Wicked Attraction (The Protector) Read online

  Nina is at the table.

  Ewan pushes a plate toward her. “Eat. Can’t have my girl getting too hungry. Because I’ve spent plenty of time making sure your stomach is fed, but I haven’t done much to make sure anything else is satisfied . . .”

  Nina is in the living room, looking at the books. She plucks a volume off the shelf, turning with a grin. Wuthering Heights.

  “I haven’t read any of them,” Ewan says. “Well, except maybe that Dr. Seuss up there on the shelf.”

  “I’ll read it to you.” Nina flips through the pages.

  The words run together.

  The book weighs a ton, too heavy in her hand.

  She is on the couch, her tablet in hand. Wuthering Heights, the book she’s been reading, on the screen. A favorite. She loves the story of the ill-fated lovers who can’t get themselves together enough to make their love work.

  She looks up at Ewan sitting at his desk. “When . . . when did you put your desk in the living room?”

  Nina is in bed. The early morning light streaming through the windows tells her it is later than she’d expected. From downstairs drifts the delicious smell of coffee, the real stuff, not synth. Ewan will be making her breakfast. She is naked. They’d made love.

  She loves him.

  He loves her.

  They are in love and happy and forever and love and happy and happy and happy . . .

  “I want to make things up to you,” Ewan says. “I’m making pancakes. I’m not sure I can. I’ve had a craving for them since we got home. I don’t know how. But I want to. They’re what my mother always made for me when I was a kid and stayed home sick from school. Middle of the night, it didn’t matter. She’d make me these pancakes, and no matter how bad I felt, I’d feel better. More than anything else. I hope you can believe me.”

  “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I believe you?” Nina puts her fingertips to her temple, where a steady, aching pulse throbs and becomes a sharp, spiking pain. She blinks away a reddish haze. She is suddenly unsteady on her feet. Ready to fall.

  “This isn’t normal, Nina. So help me, then,” Ewan says. “Help all of us.”

  “What do you want from me? What do you need me to do?” Nina gasps as a fresh stab of pain slices at her from the inside out. She doubles over at the table, her hands flat on it but nails scratching at the varnish, digging in deep enough to bend them back. More pain.

  “Tell me where it is,” Ewan says.

  She falls back in her chair with a cry of agony. “What? Tell you where what is?”

  “The tech, Nina. You have to tell me where the tech is.”

  She will do anything to give him what he wants and needs from her; she will give herself up to anything to rid herself of this pain. She will lie, if she has to.

  So that’s what she does.

  “Will you tell me where it is?” Ewan says. “Just tell me where the fucking tech is, Nina, let me in. Let me the fuck in!”

  Nina says yes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “You’re excremental at following orders.” Al spat to one side and swiped at the dust clinging to her lips. “Ugh. Spiderwebs. So gross. If I eat a spider, I am charging you extra.”

  Ewan, breath tight in his throat, shook his head. Jordie had told Al that Nina was being held in this place, in the basement. His team had confirmed it as the last location where Nina’s personal comm had registered. This was where she’d been supposedly meeting her sister.

  “She has to be in there. She has to.”

  “I’m sorry.” Allegra’s gaze went soft. “I know how much you were hoping to find her.”

  “Not just hoping. This is where the kid said she’s supposed to be.” Ewan pounded a fist into his palm and sagged against the basement’s cracked brick wall. He let his forehead rest against the dust and cobwebs, his eyes closed. He cursed low, under his breath, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

  Beside him, Al sneezed. Once, then twice, and a third time. The white arc from her flashlight swung wildly, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the basement’s darkness. “I should have let you beat on him as much as you wanted. I think he thought he was telling you the truth, if that makes you feel better. I know it doesn’t.”

  Ewan turned. “It doesn’t, no. Damn it. I thought . . . damn it.”

  He sagged for a moment. His team had led him to Jordie. Jordie had sent them here. After this, where would they go? They had no more leads.

  “Let’s get out of here. Wait.” Al grabbed at his sleeve when he meant to move. “I’ll go first. It’s what you’re paying me for.”

  Ewan followed her through the basement’s narrow lower doorway, then up the stairs to the door at the top. Nobody waited for them in the kitchen. A battered kitchen table had been pushed onto its side. There were no chairs.

  A clear space in the built-up dirt on the floor stopped him from following Al through the back door and out into the yard. “Wait.”

  She turned, pale eyebrows arching. “Huh?”

  “There.” He pointed at the scrape marks on the floor. “Someone was here recently.”

  “Look, I know you want to think it could be her, but . . .” Al shrugged but studied the spot he was pointing at. “We searched every house, Ewan. None of them had anything close to a clue that she might have been here.”

  “We have to keep looking.”

  “Shiny fine, I mean, I’m here to help. Do you want to look around the rest of the house?”

  “He said the basement? You’re sure?” Ewan asked.

  Allegra’s mouth twisted as she shifted to cock one hip. “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean much. It’s obvious nobody else is here. We can look, though. Maybe we’ll find something that will help. You said this was the address where she told you she was meeting her sister. Why do you think they’d bring her back here when it’s so easily traceable?”

  “I don’t know.” Ewan shook his head, studying the marks on the floor. “Maybe they didn’t have any other place to take her.”

  “I’m guessing this isn’t really her sister’s house.”

  “No. I mean, I’ve never met her sister and I’ve never been here before. But none of the houses on this street are occupied. This kitchen looks like it might have been staged the way the hospital room in the warehouse was. I think Nina was here. They’d have tied her to a chair, maybe. Right?” He gestured and dragged the toe of his boot along the bare spots of the floor. “She’d have fought them.”

  “They couldn’t keep her tied to a chair for very long. Not unless she was totally unconscious. And you know they couldn’t keep her knocked out for more than a few minutes before her system would start clearing that right out.”

  He knew it. He closed his eyes to think. “They had her here. She fought. She fell over . . . they dragged her? She fought them. She would have fought them.”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  “Can you see any blood?” He couldn’t, but Al should be able to discern even the faintest splatters using her enhanced vision.

  “A drop or two. Looks old. Could be anything, really.” She swept a hand around the kitchen. “Might not even be human, who knows, someone could’ve cut up a chicken in here once. Look, Donahue, we really need to get out of here in case someone comes back for you. She’s not here.”

  Ewan didn’t move. He listened. Beyond what his ears could sense, he listened with . . . everything he had.

  “Please,” he said, not to Al but to the Onegod or whatever deity in the universe might be able to hear him.

  He didn’t hear the sound of his name as much as he felt it. He felt her. Nina. “Upstairs.”

  Al went first again, a few steps ahead of him, kicking open each closed door and checking inside before she let him look. He wasn’t going to leave this house until he’d looked in every nook, every cranny. He was going to find her, his love.

  “They’re empty,” Al said when they reached the end of the hall.

  “She’s here,” he ins