Moira Rogers - Crux

“You couldn’t have locked them in a closet somewhere and saved the rest of us several years of sexual tension?”

Nick choked on a strangled noise, and Mahalia laughed. “You hush up, Alec. Everyone knows you’re just a soft old romantic at heart. Am I right, Jack?”

“You always are, May.”

Alec rose with his mug. “Fuck you, man. I’m going to go pack my shit. I’ve had about all the touchy-feely crap I can take for a morning.”

This time, the noise that escaped Nick was undoubtedly a laugh. “Be back in time for the group hug, Alec,” she called.

Jackson barely managed to avoid snorting coffee out his nose. “Oh, Christ. Now she’s giddy.”

Mahalia shook her head. “You’re going to have a hard row to hoe if you set your cap for Derek Gabriel, Nicole. I hope you know that.”

Nick didn’t look concerned. “I don’t want to marry the guy, Mahalia. I just want to date him.”

“Mm-hmm.” The older woman’s eyes were shrewd. “Famous last words, baby girl.”

The front door opened, and Steven walked in with John Peyton close at his heels. Both men looked deadly serious, and there was a tension between them that made Jackson edgy. Steven’s gaze slid over the room and stopped on Mahalia. “May, will you step outside with me for a second?”

She stared at him as she took a carton of eggs out of the refrigerator. “That depends. Do you want to talk to me alone, or does John Peyton want to talk to Jack and Nicole?”

The older man flinched visibly, but his attention didn’t waver from Mahalia. The pain in Steven’s eyes was so intense Jackson felt like he was intruding on something private. “I want to talk to you.”

Nick cleared her throat and nudged Mahalia, earning a sharp look. Jackson caught his friend’s eye and jerked his head toward the hall. “Nicky, can you help me with something?”

“No need to leave.” Mahalia tightened the belt of her robe and walked past the two men to the back door. “I like to have all my futile, pointless arguments before breakfast, anyway.”

Steven didn’t meet Jackson’s gaze. He followed Mahalia, jerking the door shut behind him.

John Peyton turned his attention to his daughter. “We’ll be leaving shortly. Is everything in order?”

Her spine straightened. “Yes, sir. We’ve coordinated as best we can without more information.”

Jackson glanced out the window in the back door as Nick explained the particulars of their last-minute plans to her father. Usually, Mahalia’s fits of temper, while impressive, were short-lived, but it didn’t seem as though she’d be getting over her anger at Steven any time soon.

Mackenzie jerked awake as a hand on her arm shook her slightly. “Hey. I got us a room.”

Marcus looked exhausted, and she could hardly blame him. Her body felt stiff and sore as she climbed out of the car and gazed at the friendly brick facade of a familiar chain hotel. “Are we in Boston?”

“Yeah.”

“I need to try to call the people who were helping me.”

He nodded and pulled a bag from the backseat. “Let’s go upstairs. We can get some food and you can use the phone in the room.”

The room was clean and comfortable. Marcus ordered enough food to feed them twice over and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving her on the bed with the phone and a directory.

By the time room service showed up with two rickety carts, she’d established that no one was answering any of the business phones—not surprising, she supposed, as it was barely past six in the morning in New Orleans—and no one had their home numbers listed.

She left messages everywhere she could think of, which was exactly two places: Jackson’s office and Nick’s bar. As an afterthought, she’d found a listing for Mahalia’s home and called it as well, trying not to wonder what it might mean that the phone rang and rang without anyone answering.

She unloaded the various trays from two carts as a way to distract herself as she tried to figure out another way to contact Jackson. By the time Marcus emerged from the bathroom again, freshly scrubbed but wearing the same clothing— warded against Charles’s magic, she reminded herself—she’d run out of ideas.

She smiled and gestured to the overloaded table. “There’s a lot of food.”

His answering smile was relieved but guarded. “Good. I’m famished.”

“I figured.” She swallowed, uncertain about how to proceed. She’d torn his life apart with her very presence, and though it hadn’t been her fault…

I still feel guilty .

She dropped into one of the chairs. “I have no idea what to say.”

“You have nothing to say. Nothing to explain.” He lifted a saucer of sliced fruit from the table and picked at it. “I believe that ball is firmly in my court.”

Mackenzie winced. “But you didn’t know.”

His lips twisted in a poor approximation of a smile. “You don’t feel, even slightly, that I should have?”

There was no answer to that. She thought, briefly, of offering him a gentle lie, but in the end she just sighed. “I don’t know, Marcus. How can anyone? The whole thing is just so screwed up.”

“An inarguable fact.”

“How else can I contact people? Someone said Nick’s father was someone important. Maybe I could find him?”

“Nick?”

“Nicole Peyton. Her father’s the…” She furrowed her brow and tried to recall the conversation she’d had with Jackson. “The Alpha? The big boss daddy werewolf.”

Marcus’s eyes widened. “John Wesley Peyton, yes. Yes, he is. We could call his office in New York, but we wouldn’t get far.”

“Shit.” She sighed and rubbed at her temples. “Okay. I guess I’ll keep calling Jackson’s office. Their assistant should show up in a couple hours.”

“Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”

Mackenzie struggled to summon a smile for him. “I think you’re the one who needs sleep. You look done in.”

His gaze slid past her. “There are two beds, and no reason we can’t both sleep.”

“Yeah, I just—” She wouldn’t be able to sleep again, not without talking to Jackson. She had to tell him she was safe, hear his voice, tell him she’d see him soon. God. I’m pathetic .

“I get it,” Marcus interrupted. “Eat something, all right? After that, you can keep making your calls.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. She ducked her head and stared at a stack of pancakes to avoid having to meet his eyes. “Thanks, Marcus. Not just for this. For everything.”

“Don’t thank me. Please.” He dropped the saucer back to the table and eyed the glass doors leading to the balcony. “I need a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.”

She felt helpless. There was nothing to do but watch in silence as he crossed the room and slipped through the glass door. Mackenzie waited until it slid shut before picking up the telephone again.

She’d called the office so many times in the last hour she’d memorized the number. She dialed it and held up the phone, listening to five rings followed by Kat’s chipper, friendly voice. “You’ve reached Holt and Jacobson Investigations—”

Mackenzie slammed the phone down and fought a snarl of frustration. Her stomach growled instead, a loud-enough noise to make her start. “Fine.” She surveyed the vast meal in front of her. “I’ll eat. I’ll sit in a hotel room, talk to myself and slowly go crazy. Crazier.”

The pancakes on her plate had no insights to offer. For that reason, she took particular joy in eating them first.

There was something almost anticlimactic about storming Charles’s lair.

The process was highly involved, almost tedious, and required them to stop a hundred feet outside each protective barrier while Michelle gathered her power and channeled it through the amulets she and Mahalia had prepared with painstaking care.