“Which is why I’ve set up perimeter alarms. We’ll have plenty of time to sneak away should they come.”
“Air dragons can fly over alarms.”
“But the scientists can’t, and any attempt to disconnect them will set them off anyway.” He reached out and caressed my cheek with his thumb, his touch so soft, so warm and somehow so caring, as if he were touching something very precious.
It made me feel good, and yet in some ways, it scared me. I didn’t need another reason to be afraid, and those damn scientists had already snatched away too many people I’d cared about.
“How’s the shoulder?” he said softly.
“Fine, for the moment.” I deliberately stepped away from his touch and moved back to the other side of the counter, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. I grabbed some more chips, then waved my free hand toward the laptop. “Are you going to use that thing, or did you just bring it in for show?”
“Nothing I own is merely for show, sweetheart.”
“Will you stop calling me that?”
Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Why should I, when it’s nothing but the truth?”
That was a loaded gun I wasn’t about to touch.
He continued, “Why do you think Marsten’s mom holds copies of all the plans and security codes for the research center in Scotland?”
“Because it makes sense to have backups.” I leaned across the bench and watched as he Googled Marsten’s name. “And because he did a lot of groundwork here in the States before he ever shifted operations to Loch Ness, and he was working out of his mom’s house for a long while.”
Hell, he and his family might still have facilities here in the States. Just because we never heard them mentioned didn’t mean they couldn’t exist.
“How big is the research center in Drumnadrochit?”
“Huge.” I hesitated. “Though the center is actually between Drumnadrochit and Abriachan.”
“Oh, I know the area intimately.”
His voice was dry and I smiled. “It’s a very pretty area.”
“And your birthplace?”
I nodded. “Marsten is using my mother’s ancestral lands as his base.”
“He couldn’t have just walked in and claimed it.”
“He didn’t. He caught Mom first, and threatened me.”
He looked at me. “Which is why your dad ran?”
I nodded, rubbing my arms. “Mom gave him no real choice. She made him swear at my birth that if anything should ever happen to her, he’d take me far away.”
“Sounds like she had a premonition.”
“She might have. She was canny like that.”
“Maybe it’s a mom thing. Mine’s like that, too.” He pressed a finger to the screen and added, “Look, there’s an article on Marsten’s old lady in Oregon Home magazine.”
“I don’t suppose it comes complete with pics?”
“Let’s have a look and see, shall we?” He clicked the link. “When did your mother disappear?”
I hesitated. Memories rose, ghosts of a past part of me didn’t want to remember. Not because it was unhappy—it wasn’t, even when we’d left Mom far behind to come to America—but because darkness had overshadowed it. My life after childhood had been very dark indeed.
“I was only five or six when I came here.”
“Explains why there’s only the barest trace of an accent.”
I nodded. “My dad’s American.”
He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “So how did you get caught if you were basically raised here?”
“I hit eighteen and decided that Mom needed rescuing.” I grimaced. “What a bad move that turned out to be.”
“Because the scientists grabbed you?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Because I am a sea dragon, and female, and they consider us extremely rare.” Which we weren’t, but thankfully, they didn’t seem to know that. I pointed at the screen. “Nice interior shots, but is there anything that can help us get in?”
“One or two shots are useful.” He grabbed some chips and munched on a couple meditatively before asking, “So if your dad knew she was alive, why didn’t he call in her kin to protect you while he tried to free her? I have to say, if it had been my mate who was captured, I’d have battled hell itself to get her out.”
“Mom’s kin disappeared about the same time she was captured.”
“Why didn’t they try and get her out?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t want to get caught themselves.”
“And she never tried to free herself?”
“She might have. They kept us well separated, so I couldn’t physically talk to her, and the telepathy thing was a wash, as I said.”
Trae clicked one of the photos, enlarging it, then pointed to the ceiling area above the ornately curtained French doors in the picture. “See that disk mounted onto the ceiling?” I nodded, and he continued, “It’s an infrared motion detector. Probably has a glass-break detector installed, too, seeing as it’s positioned near the French doors.”
“Well, breaking in through a window wouldn’t have been advisable anyway. I really don’t want them knowing we were there, if we can help it.”
“Which means you can’t actually steal the plans and codes.”
“No.” I hesitated, and yawned. “Sorry. Egan was going to buy a digital camera and photograph them.”
Trae glanced at me, concern suddenly bright in his eyes. “You look tired. Why don’t you go get some rest? I’ll search the Net and see what else I can find about our Mrs. Marsten.”
I nodded, grabbed my T-shirt, then headed for the living room and the sofa in which I’d woken. I was sleepier than I thought, because I could barely even remember my head hitting the padded arm rest.
When I finally woke, wisps of moonlight were filtering in through the windows, not only washing the room with its pale light, but highlighting the footprints in the dust-covered floorboards. Trae had been in here more than once to check on me.
I smiled and pushed upright. Like before, waking on the plastic-covered sofa was painful, only this time my whole body was itchy. Infuriately so. I scratched at my side, my legs, my arms, then got up with a semi-growl. Moving didn’t help any. In fact, it only seemed to make the itching worse.
I walked into the hallway, then stopped. There was a light in the kitchen, but it was faded, like a flashlight that was rapidly losing battery power.
Part of me wanted to go down there, see what Trae had uncovered, and grab something to eat.
But as tempting as that might be, the reality was, I needed to get to water.
Fast.
Chapter Seven
I swung around, walked back into the living room and over to the French doors. The moonlight flooding in through the dusty glass was as cold and as distant as I felt deep inside.
But through the hush of the night came the call of the sea.
It was a call I could not disobey.
I unlatched the French doors and walked out into the cold night. Paving gave way to grass, then grass to sand as I made my way though the overgrown gardens and onto the path I’d spotted earlier.
The wind swirled around me, sharp with the scent of the sea, tugging at my hair and at the hem of my T-shirt, as if trying to hurry me along. I all but ran down the path, my speed making my shoulder ache, and yet the ache getting lost in a growing sense of urgency. Fear even.
I had to get down to the sea. Had to.
I scrambled down the old steps that lined the cliff face, the occasional loose stone digging into my feet but causing no pain. The night had once again stolen such sensory details, leaving my skin cold and, for the moment, unfeeling. Leaving me the same.
I strode out across the sand. Waves rushed toward me, reaching with foamy fingers for my toes. When those fingers raced up and over my feet, a shudder that was part pleasure, part relief, ran through me. I stopped and stripped off the T-shirt, then the bandages, tossing them both back up on the beach. The wind caught them, flinging them backward, well out of the reach of the sea.