Rivals and Retribution Read Free Page B

“We need a tracker.”
    Max did not need encouragement. He nearly beat us to the front door.
    We piled into the convertible, Pietr, Amy, and Cat buckling into the back while Max took the driver’s seat and I, as the girls said, rode shotgun. It was a very American phrase, sounding far more dominant than it was in reality.
    The Gillmansen farm was not a long drive in good weather, but peering up through the windshield I realized we were not entering optimal driving conditions. Snow fluttered down from fattening clouds.
    Travel might take significantly longer, and if Jessie’s horse, Rio, was spooked, Jessie was most certainly in trouble. Time was, again, not on our side.
    Marlaena
    Leaning forward, I peeked out through the thin sliver of space between the door and doorjamb and looked down the motel’s second-story breezeway toward Gareth’s room. He’d be napping now, his shift guarding us recently over.
    I didn’t get it. What did Pietr see in Jessica Gillmansen? Why’d I even care? She was like anyone else in the world: brown hair, brown eyes, a medium athletic build … freckles spotted her nose and cheeks like any country girl who’d stood in the sun for a few minutes. She was a simple human being living in small-town America.
    Absolutely unremarkable in every way.
    But Pietr, who seemed every inch the alpha, saw something in her. Not that I cared. I didn’t want to see any redeeming quality in her. For some weird reason she felt like competition.
    Kyanne stalked along the breezeway, watching the parking lot below, keeping an eye out for trouble.
    Maintaining a guard at all times was one thing I insisted on even though the motel seemed safe. I seemed like just an average college-age girl, but that was far from reality.
    Gabriel teased me about not trusting anyone. He was very nearly right. I didn’t trust anyone but Gareth. And he was the main reason I didn’t trust myself.
    Not far away, another reason I didn’t trust myself—Jessica Gillmansen—was stashed in a forgotten storage shed. Her very existence made me undeniably insane. It had only been an hour since Gabe had delivered her as a belated birthday gift and I needed to decide how everything was going to play out. And decide what—or how—to tell Gareth.
    God. I rested my forehead on the door. Where I was raised, kids wore those WWJD bracelets to ask themselves what Jesus would do. My guardians, Phil and Margie, pushed religion on me so hard I rejected it. I was more worried about what Gareth would do.
    A door clicked open at my other side and Gabriel came into view, his eyes popping wide when I opened the door before he raised a fist to knock.
    “Hello.”
    His eyes raked over me, taking in my thin cotton pajamas and pausing so long in his examination of my low-cut top that I thought he had to be memorizing the statement scrawled across my front. “It says, ‘Sleep Is for Quitters.’”
    He blinked up at me, his mouth opening. I stopped him before words—or drool—came. “If you’re done staring at my tits, say whatever you came to say.”
    He pursed his lips and dropped his line of sight again to piss me off. I smacked him, my fingers tingling in the aftermath of the sudden strike.
    He touched his face, my palm hitting the same spot just starting to heal from Jessica’s defensive strike. He worked his jaw, testing it. “You can’t think you’re sleeping tonight … not with her here.…”
    I shrugged. “This doesn’t have to go down tonight.” I needed time to think.
    He cocked his head, his naturally narrow eyes becoming sparkling slits. “I’m not sure.”
    “Not tonight, honey.” The only thing I wanted to think about was getting rid of Jessica without Gareth knowing.
    I began to close the door on him, but he wedged his shoe between my door and its frame. “Are you going to screw this up?”
    “ I don’t screw things up. I make things happen.”
    A smile twitched at the corner of his lips. “I hope so. This could make