She nodded her understanding, rose, and fished it out of her purse. “They can use it to trace where I am, huh?”

“Yes.” He cracked the case, withdrew the sim card, and asked, “Do you still have the knife?”

“No. I cleaned it off and got rid of it in some thick bushes.”

He nodded approvingly. “Excellent. I will be back in just a few minutes. Do not open the door under any circumstances.”

He strode into the hall, annoyed he’d forgotten such a critical detail as her phone. Lars deployed shifter magic to scan for threats. “Thank God,” he muttered when he didn’t sense anyone anywhere close. He loped down the hall until he located a garbage chute. For good measure, he pulled everything electronic he could see out of the phone before he jettisoned the mess. Lars stared at the sim card. He started to chuck it after the rest of the phone, but had second thoughts. Best to destroy the damned thing. He reduced it to shards beneath his heel and tucked the pieces in a variety of spots between the garbage chute and his suite.

Reassured at least one problem wouldn’t come back to bite them in the ass, he let himself back into the room. It would be a long eight hours. He wouldn’t feel truly safe until they were airborne again.

Chapter Six

Tamara made a full transit of the suite while Lars was gone. The bedroom contained an enormous bed. The bathroom was small, but did have a full-sized tub. A bath would be perfect, but she’d wait until Lars was done with his shower. A closet contained pillows and blankets. She’d just brought an armful of both items to the couch when Lars let himself back inside.

“You should take the bedroom,” he said brusquely. “If there is trouble, it is better if I am close to the door.”

Panic tightened her throat. She had to swallow before she could get any words out. “Do you think Jaret’s men would try something here?”

Lars took a deep breath and smoothed the worry lines from his face. Tamara sensed he was about to whitewash things; she moved until she was only a few inches from him. “Sure and you won’t be needing to sugarcoat anything for me.”

Grudging admiration darkened his eyes until they looked like a cloudy sky. “Jaret was highly placed in his organization, one of the leaders. These types of operations take retribution seriously. It is how they sustain so few casualties. They rule by fear.”

“Will I ever be safe?” Her voice caught on the last word. A shudder ran down her back.

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Not in the way you currently define the word, no.” One corner of his mouth turned downward. “I have not been safe for years, fraulein. One learns to live with such things. Besides, safety is a carefully constructed illusion. None of us are truly safe—ever. An incompetent surgeon, a car with faulty brakes… Many things can cut a life short.” He shrugged.

She clamped her jaws together to keep her mouth from trembling. It was obviously past time for her to grow up. “I guess I made my choice when I set my sights on Jaret.”

“That you did, fraulein. There is no retreat from certain paths.”

She felt the heat of him across the few inches that separated them. Her pulse quickened, but she resisted an impulse to close the distance and wrap her arms around his lithe, hard-muscled body. He didn’t move; neither did she. He caressed her shoulder before turning abruptly.

Tamara pressed her lips together, lips that had been hoping for the press of his mouth against them. If he had a wife, as she suspected, it was better to keep things clean and above-board.

“Open your eyes.”

She snapped them open, not realizing she’d closed them, and gaped at a gun in the palm of his hand. “Have you ever shot one of these?”

She nodded. “Of course. In case you missed it, Northern Ireland has been a hotbed of terrorism for quite some time. The newspaper sent me there more often than I wanted.” She plucked the small caliber revolver from his hand and examined it.

“Sit there.” He pointed to a couch facing the suite’s door. “If anyone enters the room, shoot them.”

“But—”

“No buts. If it is housekeeping, they will knock and you will tell them to return later.”

She swallowed hard and tried to establish détente with an altered world, one in which she was either a hunter or one of the hunted. “I understand.” And I surely wish I didn’t. She sat where he’d indicated and checked where the gun’s safety catch was.

“I will not be long, fraulein. Once I have cleaned up, I will take over.”

Nerves soured her stomach once he left her side. She heard water running in the bathroom, and the enormity of her situation set her teeth on edge.

Sure and what was I thinking? she lectured herself. That I’d just do away with Jaret, fly back to Dublin, big as I please, and pick up the threads of my old life?

She gripped the gun so tightly its plastic case left marks in her hand, and dunned herself for being a right fool. Blinded by outrage over Moira, she hadn’t thought through things very carefully at all.

And now the chickens have come home to roost. All of them.

Tamara jolted upright at a sound from the hallway. She deployed her sensitive shifter hearing and listened intently. Silence, but it held an odd quality. As if someone was outside, trying to be quiet. She got to her feet and walked toward the door, gun at the ready.

There it was again. A muted scratching. Was someone trying to jimmy the lock mechanism?

What should I do?

Part of her wanted to open the door, shoot whoever was out there, and be done with things, but Lars had said not to open the door. She started toward the bathroom to talk with him. The scratchy noise intensified and she froze in her tracks. To her horror, the deadbolt snicked aside. Fighting her way past a sick sensation turning her gut to jelly, Tamara planted herself in a shooter’s stance, feet apart, gun pointed dead at the door. Could she shoot someone point-blank that she’d never even met before?

“Sure and I guess I’m about to find out,” she muttered.

The door blew inward. A woman stood in the doorway and Tamara’s finger turned clumsy on the trigger, feeling like a stick of wood that wasn’t connected to her body. Young, attractive, dressed in blue jeans and a baggy sweater, with an oversized shoulder bag, the brown-haired woman stared at Tamara out of dark eyes. “What are you doing in here?” she demanded in a slightly accented voice. “This is my room. They just gave it to me downstairs.”

“If that’s the truth of things, show me your keycard.” Tamara was proud her voice didn’t quiver.

The woman dipped a hand into her shoulder bag. Tamara tensed, waiting. She instructed her finger to tighten around the trigger, but it refused to cooperate. Her brain shrieked at her to shoot the bitch, get it over with.

What if I’m wrong?

The woman had been fishing about in her bag for too long. Tamara bit her lip so hard she tasted blood and forced herself to fire. The woman must have sensed what was coming because she spun out of the way. Tamara fired again. The woman fired back. Hot pain lanced through Tamara’s shoulder.

The bathroom door slammed against its stops. Lars leaped through the air, tackled the woman, and drove her to the floor. Tamara raced to where they grappled with one another and stomped down hard on the woman’s gun hand. With a muffled string of expletives in an Eastern European language Tamara didn’t recognize, the woman’s hand opened and Tamara snatched her gun.

Her shoulder was on fire. She bent to hold the gun to some part of the woman, any part, but Lars had his hands around her neck, choking her. “Shut the door,” he gritted through clenched teeth.