“This is the night deposit, or what there is of it since we closed early. Will you also verify that there’s money in it and drop it at the bank for me? Just in case, you know.”
Mrs. Arnold patted Eva’s arm. Then she glanced curiously at Flynn, but evidently her manners were too good for her to ask any questions. “Of course I will. You take care, and I hope you come back soon. I know Mrs. M will be lost without you.”
Flynn locked the door, and Eva dropped the keys back through the old-fashioned mail slot. As they watched Mrs. Arnold and Muffin head off toward the bank on the corner, Flynn looked a question at Eva.
“She’s the mayor,” Eva told him. “Before that, she was sheriff for ten years. The town certainly would be lot better off with her still as sheriff rather one of Noel’s stupid family members. There’s nobody more reputable in town, just in case Noel’s wife has a change of heart about me later.”
“Makes sense. Where to for dinner?” They started toward the little parking lot for Eva’s car, but the sound of an approaching motorcycle made her flinch.
Flynn turned to look and immediately moved to block Eva with his body.
“It’s the monkey man,” he said tersely. “We need to get you to your car if they don’t already have someone flanking us. Stay close to me. I don’t know what he wants, but it can’t be anything good.”
The gang member, though, stopped his bike at a safe dozen paces away. Apparently he did not have fond memories of Flynn from the previous night.
“Eva, Snake is coming for you,” Monkey called out. “You should just come with me now and make it easy on everybody.”
“You should leave now, while you still have legs,” Flynn shot back, face and voice deadly calm.
Monkey flinched but stood his ground. Clearly he was more afraid of Snake than he was of Flynn. He bent and reached down into a pocket on his pants leg that was too small to hold a gun—Flynn was paying very close attention—and pulled out a telephone. He tossed it at Flynn, who snatched it out of the air.
“That’s a burner phone. It only has one number on it, and there’s only one number that’s gonna call it. Snake’s gonna call you, pretty Eva. He wants to meet up.”
With that, he gunned his bike and took off.
“And we’re off,” Eva said lightly, her golden eyes more haunted than ever. “I guess I found out what else could go wrong.”
Chapter Nine
Eva suddenly wasn’t very hungry anymore, but she knew she needed food. She’d eaten almost nothing all day. She needed to keep her strength up if she was to have any hope of outwitting Scott—Snake—and his demonic powers.
She glanced over at the very large Atlantean warrior crammed into the passenger seat of her very small car. “Are you okay if we just drive through someplace? I don’t really feel like being around people right now. I know a place out in the desert, not very far, where we could eat and have some peace and quiet while we figure out what we’re doing.”
“Yes, I think that would be great. Do you want…” He sighed and looked out the window, his sentence trailing off.
“Do I want what?”
“Do you want me to get Griffin to join us so we can talk out the plans?”
“No.” After she blurted out the word, she felt like she had to explain. She wasn’t sure how to explain though. She just knew she wanted time alone with Flynn, time to relax and feel safe before whatever was going to happen, happened. The mage wasn’t the type of person who was restful to be around.
“I just feel like enjoying some peace and quiet before my human sacrifice,” she said, a weak attempt at a joke.
“Not funny,” Flynn growled. He reached across the seat, took her hand, squeezed it once, and then let go so she could put it back on the steering wheel.
“I’m not going to let him hurt you,” he said, and his words had the ring of a vow. Eva suddenly felt as if something sacred had passed between them in the dimly lit, intimate, cave-like space inside the speeding car.
Cave. Cave-like space. What was…
Before she could follow the thought to its end though, she arrived at the drive-through restaurant and lost her train of thought. She gave their order of burgers, fries, and milkshakes—hey, the condemned deserved a good last meal, to heck with the calories—and then headed out into the moonlit night toward the desert.
She loved it out here. The peace and the open space. She loved the mountains too, and the ocean. Anywhere in nature, preferably with a dog or five by her side, and she would be happy hiking all day long. She hadn’t had much time for it lately, what with always being on the run and trying to make enough money to stay ahead of the Dark Angels in the next place Snake chased her down.
Maybe, if she survived this, she’d make a point to go hiking at least once a week.
Flynn was quiet on the drive, glancing at her every once in a while but saying nothing. Instead of being tense, the silence between them felt almost peaceful, even though the low hum of constant sexual tension between them never went away in spite of the danger they were in. She felt as if she could find him in a dark room, even if she were blindfolded, by feeling her way along the electric current that sparkled and snapped between them.
She had so many questions she wanted to ask him, but they could wait a while. Just for now, in the car, she would enjoy this little bubble of peace and pretend nothing dangerous could ever find them.
When she arrived at the turnoff, she signaled and slowed down, and Flynn spoke up for the first time in about fifteen miles.
“Where are we?”
“There’s a hiking path trailhead at the end of this little road. Almost nobody ever uses it though, or at least not when I’ve been here. And certainly nobody will be here in the dark. There’s a picnic table. I thought we could get out, stretch our legs, and eat.”
She suddenly felt shy. What if he thought it was a stupid idea? On the heels of that thought came another, stronger one.
Why should she care?
If he was the type of person who thought her idea of a picnic was stupid, he wasn’t worth her time, was he?
She smiled at the feel of another piece of her damaged soul fitting itself back into the puzzle that was Eva. Pre-Scott Eva.
Authentic Eva.
“A picnic sounds wonderful,” Flynn said, sighing with what sounded like contentment. “I’ve never been a fan of spending a lot of time in cities and towns. Towns are full of people, and people come with problems. And if you don’t have any problems of your own, they’ll be glad to foist theirs off on you.”
She threw a wry glance at him, and he had the sense to look sheepish. After all, he’d foisted his problems on her. But no. Not his problems. Those girls were more than just problems. They had to find them soon.
She parked and locked the car, and they walked down a path to a place that opened up and contained a few benches and a couple of picnic tables. As she’d guessed, hers had been the only car in the lot. Nobody was here either. She picked up a newspaper that someone had left on a table and put in the recycling bin.
Flynn, meanwhile, was unwrapping their food. “This smells amazing,” he said, groaning. “I had no idea how hungry I was until I smelled this food. It was torture not to just rip into it in the car.”
She grinned at him. “Yeah, at first I thought my engine was making another new sound, and then I realized it was your stomach growling.”
He laughed and handed her a milkshake. “Maybe. But I think two double cheeseburgers will take care of that for me.”
Eva started to unwrap her chicken sandwich. “Sure, if it doesn’t kill you—”
She froze, her words trailing off.
Flynn moved around to sit on Eva’s side of the bench with her. “Stop it. Nobody’s killing you. Nobody’s dying. You’re going to stay alive and fight the good fight. We’re going to get those girls out of there as soon as we find them, and we’re pretty sure that Snake is the way to do it. So let’s talk about something else for a while,
at least until I hear from Griffin. He’s doing another swing around the area, widening the perimeter of his search, and I told him to tail Monkey and see where he goes.”
She sighed and sat down. “That’s a good idea.”
He took a big bite of his sandwich, chewed, and swallowed, then took a long drink of his milkshake. “Did you know hamburgers are originally from Atlantis?”
She paused just before taking a bite of her own sandwich. “No. Really?”
A wicked smile spread across Flynn’s face, and she caught a glint of the whiteness of his teeth in the moonlight. “Sure. The only problem was, we had to wait for you humans to invent hamburger buns.”
He burst out laughing, and she just stared at him. It took her a ridiculously long minute, but then she got it. She could feel the laughter fizzing in her belly, but she tried to fight it. The laughter was having none of that. It burst out, and she laughed and laughed until she couldn’t even catch her breath.
“I appreciate it, but that joke was not that funny,” Flynn finally said between stuffing french fries in his mouth. “You’re either a really easy audience, or that was just stress relief.”
“A bit of both,” Eva confessed, hiccupping. “I think I needed that. I feel a lot better.”
“Laughter will do that to you. Although I’d think seeing Mrs. Noel drag her husband out of the bar by the ear would have been the high point of your year.”
She grinned at him. “You know what? You’re right. This has been a banner day.”
They finished their food, chatting about nothing, and then gathered up the trash and put it in the wastebasket. Impulsively, Eva looked up at Flynn. “I know it’s dark, but are you up for a walk? The moon is so bright tonight that we can see perfectly well.”
“Also, I have superior Atlantean vision,” he smugly informed her, reaching for her hand.
She laughed, but she let him take her hand, and they started down the path.
“So. Tell me about you,” he said, steering her around a fallen branch. “Tell me about you before Snake and Monkey and the rest of the demon zoo. Where is your family?”
Eva’s hand convulsively tightened on Flynn’s at the word family. She had to call Gramps. It wasn’t fair—it wouldn’t be fair for her to just disappear without talking to him one more time. She trusted Flynn, she did—or at least she was pretty sure she did—but when demons and black-magic users were involved, there was no guarantee she would make it out alive. And she couldn’t—she wouldn’t—walk into that situation without talking to her grandfather one more time. No matter how much it hurt.
“All I have is my grandfather. Gramps. He and Gran raised me after my parents died. I was a surly, awful teenager in a world of pain, and he made it better. Not all the way better, of course, but just enough. Just enough to help me realize that I could survive. Gran’s gone now, and Gramps is all I have left in the world.”
Flynn said nothing for about another twenty feet or so, and she kind of liked that he didn’t rush in to offer empty platitudes.
“You must miss him very much,” he finally said quietly.
“Yes. I do, but I can’t go back there until the situation with Scott is resolved. I can’t put him in any danger. He’s still in his own home, but he’s getting more and more frail, and I don’t know what the stress would do to him. The stress of my being gone is bad enough, but he thinks I’m having a grand adventure. I make sure to send him chatty postcards full of lies from wherever I go.”
Flynn was silent again for a little while, but he squeezed her hand in a gesture of reassurance. “My dad—my father was a drunk. He was a violent, abusive drunk, and my mom was a drunk too, but she was quieter about it. I escaped as soon as I could, and I never looked back. I left my brothers, both younger than me, because I just couldn’t take it anymore. I abandoned them, hoping that since he’d never beaten them before—only me—he wouldn’t begin when I left. Later though, I talked to my brother, the one who’s a ship captain, and I found out just how bad it got for them. I abandoned them to that when I was their big brother. I was meant to protect them.”
She wanted to pull him into her arms and soothe the wounded child who’d had to leave a home filled with pain. The raw anguish in his voice told her that he was in no way past it.
“They’ll forgive you,” she said, instinctively knowing which part of it hurt him the most. “They’ll forgive you, and they’ll understand. You just need to reach out.”
Flynn stopped walking and turned to face her. “How could you know that? How could you know that reaching out is my biggest fear?”
“I have no idea,” she said honestly. “It was just a feeling—an overwhelming feeling—that I got from you suddenly. That never happens to me with people.”
“It never happens to you with people?” Flynn’s dark eyes shone in the moonlight, almost glowing, fascinating her. Instantly, the overwhelming attraction between them flooded back into her body, and she could feel herself straining toward him. She wanted to put her hands on him, touch him, hold him. She wanted him to wrap her up in his strong, muscular arms.
It didn’t make sense—it couldn’t make sense—but she wanted this man more than she’d ever wanted anyone in her life.
She was trying to figure out what she could possibly say or do at that moment when Flynn made a strange noise. She looked up at him, but he was staring intently over her shoulder. She started to turn around, but he caught her arms and held her still.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” he warned her in a very quiet voice. “The local animal kingdom has decided to come visit, and I don’t know these animals. I don’t know their threat level.”
Eva sighed. Of all the inopportune times for her gift to raise its furry head. She slowly turned around, but Flynn kept her in the circle of his arms, protecting her from… a coyote family. It must have been following them down the path.
When she looked at them, they all sat down in a row. The father, mother, and three little ones all sat there calmly, watching Eva. She had to smile.
“No, they’re not dangerous to us, Flynn. Those are coyotes, and normally they avoid people. They’re shy little things.”
Flynn tightened his arms around her waist and pulled her back against his chest. “Sure. Except they’re very clearly not avoiding people right now. Do you think they might have some disease or be under some magic spell?”
She shook her head and gently removed his vise grip from around her waist, although she felt a slight pang of loss when she did it. “It’s not exactly a magic spell; more like a magical gift. I have an affinity for animals, and sometimes when they feel it—feel me—they come to find me. Just to say hi, I think.”
She knelt, one knee on the path, and smiled at the animals. “Go on your way and be well, little family. Keep those babies away from the eagles and hawks.”
The boldest of the three babies started toward her, wriggling his little body in a way that reminded her so much of Daisy that she got a lump in her throat. But mama gently scooped up her wayward babe and, with a single glance back at Eva and Flynn, led her family off. Daddy Coyote took the rear guard, casting suspicious looks at Flynn as he herded his family away.
Eva stood and watched them go.
“They didn’t like me much,” Flynn said, wry amusement in his voice.
“Don’t take it personally. Like I said, they mostly stay away from humans. Especially when they have young to protect.”
“Even coyotes can tell I’m not someone to trust to protect their young,” Flynn said roughly. His hands were clenched into fists at his side, and Eva took one between her hands and smoothed his fingers out until they lay flat.
“That wasn’t about coyotes. Tell me.”
They walked in silence for maybe ten minutes before Flynn finally let his head fall back and spoke, his gaze fixed on the stars. “I told you about my brothers. That was my first failure. But I’ve just had one far, far worse. I thought I’d made friends. Even thinking about makin
g friends is always a stupid thing to do in this world, because it hurts that much more when they stab you in the back. I’m sure that’s how Kian felt about me too.”
She stayed silent. She didn’t want to spook him any more than she did any other wild creature. For Flynn was almost certainly feral, and she had no illusions of being the woman who could finally tame him.
He tightened his hold on her hand as they walked around the small loop that turned into the path back to the parking area. “Kian and his family are dragon shifters who live on the coast of Ireland. They’re having a problem. Not his family—not only his family—but all their kind. The females—they can’t make the transition easily. When they’re about fourteen or fifteen, they make their first transition into dragon shape. Most of the females don’t survive it.”
Harsh, biting pain underscored each and every word, and she wanted so much to reach up and smooth the furrows of anguish from his forehead. “I’m so sorry. That’s a horrible, horrible thing. I haven’t heard anything about that in the news.”
Flynn shook his head. “No, dragons are very private. They keep their secrets and guard them as fiercely as they do their treasure hoards.”
“They really do have treasure hoards? That’s not just a myth?”
Flynn raised one dark eyebrow. “Yes. It’s just a myth. Like shifters, and dragons, and Atlantis.”
She tried to imagine what it would be like to actually see a dragon cave someday. And then laughed at herself for what her long-gone ordinary, normal life had become. Demons and dragons and Atlantean warriors.
Oh, my.
“Okay, okay. You’ve made your point. But I’m so terribly sorry to hear that about your friend and his people.”
“Thank you. He had a younger sister,” Flynn added, and then he had to clear his throat.
Eva’s heart sank at the verb tense. He had a younger sister. She knew what was coming, but she also knew he needed to talk about it, so she stayed silent and tried to send all her sympathy to him through the touch of their hands.
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