Lance raised his hand.
Even if the gesture was innocent, ingrained werewolf behavior took over. Through the generations, the men of the Marshall clan had fought for dominance among themselves. It was like a conditioned reflex, until their cousin Ross had proved to them that they could work together if they curbed their more aggressive impulses.
But Ross wasn't here now to act as a mediator between these two particular werewolves. And Logan saw the upraised hand as a threatening gesture. Raising his own hand, he hauled off and socked his brother on the jaw.
Lance snarled and struck out at him.
Logan reached out and pulled his brother off his feet, landing on the ground on top of him.
Neither one of them was crazed enough to go for the other's throat. But they rolled across the grassy area between the woods and the house, trading punches and howling at each other.
"Stop it!"
A sharp voice cut through the fog of battle, but neither one of them paid any attention—until a stream of icy cold water struck Logan in the face. Sputtering, he jerked his head up, searching for the source of the new enemy, ready to redirect his attack.
Lance got in one more punch before the water landed solidly in his face.
"Hey!"
They both looked toward the house, and saw Savannah, wearing a bathrobe and standing on the lawn, the garden hose in her hand.
"What in the name of God are you doing?" she shouted.
They both stared at her as she pointed the hose away from them and adjusted the stream of water to a trickle.
"I came to get Lance's help," Logan sputtered as he pulled away from his brother.
"Well, you sure have a funny way of going about it," Savannah observed.
He scrubbed his hand over his face, wiping off the water, then shot Lance an embarrassed look. He was relieved to see that his brother looked just as abashed.
"Sorry," he muttered.
"Yeah," Lance responded.
"You were going to tell us why you're here," Savannah suggested.
"Yeah. Right. I…" He started to explain what had happened and suddenly became aware that he didn't know what he wanted to say. Rinna had told him… told him…
He blinked, and in that terrible moment, he understood that Rinna had tricked him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
RINNA'S HEART POUNDED in her chest as she circled high in the sky, high above the patch of woods. Off to the left and the right she could see houses among the greenery. Houses sitting out in the open, unprotected. There might be guns in this world, but the people felt safe enough to live outside a high fence. That simply wasn't true back home. Only the desperate lived without protection.
Finally she could also see a tent in the distance. Falcone must have set up camp.
It was so tempting to take her chances here and just keep flying—away from Falcone. Away from danger. But that would leave Logan in serious trouble. She had to follow through on the plan she had devised. But now that she was back near Falcone, the thought of landing made her insides churn.
Still, she had no choice. She had known that in the back of her mind as soon as she had seen Haig and Falcone and the soldiers marching through the woods.
Maybe she had even known what was going to happen when she'd landed beside the detective. Maybe a premonition had prompted her words to him.
She knew she was stalling.
But the thought of facing Falcone as a naked woman made her stomach roil. So she widened her circle, flying over the houses, her sharp eyes searching for one of those lines where people hung clothes to dry—right out in the open where anyone passing by could take them.
She was beginning to think she would have to find an empty house and break in when she finally spotted what she needed. Of course, the line was near the windows, and now it was broad daylight. Well, too bad!
She flew down, landing directly on the clothesline, assessing her choices. She saw men's shirts. And pants that probably belonged to a woman. They were wider than the men's slacks. But the legs were short.
Praying that her luck would hold, she pulled the pins from a long-sleeved shirt, then went after a pair of pants.
But before she was finished, the back door opened, and a blond-haired woman wearing a shapeless dress came out of the house, brandishing a broom and waving it angrily at the bird on the clothesline.
At least it was a broom, not a gun, so Rinna kept working frantically to free the pants.
"Get away, you damn thief. Get away," the woman shouted as she advanced with the broom.
Rinna plucked at the clothespin and finally managed to pull it loose, then dodged as the broom came down next to her, thwacking the line and making her almost lose her balance.
"Go on. Git."
Rinna hated to add violence to thievery. But it looked like that was her only option if she wanted to be dressed when she met Falcone. Turning, she spread her wings to their impressive width, then came at the woman, squawking and flapping.
AFTER getting coldcocked, Jake Cooper knew he should be in bed. After a few hours of restless sleep, he checked his pupils in the mirror and saw that they were contracting normally. Then he washed and dressed and climbed back into his unmarked.
He'd had a bad night, starting with a trip to the emergency room after he'd come to in front of the convenience store. He'd kept telling the doctors and nurses that he was okay. But because he'd been unconscious, he hadn't gotten out of the place until they'd x-rayed his head and done a CAT scan to make sure there was no internal bleeding.
Now he was supposed to be taking it easy. Instead he called Lieutenant Donaldson and said he had information that there could be some kind of attack on the convenience store.
The Lieu had been skeptical. But Jake had spun out a story about an informant claiming that a group of terrorists were planning to go after the place.
An informant? He gave a harsh laugh. Would that be the big white bird who had found him lying on the concrete in front of the store? The idea had come to him while she'd been there.
But she couldn't have anything to do with it, could she? And why did he think of the damn bird as she?
Getting Donaldson to agree to close the place and send in a bomb squad should have satisfied Jake. But he'd made the mistake of stopping by the office and found the information he'd been waiting for sitting on his desk. Logan Marshall's fingerprints were on the can of pork and beans that someone had used to brain the guy trying to rob the store.
Marshall was a hero. He should be taking his bows on the evening news. And maybe getting a reward from the company that owned the store. Instead he didn't want to get involved. But Jake was going to use all the leverage he had to get some information out of the guy.
He'd done a background check on Marshall. He was a landscape architect with a good reputation in his field. He took frequent trips to collect plant specimens, which he used in his work. If he were moving illegal goods, he could have used the trips for that purpose. But he had no criminal record and nothing about his background or his lifestyle seemed "off." He paid his bills on time. His credit was excellent. And he minded his own business, except the night he'd happened into the Easy Shopper during a robbery.
One interesting fact, however, was that he didn't appear to be married. So why had he claimed that the woman named Rinna was his wife? Had he smuggled an illegal alien into the country?
It seemed unlikely, although Jake remembered that her speech did have a slightly exotic tinge. But whatever was going on with Marshall and his "wife," Jake was going to find out.
AS the large white bird went on the attack, the woman with the broom screamed. Dropping her weapon, she covered her blond head with her hands as she ran back into the house.
With the frightened homeowner in retreat, Rinna gathered up the pants and shirt, dragging them behind her as she flew a little way into the woods. After a short rest, she put another hundred yards between herself and the house.
When she had stopped panting, she changed to human form, then hastily pulled on the shirt, which came down almost to her knees. After dragging on the strangely short pants, she looked down at her feet. She was shoeless, but her body was covered.
Now that she was dressed, she had no more excuses. Still, it took all her resolve to dredge up the courage to find Falcone.
Grimly she started back through the woods, heading for the location where she had spotted trie tent. Haig had been leading a troop of soldiers toward Logan's house.
She moved in a circle around the soldiers, approaching the old man from the side. But he had already stopped and was staring expectantly in her direction.
She was pretty sure he couldn't see her in the thick patch of brush where she hid, but he came right toward her, making her heart pound and leap into her windpipe.
He looked sick and shaken. But she saw no physical marks on him.
Gathering her resolve, she stepped out from behind the tangle of brush, then waved her arm.
He went stock-still.
As they stared at each other across twenty yards of charged space, she managed to say, "Were you looking for me?"
His face crumpled. And his message was the same one she had heard when the woman with the broom had attacked her. "Get out of here. Go. Run."
"Did he force you to find me?"
The old man opened his mouth and tried to answer the question, but no words came out of his mouth.
"OH my God," Logan gasped, sudden panic choking off his breath. "Rinna. Oh God, Rinna. I have to go back and stop her before it's too late."
He staggered to his feet and started back toward his car. But Savannah dropped the hose and came running toward him, grabbing his arm. "You must have come here for a good reason. You need to tell us what's happened."
"No. I have to go home," he insisted, watching his brother get to his feet. He tensed, wondering if Lance was going to attack.
Savannah turned and gave her husband a sharp look, then focused on Logan again. "Tell us why you came."
While he tried to collect his thoughts, he dragged in a breath and let it out in a rush. "I met my lifemate."
Savannah's face took on a sudden glow. "That's wonderful," she breathed.
"No. It's complicated," he answered, struggling to keep his voice even. "She's from the other universe. Remember at the Castle? The woman on the other side of… the portal. The one helping us fight the monster."
"Yes."
"That was Rinna. I met her again. She saved my life and took me back to the world where she lives. It's not like our universe. A lot of the people have psychic abilities, and they use them to run things instead of our power sources. I mean they use mental energy instead of electricity and gasoline. They find children who have psychic potential and put them into training programs."
"Okay."
"They don't have countries. They have city-states that fight each other all the time—like in ancient Greece. And one of the powerful guys in her city wants to… to take advantage of her powers. She's a shape-shifter. But she has other talents, too. She sent me to get help so she could leave my house and go back to him."
There was a lot more to it than that, but he'd spit out the important parts, and the idea of wasting any more time in explanations made his insides churn.
Pleadingly, he stared at Savannah, then saw his brother advancing from the side.
He stiffened, but Lance stopped a few feet away. "She's left you for him?" he asked in a harsh voice.
"It's not what you think! She's trying to keep him away from me." He had no hard evidence of that, yet he knew it deep in his gut. "I have to find her before she gets to him. But I can't do it alone."
"We can track her," Lance said.
Logan wanted to cry out in frustration. "If she'd changed into a wolf, we could."
"The two of you and Ross can track her," Savannah said.
He gave her a grateful look. "Maybe. But Rinna has two different animal shapes. I'm betting that she changed to a hawk and went flying back."
"A hawk?" Lance asked. "That's a neat trick, if you can do it."
"She can."
"So now what?" his brother asked.
Logan shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "If you're willing to help, we go back to my house, so you can pick up her scent. Then we…" He stopped short because he wasn't sure what to say. "Maybe if we keep tracking in widening circles, we can find her."
Lance raised one shoulder. "Sorry about the fight."
"Yeah. I'm sorry, too. And I appreciate the help."
"You two go on," Savannah said. "I'll call Ross and explain. Well, I'll say as much as I can on the phone."
"Thanks. He already knows a little. I called him last night about getting an ID for Rinna." Logan ran back to the car. Lance started to follow him, until his wife called him back.
"Maybe you'd better go separately. Lance needs shoes and a shirt."
His brother looked down, taking in his state of partial undress. "Yeah. I'll be five minutes behind you."
Logan wasn't wearing shoes, either. But he jumped into his SUV and roared back down the access road to the highway.
When he reached the blacktop, he forced himself not to speed, since getting stopped by a traffic cop wasn't going to increase his chances of finding Rinna.
He made good time, then raced inside the front door, to his home. Inside, he picked up the shirt that Rinna had worn. Standing in the open doorway, he caressed the soft fabric with his fingers, then held it to his face, breathing in Rinna's scent.
"Damn you," he muttered. "We could have worked this out together, if you'd just trusted me."
Was that it? A matter of trust? He didn't want to think that was the problem. He wanted
to find her
, and he didn't even know where to start.
He heard tires crunching on the driveway and stepped outside, the hand with the shirt extended, expecting to see Lance pulling up the driveway.
But it wasn't his brother, and he froze, then hastily dropped his hand.
IT was too late to run. Rinna stood frozen in place as soldiers came racing out of the bushes and surrounded her. Two of them grabbed her arms to stop her from getting away.
They held her in place, and she stiffened her shoulders as she saw a man emerge from between the trees.
It was Falcone. He had the same dark hair, the same confident walk, the same smirk on his handsome face that she remembered.
As he strolled straight toward her, she felt like she was going to throw up, but somehow she controlled the sickness churning in her stomach.
He was dressed like a man from this world with a blue shirt that buttoned down the front, jeans and what Logan called running shoes on his feet. But he still looked like the noble who was going to be ruler of Sun Acres.
"It's good to see you again," he said.
She didn't bother to answer.
"You could have made this a lot harder for me."
She raised one shoulder. "I'm tired of running."
When he stepped forward and stroked his finger against her cheek, she felt her insides turn to ice. Everything that had happened between them in those terrible hours in his bed came racing back to her. He hadn't wanted to make love to her. He had wanted to punish her for being better in school than he had been.
"I don't like it when a woman leaves me without permission," he said in a low voice.
She was about to speak when he waved her to silence, and she fell back on old habits, instantly closing her mouth and cutting off what she was going to say.
She had lived free in the badlands and with Logan. Once again she was a slave, just as she had been in Sun Acres.
And she was standing in front of the man who had raped her. She had never used that word in her own mind. But Logan had made her understand that it was true. And now she was back in Falcone's clutches. A slave who had no rights.
He turned to one of the guards. "The old man has served his purpose. Get rid of him," he ordered.
Despite everything, Rinna gasped out, "No. Please. You don't have to… kill him."
"I'm afraid I do." Falcone studied her with a smug expression on his face. "He followed orders and led me to you."
"Because you made him do it."
He shrugged. "If you say so." He turned and spoke over his shoulder. "Let's go to my tent and have a chat," he said.