Authors: Nancy Gideon
Once out of view of those watching, Jacques surrendered to impulse and sank to one knee beside his
child. Pearl flung her arms about his neck and squeezed tight. He turned his face into her pale, soft hair and breathed deep.
“I knew you’d come to get us. I knew it,” she whispered.
“And I’m never letting you go,” was his gruff promise. He swept her into his arms and stood, carrying her and her meager belongings quickly down two flights of steps to the main floor where MacCreedy waited similarly dressed in black. He smiled at the girl.
“Hi. I’m Silas. I have a nephew just a few years older than you. His name is Oscar.”
A return smile. “I’m Pearl. I can’t wait to play in his big yard.”
Silas glanced up at Jacques, who simply raised his brows, equally mystified. He placed a hand on the blonde head and told her confidently, “We’ll be there soon.”
MacCreedy cracked the stairwell door to peer down the long hall. “The guard should be leaving the desk right . . . about . . . now.” He pushed the door open. “Go.”
Jacques briskly headed toward the exit with MacCreedy just behind him. He set his features into a formidable scowl and didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead through a dedicated tunnel vision. With their black leather, strong, loping strides, glowing eyes, and single-minded ferocity, Jacques knew what others would see: serious muscle-for-hire, and no one on the
facility’s meager salary would step in their way with any questions.
Thirty feet from freedom. Pearl was relaxed in his arms, her head trustingly on his shoulder.
There was activity at the desk ahead. The night clerk returned to answer the phone and immediately, his posture straightened.
Jacques increased the length of stride, Silas doing the same.
The clerk’s animated conversation ended and he was quickly making calls. His agitated movements telegraphed his fear.
Twenty feet.
“What do you mean she’s not there?” the clerk was sputtering. “I was just talking to him. To
him
, Frost. She’s supposed to be moved to Research in the morning. Who the hell took her? You still have the paperwork?” His frantic eyes lifted, fixing on the two rapidly approaching figures and growing wide.
They rounded the corner, ignoring the desk to continue purposefully toward the exit.
“Alert security,” the clerk whispered before calling out, “Excuse me. I need to see some identification.”
They stopped as one, both looking back over their shoulders with an expressionless menace.
The clerk swallowed hard and managed to sound authoritative. “I need your IDs.”
Another motionless moment passed as sweat gathered on the clerk’s brow.
“Of course,” MacCreedy intoned flatly. He glanced at Jacques. “You go ahead and get the subject secured. I’ll take care of this inconvenience.”
Without a blink of response, Jacques continued for the door, letting Silas head back toward the desk to cover their escape.
“You there, stop,” the clerk called after him. “I need to see your paperwork, too. Stop!”
A soft blat of sound, then hurried footsteps. Silas reached past him to shove open the first of two outer doors, saying, “Go. Fast.”
Alarms screamed behind them. The doors automatically locked down, trapping them between the two sets. Without breaking stride, Jacques pulled his pistol, firing three rounds into the heavy glass. Pearl buried her face against his neck, hugging tight.
Arm raised to protect his head, MacCreedy lunged through the weakened outer door without breaking his stride, making a opening for Jacques to follow. They hit the cold slap of evening air and started running. Fast.
Their car was parked in the circle drive. Lights flashed as MacCreedy keyed the locks.
Jacques couldn’t hear the shots over the wail of the alarms but saw puffs of cement flying up around their feet. A sudden sharp punch in the back just below his ribs made him stumble, dropping him down on one knee. Silas snatched Pearl from his arms and grabbed his elbow, hauling him back up, dragging him toward the car, yanking the door open, shoving him into the
passenger seat with Pearl on his lap. Jacques wrapped himself about her small form, becoming a protective shield as bullets thudded into metal and shattered the door glass. All the while, Pearl never made a sound.
The engine roared to life.
“Hang on,” MacCreedy shouted as he put foot to floor, speeding away from the curb in a shriek of burning rubber.
Then all Jacques could hear was the ragged catch of his own breathing and a soft whisper in his ear.
“I love you, Daddy.”
Twenty-six
E
xplain ‘gone.’”
Susanna watched as a vein pulsed to life on Damien’s forehead, contrasting with his level tone.
“You’re telling me they just walked into a facility where I have paid a fortune for the best possible security and out again? I don’t care about your employee.” His voice spiked in fury. “He’s going to wish he
had
died.”
Jacques had Pearl.
Relief made her giddy.
He was here. He’d come for them.
“I want them found. I don’t care what it takes. Alive! Do you hear me? Get something right.”
Damien ended the call, his hands shaking. His narrowed stare met Susanna’s. Her features remained carefully neutral. “He won’t get far,” he assured her. “And he won’t come for you. We’ll be blanketed with security in a matter of minutes. If he’s smart, which I highly doubt, he’d just take his bastard brat and run.”
Susanna allowed a chill smile. “I hope he does. Then they’ll both be out of your reach and you’ll have nothing to threaten me with.”
He seethed over that for a moment, then reminded her with a silky venom, “I’ll still have you, my dear.”
She laughed, making that vein beat all the harder. “Do you think that matters to me? Do you think I care what you do to me as long as they’re safe?”
“I care.”
The low rumbling voice brought her head snapping about.
In his black leathers, he looked very much like he had that first time she’d seen him: big, fierce, brutally powerful. Only what burned in his eyes wasn’t defiance, it was determination. Though his pistol was trained on Frost, his stare was for her.
“Pack whatever you need for the two of you,” he told her.
She rose up, her heart fluttering in her breast. “I’ll get my bag. I have everything else.” Her welling eyes entreated. “Don’t I?”
“She’s in the car with MacCreedy. Hurry.”
She bolted from the chair, but instead of rushing by him for the stairs, she paused to place her palm on his firm middle, rubbing over the hard ridge of his abs to assure herself that he was solid and real. And hers.
He spoke to her softly without taking his eyes off Frost. “I apologize for letting you leave New Orleans without telling you I didn’t want you to go.”
She stretched up for a quick taste of his lips, whispering against them, “I love you. I always have.”
Jacques’s brows lowered dangerously as he touched the colorful mark on her face. “Did he do this?” His
hot, laser-blue gaze shifted to Damien Frost, glinting as red as the blood about to be shed.
Reading his own death in that glittering stare, Damien sneered, “Kill me and you’ll never know one second of freedom. You’ll be hunted down relentlessly like the animal you are.”
Jacques’s facial bones sharpened, growing more prominent, more bestial as fierce instinct rose, feeding the violent need to rip apart this fool who
dared
harm his mate. He smiled, displaying sharp teeth. “It would be worth it.”
Susanna stroked his tense jaw to distract him from potential carnage. “No. Leave him. Jacques!”
His fiery glare touched hers.
“Promise you won’t harm him.”
“You don’t owe him anything,” he spat out.
“But to you, I owe everything. Trust me. Jack?”
“All right.”
She raced for the stairs.
The two men stared at each other.
“What could you possibly offer her?” Damien sneered. “Look at you, you bulky, graceless, square-headed beast. What interests could you share with her, you with your IQ on the same level as that chair? Look at all I’ve given her. Yet instead of being grateful for having more than she deserves, she throws everything away for a brute like you. Why?”
“I used to ask myself that. Apparently I’m everything she wants and needs.” He shrugged. “You’re the smart one. Go figure.”
“What kind of man would demand a woman like that leave all this for a life as a fugitive? All that potential, wasted. All that promising work she could have been doing, thrown away, for what?”
“Freedom.” Then stronger, “Love.”
Frost stared at him blankly.
“Concepts you would never understand,” Susanna told him as she reentered the room with her bag over her shoulder and medical satchel in hand. “I’m ready to go.” Then she paused, gaze riveted to the floor at Jacques’s feet. “Are you hurt?”
Damien wrinkled his nose in distaste as he viewed the bright splotches of crimson. “You’re staining my carpet. Dare I hope it’s something fatal?”
“Merely inconvenient,” Jacques assured him.
But Susanna was staring at the hole in the back of his coat, her eyes going wide and glassy. She slipped her arm about his waist beneath the heavy drape of leather and found a huge, spreading patch of dampness at his belt line. And for the first time, his steady stance faltered.
“Let’s go.” Her tone was low and urgent.
“You won’t get out of this subdivision,” Damien warned. “They’ll bring you back in chains.”
Susanna observed him coldly. “At what cost to your reputation? What will this fine, upstanding community think when they discover how you’ve made fools of them all these years with your pretended mate, knowingly harboring a hybrid child?”
Damien blinked at a logic he’d never considered.
“Better you take the information I’ve left you with your precious public opinion intact, and say good riddance to us.”
He glanced from the computer, so brimming with promise and potential wealth, to the troublesome female clutching at her paling bestial lover. “Good riddance.”
“Nothing fatal,” Susanna pronounced, studying the metal slug held in the prongs of her probe.
Jacques released the breath he’d been holding to groan, “Feels like it should be.” He took another tentative breath after Susanna completed her packing and binding. Not too bad. Not nearly as painful as the thought of living without them.
He let her button him into a clean white shirt, breathing in the fragrance of her hair.
“She’s so beautiful, Anna,” he murmured, still unused to the way his chest seized up at the thought of his daughter. It was a wonderful distress.
The same kind of distress that shimmered in his mate’s dark eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I couldn’t risk either of your lives. I’m sorry for so many things.”
He cupped the back of her head in one hand so he could kiss her brow. “None of that matters now. None of it.” He reached behind him, wincing slightly as he pulled a folded piece of paper from his coat. “She drew this for me. Before I met her.”
Susanna studied the drawing of a man behind a
high counter, and a table where a girl and a woman holding a baby sat.
“I’d guess that’s my bar and the big, square-headed fella is me.” He chuckled, then asked quietly, “Did you tell her anything about me?”
“No. She just knows things.” She searched his face for signs of repulsion or dismay. Would he reject those Chosen qualities?
He smiled. “Good. She can help me find my keys when I’m late for work.”
“Can I come in now?” a small voice asked from the other side of the curtain.
Susanna pointed sternly to the mattress and helped Jacques lie back. Then she opened the fabric divider.
Pearl bounded in, hopping up on the bed with an exuberance that had Jacques grimacing happily.
“Hey, baby girl. Don’t worry. I’m going to be fine.”
“I know.” Not the least bit of doubt showed in her expression.
Susanna placed a calming hand on her head. “Your daddy needs his rest, so don’t pester him too much.”
Jacques patted the space beside him. “Why don’t we both get some rest. You can keep me company. There’s room for two.”
Pearl kicked off her shoes and curled up against his side.
Susanna tucked a thin blanket about them, saying softly, “I’ve got something I need to do but I’ll be back in a minute.”
As she left, she heard Jacques ask, “What color should we paint your room?”
“Red.”
A chuckle. “We’ll see. Is that a baby brother or baby sister in your picture?”
“Brother.”
“Yeah? What’s his name?”
“Tito.”
A pause, a hitch of breath, then a quiet, “Nice name.”
It had taken all Giles St. Clair’s powers of persuasion to coax Charlotte to join him for a crack-of-dawn breakfast. She sat restlessly across the table, picking at her eggs, her eyes darkly shadowed, her color wan with worry. He didn’t ask any questions. He could see the answers in her tense, denying posture. So he poured her coffee, put a thick smear of jelly on her toast, and constantly prodded her to take another bite.
Giles had spread the cover-up that Max had been seriously injured in a motorcycle accident, that he and lawyer Antoine D’Marco would be acting as temporary liaisons as Max ran his business from a secluded hospital room. So far, no one was questioning the story.
Awkwardly thrust into a position of authority, Giles almost wished the wily and deceitful Francis Petitjohn was still among them. But it was the least he could do for Max, mumbling a few words here and there to keep his company going. As for his other, less
than human interests, Silas MacCreedy would act as proxy.
And that left Charlotte alone, adrift, and unattended.
All he could offer was silence and support. And breakfast.
“I just talked to Mac a bit ago,” Charlotte spoke up. “He said they should be landing soon with Jacques and his family.”