“I gather the two of you were struggling and you opened the weapons box, grabbed the first thing, and stabbed her. Fortunately, you stabbed her with the wrong end, and accidentally stuck yourself with the drugged tip while doing it,” Vincent announced, straightening. “Which is probably a good thing. You passed out and she was able to get into town and buy chains, then chain you down before you came to.”
Marcus grunted, and then muttered, “I’m surprised she didn’t use them to stake and bake me out in the desert if I did all of this to her.”
Vincent actually smiled faintly at the suggestion, but shook his head. “She doesn’t seem the type.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Jackie agreed, and when Marcus glanced to her, the woman added, “She was very caring with you when you passed out and we brought you up here. And the memories we can read suggest she’s like that with everyone. Divine’s a mothering type, taking care of and helping everyone she encounters.” She paused briefly to peer at Divine’s face and then frowned. “If she is Basha Argeneau, than I think Lucian must be wrong about her being rogue.”
Marcus had been coming to the same conclusion himself, but had feared his decisions were biased by the fact that she was probably his life mate. Still, a woman who did what she could to help pretty much every mortal she encountered just didn’t seem to be the type to hang out with and harbor an animal like Leonius Livius. She wouldn’t align herself with a man who brutally sliced up and slaughtered whole families. Perhaps she wasn’t Basha. That was a good thing.
They were all silent for a moment, each of them peering at Divine, and then Jackie said quietly, almost apologetically, “We need to sort out what is going on here. Who set the RV on fire? Were they after you or her? Is it likely it was the same people who broke in here? Could they have followed you?”
When Marcus frowned but didn’t respond, Vincent said. “She’s right, my friend. We need to know what we’re dealing with here. Whether we need more people, more security, more weapons.”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” Marcus said at once. He definitely wanted anything and everything they could get here to keep Divine safe. Running one hand through his sleep-ruffled hair, he dropped to sit on the side of the bed and quickly began to recount everything that had happened since arriving at the carnival. He faltered, however, when he got to the part about his taking bagged blood to Divine, and barging into her RV with his offering without waiting for her to invite him. Just recalling what had happened then was enough to make him want to moan in remembered agony.
It was Vincent who said what he couldn’t. “But she went at you with a mop for not waiting for permission to enter and burst one of your baby makers.”
Marcus winced at the memory. “Yeah. Hurt like hell too.”
“I can imagine,” Vincent said, and Marcus noticed that he unconsciously squeezed his legs together as if his own baby makers were shriveling in sympathy.
A choked sound, suspiciously like a laugh, came from Jackie, and both men turned to glance at her with matching expressions of outrage.
“Having your ball busted is no laughing matter, Jackie,” Vincent said with a frown.
“I’m sorry,” she said at once, her expression truly apologetic, but then that expression slipped away and she gave a little laugh and said, “It’s just—I mean, men are always calling women ball busters, and usually when they don’t deserve it, and now Divine has actually earned the title and it’s just . . . not funny at all,” Jackie ended solemnly when she noted their expressions. Shaking her head, she added, “Definitely not funny.”
“Hmm,” Vincent muttered, not appearing mollified.
Jackie cleared her throat and said, “But she didn’t mean to . . . er . . . bust your ball.”
“No,” Marcus acknowledged. “I don’t think she did.”
“And she took care of you afterward, putting you in her bed to heal,” she pointed out.
“Yes, she did,” Marcus agreed. “And that’s where I was when a man entered the RV. At first I thought it was Divine and just laid there waiting for her to say or do something, but then I caught a whiff of the person and knew it definitely wasn’t Divine.”
“Did you see who it was?” Jackie asked, moving closer to the bed.
Marcus shook his head. “I opened my eyes when the door closed but they had gone. I got up to go after them then, intending to find out who it had been, and that’s when the RV went up in flames.”
“But they saw that it was you in the bed not Divine?” Jackie asked with a frown.
“I don’t think so,” Marcus said at once. “I was burrowed into the covers, most of my face even under it. Only my forehead and hair stuck out a bit and it was dark in there.” He shook his head. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t know who was in the bed. They probably noted the lump under the covers, presumed it was her, and left to set the fire.”
“So two attacks on her in one day?” Vincent said thoughtfully.
“Two attacks in two nights,” Marcus corrected. “I’m pretty sure she must have taken the head wound right after we returned from town Thursday night.”
Jackie didn’t look certain about this. “So you think what? That she was attacked on returning and somehow rode off on her motorcycle? You said she returned on it the next day, right?”
“Yeah.” Marcus knew it didn’t make sense. The amount of blood in the RV and dried in her hair had suggested a terrible wound. One she wouldn’t have been able to walk away from, let alone jump on a motorcycle and ride away from. Besides, where had her attacker gone? What had they done while she was escaping? The motorcycle had been gone and the RV dark and silent when he’d got to it intending to return her helmet. It couldn’t have taken him more than ten or fifteen minutes to get to her RV after she’d dropped him off. That wasn’t a lot of time. Whatever had happened, had happened quickly. Glancing from Jackie to Vincent he asked, “Did you see anything about the attack in her memories?”
“No,” Vincent admitted. “But then I wasn’t really looking for anything specific, and as I said, her thoughts and memories are sort of organized and disorganized at the same time. She . . .”
When his voice trailed off, Marcus followed the man’s gaze to Jackie to find her staring hard at Divine with concentration. She was reading her now, he realized and almost protested, but the donning horror on Jackie’s face stopped him. He watched with a sickening knot growing in his stomach as Jackie paled, then flushed, then paled again, this time actually going a bloodless gray before she suddenly turned away and rushed for the bathroom.
“Well, that can’t be good,” Vincent muttered, hurrying after her as they heard her retching.
Marcus glanced back to Divine and then followed the couple. He watched silently as Vincent held Jackie’s hair back as she lost whatever meal she’d last eaten. He waited as Vincent murmured soothing words and dampened a cloth to wash her now flushed face, then just as he was about to ask what she’d seen, Jackie glanced to him, swallowed, and, voice husky, said, “She isn’t harboring Leonius. She’s one of his victims and the man is an animal. Worse, a monster. The things he did to her, at least the little bit I saw . . .” She shook her head. “She’d never harbor someone like that. He—”
The rest of what she would have said was lost as she turned and retched into the toilet again.
Vincent immediately dropped the cloth he’d used to wipe her face, slid his arm around her shoulders again, and murmured soothingly as he held her hair back. Marcus turned away from the scene to peer at Divine in the bed, wondering what the hell Jackie had seen.
Twelve