J.R. Ward - Lover At Last

She’s been kidnapped, Assail thought.

Goddamn it.

Jogging up the squat steps, he hit the doorbell and stamped his feet. The idea that someone had taken his female—

The door opened and the woman on the other side was visibly shaken. And then she seemed further taken aback as she took him in with her eyes. “You are…Assail?”

“Yes. Please let me in, madam, and I shall be of aid to you.”

“You are not the man who came before.”

“Not that you saw, madam. Now, please, let me in.”

As Marisol’s grandmother stepped aside, she lamented, “Oh, I do not know where she is. Mãe de Deus , she is gone, gone….”

He glanced around the tidy little living room, and then stalked out into the kitchen to look at the back door. Intact. Opening it wide, he leaned out. No footprints other than those he’d left a week ago. Closing things back up and locking the dead bolt, he returned to her grandmother.

“You were upstairs?”

“ Sí . In the bed. As I said, I was asleep. I hear her come in, but I was half-awake. Then I hear…that sound, of someone falling. I say I come down, then the front door opens.”

“Did you see a car drive off?”

“ Sí . But it was very far away, and the license plate—nothing.”

“How long ago?”

“I called you fifteen, maybe twenty minutes after. I went to her room and looked around—that is where I found the napkin with your number on it.”

“Has anyone called?”

“No one.”

He checked his watch, and then grew concerned about how pale the elderly woman was. “Here, madam, sit down.”

As he settled her onto the floral couch in the living room, she took out a dainty handkerchief and pressed it to her eyes. “She is my life.”

Assail tried to remember how humans addressed their superiors. “Mrs.—ah, Mrs….”

“Carvalho. My husband was Brazilian. I am Yesenia Carvalho.”

“Mrs. Carvalho, I need to ask you some questions.”

“Can you help me? My granddaughter is—”

“Look into my eyes.” When the woman did, he said in a low voice, “There is nothing I will not do to bring her back. Do you understand what I’m saying.”

As he sent his intention out into the air between him, Mrs. Carvalho’s eyes narrowed. Then, after a moment, she calmed and nodded once—as if she approved of his means, though there was a good chance they were going to be violent. “What do you need to know?”

“Is there anyone you can think of who would want to hurt her?”

“She is a good girl. She works at an office nights. She keeps to herself.”

So Marisol hadn’t told her grandmother anything about what she really did. This was good. “Does she have any assets?”

“Money, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“We are simple people.” She eyed his handmade, tailored clothes. “We have nothing but this house.”

Somehow he doubted that, even though he knew little of his woman’s life: He found it hard to believe she hadn’t made some cash doing what she did—and she certainly didn’t have to pay taxes on the kind of income she’d been bringing in from the likes of Benloise.

But he feared that a ransom call was not going to be forthcoming.

“I do not know what to do.”

“Mrs. Carvalho, I do not want you to worry.” He got to his feet. “I shall handle this promptly.”

Her eyes narrowed again, belying an intelligence that made him think of her granddaughter. “You know who did this, do you?”

Assail bowed low as a measure of respect. “I shall bring her back to you.”

The question was how many people he was going to have to kill to get that done—and whether Marisol herself was going to be alive at the end of it.

The mere thought of bodily harm to that woman had him growling in his throat, his fangs descending, the civilized part of him shedding as the skin from a cobra.

Whilst Assail left the modest house, he had a feeling what this was all about, and if he was right? Even just twenty minutes into the kidnapping, he might well be too late.

In which case, a certain business associate of his was going to learn new lessons in pain.

And Assail was going to be the man’s teacher.

Layla stayed in the Mercedes. It was warm in the interior, and the seat was comfortable, and she felt safe within the confines of the great steel cage around her. And she had a landscape of sorts to ponder: The headlights shone brightly in front of the car, the beams reaching out into the night quite some distance before fading.

After a while, flurries began to float downward through the illumination, their lazy, circuitous routes suggesting that they didn’t want their descent from the clouds above to end.

As she sat in silence, cycling the engine on and off as Qhuinn had taught her to do during cold weather, her mind was not blank. No, her mind was not empty at all. Although she stared straight ahead and took note of the silent snowfall, and the straightaway of the road, and the peaceful farmland…what she saw was that fighter. That traitor.

That male who seemed always with her, especially when she was by herself.

Even as she sat alone in this car out in the middle of nowhere, his presence was tangible, her memories of him so strong, she could swear he was within reach. And the yearning…dearest Virgin Scribe, the yearning she felt was nothing she could share with any of those whom she loved.

It was such a cruel fate to have a reaction like this to one who was—

Layla jerked back in the seat, a shout breaching her lips and resonating through the interior of the car.

At first, she was unsure whether what had materialized in the beams was in fact real: Xcor appeared to be standing with his boots planted on the road ahead, his huge, leather-clad body seeming to absorb the twin beams of light as a black hole would.

“No,” she barked. “No!”

She wasn’t sure who she was talking to, or what she was denying. But one thing was clear—as he took a step forward, and then another, she knew that the soldier was not a figment of her mind or her terrible desires, but very much real.

Put the car in gear, she told herself. Put it in gear, and hit the gas pedal hard.

Flesh and blood, even as terrifyingly fierce as his, was no match for an impact like that.

“No,” she hissed, as he came ever closer.

His face was exactly as she had remembered: perfectly symmetrical, with high cheekbones, narrowed eyes, and a permanent frown between his straight brows. His upper lip was twisted up, such that he appeared to be snarling, and his body…his body moved like a great animal’s, his shoulders shifting with barely restrained power, his heavy thighs carrying him forward with the promise of brutal strength.

And yet…she was not afraid.

“No,” she moaned.

He stopped when he was but a foot from the car’s grille, his leather coat blowing out to the side of him, his weapons gleaming. His arms were down at his sides, but they did not stay that way. He reached up, moving slowly….

To remove something from his back.

A weapon of some kind. Which he laid upon the vehicle.

And then his hands, those black leather-clad hands, went to the front of his chest…and he took two guns out from under that coat. And daggers from the holster that crossed his pectorals. And a length of chain. And something that flashed but which she didn’t recognize.

He put it all on the hood of the car.

Then he stepped back. Held his arms aloft. And turned in a slow circle.

Layla breathed hard.

She was not of a warring nature. Never had been. But she knew instinctively that within the code of the warrior, to disarm yourself before another was a kind of vulnerability not easily taken. He remained deadly, of course—a male of his build and training was capable of killing simply with bare hands.