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Olivia took the chair Talon had vacated. “Whew,” she said, smiling and shaking her head. “What a night you’ve had.”
“Yeah.” I closed my mouth, still back there with Talon saying he loved me—and then leaving. “First time the man tells me he loves me, and he runs out the door before I can even say it back.”
“He’s afraid,” Mrs. Park said from the doorway.
My brows climbed. “Of me?”
“Not you so much,” she said. “What you represent.”
“And what’s that?”
“Vulnerability. Someone hurts you, and they hurt him. We saw it ourselves. He wasn’t himself while you were gone. He wasn’t just upset and angry, he felt guilty.”
I nodded slowly. It made sense, especially with parents like his. He was used to being the problem solver, the protector, the hard-ass.
Mrs. Park indicated my tray. “Finish your soup,” she said in a firm but kind voice. “Rio made it himself.”
38
Talon
Outside the castle walls, two syndicate helicopters were standing by. Brien, Cain and I climbed into one, and three enforcers piled into the second.
As I’d told Eden, our motorboat hadn’t sabotaged itself. There had been at least one other person on the island. Fortunately, that had occurred to Brien, too, and while he and Twilight were waiting for Cain to come back with the dinghy, Brien had disabled Lemaire’s boat.
Whoever it was wouldn’t have an easy way off. Yeah, they could swim, but it was a long, energy-draining trip, even for a vampire, and the closest inhabited land was Lilith Island. Most likely, they’d either called for pick up or were swimming in our direction. Either way, we might still be able to capture them before they slithered back into whatever hole they called home.
Cain and I took the seats in the back, and Brien took shotgun next to our pilot, a soldier named Gianna. We donned our headsets and Gianna took us up, the second bird immediately after.
The wind off the ocean buffeted us. Gianna cooly steadied the small aircraft and swung northwest. The other pilot followed, keeping a distance of about a hundred meters. Both pilots flipped on their searchlights.
I leaned forward trying to see something, anything—a swimmer, another boat, even a helicopter. In the seat ahead of me, Brien did the same. He muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?” asked Cain.
“Just wondering how the fuck Lemaire established a lair this close to Lilith Island without us realizing it.”
Technically, this was Maritime Syndicate territory. The entire Maritime Provinces were. But our focus was on the mainland, as it had been for Brien’s parents before us.
“It wouldn’t be a smart use of resources to monitor every uninhabited island,” Cain pointed out. “There are too damn many.”
He was right. In fact, there were close to three hundred islands within a twenty-five-kilometer range.
“This island was different,” said Brien. “Jules took me there once when I was still a kid. He even showed me that lair, but I’d forgotten all about it until tonight. That was our lair, originally—Jules had it built back when he first came to North America. He was planning to establish his base there until he struck the deal for Lilith Island. It was bigger, and a little farther from the mainland. And, of course, Bluebeard’s Cove is wider and deeper than any cove around.”
“I never stepped foot on it before tonight,” Cain said.
I nodded. “Same here.”
“Might be worth rebuilding,” Brien mused. “A backup lair in case of emergency.”
Cain and I murmured agreement, then fell silent, our full attention on the search again.
I’d told Brien and Cain that Lemaire had sold Eden to someone as a blood slave. The vampire who came to mind was Nazaire, the QCS enforcer who’d tried to buy Twilight at a private auction. In fact, the whole setup reeked of him.
Take Twilight and Eden and he’d have the two women most important to us. It was ingenious, really. The SOB could strike a blow at the heart of our syndicate while at the same time feeding his addiction for unwilling females.
“Whoever bought Eden,” I said, thinking aloud, “whether it was Nazaire or someone else, he wasn’t on the island. Lemaire was taking her somewhere by boat.”
