next it was bent at a severe angle, wrenched between the iron bars of the gate. Hunter sent a warning look at the rest of her father's men, none of whom seemed eager to test him.
Victor Bishop's voice came over the communication device again. "Someone tell me what the hell is going on. Who's out there with you?"
The guard named Mason was someone Corinne recognized now. He had been a part of the Bishop household for as long as she could remember, a kind-hearted but serious Breed male who'd been a friend of Brock's and used to like jazz music almost as much as she did. Back then, he'd worn his coppery-golden hair stylishly slicked back with pomade. Now it was cut shorter, a bright orange cap that made his widening eyes seem even larger.
"Miss Corinne?" he asked hesitantly, gaping at her in obvious disbelief. "But ... how? I mean, good lord ... is it - can it really be you?"
At her mute nod, a smile broke over his face. The guard whispered a soft curse as he grasped the communication device on his coat's lapel and brought it closer to his mouth. "Mr. Bishop, sir? This is Mason. We're down at the front gate, and, uh ... well, sir, you are not going to believe this, but I am looking at a miracle out here."
Chapter Six
The female was safe and his job here was done.
That's what Hunter told himself as Corinne Bishop was taken into the hands of her father's security detail. The guards immediately opened the gates to her amid repeated apologies for the inadvertently hostile way she had been met. The one named Mason had moist eyes as he stared at her, his voice cracking with barely restrained emotion as he rubbed a hand over his face and murmured his disbelief at seeing her standing before him. Waving the other guards ahead, Mason wrapped a protective arm around Corinne's petite shoulders and started to walk her up the cobbled drive.
Hunter hung back just inside the gate, watching her make her way toward the mansion ahead.
The task of seeing her safely delivered home was met, which left him free to return to the airport where the Order's private plane waited to take him back to Boston. In a moment, Corinne Bishop would be ensconced inside her family's Darkhaven, and in just a few short hours, he could resume the more urgent business of pursuing Dragos and the army of Gen One killers who served him.
Yet there was still the matter of Mira's vision ...
Corinne turned around to look at him as she was led farther up the driveway by her father's guards. Her long ebony hair caught in the cold breeze, whipping dark strands across her pale cheek and brow. Her lips parted as though she meant to speak, but the words were lost, clouding as her breath caught on the wind and flew away. Her gaze lingered on him. He felt that prolonged, haunted glance reach out to him across the distance, as palpable as a touch. As he watched Corinne Bishop being guided away from him, he saw instead the tearstained face and wild desperation of the woman in Mira's precognitive vision. He heard her voice, wrenched with fear and anguish.
Please, I'm begging you ...
I love him ...
You have to let him live ...
Beneath the logic that reminded him the child seer's gift had never been wrong yet, something unfamiliar tugged at Hunter from inside. The stealth tactician in him was quick to suggest that the vision was a puzzle demanding to be resolved. The assassin in him cautioned that Mira's precognition might lead him to an enemy to be discovered and destroyed. But there was another part of him that looked at Corinne Bishop in that moment, with her tender beauty and the steely resilience that had carried her out of Dragos's dungeons with her spine held straight, and he couldn't fathom being the one to finally crush her as he had in Mira's vision.
He felt an odd respect for her, for what she might have suffered at Dragos's hands. Odder to him still, he realized that he didn't want to be the one to cause Corinne Bishop's pain and tears. It was that illogical, far-too-human part of him that made him glance away from her and begin to pivot back toward his waiting vehicle at the end of the drive. If he left now, the chances were good that he might never cross paths