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Authors: Virna Depaul

Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Suspense, #Paranormal, #Fiction

Awakened (6 page)

BOOK: Awakened
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The sarcasm in his tone made the dull ache in Barrett’s head began to grow in intensity again. “Go fuck yourself, Nick.”

“Can’t. I have work to do.” He walked over to what she guessed was the security system and stared into a screen. As he fiddled with some buttons, she got the sense that he was trying to regain his control. “Stupid remote feed got fried somehow.” He gave it a smack that rattled something inside. “Won’t work the way I want it to.”

“What’s the matter?”

“The satellite tracker and the security system don’t sync.” Nick scowled. “Goddamn it.” His thick dark brows drew together as he stared into the screen and swore under his breath. “Let’s try the zoom.”

“What are you looking for?” With difficulty, she rose from the bed and went to stand beside him.

“Your vehicle. And—well, shit.”

That was putting it mildly, Barrett thought. They both stared at her smashed and burning rental car. Flames licked against cracked glass and bent metal, devouring, destroying. They heard the explosion. The screen went black.

“Guess you parked in someone’s spot,” he muttered.

“Oh. So you get to joke and I don’t. That’s really not funny.”

He shrugged and tapped other keys until he got the map function again.

Barrett saw several gold dots begin to move randomly at the bottom of the topo map. “What are those?”

“Could be a malfunction.”

His tone told Barrett that he wasn’t telling her everything. “And if it isn’t?”

“Then several someones or somethings are coming up the mountain and that makes us officially outnumbered. Let’s go.”

“Go where? In what?” Barrett was shaking, and not from weakness.

“Hang on.” He pulled out a radio. Pressed a button. “Kev, do you hear me?” Nothing. “Kev.” Still nothing. “Shit.” He threw down the radio. “I’ll try calling him when we’re out of here.”

“Him who?”

“Guy who works down the mountain. He’s got his hands full dealing with those gold dots.” Nick clenched his teeth. “At least I hope that’s why he’s not answering.”

“So it looks to me like we just ran out of options.”

He straightened and took her arm. “Plan H. Follow me.”

She wondered what had happened to plans A through G, but there wasn’t time to ask.

He reached down to grab his crossbow and arrows, then led the way to a door she hadn’t noticed. Once through it, he flipped several switches on a panel in an exterior wall. They were in a hangar. Huge panels opened slowly to reveal the sky. Silhouetted in the faint moonlight was a gleaming helicopter.

Barrett gaped at the craft, momentarily at a loss for words. “Where’d you get that?”

“It was here when I moved in,” he answered laconically.

Like she was ever going to get a straight answer to a reasonable question out of him. Nick had been famous for procuring outrageously expensive gear at no cost to himself. Whenever he wanted to see what he could get, he had filled out requisition forms one after the other and his commanding officer had signed off on them without even looking.

“As long as you know how to fly it.”

“Just get in,” he sighed.

She obeyed, putting on the headset with the attached mic she found on the seat.

They were aloft in minutes, taxiing the short distance out of the hangar to a landing pad and rising swiftly when the rotors got up to speed. There was another scanner with a similar screen mounted on the helicopter’s instrument panel. Barrett didn’t want to look at it but she did. The gold dots moved higher on the map of the mountain, almost to the top. The deafening noise of the rotors didn’t drown out another, much more primal sound. And the headsets didn’t filter it out entirely.

Ferocious howls rose to the darkening sky as they flew away.

“Sounds like the hounds of hell,” Barrett yelled, wincing as her shout and the helicopter noise seemed to stab into her temples like razors.

“Nah. Those are hunting dogs. The gold dots track them, if you really want to know. A breeding operation adjoins my property. The kennels are down there, below the ridge.”

“Are they after us?” The question wasn’t meant to be serious but it came out that way.

Nick adjusted his headset mic and glanced at the screen. “No. But someone let them out. They shouldn’t have been loose, which is why we needed to get out of there. But it’s entirely possible the dogs captured him.”

She knew whom he meant but not exactly. They’d gotten off the subject of what had attacked her.

He shut off the scanner and concentrated on a bewildering array of instruments and gauges, then looked out at the clear night sky, his mouth set in a grim line. They didn’t speak for some time. Barrett looked out through the clear bubble of the windshield as Nick piloted the craft. Her vision had started to tunnel and she blinked to regain focus. Her mouth was dry, her skin clammy. She needed to lie down. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep for eons.

She had no choice but to remain upright and bluff her way through. “Mind if I ask where we’re going?” she asked after a while.

He glanced at her, his eyes narrowing as he took her in. “Got enough fuel to get to the Atlanta area.”

“Why Atlanta?”

He shrugged. “Big city. Safer.”

“If you say so.”

Nick kept his gaze on the instrument panel. “Rest. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

“I don’t want to. Let’s keep talking.”

They hit rough air and her stomach roiled from the turbulence. Nick righted the heli with some effort and flew on.

“Fine,” he said. “You want to talk? Tell me why you came to me, Barrett. When the last time I saw you, you swore to never come to me—or for me—ever again.”

His voice echoed distinctly inside her headset. Her face heated at his deliberately crude choice of words. Had she said that? She struggled to remember, distracted by the constant thudding of the rotors.

Maybe she had.

What of it? She’d beaten him to the punch, that was all, by being the first to say they should break up. Then added that she didn’t have a place for him in her life or in her bed.

Over and out.

And though she’d meant every word, her heart had known her for the cowardly liar she was. It still did, but as always, she pushed beyond that.

“I came for your help, Nick. Not for you. That’s a big distinction.”

CHAPTER
FOUR

Exhaustion—or shock—finally got to her. Nick looked over
. Barrett’s eyes were closed. He didn’t think she was faking sleep. Her soft lips were parted slightly as she drew in shuddering breaths.

What a reunion. Out of nowhere, she’d shown up in the clutches of a turned vampire and he’d done the required rescuing. Once they were in the air and safely away … maybe the rapid change in altitude had gotten to him. All of a sudden he’d turned into Mr. Fucking Sensitive, wanting to know why she’d ended things.

Like he hadn’t made it happen back then, for the most part. Witnessing the risks she took and how far she would go, he’d schemed to get her out of Europe and safely stateside—without telling her. Barrett didn’t play safe. She took way too many chances, using her cool beauty and smarts to get into and out of places where she wasn’t welcome, one step ahead of vicious thugs.

She always had a cause and gave it her all. There were reasons why. They’d been over them. The brother she hadn’t been able to save at a critical moment was one. But that had happened long ago.

When he got right down to it, Nick had to admit that she took chances because she wanted to. Because she loved living on the edge, in constant danger. Just like him.

He’d known he had no right to try to change that trait in her, but he’d wanted to. Lost cause. One of many.

They’d both pretended to move on, but he’d known the moment he’d seen her they’d been lying to themselves.

He used the heli radio and tried Kev again. This time he answered.

“Kev here.”

“What the fuck happened?”

“Something spooked the dogs. Bad. I let them out and let them hunt.”

“And?”

“Nothing. You figure out what spooked them?”

“I have a pretty good guess.” He told him about seeing Murphy, but left out Barrett’s involvement since he still didn’t know why she’d tracked him down.

“So why’d you leave?”

Nick looked at Barrett. Her breathing was steady, too soft for him to hear. Her eyes stayed closed. “I had my reasons,” he said, knowing that would be enough for Kev. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Call in. Get some men in to help you and scour that mountain. Keep me posted on my cell.”

“Roger that.”

They disconnected and Nick stared ahead, seeing the darkened landscape below through his faint, distorted reflection in the helicopter’s windshield.

He was glad Barrett had conked out. Gave him a chance to think, although he usually saved his analytical skills for machinery. The ratio of effort to results was a hell of a lot more favorable. But even so.

Seeing her again was a huge rush. He’d forgotten how stunning she was and how intensely her nearness could arouse him. The vulnerability in her eyes when she finally opened them and recognized him was overwhelming.

Nick had kept his distance after he’d settled her in his bed, wondering what to do. He would have flown her out if she hadn’t regained consciousness. Same deal in the end.

If he hadn’t had the helicopter, he would have carried her back down the mountain to civilization, miles past the end of the road where she’d parked. Safe to assume his jeep had been blasted to smithereens, too. He hadn’t bothered to check, not with a fueled-up heli on the pad.

When it came to Barrett, he’d forgotten the strength of the protective instincts she triggered in him. It didn’t matter how well she could take care of herself. He still wanted to do it for her.

It was something they’d fought about, his constant need to protect her. His comments that she belonged in a different world. A safer one. He’d been pretty good at getting her to open up to him, and he’d get even greater glimpses of the soft woman she hid beneath her tough exterior. All it took was a little tenderness, like the song said. She was a sucker for it.

God knew she needed it. Doing what she did in Eastern Europe—getting around corrupt officials who lived on bribes, dedicating herself to saving refugee women and girls from the feral creeps who tried to prey on them—took a toll on her. Barrett never admitted to it. But Nick had understood.

Barrett stirred in her sleep and muttered something he couldn’t hear. Nick’s mouth tightened. Maybe she was reading his mind. Oh, he knew that was impossible given they were both human, but with the connection they’d once had and what they’d accomplished under the radar and without official sanction—well, he’d always fancied them sharing that deeper connection.

One case had almost gotten them both killed: those sisters, eight and ten, whom he’d spirited out of the foulest brothel the human mind could imagine, with Barrett covering him from an armored jeep hidden in a slum alley, automatic rifle at the ready. There hadn’t been room for her to fly out with the little girls and their mother. But she’d been waiting on the tarmac when he’d come back alone.

They had been in radio contact on his return hop over the Adriatic. He’d teased her, asking what she would do for him after he’d risked so much, what she would say.

He’d climbed out of the beat-up, borrowed jet and saw Barrett running toward him. She had kept it short. Exactly three words, in fact.
Are they safe?

Like a fool, he’d been expecting something more along the lines of
you’re my hero
or even
I love you
. But she didn’t think that way.

Barrett on a mission was a force to be reckoned with. Just how she was. Same principle applied in the sack, which was a plus. Love didn’t get mentioned when they were going at it hot and heavy. Or any other time, either. If it had ever been on her mind, she kept it hidden.

Whatever. The girls and their mother had been saved. Shortly after, there had been that final argument. He’d gotten his wish. He’d made sure of it after she’d gone off on her own on another dangerous mission, this one so dangerous he’d refused to help her with it. When he’d found out she’d done it anyway, enough had been enough. He’d blown the whistle on her, something he’d never told her. She’d been forced back to the States. Only he hadn’t counted on the fact that when she left her post behind, she’d be leaving him, as well. For good.

Fuck it. The past was past. Nobody got do-overs.

Not Barrett, him, or their brothers.

Nick checked the instrument panel before he looked at her again. She’d curled up some, tucking her long legs under her, her arms crossed over her breasts. Kinda reminded him of how she slept in his bed in his private quarters. Never quite letting go.

She hadn’t changed much. Maybe more beautiful, if that was possible. And tougher in some indefinable way.

He’d been scared shitless when Murphy had gotten the jump on her, even though one look at her out cold in his bed told him that she was still super fit. Unlike a lot of ex-army, she hadn’t slacked off on rigorous physical conditioning. Whatever it was she did for the FBI, she obviously had to be in top shape to do it.

What was that? And why had she climbed his mountain?

Nick made a slow midair turn to look back at it, half expecting to see his lair on fire. He couldn’t see it at all. The mountain was a black shape against a dark night, barely visible.

He got the helicopter back on course.

“Barrett.”

At the softly spoken word, Barrett, who’d only been half dozing, opened her eyes and straightened in her seat too fast. Her head and throat still hurt, causing her to wince. Nick flashed her an intense, unsmiling look before returning his gaze to what was in front of them. Tall towers spiked into the night sky, dotted with lights that outshone the stars.

Nick nodded toward them. “There’s Atlanta.”

Barrett had never seen the city from this altitude. The helicopter was flying low, hundreds of feet beneath the few airplanes she’d seen on the way. What was the term? Under the radar. The words applied to Nick Maltese in more ways than one.

BOOK: Awakened
9.38Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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