Warrior (Relentless #4)(205)

Jordan immediately launched into the story about what had happened in the wrakk, although her version was a lot more colorful and entertaining than Chris’s telling.

“When that ugly lizard grabbed me, I wanted to cut his male bits off, but he held me back,” she griped, tossing Chris a sour look.

“You might have been able to take him, but you’re not fireproof,” he argued. “And those ranc demons looked way too trigger-happy.”

“Might have?” She made a huffing sound.

Chris rolled his eyes. “You got to kill him, didn’t you?”

Sara grinned at me. I wanted to lean over and kiss her.

“What were you guys doing in a demon market in the first place?” she asked them.

“We discovered Adele has been sending letters to someone there,” Chris said. “We thought it was worth checking out.”

She snorted softly. “People still send letters?”

“People who suspect their electronic communications are being monitored,” I told her. So far, Adele had proven to be very good at evading any attempts to listen in on hers.

Chris nodded. “And who have something to hide.”

“Did you find anything?” Sara asked with a note of excitement in her voice.

“We found the demon she was sending them to. He said he was paid to drop them in a mailbox. Inside the envelope was another envelope with an address and postage. Unfortunately, every time he tries to remember the address he draws a blank.”

She looked at me. “Some kind of memory spell?”

“Looks like it,” Chris answered. “Adele is proving to be more covert than we gave her credit for.”

Sara made a sound of disgust. “So I’m learning. And I bet it’s Madeline she’s writing to. Turns out they have been friends for a lot longer than she let on to us.”

My eyebrows shot up. “How do you know that?”

She smiled as if she had a great secret to tell. “I brought a box of Madeline’s things back with me from New Hastings today and –”

Jordan whipped around in her seat to gape at Sara. “Whoa! Hold up. You went to Maine? Today? How the hell did that happen?”

Her eyes flicked to me. “And why is Nikolas not freaking out about it?”

Why indeed? Most likely because I’d temporarily forgotten about it after learning she was the vigilante and hearing her tell me she loved me. Jesus, had that all happened in the last hour?

Sara lifted a shoulder. “Eldeorin took me there and we didn’t stay long. I found a box of things belonging to Madeline that Nate had mentioned last fall. I was going to give them to Tristan, but I wanted to look through them first.”

Jordan’s gaze swung back to me. “And you were okay with her going there?”

“I didn’t know until after she got back.”

“We were in the middle of discussing it when he got the call that you guys were in trouble,”

Sara said.

“Discussing it. Riiight,” Jordan drawled.

“What did you find in the box, Sara?” Chris asked, reminding me of the books and papers scattered across her bed.

“Pictures of Madeline and Adele that were taken back in the seventies,” she said dryly. “And they look pretty chummy in them.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “That would have been just a few years after Madeline left Westhorne.”

Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised to hear that she and Adele were friends. Madeline had wanted to rebel against her life, and what better way than to befriend someone like Adele?

“Looks like we need to pay Adele another visit, Nikolas,” Chris said.

“Not without me,” Sara declared.

Jordan nodded. “Or me.”

Sara’s expression told me she wasn’t going to back down. After all I’d seen and heard today, I knew she could take care of herself, even if my gut lurched every time I thought about it.

“We’ll go see her tomorrow.”





*


“Heb, do you have a fire hose around here?”

The dwarf blinked at Jordan and shook his head. “No, miss. Master Eldeorin’s home is impervious to fire.”

She waved her dessert fork at me. “Yeah, but he’s not, and he’s going to combust if he keeps staring at her like that.”

Chris barked a laugh, and across from me, Sara’s cheeks turned pink.

I chuckled and watched as she demurely lifted her eyes to mine. The warmth in her gaze told me I wasn’t the only one wishing it was just the two of us there.

As much as I enjoyed Chris and Jordan’s company, all I wanted was to take Sara somewhere private and kiss her until neither of us could think straight.

But then, the night was still young.

When we’d returned home, my plan had been to take Sara out to her favorite Italian place and then spend the rest of the evening making up. But Jordan had protested that we had to have a celebratory dinner, so here we were.

“Hello? Earth to the lovebirds.”

I smiled at Jordan who smirked back at me. It was impossible not to like this girl, and I could see why she and Sara had hit it off. They were different in many ways, but they had the same fiery spirit and passion for what they believed in. Jordan was good for Sara, even though the two of them did share an uncanny talent for trouble.