Fury’s Kiss (26 page)

“So you’re saying this is
my
fault?” I blew up at him. “You’re the one who turned Spyder’s into the shootout at the O.K. Corral!”

“You never should have tried to take on Perris without backup.”

“Fine,” I snapped. “You were right and I was wrong—I wasn’t ready to take on Perris alone. But it doesn’t change the fact that his men are going to go after Ruby. And we won’t be able to get to her now, thanks to you.”

I knew I was taking out my worry and fear on him, that picking a fight wouldn’t change anything, but I couldn’t help it. The situation was impossible. Ruby and Alex were in danger, Rachel and Nora were still back at the bar—no doubt about to be hauled in for questioning by a seriously pissed-off Agent Graves—and Jackson and I weren’t going to get far with the manhunt that was sure to follow.

Jackson took out his phone, tapped a few keys, and hit send.

“Now what are you doing?” I asked. It hardly seemed the time for text messaging.

“Letting our backup know we’re coming. I called an old squad mate when I found out what you’d gotten Nora and Ruby mixed up in. I’ve had him on standby since you got shot.” As he talked, he pulled the SIM card out of his phone, stomped it under the heel of his boot, and tossed it out the window.

“What about the others? We can’t just leave them behind.”

“I told you before, no one gets left behind. Since we were both at the bar and couldn’t look out for Ruby, Ty has been watching over her and Alex all night. That text message was the signal to grab them and disappear.”

He glanced over his shoulder to see if we were being pursued, then added, “Nora will know what to do too. I never really believed anyone was after Ruby, but it made her feel better to have an escape plan, just in case.”

“What do you mean, that was the signal to disappear? Where are they going to go? The police will be all over the Cape looking for us.”

“Ty’s the best,” Jackson said simply. “No one finds him unless he wants to be found.”

Since I had exactly zero better ideas, I settled back in my seat, but I had my doubts. Even if this ex-squad mate of his could get the girls to safety, I couldn’t see how the two of us would get across either of the two bridges that spanned the Cape Cod Canal and connected to the mainland. The Canal was only about five hundred feet wide, definitely a swimmable distance, but I didn’t relish the thought of wading into the heavily-trafficked, rushing water only to meet police on the other side. The ferries would also be monitored and there was no way we would be able to get on a flight out.

I voiced my concerns, but Jackson didn’t answer, just continued to give directions as I drove, and it wasn’t long before it became clear where we were going.

We weren’t swimming the Canal—we were swimming the Atlantic.

When we reached Marlin Beach, one of the smallest of more than a hundred stretches of publicly accessible sand along the shoreline of the Cape, Jackson told me to pull over. “Come on.” He got out of the car and headed for the water. “Our rendezvous point is out there.”

Out where
? There was nothing but empty ocean in front of us. While the man-made Canal connected the peninsula to the mainland, the Cape was bound on all other sides by the North Atlantic. Even if we did make it to one of the islands right off the coast, there was nowhere to go from there.

I stared out at the water and shuddered. There were Great White sightings reported every summer. I might have abilities most people didn’t, but I doubted I could fight Jaws and come out on top.

Jackson stripped down to his boxer briefs and bent to bury his clothing in the sand. A siren screamed somewhere in the distance and I thought again of huge, jagged teeth, but I followed suit. If Jackson said we had to swim, then I would swim. So far, he had kept me alive and out of custody. I helped him scoop sand out of the hole he’d dug and piled my clothes in on top of his.

“It won’t take them long to find our clothing if they bring dogs in,” he explained, “but it might keep them guessing when they find the car and no sign of us. Their first assumption will be that we switched rides, not that we went into the ocean.”

“What exactly do you mean, our rendezvous point is out there?” I asked as we waded into the water. “How far
out there
are we talking?”

The cold water bit at me, a sharp contrast to the warm air of the beach, and gooseflesh prickled my skin. I winced as I waded out farther and Alecto hissed in my head.

“Ty will have a boat waiting to pick us up half a mile offshore.”

The water was up to my waist now and I put a hand on Jackson’s arm to stop him. We had little time to waste, but I had to tell him what was on my mind in case something happened to either of us.

“You should know…I saw some things back there at the bar.” He turned to face me and I took a deep breath before continuing. “Things you might want to keep private. From your time in the military, and about your brother. And I know you’d rather that Nora and Ruby had never gotten involved in this, but I just wanted to say thank you for taking care of Rachel and Alex, too—they’re my family. I know you’ll probably be moving on with Nora and Ruby when this is over, somewhere safer, and I just…”

There was more I wanted to tell him—like
stay with me,
or
don’t go,
or maybe even
I think I kinda, sorta love you.
But I couldn’t say the words, even after everything we’d been through. My feelings were too huge, and the risk of rejection was too much to handle.

Embarrassed, I didn’t wait for him to respond, just dove under the crest of the next wave that rolled toward shore and swam for the open water ahead. Whatever happened now, at least I wouldn’t get eaten by a Great White without Jackson knowing I understood why he’d pushed me away. I couldn’t express myself fully, but maybe—hopefully—my damaged, broken protector would someday see in himself what I had. That he was worthy of being loved.

The salt water of the ocean mingled with unshed tears to sting my eyes, and I blinked my brille into place so I could open them underwater. The moon shone bright, its rays of light stabbing the sand below me like shimmering silver spears diffused by the water. Tiny fish flitted past, changing direction when they came too close and realized there was a predator among them. I thought of the distance that still separated me from Jackson, and was reminded of the barrier I’d worked so hard to maintain between Alecto and myself.

The barrier that had proven to be nothing but a liability.

The truth was, I was stronger—
we
were stronger—when I opened myself up to the Fury. By opening my mind to her, I had been able to overcome Victor Priest in that seedy motel room, and it was because of her I had lived through the gunshot wound that had nearly destroyed my lung. The door between us wasn’t helping me and finally, beneath the silver shadows of the moon and the waves, I let it melt away for good. I hadn’t been brave enough to open myself fully to Jackson, but Alecto deserved more from me. She had saved my life, opened her memories to me, and gotten no reward but captivity inside my head.

Welcome
, I told the Fury, inviting her in. I surrendered to the possibility that she might take control, that I might lose myself again as I had the day the oracle had spoken through Ruby, but I had to give Alecto the freedom to choose. She was a part of me now and to deny her was to deny a part of myself.

Well met, sister
, the Fury responded.
At last, you understand.

Ever since I had seen Alecto and her sisters charging into battle in my mind’s eye, something had been niggling at me. And now, it finally made sense. The warrior women I’d seen when I’d looked into Alecto’s memories
hadn’t
been Furies, after all. Not exactly. Like me, they were humans who had opened themselves completely to the divine, formless energy that was a Fury’s true nature. Accepting the unknown was a test I had finally passed, and in accepting my role as Alecto’s hostess, I now had access to greater awareness and understanding of my gifts. Something dark was stirring, perhaps as old as Alecto herself, and I had been chosen to be her champion in the war against it. Her sister in arms, as she was my sister in spirit.

A keen longing struck me for the other Furies I now knew must also be awakening around the world, confused and alone, and I vowed to find them. I would locate Tisiphone, Megaera, and the others, and I would help guide the women they had chosen to be their own hostesses. I tried to picture life without Rachel and Alex, the sisters I had chosen for myself, and recognized Alecto’s pain at her separation from her own sisters. Whatever was out there, the evil that had inhabited Christos Perris was just a forerunner. We would need to stand together if we had any hope of being ready to face it.

A burning in my lungs distracted me from the tumult of memories and emotion that swirled through me, and finally I surfaced. I turned in circles, treading water as I searched for Jackson, but he was nowhere to be seen. A trickle of fear competed with the cold of the water to chill my blood and I turned again. Where was he?

I scanned the horizon. Nothing.

“Jackson?” I kept my voice low so it wouldn’t carry over the water. There was no reply, and my heart pounded. What could have happened to him? What if there
was
a shark in the water with us? I scouted the waves anxiously for the smooth, gliding wake and sharp, glistening fin that would mean death prowled the water around me.

“Jackson!” Again, there was no reply.

I strained to listen while my arms and legs churned, treading water, until finally I heard a sound.
There
. A faint splash, almost inaudible.

It had to be a good sign—sharks didn’t splash, right? But my heart was in my throat as I swam toward the noise. I landed in a valley between waves, then breathed out in grateful relief when I saw Jackson swimming toward me on the next swell. He stopped when he reached me, breathing hard.

“Don’t do that again,” he scolded when he’d caught his breath. “We can’t afford to get separated out here. If you get lost, I might never find you. And get rid of that damn film over your eyes when I’m trying to talk to you.”

I blinked the brille away, tucking it up under my eyelids. “Don’t do what again? You’re the one who didn’t keep up.” I’d been ready to face down a man-eating shark for him, and all he could do was complain about my appearance?

“Didn’t keep up?” he repeated. “Tara, I’ve been trying to catch up to you for the past quarter mile. You’ve been swimming like a fish. Hell, you’ve been underwater for the past five minutes.”

Oh
. My eyes widened. “I was?”

He shook his head disgustedly.

What I could say to make things OK again? “Um…I’m sorry I got you into a gunfight with the FBI? And that I left you behind?”

Jackson just looked at me then started to swim again, so I blinked the brille back in place and followed. This time, I made sure to stay close and swim on the surface. After another ten minutes or so, we reached an inflatable boat made of black rubber. It was tethered to a drift anchor to keep it in position, and was captained by an unfamiliar man dressed in black. His dark clothing and dark skin blended into the night, and even while rocking from side to side on a piece of wave-tossed plastic, he carried himself in a ready, alert stance that screamed military. He had to be Ty.

Aside from the man captaining the rubber vessel, the crew was comprised of four very familiar, very anxious faces—and one brunette zookeeper whose presence I couldn’t explain. After Jackson and I had been hauled aboard, towels and clothing handed out, and hugs exchanged, the man at the helm hauled in the anchor. Muscle bulged under mocha-skinned forearms as he pulled on the rope. After stowing the anchor, he started up the engine and angled us southeast.

Alex handled the introductions. “Tara, Tyler Kelly. Tyler, this is Tara.”

“Call me Ty,” our captain said. His voice had a touch of Cajun in it that hinted at Louisiana. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Well, that was interesting. I’d heard next to nothing about him.

I looked sideways at Jackson. What had he told Ty about me? His fellow ex-SEAL must have wanted
some
kind of explanation for what he was doing in a boat full of women in the middle of the ocean.

“How did you all get out here?” I asked.

Alex explained. “Ty came up to us while we were getting ice cream and said we had to come with him, on Jackson’s orders. I didn’t believe him, but Ruby said he was one of the good guys.” She shrugged. “You know how the kid can read people, so we came along.”

“So Ty picked up you and Ruby after Jackson texted him…but how did Nora and Rachel end up aboard? It seems like you all managed to get out here awfully fast. And what’s she doing here?” I pointed to the extra member of our makeshift crew.

Now Nora spoke up. “The first time Perris came after Ruby, no one believed me, since his people made it look like a break and enter gone wrong. I always kept a go-bag in the truck after that. So when we heard the commotion outside the bar, Rachel and I took off to meet Ty. He and Jackson had this whole thing planned in advance, in case anything went wrong with Perris tonight.”

“And her?” I still wanted to know about the snake handler.

“I just couldn’t turn down the possibility to have such an adventure,” Hester said in her posh, British accent. “So when they tried to leave me behind, naturally I threatened to turn them in if they didn’t take me.”