Henchgirl (Dakota Kekoa Book 1) (21 page)

As I turned from him I heard him call, “Get your gun, but you won’t need a shirt.”

I gave him a one finger salute as I ascended the stairs.

*****

The Vervari moved faster than me and the quarter-gallon of tea coursing through my bladder appreciated. Wyvern had not even blinked at the handgun I had in one hand, resting on the chair but pointed at the dashboard. Having Contingency’s familiar ribbed metal in my hand was like a security blanket for my mind.

He probably did not mind the gun because he was fast enough to dodge bullets or impervious to them or something, that would be just my luck. I held onto the gun all the same with the sense of security it probably should not have been.

As our car rounded the corner, he broke suddenly, taking up every space in a small beach parking lot. He whirled on me saying, “I want to hire you to find Honua.”

I pursed my lips. It was not all that unexpected. I had thought that Wyvern would come to me; however, I had thought it would take a bit longer until he ran out of other options. I guess he had come to the same conclusion I had, sooner rather than later, that I was his best chance of finding Honua.

“How much will you pay me?”

“So, this guy
Keanu Hale
, at the beach I saw him kiss you. Is he your boyfriend?” Wyvern asked, the question had a biting tone to it. “What does his life mean to you?”

Bargaining with a half-dragon was not just an art, it was tightrope walking over molten lava. I could not let him dictate the terms if he thought he could get me to do what he wanted by threatening the lives of the people I cared about then he would own me.
‘Dakota, why don’t you take out my dry cleaning or I’ll BBQ your nearest and dearest.’
No thank you.

“I have four demands I want in return for my help,” I said. I had been planning them out since my grandfather’s doppelganger had carried me away from Wyvern in the crater. When trading with a high-blooded-dracon, you must make sure they give up at least one thing that they did not want to give for the reason I already mentioned. If you did not, they did whatever they could to own you; it was in their nature, to own.

I turned to make full eye contact with him. I then deliberately held up my mostly healed left hand to tally my demands on my fingers. I said, “First, I want you to promise no repercussions on me, my family or any of my friends if I fail.”

“I will agree to that in part; if they had no involvement in Honua’s disappearance I will not in any way do intentional harm to your family or friends, except Keanu Hale.”

I nodded, already expecting this. I held up my second finger. “I want fifty thousand dollars, paid in full, in cash, when I find Honua alive.”

His gaze narrowed on mine. “We’ll discuss that later. Next?”

It was strange, I thought that request would be the easiest for him to give up. What was fifty thousand dollars to a guy who probably owned a couple states? If that one was a problem, there was no way that he would accept my next request.

It might have taken me a while to connect the dots, but when I did, the picture it formed was terrifying. My grandfather was concealing what I was, who I was from someone traveling with Wyvern. He was going to great lengths to do it too. And for some reason, I doubted that the deception was put on to fool the good natured Braiden McCormick or his snobby sisters, which only left one companion. If I need protection from the full-dragon, I was indeed up shit creek without a paddle.

So I phrased my next request very carefully, “I want your protection from anything or anyone that I draw the attention of during the time I’m searching for your sister.”

He looked at me for a long minute, seeming a little confused, but at the same time pleased. “Are you saying that you want a ‘contract’ with me?”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said.

“It means you want me to offer you my protection.” His lips looked distinctly like they were fighting a smile.

“Yeah…that’s what I said,” I said, feeling like I might be missing something.

“For how long?” he asked.

Thinking about his full-dragon father, I said, “For as long as I am in danger from those I mentioned in my original request.”

Wyvern’s smile spread wide and triumphant across his face, and I instantly wanted to take the request back. What did I say wrong? I wasn’t sure, but a half-dragon only gave you that kind of look if you just promised him your entire hoard.

“Accepted,” he said. “And the fourth?”

“That you leave Keanu Hale alone until I have given up looking for Honua. And if I find her alive, you will not punish him.”

Wyvern inhaled a long breath through his nose not taking his gaze from mine. He raised his hand to the finger I had raised along with my fourth request. His finger stopped just short of touching mine, maybe a millimeter away from mine. He ran his finger down, just barely not touching me.

I watched, transfixed, not pulling back my hand, wondering if he would close that miniscule distance. But he did not. I felt the ghost of his touch as he slid his finger just above my arm.

He must be impervious to bullets, or maybe he just thought I would not shoot him. Wrong.

“You really don’t have much room to negotiate, Dakota,” he said when his finger was halfway down my arm, “I know that you’re going to look for Honua whether I agree to your requests or not.”

Well, he had me there. But it pissed me off that he thought he knew me well enough that he could assume what I would do next. He might be worried out of his mind for his sister; however, I could tell he was still enjoying himself. It wasn’t all that unexpected; dragons loved to negotiate. What I was doing here was actually pretty high on the stupid scale because a half-dragon would only ever agree to a bargain if they expected to take much more from you than you were getting from them.

“Maybe you’re right. But my grandfather ordered me not to see you,” I lied. My grandfather wasn’t stupid enough to order a teenage girl not to see a teenage boy; did I mention he raised over a hundred children?

I leaned in so my face was even with my raised four fingers and closer to his. “It’s going to be hard to do this recovery without working with you… But if you can’t even agree to four little requests…” I shook my head slowly. “How can I be expected to go against my protector?”

His finger paused at my elbow, then he pulled it away. “I’ll give you a hundred thousand, half now, half when you recover Honua.”

“So what you’re saying is: that you think I’m stupid?” I said, dropping back to lean away from him in the seat. I shook my head slowly. “No way, no how, am
I
owing
you
. Fifty thousand delivered to me in cash the morning after I succeed in my mission to find Honua alive.”

“Besides the stipulations I have already agreed to, here is what I offer: I will pay you fifty thousand in cash but won’t hand any money to you until the day after you recover Honua alive and deliver her to me. And… I will not hurt Keanu Hale for the time you are searching for Honua or three days starting tomorrow, which ever time ends first, unless my sister has been killed or I find out Keanu Hale played some willing part in her disappearance. If she is recovered alive during that time and he played no part in her disappearance, I won’t punish him. If he did, I will kill him.” His face lost any trace of the flirtatiousness or teasing as he said the last part.

I knew that was the best offer I was going to get from the half-dragon. So, I opened my purse and set my gun in, then offered my hand.

The moment his fingers wrapped around mine, I felt a buzz of energy flow between us.

I had to fight to not automatically pull my hand back. I wasn’t sure if the buzz I felt was the bargain we were making actually physically crackling between us. Or, even more frightening was the idea that this feeling stemmed from a connection I created between us when I absorbed a piece of his soul and simultaneously coiled a piece of my soul into him.

Both would be horrible if true, but worse still was how my hand did not seem to want to let go of the contact, my head was screaming, ‘this is bad! Really, really bad!’ Yet all the while it did not feel bad. No, the contact sent little sensations dancing up my arm. I wanted to explore his hand, play my fingers along the calluses and explore the dips between fingers as the energy coursed between us.

It could be something he was doing to me; he could be sending this sensation into my arm. The moment the idea occurred to me, my mind clutched it. That had to be it. Half dragons loved to screw with your mind, make you think that the bargains you made with them had some physical manifestation, some supernatural binding to them. Being manipulated by half-dragons I could deal with, whereas I was not sure I could wrap my mind around any of the alternatives.

When I pulled back, his fingers did not seem to want to unwrap from mine either. I still did not give him the satisfaction of showing how much the contact rattled me. I unhurriedly returned my hand to my lap and did not let my fingers drum across my leg or stretch, even though they ached to.

Wyvern turned from me, backing up the little sports car into the road, making a utility truck screech on its brakes to avoid smashing into us. Poor guy probably just saw his business flash before his eyes almost hitting a Vervari like this.

“Wyvern you are a jerk,” I said. I waved an apology at the driver because Wyvern had not even blinked in the man’s direction.

Wyvern gave me a smirk and turned quickly back to the road.

Good, that was where I wanted his eyes anyway.

Looking ahead, at least I had clear deadlines; five days until we were evicted by the police, three days until Wyvern killed Keanu, and probably fifteen seconds until my head spontaneously combusted.

“Where to now?” Wyvern asked, shifting into gear.

“My house, I can’t go anywhere until my uncles return with my dampener. But after that, I plan to look over what is left of the Hale estate.” I pulled out the notebook that I had hidden in my purse; it would have been a little obvious that I was going to accept the case no matter what if I had let him see it.

I had a collection of the little black covered notebooks at my house. I used a new one every assignment, then gave them to Glacier for his ridiculous, to the point of anal, record keeping.

“Okay,” I said, clicking the back of my pen to open it. “Tell me everything about your sister, even things you would assume I already know.”

The story was shorter than the car ride back, and Wyvern sped the whole way.

He only discovered that he had a living mother and sister two years earlier. Wyvern had hired a private detective to find out his nationality for a homework assignment of all things. I wrote the private detective’s name down in bold letters, Mr. Ferguson Hodge. Mr. Hodge not only obtained a full record of Wyvern’s Mabi heritage, he also retrieved phone numbers for Kali Alaniu and her daughter Honua. Wyvern contacted them to find out if they had enough money to survive and Kali responded with seventeen years of returned letters as she had been trying to find him the whole time.

Wyvern learned that after his father had seduced his mother, he had not visited during the pregnancy. He showed up on the day of Wyvern’s birth and just took him. The dragon had given no way to contact him, just left a suitcase of money with her parents, assuming Kali would not survive.

Then Wyvern’s story became confusing.

“Kali said she’s a… were-boar,” Wyvern said.

“Come again?” I said, not writing the information down. “There’s no such thing.”

“She told me she had been born a were-boar because she was a descendant of Mabiian royalty,” Wyvern said. He shifted gears as we turned onto a residential street; he was still going too fast though. He looked over at me and in response to my skeptical expression he said, “I had not heard of that either.”

“Yeah, but I’ve lived here my whole life, I’m one fourth Mabiian. There’s no such thing.”

Boars were the Mabiian Island chain’s own brand of predator. I knew most people did not think of pigs as predators, but if you put a human and a five-hundred pound boar with two-foot tusks in a pen and watch them fight it out, you would see who ended up becoming dinner. Boars were also smart; some people estimated they had almost a human level of intelligence. A were-boar would be a pretty terrifying creature, but there was no such thing, the were-animal infection came from dragons and there was no boar-dragon. Just to be sure I asked, “There isn’t even a boar dragon… is there?”

“No, I checked,” he responded. “And I know Kali is human.”

I would check into it still, but more than likely it was a delusion of a traumatized mind. A big fat dead-end. “Anyway, if she was any kind of were-animal before you were born, then she would’ve been unable to have you, dragon-infected humans can’t have dracon babies. That, I know is true. Okay, let’s move on, tell me about Honua.”

Wyvern continued to tell me about how he and Honua had corresponded over frequent emails, through a secure server he set up. She told him about her school, her classes and her friends.

“What friends did she mention?”

He looked over at me, that flash of anger that he had shown me in the party resurfaced. “You, mostly. I’m surprised you don’t know who her other friends are. She sent me a picture of you two together; she told me how you learned sign language for her. But I guess it makes sense you don’t know, you weren’t really her friend.”

I turned to Wyvern. “I’m going to make this really simple so you can follow: I’m going to school on an assignment. Honua isn’t part of that assignment.” I should have ignored the jibe, just focused on
this
assignment, but my fist wanted to slam into his well-defined jaw.

This was why he had something against me from the very beginning, I realized. He was angry because I wasn’t the friend Honua cherished so much. It was because in his mind I had betrayed the devotion that Honua had wrapped around me.

“You wouldn’t understand,” I said, swallowing. “You dracons who give the orders never understand what it’s like to have to follow them even when you don’t want to.”