On that note, hopefully he wasn’t here to say that thing had been razed to the ground. Or looted. Probably should have checked her texts first.
“There is no other way.” Mary surreptitiously glanced at her phone. Rhage’s message merely said that he was ready when they were. So guess it was thumbs-up. Assuming Bitty was still on board…“You don’t have to go, but if you do decide you still want to, it’s only going to happen with him. It’s your decision.”
Bitty shifted off the chair in an abrupt way. “Then we go.”
She didn’t meet Mary’s eyes as she walked by, heading for the front door. And as Mary watched the girl, something was triggered in the back of her head. There was no time to tease whatever it was out, though.
Only staff members had clearance to unlock things, and Mary put in a code on the pad to the left of the heavy panels. There was a clunk and a shift, and then she was able to open the way out. Moving to the side, she waited for Bitty to pass by, and then shut and relocked the door.
Rhage was standing at the property line, on the patch of well-mowed but dying grass over on the right. The moonlight made his blond hair flash in the darkness, and did nothing to highlight the black of his leathers and jacket.
Thank God it looked like he’d kept all his weapons hidden.
Bitty stumbled down the steps, her feet tripping over obstacles that were no doubt in her head, and certainly not on the concrete. She kept her chin up, though, even though her stare stayed at ground level.
As Mary fought the urge to put her hand on the girl’s shoulder, she felt that flare in the back of her mind again—but she was too concerned about how the meet-and-greet was going to go to worry about it.
Rhage, however, was perfect. He didn’t move as they approached him. Kept his hands visible and down by his sides. Inclined his head as if he were doing his very damnedest to appear shorter.
Which was a total losing battle, but very dear of him.
Bitty stopped a good eight feet away and seemed to burrow into that awful coat.
In the meantime, Mary deliberately went up to Rhage and took his hand as she pivoted back around. “Bitty, this is my husband. I mean … hellren. Rhage, this is Bitty.”
For some reason, Rhage’s voice made the center of Mary’s heart ping as he said gently, “Hi. Nice to meet you.”
Bitty just stared at her shoes, her face unreadable. Which was pretty much her standard operating procedure, as the Brothers would say.
“Okay. So.” Mary glanced across the lawn. “Let’s head over to the Volvo—”
“Actually, we need to take my car,” Rhage cut in.
“Ahh—”
Rhage squeezed her hand. “We need to take my car.”
When she looked into his face, she took a deep breath. Of course. He had weapons in the trunk, ones that he was prepared to use in addition to whatever was under that jacket of his—and it wasn’t like doing a transfer of deadly arms to the Volvo was going to help this awkwardness along.
“All right.” Mary nodded toward the GTO. “Bitty, you ready to come with us?”
As Mary stepped forward, the little girl shuffled along behind, keeping her distance.
“So this is my ride,” Rhage said as they got to the car. “I’ll just unlock this here, and Mary can help you into the back, ’kay? Only have two doors, sorry.”
Mary waited for Rhage to open things and go around to the other side before even attempting to put Bitty into the rear. Maybe the girl would like to sit up front? Except then she’d be next to Rhage.
No, the back was better.
Holding the top half of the front seat forward, Mary glanced over her shoulder. “Come on, Bitty—I’ll even sit back…”
No reason to finish. The girl wasn’t hearing it. She wasn’t even looking in Mary’s vague direction.
Shit.
THIRTY
For most of his nights on the planet, Rhage was only vaguely aware of how big he was. But at the moment, even though he was on the far side of three thousand pounds of steel and engine, he felt like he was an enormous, muckling nightmare.
And OMG, that kid had haunted eyes.
As Rhage waited for Bitty to say something, anything, in response to Mary, he couldn’t help but measure how much taller the girl was than the memory he had of her from that horrible night of the rescue. Not that he’d spent much time at all with her—he’d been too busy fighting to have anything more than a foggy recollection of her brown-haired little self cowering in her mother’s arms.
Man, he wanted to dig up that father of hers just so he could kill him all over—
“Bitty?” Mary prompted. “We should either go or head back inside.”
Rhage was prepared to wait out here all night if that was what it took for the kid to make up her mind, but his mate had a point. This was a safe neighborhood—relatively speaking. Which was to say it was much better than that den of lessers they’d attacked at that prep school, but not nearly as secure as inside the house.
“Bitty?”
And that was when the young looked at him for the first time.
The was no shift of her head, no change in her expression, but suddenly the moonlight caught her eyes properly and they flashed.
Later … Rhage would reflect that that split second was one of two defining moments in his life. The other being his hearing Mary’s voice the first time.
“Is this really your car?”
Rhage blinked. And had to take a moment to make sure he’d heard the question right. “Ah, yes. Yes, this car is mine.”
Bitty walked over to the hood and extended her small hand to the GTO’s shiny, smooth body. “It’s so pretty.”
Rhage looked at Mary—who seemed equally flummoxed.
“The, ah, the paint job is custom.”
“What does that mean?”
“It was specially made just for her.”
Bitty glanced up at him in surprise. “It’s a girl?”
“Oh, yeah. Sexy—I mean, hot—er, good muscle cars are always girls. It’s ’cuz you gotta take care of ’em like they deserve.”
“Muscle car?”
“That’s what she’s called. She’s a GTO. When I got her, she was a wreck, but I had her redone—I brought her back to life. She’s old, but she’ll blow the doors off any Porsche on the road.”
As Mary started making can-it motions with her hand, he clammed up.
Except then Bitty asked, “What’s a muscle car? What does it mean, blow doors off?”
“Well … would you like to hear the engine? I’m warning you up front, it’s loud—but it’s supposed to be. There are a lot of horses under that hood.”
Bitty recoiled, and yeah, he got an impression of just how sheltered she was, how little she had been exposed to.
“There are horses in your car?”
“Here,” he said, holding up the key. “I’m going to start her up—and pump her with some gas. But you might want to cover your ears, ’kay?”
Bitty nodded and clamped her palms on either side of her head like her skull was in danger of popping off her spine.
Opening his door, Rhage got in, left-footed the clutch to the floor, made sure the stick was in neutral, and shoved the key into place. One crank and a little gas—
VROOOM!—mah, mah, mah-mah-mah, VROOOM! VROOOM!—mah, mah, mah-mah-mah …
Bitty walked in front of the car as he continued to pedal the accelerator. After a minute, she slowly dropped her arms and tilted her head to the side.
Over the din, she shouted, “But where are the horses?”
Yanking the parking brake hard, he leaned out. “It’s the engine!” he said loudly. “You want to see the engine?”
“What?!”
“The engine!” Reaching for the release, he pulled the lever and got to his feet. “Let me show you.”
He was careful not to move too fast as he came to the little girl, and he was very conscious of the way she put her hands in the pockets of her too-big parka and took a couple of steps to the side to keep some distance between them.
Freeing the second latch right in front, he sprang the hood, releasing a sweet, hot breath that was clean oil and fresh gas combined.
Bitty leaned in and seemed to take an inhale. “That smells nice.”