The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(24)

“Assail…” she whispered.

“May I help you?” a voice she didn’t recognize asked.

Wait—what? Okay, no, that was not Assail—which was a relief. “I’m a—I’m a friend of Assail’s. This is still his house, right?”

“Yes.”

When nothing more was offered, she cleared her throat. “May I see him?”

“He is not here.”

“Where is he?”

“Who are you again?”

Sola glanced back at the road-grime-covered car and saw her grandmother sitting there, buckled into the passenger seat, her pocketbook clutched to her bosom. Thirty-six hours. Sola had driven that poor old woman thirty-six hours in a car that had the shock absorbers of a cardboard box and a heater that smelled like an electrical fire if they were going over sixty miles an hour.

All that for, Who are you again?

Ehric and Evale had come down, hadn’t they? She and her grandmother couldn’t possibly have had an identical bizarre dream.

“If Assail’s not here, are his cousins available,” she said, her voice growing strident.

“They have just departed.”

“Can you reach them?”

The man shook his head, and he took a step back, as if he were uncomfortable keeping the door open and not just because it was letting cold air into the house. “No. They are—it is private business. Please come back another time—”

She caught the heavy panel with a strong hand and looked the guy right in the eye. “You get on your phone, right now, and you tell Ehric I’m here. And then I’m going to help my grandmother out of that car and escort her in here. She’s eighty damn years old, we’ve been on the road for a day and a half, and she’s not staying in there one goddamn minute longer. Are we clear?”

And if he didn’t do what she said? She was going to pull her gun on him. She was done with the games and utterly over being polite.

Not that she and Emily Post had ever been besties, anyway.





TWELVE


Five minutes. Maybe less.

Within five minutes, Sola and her grandmother were in the house, using the ladies’ room, and getting the kinks out. And two minutes after that? Ehric and Evale came through that back door like they had been shot from a cannon.

The two men stopped dead when they saw her, as if they were shocked that their request had been actualized.

“You’re here,” Ehric said in a strangely flat voice.

“Yes.” She glanced at his twin. “Where’s Assail?”

Ehric bowed so low, he nearly kissed his heavy combat boots. “Let me take you to him.”

“Which hospital? I’ll drive myself.” She glanced at her grandmother. “Vovó, let’s go—”

“I stay here.” Her vovó took off her coat. “Bring me the groceries from the trunk. I send him for more things.”

As she pointed at Evale, the man assumed a look of messianic zeal, and Sola debated putting her foot down. But Assail’s cousins had never been anything less than respectful, and besides, it didn’t seem fair to drag her grandmother to a hospital and ask the woman to wait around while Sola tried to inspire a dying man. That could be hours.

Evale spoke up. “She will be safe herein. Markcus and I shall protect her.”

If Markcus was the thin guy over in the corner, it was hard to believe he’d be much help in a fight. Then again, like Evale was going to need any? He had more guns on him under those loose clothes than he had fingers and toes.

“Okay,” she said to Ehric. “Let’s go.”

The man nodded, and as he headed for the mudroom and the garage, Sola glanced at her grandmother, giving the woman one last chance to change her mind. When her vovó simply went for the refrigerator to check for staples, Sola started off in Ehric’s footsteps.

As she passed by the guy’s twin brother, she said in a low voice, “She’s older than she thinks she is.”

Evale snapped a hold on her arm, stopping her. Eyes that were the color of a blue diamond bored into her like stakes through her skull.

“You take care of my kin, I take care of yours.”

Sola’s chest tightened, and in that moment of connection, she realized how alone in the world she was. She had never felt as though she had help keeping herself and her grandmother safe and alive—because she trusted no one, out of necessity. And yet this killer in front of her? He had just given her the kind of vow that made them…almost family.

“Thank you,” she said roughly.

He released his vise grip of a hand and bowed. And then she was walking out on legs that were wobbly.

In the garage, there was a blacked-out Range Rover she knew all too well. It was the SUV she’d ridden in after the abduction, and the sight of the thing took her back to that horrible night.

“Which hospital is it?” she said as she went around to the passenger side.

“You’ve been there before. It is where we took you.”

“Oh, right.” Even though she had few memories of the place. Shock’ll do that to a girl. “How far out of town is it?”

“Not far. But we have to pick up someone first.”

As she got in, she felt for her gun. “Do I know them?”