Page 145 of Dancing for the Minotaur

Terra glanced guiltily around her.

“Okay. Fair point.”

“Slow down,” he emphasized. “Breathe. It’s all over and everyone is fine.”

“All right, I know. I’m trying to calm down.”

“Good.” His voice softened. “We will be waiting.”

“Taurex…”

“Yes?”

There were a thousand things Terra wanted to say, but none of them seemed sufficient. Thank you wasn’t enough—it didn’t begin to cover what he had done or what she was feeling, and she had no idea yet how he had even known where to find the children.

“Thank you,” she whispered anyway.

For a moment, he didn’t answer. But then he murmured,

“You are welcome,” and the call ended.

Terra lowered the phone slowly and took some deep breaths.

She drove another block before pulling into an empty parking space at the curb because her hands were shaking so badly, she no longer trusted herself to steer. The moment the car was stopped, she put it into park and dropped her forehead against the steering wheel.

Her babies were safe. The thought came again, and this time Terra finally allowed herself to believe it. Cody was safe. Lisa was safe. Taurex had saved them.

A sob tore from her throat and she covered her face with both hands, crying so hard that her entire body shook. Five minutes ago, she had been prepared to give Viktor Orlov anything he demanded, prepared to walk willingly into whatever nightmare he had planned if it meant getting her children back. Now Orlov was apparently gone—or dead, though Taurex hadn’t actually said the word—and her babies were sitting in the penthouse with the one man Terra had convinced herself she needed to fear.

The irony of that was not lost on her. She had been afraid of Taurex. She had looked into those golden eyes and begged him not to hurt her. But when her children were in real danger, he was the one who had come for them.

Terra wiped her cheeks and looked upward through the windshield at a narrow strip of blue Florida sky between the downtown buildings.

“Thank you,” she whispered. She wasn’t entirely sure who she was talking to. God, certainly. Maybe the Monstrum Goddess Taurex believed in too, though Terra wasn’t exactly sure how that worked theologically and she was far too overwhelmed to worry about it right now. “Thank you for sending him,” she added softly.

Then she started the Honda again. This time she obeyed the speed limit—mostly. Her heart was still pounding, and she knew she wouldn’t truly believe her children were safe until she had Cody and Lisa in her arms, but the cold fist of terror that had been gripping her insides was finally loosening.

There would be questions later—a lot of questions. How had Taurex known where to find them? Why had Orlov been in the same building? And what had Taurex meant when he said Orlov would never bother anyone again?

But she would deal with all of that later, Terra told herself. Right now, only one thing mattered—her children were waiting for her.

And somehow, impossibly, so was Taurex.

38

TERRA

The rest of Terra’s trip to the Montana Building existed afterward only as a series of disconnected flashes in her memory. She remembered parking the Honda badly, half over the line in the garage, and vaguely remembered someone calling after her when she rushed past the front desk, but everything else had blurred beneath the pounding need to see Cody and Lisa with her own eyes.

Taurex had told her they were safe. She had heard their voices. She knew, rationally, that they were waiting for her upstairs, but the terrified mother inside her refused to believe any of it completely until she could touch them herself.

The golden elevator seemed to take forever despite the fact that it was probably the fastest one Terra had ever ridden. She stood with both hands clasped tightly in front of her, staring at the glowing numbers as they climbed while her heart hammered so hard against her ribs that she could almost hear it. When the doors finally opened onto the private penthouse foyer, she rushed out before they were completely apart and barely remembered punching in the access code before the enormous doors opened.

“Mom!”

“Mommy!”

Two small bodies came flying toward her.