Boone looked up from the medical equipment he was sterilizing, his eyebrows knitting when he spotted them. “What happened? Did she relapse?”
It took her a second to remember the leviathan bite that Boone had previously treated. Goddess that seemed like almost a different lifetime, when in actuality it’d only been two days ago.
Max carefully settled her on the edge of the stainless-steel examining table. “No, screaming siren. I’m not sure what the extent of the damage is on her eardrums.”
To Boone’s credit, he didn’t even bat an eye at the announcement. Unclipping a penlight from the breast pocket of his lab coat, he quickly clicked it on and moved beside her. He looked in her ears, occasionally giving a noncommittal hum. Then again, maybe what she mistook for humming was really the residual ringing inside her head. Tucking his knuckles beneath her chin, he coaxed her to meet his gaze. The cracked state of her eyeglasses made them more of a hindrance than anything, so she plucked them from her face and hooked them on the collar of her shirt.
Boone flashed the light in her eyes. “Are you experiencing any sort of pain?”
“Not really.”
Boone winced, leading her to believe she must have shouted the words. Jeez, it was hard to judge sound when your hearing was wonky. Mindful not to blast his eardrums, she deliberately lowered the pitch of her voice for the rest of her statement. “I thought my brain was going to detonate earlier, but now it’s mostly just…foggy.”
Pocketing his penlight, Boone gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Wrestling a leviathan wasn’t exciting enough for you, huh? Had to go and get in a yelling match with a siren. You’re damn lucky your eardrums didn’t rupture.”
She peered at Max, recalling how he hadn’t even covered his ears. “Why is it that you’re perfectly fine?”
“I’m immune to any siren’s call. All sharks are. I suspect you would be too, if your nymph side was fully integrated into your psyche.”
“Nymph side?” Boone parroted.
Max gave him a quick rundown of events without revealing Willa’s true identity. But even without that staggering part of the story, Boone still looked properly stunned. “Do you think the siren was Reva, and not merely one of her cronies?”
“I’d say it’s a good bet. I haven’t heard anything from Justin yet about word of his grandmother’s escape, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything if he truly wasn’t in the loop of what was going on. Speaking of being in the loop, I better get a hold of Jona and let him know we have a homicidal siren in our backyard.”
Max reached for his cell, and she strained to keep up with his side of the phone conversation, her panic escalating. If Reva Bellemuir had indeed escaped… “Aurele! We have to let her know what happened.”
As soon as Max finished talking to his deputy, he handed over his cell phone, and she frantically punched in Aurele’s number. When the voice mail kicked on, she practically screamed in frustration. After leaving the older woman a brief message about Reva’s appearance in Tybee, as well as terse orders for Aurele to call Max’s cell phone, Willa hung up and buried her face in her hands, helpless sobs racking her. Max’s strong arms surrounded her. Despite her resolve to at least pretend at being a steady rock, she clung to him. He stroked her hair, soothing her. His presence comforted, but it didn’t change the reality of the nightmare facing them.
Secured prison walls no longer protected the world from Reva Bellemuir’s hatred.
The countdown to Armageddon had just begun.
Chapter Sixteen
It took every ounce of Harrison’s nonexistent patience not to strangle Reva as the duchess sailed by him and stormed into the stationhouse. That stupid, crazy bitch. What the hell had she been thinking, letting loose with her caterwauling before the fucking shark and the girl abandoned their vehicle? Clearly being locked up all those years had killed off more than a few of the siren’s brain cells.
Pivoting, he walked inside the building and slammed the front door shut. Not that it did a damn bit of good. The glass that should have been affixed within the frame currently littered the floor. He glared at the duchess’s rigid back. “Don’t ever do that again.”
She whipped around and stared at him coldly. “How dare you speak to me that way. Do you know who I am?”
Yes, you’re a fucking basket case. He’d worked with enough of them to read the signs. Hell, he’d been forced to deal with seven basket cases with his previous mentor. Definitely made him an expert on the subject. “Because of that giant hissy fit you threw out there, the girl got away.” Again. With that fucking shark in tow, no less. Damn if that didn’t sting worst than salt in a wound.
“Do you take me for a fool?”
Did she honestly expect him to answer? No, too easy.
“The girl didn’t slip through our fingers with no hope of being found again. We’ll simply lay a trap for her.”
He flicked a speck of dust from his waistcoat. “And how do you plan on going about it? Bloody difficult to lay a trap without bait.”
“Everyone has a weakness. It only takes a little digging to find it. I propose we start searching for clues at her residence.” She marched to the nearest desk and waved imperiously at the computer resting there. “I trust you know how to use one of these contraptions? Plug in her name and find out where she lives.”
He despised being ordered around. It reminded him too much of his previous life. Still, it was a necessary means to a glorious end. Crossing to the desk, he shoved the dead officer from the rickety seat and plopped down. Fortunately, the crazy bitch’s siren blare hadn’t blown out the monitor. He tapped the keyboard, inputting the girl’s name into the database. In less time than it took him to type the two words, her information popped onto the computer screen. Jotting her address onto the adjacent pad of paper, he grumbled to himself.
“What was that?” crazy bitch demanded.
“I said why didn’t we just do this in the beginning?” He pointed to the dead seagull shifter on the ground. “It would have saved the trouble of torturing that dumb bastard for information he didn’t have.”
The duchess’s scarlet lips took a decidedly evil upward slant. “But then that would have spoiled my fun.”
Harrison and Reva decided it would be best to leave the six leviathan henchmen in the minivan while they ransacked the Jameson girl’s apartment. In all honesty, it killed Harrison just a little bit inside to be chauffeuring his hand-picked death squad around in a fucking minivan. The future leader of the world did not cruise in the same vehicle that shuttled soccer kids to and fro, for fuck’s sake. It was an abomination. First chance he got, he was stealing a goddamn tank.
They broke into the apartment with nary any trouble. In fact, the ease of it was almost a disappointment. Working together, they systematically went through every scrap of paper, every tossed-away receipt, anything that offered a possible avenue they might use against the girl in order to earn her compliance. Just as he became convinced they were wasting precious time, they entered the bedroom and the duchess’s attention fell upon a framed photograph of the girl with an older woman. An angry hiss erupted from Reva. Eyes flashing fire, she turned on him, hurtling the frame at his head. He ducked in the nick of time. What was it with her and the fucking hissy fits?
Far as partner selections went, she was turning out to be a bigger pain in the ass than she was worth. Too bad he didn’t know all this shit before he sprang her out of prison.
“Why did you not tell me she’s alive too?”
“Who?”