No, his problem was that he was trying so hard to impress her and make her look at him as she used to that he looked like a wanker.
Ryder made his way back to the third floor and the computer room. But as he sat in front of the monitors, for the first time in a very long time, he didn’t care what they showed him.
All that mattered was the woman in the kitchen and the love within his heart.
He squeezed his eyes closed and concentrated once more on finding a hint of where Ulrik was. So far, none of the scans across the entire United Kingdom had shown anything.
Ulrik could be out of the country. Knowing that—as well as Ulrik’s affinity for the Dark Fae—Ryder focused on Ireland, which the Fae had proclaimed as their own.
While those scans ran, Ryder looked back through the last day they’d caught Ulrik on camera near his shop in Perth. It ran on fast-forward. As usual, there were the normal visitors who came to the antiques shop.
Ryder paused the recording and rewound it when he spotted a young woman in jeans, wearing a sweatshirt from the University of St. Andrews. With a backpack slung over one shoulder, she looked like any other student.
But there was something about the girl that caught Ryder’s attention. The way she moved, the way she covertly took in everything.
He played the tape three times as she walked from the bus stop to the door of The Silver Dragon. It was the way the young woman looked around that troubled Ryder. He’d seen someone do that quite recently. And that someone was Henry North.
MI5 was known to recruit spooks at a very young age. Not to mention Ulrik’s past connection to MI5 was also a sign.
Ryder fast-forwarded the recording to see how long the girl was in the store. Fifteen minutes later she emerged with the same backpack, but there was something different about it.
Now focused entirely, Ryder split the screen in half. On one side was the girl when she arrived at the store, and the other when she left.
Ryder rotated the image of her arriving and was able to take dimensions of the backpack. That’s when he realized it was sitting higher on her shoulders because it was no longer weighted down by something.
He needed to find out who the girl was. While he ran facial recognition software on her, Ryder also sent her picture to Henry, their one ally within MI5.
Henry had long been a friend of Banan’s, and during one harrowing battle with Ulrik, he had helped Banan rescue Jane in the middle of London.
From there, it hadn’t taken long for Henry to learn who those at Dreagan really were. Henry helped them on multiple occasions after that. It was just a few months ago that he began living at the manor to help the Kings track the Dark Fae’s movements all over the world.
Ryder set down his phone, thinking it would take Henry awhile to learn who the girl was, when Ryder’s phone dinged.
He read the message twice he was so shocked.
HER NAME IS ESTHER. SHE’S MY SISTER.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kinsey knew the moment Ryder left the kitchen. She no longer felt his presence, which made her feel … unprotected.
That couldn’t be right. She feared him. Didn’t she? Her feelings and her mind were all jumbled into a huge tangle that grew more convoluted as the minutes and hours passed. That’s what made it all the more difficult to keep her distance from him.
“Do you hate him?”
Thorn’s teasing words were gone. Kinsey lifted her eyes from her plate and met Thorn’s dark ones. His deep brown hair was long and loose about his shoulders. There was no compassion in his gaze, only an intensity that told Kinsey to speak the truth at all costs.
“That’s not easy to answer,” she replied.
The chair between her and Thorn was pulled out as Lexi took a seat. Her slate gray eyes were filled with sympathy. She then tucked a strand of pale brown hair behind her ear. “It might seem like a difficult answer, but it’s really not.”
“You know what’s going on,” Thorn said as he sat back. “You saw it yourself in Glasgow. We willna have someone in our midst who is here to harm one of us.”
Kinsey set down her fork, her appetite gone at his words. She gawked at him in wonder and stupidity. “That’s a joke, right? You’re dragons. You can shift. Who can harm who?”
“Kinsey,” Lexi said and rested her hand atop hers. “What my husband is trying—badly—to say, is that though they’re immortal Dragon Kings who can shift, their hearts are as delicate as ours.”
“Now, sweetheart, I’m no’ sure I’d use delicate,” Thorn admonished.
Lexi raised a hand to quiet him without even looking his way. Kinsey watched in amusement as Thorn looked like a scolded toddler.
The silence in the kitchen extended. Kinsey felt like she was on trial of sorts. Which she had been since she first stepped foot onto Dreagan.
But this was different. This was focused on her feelings, feelings she herself hadn’t dared to look too deep into because she was afraid of what she might find.