Peter gazed up at him, incapable of speech.Incapable of anything, in fact.
“Yolanda?”The man growled again, more human this time.
Peter started.Did he just hear a soft Irish accent cutting through the growl?The same Irish accent haunting him for the last nineteen hours?
Strong fingers dug into Peter’s shoulders.“Damn it, man.Did you say Yolanda?”
“O’Connell?”The name fell from Peter’s lips.The accent.The name.“You’re O’Connell, aren’t you!”
The man leapt to his feet, fluid and fast.He flung his gaze around the room, dragging trembling, bloody hands through tangled black hair.“Shit.They’re not here!”
Peter climbed to his own feet, staring at the naked man.He raised his gun.Pointed it at the man’s bare chest.“Tell me who the fuck you are now!”
“Look around you, Peter,” the man snapped, ignoring his order.“Your sister.She’s gone.”
Peter closed his finger firmer on his trigger.“Good.At least she’s safe from you.”
Those grey eyes turned cold.“But not from your partner.”
“What do you mean, my partner?”
“The blonde.Slight German accent?How long she been your partner for?”
Peter’s chest tightened.“Why?”
“She’s a plant.I’m guessing she’s been playing you from the start.”O’Connell stepped forward, completely mindless of the fact he had a blood-oozing bullet wound in his chest and a loaded Glock aimed straight at it.“Yolanda Vischka works for the very man I’ve been trying to save your sister from!”
Peter’s mouth turned dry.He shoved the Glock’s barrel harder to the man’s chest, punching the raw flesh of the wound with its metal tip.“What the fuck are you talking about?”
O’Connell’s lip curled and his grey stare flicked over Peter’s body.“I can smell her on you.She’s marked you as her own.She’s touched you just about everywhere.”
Peter’s eyes widened and he bit back a curse, blistering guilt surging into his gut.Christ.How did the man know?Another surge of guilt crashed over him and he choked back a groan.What had he been doing all day?Trying to find his sister, or letting a woman he barely knew control his actions?His heart squeezed, as if a force stronger than the creature he’d fought was trying to rip it from his chest.“What thefuckare you?”
Hand a blur, O’Connell snatched Peter’s gun from his grip before he could react.“The same kind of monster after Regan.A werewolf.”His stare turned dark.Dangerous.“And if I don’t go after her now, Nathan Epoc will kill her before you can draw her face into your mind.”
Peter stood, frozen.For exactly one second.
He spun on his heel and sprinted across the room, heading for the door.
A dark blur whipped over his head, a gush of displaced air sucked at the hair on his crown and suddenly O’Connell stood between Peter and the door, snatching his arm in a brutal, inescapable grip.“No.You haven’t a hope.Only I can take Epoc out.”
Peter glared at him, tugging against his hold.“Get the fuck out of my way.”
O’Connell’s eyes flashed silver.“Don’t be an idiot.I almost killed you.”
“Get.The fuck.Out of my way.”
Those eyes shimmered silver again before, hands raised to his shoulders in a display of surrender, his right still gripping Peter’s gun, O’Connell stepped aside.
Peter tore through Rick’s house, his chest growing tighter with each pounding step.Fuck!Reggie?Yolanda?Every second of the day ripped through his head in multi-colored, sickening detail.Yolanda’s arrival, her seduction, her supposed vulnerability, his stupid, stupid capitulation to the power she held over his body, his hungry longing for every inch of her, despite his suspicions.
He’d thought there was something wrong about her from the beginning, but his growing desire for her had taken control.Lust and his desperate desire for her to be something she clearly wasn’t.Bloody hell!Could he be that stupid?That lonely?
Fuck, Reggie.I’m sorry…
He burst through the front door, staring wildly up and down the night-shrouded footpath.Empty.He spun about, sprinting to his car, hope and fear crashing over him, through him.
It sat, exactly where he’d parked it.Locked.Empty.No Regan.No Yolanda.Nothing.
