Oh my God. He turns into a daddy longlegs?!
… That’s almost kind of cute, she thought, and tried not to smile. I wonder if he’s overcompensating for it in his human form, given how easy it would be for him to get squished. He couldn’t even shift into his spider form until Rhys had loosened his grip.
Military Man loomed over her from the other side of the table, his face red with rage. “You!” he snarled. “Agent Richardson, you and your double agent friend here are testing my patience.”
“Weare?!” Rhys spat back, pushing Maisie behind him and toward the door. “You people have pushed me way past the point of my patience beingtested. My patience hasfailed.”
“I can see why you’re under investigation,” Military Man sneered. “Incompetentandinsubordinate. I only wonder how you ever got brought on in the first place.”
Rhys bristled, and Maisie could tell that he was struggling to keep his temper in check. “We’re getting out of here,” he said to Maisie, as he reached for one of the crappy plastic chairs sitting at the conference table, grabbing it by the backrest. Understanding immediately, Maisie backed further away, watching appreciatively as Rhys leapt over the table and whacked Military Man over the head with the chair, catching him on the jaw with one of the metal legs. A second strike had him staggering, but it was obvious that it wouldn’t keep him long – and, as strong as Rhys was, Maisie knew that he would struggle to go one-on-one with this guy in a fight.
“Run!” Rhys yelled, following her out of the door and into the corridor.
They bolted toward the emergency exit staircase, Maisie’s heart pounding with every step, before she skidded to a stop.
“Brent!” she yelped. “We have to save Brent!”
“Are you kidding me?” Rhys exclaimed. “He’s a shifter criminal! If he’d been caught in Sydney,I’dbe the one interrogating him right now.”
Maisie’s stomach twisted. “I know, but they haven’t arrested him for things he actually did! He’s been set up too. He’s a jerk and an idiot and a shitty boyfriend, but he’s not a murderer. And you said yourself you don’t know who you can trust right now.”
Rhys’s eyebrow twitched.
“You can have him arrested by your own people for the crimes he actually committed,” Maisie pleaded. “But I don’t want him to get disappeared.”
And she didn’t. She didn’t think she could live with herself if she just left him here to get interrogated by shady types without at least trying her best. He could go to hell after that for all she cared, but she had to do something now.
“Michael said that the Agency had booked out the entire sixth floor,” Rhys said, and Maisie looked up and down the corridor. About twelve doors in all – they definitely wouldn’t have time to check all of them.
Surely they wouldn’t have taken him too far? She put her ear to the nearest door, but, nothing.
Then suddenly, from the next door down, she heard the faint cry: “I swear, I didn’t do anything! I keep telling you!”
There was only one person who could be both that cowardly and that annoyingly repetitive. She turned to look at Rhys, who nodded, and she moved herself back out of the way as he raised his foot.
When we move in together, we’re getting a place with no doors.
The door burst inward under Rhys’s foot, and he ran into the room, Maisie one step behind.
Brent, for his part, shrieked and toppled out of his chair. Maisie couldn’t say that she entirely blamed him, given the number of times she’d had the same experience over the past few days, but it was still pretty satisfying. He definitely deserved to get knocked around a little.
“Come on!” she yelled, grabbing his cuffed wrists and hauling him to his feet while Rhys delivered a swift punch to the nose of one of his captors. Brent stumbled and almost fell, whimpering, and she kept him upright by sheer force of will and adrenaline.
“Babe,” he whispered – and then, belatedly, amended it to, “Maisie.”
“He can be taught!” she exclaimed, dragging him out of the room. “Come on – get moving. We’re getting out of here.”
The three of them stumbled along the corridor – well, Brent stumbled, Maisie stumbled as she tried to hold him up, and Rhys moved with the preternatural grace of a born predator – and yet, the emergency exit didn’t seem to get any closer with every passing step. If anything, it seemed to be getting further away.
Maisie tried to propel Brent toward the exit even faster. There had to be more agents preparing to burst out of the hotel rooms at any second.
Or maybe it’s –
Before she could finish the thought, she was knocked aside with a blow that knocked the air from her lungs – and Brent was sent sprawling, pinned to the ground by a flying tackle from Military Man. Clearly, he’d managed to recover from the chair leg Rhys had hit him with, and he was back for more.
Maisie, coughing, felt Rhys’s arms around her, pulling her to her feet, in the moment before he noticed the situation with Military Man and Brent.
“Shit,” Rhys muttered, turning back, clearly determined to haul Military Man off of Brent. Rhys reached down to grab the back of Military Man’s shirt, but stopped, a confused expression on his face.
