Marley took a deep breath. “That sounds noble, but it’s not me. I’ve rebuilt my life after what Anson took, and I have no interest in revisiting that hell.”
Riley straightened and sighed. Marley had fought her battles already and earned her right to say no. She had to respect that. She carried her bag to the dresser to pack her toiletries in the side pocket. “I understand. It’s fine. I can go alone.”
“Is there any way I can stop you from charging down there? It’s dangerous.”
Riley had already done the calculations. “I’ll drive straight down and get to Millinger on Sunday. No one should be there, and all I have to do is search the office for evidence of what they’re trying to do. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.” Even if part of her wanted to confront Anson head on, she really did only need information. For now.
“You should have a protector with you, at least.”
Riley only wanted Sam. He was trained as a protector, and he had as much stake in this as she did. But what he was doing was important, too, and the sooner he was done in Mississippi, the sooner he’d be back at her side. All the better if she had something to give them a direction to look in or an action to take when he was.
“I can’t wait.” She finished stuffing the little bottles into her bag and dropped it on the bed. “I know what I’m capable of now. Protectors don’t cover goddesses in power, right?” Marley nodded reluctantly. “So I load up with metal. I have a pipe and a tire iron and some other things in the car.” But nothing she could easily wear or carry. “I can take…I don’t know, what do you have here?” She tried to think of something portable that wouldn’t call a lot of attention. They went into the kitchen and she tested the utensils, but they didn’t let her draw enough energy for what she might need. The pans were stainless steel and would be great if they weren’t so impractical.
“I’ll stop at a hardware store,” Riley decided. “Can I borrow your laptop? I need to print off directions. My car doesn’t have GPS.”
A few minutes later she paused at the door, her hand on the knob. She looked back at Marley. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”
Marley bit her lip and shifted her weight from foot to foot. She glanced at the pipe and tire iron slung through the straps of Riley’s bag, then at the wall between the living room and kitchen, lined with amethyst and other crystals. Finally, she shook her head. “No. I’d be worthless. I’ll stay here and report to the security team, then see if I can learn any more about anything. Call me. And please, please be careful.” She hugged Riley, who hugged her back with a surge of warmth.
“Thank you,” Riley said. “For everything.”
Then she was out the door and on her way to her car in the parking garage, a little excited to have a mission. For the first time since she bounced off that big old Buick the day after her twenty-first birthday, Riley felt in control of something.
Chapter Eight
My foolishness should not have been rewarded, but my gratitude is endless. My debt will remain unpaid for the remainder of my life, but to become whole again, to embrace that which I lost through my own shortsightedness, has been the greatest joy of my life.
Sam spent his time on the plane and his layover in Chicago trying to nail down something, anything, on Millinger or Anson Tournado, but still came up agonizingly empty. He’d reactivated some old, not-entirely-legal methods of searching but still nothing. No financial records or leases or utilities in Anson’s name, which might mean he was operating on a cash basis since getting out of jail, but could also mean he was using aliases or fronts to hide his activities should anyone go looking.
Vern Nurnan and Sharla Cannalunis turned up a little more, but none of it was helpful. Both had small-time criminal records, had bounced from job to job, and used their credit and debit cards for meaningless purchases. He couldn’t find an employment record for Millinger, despite the business cards, but they had said consultant, so they probably weren’t on any official payroll.
He’d texted Riley a couple of times and talked to her once. She’d sounded distracted and ended the call quickly, leaving him to wonder how upset she was, after all, that he’d left her. It made him more determined to get this done quickly and get back.
Once he’d landed in Jackson, Mississippi, and driven to the hotel where he was meeting Nick and Quinn, it was late, and he was exhausted and cranky after being folded into an economy seat for too many hours. He texted Nick his room number and got a response that they were still en route and would see him in the morning. It was too late to try to call Riley, but he fell asleep thinking of how he could make it up to her, and tested a few of those in his dreams.
He woke to Nick pounding on the motel room door at what seemed like only a couple of hours after he’d fallen asleep. He groggily dragged on jeans and manipulated the locks to let him in.
“What are you doing here so early?” he griped.
Nick looked way too chipper after driving twelve hours, but he was probably thrilled to be back on the road. He’d been stuck in one place for three years after fifteen as a protector, moving from one goddess assignment to the next.
He closed the door behind him and leaned against the wall. “Dude, it’s almost noon. We’ve been waiting for you to drag your lazy ass out of bed and call us. You missed breakfast.”
Sam rubbed his eyes and headed for the bathroom. “I’ll be out in a minute.” He left Nick sighing in mock annoyance and picking up the remote for the TV bolted to the wall.
Sam brushed his teeth and took a fast-and-dirty shower that managed to give him a measure of alertness. But he’d been so groggy he hadn’t grabbed clean clothes. He wrapped in a threadbare towel and went back out into the room.
Nick was sitting on the end of the bed, boots planted flat on the floor in front of him. “So?”
“So, what?” Sam pulled clothes out of his duffel bag and started getting dressed.
“So, who’s the chick?”
Sam narrowed his eyes at him for a second before yanking a Henley over his head. “What are you talking about?”
Nick flipped off the TV. “The reason you put me off the other day and are in such a hurry to get back to Boston.”
“It’s about a lot more than just a chick.”
“Yeah, I talked to John.” He stood and went to the chipboard dresser, flipping a few pages in the info book while he re-rolled the sleeve of the flannel shirt he wore over a T-shirt. “Believe me, I’m as eager to wipe Tournado off the face of the earth as you are. But you’ve got squat to go on, right?”
Sam grunted and sat to put on his socks and boots.
“So the only reason you’d be in a hurry to get back there must be this new goddess you’ve discovered.”
“I didn’t discover her.” He didn’t know why he was reluctant to tell Nick about Riley, except that he wasn’t in the mood for brotherly ribbing or Nick’s brand of smugness when he thought he knew it all, which was almost always. “She’s vulnerable and a potential target of Anson’s.”
“And hot?” Nick waggled his eyebrows, and Sam couldn’t help laughing.
“Yeah. But that’s not why I like her,” he defended. But when Nick hooked one finger into the side of the curtain and peeked out into the parking lot, and then scrubbed a hand in his shorter-than-usual spiky blond hair, Sam began to suspect there was something Nick wasn’t saying. He wasn’t normally this antsy.