Frowning, Thomas recalled that Inez had suggested that perhaps someone hadn"t wanted her to realize that they were chasing the mugger with the phone, not Marguerite. Thomas reconsidered the idea now.
"You"ve gone suddenly silent and grim," Inez murmured, bringing his attention away from his thoughts. "What are you thinking about?"
Thomas hesitated, but finally admitted, "I was thinking about the first time you were controlled in Amsterdam."
Inez stopped walking abruptly. "The first time?"
Thomas cursed himself for the slip of the tongue.
Light suddenly splashed over them and the street was filled with the sound of voices and laughter as a door opened behind them.
Thomas glanced around to see they were standing outside a pub. It seemed fortuitous, he suddenly needed a drink and suspected Inez was going to need one too.
"Come on," he said, taking her arm to urge her toward the door, "we"ll have a drink and I"ll explain everything."
"So you think someone controlled me again," Inez murmured, peering down into the gla.s.s of ale she"d barely sipped at since the waitress had set it before her. The pub was a small, crowded affair with people sitting around tables, or standing around in groups talking. It was the real deal, a true English pub, not one of the ones opened for tourists.
Thomas had just finished telling her his version of their stop at the cafe. It was quite similar to her own except for the part about her getting up in the middle to go find the ladies" room. She believed him, but had no recall of that whatsoever.
Thomas reached out and squeezed her hand comfortingly. "Yes."
She nodded a slow acknowledgment. "Okay. Well, either I saw someone or something I shouldn"t have when I went to the ladies"
room, or..." Or what? she wondered helplessly.
"Back in Amsterdam, you suggested you were controlled and your memory wiped because someone didn"t want us to realize that the mugger had the phone, not Aunt Marguerite," he reminded her. "I think you might be right about that now. So long as we thought Aunt Marguerite was in Amsterdam, we would have stayed there searching for her. But finding out the mugger had the phone and not her made us immediately head back to England. And it turns out she was here in York the whole time."
"So you think I was right and whoever controlled me just now might have done so for a similar reason?"
He nodded.
Inez peered into her gla.s.s again, and then raised her eyes and said, "That would suggest that this last time I was controlled because I either saw or was about to see something that might lead us to Marguerite."
Thomas nodded and sat back in his seat, irritation on his face as he said, "But this time we don"t have any idea what."
"No," she agreed and then added, "But it tells us we might be on the right track now."
"Yes, it does," he said with surprise and smiled at her.
"So, let"s try to put together what we do know," Inez suggested and reached into her purse to pull out a notepad and pen. Setting the pad on the tabletop, she pushed the b.u.t.ton to eject the pen nib and wrote at the top of the first page, "Things we know."
She glanced up at Thomas. "We know she drove to London with Tiny and stayed at the Dorchester."
Thomas sat forward as she wrote that down and added, "And we know Notte rented two suites of two rooms, requesting three have twin beds."Inez nodded as she wrote that down, commenting, "That has kind of bothered me since I heard it."
"I know. You said," Thomas murmured, sounding distracted.
Inez glanced up with surprise, but he was looking thoughtful, obviously considering what the next point should be. Shrugging to herself, she glanced down to the notepad, muttering, "I didn"t realize I"d mentioned it to you."
"What?"
Inez raised her head again surprised to see the frozen look on his face, but told him, "I said I hadn"t thought I"d mentioned it to you."
Thomas sat forward, leaning on the table as he said, "We talked about it in the cafe."
Inez was silent, her mind now chasing the memory of such a conversation, but there was no memory to be found. In fact, she just had some vague recollection that they"d chatted amicably but couldn"t say what about. When she told him that now, Thomas sat back again, his expression thoughtful.
"Why would our conversation be removed from my memory?" she asked uncertainly.
"Maybe we were getting too close to figuring something out," Thomas said slowly.
That seemed a good possibility, Inez supposed. "What did we say?"
"You said that even though there were only five tickets to York, the two suites of two rooms with the request that at least three of them have twin beds suggested there were seven people in London. We tried to figure out who they were, but don"t know enough and came up three short."
"Who were the four we came up with?" Inez asked and then said, "Marguerite, Tiny, and Christian and his father?"
"Yes, but we couldn"t come up with anyone else and then you got up to go find the ladies" room."
"I was probably still thinking about it then."
"Yes," Thomas agreed and then said, "I think Bastien mentioned Christian having a couple of cousins with him in California. They might have been among the group."
Inez reached for her drink to take a sip as she considered this, and grimaced as the flat, tepid beer filled her mouth.
"Bad huh?" Thomas asked with sympathy. "Mine has gone warm too." He glanced around and then grimaced. "The waitress probably won"t return so long as our gla.s.ses are full. I"ll go up to the bar and get us a couple more drinks. Keep thinking about this and try to come up with what you might have thought of the first time. They can take away the memory of figuring it out, but not the reasoning skills that got you there and you have excellent reasoning skills," he added encouragingly, then patted her hand and stood to move to the bar.
Inez smiled faintly as she watched him go. He always knew the right thing to say. And she enjoyed just looking at the man, she acknowledged, her eyes dropping over his tapered back to his derriere in the tight jeans.
A little sigh slid from her lips as she wished that they had time just to be together. She"d really rather be back at the hotel in Dorchester making love with him than here trying to sort out what had been stolen from her memory.
Unfortunately, until they found Marguerite, they didn"t have the time for what she wanted, Inez reminded herself and set her thoughts on the matter of who the others in Marguerite"s party might have been. Bastien had said that there had been only five tickets to York, so the party had dropped in number. She doubted Marguerite and Tiny had left the group, they were the ones who were supposed to find the mother. Christian would have been one too, and probably his father, but since she had no idea who the others might have been, she had no idea who had left the party.
Inez considered the cousins Thomas had mentioned being in California with Christian and wondered if Bastien had thought to try to contact them. If it was one of those men who had dropped out of the group when it moved on to York, they might be able to lead them in the right direct- Inez"s thoughts died abruptly as she suddenly found herself standing up and turning away from the table. She wasn"t doing either thing herself, it was simply happening, as if a puppet master were directing her movements.
That thought sent a wave of panic through her as she recalled Christian"s description of most mortal women being nothing better than blow up dolls or puppets to immortals. She was being controlled again, Inez realized, and wondered if the first two times it had happened she"d been aware and felt the panic now claiming her. And Inez was most definitely feeling panic. Her heart was thumping wildly in her chest, her mind racing with desperate ideas to end this. She tried to take back control and force her body to stop, but couldn"t even manage to slow her steps. Inez then tried screaming or even whispering, but her mouth was tight closed, not a sound coming from her throat.
Don"t panic, she ordered herself. It will be all right. So what if your mind is erased again? You haven"t been hurt by it before, she told herself, but the thoughts had a hollow ring to them. The previous two times she"d been controlled she"d been returned to Thomas, the first time back to the hotel in Amsterdam, and just an hour ago in the cafe she"d been sent back to their table-but now she was being led away from Thomas. Surely if they just wanted to erase her mind, they didn"t have to take her away to do it!
Inez had no idea, she didn"t know how it was done, but for some reason this time felt different. She didn"t think the intention was to just erase her memory and let her go again.
She was walking through the middle of the pub on a path to the door, weaving her way around groups and individuals and no one seemed to notice the least little problem. Surely her eyes showed her panic?
Inez tried to find Thomas with her eyes. He at least would realize something was wrong, he would see her fear, she thought, but couldn"t find him in the crowd. She couldn"t even see the bar for the people between her and it. Inez kept trying, though; right up until she reached the pub door and her hand rose to push it open. As she stepped out into the cool night breeze, Inez knew she was lost.
The area around the bar was thick with people waiting their turn. The man pulling the draft was being worked off his feet, but was cheerful despite all that. Thomas waited, trying to be patient. It was always difficult to wait when you knew that, ultimately, you didn"t have to. He could easily have taken control of the man and had him serve up their drinks in front of the others, and then could have stopped anyone who took issue with his being served before them, but he didn"t. At least, he didn"t until he saw the waitress who had served them on their arrival, slip behind the bar to collect drinks.
Pursing his lips, Thomas glanced at the long line still in front of him, and then slipped into the waitress"s mind, deposited his order there for her to bring to their table, and then headed back to Inez. Crowded as it was, Thomas was almost back at the table before he realized Inez was no longer there.
Surprise flickered through him, but was quickly followed by alarm when he saw that her purse was still at the table, sitting out in the open for anyone to take. In fact, someone was approaching now and reaching for it, he realized and narrowed his eyes on the woman.
"I wouldn"t if I were you," Thomas growled as he reached the table.
The woman s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand back, saying quickly, "I was just going to take it to the bar. I thought the girl forgot it when she left."
Thomas didn"t bother to argue with the mortal woman. Lips twisting, he s.n.a.t.c.hed up the purse and started to turn away, but then frowned as he realized what she"d said. Swiveling back, he stabbed her mind with his own, entering swiftly and found a vision of Inez walking stiffly out of the bar, her expression blank.
Cursing, Thomas whirled away and hurried for the door, Inez"s purse tucked under his arm like a football. It never occurred to him that he might look like a mugger fleeing the scene of a crime until a man stepped in his path, snarling, "Give it "ere ye lousy t"ief."
Thomas nearly mowed the man down, but then quickly slipped into his mind and moved him aside instead. It was rare enough others troubled themselves to stop a criminal; and while the man had misunderstood the situation, he thought he was stepping up to help a lady in distress. Thomas thought he should be rewarded, not plowed down.
No one else got in his way, and Thomas crashed through the pub door and out onto the street without further hindrance.
A slight breeze had kicked up outside. It sent his hair ruffling as he glanced first one way and then the other. Thomas didn"t see Inez in either direction, and panic became a living beast in his chest, clawing at his heart. He couldn"t lose her now. He"d waited two hundred years for Inez, he simply couldn"t lose her.
Spotting a crossroad just a little ways up to his left, Thomas hurried toward it, thinking that surely that would have been where she"d been taken. He hadn"t been away from the table long, whoever was controlling her would have wanted to get her off this street in case Thomas came looking, and this was the nearest corner.
Pausing at the crossroads, he glanced left and right again, freezing when he spotted a bit of brilliant white in the distance. Despite his exceptional eyes, it took him a moment to realize that it was a figure in a brilliant white blouse and dark slacks being led off the sidewalk and down what must be steps by a dark figure all in black. Thomas couldn"t be sure from this distance, but by the size difference between his pet.i.te Inez and the figure with her, he"d guess her captor was a man.
G.o.d Bless her penchant for wearing white blouses, Thomas thought as he set out up the street at a dead run. If she"d been wearing black like himself and the man with her, he never would have spotted her before she disappeared from view.
Thomas crossed the distance quickly, uncaring that anyone might see the speed he traveled at and wonder. He slowed when he thought he was drawing close to where Inez had been led off the sidewalk, and soon spotted a set of stone steps just before the bridge that crossed the river. They led down to a lower level with a stone path that ran along the river.
Thomas stopped at the top of the stairs and peered down, spotting Inez and her captor at once. The dark figure was most definitely a man, tall, and wide and built like a warrior of old. An immortal that was older than he, Thomas surmised, but couldn"t care less. He wasn"t giving Inez up without a fight, not even if it killed him. He was about to start down the step when he saw the man bring Inez to a halt. Thomas frowned as he watched him turn her so that she faced the water, placing her back to him, but when he then raised his hands placing one on her shoulder and one around her face, Thomas recognized that he was about to break her neck, then probably drop her in the river. He roared with fury and hurled Inez"s purse like a missile.
Thomas didn"t wait to see if the purse hit its target, but immediately charged down the stairs at a speed he didn"t think he"d ever reached before. Still, he did see the purse slam into the man"s head and send him stumbling a startled step to the side, dragging Inez with him. Regaining his balance, the man glanced up the path to where Thomas was just hurling himself off the last step and racing toward them. The immortal hesitated, and then shoved Inez off the edge and into the river even as he turned to race away.
Heart lurching in his chest, Thomas put on another burst of speed, raced to the edge of the path, and dove into the water after Inez. The River Ouse was cold, dark, and murky. It was impossible to see anything.
Silently cursing, Thomas waved his arms around, searching blindly for Inez. He was beginning to despair of finding her when the tips of his fingers brushed against something. Moving in that direction, he waved his arms again and this time caught something in the crook of his elbow. Grabbing at whatever it was with his other hand, he felt his fingers close around an arm and immediately pushed off the riverbed toward the surface, tugging her along with him.
The impetus of his push sent him whizzing through the water. Thomas was still moving at speed when he hit the surface and rose out of the water up to his waist, before receding back into it. He glanced toward Inez as he started to slide back into the water, realizing only then that he had her by the calf, not her arm as he"d first thought.Kicking his feet to stay above water, Thomas quickly shifted her around, drawing her head out of the water as he caught her by the upper arms. Her head was tipped back and the moonlight glowed down on her face. Thomas"s jaw tightened as he noted the blue tinge to her skin. It was most noticeable around her lips.
Thomas drew her closer, pinched her nose and blew air into her mouth several times, then kicked toward sh.o.r.e, crossing half the distance before stopping again. He breathed into her again before continuing on to the embankment where he once again took a moment to breathe air into her.
Thomas managed to get them both out of the water, lifting Inez out first and then following. He crawled to her side and peered down at her face in the moonlight, frowning at her poor color. Swallowing back the fear tickling its way up his throat, he promptly set to work. Thomas tilted her head back and lifted her chin, then bent to listen for breathing. When he didn"t hear anything, he pinched her nose closed, breathed into her mouth twice, and then placed the heel of his hand on her breastbone, placed his other hand on the first and pressed straight down fast and hard thirty times in a row before stopping to breathe into her mouth again, watching her chest rise as he blew in, then fall as he stopped.
"Come on, Inez," Thomas muttered as he switched back to compressions. "Don"t you die on me. Come on!"
He bent to breathe into her mouth, jerking away when she suddenly began to cough. Turning her swiftly on her side, Thomas made sure her head was tilted back so her throat wasn"t blocked and then simply rubbed her back as she continued to cough and began to spit up the water she"d swallowed.
When Inez finally fell back with a moan, Thomas reached down to brush away the damp hair plastered to her face and breathed out with relief.
Noting that her color was much better now, he took a moment to run his hands over her neck. Thomas was sure the other immortal hadn"t got the chance to do an injury to her, but he checked anyway, relieved when her neck seemed fine.
Sitting back on his heels, he glanced up and down the path, but there was no one around. The immortal was long gone, and while he could see a couple of people walking across the bridge at the end of the path, they were far enough away they didn"t even seem to notice he and Inez. Certainly no one appeared to have noticed them in the water and rushed to help.
Another moan from Inez drew his gaze back and Thomas leaned over her again. "Love?" he said quietly. "Are you awake?"
Inez"s eyes fluttered open. They were full of confusion and pain until she recognized him and then relief filled her expression and she whispered, "Thomas."
"Yes, love. I"m here. You"re safe now."
Her fingers clutched weakly at his hand, her eyes solemn as she gasped, "Thought would die before could tell you-"
Thomas felt his heart tighten as she broke off into a deep, painful sounding coughing fit. Slipping his arm behind her back, he lifted her into a half-sitting position, and then rubbed her back, trying to help her through it.
"Have to tell you," she gasped once it was over.
"Don"t talk, love. Just rest," he insisted worriedly.
She shook her head with frustration and tried anyway. "I want you to know, I lo-"
Thomas rubbed her back again as she went into another coughing fit. He was sure she was trying to tell him she loved him, and while he wanted to hear those words more than anything in the world, he didn"t want them at the expense of her health.
"You can tell me after," he a.s.sured her, scooping her into his arms once this fit ended. "When you"re feeling better."
When she merely moaned and sagged weakly against his chest, Thomas held her a little closer and turned toward the stairs. He stumbled over something on the path and glanced down. Spotting her purse, Thomas stooped and rested Inez"s legs on his knees as he picked it up. Fortunately, it was a zippered purse and hadn"t burst open on impact. Slinging it over his shoulder, he slid his arm under her legs again and straightened to walk to the stairs.
Inez remained still and silent in his arms as he mounted the stairs. Thomas kept glancing down at her, his attention torn between the steps and his concern for her.
"Hang in there, Inez. I"ll take you to a hospital. You"ll be okay," he murmured.
Inez"s reaction to the words was almost violent. Jerking in his arms, she raised panicked eyes to him.
"No... no hospital," she protested, her voice hoa.r.s.e and weak.
Thomas frowned at her upset, but said, "It"s for the best, love. You nearly drowned."
"He"ll find me," Inez cried, and the fear in her voice made his heart hurt. It also told him that the immortal hadn"t bothered to wipe his taking control of her from her memories, but then, why would he bother? Thomas was sure the man had intended for her to die. He"d stake his life that he"d been about to snap her neck when he"d intervened.
Perhaps the hospital wasn"t such a good idea, Thomas acknowledged. He didn"t want her out of his sight for a minute from now on and couldn"t guarantee they wouldn"t try to separate them at the hospital or try to keep her overnight. The immortal might very well get his hands on her again and Thomas wasn"t allowing that.
"No hospital," he a.s.sured her soothingly as she moved restlessly in his arms. "I"ll take you back to the townhouse now."
A little sigh of relief slipped from her lips and Inez closed her eyes and went still in his arms, but her expression was still tight with fear. Thomas felt a slow rage begin to burn in him as he peered down at her.
No woman should have to live in fear, and he"d be d.a.m.ned if his was going to, Thomas thought grimly as he started up the stairs.
The moment he had Inez back to the townhouse he was going to turn her. The immortal would still be able to read her until she was taught to put up-and keep up-guards, but she would be harder to read and control... and definitely harder to kill. At least she"d have a fighting chance.
The streets were relatively quiet. Thomas only pa.s.sed a few people on his way back to the townhouse and had little trouble wiping the memory of their pa.s.sing from their minds. The last thing he needed was someone calling the police and telling them they saw a man carrying an unconscious woman through town center. Still, he was so relieved to reach the townhouse that he didn"t notice that the lights he"d turned off on the way out were on again as he struggled to unlock the door and get Inez inside.
Thomas had just kicked the door closed and turned to carry Inez upstairs to the bedroom when that realization struck him. He stopped, one foot on the bottom step as adrenaline began to rush through him, then jerked his eyes to the top of the landing as the sound of a door opening upstairs reached his ears.
When no one appeared at the top of the stairs and he heard movement in one of the rooms, Thomas whirled and hurried silently across the hall and into the living room. He set Inez out of the way on the couch, then turned back and crept toward the door, slowing only long enough to s.n.a.t.c.h a lamp off a table and jerk the cord out of the wall, before continuing out into the hall.