“Well, you need to pull yourself together, baby, because you and I are going somewhere.” He kissed the top of her head softly as she stiffened.
“I can’t go anywhere with you, Marcus,” she replied in a hard voice. “Are you crazy?”
He shifted on the bed and let her slide from his arms as he sat up. “Not at all. And you have to come with me. Branson will be waiting. We’re going to see your father.”
Tait, who had been rolling to the other side of the bed to get up, froze in a half reclined position. “No.”
Her hoarse reply drove Marcus to his feet. He walked around the bed and reached down to pull her up. “Yes. He has answers to this puzzle and the best way to get them is to show him something he wants. You.”
She shook her head, her eyes wide with apprehension. “He thinks I’m dead.”
Marcus smiled. “Then he’ll be happy to see you’re alive. Now, into the shower.”
They showered together in a stall so tiny that Marcus instantly loved it because he couldn’t move without brushing against Tait’s naked body. Once they’d dried off and dressed, they actually drank some tea, and Marcus made Tait eat something. Her fragility worried him. Not just the fragility of her psyche but her body. He hoped that seeing her father would help strengthen her, because he knew if it came down to a fight, he and Branson would need her.
As he watched her load the inside of the Alizar cloak in preparation for leaving her cottage, Marcus decided that he needed her for pretty much everything. Not just as backup in a fight, although it was good to know that her skills were up to it. Today would be traumatic for both her and her father. But if everything went according to his plans, their meeting with the General would set them on the path to clearing up the past.
Unbreak Me (Spellbound Treasure)
Unbreak Me (Spellbound Treasure)
Chapter Seven
Estep Realm
Falconaire City
The Avenal District didn’t look dangerous. It had the ability to appear as a charming shopping area with cafes and quaint shops while hiding the worst criminal activities in the city. Tait had been there countless times while training for the Elite. Once she’d become part of Marcus’s unit though, she’d ceased getting assignments that brought her to that area. The skills of their unit were reserved for much bigger problems.
Tait trailed after Marcus, the Alizar cloak wrapped around her, obscuring her face and body. Magical wards obscured her scent to help mask her true identity. She walked one pace back and to the left of Marcus. He was right handed and should an attack occur, he would draw his side arm from that side. Despite his accuracy with a laser, Tait preferred to be on his left side, just in case.
For herself, Tait carried an entire arsenal inside the cloak. A stripped down assault rifle, an assortment of throwing stars and knives, and a laser side arm identical to Marcus’s. Not to mention a garrote and a couple of gas grenades. Hand to hand combat wasn’t possible while wearing the cloak, but Tait intended no one get close enough to try, which is why she carried the arsenal.
To an outsider, they appeared completely innocuous. A Pythian Elite warrior and his whore, her face obscured by the Alizar cloak to keep other men from falling beneath her spell. An ordinary enough pair especially in Avenal where most men were accompanied by women who were not their wives and girlfriends. Even walking behind him instead of beside him suited the picture they portrayed of a man and his mistress. A person would have to be more powerful than she and Marcus combined to know that she was not as she appeared.
Marcus entered a small trattoria with quaint murals of vineyards painted on the walls. Branson sat at a table in the back, facing the entire café. A half finished bowl of pasta and a barely touched glass of wine lent credence to the image of him as a casual diner. Tait, who knew Branson’s spells as well as she knew her own, could see his side arm lying on his thigh beneath the table. To anyone else, the gun appeared holstered at his side.
Instead of sitting down when they reached Bran, he stood up, slipping his side arm back in place with a surreptitious movement of his hand. He and Marcus greeted each other casually then turned toward the door. They both gave the appearance of being only peripherally aware of her trailing them, but she knew it for a ruse. Both of them had every sense trained on her and in Marcus she could easily see the worried, protective expression in his eyes.
Bran led them down the street to a jeweler’s. They stopped in the recessed doorway, their posture that of two men perusing the pieces in the display window. In reality, Tait saw Bran conjure a portal, cloaked by Marcus’s masking spell. She had already been warned not to use her magic in public unless absolutely necessary for survival or she would have lent her own power to their work.
In moments, Bran stepped through the portal, looking for all the world as if he’d stepped into the jeweler’s shop. Marcus shot her hard glance, and she stepped forward into the portal, feeling his body brush hers as he crowded in behind her. They stepped out of the portal onto the narrow access street that ran along one side of her father’s house in the Chenault district of Falconaire City. A tall metal gate broke the line of the ten foot wall that enclosed the house and grounds.
Swiftly, Tait strode to the gate and pressed her palm to the lock. It snapped open and she swept inside, Marcus and Bran so close on her heels that the Alizar cloak whipped around their calves. The gate closed and instantly, two dogs burst from the trees, running at them. Tait dropped to her knees and they ran up to her, trying to lick her face beneath the covering of the cloak, their bodies quivering with excitement.
Hot tears spilled over as she hugged them, murmuring their names. She hadn’t been sure they would still be here. After all, animals died. But the two guard dogs who had been her constant companions when she'd stayed at her father’s house, still lived and, impervious to the magic she was wrapped in, still remembered her scent.
She rose to her feet, sniffling a little behind the cloak. A warm hand touched her shoulder and she turned her head, looking up into Marcus’s warm eyes. He nudged her and with a final pat to the dogs’ heads, they moved toward the trees that surrounded the house. The dogs trailed behind them as she led the way toward a side entrance.
A thick wooden door set into the warm stone side of the house yielded to her palm print and in moments they were inside. Tait reached up to pull off the Alizar cloak, but Marcus stayed her hand. Trembling from tension as well as anticipation, she made her way toward her father’s study, the place he would most likely be based on the time of day.
The door stood open and as Tait approached it, Marcus grabbed her arm, shoving her between him and Branson. Inside the study, she saw her father standing beside his desk, a Pythian Elite laser side arm pointed at them. She shouldn’t have been surprised, but she was. Her father might be retired now, but he would always be a soldier.
“Dad?”
The word burst from her mouth before she could stop it. Choked with emotion, shaken with fear, the thread of sound turned her father to stone. His craggy face became a mask of pain.
“What the hell are you doing here, Major?” he rasped, ignoring her, and focusing on Marcus.
“You tell me, General,” Marcus replied smoothly. “Are you going to acknowledge how we got in here? Or just focus on why we’re here?”
Tait noticed Branson edging away from them as her father remained watching her and Marcus. She knew Bran would try to get behind her father or at least into a position away from where she and Marcus stood.
“I don’t know how you managed to use Tait’s prints to get in here, but I imagine if anyone had the ability to do that, it would be you, Major.” The General’s words were cool and even but Tait heard the pain that underscored them. “How long have you been back? A week? Two? You haven’t even been to her grave.”
“Franklin, she’s not dead,” Marcus said softly.
A muscle twitched in the General’s jaw. The hand holding his side arm shook very slightly. It was all the o
pening Branson needed. Moving with the speed of a striking snake, he cast a spell at the gun which sent it spinning from the General’s hand even as Bran came up behind him and pointed his own firearm at the base of the older man’s skull.
Tait gasped. “Bran, no!”
The General chuckled weakly. “Very good, Branson. I taught you that spell myself, didn’t I?”
“You did indeed, sir. And I thank you for it. It’s a nifty little trick I use on occasion always with props to you.” Branson’s eyes glittered with a spark of humor.
The General turned toward Tait. “Take the cloak off, my girl. Let me see you,” he said softly. “I wondered if this day would ever come. Without bodies as proof of their deaths, I’d hoped Marcus and Branson had not been killed. I knew that if they weren’t dead, they’d find their way back here and find you. I could not look for you myself. If I had, the whole realm would have known you were alive.”
Shocked, Tait raised a shaking hand to pull the cloak off. “You knew that body wasn’t me?”
The General made a rude noise. “Of course, I knew. The hair was just a shade too bright. I figured you’d talked that Molly Dare into coloring her hair before you torched the prison. But I had to give you a shot at freedom the only way I could, by telling them her body was yours.”
Tait tossed the cloak onto a chair, the weapons in it making a clanking sound. “All this time you’ve known I was alive?” she asked hoarsely.
Her father nodded. “Who do you think sent the heartstone to Spellbound Treasures?”
With a choked cry, Tait flew across room into her father’s arms. She hugged him with a bruising grip, frowning over his shoulder at Branson, who lowered his weapon. Tears threatened as her father’s love washed over her. She’d been alone for so long, her heart broken, her soul shredded. In a brace of days, she’d regained her father, the man she loved, and one of her best friends. Reaction set in and she began to shake uncontrollably.
The General gasped and led her carefully to the sofa. She wrapped her arms around herself, trying to stop the shakes but it was impossible. She stared pleadingly up at Marcus. He holstered his gun and sat beside her, taking her in his arms.
“Get her a brandy,” he said gruffly to her father.
He held her tightly, stroking his hands over her hair. When the General handed him a snifter of brandy he held it to her lips and she sipped cautiously, feeling the burn of the alcohol. After a few minutes, she calmed and the tremors subsided. She looked up to find her father watching her with a worried, pained expression. She knew instantly what he thought.
“I killed them all, Dad. Except Marlowe. Everyone who hurt me has paid. He’s the only one I couldn’t get,” she told him simply.
“And he’s mine.”
Marcus’s soft words shouldn’t have made her feel special, loved. Yet, they did. And her father’s expression of grim satisfaction did as well.
“You’re here for answers I suppose,” the General said on a sigh as he took the armchair closest to her. “I got as much information as I possibly could once I was out of the coma. I have an operative, a secret one, who helped me. He still does. He’s the reason I expected your arrival. The palm locks have never been changed because I knew all along you were alive, Tait. I hoped you’d try to come here, but you never did.”
“I thought that you thought I was dead,” she pointed out.
Her father nodded. “I suspected as much. And I also suspected that your training wouldn’t let you come here. It probably wasn’t safe. Enough time has passed that we’re no longer at the forefront of their minds.”
“Whose minds?” Marcus asked, leaning forward, his gaze seeking her father’s.
The General grimaced. “Bond and Marlowe. Despite the Pythian Elite code of honor, I can’t say that I’m happy you dealt with Price as you did, Tait, but I’m certainly glad the man is dead.”
Tait noticed that Marcus’s mouth tightened at the mention of Price but neither he nor Branson said anything. She reached out and patted her father’s hand.
“I was out of my mind when I killed him, Dad. I wasn’t thinking of the code. I probably shouldn’t have done it quite the way that I did, but I don’t regret taking my revenge,” she said quietly. “Everything that came after…” She stopped and swallowed hard, pushing down her memories. “None of it mattered because I thought Marcus was dead. And I learned a very important lesson from all of it.”
She could feel the weight of their gazes on her as she whispered, “I’m not a soldier first. I’m not an assassin first. My first duty is not to the Elite. Not to this government. Not even to you, Dad. I am a woman first. A woman who loves someone to the exclusion of all else. He is always first with me. In my thoughts and in my heart. I won’t ever make the mistake of thinking otherwise in the future.”
Hard fingers threaded with hers, clasping her hand tightly.
“We don’t have much time,” Marcus said. “We need to exchange information so we can end Tait’s nightmare. I promised her I would fix this, General. We all want our lives back.”
“Then we’re all on the same page, Major.”
Tait watched as her father leaned back in his chair and stroked the arms absently as he spoke. It was a gesture she remembered from her childhood.
“What I know of this conspiracy isn’t all first hand, but it’s irrelevant how I came by the information,” he told them. “Price and Marlowe were half brothers. Both owed Bond a debt as he helped them achieve the positions they held. Apparently, Bond likes putting people into positions where they are useful to him in the future and whose gratitude makes them his pawns. Unfortunately, the brothers had ambitions of their own that Bond didn’t know about.”
“Price and Marlowe decided to have us killed, you poisoned, and Tait imprisoned so that they could both move more easily up the political ladder. And Marlowe also wanted Tait for his deviant sexual games.” Branson picked up the tale, giving the bare facts in a quick emotionless tone. “But Bond didn’t know about their machinations and it fell to him to try to cover up as best he could when Tait discovered Price was behind our ambush and killed him. Price paid for his ambition and inability to cover his tracks with his life.”
“At first Marlowe was scared shitless that his brother’s plans had ended in his death, but then Bond used Tait’s act of revenge against her. I was no help because I was busy trying not to die from their poison,” her father said gruffly. “They pushed everything through so quickly that no one noticed much. Price’s death held the public in thrall especially since they did not know the revenge angle and the code of honor. It was touted in all the papers that Tait had gone crazy and tortured Price to death because he’d been the commander who had sent the unit out and subsequently to their deaths.”
“So the question now is, how do we get Bond and Marlowe?” Tait asked.
Silence fell for the space of a few seconds. Then her father shook his head. “I don’t know and they’re only part of the equation. Before all this started, I had begun to get an inkling that something in the Ministry was off. The missions they wanted to send the Pythian Elite on seemed almost contrived, manufactured. The outcomes weren’t quite what you’d expect. Rather like the one you two were sent on. We’d never had trouble with the Mellonians before. Suddenly, they’re hostile and negotiations were begun. The Prime Minister became very visible in the media dealing with all the little political crisis.”
“Are you saying the third arm is the Prime Minister himself?” Bran burst out in shock.
Her father shrugged. “I don’t know. But we can’t rule it out. Currently, we’ve no idea who is pulling Bond’s strings. Certainly someone higher. Certainly it could be the Prime Minister.”
“Right now, we can’t even get Bond. The ties to him are loose at best. If we reveal the documents from Price on his hard drive, we admit to hacking the Elite’s private network, which is cause for court-martial, and we don’t need to be exposed yet. We just don’t have enough to pin him with,�
� Marcus rasped angrily. “But we have plenty of evidence against Marlowe and the best of it is right here.”
Tait saw her father’s eyes glint with anger. “He couldn’t resist putting his hands and his magic on you, could he?”
She shook her head slowly. “No,” she answered in a grim voice. “And he took great pride in his work too.”
“He can’t know you’re alive, Tait,” Branson said suddenly. “If he knew, you’d be marked for death.”
She laughed a little, the sound rusty and derisive. “Aren’t I that already?”
Her father ignored her remark and looked at Marcus. “We need a plan to expose him. What do you have in mind?”
Marcus leaned forward, his face alight with devious pleasure. “I thought you’d never ask, sir.”
For a moment, Tait basked in the familiar. Her father, Marcus and Branson going over the fine points of a plan, plotting and working out all the angles. She wanted them to succeed. Actually, she needed it. Being with Marcus, coming home to see her father, all conspired to make her long for her old life once more. Except, if given the choice, she wouldn’t take her old job back. She wanted a different life, one with Marcus and children and peace.
As she listened to their plan, she realized she had one mission left in her, and if it went according to Marcus’s plans, at the end she could have what her heart desired. She stuck her hand into the pocket of her pants and clutched the heartstone. The runes burned into her skin but she barely noticed.
One last mission. Either she would die trying to be free or all her dreams would come true. All she had to do was follow Marcus’s plan.
Unbreak Me (Spellbound Treasure)
Unbreak Me (Spellbound Treasure)
Chapter Eight
Estep Realm
Falconaire City
The Citadel – Ministry Office Complex
Unbreak Me (Spellbound Treasure) Page 7
