the trails had looked isolated and foreboding. There had also been some taken around a creek that she could well imagine Garrett dumping her body to be well-hidden by the wild foliage and crevasses in the rock formations along its banks. If he got her alone on one of those trails, then she knew she would never emerge alive.
“I told you, if you kill me, then you’ll never find Matty,” Amber said slowly, willing her voice not to shake. To Garrett, that would be like blood in a tank full of sharks. “Everyone will also hear the audio file that proves you’re a monster.”
“Who said anything about killing you?” he said with a wide smile that chilled her to the bone. “You have plenty of kneecaps, hands, feet, and elbows for me to shoot without the threat of you bleeding out too quickly. One for every time you refuse to answer me.” He waved his gun in the direction she knew the entrance to one of the trails lay. “Now start walking.”
Amber didn’t move a muscle. “You really are crazy if you think I’m going to go anywhere with you! Think, Garrett! Why can’t you see that there’s no way shooting and torturing me will end well for you? Someone will hear the gunshots. They’ll hear my screams. With that many witnesses, even your daddy’s money and the Johnson name won’t be able to shield you from the consequences!”
“Someone’s already seen you,” a woman’s voice abruptly called out somewhere behind her.
Amber whipped her head around and then cried out as her abused neck instantly erupted in a sharp pain that brought tears to her eyes. Even so, none of that was enough to distract her from the scene straight from her worst nightmare that had shockingly come into play.
“What the hell are you—how did you—!” Amber stammered in anguish.
Taylor Madden, her backstabbing and now ex-lawyer, stood several feet behind them near a stone building, her right hand clutching the hand of a very terrified looking Matty dressed in unfamiliar, but Terran clothes.
“I didn’t tell you to come here, but…” The look on Garrett’s face was so gleeful and triumphant that for a split-second, Amber thought getting shot would be worth it if she could just punch him right in the center of that face as hard as she could.
“No, you didn’t,” Madden said crossly, “but after the phone call I just received full of demands from Senator Johnson, I’ve decided I’ve had enough of this madness.” The woman then turned a steely gaze onto Amber. “No amount of money you pay me is worth being constantly threatened. I won’t hide him for you any longer. I refuse to deal with this crazy family any longer.”
Huh? Hide Matty? What the hell was the witch even—wait. Those last couple of words…
Like a punch to the gut, Amber’s white-hot panic melted into a shocked understanding that sent her mind into overdrive. Although her speech patterns and brusque alto had been spot on, Madden’s words, especially the last two, had been spoken with a slight accent—and it wasn’t her usual Texas twang.
A conversation surfaced in her mind from breakfast that morning.
“Too bad you need to look like you for the cameras in your lawyer’s office,” Otaron said between bites of toast. “Then we wouldn’t have to worry about the wrong people spotting you.”
Amber frowned. “You mean like dye my hair black and wear brown-tinted contacts like you do?”
“Oh no. Nothing so permanent. You have the loveliest shade of golden hair that it would be a travesty to alter it.”
Raphek’s warning growl made both Otaron and Airon laugh.
“What he means is that in these types of situations where one needs to temporarily hide their appearance, a glamour is usually used to great effect,” Raphek explained.
Amber’s eyes widened. “A glamour as in a type of magic spell?”
He nodded. “An illusion created by magic.”
“Magic as in what Lady Serie used to heal my calf?”
“No,” Raphic replied. “Lady Serie is a healer. A practitioner of a different discipline is need for this. The English word for them is ‘mage,’ and all magic users among the Rekkan have at least one Mikkan ancestor.”
“Like me,” Otaron said with a grin. “My grandmother, though her blood runs fairly thin in me. Most high-level spells are beyond me. I can’t, for example, create a physical illusion that can be touched, but glamours? Piece of cake.”
“Can you show me?” Amber asked a bit diffidently.
“Something, small, then,” Otaron agreed. “A glamour as elaborate as