“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“We have to get to
el Creador
.”
“Who says I haven’t already?”
“You led them away,” she said.
“I did,” he insisted. “I can also walk and chew gum. Or walk, and then chew gum. It’s tricky, but with practice…”
She laughed and was glad that doing so didn’t hurt. Her ribs were fine. It was her leg that seemed to be on fire.
The woman whose home they’d invaded returned with the scissors. She helped Sean cut Brynn’s jeans off then wash the wound free of gravel and dirt. The woman spoke enough English to understand Sean’s requests for bandages and antibiotic cream, which she seemed to have in generous supply.
She also brought Brynn a powerful espresso laced with brandy, which she gulped down while Sean wrapped large strips of clean gauze around her thigh.
“Doesn’t feel broken,” he said, stretching out her bare leg and running his hands over the unblemished flesh.
In any other circumstance, his gentle exploration would have been sensual. Instead, it was aggravating. She was the caregiver. He was the patient. This was the dynamic she understood. This was the dynamic she preferred, because it put her in the superior role and kept her from dropping her guard entirely, even after they’d become lovers.
What was she supposed to do now?
“So you’re a doctor now?” she snapped.
He handed her two over-the-counter painkillers. “I’m no Doogie Howser, but you’ll have to take what you can get. And I know enough about field medicine to patch you up. You might have a nasty scar, though, unless that antibiotic lives up to the marketing claims.”
She could only hope. She didn’t care about the scar, but she did know that a scrape this big was going to slow her down.
And right now, the last thing they needed was a lack of speed.
Sean glanced toward the doorway, drawing Brynn’s attention to the state of the apartment. It wasn’t large, but it was neat, except for a smattering of toys strewn across the scuffed hardwood floors. Brynn was laid out on a twin bed in a room that contained a battered dresser, a chipped mirror and hand-painted stencils of dinosaurs on the walls. A crib was shoved in the corner, the bright white bedding askew.
“Who is our angel of mercy?”
“Single mom, from what I can tell. Two kids. I didn’t think she was going to answer the door for me at first,” he explained, “but luckily, those euros you stuffed into my pockets did the trick. She also speaks enough English so that I could convince her I wasn’t going to hurt her and not to call the cops.”
“Yet,” Brynn said.
He nodded. “We shouldn’t overstay our welcome.”
Brynn moved to get up, but when she winced, Sean pushed her back into the lumpy pillows.
“I’m pretty sure she’ll tolerate us while she’s feeding her kids breakfast. Give yourself a minute for the pills to take effect and tell me what happened.”
Brynn relaxed into the mattress, thankful for a couple of minutes to recharge. Though she must have fallen asleep on the fire escape, exhaustion still flooded her veins like liquid lead.
“I was just coming over the bridge when they shot out behind me. They must have been waiting. I tried to lose them by jumping the sidewalks and navigating between buildings. I thought I’d shaken them off and was making my way back toward the rendezvous when they came around a corner and smashed me from behind. I laid the bike down as close to an alley as I could then climbed up the fire escape and hid under the tarp. As soon as I thought it was safe, I activated the tracking device so you’d find me.”
“It worked,” he said. “I figured they might be watching me, so I led them away then doubled back.”
Sean’s blue-gray eyes darkened like storm clouds. He’d made the right choice for the mission, but he’d paid a price for leaving her behind—a price she’d never wanted him to dole out on her behalf.
“Did you see them?” she asked.
Sean looked away. The break in eye contact lasted a split second, but it was long enough for her to understand that he’d not only seen the men who’d attacked her but he’d stopped them.
Permanently.
“Who were they?”
He patted his jacket pocket. “I don’t know, but I have their photos. We’ll look at them later. Ready?”
The painkillers had taken the edge off. He helped her stand, and once satisfied with her control of her balance, he let her limp unassisted into the tiny living area where their Spanish-speaking guardian angel was blowing on a mug of hot chocolate for her…son?
Brynn wasn’t sure. The child had long, dark, curly locks and brown eyes with lashes a mascara model would kill for, but the imp was dressed in a bright blue T-shirt emblazoned with a stylized gold and red S—the universal symbol for Metropolis’s favorite superhero.
Not that the clothing was gender specific. For Christmas, Ian had gotten her an Iron Man sleep shirt. She’d always had a soft spot for Tony Stark.
She smiled at the memory, which their hostess took as a signal to invite them to eat.
They begged off politely, but Brynn couldn’t refuse when the woman offered her a pair of jeans that didn’t have one leg missing. A size larger than Brynn normally wore, the jeans did not rub so badly against her bandage. She changed in the tiny washroom, taking time to wash the grit off her face and brush out her hair. By the time she’d donned a fresh white button-down blouse and denim jacket, also provided by their generous savior, Brynn looked almost normal.
She slipped as many euros as she could spare into the woman’s bathroom cabinet before they exchanged hasty good-byes. Despite the language barrier, Brynn did her best to warn the woman against telling anyone that she’d helped them. Judging by her earnest nods, Brynn trusted that she understood.
They slipped down a back stairwell then went around to the front, anxious to blend in with the locals heading out to work. Sometime before he’d retrieved Brynn on the fire escape, Sean had exchanged the leather jacket he’d taken from the safe house in Barcelona for a gray wool coat that was cut somewhere between a trench and a blazer. The look on his trim body was heart-stoppingly European. When he dragged a pewter-gray scarf out of his pocket and wrapped it carelessly around his neck, Brynn thought she might faint from hormonal overload.
“Where did you pick that up?” she asked, lightly fingering the wool-blend material of the sleeve.
His wicked grin made her knees tremble. “
El Creador
has a taste for high fashion.”
“You’ve already been to see him?”
She had no concept of how long she’d slept under the tarp. Long enough, clearly, for him to neutralize the men who’d been tailing them, double back to
el Creador
’s loft and not only retrieve the papers they’d been waiting for but also acquire a new wardrobe.
The man was remarkable.
“He was very cooperative.”
“Is he still breathing?” Brynn asked.
Sean winked in reply, and Brynn read that as a good sign. He hadn’t been so jolly when he’d avoided telling her how he’d dealt with the men who’d knocked her off her bike.
A crowd of tourists, each rolling luggage across the sidewalk, filed past the building. Sean took Brynn’s arm and led her into the center of the group. They walked a half block before the group stopped in front of a luxury tour bus, the lower compartments open to receive the bags.
“Did you arrange for this, too?” she asked him.
“I’m good, but sometimes, I just get lucky.”
Taking into account all that had happened to him since he was kidnapped from the States, Brynn figured he was due for a turn in fortune.
Sean finagled two spots on the tour bus for them. He helped her up the steep steps like the dutiful newlywed he was pretending to be. He even deferred the aisle seat to her so that she could stretch out her injured leg, despite how the spot by the window put him at a strategic disadvantage. She gave the tourists a quick once-over but got no negative vibes from any of the mostly middle-aged Americans chattering about topics as varied as the octopus they’d had for dinner to the wine they planned to drink the moment they arrived in France. Brynn allowed the conversations to chip away at her nerves, while at the same time, she was fully aware of how Sean scanned the street through the window, waiting and watching for anyone who might pose a threat.
She couldn’t forget where she was or why she was here. From a technical standpoint, her mission had been an unmitigated disaster. Yes, she’d saved Sean. Yes, he’d recovered from his injuries. But at this point, she should have been back in the States, bonding with her brother and overseeing the continued fiscal health of her business, not plotting to sneak illegally over a foreign border while on the run from an anonymous force for evil.
Not that Brynn was in the mood to complain, particularly not after she lifted the armrest separating her from Sean and snuggled into the tobacco-scented lapel of his GQ coat. “Relax,” she said, sliding her hand onto his. “Whatever happens next, we’ll handle.”
His grin was half-cocky and half-skeptical. “Do you always get this confident after one lucky break?”
“Not usually,” she admitted, “but you have a strange effect on me.”
His smile vanished from his lips but not from his eyes.
“That should worry you, you know.”
Brynn turned in her seat, away from his handsome face and those devastating blue-gray eyes.
“Who says it doesn’t?”
Seven
When they experienced their third lucky break in twenty-four hours, Sean started to worry.
He’d never been a big believer in Fate, but he had a fairly decent understanding of odds. Sooner or later, the tides were going to turn, and he had to make sure neither one of them fell into a fall sense of security.
That could get them dead.
First, they’d successfully blended in with a tour group, booked passage on the bus and crossed into France without a second glance from the border guards, who’d also missed the handguns Sean had hidden in the coach’s air-conditioning unit when everyone else had stopped to take their last photos of the Basque countryside.
Then a stop at a tiny French vineyard had crossed their paths with a trio of teenaged brothers joyriding in a truck that had rolled off the assembly line long before they were born. Brynn had drained the last of her cash buying the jalopy. With batted eyelashes and a naughty joke, she’d also procured the two sacks of groceries they’d picked up at the market for their mother.
The third break came after they’d navigated the winding, densely forested roads toward Dante’s estate and arrived, six hours later, long after dusk. They’d agreed that crossing onto the highly secure property after dark wasn’t a good idea. Instead, they took refuge at a long-abandoned caretaker’s cottage on the southern-most corner of the property, which was actually owned by Dante’s wife, a former spy named Macy Rush. Sean had told Brynn he’d discovered the refuge while walking off his buzz after the wedding reception, but the whole truth was that Dante had shown him the spot so they could indulge in cigars and aged Scotch on the eve of the nuptials. Apparently, massive French chateaus did not come with man caves.
Dusty with cobwebs and inhabited by a family of beech marten who’d taken up residence in the roof, the rustic hideaway wasn’t exactly five-star, but it would do for the night.
It did, after all, have a bed.
Not that he intended for them to use it. Their parting was coming nearer and nearer, and sooner rather than later, Sean was going to have to stop indulging in behavior that was going to make their separation harder to bear.
For both of them.
“Brrr,” Brynn said, tugging the tattered tartan blanket she’d found in the back of the pickup around her shoulders while Sean removed grimy sheets from over the battered chairs and lumpy mattress. “I’m missing sunny Spain already.”
In this region of France, the air was thinner and colder, perfect for growing grapes but anathema to Sean’s native New Orleans blood. When he’d been there for the wedding, he’d grumbled about the weather constantly, if only to himself. But with Brynn around, the chill came in handy.
“It’s been a while since I was a Boy Scout, but I think I can manage a fire,” he announced.
She snorted, which was both adorably un-Brynn-like and saucily alluring. “You, Sean Devlin, were never a Boy Scout.”
“I could have been,” he insisted.
“Only in an alternate reality.”
With a nod, he conceded her point. Other than venturing into the swamp with his mother’s brother to collect gator heads to sell to the tourists, his childhood hadn’t featured much by the way of outdoor excursions.
“True,” he said, “but I was Special Forces. Building a fire is Survival 101.”
He collected the needed supplies, including some straw for kindling and a lighter Brynn had packed into the go-bags. He used what was left of a three-legged chair for firewood, first clearing the chimney with a sooty broom handle.
“Won’t the smoke give away the fact that we’re squatting on Macy’s property?” Brynn asked, tugging hard on an iron hook hung over the grate. She leaned her whole weight on it until both she and the hook were screeching from the resistance. In the end, she won the battle, though she nearly tumbled into the flames.
Luckily, Sean was there to catch her.
The scent of smoke clung to her hair, along with the earthy scents of soil and salty sweat. They’d been on the road for hours. She hadn’t freshened up since before their encounter with the triplet teens, and yet, the feel of her body affected him as if she’d just walked out of a steamy shower in sexy lingerie.
“It’s a chance we’ll have to take. To keep warm,” he whispered.
“There are other ways to get me hot.”
“Don’t I know it,” he replied, then gently but firmly pushed her aside.
He and Brynn had toyed with fire long enough. Sex may have started as a means of buying time and trust, but now it had thrust them into a relationship that neither one of them could afford. In the morning, Sean would meet with Macy. Through her contacts, he’d obtain the information he needed to pursue his kidnappers and discover, once and for all, how and why Jayda had dragged him back into her orbit, even after her death.