“I’m genuinely relieved to hear that.” Force tucked his thumbs in his jeans, his gaze remaining direct. “But here’s the deal. If you bring Pippa in, you do it both literally and figuratively. I’ll want to interrogate her, and I can’t go easy. You understand how this works.”
The memory of her shuddering body after her nightmare caught Mal. “She’s innocent. I know it.”
“She can be both innocent and planning an attack in the name of her lord.” Force’s voice remained reasonable and somehow gentle. “You know that, too.”
Now the question remained, what would he do with that information?
Chapter Twenty-One
Pippa waited until first light to start packing. Everything in her hurt. Why had she let herself get emotionally involved with Mal? She’d known better. But she wouldn’t trade the last couple of nights for anything. She called Trixie around five in the morning.
“What in the world?” Trixie answered the phone, her voice groggy.
“I’m taking off,” Pippa said without preamble. She finished stuffing her socks into a large suitcase.
Trixie gasped. “Why? What happened?” Movement sounded across the line. “Do I need to run? I knew it. I’ve been followed. They have found us. This is terrible. Want to meet up?”
“Hold on. I don’t think they’ve found us.” Pippa sat next to the suitcase on the floor, her heart hurting.
“Oh.” Trixie seemed to pause in her frantic movements. “Then why are you going?”
Pippa swallowed over a huge lump in her throat and told Trixie the whole story about Malcolm and his so-called job.
Trixie listened quietly until Pippa wound down. “All right. Let’s look at this. He’s definitely lied and isn’t a governmental paper pusher.”
Definitely. Pippa dropped her forehead to her knees. She had to get back to packing. “Right.”
“And his job, before this one, was as an undercover cop.”
Yeah. The guy lied for a living. Though she couldn’t exactly throw stones there. “Yes.”
“Chances are, he’s undercover again. But isn’t that supposed to be secret? I mean, he couldn’t just tell his girlfriend all about a current case, right?” Trixie asked.
Pippa straightened enough to lean her head back against the wall. “Well, yes. I suppose so.”
“What do you care if he’s a current cop or an ex-cop? Either way, he’ll probably want to enforce the law.” Trixie coughed away from the phone and then returned. “But as far as I can tell, there’s no crime for him to find out about. What we did? It was never reported. We don’t even know what we did. Not really.”
“That doesn’t matter. The Prophet has me, and you know it.” Pippa set a hand on her stomach as it started to ache. Isaac was a genius, and he’d set her up perfectly.
Trixie swallowed audibly. “I know,” she whispered. “But Isaac is crazy, and he thinks he’s in love with you. That you’re soul mates. He won’t really use that evidence and turn you in.”
“He will if he can’t have me.” It was a fact Pippa had reconciled herself to years ago. If she could just make it to her twenty-fifth birthday, then maybe Isaac would give up on getting her back; his so-called prophecy would no longer be valid to him. In the meantime, he was obviously gearing up to find her with the new website. “I should run. If not for me, then for Malcolm. Even though he’s good, Isaac has enough people doing his bidding that somebody could get a shot off if Isaac ever finds out I care about Mal.”
“You do, don’t you?” Trixie asked, her voice soft. “You care about him a lot.”
Pippa’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah. He’s tough and sweet.”
“Maybe you should just tell him the truth. If he cares about you, he’ll believe you,” Trixie said.
“I almost did last night. But even if he believes me, if Isaac turns me in, there’s probably nothing Mal can do. Evidence is evidence, you know? And then Mal would probably go after Isaac.” He would have no idea how evil Isaac could be or how strong his influence was over the family. “He’s strong, but . . .”
Trixie coughed some more. “Do you ever think we have an inflated impression of Isaac? That he seemed invincible when we were kids, so we’re making him out to be more than he is, even now?”
“No.” Isaac had an army who’d do anything for him. “We see him as he is.” Which was powerful and evil. A terrible combination. Pippa looked around her room. She loved this place. It would physically hurt her to leave it.
Trixie coughed again.
Pippa sat up. “Are you all right? You sound worse.”
