The Story of Son(25)

As soon as she got a dotted line, she floored the accelerator and sucked the doors off the Cadillac.

Eyes on the road, she fumbled with her bag. She needed her phone. Where was her—She pulled it out and hit speed dial.

As it rang, she glanced at Michael. He was braced in the seat, arms out straight against the door on one side and the armrest on the other, legs crammed under the glove compartment. He was as white as paste and his eyes pinged around his skull.

“Put your seat belt on,” she said. “It’s to your right. Reach down and pull it across like I’ve done with mine.”

He found the strap and yanked it around himself, then resumed his deer-in-headlights routine, bracing himself for an imminent impact that wasn’t going to happen.

It dawned on her that he might well have never been in a car before.

“Michael, I can’t slow down. I—”

“I’m fine.”

“We’re going—” Her call was answered, the man’s hello an incredible relief. “Mick? Thank God. Listen, I’m coming to your house and I need some favors. Huge favors that I won’t ever be able to rep—thank you. Oh, Jesus, thank you. About an hour. And I have someone with me.” She hung up and looked across the seat. “This is going to be all right. We’re going to a friend’s house in Greenwich, Connecticut. We can stay there. He’s going to help us. It’s going to be okay.”

At least she hoped it was going to be okay. She assumed the butler wouldn’t come after them through legitimate channels, but as she drove through the night, she realized there were other ways to get someone. Ways that didn’t involve the human legal system. Shit. There was no telling what kind of resources Fletcher had at his disposal, and if he had enough wherewithal to be successful at what he’d done for so long, he was smart.

Which meant he’d taken down her license plate. And he also knew where she lived, didn’t he. Because . . . oh, God, she’d woken up in her bed at home after the three days with Michael. Fletcher had somehow gotten her back there.

Maybe he had some mind tricks at his disposal as well.

Maybe they should have killed him.





7


When Mick Rhodes’s Federal mansion came into view an hour later, Claire wondered whether she was doing the right thing by getting her friend involved even tangentially.

After all, she was pulling into the guy’s driveway with an escapee vampire who had a bad case of justifiable agoraphobia. Who was also carsick.

Michael was green around the gills as she put the Mercedes in park. “We’re safe.”

He swallowed hard. “And we’re not moving. This is good.”

The front lights came on and Mick walked out onto the porch.

Claire opened her door and got out as Michael did the same. “Mick is an old friend. We can trust him.”

Michael sniffed the air. “And he was your lover, was he not?” he said softly. “He remembers you with a certain . . . need.”

Jesus. “That was a long time ago.”

“Indeed.” Gone was the fear and the queasiness. Michael was dead serious. And staring at Mick like the other man was his enemy.

Vampires were evidently rather territorial of their mates.

Mick lifted his hand in greeting and called, “Glad you made it. And who’s your friend?”

“He’s going to help us, Michael,” she said, going around to her man and taking his hand in hers. “Come on.”

Michael’s eyes shifted over to hers. “If he touches you inappropriately, I’m going to bite him. Just so we are clear.” Michael glanced back at her friend. “I’m not an animal and I shall not behave as such. But you are mine and things will go better for him if he respects that.”

Vampires were evidently very territorial of their mates. “He will. I swear it.”

Mick shifted impatiently. “Are you two coming or going?”

“Coming,” she muttered as she started to walk forward. When they got to the house, she said, “This is Michael.”

“Nice to meet you, Michael.”

Michael glanced at the palm that was offered. As he bowed slightly instead of putting his hand out, she wondered whether he didn’t trust himself to touch Mick even in a polite way. “How do you do?” he said.

“I’m all right.” Mick put his hand back in his pocket with a shrug, then frowned. “Chains . . . is that what you have on your arm?”

Claire took a deep breath. “I told you I needed big favors.”

There was a moment’s hesitation. Then Mick shook his head and indicated the open door. “Come on in, you two, and how about we start by ditching your iron, buddy. Unless you’re wearing it as a fashion statement? I’ve got a hacksaw.” He glanced at Claire. “And maybe you’d like to tell me what the hell is going on here.”



An hour later, Claire was drinking a cup of coffee in the library, looking over the rim at Michael, who was free of the chain and seemingly much more himself after the nausea of the car ride had fully faded. Dressed in his robe, he fit in perfectly here, she thought. With the formal, antique feel of the library, he seemed to have stepped out of a Victorian novel—maybe the very one he held in his hands. He was loving all of Mick’s books, examining their spines, taking them out, leafing through them.