Charlaine Harris - Must Love Hellhounds

After a few seconds, Savi gave a short “Woot!”

Maggie blinked. “What did you find?”

“Campground reservations. The entire state system is on-line. I’m in, so I’ll start running the registered plates.”

“All of them?”

“Why not?” She could easily imagine Savi’s shrug. She’d seen it a million times, on both the young vampire and the brilliant geeks who made up the CIA’s tech support. “Something might pop. A plate that doesn’t match the vehicle make, or is listed as stolen.” Savi snorted out a little laugh. “Stealing a motor home. That takes some balls.”

“More brains than balls,” Maggie said. “If it had been kept in storage, weeks might go by before the owner reports it missing.”

“Good point.” The clacking stopped. “Hey, Maggie… Colin’s not here, but I can speak for both of us.”

Her chest seemed to freeze. “Yes?”

“Katherine’s still alive. Chances are, they’ll keep her that way because they want something.”

“Yes,” Maggie agreed quietly. Her tongue felt numb. If she looked in the mirror, she was sure her face would be pale, her lips bloodless.

“So we’re still cool now. And it’s not that we don’t trust-” Savi stopped. Started again with, “Geoff is good at what he does. And you were good at what you did.”

“Killing people?”

“Getting them out of bad situations,” Savi said. “Troubleshooting.”

Usually by shooting whoever was causing the trouble. But Maggie wasn’t going to argue. “All right.”

“You know we’ve got the pictures.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes.”

“We wouldn’t have hired you if we didn’t trust you, and it helps that James led you to Geoff.” The deep breath Savi took was audible over the speaker. “But if you betray that trust without good reason, I can’t- I won’t -protect you from Colin.”

What was a good reason? But she only said, “I know. Thank you, Miss Murray.”

“Jesus, Maggie, don’t thank me. Just make it back, okay?” She sighed when Maggie didn’t answer. “All right. I’m going to finish up here, and I’ll shoot you everything I find when I’ve finished. Give Sir Pup a kiss good night for me.”

Maggie disconnected and looked over at the hellhound, taking up one of the two king-sized beds. He lifted his middle head and licked his chops.

Maggie shook her head. “Not going to happen, pup.”

The bathroom door opened. Blake came out, rubbing his hair with a towel and wearing a pair of pajama pants. The muscles in his chest and stomach flexed with each vigorous rub.

Maggie glanced away. Dammit. She hadn’t even realized how often she’d looked him over until she tried to avoid doing it.

“Why ‘thank you’?”

She turned, stared at him blankly. “What?”

“Savi said she wouldn’t protect you. You said ‘thank you.’ How does that work?”

“I appreciate knowing where I stand.”

Blake nodded and tossed the towel onto the bureau. “She was lying, though.”

“She doesn’t trust me?”

“She would stop him. Talk him out of it, if she could. And if she couldn’t, she’d help you get a head start, complete with a new identity.” The shrug of his shoulders did gorgeous things to his chest again. “But, of course, she can’t tell you that.”

“And you can?”

Small lines fanned from the corners of his eyes when he smiled. “I just did.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer immediately. From her seat by the desk, she watched him settle on the bed with his long legs stretched out, his ankles crossed, and his shoulders propped by the pillows. He laced his fingers over his stomach.

She dragged her gaze away again. “Do you need a shirt, Mr. Blake? I believe Sir Pup has several more in his hammerspace.”

“I’m comfortable, Winters.” He grinned, and she was suddenly looking at his mouth.

Dammit. She stood and stripped out of her jacket and weapon harness. “Why, Mr. Blake?”

“I was in Darfur four years ago.”

Though her back was turned to him, she could see him in the mirror. He was no longer smiling. “I know you were. And?”

“And there are times when I’m looking through other people, I see things I don’t want to.”

Maggie closed her eyes, suddenly unsure she wanted to hear this. “Yes, I suppose your parents kept their bedroom dark.”

“Unfortunately, no.” She heard the smile in his voice before it left again. “Four years ago, I slipped into the head of a man with a young girl. She was maybe ten or eleven. Tied up on a bed. She’d already been… He wasn’t done.”

Maggie faced him. “I get it. Go on.”

“He must have been nearby, but I didn’t know where the hell he was, so I started looking. And I knew by his surroundings that it was one of the government houses, because everyone else lived in shacks.”

The same way he was looking for Katherine now, she guessed. Recognizing surroundings, narrowing down a location.

“What were you going to do when you found him?”

“Get her out of there. Kill him.”

Probably not in that order. “ Did you find him?”

“No. Someone else did. I don’t know what she was doing there, what trouble she’d been sent to fix-but she opened the door, and she looked at him. She looked at the girl. And she shot him. Just raised her gun and fired.”

Realization struck, made breathing suddenly painful. “You were in my head then?”

“No. His.”

Jesus. “You weren’t… hurt… by being in him when he died?”

“No. I just lost contact. So I moved into the girl, stayed with her after you helped her to the exit. She limped down the street right past me, and I made sure she got where she was going. I tried to find you again, but…” He shook his head. “I didn’t.”

“He wasn’t my target,” she admitted. Not her target, never reported, and not classified.

“He should have been.”

Maggie toed off her boots and tucked them beneath the desk. “If the girl had screamed, it might have compromised my mission.”

“Yet you did it anyway.”

“Yes.” She hadn’t even had to think about it.

“With a reaction like that, you were in the wrong line of work.”

Yes, I was. But she only asked, “Why tell me this?”

“I never got a chance to thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

“What does that matter? You did what I couldn’t, and I’m grateful for it. Just as it doesn’t matter now whether you’re helping me find Katherine because she needs to be found, or if it’s because you feel responsible for James after letting him go alive. Either way, I’ll be grateful for the help when we find her.”

Who was this man? Was he for real? Her fingers were clumsy as she unbuttoned the cuffs of her sleeves. What kind of person offered trust like this? Acceptance? She wasn’t family. Their only connection was one of the few impulsive acts Maggie had performed in her lifetime. She shouldn’t even matter to him.

And yet… his acceptance and trust had begun to matter to her, too. It must have, because her throat was aching, and she wanted to say “Thank you” in return.

But as she moved toward the bathroom, she only said, “You aren’t at all what I expected, Mr. Blake.”

She looked too soft with her hair blown dry and loose around her shoulders. She felt too soft, and so Maggie braided it into a rope before leaving the bathroom. Her only clothes were a tank and underwear, but she had no intention of looking down at herself.

Sir Pup hadn’t abandoned his sprawl across the second bed. She studied him, wondering how to maneuver through this. Sleeping had never been an issue before.