by Faith Gibson
“That’s not possible,” Tamian huffed, pulling his phone out of his pocket to check the app.
“I saw her with my own eyes. Look, there she is.”
Tamian turned toward the house across the street, and sure enough, Harlow was walking out the front door, pulling a suitcase behind her. “What the fuck?” he muttered. Tamian couldn’t help but admire the way Harlow’s pants hugged her round bottom as she stowed her luggage in the trunk. As she shut the lid, the female turned and looked right at him with a smirk before walking around and lowering herself into the driver’s seat. He could only stare as she drove past and waved. “What the fuck?”
Tamian dialed Julian’s number, and as he waited for the other Goyle to pick up, he tapped on the screen of his phone. Changing apps, Tamian opened the one showing which route Harlow was taking. The red beacon moved across the map, headed out of town. Damnit. “Sorry, love. I’ve gotta run. Tell Halina I’ll call her,” Tamian said, kissing Freyda quickly on the cheek.
“Be careful out there,” she called after him as he headed toward the Aldobrand home to gather his things. If Harlow was leaving town, he needed to hurry.
Julian answered, “Tam? What’s up?”
“Harlow is on the move, and if I’m right, she’s headed to the airport.”
“Hang on.” Julian’s fingers moving across his keyboard was too loud in Tamian’s ear, so he put the phone on speaker. He rushed to gather his things from Urijah’s old bedroom, not bothering to leave a note. He had no doubt Freyda had already phoned Halina, letting her know he was leaving.
“The good news is one of her aliases popped up in the system. Marlena Evans is on the eleven-ten flight to New York. The bad news is that flight is booked. Do you want me to see if I can get you on the next one?”
“That won’t be necessary. I have my jet. I just needed to know where she was going.”
“Her flight is nonstop, due to arrive at La Guardia at one-fifteen.”
“Thanks, Julian. I should be able to be there before her, or at least close to the same time.”
“Good luck, Brother.”
“Later.” Tamian disconnected, his heart swelling once again at being considered part of the Clan. Making his way to the airport in his rental car, Tamian called his pilot, Santiago, who was on standby. Even with having to stop and refuel, the male assured Tamian they would reach La Guardia before the airbus Harlow would be flying on.
Tamian had found no evidence of Harlow spying on the Goyles, but he wasn’t ready to abandon the notion. There was more to the female than met the eye, and he planned on finding out all about her.
Lucy couldn’t help herself when she waved at the man who’d been following her. He thought he was being stealthy, but her senses were hyperaware of her surroundings. He also thought he could get away with being inside the house she’d rented without her knowing. Once she’d caught his scent, that was all she needed to realize he’d broken in. With her eagle-eyes, it didn’t take long to find the cameras he’d hidden. What she couldn’t figure out was why.
Being an agent with the Global Intelligence Agency, Lucy had plenty of resources at her disposal, and after snapping a photo of the man, she ran his picture through a facial recognition program on her computer. Tamian Andrew St. Claire was the most stunning man to ever follow Lucy. Hell, he was one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen, in real life or otherwise. The first time she noticed him, she nearly tripped over her own feet. There was something different about him, and if Lucy had time, she would love to figure out what that was.
Lucy had never found herself lying awake at night, thinking about how a man was built, or how his green eyes held a mystery she was dying to solve. Once she’d become immersed in the family business, Lucy never took time to date anyone. No one held her attention long enough for her to consider anything more than a one-night stand, and she’d not bothered with those since college. Until now.
Her time in Holmesvik had been cut short, as she’d been called back to the States. It bothered her that Mr. St. Claire was spying on her. She had never heard of the man before she arrived in Norway, and as far as she could tell, he wasn’t linked to any of the cases she’d had, past or present. Instead of alerting her superiors or her family to the man’s presence, Lucy decided to do a little more digging into his background.
After her mother passed away four years ago, Lucy finished her education at MIT. It had been hard, but she’d made a promise to Vera. Once she received her diploma, instead of diving headfirst into her father’s research, she took some time off and learned some new skills. Finding out she was adopted had thrown Lucy for a handful of loops. She became obsessed with finding out who she really was. If only Lucius and Vera had told her she was adopted, she would have been able to handle the truth. At least, she thought she would have. Finding out the Balls weren’t her birth parents, rather her aunt and uncle, put Lucy on a path that reshaped her future.
Lucy was smart, but computer hacking wasn’t in her sandbox back then, so she hired someone to teach her. With both her adopted parents deceased, Lucy was the sole heir to the Ball estate, and it had been sizable. Lucy talked one of her former classmates into showing her how to find things on the internet she shouldn’t have been able to, and for Anna’s time and discretion, Lucy paid her well. If things had been different, if Lucy had been different, she and Anna could have ended up being best friends. As it were, Lucy became obsessed with finding Warryck Lazlo – her father.
With Anna’s help, it hadn’t taken all that long to locate the male. He was a psychology professor, teaching not far from where she grew up. The reunion hadn’t been a happy one, but it did open up a whole new world to her. War, as his family called him, was one of five boys. Not only that, he had a twin – Maveryck. Mav and her grandparents welcomed Lucy into the fold, and her life took a twist she never would’ve believed had she not lived it.
Becoming entrenched in the family business, Lucy found herself switching gears from genetics to computer infiltration. That sounded better than hacking. Several months after she graduated, Lucy was approached by the GIA. She wasn’t as adept as Anna with computer research, but she had learned quite a bit. Somehow, she’d shown up on the government’s radar, and they wanted to recruit her. She asked them for time to think it over, but they gave her an ultimatum – work for them or jail time. For Lucy, there was no choice. In agreeing to work for the GIA, Lucy would have access to better equipment, and thus she’d have more resources to help the Hounds with their endeavors.
Before the GIA, Lucy had never fired a gun. Never studied martial arts. Never even thought about covert operations and spying on people except for those her family kept an eye on. Within eighteen months, Lucy was proficient in all those things. By her twenty-fourth birthday, she had several aliases and an almost-full passport.
Traveling the world was nothing new to her. Traveling the world as someone other than Lucy Ball took a little getting used to. She had chosen her own aliases, opting to use names closely related to real-life celebrities or television characters. Those were easier for her to remember.
Lucy had vacationed in many exotic places with her parents. Some were tropical islands. Some were ancient cities which had been abandoned during the near apocalypse. Some were even small villages where she and her parents volunteered their time and money to help the less fortunate. She was taught at an early age how most people didn’t have the luxuries she did, and it was important to give back to the people she shared the world with. As proven by her parents’ deaths, you couldn’t take it with you when you died, so being charitable had been ingrained in her for as long as she could remember.
Most of her cases within the GIA were to gather information. After the world fell some thirty years prior, it took a while for most countries to rebuild. Things became rather archaic at first, but gradually, the world returned to an almost normal status. As governments worked to recover from the economic as well as physical destruction, there was a faction who call
ed themselves the Ministry, determined to hold governments hostage unless they conformed to their ideals. It was their belief the world had fallen because God had once again cursed the sinners.
The public lost all respect as police and other local officials stooped to corruption, and the alphabet agencies were brought to their knees. After many years and lots of hard work, the GIA was formed, replacing the CIA. The FBI was still around, but their name was still less than respectable.
Lucy’s job with the GIA was to make sure governments were behaving while determining how much of an influence the Ministry held over them. That was a job easier said than done. The reason she’d been in Holmesvik was because word had reached the agency that power was changing hands. When she arrived, Lucy found that not only was Norway’s King Aumont not going anywhere, but he was adored by the people. Whatever Intel her agency had received was wrong. She had figured that out within two days of arriving in Oslo.
Instead of returning to the States immediately, Lucy took a non-sanctioned mini-vacation. When she found the small town of Holmesvik, she fell in love. The people were kind, and the atmosphere was conducive to relaxing, so she stretched her visit out as long as possible. It was a village full of shifters, even though she didn’t let on she was aware of their true nature. She knew what it was like to hide the animal inside.
As the small jet settled at cruising altitude, Lucy’s thoughts turned to Tamian St. Claire and the way the man followed her. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he was special, too. Having abilities outside the norm allowed her to go above and beyond in doing her job. They kept her safe on more than one occasion when someone got too close to finding out the truth of who she was underneath the alias and the disguises. Wigs, makeup, and fake accents did wonders, but sometimes they weren’t enough. If her cover was blown, it could mean more than a case being blown wide open; it could mean death.
Lucy wasn’t ready to join Lucius and Vera. Both their lives had been cut short. Lucius’s shorter than it should have been, considering. What would Mr. St. Claire think if he knew who Lucy was? How would he react to her inner nature? Leaving the gorgeous man behind in Norway, she would never find out, unless he somehow managed to find out where she was going. It seemed he had an agenda where she was concerned, and she couldn’t allow that. Unless he was aware of her aliases, he’d be searching for a long time.
Chapter Two
Tamian’s plane touched down an hour before Harlow’s flight was scheduled to land. He’d spent the last several hours trying to figure out how he was going to track her without her knowing it. Julian had tapped into the feed on the cameras Tamian installed in Harlow’s rental, and he’d found where she, or someone, had put the output on a continuous loop showing no one was home. If it was her, she was smarter than he’d given her credit for. Smart and stunning.
For half an hour, Tamian hung around the private hangar he shared with his father. He used that time to call his mother and check in, promising to stop by since he was in New York. With less than thirty minutes until Harlow was due to arrive, he made his way into the large terminal and waited at the luggage carousels, being sure to keep his distance from the one Harlow would be using. Half an hour came and went with no sign of the female. After another thirty minutes passed, Tamian was ready to give up when a young woman dressed in an airline uniform walked up to him.
“Mr. St. Claire?” the woman asked in a southern drawl.
Tamian was so startled someone knew who he was he turned toward the voice but didn’t deny it. “Yes.”
“This is for you.” An attendant from the airline Harlow was supposed to be on handed him an envelope, grinning. Before he could open it, she turned and disappeared into the crowd. He opened his senses to the woman’s mind.
“Dayum! That agent’s crazy for not delivering this message herself. A body like that? Whoowee.”
Tamian shook his head as he looked at the envelope, staring at his name written neatly on the outside. His full name. A familiar scent filled his nostrils, and Tamian couldn’t help but smile. Carefully, he opened the flap and pulled out the card.
Better luck next time
Standing among hundreds, if not thousands, of travelers, Tamian threw his head back and laughed heartily. He didn’t care about the stares he received. Harlow Guthrie, or whoever the woman was, had thrown down the gauntlet, and Tamian was just the Goyle to pick it up and run with it. Tamian weaved his way through the throngs until he arrived at the rental car desk. His mother had offered to have Manny pick him up, but Tamian hadn’t known when exactly he’d be visiting. He no longer had a female to follow, a female agent, if the messenger’s thoughts were correct, so he made his way to his parents’ estate. Now that Harlow was on to him, he would need Julian’s help in finding the female.
As he made his way out of the terminal in a sleek sports car, his phone rang. Having already synched it to the Bluetooth, he answered. “Hello?”
“Tamian, this is Julian. I screwed up.”
“If you’re talking about Harlow, she was on to us. Or on to me, I should say.”
“How do you know?”
“She had a flight attendant bring me a handwritten card that said ‘better luck next time.’ She even addressed it to my full name. I’m telling you, Julian, this is no mere mortal,” Tamian said, laughing. He found himself doing that a lot, even though the female was frustrating. “First, she was able to loop the output on the camera feed, and now she found out who I am? Who would have that type of skill set as well as several aliases?”
“Someone who works for the government. And Tessa,” Julian added. “Unless she is a contract player, I would venture to guess she probably works for the GIA since she was out of the country. The FBI is limited to the States.”
Tamian almost slipped up and told Julian what the flight attendant had thought when she was walking away. She called Harlow the agent. “How did you figure out you screwed up, as you put it?”
“I only looked for her aliases on commercial flights. I didn’t think to look at private itineraries until it was already too late. A private jet left Oslo half an hour before you took off. According to the flight plan, it landed in New DC about ten minutes ago. I’ve already begun a facial recognition search. If your mate is there, I’ll find her.”
Tamian didn’t argue that the female wasn’t his mate. He’d figure that out if and when he ever got the chance to speak to her. “I appreciate it. I’m on my way to visit Elizabeth and Xavier since I’m in the area. If you find anything, please keep me posted. I’ll have the jet fueled and ready to go.”
“Will do. Later, Brother.” After they disconnected, Tamian called Elizabeth to let her know he was on his way. As he drove, he couldn’t stop obsessing with Harlow. He’d never believed he would have a mate, let alone one as stunning as she. Now that the possibility had arisen, Tamian was ready to make her his. He just had to find her.
Elizabeth met Tamian at the front door. “You’ve been away too long,” she chastised as she wrapped her arms around his waist. She was shorter than Andi – Tessa – by maybe an inch, but other than that, the mother and daughter could pass for twins.
“I’ve been chasing criminals around the globe.” Tamian pulled back when Xavier stepped up to the open doorway. He was a grown Gargoyle, yet he still got intimidated by Xavier whenever he was in his presence. “Hi, Dad.” Xavier’s face lit up, and he closed the distance between them. Rarely did the King of the Italians show him true affection, but he grabbed Tamian and pulled him into a crushing embrace. One he returned gladly.
“Son, I’m glad you’re here. There is something I wish to speak to you about. Let’s go inside.”
Tamian held the door for his parents, and before he got farther into the house than the entryway, Cassandra was wrapped around him as tightly as his mother had been. “Oh, my boy,” she whispered.
“Hello, Cassandra.” Tamian kissed her on top of her head, and the older woman pulled back to look at him. Tears threatened to fa
ll, but she blinked them away.
“You and that sister of yours are too busy these days. But you’re here now. Are you hungry? Thirsty? What can I get you? Supper won’t be ready for another hour, but I can fix you a sandwich.”
“I can wait to eat, but I’d love a glass of your lemonade.” Tamian preferred something stronger, but he wanted Cassandra to feel needed. His parents had been traveling more, thus leaving their housekeeper with no one to look after.
When she scuttled off to retrieve his drink, Tamian met his parents in the lounge. This was his mother’s favorite spot in the large home. It didn’t matter that it was the first week in June; there was a fire in the pit, which was situated in the middle of the room. Both Tamian and Xavier stood off to one side where the bar was. Xavier poured them both a glass of whiskey while Elizabeth sipped on a glass of red wine. Cassandra returned with Tamian’s lemonade, and he took it in his free hand. “Thank you, Cassandra.”
“You’re welcome. I’ll be in the kitchen if anyone needs me.”
Tamian waited until the housekeeper was out of earshot before asking, “What’s going on?”
His parents glanced at each other, and Tamian braced himself for whatever it was his father wanted to talk to him about. He downed the whiskey and set the empty glass on the bar. Holding onto the lemonade, Tamian gave his father his undivided attention.
“Now that the threats have died down and your mother and I are able to travel as we wish, I’m stepping down as King.”
“I can understand that. Is Vittore ready to take your place?” Customarily, it was the firstborn son who would take over, but since Xavier didn’t have a male heir, he would most likely choose his first in command to take his place.
“I haven’t asked him. Tamian, I know you don’t consider yourself to be my son, but I do. Your DNA is as much mine as your mother’s. I have a feeling Jonas tossed in some of his own. He’s too egotistical not to have, so that makes you even more of a Montagnon. I want you to take over as King.”
