Must Love Hellhounds

She leaned in, buried her face in his throat. Tension held Geoff stiff for a second before his arms slid around her.

“I’m tired,” she admitted, and let herself rest against him. Not physical exhaustion. Emotional. As if she’d been slowly wrung out since receiving that e-mail. “I haven’t been this tired since I left the agency.”

His voice was a soothing rumble against her cheek. “We’ll be finished soon.”

“Yes.” She stepped back. Her hand drifted down his arm until her fingers linked with his. Then she let her hand drop back to her side. “We need to go.”

Chapter Eight

Maggie drove just above the speed limit, her gaze constantly returning to the device tracking Sir Pup’s location. He and James weren’t too far ahead-but not, Maggie had said, so close that James would spot their vehicle.

Geoff nodded, casting ahead in an attempt to find Sir Pup, and was surprised when she admitted, “It’s almost a relief. To know I was wrong about him.”

She’d said that she couldn’t talk about it yet, that it was too much. But maybe, Geoff thought, too much not to. At least a bit. “Wrong, how? The kill order was a setup.”

“Yes. That’s not what I-Not exactly.” She checked Sir Pup’s position, still on a steady course north. “I was afraid I’d have to choose.”

“Choose what?”

“I didn’t know.” He heard the long, shaky breath she drew. Saw her hand make an open gesture, grasping at air. “Choose something. Something that would turn out to be karma coming back to bite me on the ass. Something that meant I wouldn’t be going back home.”

Home. She glanced over at him, and he wondered if she saw his face. If she knew what she was looking at when she did.

“But now,” she continued, “I feel I’ve done what I could for him. And the rest isn’t my choice, or my responsibility.”

Geoff didn’t point out that it never had been. Saying it wouldn’t mean she hadn’t felt it hanging over her head.

“Anyway.” She took another of those long breaths, but this was deep, steady. “I don’t feel so tired now. Thank you.”

Surprise shot through him again. “What for?”

“For caring.” She searched his features, and this time he was certain she saw. “Don’t get careless, though. Or do anything stupid. And I won’t, either.”

She was in an emotionally weak moment. It was probably unfair to press her now. “After we retrieve Katherine, I want a week with you. Or two. Time set aside every evening. Even if we’ll do nothing more than sit in your garden.”

“I killed all of my flowers trying to discover if I had a green thumb.”

“I’ll not look at them if you don’t.”

The mirror caught the corner of her smile. “All right.”

He should have asked for a month. Geoff pushed ahead, found a driver, went farther-slipping into more than thirty people before the world exploded around him in sharp, brilliant detail. Each flap of a bumblebee’s iridescent wings as it flew past Sir Pup. Minute particles swirling from mufflers, the pits in the pavement rushing beneath his feet.

His head began to throb, but he didn’t want to lose the co

“I have him,” he told Maggie, and that was all that was said between them until, ten minutes later, Sir Pup began to slow.

“James is turning right. It looks to be a shared drive, marked with a stack of yellow stone blocks. I-” He clutched his head, fighting nausea as everything blurred.

A house rushed by, a second. Then a glimpse of the boathouse Katherine had seen from her window before Sir Pup was standing, peering through green-leafed shrubbery at the driveway.

Low, Geoff thought. Lying or crouching.

“I believe…” He swallowed hard. “I believe he looked over the layout of the area. There are three houses, but they are a good distance apart and separated by trees and plantings of some sort.” His thumb was no greener than Maggie’s. “The driveway is lined with the same. He’s waiting there now, on a bend. He’s past the lanes for the other two houses.”

“We’ll be at the turnoff in about a minute.”

Geoff nodded. Good timing. “And there’s James,” he told her.

The vehicle moved along the driveway at a good clip. Sir Pup seemed to rise from the ground-then darted forward.

Tendrils of smoke rose from the tires as they skidded over the pavement. Geoff didn’t hear the crunch of the metal hitting flesh, but he saw the bumper dent from the impact, the drops of blood that splattered the black paint.

The world spun once, twice. Sir Pup rolled to a stop twelve feet from the vehicle, his unfocused gaze directed under the Land Rover.

Playing dead, Geoff thought.

His own body had clenched, he realized, as if braced for impact. He drew in a deep breath, then another. “Does he heal quickly?”

“Sir Pup?” Her voice had a sharp edge. “Why?”

“He jumped in front of the SUV.”

“Oh.” Her short laugh was high, relieved. “Yes.”

James’s booted feet appeared beside the Land Rover and jogged over to Sir Pup. The hellhound lay still until James knelt beside him.

To Geoff, it only appeared as if Sir Pup batted James with a forepaw. Then Geoff lost sight of him until the hellhound rose to his feet and looked over at the Land Rover. The windshield had shattered. James slid down the hood and crumpled to a heap on the driveway.

Geoff’s heart pounded and echoed in the suddenly hollow space between his ears. “And you say that while my uncle sleeps you’re alone with that dog?”

“I’ve never said that. Is James still alive?”

Sir Pup was sniffing at the man’s legs, his arms. At James’s throat, his pulse beat faintly beneath his skin.

“Yes,” Geoff said, then slipped back into Maggie’s eyes when she next spoke.

“There they are.”

Maggie rolled James over and stripped him of his weapons. Nylon cable-tie handcuffs bound his wrists behind his back, his legs at the ankles. With Geoff’s help, she loaded him into the back of the Land Rover.

She pulled off her jacket and tossed it on the front seat. “Can you shoot a gun?” When Geoff’s brows lifted, she said, “If the demon looks at you, you’ll be able to aim and shoot him. The bullets won’t kill him, but they’ll hurt him a little.”

And with luck, provide enough distraction that Sir Pup would be able to do his thing.

At Geoff’s nod, she fitted him with a 9-mm from Sir Pup’s hammerspace and screwed on a sound suppressor. Sleek and effective.

“We’ll drive up in the Land Rover,” she told him. “Sir Pup-you go on around.”

The driveway bent to the right and down a small rise. Maggie studied the house longer than she might have if Geoff weren’t looking through her eyes. A columned veranda wrapped around the front of the house. It rose three stories, topped by a widow’s walk. Exits in the front, she noted, and likely in the back.

For a demon, though, any window could serve as an exit.

“I walk ahead of you,” Geoff said. And before she could protest, he added, “So I can see where the hell I’m going.”

And when he could see where he was going, Maggie realized, he moved as smoothly and as confidently as any of the operatives she’d worked with. He took the front steps and moved to the side of the door. He held up his hand before she could kick through.

Geoff pointed to his eyes, then the door. It took her a moment to understand.

The demon was waiting for them-and looking at the door from the other side.

On the stairs, he mouthed clearly.

Her pulse raced, and she couldn’t stop her grin. The British and American governments had no idea what they were missing.

He reached down and depressed the door handle. It opened easily.

Maggie swept through low, aimed-and froze. Katherine stood on the stair landing. Tall and dark, just like Geoff. Her eyes widened, and she raced down the stairs.