Must Love Hellhounds

Maggie slowed as soon as James’s vehicle was out of sight, then pulled off onto the shoulder. Sir Pup jumped out the window.

“Can he catch up at highway speeds?”

“Yes.” She watched the dark blur streak across the road. “If he’d run from San Francisco instead taking the plane with me to New York, he would have arrived before I did.”

“He’d have… Bollocks.”

Maggie met her own flat stare in the rearview mirror. “Do I look like I’m joking?”

“I don’t know. I’m with him. And he’s running… very fast.” Blake reached forward, braced his hand on the dash. “It’s a bad amusement park ride. Oh, hell. He’s purposefully running in front of oncoming vehicles.”

He probably was. Maggie pulled back onto the road and headed after the hellhound. And hoped that whatever chaos Sir Pup left in his path didn’t delay them too long.

And that he didn’t interpret “detaining James” as “eating his legs.”

At least, not yet.

Chapter Seven

James is a lucky man, Maggie thought. He’d stopped at a beachfront park, a location too public for Sir Pup to do anything more than lie in the sand a hundred yards away and stare at him.

Maggie parked and turned to Blake. “You can see him?”

“At one of the tables. He looks to be on the phone.” He held up his hands, moved his thumbs. “Not talking. Texting.”

And she would have to cross an open expanse to reach him. After a quick check of her gun, she said, “You’ll stay with Sir Pup while I talk to him.”

“Not a chance.”

She knew he’d say that. “He won’t talk with you there.”

“We don’t need him to talk. Just to point out the house.”

“Geoff, I need you to trust me.” And to be out of James’s line of fire. She couldn’t trust James, not until she knew what his role was.

And even then, it would be difficult.

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “This isn’t about trusting you, Maggie.”

“No. You’re angry on behalf of your sister, so it’s about you wanting to break your fist on his face.” She touched his hand, the tight, white-knuckled clench. “We can’t charge blindly into the house. We can’t take that risk.”

The fingers beneath hers loosened slightly.

“You can start punching after we get her out.”

He released a heavy breath and nodded. “All right, then.”

The relief that swept through her was too strong, she thought as she spotted James at the table. Relief like that came from caring.

And she wasn’t going to be careless with Geoff.

She knew the moment James spotted her. The expression on his boy-next-door face didn’t change, but beneath the table, his booted feet shifted slightly wider. Getting ready to dive to one side or the other.

She didn’t sit on the bench and offer an easy gut shot below the table. She leaned her hip against the tabletop instead, her arms casually folded beneath her breasts, her right hand on her weapon and concealed by her jacket.

“This can be easy,” she said. “But it’s up to you.”

He laid the phone down and placed both hands flat on the table. “I’ll make it easy.” With his chin, he gestured at the phone. “I sent you another message. You found me faster than I thought you would.”

And she’d never tell him how. “My employer has interesting friends.” Let him wonder about that. Wonder and worry. “And yours is a demon.”

“He used to be yours, too, Maggie.” He leaned back slightly, looking up at her face. “The demon is Langan.”

Their handler-her superior-at the CIA. The one who’d given her James’s kill order. She didn’t allow her surprise to show. And wondered if he was lying, just to make her stumble.

But it was possible. If Langan had been a demon, he couldn’t have killed James; giving Maggie the kill order would’ve been the only way to get rid of him without breaking the Rules. And Maggie didn’t know Langan’s current status… but she would have Savi check into it the moment the vampire came out of her daysleep.

“Langan,” she repeated flatly. “And what does he have on you?”

“A bargain. I help him find what he needs, and he doesn’t tell the agency that I’m alive… and that you faked the kill.”

A demon or vampire could have heard the pounding of her heart, might have sensed the fear that spiked through her. A human couldn’t. Her smile was thin. “I could make it real now.” She waited a beat. “That kill order was bogus. You know it, and if the agency looked close enough, they’d know it, too. Even if they dragged us back, we’d get the equivalent of a slap before they started hunting for Langan. So what else does he have that would make you stupid enough to bargain with him?”

Sweat beaded above his upper lip. “I took an assignment. A leadership change.”

A political assassination. “So?”

“I couldn’t complete it. I took the shot, but couldn’t complete the assignment. So I disengaged and reported to Langan. Reported everything.”

Maggie frowned. Failure wasn’t reason to-

Ice slid through her veins. “Couldn’t? Because he healed? Because bullets couldn’t kill him?”

“Maggie…”

“A vampire or a demon?”

He blinked. Was going to lie. But she knew, didn’t she?

A political assassination.