As if she’d expected him to back off. But she hadn’t expected him to reach for her—to stop, pull his hand back and fist it at his thigh. To say, “If she’d taken you, Gwen Badura, it damned well would have been about me.”
Her mouth hadn’t expected it, either, already bursting out with, “Just because you—”
And then, “Oh.” She looked at his fist, white-knuckled as it was; she looked up to his face and his eyes gone dark and his gaze latched on to hers. What he’d said, what he’d meant...how deeply he’d meant it. “Oh.”
And then, because he still seemed caught there in the very agony of the thought, she said, “Kiss me, dammit!”
Oh, yeah. Right there across the middle console, quick enough to startle her—he grabbed her shoulders and kissed her right to instant flashpoint, hard and not a little bit rough and just exactly what she wanted, a growl stirring in his throat.
She startled as the sweet tension curled fast through her body, thrumming into an unexpected echo—she jerked with it, a surprised little cry trapped between them. Mac stiffened, his hands tightening on her shoulders—and when he drew back from her, his eyes had gone huge and wild, his control tipping and his breath hard and fast.
The blade. The pendant. It had to be.
She opened her mouth to ask—but he only shook his head, cutting her off. And when he could speak, it was only to say, “I don’t know. I don’t— God, Gwen. I don’t know.”
Gwen sat heavily against the seat back, just a bit of an uncomfortable squirm there. “I wonder,” she said, finding her own breath again, “if that hotel room is safe yet.”
A hint of his wry amusement returned. “I wonder if we would survive it, regardless.”
“Oh,” she breathed. “But what a way to go...”
And then she sighed, straightened the bag on her lap and peeked within it. “Smashed burger, anyone?”
“Anything,” he said, fishing for the phone. “I’m hungry enough to—” His gaze caught hers. She stopped breathing again, and he let slip that little twist of his mouth. “Eat anything,” he said, finishing the words.
In practical desperation, she shoved a hamburger—indeed somewhat worse for the wear—in his direction. And then when he reached for it, she caught his wrist—just for a moment, passing her eyes over the fading bruises, the healing skin. She shook her head but didn’t say anything.
Besides, she was hungry, too. She fished a wrapped burrito out of the bag and spread a napkin in her lap. “Because,” she said, feeling absurdly fussy, “I hardly have any clothes left to spare at this point, do I?”
He flipped the phone open again, hitting the voice mail, thumbing in his password and activating the speaker. In moments, a woman’s voice issued from the phone—he glanced at her, as neutrally as she imagined he could make it.
She nodded. Yes. Natalie.
“Gwen, listen. I’m digging up some information on the other blade involved. Believe it or not, I really didn’t need you to tell me there’s someone else involved, and that you’re tangled with him—and it’s not good. It’s a strong blade, and there are indications that it’s created a bond of unusual properties. This man has been building his resources for longer than any one lifetime. Gwen, if he learns about you, he’ll stop at nothing to get what you have. I really wish you would—”
And something interrupted her, or the voice mail system cut her off, but it didn’t matter.
“She wanted me to go there.” Gwen shifted her weight to pull the business card out of her pocket and display it to him. “She keeps saying they can help—”
Mac took the card from her fingers, dropped it onto the drink holder console, and put the phone on top of it. “That man offered to help, too. He offered all sorts of things. They all have their own reasons, Gwen. You heard what she said—he’ll stop at nothing to get what you have. Do you know this woman well enough to be sure she’s not exactly the same?”
Gwen sucked in a breath.
She didn’t, did she?
She remembered the look on Natalie’s face when she’d let it slip that she’d used the pendant, however awkwardly—that she’d wrung Mac a temporary separation from it. And then she remembered the quiet manner in which the woman drove away afterward, knowing Gwen hadn’t told her everything, knowing Gwen had the pendant and that she had Mac. She let the breath out again. “I’ve got uh-oh alarms. She didn’t set any of them off.”
“Neither did I.”
“That’s different,” she protested. “With you it was...it was...” Way to paint yourself into a corner, Gwen.
“Love at first sight?” To give him credit, that dark humor came gently.
She lifted her chin. “Not in the least. You scared me. But you...you caught me, too. Maybe,” she added, resting the burrito on top of the bag from which it had come, her appetite momentarily gone, “that’s what scared me.”
He snorted. “Or maybe you were just smart.”
“Look,” she said. “Maybe they’re not totally safe. But they’re not that man, either. If we have to choose between the two—”
The look he sent her held a fierce defiance she hadn’t expected. “Who says we have to choose at all?”
She sat back in the seat, momentarily and unexpectedly silenced as he balanced his burger on his lap and shoved the Jeep into gear. Who says?
Except in her heart, she knew the grim truth of it. Natalie and Devin, they belonged here. They had resources. They were positioned to deal with this situation. And that man...he didn’t seem to belong here, but hell, yes, he had resources. And power.
She and Mac had a vehicle, a few suitcases, and a compromised hotel room. Mac’s blade had made him wanted...and Gwen’s pendant would make her wanted. And neither of them truly knew what to do with what they had.
Chapter 15
Mac drove the circuit around Albuquerque with hands tense on the wheel—the burger leaden in a stomach that still demanded more, the impact of what he’d heard lying heavily upon him.
He’d been drawn here; he knew that much. Gwen had been drawn here. And now he faced not one but potentially two enemy adversarial camps that might have had a hand in it.
Except if Natalie was telling the truth, she hadn’t known about the pendant and still didn’t know much about it. Subdued as she was, Gwen had devoured her burrito, picking through the folder with fingers she kept licking clean. Defining what she could for him—the name of the thing, the purpose of it, the vague genesis of it. But she didn’t know, and Natalie apparently didn’t know, how to use it.
Or Natalie and Devin could simply be playing them and doing it more subtly than the man at the warehouse.
Not subtle at all, that one.
Go. The thought surfaced unbidden. Run. Just as Gwen had suggested. If they’d been drawn here, then maybe leaving here would be enough.
Except he didn’t believe it for a moment. And he wasn’t about to risk Gwen. Not when, as she had so aptly pointed out, it suddenly wasn’t about just him anymore. Him and the blade.
“Wow,” Gwen said. “Look how fast those clouds came up.”
He followed her glance out the windshield, north and west and up, and found towering late afternoon clouds tumbling high, white above, dramatic shadowing below. “We should have checked the weather.”