Page 129 of Dark Lover

He pulled out onto the barely lit drive, following the armored transport. Kit sat beside him, seething. “Spit it out,” he said, not really in the mood for her opinion. He needed a drink. He wouldn’t mind some sex.

“Why didn’t you give Sam a ride back home?” she demanded, turning to look at him. She was pale. There were circles under her eyes.

“Sam is on suspension while I decide whether to fire her or not.” He spoke calmly, turning onto a country road that would take them to 495 and the city. He meant it. She’d gone renegade on him. That made her a bad—and dangerous—agent. It made her a rival.

“Great,” Kit grumbled. “What about Maclean? Are we hanging him out to dry?”

“Find him and we’ll save his unlucky ass,” Nick said, glancing at her.

He saw the other vehicles at the same time that Kit did.

They came headlong at them. Nick knew what they intended—to separate him from the page. He clung to the wheel, determined not to be forced off the road.

“Nick!” Kit shouted at him.

It was a form of playing chicken, he thought, as the two big black SUVs came right at them, probably at eighty or ninety miles an hour.

At the last possible moment, he swerved aside. There was no choice, because he knew either demons, mutts or subs were at the wheel, and they’d commit suicide to stop him.

Kit held on to her seat as the sedan roared over an embankment, hit the woods and kept going. Nick braked, steering through the trees wildly, swiping one with his left front fender. It caught the sedan and hooked it, spinning it around. He pressed harder on the brake and the damned car stopped.

He looked at Kit.

She looked back. “I’m okay.”

He cursed, launching himself from the car, running for the embankment. When he got to it, the road was empty. The armored transport was gone.

His cell phone rang.

He seized it.

“Hello, Nick.” Rupert Hemmer laughed at him. “I think I have something that you want.”

IT WAS THREE IN THE MORNING. Sam paced Nick’s office, as furious as she’d been at Loch Awe, when he’d stolen the page of illusion from her. She’d received some incredulous looks when she’d arrived at HCU. She wasn’t sure what those looks meant. Did it mean that everyone knew she’d betrayed Nick—and the agency?

Having Macleod parade around HCU was not a good idea, not from anyone’s point of view. Only those cleared to higher levels of file access knew about the Brotherhood, much less time travel. Because the monk expected to make contact with her at Maclean’s apartment, it had seemed like a good idea to send Tabby and Macleod there.

Sam wanted to throttle Nick with her bare hands.

Until that day, she’d liked, respected and even admired him. That had all gone up in smoke. She would never look at her boss again the same way. And he wasn’t her boss anymore. They were done.

The door opened and Nick came in, looking disheveled, his right eye bruised. Sam didn’t hesitate. His eyes widened and he halted as she strode over to him, slamming her fist in that damaged right eye.

“Jesus,” he said.

“You answer to me now,” Sam snarled.

He gave her a long look, as if she hadn’t just clocked him, and walked over to the minibar in his office. He put an ice cube on his eye and said, “Must be love, huh?”

“I’ve been here for seven hours, Nick, waiting for you to get back!”

“Some of us like to travel the old-fashioned way.”

“Where’s the page?”

Nick sobered, tossing the cube of ice into the waste basket beside his desk. “I’m sorry, kid. It’s gone.”

Sam stared coldly at him. “You mean it’s at the Pentagon? Or do the Feds have it? Or maybe it’s downstairs in those vaults CDA controls—the vaults no one knows anything about?”