“I think so.” He released my foot for a moment and reached into his pocket to retrieve his Swiss Army knife. “Tell me about the kids to distract yourself.”
Yeah, like that was going to work when he was sticking a bit of metal into my flesh. Now, had it been flesh sliding into flesh . . . I gave a mental sigh, and tried to remember what his question had been.
“There were six of them, as I said. Carli was the youngest, and she’s the sweetest little girl you could ever meet.”
“Sounds like you cared for her a lot.”
“It wasn’t hard. I think Egan and I became surrogate parents for them all.”
“Which would have made leaving them there even harder.”
I flinched slightly as the knife pressed into my skin, but it didn’t really hurt as much as I’d expected it to.
“Yeah.” I tried not to remember Carli’s tears or the fear in the other little ones’ faces when we’d finally told them what we planned. “Sanat is eight, Tate and Marco are nine, Cooper is thirteen, and Jace is fifteen.”
“And how long have they all been in there?”
“Carli’s been there the longest—four years.”
He grunted. “Did you ever see your mother?”
I shook my head. “They kept us separated at all times.”
The knife dug deeper. I winced and clenched my fist against the need to jerk my foot away.
“Then how did you know your mother was a captive like you?”
“Because I could feel her. And she was able to contact me twice.”
“If sea dragons share kin telepathy—”
“And they do.”
“Then why weren’t you able to contact her more than that?”
The knife twisted in my flesh. “Ow!” I said, then added, “I tried, trust me. Whether it was the drugs that stopped me for so long, or something else entirely, I don’t know.”
“But she was the one who warned you about your dad, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. But that was the first contact we’d had for years.” And her mind had been a jumbled mess of confusion and distance. Only her fear for Dad had been sharp and true.
“Got it,” Trae said, and held out his hand for inspection.
Sitting in the middle of his palm was a small disk little bigger than a freckle. Only it was metallic and shiny looking.
“You sure that’s it?”
There was doubt in my voice and he smiled. “Well, unless it’s part of your unique body makeup to have circuitry in your flesh, then yeah, I’m sure.”
I studied it dubiously. “So what are we going to do with it?”
“This.” He dropped it on the floor and smashed it with his heel. “Hopefully, that’ll end the problem.”
I frowned at the metal bits on the floor. “Not necessarily. They might be on their way here right now, for all we know.”
“Which is why I’ve set up perimeter alarms. We’ll have plenty of time to sneak away should they come.”
“Air dragons can fly over alarms.”
“But the scientists can’t, and any attempt to disconnect them will set them off anyway.” He reached out and caressed my cheek with his thumb, his touch so soft, so warm and somehow so caring, as if he were touching something very precious.
It made me feel good, and yet in some ways, it scared me. I didn’t need another reason to be afraid, and those damn scientists had already snatched away too many people I’d cared about.
“How’s the shoulder?” he said softly.
“Fine, for the moment.” I deliberately stepped away from his touch and moved back to the other side of the counter, even though it was the last thing I wanted to do. I grabbed some more chips, then waved my free hand toward the laptop. “Are you going to use that thing, or did you just bring it in for show?”
“Nothing I own is merely for show, sweetheart.”
“Will you stop calling me that?”
Amusement crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Why should I, when it’s nothing but the truth?”
He continued, “Why do you think Marsten’s mom holds copies of all the plans and security codes for the research center in Scotland?”
“Because it makes sense to have backups.” I leaned across the bench and watched as he Googled Marsten’s name. “And because he did a lot of groundwork here in the States before he ever shifted operations to Loch Ness, and he was working out of his mom’s house for a long while.”
Hell, he and his family might still have facilities here in the States. Just because we never heard them mentioned didn’t mean they couldn’t exist.
“How big is the research center in Drumnadrochit?”
“Huge.” I hesitated. “Though the center is actually between Drumnadrochit and Abriachan.”
“Oh, I know the area intimately.”
His voice was dry and I smiled. “It’s a very pretty area.”
“And your birthplace?”
I nodded. “Marsten is using my mother’s ancestral lands as his base.”
“He couldn’t have just walked in and claimed it.”
“He didn’t. He caught Mom first, and threatened me.”
He looked at me. “Which is why your dad ran?”
I nodded, rubbing my arms. “Mom gave him no real choice. She made him swear at my birth that if anything should ever happen to her, he’d take me far away.”
“Sounds like she had a premonition.”
“She might have. She was canny like that.”
“Maybe it’s a mom thing. Mine’s like that, too.” He pressed a finger to the screen and added, “Look, there’s an article on Marsten’s old lady in
“I don’t suppose it comes complete with pics?”
“Let’s have a look and see, shall we?” He clicked the link. “When did your mother disappear?”
I hesitated. Memories rose, ghosts of a past part of me didn’t
“I was only five or six when I came here.”
“Explains why there’s only the barest trace of an accent.”
I nodded. “My dad’s American.”
He looked at me, one eyebrow raised. “So how did you get caught if you were basically raised here?”
“I hit eighteen and decided that Mom needed rescuing.” I grimaced. “What a bad move
“Because the scientists grabbed you?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Because I am a sea dragon, and female, and they consider us extremely rare.” Which we weren’t, but thankfully, they didn’t seem to know that. I pointed at the screen. “Nice interior shots, but is there anything that can help us get in?”
“One or two shots are useful.” He grabbed some chips and munched on a couple meditatively before asking, “So if your dad knew she was alive, why didn’t he call in her kin to protect you while he tried to free her? I have to say, if it had been my mate who was captured, I’d have battled hell itself to get her out.”
“Mom’s kin disappeared about the same time she was captured.”
“Why didn’t they try and get her out?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t want to get caught themselves.”
“And she never tried to free herself?”
“She might have. They kept us well separated, so I couldn’t physically talk to her, and the telepathy thing
