Use it wisely.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They stayed late. All the beer disappeared, Cee Cee grumbling about not getting a taste. Since Giles had dropped her off, she drove them home in the Camaro. After several miles of silence, she ventured, “That went well. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Making it easier.”
“Making what easier?”
“Saying I’m sorry.”
His smile flashed in the darkness. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for, sha. I’m the one who’s overreacting.”
“What’s so terrible about being an overprotective male?”
He took a breath and plunged in. “It terrified me when communications went dead.”
“Max—”
His words gushed on. “The things that went on in my mind . . .”
“I know. I’m sorry. What are we going to do?”
“Get you home so my heart rate can get back to normal. I spoke to Atcliff.”
Cee Cee’s hands whitened on the wheel. “Oh?”
“I assured him that you’re willing, able and eager to return to duty.”
Her jaw loosened then shut on a breathy, “You did?”
“Lesson learned, Detective. You’re the best judge of your own limitations.”
She considered that for a moment then claimed, “I wasn’t worried. I knew you were there.” She flashed him a soft glance. “You saved Dr. Jones. And as soon as the investigation is complete, we rebuild Bright Haven for Women so she has work to return to when she recovers.”
He smiled then turned to the road ahead. She sounded so confident, he couldn’t darken that hope with doubt.
Genevieve Savorie couldn’t be underestimated. She had resources and money and motivation. And she had what they did not. Time. Time to plot and plan and discover their vulnerabilities. Charlotte was his strength, but also his weakness, his Queen to be protected at all costs if the match of skill and strategy was to be won. In allowing her to return to the streets, he was exposing his flank as well as his heart.
But they didn’t know his mate. And that would be their downfall.
That, and being foolish enough to touch what was his.
“Tomorrow,” he began, voice soft and threaded dangerously with steel, “we go back to work and find out who betrayed our trust. I put Silas on our mysterious Mr. Maitlin from Chicago. Perhaps we’ll get lucky and intercept him and the information he stole.” Genetic information on his wife and unborn child. “And perhaps discover who his accomplice is here in New Orleans.”
Cee Cee’s jaw turned concrete. “Brady. We both know it.”
“Yes, we do.” Quietly, determinedly said.
“Someone put our child in danger, Max. We’ll find out who. And we’ll make them very, very sorry.”
– – –
Bram Terriot wasn’t pleased. And when he wasn’t happy, no one was happy . . . or safe within reach of his massive fists.
He was no longer the wasted, muddled old man his treasonous sons had incarcerated in a Reno hotel prison. He hadn’t withered away, as expected, while Cale assumed his stolen mantle as the clan’s pretended savior.
They should have known better than to let him live.
Instead of obliging the traitors with his lingering death, he’d used the time to recover from the debilitating effects of the poisons that bitch Martine had been feeding him. Word of her violent end by her own hand had been disappointing. He’d dreamed of wringing that slender neck she’d slashed herself to escape Cale’s wrath. But dead was dead, and he was glad to be rid of her. Once his mind finally cleared from its fog of madness, he’d begun plotting a fitting revenge, using the never-ending hours of captivity and an infinite tide of rage to pump up muscle and endurance, becoming again a terrifying mountain of brute force to be reckoned with.
Bram the Beast.
The sons who’d rescued him were terrified in his presence. Good. They should be. They’d expected reward and position within the world he’d remake upon the ashes of Cale’s ruin. Fools. Where were these sons when the pretender had him imprisoned?
He paced the confinement of the strange hotel room while his son Stephen struggled to hide his fear. The old king could smell it, stronger now that Lee, his accomplice, weak link that he was, had been compromised and killed in some sleazy Vegas casino. His life wasn’t as big a loss as the funds he’d been funneling.
After Cale proclaimed himself their king, they’d waited in spineless trepidation until outsiders—one a coward of no consequence and one a human policeman—approached to make that first overture. He’d listened to their plots and ambitions and waited to learn of his place within them. A king reduced to blunt instrument to be wielded at