Page 15 of Black Bay Protector
She did. She’d tucked it under her thigh while she’d been driving so she’d have easy access to it if she needed it.
He pulled out a holster. “Here, put this on and cover it with your sweater.”
Paige eyed the building and the people moving in and out of the doors. A small group of children were playing tag on the grassy hill in front of the building, their squeals of laughter ringing through the air. Maybe they shouldn’t have stopped in such a public place. Were they leading the danger here? The sooner they were gone, the better.
Snatching the holster from Jace, she put the gun in it and secured the clip to her waistband, covering it as he’d suggested. “Find that tracker quick and destroy it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jace replied, reaching for his door handle.
Before he could open it, she grabbed his hand. “Wait.” Her eyes went back to the children playing. “If you find it, let’s drive away first, lead them away from here. Then destroy it.”
Jace’s eyes followed hers and he grimaced. “Agreed.”
As Jace used the device to search the van, his thoughts lingered on the earlier fight. Less than a minute. That was all it had taken for that soldier to get the best of him. He’d lost fights before. Some of his people were stronger than him, built like tanks where he was built for hunting and stealth, but he’d never lost a fight that quickly. Not even against Kong and he was the strongest of them. If it hadn’t been for Paige, Jace would be dead right now. He was sure of it. He didn’t know what had happened and was pretty sure Paige didn’t either, but whatever it was, whatever glitch she’d caused in that soldier’s matrix, it was the only reason Jace was still breathing.
He might heal from a wide assortment of injuries – Doctor Dietrich had herself tested an extensive number in that torture chamber she called a lab – but he wasn’t immortal. If someone ripped off his head or tore out his heart, he was done. Game over. If there were more soldiers out there like that, he needed to warn his people…
Straightening from his crouch, Jace scratched his head. He was at his wit’s end. There had to be a tracker. There had to be. It was the only plausible reason why they’d been found. But he’d scoured the van, crawled underneath it, checked the engine compartment, even crawled around inside in case they’d somehow managed to get one in the interior. Not a single beep. He knew the range on the device was pretty narrow, but he should have at least had a chirp by this point.
He looked up at the sky, his hand shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. Maybe a drone had been tracking them?
“Did you find it?” Paige called out as she strolled down the hill. She stopped for a moment and smiled at the children, saying hello, before she called out to him again. “They have vending machines up there. Do we need to replenish the snacks?”
She was roughly five feet away when the beeping began, the rhythmic sound speeding up as she drew closer. Jace stared stupidly at the thing as the implication he didn’t want to consider took hold.
When she stopped beside him, the sound became one long beep like a heart monitor that had flat-lined. Fuck! Please let it be on her clothes…
“What’s the matter? What’s going on?”
“The tracker’s on you,” he gruffly stated as he began running his hands over her jeans, and her shoes, searching even the tiniest of bumps carefully.
“Oh, my God. Are you serious?” Catching on to what he was doing, Paige practically ripped the sweater he’d loaned her over her head and began to check it over while he moved to her back to search her t-shirt for an uninvited guest.
Nothing. They had to look deeper. “Get in the back of the van. You’re going to have to strip.”
Paige didn’t hesitate, but his enhanced hearing didn’t miss her dryly muttered, “Not how I’d hoped to get naked with you.”
Dammit. He felt the same. What he wouldn’t do to have an eternity to explore every inch of her skin, taste her, hold her, love her as thoroughly as she deserved, but this couldn’t wait. If he didn’t find and remove that tracker, there’d be no place to escape to, no place she’d be safe.
Pulling her to the back of the van, he threw each piece of clothing she discarded toward the front until she was bare from head to toe. She was so beautiful to him, absolutely breathtaking, but there was no time to fully admire her as he would have liked.
He’d expected the sensor to slow back to its earlier rhythmic beeps once whatever item of clothing the tracker was stuck to was tossed away. That didn’t happen. Instead, it kept up that long tone he was loathed to hear.
“You said you weren’t hit!”
Jace wasn’t angry at her. And he hadn’t meant that bellow to sound like an accusation, but the realization of what he’d have to do to Paige was making him crazy. The tracker had to be implanted subdermally somewhere on her body and their only option was to cut it out.
“I wasn’t!” she insisted, looking aghast at the sensor that was still singing. Her expression suddenly morphed into a thoughtful frown as her hand drifted down to her leg. That’s when Jace saw the quarter-sized purplish bruise on her outer thigh with a red spot in the center.
Quietly, more to herself he was sure, she uttered, “I thought I was just hit with flying debris.”
Flicking off the sensor and its annoying sound, Jace took her hand. “We have to get it out.”
Her fingers gripped his hand tightly, the only sign that she was feeling any sort of trepidation for what had to be done, but her chin raised a notch and her eyes were determined when she said, “Do it.”
Respect. Jace may have been the one engineered with animal DNA but at that moment, it was his woman who was the impressive beast. He couldn’t help but fall a little bit in love with her.
Chapter Eight
