He’d taken more of her blood and made her wait for the results, but by early afternoon, the doctor released her. The only problem: she was immediately sent back to the police.
So, here she sat…again.
Only this time the seats were cushioned and she wasn’t cuffed to the table. Not an interrogation room, but definitely utilitarian. Stacy had left her but promised to return.
Almost an hour ago.
Marie tapped her foot on the tile floor and wrung her hands in her lap. This was more alone than she’d felt her whole life. She’d always had her uncle only a phone call away. Today…
Not even that.
Marie was sad at first, but as the day lengthened, frustration and anger crept in and planted roots. She didn’t like this feeling. She didn’t like not knowing.
Malcolm still hadn’t shown his face, and though she kept telling herself that it was only a matter of business, the void he left pulled at her…pulled at her temper.
She stood and paced.
“This is ridiculous,” she muttered. On the next pass of the door, she opened it. A young policeman straightened in front of her. “Who are you?”
“Officer Hart, ma’am. I need you to stay in this room until they’re done processing your paperwork.”
“What kind of paperwork?”
He frowned at her. “Well…” As if he realized maybe he wasn’t supposed to be talking to her, he backed down. “If you could just please stay in the room, ma’am.”
“I don’t want to stay in the room. I’m tired of staying in the room. I’d like to go find my people, please.” She didn’t let the doubt creep in now.
“I can’t allow you to leave.”
She stood up to his tall presence, ticked off and sick of everything, which had developed since she’d entered the Dimitru estate and taken the armband.
She had to look way up. “I demand to speak to your superior.”
As soon as she said it, she regretted it. It sounded so pompous and bratty and spoiled.
The officer sighed. “If you’d like to go sit down on the nice, comfortable chair, I’d be happy to go get him.”
She heard a man clear his throat.
Even as embarrassment flooded her veins, relief and excitement made her blood race, and she turned as Malcolm came in. “I’ve come to collect Marie Feur.” He held out a stack of papers to the officer.
Officer James came around the corner and nodded to the younger cop. “She’s free to go with him.”
“I’ll be good,” she said to the man who had arrested her.
James glanced at Malcolm.
“I’ll make sure she’s good,” Malcolm said.
Marie scoffed but stayed by his side. She’d take it. This close to knowing what was in store for her, she wanted out of there, so Malcolm could tell her everything. What had happened after she was arrested? Had Vladimir been questioned?
Malcolm took her elbow and led her through a series of hallways deeper into the building and then finally out a door. Into an alleyway. They were being discreet.
“We’re not running, are we?” she asked, tongue in cheek.
He grunted and kept going, down the narrow road a ways. The chill wind blew threw her clothes and made her shiver.
Then his arms were around her, and she knew exactly why she was shivering.
She gripped his warm shirt and buried her face into the circle of his arms. “Malcolm,” she breathed his name. “I thought you were mad.”
“I’m mad as hell, Marie. So mad.”
She sniffed, catching his scent. “But you’re hugging me.”
“I guess I’m learning to live with it.”
She felt his smile and the kiss he gently placed on her head. It made her lower her head, resting her forehead on his chest. “Maybe I’m sorry, Malcolm.”
“I know. Maybe I forgive you.” He took her hand and walked toward the car at the curb. She hadn’t recognized the rental, but she did recognize the driver.
“Hello, Jamie,” she said when Malcolm opened the door. “Where are you taking me?”
Malcolm helped her in, lifting her, even though she didn’t really need it, and set her on the seat. “We’re going home,” he answered for their red-headed friend.
Jamie grinned. “Good to see you, lady.”
“Home? Like…my home?” She hadn’t expected to go back. She’d been transferred into FBI custody.
“Yeah. But don’t worry. The FBI is going to meet us there. You’re not in the clear yet.”
She might have scowled to humor his ribbing, but instead she grinned as she sat back.
This was more like it.
***
Back in the kitchen of her childhood home, Marie poured a cup of coffee. “So, why here?”
“The FBI needed an out-of-the-way place,” Hawk said from his seat at the table, where he had a laptop open and headphones on. “With Dimitru having contacts in the police, the FBI has kept their investigation under wraps. And they want Vladimir to think you’ve been released.”
She knew he had some kind of voice software that would read the screen for him. It was one of the ways he compensated for his vision loss when even the large font failed him. She wasn’t sure how much he could see, but knew there was some vision. This wasn’t the first time she realized he didn’t need to see. His power was in his name, in his connections.
His words finally penetrated. They want him to think I was released.
“You mean…they want to use me?”
“No one’s going to force you to do anything,” Stacy quickly added.
“I’ll do anything—for one favor.”
“Making demands already?” Malcolm stepped in with a frown on his face.
“No,” she answered quickly. “Sort of. Okay, yes. I want my uncle back.” She hesitated. “And if not him, then I want the armband back.”
She wasn’t certain, but she thought a freaking hole in the ground might be a good place for it.
Dimitru had been ready to kill for the damn thing. She’d never understood the obsession. To her, it was merely a reminder of the past, of her family’s roots.
But for a man like Dimitru, there was the power of the myth, reaching into his black soul and making him a believer in things that were invisible, in the promise of riches and wealth.
Complete stinky horseshit. There was no power, no protection. It was all lies. But they were her lies now. Her family’s stories and legends. The gold amulet belonged to her uncle. She couldn’t let him die for nothing.
“This is so awesome!” Craig’s muffled voice sounded through the wall behind the stone fireplace on the west side of the kitchen. The tunnel to the bunker.
Marie rolled her eyes with a laugh. “You showed them,” she accused Malcolm.
“How could I not?”
She shrugged. “Good question. I always wanted to show my friends. Uncle Bert never let me.”
Malcolm rested a hand on her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. “We’re going to find him.”
She nodded and leaned in. She was starting to tire, which unsettled her. Nerves fluttered through her stomach, and pain shot through her shoulder, but the warmth at having Malcolm hold her made the physical discomfort worth it. The only real pain was of regret, exploding inside her heart.
“Are you okay?” Stacy watched her like a hawk, which seemed funny to Marie, more a sign she wasn’t tiring but was already tired. “No regressing on my watch. If you need anything, I want you to say something right away.”
“I’m okay. Really.” Marie shrugged. “The doctor wouldn’t have let me go if I wasn’t ready.”
Jamie Nash pounded down the stairs and entered the kitchen.
“I thought you were supposed to be enjoying the beach down in Belize,” she said. Craig, John, and Emily followed him in.
“He can’t stay away,” Malcolm said without cracking a smile, still somber but not forcing distance, which was his usual modus operandi.
“Heard there was trouble up in the Pacific Northwest,” Jamie said. “Couldn’t miss the chance for a free ride to the Pacific. Not to mention that saving his ass is what I do.”
“So,” Marie began hesitantly, “what happens next?” She knew they’d all been planning while she was at the hospital.
No one spoke right away, and uncertainty rose in her gut. She looked to Malcolm for the safe feeling he always gave her, even when he was scowling and disapproving. The scowl was there.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Hello in the house,” a man called out, his voice vaguely familiar. Not only familiar, though. Her heart raced, pounding painfully against her ribs.
“It’s him,” she whispered as the need to fight, to protect—hell, to run—shrieked through her brain. The man from the Dimitru estate. The one who’d almost caught her in the gallery. He was here.
“He’s one of us,” Malcolm said.
Confusion clouded her brain. “What?” Survival kicked in. She backed up, looking for an exit. “No. He’s—”
“Hello again. I’m Agent Graham,” said the man with the British accent.
“He’s with the FBI.” Macolm shrugged, keeping an eye on her. “He’s been undercover at Dimitru’s for the last six months.”
“Two days. That’s all I needed. Now this cluster…”
He had known she was there. Not she, but someone, and he’d overlooked her.
“Is my uncle still alive?”
***
Malcolm stepped up to her, crossing the kitchen as if approaching a cornered lion. The agent had thrown her, as he had thrown Malcolm. But he had more at stake.
If the FBI pressed charges, he could lose her. The newly blossoming—possibly fucked up—protective instinct for her rooted itself even deeper into his heart.
He stood next to her and faced the man, who was about to set them on a path Malcolm was fairly certain he wasn’t going to like.
“Your uncle is alive—barely,” Graham said.
She tensed. “I need to go get him.”
“We’re working on it.”
“We? Who? Me. I need to go get him.”
Malcolm pulled her back with an arm around her shoulders. “Let’s not irritate the officer of the law.” He grinned. “She’s…”
“…a thief,” Graham said. “I know.”
“I am not a thief,” Marie said.
“I was going to say ‘passionate about her family,’” Malcolm said.
For a woman with such a small stature, she sure knew how to stand up straight and take charge. “That piece is mine,” she continued. “I was taking it back—”
“What you did was blow the cover on my months-long investigation.” Graham’s words were fact, no malice in the tone. “As it is, the shipment of women we’ve been waiting for has been indefinitely postponed, and I’ve been put on a leave of absence by Dimitru. He trusts no one. Security is tight as a cock ring now, thanks to you.”
She cringed.
Graham ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair.
“I never meant to involve anyone from the company.” Her gaze went to Malcolm and back to Hawk. “It’s why I went alone. It’s why Malcolm never should have come back for me.”
Malcolm growled when she took another step away from him. Stop moving, he wanted to yell at her. He’d seen Uncle Bert gunned down. He wasn’t going to let the same happen to Marie.
“I can get back in.”
“No,” Malcolm said firmly. “Abso-fucking-lutely not.”
“I have something he wants.”
“No way.”
“Hawk—”
“He has nothing to say about this, Marie.”
He saw the fire in her eyes and knew he wasn’t doing himself any favors by being so high-handed, so ridiculously scared for her.
“You have nothing to say about this,” she replied.
Hawk stepped between them, surprising Malcolm into taking a step back and taking a deep breath. He had the urge to take off his flannel. Was it hot in here? Fuck. Fuck, he really needed to stop saying and thinking that word. So far, it wasn’t doing anything for him.
“Let’s take a minute,” Hawk said. “No one is going anywhere at this point. The FBI hasn’t invited Hawk Security into their investigation—yet,” he said with a pointed look at Graham. “Until then, I think it’s time we had a meeting and got all the facts on the table. Then then we’ll talk about where to go next.”
Malcolm ran a hand across the back of his neck and squeezed the tightened tendons. He stepped around Marie and out the back door onto the porch. Maybe he hadn’t been there long enough to call it home or some cheesy shit, but she had put a spell on him here, made him dream of calling a place like this his own.
The breeze cooled his skin, sharpening his thoughts.
What was he doing?
Acting like an idiot. She’d betrayed him. Maybe I forgive you.
Now he was ready to defend her. Needed to, with everything in him.
Maybe the old adage about men thinking with their dicks was true. He never should have slept with her. Fat chance of that not happening. He was weak for her.
She’d stolen his good sense.
“Fuck,” he whispered.