Cherry Adair - T-flac 09 (42 page)

“Rook,” the op shouted into his lip mic. “To Heather.
Now.
”

Rook materialized beside her with a cocky grin. “Hi, beautiful. Ready to go home?” He shot the man beside her a sneaking glance.

“He can’t teleport me, either.” She didn’t even try to keep the panic and nerves out of her voice.

“Where’s Caleb? What’s going on?”

“We’re on it,” Rook insisted. “Let’s get you out of here. Ready?”

“Ye—” She didn’t teleport when Tony tried again either. She was suddenly very afraid.

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Farris glanced at Rook. “Take her outside. I’ll get Caleb.” He was gone in a poof and a blink.

She and Rook ran side by side. The firstEXIT door was locked and Heather tasted the burn of panic.

“This way.” Rook pointed to the left with the barrel of his gun.

Okay. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She was here to save Caleb. And she’d seen nothing but the back of his head. Heather’s heartbeat faltered, and she slipped on something on the floor. She threw her hands out as her feet shot out from under her. Tony tried to grab her.

Three things happened simultaneously. One, Tony couldn’t touch her, two, somehow she was upended and placed gently back on her feet, and three, Caleb arrived wearing a scowl. “What the hell are you thinking, Rook? Why is she still here?”

“Can’t teleport her. Neither can Dek or Farris.”

“Bullshit.” Caleb’s eyes narrowed when she didn’t go anywhere. “Who the fuck protected her?”

“Farris. But I’m telling you, he can’t teleport her either.”

“Impossible. Probably,” Caleb amended.

“What
probably
?” Heather shot back. She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt. “Do something. Conjure up some eye of newt or whatever it is you have to do but—”

“Bean,”Caleb said with dawning wonder.

“What?” everyone seemed to ask in unison.

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Heather curved her hand around her tummy. “Oh, God. Is something wrong with the baby?”

“Try,” Caleb began, pausing to turn and fire a few cover rounds down the hallway before saying over his shoulder, “talking to him.”

She took a deep breath, wondering if she was so far gone crazy that there was never any chance of coming back, then as reasonably as possible, said, “Bean, we need to get out of here, so Daddy and I would really appreciate it if you could—Holy crap!”

She was back in her apartment.

Lark was sprawled on her bed, reading an Italian fashion magazine and popping chilled grapes into her mouth. She glanced up as Heather noisily collapsed into the straight-backed chair at the table.

“You look sweaty. Everything okay?”

Stunned, Heather managed a nod. “Uh. Oh, crap. Damn. I think so.” She rubbed her stomach in awe.

“I am okay. Apparently my son is already taking care of his mother. He teleported me home.” She swallowed, then grinned as she felt the gentle answering flutter in her womb.

Lark crossed her feet, and grinned. “Told you he was going to be powerful.”

Heather held onto the chair until the dizziness of reentry faded. “You knew this could happen?”

“I’m an empath, remember?”

Heather frowned as she glanced around, expecting to see Caleb. Wanting to see Caleb, damn it. “Bean only teleported me?”

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Lark smiled. “Caleb’s a powerful man and a wizard, Heather. Caleb can handle himself.”

From your lips,she thought, standing. “Hard to forget,” she muttered, going to the kitchen for a glass of water. Wine would have been better, but not when she had a baby onboard. “How come Bean didn’t protect me in Matera?” she shouted, filling a glass.

She walked back into the other room, and sat down at the table. Placing her half-empty glass beside her, she started sorting through the small mountain of jewelry still piled there in a jumbled mess. All that was left of her old life. “Well?”

“Timing is everything,” Lark said, her expression a mixture of amused and triumphant. “A carrier has to hit the fifteen-week mark before the baby’s powers start to develop.”

“Carrier?” Heather groaned. “That makes me sound like Typhoid Mary.”

“Yeah, sorry, didn’t mean for it to come out like that. At any rate, you conceived fifteen weeks ago as of three this afternoon.”

“Are you telling me
I
now have wizard powers?” Heather demanded, half horrified, and half intrigued.

And absolutely
not
wondering how Lark knew the exact hour of Bean’s conception.

“Not you. Your child. And through Bean, your own natural abilities can come forward.”

Say what? “Believe me, I don’t have any natural, or
un
natural abilities,” Heather assured her.

“Time will tell,” Lark said enigmatically.

As much as she wanted to ask Lark what she was talking about, Heather bit her tongue. Lark wouldn’t tell her, and frankly she had enough on her plate to think about right now without going down that road.

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While Lark reclined on the bed, flipping through her magazine, Heather got up again and paced.

“Wherever your father is, I wish he and the others would hurry up and come home,” she whispered.

In a matter of seconds, four men crumpled into a heap at her feet. Blood oozed from a cut above Keir’s right eye. Dekker had a split lip and what appeared to be the beginnings of a nasty bruise on his cheek.

Tony Rook’s hand was swelling and black-and-blue already.

Caleb rolled onto his side, wincing as he got to his feet.

“Why do you guys always like to do it the
hard
way?” Lark demanded, shaking her head as she took in their disheveled appearances. “What’s the point in being wizards if you don’t utilize your powers in these situations?”

Tony Rook grinned. “Perk of the job.”

“What the f—What was
that
?” Keir asked, rubbing his lower jaw and looking at the others.

“Warp speed courtesy of Mini Edge,” Lark said, barely containing her excitement.

Caleb’s blue eyes fixed on Heather. She could tell he was favoring his left side. His ribs? “How’d you make that happen? What did you do?”

Worry about you. Love you.“I just wished you’d hurry up. I guess Bean did the rest.”

“Awesome,” Rook announced. “We flew through those guys at warp speed. Heather, honey, you can wish me through any op you want. Hey, thanks,” he told Caleb as he noticed that his hand was healed.

He flexed his fingers and grinned. “That is
so
cool.”

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Still watching
her,
Caleb fixed his friends’ battered bodies. His eyes promised her retribution for showing up at the Aquarium.

Tough.

As usual, his closed expression betrayed nothing more than what she imagined she read in his eyes. And even there she could be way off. Where had he learned to be so damn,
annoyingly
inscrutable?

“Send a detail back to the Aquarium. They’ve got the place prepped to blow,” Caleb told Lark.

“Presidential and environmental group scheduled, tenA.M. tomorrow. I’m on it.” She disappeared, taking her grapes and magazine with her.

“Heather, give me whatever it is that has the account numbers, so we can get this tied up.”

“Do you have any damn idea how freaking…
annoying
that is? ‘Get this tied up?’” she repeated through her teeth. “Like you haven’t just walked in and disrupted my entire flipping
life
!”

Caleb glanced at the jewelry strewn on the table. “Which piece is it?”

“Bean, Mommy needs to talk to Daddy alone. Could you please send everyone wherever they’d like to go, as long as it isn’t here?”

“Hey, w—” The three men disappeared instantly.

Holy crap. Tony was right. This
was
awesome. “Now, please put Daddy’s butt in that chair. Gently.”

Caleb flew through the air, but landed lightly in the seat.

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“Careful,” he warned, looking a little shell-shocked. “Power corrupts.”

“It’s also convenient,” she countered, moving closer to him. “I can’t have you teleporting off into the sunset when you have so much explaining to do.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me,” she said, folding her arms over her chest and pinning him in place with a look. “I want to know why you used me. Why you thought it was okay to make me a pawn in the game you were playing with my father.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Really. What was it like?”

Caleb rubbed his palms over his face. “It didn’t even start out as my assignment, Heather. I agreed to come and talk to you just to get out of the damn hospital. This wasn’t even my op. I was supposed to pass you off to another operative.”

“To do what?”

“Find your father. Finding him meant finding the money. Finding the money meant chopping the financial legs out from under a dozen terrorist groups.”

“Why didn’t you just go to Matera and teleport him where you wanted him?”

“Teleportation requires visual contact.”

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“Oh, for—You could have become invisible, walked into that place any damned time you liked, and
seen
him.”

“Tried that. Problem was, the place was a labyrinth. We couldn’t
find
him. We knew he was inside.

Then.
But we couldn’t be sure he’d stay there while we kept searching. I tried everything before I came to you.”

For a moment her eyes were clear and bottomless. “There’s one thing you didn’t try.”

“And that was?”

“You didn’t tell me the truth and
ask
for my help.”

“Hindsight is twenty-twenty,” he said grimly. “But in all honesty, the thought never crossed my mind.”

“Too bad. It could have saved a lot of time.”

“And a lot of pain.”

“Yes. Marrying me was a bit drastic, considering that all you needed from me was a couple of hours at most.” She pinned him with her gaze. “I understand that fighting terrorism is more important than, say, trying to find a way to make that Curse null and void.” Seeing him wince, she added, “You certainly take that duty thing seriously, don’t you?”

“Nairne’s Curse has been in force for five hundred years. It is what it is. And completely irrelevant in this case.”

“Oh, I think it’s very relevant at the moment. I’m your Lifemate.”

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Caleb’s blood ran cold as the word spilled so easily from her lips. “No,” he said flatly. “You’re not.”

He’d almost lost her once because he’d refused to acknowledge his feelings. He’d thought that by not acknowledging who and what she was to him, she’d be immune. Wrong. He’d been given a reprieve, that was all. It was as if Nairne had given him a warning.

Do not fall in love.

Duty.

Duty or death.

He shuddered, the pain ripping through his body. He was damned if he’d put her at risk like that again.

He’d rather have his beating heart ripped out and fed to dogs than see her hurt again.

She gnawed the corner of her lip and frowned. “Are you saying you don’t love me?”

The smell of her skin was making his brain turn to mush. Damn it. He should move away. “I didn’t say that.”

“So. You do love me.”

“Immaterial.” His heart was a block of ice beneath her palm, which still rested against his chest. “I have nothing to offer you. Not a damn thing. I can’t give you a traditional marriage. I won’t live with you. Ever.

You and Bean will be well taken care of. Both physically and financially. But I can’t,
won’t
be a part of your life. Not going to happen.”

“Because of the Curse?”

If he told her yes, she’d try to buck it. If he told her no, she’d try to squeeze an admission out of him.

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“If nothing else,” Caleb said carefully, “Nairne’s Curse is as real as death and taxes. Countless ancestors have given breaking it their best shot. It just flat out doesn’t work.
Generations
of Edges have tried and failed. Fortunately, that doesn’t come into play here.” He kept his tone bored and slightly impatient. “To be brutally honest, you were nothing more than a means to an end. That’s all.”

She blinked at the strike, then lifted her hand off him. Caleb immediately felt the lack of heat.

“That doesn’t leave room for interpretation, does it? I—My life has been on hold for long enough,” she said with a wobble in her voice. “I want to be settled,
feel
settled before our son is born. I didn’t realize until I wasn’t living it anymore that my life in Paris didn’t quite fit me. But neither does living in a one-room apartment here in San Francisco. I want less of what I had before, but more than this.”

She cocked her head to one side, as if she was actually consulting him. He knew better.

“I have to find some sort of middle ground. With or without you. I’ve been on pause. Now I want to hit

‘play’ and get my life back on track.”

“That’s your prerogative.” He felt feral. Why wasn’t she trying to make him stay? Agreeing to be miserable, just like he would be miserable without her in his life, every single day? It really ticked him off that she was so calm and collected. And that she was making him doubt his decisions. Decisions that he’d made years ago. All three of his brothers had, for Christ’s sake! Informed decisions that had always,
always
made perfect sense. Marriage and love equaled death to the Lifemate—therefore, no freaking Lifemate. Simple.

He wasn’t exactly taking this lightly. Five hundred years of Edridges and Edges had been foolish enough to think
they
could break the Curse.