Page 27 of Captured

“She wasn’t looking at you like any outsider,” his sister sniffed. She turned her gaze out the window again, watching Lauren as she disappeared around the corner of the house. “She looked like she wanted to eat you for breakfast. Which makes me sad for her. The disappointment will be crushing.”

“I suspect she’ll survive.”

“Yes, but the nightmares.”

As they bantered, Dimitri studied Calista’s profile. Long, thick white hair curled around his sister’s lined face, and her skin was a little looser at her jaw than the last time he’d seen her, but her dark eyes remained sharp, her laughter bright and full. No matter how much else had changed between them, some things never would.

His sister had been like him in almost every way when they’d been children, a year younger but every bit as fiery-tempered, always up for an adventure. When they’d learned that Dimitri had enough of the throwback demigod gene to allow him the choice of Hemitheos, she’d at first been irritated that he’d gotten the nod from the gods and not her.

But that hadn’t lasted. Calista had encouraged him to embrace the gatekeeper’s gift at twenty, to make the choice to serve the crown and live as a demigod, not a man. And even though she hadn’t fully understood the sacrifices it would entail back then—neither of them had—she’d never stopped treating him like a slightly older brother. Even as he’d only aged one year for every ten of hers, even as they’d buried their parents, then their aunts, uncles and cousins—and eventually her first two husbands. Even as he’d seen her beautiful children grow, thrive, and have children of their own, she’d always been there for him.

“Now you’re the one looking at me like a xénos,” she grumbled good-naturedly, sending him a sidelong look. “You’ve never seen an old woman before? Show some respect.”

“I’ve never seen an old woman as cranky as you,” he said. “And you’re too thin. You need to eat, Callista.”

“And you need to tell me more about this American.” She pointed a long, knobby finger in the general direction of where they last saw Lauren. “I heard about Kristos’s engagement, even all the way out here. It’s about time he stepped up to his responsibilities. Ari’s been dead a year.”

“Not dead,” Dimitri said sharply.

She flapped her hands at him. “Gone then, gone. You can give me that. And Kristos is here, the royal family is here. The country must go on. But back to your girlfriend.”

“Not my girlfriend.”

“Okay, she’s smarter than I thought. She’s with the new princess? A friend?”

“She is.”

“Is she in trouble—or isshethe trouble?” She eyed him. “I mean, why’s she with you?”

Dimitri flashed her a smile. “Besides the obvious?”

Calista snorted. “So maybe not so smart after all. Still...”

The sound of an engine starting had them both turning toward the door.

“Shit,” Dimitri snapped. He was out the door in ten seconds, but it didn’t matter. He’d left the keys in his four-wheeler. Of course he’d left the keys in his four-wheeler. Of course he’d left the keys, and of course Lauren had taken it. The same way she’d probably taken for granted that everything she saw was hers the moment she laid eyes on it.

He shook his head, his anger dissolving into a rueful chuckle as Calista strode out behind him, laughing her fool ass off. Together, they watched as Lauren roared down the beach in the beach rover, completely in the opposite direction of town. She’d figure it out soon enough.

“Seriously, she’s the trouble or she’sintrouble, which is it?” Calista asked.

Dimitri sighed. “Both.”

It took him an hour to track Lauren down. Not very difficult, given the size of the only town on Miranos, and the fact that she was the only blonde on the island. He saw the vehicle first, parked in front of the main pub. There would be a TV there, and a phone, he knew she assumed. She wasn’t wrong. Because she also wasn’t stupid.

He entered the bar and waved to the bartender, Anker, whose grin broadened as he looked up from Lauren, who sat hunched over Anker’s ancient phone. “She said you would pay for her coffee, my friend. I said to myself, a beautiful woman I have never seen before comes to my bar, of course she is friends with Dimitri Korba. Unfortunately, she has been having no luck with my phone. I told her the connection on the island, it is not so good. It is the price we must pay to live in paradise. But oh! Good, you can help her.”

Lauren turned to him then, her eyes narrowing as she saw what he held in his hand. “Your phone was charged all along!”

“You Americans are all too connected.” He handed the sat phone to her. “Call the number I last dialed. Nicki Clark will pick up. Stefan tells me she’s been hounding him by the hour for information, that she wouldn’t go to sleep until she knew that you were safe. And even then, she slept in the communications room.”

“She—worries.” He could tell she was thinking something else, and her words sounded false to him, anyway. From what little he’d seen of Nicole Clark, she didn’t worry. She acted, reacted, attacked, confronted. He didn’t envy Stefan having her underfoot, literally. She was probably coming out of her skin. If there was one thing Oûros’s most polished diplomat didn’t like, it was any lack of control. And Nicki Clark had that in spades.

Lauren’s voice recalled him. “But she’s the only one there?” she asked, clearly mapping out her communications strategy. “Not my parents?”

He shook his head. “They continue to search. Cyril took them into the mountains, stopping at every château along the way. He has assured them that you cannot leave the country without our knowledge. Oûros is not that big.”

She grimaced. “I have to contact them, Dimitri.”

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