A wolfish grin. “Don’t be. I like picky.” He pushed to his feet. “Well, no, usually I don’t like picky, but this time I think I do.”
With a sidelong glance through the window, he put his arms around my waist, leaned down, and kissed me. It was a slow kiss, easy and relaxed, with none of the practiced attention to art of his first kiss.
“Setting the scene?” I murmured with a nod toward the window.
“A good excuse.” He kissed me again and then sighed. “You really are immune, aren’t you?”
“To what?” I caught his look and rolled my eyes. “Oh please. You really are vain, aren’t you?”
“I already admitted that. I can’t help it. I’m accustomed to having my attentions returned.”
“Hmm.”
“Not even going to bite for that, are you?”
I stepped back and sat on the edge of the bed. “What? If you find me attractive, I’m honor bound to return the compliment? Fine, yes, you have your charms.”
A twist of his lips.
“That’s not good enough? Okay, let me try again. I think you’re the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen and I can barely keep my hands off you …Well, not when there’s a decent source of chaos around.”
He growled and scooped me up off the bed, kissing me again.
“Enough already,” I said, squirming free. “I admitted you were—”
“Charming.”
“I said you had your charms.”
“Which means you find me charming.”
“No, well, yes, you are charming, but I don’t find that charming.”
He laughed and shook his head. “All right, you find me physically attractive, then.”
“Yes, you are, but no, I don’t find that particularly attractive.”
He bared his teeth in a quick grin and stepped closer. “My wit?”
I moved back and shrugged. “Witty enough, though not as witty as you think you are.”
“Ouch.” He gave an almost self-mocking grin. “Then it must be my undeniable sense of style.”
“Because you can pick out a decent tux?” I snorted. “There’s, what, one color option, two or three styles?”
A feigned look of shock. “You mean you don’t find me irresistibly suave, debonair—”
“Where I grew up, guys learn suave from the cradle.”
His grin only grew. “Then whatever you find attractive about me has nothing to do with any of this—” He waved his hands over himself. “—this infinitely polished package?”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“Very good.”
He caught me up in a kiss. As he did, a distant vibe twanged through me.
“They’re here,” I whispered.
Marsten glanced out the window, his body blocking mine, gaze scanning the dark street.
“They’re across the road,” he murmured as he turned back to me. “They must have just arrived. On the count of three, I’m swinging you past the window and onto the bed.”
He did. As soon as I hit the mattress, I rolled to the far side and dropped onto the floor. Marsten followed. We crawled into the hall, down the stairs, and to the back door. We reached it in time to duck behind the kitchen cabinets before we heard footsteps. The guard tested the door, peered in, and then moved on.
“Quickly,” Marsten murmured. “They’ll be back. This is the safest place to break in.”
As we slipped onto the rear deck, I started pushing the handle in, to relock it when it closed. Marsten caught my hand.
“We want them to know we came out this way,” he whispered.
Hunched over, darting from bush to tree to garden shed, I led him across my tiny yard, and down the small hill to the woodland beyond. Marsten found a place for me to hide. He made sure I had my gun and warned me, whatever happened, to stay where I was. Then he gave me a card from his wallet and told me, if he didn’t return in an hour, I was to get to a public place, call the handwritten number on the back, and explain everything.
A moment later, he was gone.
I did as Marsten instructed. I had no choice. As impotent as I felt cowering in those bushes, I knew, if I tried to help, I’d more likely get us both killed.
I listened as the soft lullaby of cricket and frog calls went silent under the heavy footfalls and guttural muttering of Tristan and his guards. I listened as those mutters gave way to orders and oaths. I listened as those trudging footsteps divided and turned into running feet. I listened as a shot shattered the night. Then a scream, cut short by flashing fangs.
That wasn’t my imagination working overtime. I saw those fangs flash, smelled bowels give way, felt hot blood spatter my face, and the visions brought not a split second of chaos bliss. With every cry, every scream, every silenced pistol shot, I was certain Marsten had been hit.
The death vision came twice, and still I heard multiple running feet and voices. My God, how many were there? How would he ever—
Another shot. Then a piercing canine yelp of pain.
THIRTEEN
I gripped my gun and slunk through the shadows until I was close enough to see a flashlight beam cutting a swath through the dark forest. The beam stopped, and my gaze followed its path through the trees.
A black mound of fur lay motionless at the end of that flashlight beam. A guard stood beside the mound, his gun pointed down.
Something flashed near the top of the heap, a blue eye reflected in Tristan’s flashlight beam. The eye rolled, following Tristan. I took another three steps, until that dark mound became a massive wolf, lying on his belly, his head lowered but not down, ears and lips drawn back as he watched Tristan’s approach. The fur on Marsten’s shoulder was matted with blood. The guard had his gun pointed at Marsten’s head, and I couldn’t tell whether he was staying down because of that gun or because he was too badly injured to rise.
“Hope!”
Tristan’s voice rang out so loud that I jumped. Only the barest rustle of dead leaves gave me away, but Marsten’s ears swiveled in my direction. His black nostrils flared. Then he let out a low growl, and I knew that growl was for me. As clear a Get the hell out of here as if he’d shouted the words.
“Hope!” Tristan yelled again. “I know you’re there.”
Marsten’s muzzle turned sharply as bushes crackled. The top of a head bobbed from the darkness. Tristan waved for the guard to stand near Marsten.
“Hope! Don’t you think you’ve caused enough trouble tonight? Three men dead and another to follow? All because you couldn’t do your job and catch one man—a thief, no less. Isn’t that what you’d signed on to do? Help us put away scum like Karl Marsten?”
When Marsten had found us hiding spots, he’d emphasized protecting our backs. So where could I safely …?
I looked up into the trees.
While Tristan shouted for me, I scurried to the nearest candidate, grabbed the lowest branch, and channeled my inner tomboy. In minutes I was lying on my stomach on a thick branch.
“Hope! You have thirty seconds to show yourself, or I put a bullet in this mutt’s head.”
I ignored him. He wasn’t about to kill the only way he had to get to me.
My sight line into the clearing was less than ideal. I could make out heads and torsos, but nothing below waist level, which included Marsten. I wriggled farther along the branch and spotted him, still on the ground at the guard’s feet, his head raised as he glowered at Tristan.
“Hope? Last chance.”
Tristan’s finger moved to the trigger. Was I so sure he wouldn’t shoot? Tristan wanted Marsten dead, wouldn’t leave this forest until he was dead. He had him dead to rights. Getting me was secondary.