Chapter 17

"… A

nd so, that's why the Queen of Finland hired me – to bring down the Australian government."

Maisie sat back in her chair, feeling a not entirely undeserved sensation of satisfaction as she looked at Military Man sitting across the table from her, his head in his hands.

"First of all," he said, after several moments of very strained silence, "the nation of Finland has never been an independent sovereign monarchy. There has never been a king, let alone a queen, of Finland. Second of all, are you trying to suggest to me that you did all this to smuggle submarine parts hidden inside bags of potato chips out of the country? And third of all… none of that made even the slightest bit of sense whatsoever!"

As he finally raised his head to look her in the eye, Maisie sat back, affecting wide-eyed innocence.

"But you asked me to tell you everything I know, and that's what I'm doing! It's not my fault if you won't believe me."

Military Man let out a long, slow exhale. It was pretty clear to Maisie he was only just barely keeping his cool.

But at least I've wasted a whole bunch of his time, she thought. She'd managed to spin her tale out to almost an hour. Military Man had been taking notes to begin with, but as she'd gone on he'd stopped, then he'd just started staring at her as if she was a lunatic, and Maisie wasn't completely unconvinced he hadn't stopped her just because he'd been unwillingly curious about what she was going to say next.

"Look," Military Man said, after a few light breathing exercises. "I've tried being nice. I've made you an offer. So how about you get serious, or I'll get seri—"

CRASH!!

As glass flew everywhere and Maisie flung herself to the floor, she idly wondered whether it was possible for her to go more than forty-eight hours without something exploding at her.

Apparently not, she decided, feeling oddly calm. Apparently this kind of thing was just her life now, and she'd decided to embrace it.

Especially because she had a feeling that this explosion was a beneficial explosion.

Sure enough, as the dust settled and she peered up over the edge of the table, she saw what a part of her deep down in her soul had known she would see: Rhys, in the last stages of his transformation from griffin to human, straightening up and shaking out the glass in his hair with an absolutely murderous expression on his face.

Rhys, she thought, her heart soaring. I knew you'd come.

His hand shot out and grabbed Military Man by the throat, squeezing tight. Even though the guy had the enormous neck of a life-long rugby player, Rhys's fingers dug in until he struggled for breath, his feet dangling as Rhys lifted him single-handedly off the floor.

Rhys's eyes blazed as he squeezed tighter. "Let. My. Mate. Go. "

"Rhys," said Maisie clearly, straightening up. "It's okay. Put him down."

"Put him down?" Rhys said, still staring the gasping Military Man in the eyes. "Maybe once he lets you out of here." But he relented, loosening his grip – and then suddenly, Military Man disappeared entirely.

Maisie blinked. Where had he gone?

It took her a long moment to realize that, of course, Military Man – I really need to find out what his name is! – would be a shifter as well, and apparently he had taken the opportunity to escape. But what did he turn into?

She looked down, eyes scanning the floor… but, nothing. Bewildered, she looked up at Rhys, who looked almost as confused as she felt. "Where did he go?"

"I can sense that he's still here," Rhys said. But he wasn't looking for him – he was looking directly at Maisie, the protectiveness in his gaze so intense that she shivered.

"I'm okay," she said, running around the table and throwing herself into his warm arms. "They didn't do anything to me. That guy just asked me some questions that I had no idea about and made me a cup of tea. He even gave me a Scotch Finger."

Rhys huffed a laugh, his arms tightening around her. "What, not even a Monte Carlo? Cheapskate."

Maisie laughed back. "I know, right? The economy is in shambles if a secret agent can't even afford the good stuff."

"Times are tough for everyone, I guess," Rhys mused, still holding her tight. After a moment he pulled back from her reluctantly, looking her in the eye as if to check that she was truly okay.

"I'm fine," she said truthfully. "It was almost fun. Almost."

Rhys shook his head a little, smiling. "I'll have to take your word for it."

"More fun than bursting through a glass window, anyway," she said. "Do you shifters even know how to enter a room normally?"

"Are you sure you want to talk like that to the guy who can get these cuffs off you?" Rhys said playfully, mock-stern. "Because I can just leave them on you, if you like."

Warmth ran through Maisie's belly. "… Maybe some other time," she murmured, gazing up at him. "But probably I shouldn't be running around town with a pair of handcuffs on."

"I'll hold you to that," Rhys said, his gaze heated – and he reached down, cradling her hands gently for a moment, before he snapped the chain clean in two.

Okay. Wow.

A sudden movement caught her eye, and she looked up – to see a spider on the ceiling. She startled, still a bit jumpy, before relaxing.

"What is it?" Rhys asked, concerned.

"Oh, nothing," she said. "I saw a spider and I was worried for a moment, but it's just a daddy longlegs. I guess they really do have a lot more bugs up here."

Rhys turned around to look, craning his neck – and then pushed Maisie across the table, following close after, as the spider dropped from the ceiling and turned into an enormous, hulking, very pissed-off man with a flat-top haircut.

Oh my God. He turns into a daddy longlegs?!

… That's almost kind of cute , she thought, and tried not to smile . I wonder if he's overcompensating for it in his human form, given how easy it would be for him to get squished. He couldn't even shift into his spider form until Rhys had loosened his grip.

Military Man loomed over her from the other side of the table, his face red with rage. " You! " he snarled. "Agent Richardson, you and your double agent friend here are testing my patience."

" We are?!" Rhys spat back, pushing Maisie behind him and toward the door. "You people have pushed me way past the point of my patience being tested . My patience has failed ."

"I can see why you're under investigation," Military Man sneered. "Incompetent and insubordinate. I only wonder how you ever got brought on in the first place."

Rhys bristled, and Maisie could tell that he was struggling to keep his temper in check. "We're getting out of here," he said to Maisie, as he reached for one of the crappy plastic chairs sitting at the conference table, grabbing it by the backrest. Understanding immediately, Maisie backed further away, watching appreciatively as Rhys leapt over the table and whacked Military Man over the head with the chair, catching him on the jaw with one of the metal legs. A second strike had him staggering, but it was obvious that it wouldn't keep him long – and, as strong as Rhys was, Maisie knew that he would struggle to go one-on-one with this guy in a fight.

"Run!" Rhys yelled, following her out of the door and into the corridor.

They bolted toward the emergency exit staircase, Maisie's heart pounding with every step, before she skidded to a stop.

"Brent!" she yelped. "We have to save Brent!"

"Are you kidding me?" Rhys exclaimed. "He's a shifter criminal! If he'd been caught in Sydney, I'd be the one interrogating him right now."

Maisie's stomach twisted. "I know, but they haven't arrested him for things he actually did! He's been set up too. He's a jerk and an idiot and a shitty boyfriend, but he's not a murderer. And you said yourself you don't know who you can trust right now."

Rhys's eyebrow twitched.

"You can have him arrested by your own people for the crimes he actually committed," Maisie pleaded. "But I don't want him to get disappeared."

And she didn't. She didn't think she could live with herself if she just left him here to get interrogated by shady types without at least trying her best. He could go to hell after that for all she cared, but she had to do something now.

"Michael said that the Agency had booked out the entire sixth floor," Rhys said, and Maisie looked up and down the corridor. About twelve doors in all – they definitely wouldn't have time to check all of them.

Surely they wouldn't have taken him too far? She put her ear to the nearest door, but, nothing.

Then suddenly, from the next door down, she heard the faint cry: " I swear, I didn't do anything! I keep telling you! "

There was only one person who could be both that cowardly and that annoyingly repetitive. She turned to look at Rhys, who nodded, and she moved herself back out of the way as he raised his foot.

When we move in together, we're getting a place with no doors.

The door burst inward under Rhys's foot, and he ran into the room, Maisie one step behind.

Brent, for his part, shrieked and toppled out of his chair. Maisie couldn't say that she entirely blamed him, given the number of times she'd had the same experience over the past few days, but it was still pretty satisfying. He definitely deserved to get knocked around a little.

"Come on!" she yelled, grabbing his cuffed wrists and hauling him to his feet while Rhys delivered a swift punch to the nose of one of his captors. Brent stumbled and almost fell, whimpering, and she kept him upright by sheer force of will and adrenaline.

"Babe," he whispered – and then, belatedly, amended it to, "Maisie."

"He can be taught!" she exclaimed, dragging him out of the room. "Come on – get moving. We're getting out of here."

The three of them stumbled along the corridor – well, Brent stumbled, Maisie stumbled as she tried to hold him up, and Rhys moved with the preternatural grace of a born predator – and yet, the emergency exit didn't seem to get any closer with every passing step. If anything, it seemed to be getting further away.

Maisie tried to propel Brent toward the exit even faster. There had to be more agents preparing to burst out of the hotel rooms at any second.

Or maybe it's –

Before she could finish the thought, she was knocked aside with a blow that knocked the air from her lungs – and Brent was sent sprawling, pinned to the ground by a flying tackle from Military Man. Clearly, he'd managed to recover from the chair leg Rhys had hit him with, and he was back for more.

Maisie, coughing, felt Rhys's arms around her, pulling her to her feet, in the moment before he noticed the situation with Military Man and Brent.

"Shit," Rhys muttered, turning back, clearly determined to haul Military Man off of Brent. Rhys reached down to grab the back of Military Man's shirt, but stopped, a confused expression on his face.

Maisie looked down to see what had him so confused, and felt her own face contort into an expression that she wasn't sure she'd be able to describe, even if she could have seen it.

Military Man was on his hands and knees over Brent, who was lying on the ground. The two of them were frozen in an awkward tableau, eyes locked, and – could Maisie detect a slight tremble in Military Man's arms?

"Where have you been all my life?" Brent whispered, his eyes never leaving Military Man's face.

" What? " Maisie exclaimed.

What on earth is going on?!

"I was waiting for you," Military Man replied, his voice choked with emotion. "I had resigned myself to never finding my mate. I never imagined –" He cut himself off with a shake of his head, clearly overwhelmed for a moment, before continuing on. "But, how rude of me. My name's Daniel. But you can call me Danny."

"Brent," Brent said, staring up into his eyes in awe. "But you probably already knew that."

"Brent," repeated Daniel, as if in wonder. "My mate. Brent."

"You fucking hypocritical sack of shit!" bellowed Rhys. "When it was my mate you couldn't say I was compromised by emotions fast enough!"

But it was clear that neither Brent nor Daniel – Danny – was listening to a word he was saying. They were too busy gazing into each other's eyes, a look of wonderment on their faces.

Oh, that is so typical, Maisie thought.

Rolling his eyes, Rhys turned to Maisie. "Come on – we have to get going right now."

"Will Brent be okay?" Maisie asked distractedly, though her heart wasn't really in it. This whole thing was too weird by far. Which she knew was her own hypocrisy, given that she'd just met her mate as well and she knew what effect that could have on a person… but, still. It was Brent and Military Man – Daniel – making goo-goo eyes at each other on the floor. She hoped Military Man's sense of duty wouldn't override his heart, and he'd do the right thing by Brent.

"He'll be fine," Rhys said, grabbing her wrist and dragging her along.

"Way to go, Brent!" she called out as she left, still reeling a bit at the absurdity of it all. Brent didn't answer, and she didn't look back to see why not.

In any case, she had to admit, she was a bit too busy marveling at the way Rhys shouldered open the door to the stairwell as if it wasn't even there to think or care much about what Brent and Military Man might be doing.

Mainly, she just wanted to get out of here.

"Come on," Rhys said, once he'd leaned into the stairwell to check the coast was clear. "We have to hurry."

Maisie followed him at a run down the stairs, but there was no way she could keep up with him – she considered herself pretty fit, since she was often on her feet for hours at a time, but Rhys, aside from being obviously in peak physical condition – and don't I know it – was using some kind of shifter leaping ability to propel himself down entire flights of stairs with as much effort as if he was strolling across a hillside on a sunny day.

"Rhys!" she gasped out, doing her best to follow him. "Slow down – I can't keep up!"

"Shit," Rhys muttered, before he leapt back up the stairs he'd just leapt down. "Come on – don't worry. I'll carry you."

Maisie didn't have time to get a word out before she was swept up in Rhys's arms, bridal-style, and carried down the next flight of stairs snuggled safely against his chest.

That is it, she thought, completely unable to resist cuddling a little closer to him. I am never taking the lift again. This is the only way to travel.

Rhys wasn't even breaking a sweat as he sailed down the stairs four or five at a time, leaping as gracefully as a panther. At this pace, it was only a few more seconds until they were on the ground floor, though Rhys apparently didn't see any need to put her down.

He ignored the doorhandle – Well, he is holding me in his arms this time, I guess, so he has an excuse – and instead lifted his foot and kicked the doors at the bottom of the stairs down, and carried her out into the brilliant white sunlight.

"Trent! Euan!"

Rhys's voice was loud in her ears as he carried her at a run. Glancing around, still secure against his chest, Maisie took a moment to get her bearings.

As Rhys rounded a corner of the hotel, she realized she knew where they were – he'd carried her around the back, to where the helicopter had landed and she'd been hustled out of it. She could see a few of the stern-looking men who'd been guarding the doors when she'd arrived – not that she'd been expecting them to go anywhere.

She wondered if they were friends of Rhys's, and if it was them he was calling to – at least until she saw the two other men who were standing a short distance off, their heads turning as Rhys called what she assumed had to be their names.

One was very tall and kind of rangy, though she could see he still had muscles underneath his white tank top and kind of loud Hawaiian shirt. The other one was a little shorter, but way more powerfully built – like a brick shithouse, her mind helpfully supplied, but it was true.

"Are they friends of yours?" Maisie murmured, as Rhys placed her down on the ground with a gentleness that was belied by the fact he'd just spent the last fifteen minutes hitting men with chairs and kicking down doors.

"Yeah." Rhys gave her a reassuring nod. "Don't worry, I'm sure we can trust them ."

Maisie decided to believe him – the certainty in his voice made it impossible for her to do anything else.

"We have to get to a boat, or a helicopter, or some other way back to Sydney," Rhys said, as the guys he'd called Trent and Euan started running over toward them. "Or anywhere that's not here. This place is crawling with agents, and we're not going to get them off our backs until we've been able to tell the truth about everything."

"But what even is the truth?" Maisie asked. "And why do they think I'm the culprit?"

"I don't know that yet," Rhys said grimly, as he took her hand once more, urging her to run. "But I will find out. Michael's sent me some info I'll have to take some time to read over. But then, whoever did this is going down ."

A warm shiver ran through her at the heated, dangerous tone of Rhys's voice. She couldn't help it, she guessed – she just loved a bad boy.

"All ready to go, are we?" the taller of the two men Rhys had called to said when they reached them. "Packed your bags?"

"Save the jokes, Trent," Rhys snapped. "We need to get back to the boat. Has it got enough fuel to get us out of here?"

"Far enough," the tall man – Trent – replied. "Not as far as Sydney, but far enough."

"Then let's go," Rhys said grimly.

The four of them set off at a run. Maisie didn't know Townsville at all, but she had seen enough on the way in to know that they were heading in the direction of the ocean, and that it wasn't far at all.

We can do it.

Her heart thudded as her feet pounded on the footpath, the closeness of their goal giving her the energy boost she needed to power through. She'd probably sleep for a week after all this, but right now she felt alert and energized.

She chanced a glance over her shoulder, and saw what were obviously a large number of agents exiting from the hotel grounds and sprinting after them. They were far enough back that Maisie thought they wouldn't be able to catch up – but even so, she put on an extra burst of speed she hadn't even known herself to be capable of, sweat pouring off of her in the humid warmth of the afternoon.

Almost there.

She ran on, keeping pace with the other three, hoping that they weren't drawing too much attention. The last thing they needed was to draw the ire of the local cops by looking like they were escaping from a crime scene!

Even though we kind of are.

A row of palm trees and flagpoles appeared in the distance, and beyond them, a blue sliver of ocean.

And, in front of them, a whole lot of cars.

Maisie skidded to a stop, her heart dropping in dismay.

Traffic? Here?!

She knew that Townsville wasn't a tiny country town, but it wasn't exactly the kind of place where one would experience major traffic problems. Or so she'd thought.

Because the scene in front of her was what one might politely describe as ‘traffic chaos'.

It wasn't a traffic jam – they could've dealt with that simply by running between the cars. No, this was cars moving just slowly enough to cause a backlog, and just quickly enough to be dangerous. Not to mention the honking, swerving, and people yelling excitedly and leaning out of car windows to get a look at something.

What the hell is going on?

Beside her, Rhys swore.

Maisie stood up on her tiptoes, trying to work out what the hold-up was. As a car moved out of the way, she caught a glimpse: in the middle of the roundabout a crocodile was happily sunning itself, lifting its head lazily when curious onlookers dared to get too close. Unlike the one at the mini-golf course, this one seemed to be very much an actual croc.

Well, I did want a Queensland holiday, Maisie thought. Looks like they pulled out all the stops.

Rhys turned to Trent. "Can you jump over this traffic while holding Maisie?" he asked urgently, as cars streamed past. "I don't want to have to shift and fly her over, but I will if I have to, and deal with the consequences later."

Trent nodded tersely. "I'd have to make one jump to the traffic island and then another one to the other side, but I reckon I could do it. Hopefully they're all too distracted by the crocodile to pay too much attention, or they've been indulging in enough day drinking to think they're imagining it."

"Jump?" Maisie said, laughing nervously. "Like a kangaroo or something?"

"Pretty much, yeah," said Trent with a light laugh. "Though I won't be shifting this time – it's just that I never skip leg day, so I'm pretty handy in this form as well."

"Enough," Rhys said. "You get her over there and onto the boat. Euan and I will hold them off if they catch up before we can cross – leave without us if we don't make it back. Getting Maisie out of here is the priority."

Trent nodded again, not even protesting the idea of leaving the others behind, and despite everything, Maisie took a moment to be impressed by their professionalism. She certainly didn't want to leave them behind!

She wanted to protest, but could see that it would be pointless. She'd simply have to trust that the other Agency agents wouldn't harm Rhys or Euan if they captured them.

Swallowing, she nodded in agreement, before giving Rhys a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Stay safe," she said, and Rhys nodded.

"I will."

"Okay," she said to Trent. "Do your thing."

She felt herself lifted into the air, and gasped in surprise. That was quick!

Below her, Rhys and Euan and the crocodile stared up at her, mouths open.

As did Trent.

Huh. That's weird. I thought Trent was supposed to be the one carrying me? Does he just astrally project as a kangaroo?

They got smaller and smaller as she watched, and, she realized, Rhys was yelling her name.

It was at that moment that she became aware of the tight grip around her upper arms. She looked down at her arm in surprise, to see that it was encircled by an enormous, cruelly-clawed talon.

Talon??

The figures on the ground were quite small now, the wind whipping her hair around, and Maisie suspected that possibly she wasn't being bounced across the road by a kangaroo man.

Gulping, she looked up directly above her…

… And saw the most massive, monstrous bird she had ever seen in her life.