“You’re weak, Munchkin,” he said harshly. “If anyone ever gets their hands on you-“

“You’re afraid that I’ll talk about something. Something you don’t want anyone to know about,” she concluded, cutting him off.

When he didn’t answer her she knew she was on the right track. She leaned back against the wall as she racked her brain for an answer. What could be so damn important that he’d be willing to sacrifice her happiness and freedom for?

The answer hit her hard.

His family, or rather one person in particular “You’re doing this to me to keep your brother safe, aren’t you?” she asked, feeling sick to her stomach. Not because he would do anything to keep his brother safe.

If she had someone that she loved more than her own life she would do the same, but the fact that he thought she would sacrifice a little boy to save her own ass hurt.

“I’m doing this to keep them all safe.”

“You don’t need to send me away. I would never-“

“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t talk because we both know that you’d spill everything within the first f**king minute anyone threatened you,” he yelled.

“Oh, really?” she snapped, stepping closer to the bed so that she could glare down at him. “You know me so well, huh?”

“I know that the first time your comfort was threatened you spilled your f**king guts,” he said with disgust.

“And what exactly did I spill, Chris?” she demanded.

“You gave up information about your program and your password!”

She rolled her eyes. “Whipdee f**king doo, Chris.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously on her as he gave his cuffs another hard tug.

“Let me explain to you why none of that mattered. First off, that password only paused my program, but the program is still running in the background. You should also know that the password I gave you was a onetime deal, Tattletale will never obey it again. Know that at any point I can go and activate that program again from anywhere so try not to piss me off,” she said, enjoying the look of shock on his face.

“Secondly, who cares if you know what my program does. You don’t have it, do you? You have no idea where it is and you will never find it,” she said, rubbing it in.

She was about to walk away when she decided to impart one more piece of information just to piss him off. “You should probably know that Tattletale has already hit your system and if I wanted to I could sell your little group down the river whenever I felt like it so keep that in mind the next time you threaten to lock me up on an island.”

“You’re bluffing,” Chris bit out, but he didn’t look too sure. Good. Let him squirm, she thought as she headed for the door.

“Enjoy your freedom while it lasts, Munchkin, because the minute I get out of this your ass belongs to me!”

*********

“Shit,” Kale muttered when he picked up Logan’s lingering scent. Of course the bastard was in town, he thought inwardly cursing his dumb luck.

Logan’s interference was the last goddamn thing he needed, especially right now. For the first time in centuries he was considering breaking his word on a contract. Normally he was focused and allowed nothing to come between him and his job, but today…..

Today he was sitting in a bar, sipping a piss warm beer and contemplating killing a little boy, a boy he couldn’t allow a Master to get his hands on or allow to reach true immortality, instead of hunting down one Isabella McGuire. He had a good idea where she was and where she was headed, but he couldn’t make himself leave.

Not quite yet.

Was there really a point in leaving and finishing this job? Once he did what needed to be done he would be the most wanted man on earth by the Sentinels. They’d capture him, torture his ass and behead him. That is of course if the boy’s parents didn’t get to him first, which they would.

Marc Williams was the beloved child of an ex-New Hampshire State police detective and ex-high school history teacher. They were well respected upstanding members of the community and the parents of three adult children. Of course they were also the subject of a great deal of gossip, which was how he gathered his information.

They weren’t aging.

Ephraim Williams came to Rerum, New Hampshire over fifteen years ago and Madison over ten years ago and they both still looked to be in their mid-twenties according to a group of little old ladies who were selling burnt cookies in front of the post office for the church explained earlier. That had confirmed it to him that he was dealing with a pair of adult Pytes.

The other piece of gossip had floored him. The female, Madison, was pregnant with twins according to her grandmother, who’d called everyone in town to share the news. It was the last thing on earth that he wanted to hear and made things a thousand times more complicated.

He could either kill the little boy now and make a run for it and come back for the babies once they were born or he could take the boy out now and tear the female apart with his hands and pray he did enough damage to make her abort the babies since the babies were protected and could only be harmed if the mother was in severe distress.

None of the options appealed to him, but he knew he couldn’t sit back and risk having three more Pytes in the world. Whatever he did had to happen soon before they scented his presence and took the option out of his hands.

The first chance he got he was taking Marc Williams out.

*********

“Please start,” she whispered quietly, afraid that any noise would bring a lot of unwanted attention to the fact that she was crouching behind the open driver’s side door of the car Chris had stolen and attempting to hot wire the piece of junk.

Why the hell wasn’t this thing starting? she wondered for the hundredth time. She’d done exactly what the video told her to do. At least she thought she had. After throwing a cautious look over her shoulder to make sure that she was still alone in the very dark parking lot that was really creeping her out, she looked back at her small Netbook and refreshed the video.

“I did that,” she grumbled as she watched the man in the video flick two wires together. “Why the hell didn’t it work?”

“Because you didn’t press the wires together long enough, Munchkin,” Chris mused somewhere behind her, making her freeze in terror.

“Oh,” she said, swallowing hard, trying not to make any sudden moves and give herself away.

“Don’t you have anything that you want to say to me?”

he asked casually, but she could detect some definite anger in his tone and really who could blame him?

She might have gone overboard when she allowed him to piss her off enough to take a little bit of revenge out on him while he’d been handcuffed to the bed. Being left handcuffed to a bed like that by her was probably bad enough and she probably should have left it at that, but he’d pissed her off.

As much as she would love to say that she’d been the bigger person, acted maturely and simply walked out of the room, she couldn’t. After everything that she’d been through she hadn’t been able to leave without exacting a little petty revenge. At the time she knew he’d wring her neck if he ever caught up with her, but it hadn’t mattered. Well, it had, but she’d been admittedly a little pissed to think clearly.