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The first words McCallister said to her as she and Mr. French rushed inside the mansion’s big entry hall were “This way. ”
“Do you have the information?” Bryn asked, dumping everything but her phone next to the door.
“Yes. Come with me. ” He’d taken off his suit jacket and tie, and his pale blue shirt was wrinkled, the first two buttons opened—he looked unexpectedly vulnerable to her, somehow. She was so used to seeing him completely together. As she followed him, he said, “Bryn, you have to expect that this may be—”
“A trap,” she said, well aware of the tension in her voice. “I know. Just help me find her, Pat. I need to find her. Please, don’t tell me the dangers, just…help. ”
He said, “I will,” in a soft, flat voice, and closed the door behind her. She hadn’t paid attention to where they were going, but in the sudden rush of stillness, she realized that they were in Patrick’s personal office…a place she’d rarely gone, simply because the door was always shut, whether he was inside or not. It was a warm, book-lined room of dark woods and maroon fabrics, with soft gold light fixtures that lit but didn’t dazzle. The desk was massive and heavily carved, and the chairs matched. It was all very masculine and Victorian, except for the gleaming, ultramodern laptop sitting on the tooled leather desktop.
Pat lifted his gaze to hers and said, “Info’s on the laptop screen. I printed a copy for you to take. But make no mistake, Bryn: I might be willing to accept letting you go alone on Pharmadene’s black flag op, but not on this. No way in hell. So I’m coming, too. I’m not entertaining any arguments. If you tell me no, I’ll just take another car and beat you there. ”
“I wasn’t planning on trying to shut you out,” Bryn replied. “I’m scared. I’m scared for Annie. ”
“And I’m scared for you. You’re too desperate to find her, and that’s a liability. Slow and careful. That’s how we’re going to find her, and how we’re going to get her back safely, without losing anyone else. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Do you think he ordered her to make that call?” Jonathan Mercer’s moral compass—if he’d ever had one in the first place—had shattered into a million sharp pieces when he’d helped create Returné. What was left was something Bryn didn’t really understand at all. Mercer was capable of anything…of luring them in to be killed, most obviously, but he was utterly unpredictable. He might just be screwing with her to entertain himself. Or to let Annie go…If Annie was still under his control, she’d be a perfect Trojan horse.
Or maybe, just maybe, her sister had somehow won her freedom and needed, desperately, to find safety.
Pat sank down in the desk chair, holding both her hands in his. “I think if Mercer wants to have a chat with you, he’d think using Annie to arrange it was just good business,” he said. “So until we find out differently, we have to assume th
at he knew she was calling, at the very least. It wouldn’t be safe to do anything else. ”
She looked past him at the screen. It had a cell phone number on it, but he quickly crashed her hopes by saying, “The number’s not useful in itself; it’s a throwaway. But I have the cell’s last GPS location. It’s been switched off, but you were right. It was at a marina, right here. ” He brought up a map, and pointed. “It’s not exactly the yacht club. The place is a favorite for drug smugglers. If we go, we go in armed and ready. ”
“If we go?”
“Mercer—”
“Pat, Mercer didn’t set this up. If he had, he’d have at least had her give the location to feed to me, wouldn’t he?” Even as she said it, it had a hollow ring and she knew it. She wanted to believe that Annie had gotten free of him, that she could be saved. Could be fixed.
And at the same time, she knew that was bullshit, but she couldn’t let it go.
Pat, however, was going to make her do it. “Knowing we could grab the number off your records and get the GPS coordinates? No. He gives you more credit than you give him, Bryn. ” He leaned forward, capturing and holding her gaze in his intense stare. “I will not let you throw yourself away on this. We’ll play the game, but we’ll play it safely. You don’t go charging in, are we understood? Say yes and mean it, or I zip-tie you and leave you here while Joe and I go on our own. ”
“You wouldn’t. ”
“You think not?”
She couldn’t actually swear that he wouldn’t. McCallister could be coolly ruthless when he needed to be, and he might think that he did need to be right now, with her. “I could probably get those zip-ties off. I mean, skin and bones do grow back on me. ”
A smile shadowed his lips but didn’t show itself plainly. “Probably,” he said. “But it’d slow you down. ”
“So does a bag over the head. ”
The smile, never really present, disappeared completely. Pat’s grip on her hands tightened, then deliberately loosened. “I will never, never do that to you,” he said. “You believe me?”
She did believe him, and always had—from the moment she’d first seen him on her second birth, she’d somehow believed in his essential goodness. And on impulse, she leaned forward and kissed him—caught him by surprise, for once, and for a second his lips were soft, yielding under hers before pressing forward, parting, meeting hers with equal amounts of need and longing. His tongue stroked gently over her mouth, and there was a buried wildness in her that broke free when she allowed it entrance. His body was tense against hers, and his hands traveled slowly down her sides, curved inward, cupped her hips, and pulled her tighter against him. She had no idea what drew him to her with such constant and consistent force, but it was always there, that buried attraction that required only a moment’s slip of control to surface. It was wildly sexy, but more than the pure attraction of him, there was a kind of beautiful strength to Patrick that she couldn’t begin to define.
Why he wanted her was such a mystery to her, but there was no question in her mind, no question at all, how much she wanted him. She wanted to blot out the world with the red race of pulses and bodies, the damp solace of kisses and sweat and hot, mind-wiping sex. She needed to feel alive, with Pat, now.
But she couldn’t. Because of Annie.
So she sucked in a deep, angry breath and backed away.
McCallister reached for her, but when he saw the look on her face, he let his hands fall back to his knees. He pulled in a deep breath, dropped his head against the cushion of the chair, eyes narrowing. “I still mean it about the zip-ties. ” He almost succeeded in making it sound as if nothing had happened between them. Almost. But there was color in his face, and his lips were damp, and she couldn’t stop zeroing in on them.
On the shining focus in his eyes.
