“Rhys – !”
The yacht sounded its horn as it pulled away from the dock, but Rhys barely noticed. He only had attention to spare for Maisie, her eyes wide, mouth open, as some arsehole pulled her back and held her close, out of Rhys’s reach.
His fury intertwined with that of his griffin, to the point where he couldn’t tell which one of them was thinking it:
He will pay.
He shifted into a fighting stance, taking in as much information as possible before he made his move.
Firstly: Maisie didn’t seem to be under immediate threat. The guy didn’t have any weapons that Rhys could see, and he didn’t seem to be hurting Maisie or trying to take her anywhere.He was just holding on to her, his arms around her shoulders as she struggled against him.
Secondly: the suited agents seemed as surprised as he was, looking back and forth between each other, as if trying to work out who to go for first. But at this point, at least they weren’t interfering, or trying to take him down now that he’d stopped running and was on his own.
Thirdly: Rhys became aware of what his griffin was yelling at him.
It’s a shifter,his griffin was bellowing.Our mate has been stolen by another shifter!
Rhys blinked. He could sense it now – the man who had a hold of Maisie wasdefinitelya shifter.
But the others… aren’t?
It was true – now that he had time to send his griffin’s senses out, he could tell the suited agents who surrounded him were just regular humans.
That didn’t mean they weren’t Hargreaves agents – Hargreaves employed humans when it suited them. But it did open up a whole range of possibilities as to who they might be working for.
He turned his attention back to Maisie and the arsehole who was still holding her arms. Maisie looked pissed off, which was reassuring in its own way.
The arsehole himself looked like a massive wanker. Obviously thought pretty highly of himself, with his slicked-back hair and his stubble and his cocky attitude, and his… leather jacket?
Who the hell wears a leather jacket in Queensland? What a tosser.
He did seem to be sweating a bit under it, at least, which gave Rhys a small amount of satisfaction.
“Brent!” Maisie yelled, trying to jerk her arm out of his grasp. “What the hell are you doing?! Who the fuck told you to come here?!”
Rhys blinked.Brent?!
The name rang a bell somewhere at the back of his mind – before he remembered that Maisie had mentioned that the plane ticket he’d flown up here with had originally been booked under the nameBrent Coleman.
Wait – it’s herex?The guy she broke up with?!
Judging from the stunned expression on thisBrent’sface as he finally let Maisie go, it definitely seemed to be the case – but it also seemed to be the case that he was just as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
“Maisie?” he said, sounding completely flummoxed – but then his face broke out into a massive grin. “What the fuck! This issoweird, babe. I had no idea – when I was told we had a guy on the inside, I had no idea thatguywas you!” He laughed. “It’s like some real-life Mr. and Mrs. Smith shit – we werebothworking this job, and we didn’t know? Babe, this issofunny. I knew you weren’t really breaking up with me. It was just a cover all along.”
…Babe?!
Anger built up inside Rhys – not toward Maisie, of course, but toward this idiot. Maisie had told them they were broken up and Rhys believed her entirely – and besides which, it was clear that Maisie didn’t want anything to do with him, her face scrunched up in distaste, her body angling away from his.
We must rend him limb from limb,his griffin snarled.And then we must reanimate his worthless carcass, so that we can destroy him once more. Death is too good for such a fiend.
Rhys didn’t disagree, but he had to focus. There was way too much going on, and, from the looks on the faces of the other agents, they were just as confused as he was.
Brent had said that they were both working a job. Obviously that wasn’t true at all – Maisie had come up here with him on the spur of the moment, but even so, she clearly wasn’t working for anyone.
What organization is Brent doing the job for?Rhys thought, his eyes narrowing. He wasn’t acting like a professional, that was for sure – he was putting both himself and Maisie in danger, standing there yapping. But it must have meant Maisie was unknowingly involved with a man who was into some shady shit – and a shifter besides. She hadn’t known what shifters were before meeting Shaz and Michael, so Rhys didn’t find it very likely she’d known about anything else, either.
Brent must have been keeping things from her, or they weren’t going out long enough for her to know. Thathasto be the answer.
