a Touch of the Past (An Everly Gray Adventure) (20 page)

Calm him down, Everly. A rabid Pierce is not a good thing.

I swallowed, giving in to the shudders that threatened to buckle my knees. If Pierce hadn’t wrapped his arms around me, I would have landed on the ground. "He got away, didn’t he?"

"Not for long." His words were tight with barely leashed violence.
 

Instinct had me stepping back. I tried to see his face in the dark. Shadows. No features. Unnerving.
 

Sirens closed in, the sound grating over my skin. A thousand tiny goose bumps popped out on my arms and legs. "Someone was hurt? Your team?" My voice shook, then hollowed out around the words.
 

"Three are down. No visible wounds." Pain clung to the underside of his voice, raising a well of sympathy and guilt in my chest. If they hadn’t followed me…

"I’m sorry I punched you."
 

Lame, Everly.

And then it hit me. "No visible wounds? As in something toxic?" Shudders hit my gut and spread—arms, legs, hands. Pierce’s handkerchief slipped from beneath my fingers and dropped to the ground.
 

He picked it up by the edge, checked my arm, then pulled a plastic bag from his back pocket and tucked the folded cloth inside. "Don’t know yet. They’re being transported to Tripler Med. And we'll need to get you checked out as well." He shuffled his feet. Not a Pierce move, so I figured maybe he was worried about me. Like I was one of the guys, a real member of his team. But three of them were down.
 

Whatever bravado I’d been faking dissolved. "You think the toxin was on his knife? That I’ve been infected?"

"You’re breathing, talking, and punching, so no. This shit seems to work in minutes, but you need to be checked out. And I want your clothes, body swabs—"

I nodded, a quick jerk that was a painful reminder I’d just been in an altercation with a bad guy. "I get that. DNA testing, or whatever they do on TV. I scratched him, so there might be cells under my nails. But—"

Pierce must have had another incoming call, because he punched a button on his phone. "Tripler. Be there in twenty."
 

So they were taking me to a military base to be stripped, prodded, probed, and probably questioned. And Mitch would arrive in two hours. Damn inconvenient to be temporarily incarcerated because it would mean an explanation that would…
 

Pierce grabbed my right elbow and gently tugged. "Gotta move, Belisama."

I didn’t shake free. Not with my knees doing their best impression of a top-of-the-line Kitchen Aid mixer set on high speed. But that didn’t stop the questions from churning in my head. "So, where were you while I was having an up close and personal encounter with the Scuzzbutt? I mean, you’re supposed to be guarding my body. Right?"

A menacing grumble that would have terrified a lesser woman, escaped from his throat. My toes curled and dug into my Nikes—preparing to run?
 

"Got word three of my team were down. Thought you were in the clear. Bastard couldn’t be two places at once."
 

My stomach bottomed out. No way could I fault the man for protecting his team. "Did you get a look at him? Did anyone? They had night vision goggles or whatever, right? And Scuzzbutt had to have gotten close enough to your guys to infect them."

"They’re unconscious, Everly. Vitals weak. Probably won’t make it. They’re sure as all hell not talking." The air sizzled with his anger, and in that instant I knew whoever did this to Pierce’s team had the black edge of death clouding their auras because he’d already decided on a shoot-first plan.
 

"I’m so sorry. I didn’t see his face either. Just a glimpse of white teeth and an insane grin. Nothing I could give to an artist. And Mitch will be here soon."

Pierce grunted. "Good. We need another set of eyes on you."

Annie joined me at Tripler
, bringing clean clothes and a lecture stern enough to rival Millie the day I’d accidentally set my bedroom on fire. The hospital staff had cleaned my cuts and scratches, bandaged my knife wound, and confiscated the clothes I’d been wearing. After much discussion, and several threats on my part, they’d decided not to keep me. The toxin that infected Pierce’s team had worked fast, so chances were I hadn’t been infected. If I had been, I’d be unconscious, not arguing for my release.
 

By the time I’d scrubbed my face, zipped myself into the flirty dress Annie brought, and toed on my dressy slippahs—the ones with tiny jewels embedded in the straps—I was ready to meet Mitch, sort of, and I was definitely done listening to her lecture.
 

She flicked the Unlock button on her key fob, and when I spotted the car I interrupted her rant, trying to deflect her attention to something less personally punishing. "Hey, new car." It was a hard-to-miss bright, metallic blue Mazda. Not an Annie vehicle at all.
 

"Pierce had the Jeep. Sean and I need transportation." She brushed my observation aside with a flick of her wrist, and then went back to listing my worse-than-stupid decisions, her lips drawing tight around the words.
 

It was easy to close my eyes and shut her out as she pulled the sporty Mazda out of the parking lot. Not that my lack of participation slipped by her. She tapped me, none too gently, on the wrist. "Do not even think of falling asleep. You know better than to sneak out like that. This is bigger than just us, Gray."

Oh, damn. She’d used my last name. "Yeah. I know, but it’s
my
family. And I’m…scared." I was whining, but the last name thing had pushed me past overload. My arm hurt where they’d scrubbed the heck out of it, Mitch was arriving in ten minutes, and although the scratches on my legs had been cleaned, they were still visible. Pierce and Annie were furious with me, and Mitch was arriving in eight minutes. He was going be so pissed. And it would be hours before my lab work came back. Maybe I was going to die in few hours. And Mitch was arriving in seven minutes.
 

Annie turned onto the airport access road, then checked her watch. "We’re on time. You want me to park, or just pull up at baggage claim?"
 

"Park. Sean will be here in an hour, so you should probably just wait for him. Mitch will want to rent a car anyway, and—"

"My wedding is in four days." She wiggled, annoyingly happy now that she’d drained her anger by giving me hell for forty-five minutes.
 

"Yeah." I gave her the best smile I could manage. "You’re going to be a beautiful bride, but what does that have to do with parking?"
 

"Nothing." She pulled into a spot and turned off the engine. "But it has everything to do with you and Mitch staying safe. This situation has to be controlled before then, which means you have to start telling me the truth about what’s going on. You’ve been hurt, and there are too many people we both care about in danger. I’m off the clock in four days. Truth. Everly. Right now."
 

A shiver rippled down my spine. Her eyes were flat, without a trace of the sparkling Annie who was my best friend. But she loved me. I could feel it where her hand rested reassuringly on my shoulder. Still, it bordered on creepy. "What’s with the lightning quick mood change? A second ago you were happy dancing, now you’re…oh, bridezilla."

"Yeah, well, my emotions might be off, but I still need the truth from you." She squeezed my shoulder, then folded her hands in her lap and waited.
 

"Aukele is my grandfather, and I think he knows all about the toxin, maybe all about what my mom was involved with."
 

She nodded. "Uh-huh. I expected that. Can’t find him, or a record of any marriage to Makani Milu, on any database in the known cyber world. I’m guessing theirs was a native Hawaiian ceremony, and they kept it that way, never giving in to bureaucratic pressure to register their union."

"That fits. The other thing really nagging at me is the apparent lack of connection between Parker Steele’s cousin and whoever is trying to kill me. Abduct me. Terrorize me. Whatever. It’s not like I’m carrying this magic formula around with me, and it’s not buried in my subconscious, or—"
 

My cell buzzed with a text from Brody Williams.
 

Confirming appointment tomorrow. 8:30am HI time.

"Darn. I’d totally forgotten about my client session tomorrow morning." I kept talking to Annie while I texted agreement to Brody. Multitasking: great invention. "It’s gonna be a late night with Mitch because I need to fill him in on everything, and now I need some planning time for this session tomorrow."

Annie’s shoulders tightened, the movement subtle, but the repressed reaction behind her motion was strong enough to punch holes in the Mazda’s interior energy field. Not good, since the car hadn’t come with a whole lot of breathing room.

Time for me to probe. "You want to talk about why you react to this client like he’s your worst nightmare?" I was pretty sure she’d sidestep the question, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

She rolled her shoulders back…slowly. It was obviously a decision rather than spontaneous relaxing. "No. It’s not him,
per se
. I think it’s just that I’m about to get married, and what if something in my past comes back to hurt Sean? How could I live with that?"
 

There was an odd rumble of half-truth running through Annie’s words that bothered the back of my mind, leaving a tangled case of the twitchies behind. "I think there’s more—"
 

Her phone chirped, and within a nanosecond she’d tuned me out, and focused on the text message shining brightly in the half-light of the parking garage. My trepidation hiked up a notch.

"Sean’s here. His flight just landed. Early. Oh, El. He’s here." Clipped words. Excitement mixed with anxiety. Or maybe I was just projecting my own screwed up psyche onto Annie’s happiness.

"Fantastic. We can meet at the Hilton for a drink and then show Sean and Mitch the chapel."
 

She eyed me, both eyebrows hiked up in elegant arches. "Have you looked at yourself?"

My stomach took a dive into reality. Mitch wasn’t going to be happy with the bags under my eyes or the cuts and scrapes on my legs. Then there was the bandage from the knife wound, clearly visible, since Annie had brought me a dress with spaghetti straps. "Right. Better give him a chance to assimilate my relative safety before tossing him into a social situation with you guys."
 

We climbed out of the car, the scent of airplane fuel clinging to the humid air. I thought twice about breathing. "Where do the military flights land? You know?"

"Um-hmm. They share the airport. Sean is arriving on Delta, but Mitch will grab a bus from wherever his flight disembarks. He told you to meet him at baggage claim, right?"
 

"Yes. It’s just that this is the first time I’ve met him at an airport. Guess I’m nervous."

"You’re nervous because he’s going to give you hell about fighting with a killer."

She had a point.

We strolled through the front doors of the airport, our heads turning, each of us searching for our respective guy.
 

Mitch showed up first, hobbling toward me with a huge grin that was bracketed by lines of exhaustion.
 

Panic flared deep in my gut. Had he been hurt? I ran toward him, slippahs slapping a frantic rhythm against the cement floor. I reached for him, my palms skimming down his arms.
 

"It’s okay, Sunshine. Go ahead and touch."
 

I sucked in a preparatory breath, then curled my fingertips against his arm, and we shared a moment so intimate it stilled my heart. Love for me flowed through him, so complete, so perfect, that tears pooled in my eyes. His lips touched mine, demanding, while I watched the images of him flashing on my internal monitor—it was a minor tumble from a rocky cliff. He had some bad bruises, but nothing serious.
 

When we broke apart, he tapped the bandage on my arm, and then ran his thumb over my lips. Worry leaked from behind his eyes. "Don’t tell me until I have a beer in my hand."

Sean came up behind Annie, grabbed her, and lifted her off the floor in a huge hug.
 

"Welcome
home
, handsome." Annie grinned as he spun her around.
 

Normal. But not. She’d put enough emphasis on the word home, that it distracted me from cataloging Mitch’s injuries.
 

While they were lost in a kiss, Mitch laced our fingers together. "Sounds like Sean found a job here. I knew he was looking."

Job? Here? Annie hadn’t said anything.

Their kiss ended, and Annie laid her hand against Sean’s cheek. "I talked to the real estate agent earlier. She’ll put my townhouse on the market tomorrow."
 

The room spun. Free fall. No parachute.
 

Eighteen

Mitch pulled me tight against
his side. "Annie didn’t tell you that Sean got a job here?"