Chapter Twenty-Six – Luke

 

Molly threw her arms around my neck and planted one right on me the second I walked back into the kitchen. Soft, insistent lips pressed to mine as she groaned softly, and I couldn’t help but wrap her supple body in a warm embrace. She seemed to fit perfectly against me, like we’d been made for each other, and we lingered in each other’s arms like lovesick teenagers for what seemed like hours.

Finally, as I noticed the sun’s dying light and how far it had dropped in the sky, we pulled apart. We stood there for a long moment in the small kitchen, our arms still tightly coiled around one another, our foreheads together.

“You’re okay, then?” I asked as I looked down into her eyes.

She smiled, a kind of breathless smile. “Need me to draw you a picture, too?”

I chuckled, giving her a little squeeze and another kiss on the lips. “Me big soldier, me dumb.”

“I don’t believe that for a minute,” she whispered as she looked up into my eyes. “Not for a single hot minute.”

I untangled my limbs from hers, and we both pulled apart, except for the fingers of our hands, which were still tightly entwined.

“What now?” she asked, the smile wilting on her lips. “We still have to get Heidi out of there, don’t we?”

“We?”

She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Of course ‘we’!”

I shook my head. “No, there’s no ‘we’ in this at all. You need to get out of town, and I need to go in and pull your friend out.”

A cloud passed over her face, and her expression turned sour as she released my hands, almost as if she were throwing them away from her. “That’s bull, and you know it, Luke.”

I groaned as I wiped a hand down my face. “Seriously. Every time I try to tell you this is dangerous, and we need to be careful, what do you do?”

She didn’t reply, just turned away from me.

“You get upset, that’s what.”

She shot me a look. “Well, the last time you tried to protect me, it still didn’t work anyways, remember? They just showed up here looking for me. You said so yourself, I might be next.”

“Which is all the more reason why you should leave town, Molly. Put as much distance between you and these things as possible.”

“Distance?” she asked, even scoffed a little. “What kind of distance should I put between me and a dog ogre that can become a shadow, and a demonic sex demon that can pull a woman’s heart from her chest without even pricking the skin? How do I even hide from that? Who can even hide me from that, besides you?” She paused as she turned back to me, licking her lips a little. “Who can protect me, or keep me safe? Your contact downtown, this other monster?”

I felt the color drain from my face. Sending Molly to Roxanne was the worst idea of the bunch. Following hot on its heels, though, was just sending her blind into the world. Could they track her somehow? Maybe, since they’d already gotten her scent.

I had no idea.

And after our run-in with Stryos, and the hurt Molly had put on it, I had a feeling she was prime pickings for them.

If I was closer to our main base of operations, or working with the PRB still, I could have gotten her some modicum of safety. We had protocol in place for this kind of thing. But out here in Tucson, all alone, all I had was a pistol, a Maglite, and a unicorn horn. And I was fresh out of hopes or prayers.

“See my point?” she asked. “There has to be a ‘we’ in this, or I’m just a sitting duck. Let me help you, Luke.”

I sighed. “Okay, saying I let you help, what exactly do you propose?”

She pinched her lips together into that thin line, her lips almost turning white as she turned away from me. “Well…”

“Look,” I said, coming up behind her, “some people have particular sets of skills for these kinds of things. They’re witches, or they’re hunters, or they’re shifters. They’re people who do this kind of thing.”

Her shoulders stiffened more and more as I spoke. “And I’m just a nanny, aren’t I?” she asked without turning around. The accusation was clear in her voice, though.

I winced. “That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“I just, I mean, you’re just not trained for this kind of thing, that’s all. That’s what I meant.”

She turned around slowly, fixing me with those dark eyes of hers. “Well, have you ever gotten an invitation to attend one of these clubs?”

Chuckling a little, I just shook my head. “Sorry, but no. Not exactly my cup of tea. I did more clandestine infiltrations and grabbed high value targets when I was in the service.”

“Well, I have,” she said.

“What?”

“Heidi sent a picture of me and her dressed up for the evening, to show him who her driver was. Chuck said I was always welcome to go along. That I had the right stuff.” By the time she finished, there was a smile of satisfaction on her face. Mixed satisfaction, for sure, but satisfaction nonetheless.

I backed away till I bumped into the kitchen counter behind me. “I don’t know, Molly. Are you sure you really want to do that? Can you, you know, do what your friend does?”

She frowned and shook her head, and it suddenly looked like she’d just found rotten eggs in the refrigerator. “Ew!” she said, her head still oscillating back and forth as a little shiver of disgust ran through her body. “God no, Luke! I’m not going to do that at all! This would just be to get you in the door, nothing else. I’m not doing that, no way in hell.”

I believed her, but I still didn’t have any words to respond with.

“But, if I can get us in there, you can go as my driver! It’ll be a perfect cover, and you can get in without having to sneak around in the dark.” As she spoke, I could see the diagrams practically drawing themselves behind her eyes as she planned her operation like General MacArthur planning the counteroffensive against North Korea, or Eisenhower and Patton helping to plan Operation Overlord. “This is perfect! I could draw out this Dominic guy, distract him there while you sneak in and get Heidi out of his lair, and then you can kill him when you get out.”

“Now hold on just a minute,” I said, my voice rising a little, “how did this go from you leaving town to us using you as bait? I didn’t agree to any of this. This is way too dangerous for me to put you in that position.”

“Put me in this position, Luke? It’s my choice.” Her words were as flat as the Utah salt wastes. “You’re going to have to lock me away somewhere if you won’t let me help. She’s my friend, not yours, and I’m the one who drove her there in the first place.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Molly,” I said, reaching out to take her hand.

A change passed over her face as her shoulders sagged a little. She turned away from me. “Look, I got her into this, okay? I need to get her out. I need to help.”

She stiffened a little as I took her into my arms, but relaxed a second later and leaned back into me. I smelled her hair deeply for a moment, before saying, “This isn’t your fault. You didn’t cause this. If it hadn’t been Heidi, it would have been some other woman up there. You’re not causing this. Hell, it’s not even Heidi’s fault. Who would’ve thought a lust demon would be kidnapping women?”

She snorted, her hands up around my forearms as she awkwardly returned my hug, the smell of her freshly washed hair filling my senses. “If you’d told me that this morning, I would have thought you were crazy.”

Hell, if someone had told me this morning as I was getting off the flight here that I was going to fall hard for the first woman I met in Arizona, I would have asked them how much the oceanfront property around here cost.

I kissed the top of her head. “It’s amazing the difference a day makes, isn’t it?”

She turned around in my arms, her shirt rising up a little around the midriff so my rough hands were running over her soft skin. She gazed up into my eyes again, smiling a little. “It’s almost like it’s a new day, right?”

“Almost,” I said, returning that infectious smile of hers. “Yeah, almost.”

“What now?” she asked.

“Now?” I gave her a little squeeze, not wanting to let her go. “Now, you need to go call this Chuck guy and get a meeting set up. We don’t have much time if you want to make it to the party tonight.”