that they had some hope, at least, of being able to get away. They hoped that Lana meant enough to her husband that he wasn't going to put her at risk by attacking them when she was sitting right in the car.

  At least, he wasn't going to do it in a way that endangered his wife. And from this distance, it all endangered his wife. Obviously, that hadn't been the way they'd discussed it. They'd talked about it from the opposite perspective–it was smartest tha
t they get him out first, because he wasn't driving, and because the cops were more expendable than she was. This was their job, to take risks.

  "God–is he going to be alright?"

  The door shut. "Yeah, he'll be alright."

  Nick opened her door next. The look of genuine, complete confusion on Lana Grant's face almost stung Brianna's heart. But she wasn't in a position to have feelings about what they were doing. What they were doing had to be done. That was the way it had to be and there wasn't anything right or wrong about it. They just had to deal with it.

  She shut her eyes as Lana let out a yelp when Nick grabbed her. Real loud. "Ow!" Then the door shut behind her. Nick wasn't being rough with her. Brianna opened her eyes again. He knew how to be rough. Sometimes real rough. He'd gotten real rough with Lana Grant when they'd picked her up. He'd gotten pretty rough with Brianna, and she wasn't complaining.

  No, what he was being was firm, but surprise seemed to be adding pain where it wasn't actually anywhere to be found in her body.

  She let out a breath, rolled the windows down. The car was still running. She eased it forward just a little bit. Enough to make sure that it would still move, to ensure that she was going to be able to get the fuck out of there at the first sign of trouble.

  She heard something off in the distance. Something like the sound footsteps on grass, off to her left. The distance was far enough that she didn't worry about needing to rush off. Instead, she turned her head and looked.

  Everyone knew what Frank Grant looked like. He'd been on the cover of Time Magazine twice–in the last twelve months alone, in fact. Another two times back in the eighties. Since then he'd done television, he'd done movies, he'd done about everything someone could hope for.

  So when she saw him, she wasn't surprised, and she didn't question who it was. But the man beside him looked almost familiar as well, and that did surprise her.