Page 28 of Nauti Siren (Nauti 7)

“I’ll be there in approximately three hours,” Jed told him. “Can you wait?”

“We’ll be here until you get to her,” Bret promised. “But if you could get here faster, it would be good. I heard the nurse say someone else already called the hospital and asked about the lady attacked at the hotel, so whoever attacked her could be planning to come back. ”

“How many are with you?”

“Just me, my best friend, Matt, and his girlfriend, Olivia,” Bret told him. “We’ll wait on you. No one’s going to bother her while we’re here. ”

“Thank you. ” Jed wasn’t reassured, but he had to admit he was damned glad to know she wasn’t alone.

“Well, if it was my sister, I’d want someone to wait on me,” the boy admitted. “Drive careful. We’ll be here. ”

Careful?

Jed hit the interstate and pushed his foot on the gas as he disconnected the call, then made another.

“Control,” a well-modulated feminine voice answered.

“This is Agent Booker,” he stated before quickly giving his control number. “I’m en route to agency airfield in Louisville, Kentucky. Advise all law enforcement to allow disposition and advise agency pilot to have transport ready. Destination New York City. ”

“We have you on satellite, Agent Booker,” Control advised him. “All law enforcement will be advised and turned away. Proceed with caution to airfield Delta-Bravo-Tahoe, where a pilot will be advised to be waiting in hangar six-four-zero. ”

“Understood,” he responded. “Agent Booker out. ”

No doubt Timothy would question him once he was given the report of Jed’s midnight race to New York City, but that could be days away, possibly weeks, until Timothy called and requested agent maneuver reports. Though that was something he rarely did.

The landscape sped by; the roads, luckily, weren’t busy in the hours after midnight until four in the morning or later. It gave him the space needed to travel safely at the speed needed to reach the airport just outside Louisville and to still the sudden, unheard-of terror piercing his heart.

What the hell was Piper doing in New York City?

Whoever the hell she’d been sneaking out to meet had obviously abducted her, hadn’t they? Piper surely wouldn’t leave the state without letting her brother, Dawg, know she was leaving.

Or would she?

Damn her.

He’d been driving himself insane in his attempt to figure out where she had gone without resorting to official channels or contacts to learn her secrets. She’d left without telling him with whom or where she was going. It was obvious she didn’t want to share the information or the identity of her lover.

She hadn’t wanted to share it then; she would share it now.

She would share it or he would be on the phone

to Dawg.

Piper and her sisters didn’t think there was anything worse than having their brother or male cousins pissed. Piper was about to find out there was something far worse.

There was Jed, and he wasn’t about to let an attack against her go.

This had nothing to do with protectiveness or control. It had nothing to do with an attempt to dominate her life. What it had to do with was the fact that someone had dared to hurt her, and he would make certain that someone had the favor returned.

* * *

Piper stared at the nurse in disgust.

“You can’t make me stay here,” she informed the middle-aged, kindly looking nurse as the woman stared back at her with concerned hazel eyes.

Standing at five feet, four inches if she was lucky, her gray-and-brown hair pulled back from her face in a tight braid as the small wrinkles at the corners of her eyes drew in with her frown, the nurse watched her in disapproval.

“You’ve had a concussion, Ms. Mackay, and I doubt you feel much like walking right now, let alone traveling to the train station. If you’ll just calm down, the doctor will be in soon; he can check you and let you know what damage has been done. ”

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