Page 9 of The Hero Within
"You can have everything." Luc's shoulders slumped in relief. "I can mark out the route you'll need to take. You'll have to cross the Rim and the Great Divide, which means going via Rimside."
"Don't make any rushed decisions in the meantime," she said, patting his arm. "I need to make a radio call to Absolution. Let them know what's going on."
"Understood." His head swiveled toward her. "But if you're not back by the end of fourteen days, then I will do what I have to do to save my daughter."
"Fourteen days," she whispered.
"Fourteen days."
Chapter Three
"Excuse me,"said a firm voice. "I want to hire a guide to take me across the Great Divide."
How polite, was the first thought that went through Johnny Colton's head.
It was the sort of female voice that stroked through him, enticing him with long-lost thoughts of community, when he'd stalked the edges of civilization and hungered to be a part of the human world. The sort of voice that turned a man's head out here along the edges of the Rim, where only the very desperate rode—bounty hunters searching for warg or reiver scalps; salvagers looking for scraps out here in the barren Wastelands; the odd Nomad biker turned smuggler; and those like him, who were trying to stay lost.
The sort of voice that conjured thoughts of a pair of well-shaped lips wrapping around the precise consonants, and leading directly to the idea of what else those lips might be able to wrap themselves around.
Fuck.Trouble had walked into the bar he'd chosen to dwell in for the past week. He just knew it.
Laughter exploded behind him as Johnny lifted his forehead off his arms. His blurry gaze locked on the slim figure standing in front of the bar.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," said the bartender, even as one of the other patrons whistled at her. "Nobody crosses the Divide. It's full of shadow cats and wargs. Not even the reivers go there and they're borderline psychopathswitha death wish."
"I don't have a choice." There was definitely frustration in the young woman's voice now. "And I'm sure there's somebody who'll do it... for the right price."
Son of a bitch.Johnny was cursing her for walking into his bar when the woman turned and he caught just a glimpse of the side of her face and the stubborn jut of her chin.
Everything stopped.
For a second the world froze, dust motes hovering in the air as Johnny's gaze narrowed in upon her, his heartbeat pounding thickly in his ears.
A tangle of golden-brown curls. A firm ass clad in a pair of no-nonsense jeans. Knuckles resting on a set of generous hips as she glared at the bartender.
He had to be dreaming, but that looked like Eden McClain. He even had the knot in his gut to go along with it.
Hell, no. His memory must be playing tricks on him.
Johnny reached inside his leather riding bag—or the one he'd appropriated from his old enemy, Adam McClain—and withdrew the faded photo of McClain's baby sister from inside it.
A sunny-faced girl smiled out at him, her mess of chestnut hair snagging in unruly curls around her face, and her green eyes reminding him of McClain's.
Sweat sprang up along his spine. Memory swept him into the past—
Johnny hauled the skinny young woman toward the hut his uncle, Bartholomew Cane, had picked out.
"What are you doing?" Eden McClain screamed, kicking out at him with her boot. "Adam! Adam, help—"
"You leave her alone!" McClain roared.
Johnny looked up at the woman in front of him. She'd turned away from the bar with a scowl, chewing on her knuckle. She was at least fifteen years older than the girl in the photo. Far more serious of expression, with a small crease between her brows as if she frowned often—or needed glasses, perhaps.
But there were the messy curls, knotted back in a loose bun on top of her head, and there were those dangerous green eyes, and there were— Holy fuck, Eden McClain had grown one hell of a set of tits.
Itwasher.
Had to be. He'd been staring at that bloody photo for two years, ever since he stole the bag from McClain and found it within, just another memento to haunt him.
