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“Stop being so bloodthirsty Annette,” she ordered the girl. It was an order she heard often. “Your father isn’t getting a gun. . . .”
Tires were screaming outside, and the rev of an engine accelerating from the marina entrance and more rubber howling in protest as the vehi
cle was forced to a stop had them all pausing.
“Bliss!” Natches’s voice thundered through the store.
“Dad. Dad.” Tears choked the teenager’s voice as she tore away from Kelly and met her father at the doorway of the office. Instantly, she was pulled into his arms, lifted from her feet as Natches sheltered her against his chest, one hand at the back of her head as he held her with his other arm, his eyes closing as Bliss wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, the fear finally hitting her.
She was sobbing against her father’s shoulder as such agony creased Natches’s face that it clenched Zoey’s chest.
“Where’s Chaya, Natches?” Rowdy questioned him, his tone icy as Natches opened his emerald-green eyes, and focused on his cousin.
“Dawg . . .” He cleared his throat as his hold tightened on his daughter.
Moving to the chair next to him Natches sat down as though afraid his legs wouldn’t hold him much longer. He cradled his daughter in his arms, her head still buried in his shoulder, her arms locked around his neck. “She was with Dawg and Christa.”
At the same time the sound of tires screaming again just outside the marina had Zoey jumping in fear and moving quickly to look outside the large glass window where Dawg’s truck nearly touched the glass.
Moving aside as Chaya raced inside, tears streaming down her face, Christa and Dawg moving behind her.
“Bliss. Bliss.” Chaya nearly fell as she tried to get to the door, caught herself, then went to her knees in front of her husband and daughter.
“Mom. I’m okay, Mom.” But she was still crying.
Bliss’s looks were nearly identical to Zoey’s but for the emerald eyes and Zoey’s celadon green ones. They were often mistaken as twins to those who didn’t know them.
Behind Dawg, Doogan pushed into the office, his features hard, his brown eyes ice until they found hers. Warmth blazed in them, then relief and love filling them as he moved to her, his arm sliding around her to pull her to his chest.
Still holding her hand over her lips Zoey realized Bliss wasn’t the only one crying. Tears dampened her own cheeks, and as Christa ran to her daughter, the other woman was crying as well.
“Someone tried to abduct Bliss,” she whispered, lifting her gaze to him, the horror of it still resounding through her. “They almost took her, Doogan. Someone nearly took her.”
“And now they’ll die.” He shrugged, that ice lingering in his gaze, his voice. “Soon.”
—
Angel packed slowly, not that she had much to pack. The saddlebags that secured to the back of the motorcycle didn’t hold a lot. The rest of their gear, supplies, and various weapons had shipped out that morning with Tracker’s ’vette and the black Range Rover that traveled from job to job with them.
She wasn’t ready to leave Somerset yet. She wasn’t ready to turn her back on the last dream that had survived her childhood. The dream already slowly dying in her soul.
After securing the pack and setting it next to the door, her gaze was caught by her reflection in the full-length mirror there. Shattered sapphire eyes. Once, when she was a child, her eyes had been a soft gray, her hair dark blonde rather than the sunlit color she kept on it.
She’d resembled her father then, but once she’d hit her teens, Tracker, the man who had saved her, said she began looking like her mother. She could see her mother in her features now. The shape of her eyes, the curve of her brow. The set of her chin.
She was shorter than her mother though, her frame more delicate than the former Homeland Security agent’s. She had her mother’s smile, Tracker would tell her sometimes, when she allowed herself to smile.
Pulling back from the mirror and blinking, not to hold back tears—Angel never cried—but to fight back the hurt, the pain that leaving brought.
Tracker was right; they had no reason to stay. They’d been away when Zoey had needed them, arriving back in town only days after Jack Clay had been killed. Two months was too long to stay in one place without a job. The Mackays were going to start asking questions, and Angel didn’t want questions. She had wanted recognition. A recognition that hadn’t come. All she saw was suspicion, and Tracker was right, it was killing her.
Picking up the pack and opening the door she stepped into the small living room of the cabin they’d taken after returning, her gaze narrowing on the three men standing tensely by the door.
“Eli?” Her gaze flicked to Tracker and their partner, Grog. Both men were tall, imposing, not so much handsome as roughened.
And she knew both of them. Something was wrong.
“Angel.” Eli nodded his dark blond head before turning back to Tracker. “I have to go. I just thought I’d stop on my way.”
