“They aren’t real.” No one was in the cruiser with us yet, so I leaned toward him and put my lips to his ear.

“You sure about that?”

He shivered and a flash from a camera went off behind us. A picture of me snuggling up to the agent who’d shot his partner while hunting me. Oh, that was not going to help us any.

An officer got in the car, flipped the lights off, and stared at us through the metal bars that kept us from climbing out. “Was she worth it?”

O’Shea glanced over at me, and I smiled up at him and gave him a wink. “Go ahead, tell him the truth.” Something in me wanted O’Shea—Liam—to smile again.

There it was; a flicker of devilry in those dark eyes. “I don’t know. Yet.”

Heat, intense, searing heat flared between us. I couldn’t look away—the promise of that one, single, simple word was all it took to spin my mind back to a very tight cramped bathroom and the feel of his chest under my fingertips. The taste of his lips and tongue against mine. I swallowed hard, my heart pounding, blood rushing to places I’d ignored for a long time.

“You’re a disgrace, piece of shit cop killer,” the officer said, breaking the spell between us.

I looked out my window, feeling the distance between O’Shea and I seemingly shrink. His side pressed up against mine, and I knew my mind hadn’t been playing tricks on me.

His hand stole around my back, hampered by his handcuffs, but undeterred. Even if I’d wanted to pull away from him, I couldn’t, there was nowhere for me to go. Fingers linking with mine, he leaned into me harder. I stared at his mouth, only inches away from my face, and tried to form a cohesive thought other than how good he tasted.

Then he jabbed his key into my hands. Key? Blinking, I flicked my eyes up to his, which were almost laughing at me. My fingers curled around the key and I slid it into the handcuffs. A small “snick” of metal unlatching and I was free. In a manner of speaking.

“Now what?” Still crushed up against him, my voice was whisper soft.

“We give them a show, one that’ll make them pull over and try to separate us.”

“You just want another chance at my lips.” My whisper was just a tad too breathy. Damn I sounded eager. Maybe I shouldn’t have employed Milly’s tactics. They were certainly landing me in a whole different pot of hot water.

His lips quirked up, putting a slight dimple in his cheek. How had I not noticed that before?

He pushed his face even closer to mine, a mere shiver away from touching. “You don’t?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t damn me all to hell and back, and my own reaction to him did that well enough.

The same officer who’d interrupted us before did so again. Thank the gods.

“You two, chill out.” His babyish features pegged him for the rookie he obviously was. That, and the way his hand never strayed from the butt of his gun.

O’Shea obediently slid back to his side of the seat, and I sucked in a large lungful of air. Moments later another officer joined the first and we were off to the police station. Or at least, that was what I thought. About ten minutes into the drive the silence broke.

The young officer turned to his partner. “Where’s our escort?”“ I thought we were going to be flanked by the FBI?”

In answer, the older cop shook his head. “Pull over.”

What was this? The young cop did as he was told, without question, putting the car in park. Not a good thing, even I knew that.

“Shit.” O’Shea mumbled under his breath. “Be ready.”

For what? I wanted to ask—

The older cop pulled his gun, placed it right against his partner’s head and pulled the trigger, the shot reverberating, shaking my eardrums. Blood and brain matter splattered the inside of the cop car in a macabre graffiti. I almost pulled my hands up to my ears, at the last second managing to keep them behind me, hiding the fact they were no longer cuffed.

The older cop’s image wavered, and then I stared at one of the ugliest trolls I’d ever seen. Not that any of them are particularly handsome, but he won the “nasty looks” contest hands down. Orange and yellow spotted skin hung in folds off his body, the clothes he’d been wearing tore and revealed far too much for my taste. His four-fingered hand clutched at the gun and he waved it at us, one eye hanging from its socket, the other blinking rapidly as if to clear some unseen haze.

“Get out,” the troll commanded.

I knew there was a reason this would work out in our favour. “Can’t, no door handles inside. It’s a human thing you know.” I shrugged. “You want us out you need to get the door open for us.”

Grumbling, the troll smashed the side door to let himself out.

Now it was my turn to be pithy. “Be ready.”

“For . . .” O’Shea started to ask when the troll grabbed the door on my side and wrenched it off.

“Get out.”

Sliding carefully, slowly, across the seat, I wracked my brain for the best way to handle this. Trolls were sketchy at the best of times. One minute your friend, the next they were trying to eat you alive. This one didn’t look to be interested in making new friends. He (and yes it was a he by way his double genitalia hung nearly to his mid-thigh) glared at us and clicked his broken teeth together, bits of tooth flicking out around him. The only upside I could see was if we had something he wanted, he could be swayed to our side, momentarily at least. Trolls were fickle, and that could work in our favour.

I stepped out of the car. The six-foot tall troll stepped back, his hanging eye staring around as if seeing us for the first time. “You’re prettier than they said. Those witches were right; you will be a fun time.”

Ugh, that was not what I wanted to hear, not the part about the fun or the fact that he’d been sent by the black Coven. Both of his, um, members started to rise as his hanging eyeball roved up and down my body.

A long, split tongue licked his lips. “I could let you go if you do something nice for me,” the troll said, stepping forward.

“No,” O’Shea said, stepping around me, putting his body in the line of fire.

“This is not the time to get all white knight on me,” I said, keeping my voice low.

The troll snarled and lifted the gun, his finger twitching against the trigger.

Using my hip, I bumped O’Shea out of the way and walked closer to the troll, swaying my body as seductively as I could and batting my eyes, much to his delight, if the way his loose hanging eye lit up was any indication.

“You know, I always wondered what a double whammy would be like,” I said.

The troll puffed up his chest, his free hand stroking down the folds of skin that hung from his body to cup one of his overlong members.

I struggled to hold back the gag. That was not attractive in the least, but I kept moving forward, closer to the troll, and the gun he held leveled on O’Shea. Sure, it could backfire, it could explode, hell, it could do all sorts of weird things. But after seeing it blow out that young officer’s brains all over the inside of the car, I wasn’t going to take any chances.

There was only one weak spot I would be able to reach, and so even though I didn’t want to, I sidled up to his hanging bits.

With an exaggerated slowness, I lifted my hand and placed it on the troll’s upper chest, massaging my fingers into the loose skin. “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re that Tracker, who goes after kids,” he said, and I rubbed harder across his collarbone, inching closer to the dangling eye.

The troll rumbled under my hand, the skin vibrating to the point of making it ripple like a bowl of Jello that had been shook. He puffed out his chest which stretched the skin, making it taut, the rumbling in his chest now caused a sound reminiscent of a large bull frog’s mating call. Gross. I bit back the disgust filling me, making me want to pull away. But I had to get that gun away from him.

Like now.

I reached up and grabbed the eye, squeezing it just short of it popping like a grape in my fingers.

The troll howled and the gun swung toward my head. “Drop it!” I hung onto the eyeball, applying more pressure with one nail.

He screeched, and then a body, O’Shea’s to be exact, tackled the troll to the ground, the gun pinned between them. The connective tissue to the eye snapped, the troll screeched again, and I was left standing there with an eyeball in my hands while O’Shea handcuffed the screaming, writhing troll like it was something he did regularly.

Gun secured, O’Shea stood.

I just stared at him. “I had it under control you know.”

“I couldn’t watch you fondle that thing anymore,” he snapped.

My jaw dropped, and I was about to tell him just where he could stick his meddling when a wave of fear hit me that was not my own.

India.

I froze and focused on her. She was terrified and her life force wavered. Shit, shit, shit.

“We’ve gotta go,” I said. “India’s in trouble.”

O’Shea glared at me. “You say that like it’s something new. Like she wasn’t in trouble before.”

I wasn’t about to explain my ability to sense people, certainly not to him. “Get in the car, we’ve got to get weapons and get back out to the mine shaft. Now.”

He started to go around to the driver’s side.

“I’m driving,” I said, jogging to catch up to him.

Hoisting the body of the young cop out of the seat, O’Shea let out a sharp breath. “Here, just let me move this for you.”

The cop’s head rolled, exposing what was left of his brains inside the gaping black hole that had blown out the side of his head. Much as I didn’t want to admit that it was affecting me, the sight was almost too much. Muscles tensing, I fought against the emotions rising in me. Sorrow for his family, grief for him, and an unmistakable sense of regret that was not my own, but O’Shea’s. Damn. I clamped down, forcing the feelings back, and behind that came a bolt of terror that was pure child. India was panicking and that was not a good sign. She had to be the number one priority. I’d thought I had time to prep, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to be the case, which meant we were going to go barreling in there with next to nothing.