by Julie Leto
Paschal forced his eyes open and looked down at his chest, expecting to see an anvil pressing down on him. He inhaled and exhaled in a steady rhythm, hoping the tight sensation was merely an aftereffect of seeing Farrow Pryce not only alive, but using the Dresden Sword to wield dark magic.
Despite the pain, Paschal pushed himself up. Gemma was now pacing the room, her fingers jabbing into her hair, mercilessly tugging on black and blond spikes.
“Did you see him?” she said, whirling on him. “He’s supposed to be dead. You told me he dove off a cliff in California. You told me he died!”
Slowly, the weight on his chest lifted. He wasn’t having a heart attack. Much better news than the fact that Gemma’s ex-boyfriend and Paschal’s nemesis had survived what should have been a fatal fall.
“Seems I was wrong,” he replied.
Gemma slid onto the floor. Not for the first time since she’d convinced him to join her, she revealed her rare but unmistakable vulnerability. The cool seductress she’d pretended to be as Farrow’s mistress had melted away. At this moment, she was raw, authentic—and afraid.
Until he’d proved himself capable of surviving a drop off a California cliff, Farrow Pryce had not scared Gemma. Like every other man in her life, he’d been a means to an end. Now he was a genuine threat.
Neither she nor Paschal had anticipated that Farrow was still alive—and worse, using the Dresden Sword to attack Rafe and, shockingly, Mariah Hunter.
“He can do magic,” Gemma said. “Not piddling psychic shit. Real magic. He made that pyramid thing shake.”
Paschal closed his eyes again, but the images of potential destruction he saw there left him quaking with nearly as much force as the Mayan temple. If ever there existed a man with no business controlling Rogan’s dark magic, it was Farrow Pryce.
“He took the Dresden Sword with him when he went over that cliff six months ago. The police searched and found nothing,” he told her.”The magic must have saved his life.”
“How?”
Paschal frowned. The possibilities were both endless and terrifying.
“We’ll sort that out on our way,” he said, hoisting himself to his feet, then reaching out to Gemma to help her off the floor. He glanced longingly at the papers he’d scattered on the dining room table. He’d found references to items the K’vr had listed as missing—items associated with Lord Rogan’s legacy that they did not yet possess. He desperately wanted to explore that register more thoroughly, but their time in the manse had just run out.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“To find my son,” Paschal replied, dragging her with him as he assembled what he could afford to take. They were still traveling light. He’d have to choose carefully.
Gemma shook herself free. “No! I told you. I’m cooperating only with you. I don’t trust anyone else, especially not your son.”
Paschal bit back a curse. “Heard the one about the pot and the kettle lately?”
She narrowed her gaze. “I haven’t lied to you. Not once. Can you say the same?”
Their standoff was a waste of time. He shoved the register of lost items into a leather portfolio, then tossed it by the entrance to the secret tunnel they’d planned to use for their escape. “Look, you don’t have to trust Ben, and frankly, you don’t have to trust me. But I’m going to Texas to find my son.”
“Why?”
“Because that woman under attack by Farrow Pryce is Mariah Hunter. She used to love my son, and I’m betting that’s the connection that is about to get her killed.”
***
Ben flipped his cell phone shut and glanced at Cat, sleeping soundly amid a tangle of snowy white sheets. As he suspected, Mariah had screwed up, and now he knew, generally speaking, where she was. But as much as Ben and Cat had planned to go after Mariah at some point, riding to her rescue was never a scenario they’d considered.
But his father had been very clear. He was on his way to Texas, with Gemma Von Roan in tow, but traveling would take them a day at the most. Mariah was in a life-or-death situation in a remote part of the Mexican jungle, which Paschal recognized from markings on a nearby Mayan structure. She could also be in Guatemala or Belize, but Mexico was where she’d lost those coins—and Ben had no doubt that the pressure from Hector Velez had sent her back to Chiapas.
And though he was closer here in Texas, he might already be too late. Paschal hadn’t been sure if the vision of Mariah being shot at—or shot—was the past, present or future. But positioned as he was, Ben had to respond. He had his pilot’s license and, thanks to Alexa Chandler, a plane. All he needed now was a plan—and for that, he needed Cat’s cooperation.
Chiapas was vast and Mariah could be anywhere. But Cat could find her. Cat had Mariah’s watch, and while she’d tried and failed to forge a connection and pinpoint Mariah’s location before, the situation had changed. If they took to the air over the jungle, closer proximity might help Cat key into his ex’s psychic energy.
With a mew of contentment, Cat turned over. Bare breasted and beautiful, she made his mouth water. Her dark skin contrasted against the sheets, enhancing her sweet curves. He knew every rise and indentation intimately, but damn if he didn’t want to touch her, taste her, feel her over and over again. His body ached for her—but even more, her very presence made his heart hurt.
Because of the search for his uncles, they’d been together for over a year. She knew him inside and out and she stayed with him anyway. She loved him.
Not that she’d said the words. Neither one of them had crossed that hazardous suspension bridge just yet, even after all this time. And though Ben liked to think they didn’t need a trite phrase to bind them together, he knew that just like Mariah in the jungle, Ben was running out of time. He didn’t need to share her psychic power to know Cat craved commitment. He just didn’t know how he could honestly make any promises until this madness with his family was resolved.
And if Paschal was right, they were close to retrieving yet another Forsyth brother.
If they hurried.
If Cat would help.
Never one to shy away from danger for long, he slid onto the bed and woke her from her late-afternoon nap with a long, languorous kiss.
“Mm,” she said, shifting the sheet down so he could salivate over every inch of her incredible naked body. “That’s certainly better than an alarm clock.”
She slid her hand down his arm, took his hand and guided it toward her sex, which he knew would be wet and ready for him.
Uttering the strongest oath in his repertoire, he pulled away. “Sorry, babe. There’s no time.”
Her lazy eyelids flashed open as she turned to the clock and groaned. “You have an appointment I don’t know about?”
“Actually,” he said, “yes.”
She grabbed the sheet and sat bolt upright. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”
“It’s hell living with a psychic,” he groused.
“I don’t have to be psychic to read the look on your face. What’s wrong?”
“So much, sweetheart, I don’t know where to begin.”
***
Rafe fulfilled his promise. Using the last of his energy, he drew the searchers away from the fallen tree trunk, giving Mariah just enough time to sneak out of her hiding place and circle around to the back of the pyramid. She considered taking the chance to really escape, but where would she go? She had no supplies. No flashlight or water or machete. No means to exit the country. And since she couldn’t risk carrying the stone with her in case she got caught, she couldn’t leave Rafe behind, either. The shaking pyramid proved that Pryce character possessed some means of magic. She had to trust Rafe’s instincts and attempt to do as he’d asked.
Fake an escape. Make them look for her. Give them a run for their money. And if she got caught, make sure it wasn’t until shortly before sundown.
It wouldn’t be easy, but she was certainly going to see what she could do.
Unfortu
nately, she managed to elude them for only an hour. She’d found a second great hiding place, but a scrambling family of monkeys gave her away. She took off before they’d sighted her, but…damned wrong turns. They got her every time.
“Alto!” a man shouted, punctuating his order by shoving the serious end of a Magnum .357 to her temple. She immediately put her hands up.
“Take me to your leader,” she quipped.
Unfortunately, the guy she’d grazed in the arm met them first. He punched her dead on the chin, and by the time she’d regained consciousness, she’d been dragged back to the pyramid, where the man named Pryce sat on the steps, contemplating his sword. His men tossed her to the ground. In addition to seeing stars, she was now also spitting dirt.
“Ah, there you are,” he said casually. He set the sword carefully on a stone step and extended his hand. “Farrow Pryce.”
She pushed herself up and glared at him, but didn’t stand. His men must have found this rude, because they wrenched her to her feet. With each arm held immobile, she gave her jaw a wiggle to make sure it still worked, licked away the blood that had gathered in the corner of her lips and hocked a loogie that just missed the toe of his shoe.
“Wish I could say it was a pleasure,” she cracked.
He frowned at her spittle, and then look very little care in grabbing her chin and checking out the damage. “You’ll have an ugly bruise. Not to mention a nasty welt. I’m sure that’s very painful. You really shouldn’t have shot one of my men.”
“It was self-defense, remember?” Soil coated the inside of her mouth, but she wasn’t sure about spitting again.
He hummed in exaggerated contemplation. “A truly unfortunate way of making first contact, I agree. So let’s try again.”
After his silent nod, the men let her go. She tumbled to the ground and lights flashed all around her. For a second, she thought that Rafe had finally reappeared, courtesy of his new power, but she had only her injuries to blame. She was going to face off with Farrow Pryce alone, surrounded by three men who looked like they’d love nothing better than to kick the shit out of her.
“What do you want?” she asked, attempting to buy time until sunset.
“I told you before,” Pryce said, motioning for one of the men to come forward with her bag so he could rifle through the contents. “I want the stone you stole from the site in Valoren.”
“That wasn’t a site,” she contradicted, pulling herself to her knees and attempting to blink away the stars still blurring her vision. “It was a forest. There wasn’t anything there.”
He made tsking noises that made her wonder if he’d studied Villains 101. Haughty, overconfident and sickeningly debonair, Farrow Pryce might have been a good-looking guy if he didn’t act like such a caricature of Professor Moriarty.
“One of my men had the stone in his hand briefly in your hotel room,” he replied. “So you might as well drop the whole ‘I don’t have it’ scenario and move on to the next phase. Which would be ?”
She forced a grin. “The ‘I don’t have it with me’ scenario.”
“Which I counter with the ‘I don’t believe you’ scenario,” he said, tossing first the package of coins and then the GPS onto the ground. Once he had completely emptied the bag, he turned to her with an expression of feigned regret, then smiled.
“Search her.”
The experience proved just as awful as Mariah expected. The man with the bandaged arm took great pleasure in describing every curve of her body to his compadres as he groped and manhandled her in his quest to see if she’d shoved Rogan’s marker into one of her many pockets, beneath her clothes or in some hidden orifice. Luckily, Pryce assured him that the stone was too large for her most private areas, but by the time he’d gotten his jollies, she was minus her knife and panting with rage. It took all three men to hold her steady—a fact Farrow did not ignore when he ordered her tied to a nearby tree.
This wasn’t ending up at all as she and Rafe had planned. If the rat bastard tried to torture the information out of her, she’d…what? Scream? Who the hell was going to hear her out here?
“Why would I bring the stone with me?” she asked, fighting against the bindings that pulled hard on the joints in her shoulders and cut off the circulation to her hands. “I came here to look for those Mayan coins. They’re worth quite a bit. Why don’t you take them instead of some crappy rock I took as a souvenir?”
“And yet, you fought like hell to get it back. Won, too. Thanks to a mysterious man who appeared, if I can quote my man, out of nowhere?”
Farrow retrieved the sword again and was once again toying with the hilt, slipping his hand into the tangle of gold at the handle and turning the blade carelessly this way and that. Some might have assumed his movements were casual, but Mariah knew better. He meant to intimidate her. Wasn’t doing a half-bad job, either.
“The guy had great timing,” she said, aware of the irony of speaking in the past tense.
“And his name was?” Pryce asked.
Mariah swallowed thickly, wishing she had her canteen. And free hands with which to use it. “I didn’t catch it. He was gone before I had the chance to ask.”
“But came back in time to accompany you here.”
“That’s crazy,” she insisted. “I haven’t seen him since that night in the hotel.”
“And yet, the helpful couple at the outpost near the river said he was with you,” Pryce contradicted. “They did not meet him. He did not speak. But he was there.”
The price of discretion must have gone up in Mexico without her knowledge. “They’re lying. Telling you what you want to hear. You tracked me this far. Did you find one set of footprints or two?”
“One,” he replied. “But there was a double set leading from the hut where you acquired your donkey to the river where you camped the first night.”
Mariah forced a grin and laced her words with as much innuendo as she could. “That was the woman’s husband. He wanted to make sure I got to my campsite safely.”
Farrow frowned. “He didn’t say anything about going anywhere with you. And believe me, he was well compensated for every detail he provided.”
She chuckled. “You might have a fat wallet, but his wife carries a damned big gun. There aren’t enough pesos in this country to have him admitting his…private tour…in front of his wife.”
She was taking a chance, bluffing like this. But what choice did she have? She glanced at the shadows around her, which had already grown deeper and fainter, fading into the natural darkness created by the thick canopy of trees overhead. She didn’t know how much longer she could waylay Farrow Pryce, but she intended to keep up the conversation as long as possible.
Farrow licked his lips, and suddenly, the fact that the top two buttons of her shirt had been ripped off in the struggle made her squirm. His stare wasn’t exactly lecherous, but Farrow Pryce was clearly a man who liked women and sex.
“So you seduced Armando by the river, not the mystery man?” he asked.
“His name was Andreas, and let’s just say that his wife isn’t the only one in that family with a damned big gun.”
The sound of Pryce’s men chuckling froze the sweaty hairs on the back of her neck. Despite the pain in her shoulders, she forced herself to lean, relaxed, against the trunk of the tree.
“Although,” she said, eyeing his weapon, “what’s a gun when you can have a sword?”
He grinned. “You noticed my prize, have you?”
“Hard not to. I’m a treasure hunter, remember? Baby like that could fetch a tidy sum with some of the collectors I know.”
“I paid a tidy sum for it,” he replied. “Well, at the very least, I offered a fool’s ransom. When the owner resisted, I simply took what I wanted.”
“Man after my own heart.”
He leveled the sword at her, but not in a way meant to threaten. She could see by the adoration in his eyes that he simply wanted her to admire the workmanship. The men who surrounded
her started to shuffle uncomfortably. The topic had strayed away from sex, and they weren’t happy about it.
“Tell me what you see,” he said.
She took a deep breath and blinked, trying to remove some of the sand and grit from her vision. “Double-edged sword. Tempered steel. Spanish-style handle. Hand-forged by a master swordsmith.”
“And the gem?”
She met his gaze straight on. “Fire opal. About…thirty-five carats.”
His eyebrows rose a notch. “Forty. What are the chances, do you think, that this faceted beauty was cut from the same mother stone as the one embedded in the rock you stole from Valoren?”
She pressed her lips together tightly, considering his suggestion with a professional air. “Well, fire opals generally aren’t very large, though there have reportedly been some as sizable as a man’s fist. The color of yours there is a vivid red in the shade, but in the light,” she said, noticing there was very little left, “it’s a bright orange?”
He nodded.
She continued, “Well, I didn’t get much of a chance to look at the stone back in Texas, but they certainly look the same in terms of color and style of cut. But like I said, I didn’t have very long to look at it. My priority was to retrieve the Mayan coins. Velez will have my head if he doesn’t get those coins in the next few days.”
“How do you know I won’t kill you first?” Pryce asked.
“I don’t,” she replied. “But either way, I’m dead. Now, later—what difference does it make?”
Their stares didn’t break, and Mariah realized by the slightest twitch in Pryce’s right eyelid that she’d struck a nerve. He wanted her alive.
“After your thugs tried to steal the stone,” she continued, “I hid it. You likely searched all the most obvious places before you followed me here or you wouldn’t have bothered to come this deep into the jungle. Once I deliver the coins to Velez, I’m willing to negotiate with you for the stone.”
Farrow ran his fingers lovingly over the opal on the hilt of the sword, then down the blade, though he was careful not to cut himself.
