Seeker of Shadows (38 page)

“Good to know. Be good to have them back.”

He liked the bulky Shifter with his booming voice and his surprisingly feisty doctor girlfriend. It would be good for Ozzy to have a new friend out at the house to distract him from his loneliness. And MacCreedy had proved to be a stabilizing presence and rock solid ally. All of them would form a strong circle of community about his boss. And maybe that would be enough to bring him back.

Charlotte’s cell rang. She was grateful for the chance to escape Giles’s insistent mothering, hoping for some sensational news, like a grisly murder, to drag her from her sorrow.

“Lottie?” came a faint voice she hadn’t heard for far too long. “It’s Mary Kate.”

Susanna placed her hand upon Silas’s shoulder. He opened his eyes, and removed one of his earbuds to look up in question.

“Hi. Everything okay?”

“Yes. Thank you. For everything.”

He smiled as she took the seat across the aisle. “That’s what friends are for.” Then his expression grew more serious. “You know Frost isn’t going to let you go, don’t you? He’ll eventually blow through whatever he gets from trading the information you left behind, and want you back to earn him more.”

“It doesn’t matter what he wants. He’s not going to get it.”

Her hard tone piqued Silas’s interest. “Yeah? And how are you going to stop him?”

She opened the onboard portable computer and brought up a document from the flash drive she’d secreted in the hard binding coil of a notebook from her purse. She passed the netbook to him.

“A little something I composed on my flight up to Chicago. I was about to send it.”

He started to read, a slow appreciative smile curving his lips.

It was an e-mail addressed to the governing board of the project she worked for.

It’s with sincere regret that I write this message but I cannot in good conscience allow you to be betrayed as easily as I have been by our enemy, Damien Frost. He has deceived me regarding his intentions, pretending to be a respected member of our Community and supporter of our Purist Movement. Only recently have I discovered his true allegiance to a rebel faction that would bastardize our race with their tainted heritage.

Damien forced me to be his envoy in New Orleans by threatening our daughter’s life. When I was unable to make contact with an organization suspected of plotting an uprising or to find any evidence of unrest, he devised another plan to gain your trust and through it, bring about your collapse. It is only upon being freed of his vile domination by a faithful bodyguard who gave his life for mine that I’m able to come to you with this truth.

Damien Frost will bring information he claims to be my work and he will try to sell it to you as the solution to our problem of ethnic impurity. This is a lie. The files he plans to sell are infected with an undetectable virus that, once in our operating system, will breach our security and destroy all the data we’ve collected in an act of unconceivable terrorism. I urge you to use caution in your dealings with him.

Please do not attempt to find me. My failure to support his plans and now my betrayal of them has placed my safety and that of my daughter at unacceptable risk. By the time you read this, I will be out of the country and forever out of his reach.

I remain faithfully,

Dr. Susanna Duchamps.

“Brilliant,” Silas mused. “If they believe you, they arrest Frost and destroy your data. If they don’t believe you and access your data—a big surprise?”

“A mild surprise, but unpleasant enough to do the job, discrediting Damien either way. The information I left on my computer was useless. His influence will be destroyed. He won’t have the means to come after me. He’ll be lucky if he gets out alive, which will be better than he deserves.” Her gaze flashed up to Silas’s. “He was turning Pearl over to Research.”

Silas flinched. “Far better than
he
deserves.” He pressed Send on her e-mail and shut down the computer.

Susanna exhaled, all the tension draining from her with a shudder.

“We’ve got another hour or so,” Silas told her. “Go get some sleep.”

As Silas plugged in his earphones and settled back in his seat, Susanna returned to the rear cabin, where the soft light brushed over the two slumbering figures. Her emotions took a tender twist at the sight of a small hand resting upon the hard, massive chest. Her mate. Their child. Both safe.

She sat on the edge of the bed, brushing her hand
over Jacques’s head, then over their daughter’s silky hair. Jacques’s eyes blinked open. He smiled and murmured, “I love you.” Then he drifted off again.

What more could she ever want?

With a tender sigh, she joined her family on the bed, where they’d left room for three.

For more from Nancy Gideon’s seductive Big Easy preternatural world, read the first novel in her steamy new spin-off series

Don’t miss Nancy Gideon’s intoxicating Moonlight series featuring the forbidden romance between Detective Charlotte Caissie and shape-shifting former mobster Max Savoie

MASKED BY MOONLIGHT

CHASED BY MOONLIGHT

CAPTURED BY MOONLIGHT

BOUND BY MOONLIGHT

Available from Pocket Books

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