Page 30 of A Rhapsody of Ravens and Revenge

“As long as we get the job done,” Cal said. “I want to go change before Nate and Eden get here. We won’t have time to work out. Atticus said Taber was spotted in Atlanta. They’re using satellite imagery to try and track his route, but they know for sure he’s headed east. You’re the most likely target.”

They headed back up the stairs to the bedroom they were sharing.

“Does that mean he found his target in Atlanta?” she asked.

“Don’t know yet,” Cal said, getting a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt from the closet. “No body has been found.”

Evie looked down at her oversized shirt and leggings and wondered if she could get away with wearing them for the rest of the day, but she figured it was probably a good idea to make a good impression on the people sent to protect her with their lives.

So she grabbed her own jeans and debated over the folded clothes she’d rescued from her room down the hall. It had been a long time since she’d paid attention to her clothes. Hiding her body had seemed fitting with having to hide her true identity. But she’d felt something surge through her the day before when she’d sat behind Cal’s console and felt the magic run through the tip of her fingers.

Now that she’d had the taste she knew she couldn’t go back to the woman she’d pretended to be for the last decade. Even if Cal asked her to.

She grabbed a black tank top from the pile and her jeans. It was still warm and they were in Florida and the humidity was thick. But she was her father’s daughter. Be prepared in all things. So she chose jeans instead of shorts, grabbed sneakers and socks, and went into the bathroom to change. She rolled her eyes at Cal, who didn’t seem to have any problem with stripping down in front of her.

He was dressed when she came back out, his gun in the holster at his waist and an extra magazine in his pocket. He wore a lightweight Gore-Tex jacket with pockets that probably had any number of weapons hidden inside.

His brow arched when he noticed she wore a tank top instead of an oversized ugly shirt, and she felt a tingle of excitement as his eyes darkened. She went to the nightstand and grabbed her .9mm to keep on hand. She could tell something had shifted in Cal, and it put her own senses on high alert.

Cal’s phone rang just as they were coming back downstairs.

“This is Cruz,” he said. And then, “Send them to the house.”

“They’re here?” she asked. “That was fast.”

“They were scheduled to come in today no matter what,” Cal told her. “They just got back from a mission a couple of days ago and had time to debrief and decompress.”

Cal opened the large glass front door and they watched a gray SUV come through the gate and down the long drive of palms, circling the fountain before coming to a stop.

One of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen got out of the passenger side. Her dark hair was pulled back from a strikingly exotic face, and though she was slender, the muscles in her shoulders and arms were clearly defined in the spaghetti strap tank she wore. Evie’s brows knitted together when the woman came close enough for her to see the three puckered scars high up on her chest.

Evie knew by looking at them they were gunshot wounds, and by the placement of them, she was lucky to be alive at all.

“Eden,” Cal said, pulling her into a hug. “Beautiful as ever. I can’t believe you married this dunderhead. Did you know he once went an entire mission only eating Vienna sausages? He kept trying to convince the rest of us it was why he had so much energy.”

“They say love is blind,” she said, laughing. And then she looked at Evie. “You must be Evangeline. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Call me Evie,” she said, liking the woman instantly.

“Don’t y’all stand there and act like I’m the hired help,” Nate said, opening the trunk to grab their bags.

“Oh, didn’t see you there, Warlock,” Cal said. “You look different. I think you might be putting on some weight around the middle. I hear married life does that to a man.”

Eden and Evie laughed, and Evie thought Nate looked like he was in the best shape of his life. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him anywhere. She’d grown up around men who had certain skill sets, and she’d learned to recognize them at an early age. They all moved the same, and there was something in their eyes that brought an initial wariness to anyone they came in contact with. Though Nate was a more presentable first impression than Cal could ever hope to be. Most people walked in the opposite direction whenever they saw Cal coming. Maybe it was the tattoos.

But Nathan Locke was Cal’s complete opposite. She’d never seen anyone whose description fit California better than his. He was a couple of inches taller than Cal, and his white-blond hair was long enough to be casually tousled around his angular face. A short beard a shade darker than what was on his head covered his cheeks. She’d expected to see blue or green eyes with his coloring, but when he took off his sunglasses she could see they were so dark they were almost black.

“I will kill you, Cyph,” Nate said, hanging his sunglasses in the front of his shirt. “Now come get some of these bags. We brought an arsenal. Eden doesn’t like to leave home without them. I guess some women don’t like to leave home without their purses. For Eden it’s guns.”

“My kind of woman,” Cal said.

“So you’re Lockwood’s daughter,” Nate said, looking back and forth between her and Cal.

“That’s what they tell me,” Evie said. “I can’t prove it though.”

“You certainly don’t look like him. Thank God for small blessings. Now I see why Cal has been so protective of you all these years.”

Evie arched a brow. “Oh really? In what way?”

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