Disturbed by the absence of memory, Scotty tried harder and dug deeper into the man’s mind, but there was nothing there. The area when the accident had happened was blank. It was as if he hadn’t been there during it.
Or as if he’d been under someone’s control, Scotty thought with concern. He took a moment to calm the man’s mind, and then stood and turned to survey Beth’s vehicle.
She was lucky to be alive. Had her seat belt not snapped, allowing her to avoid the girders, she might have been beheaded. And he wasn’t quite sure how the Explorer hadn’t exploded and burned her alive when the flatbed dropped on it. Those were the only two ways that an immortal could die, beheading or burning, and an accident like this should have resulted in one or the other of those outcomes.
“Mortimer says he’s got a team on the way. They’ll be here in five minutes.”
Scotty glanced to Donny at that announcement and nodded abruptly, then led him to where Beth was leaning into the Explorer. His eyebrows rose as he heard her mutter an unhappy “Damn.”
“Problem?” he asked.
Backing out of the car, she straightened and held up a shoe that had slid out of the plastic bag. “The Explorer ate my shoe.”
Scotty grinned crookedly. “Ate it, eh?”
Beth stared at the remaining shoe and moaned, “They were my favorite shoes.”
Scott shifted his gaze from her pretty, flushed face framed with red hair and looked down at the shoe she held. He then blinked. Good Lord in heaven, the shoe was as red as a candy apple, the heel a good four or five inches high, and he immediately envisioned her wearing them and nothing else. And then he recalled that there was only one now and she’d never again wear them, naked or otherwise, and was nearly as distressed as Beth appeared to be. He really would have liked to have seen her in them.
“Ah well,” Beth muttered, tossing that incredible shoe back into the vehicle. “At least my weapons case appears to be all right, and my overnight bags appear to be okay too.” She pulled them out of the Explorer one after the other.
Scotty took each item from her, slinging the bags over his shoulder and reaching for the next item until she pulled out a long tubular something. He took it, but then turned it slowly in his hand and sniffed it, asking, “What is this?”
“Huh?” She turned with a brick of something white and stinky in hand and peered at the item he was eyeing with interest. “Oh. Goose sausage. A friend gave it to me. It’s really good too, but I was worried that it and these other foods would go bad while I was gone, so I thought I’d best take it all to the Enforcer house. If I’m not going to be gone long, I’ll just store it there and collect it when I get back, but if I’ll be gone longer, Sam and Mortimer can have it or give it away to charity.”
She finished her explanation by plopping the smelly white brick in his free hand and then returned to digging in the car.
The minute she’d turned her back, Scotty handed off the white brick to Donny but held on to that sausage. It smelled delightfully delicious. He could almost take a bite right now.
“I think that’s everything,” Beth announced, turning with a somewhat crushed box holding several more items of food.
“Good, because if I’m no’ mistaken, I believe that truck pullin’ up behind our SUV is Mortimer’s men,” Scotty commented, his gaze narrowed on the vehicle as two men got out, one fair-haired and one dark-haired.
“It’s Russell and Francis,” Donny said, recognizing them. Concern on his face, he added, “Man, Mortimer must be desperately low on people if he took them off the gate to come out here and handle this.”
Scotty frowned at the comment, and reached into his pocket to clasp his phone as they watched the men start across the other side of the highway toward the median. He was considering sending for a half dozen of his own hunters to come help out here . . . just until this business in Venezuela was resolved. He might send a couple down to Venezuela as well to help out there. It would keep his thumb on the pulse of what was happening with that business.
“Hola!”
Blinking his thoughts away, Scotty raised his eyebrows as the dark-haired man leapt over the second concrete barrier and rushed ahead of his partner to greet them. He fairly danced between the slow-moving vehicles in the inside lane and then rushed to Beth and caught her up in his arms.
Scotty stiffened and scowled as the man hugged her tightly and cried, “Elizabeth Argenis! You must be more careful. You cannot get yourself killed after we’ve just become friends.”
“MacDonald.”
Scotty heard the greeting as the fair-haired man reached them, but was busy trying to incinerate the darker man with his eyes.
“I do not think you have met my life mate, Francis. Have you?”
That caught his attention, and Scotty blinked and turned to peer at the speaker. “Russell,” he said, recognizing the fair-haired man now. His gaze swung back to the man still holding Beth in his arms. “Your life mate?”
“Yes,” Russell said, his eyes twinkling with amusement, and then he glanced to the darker man and admonished, “Francis, put Beth down and come meet Scotty.”
Francis froze, his head jerking toward them, eyes wide. Setting Beth down, he spun her around to face them and dropped his arm across her shoulders as he stared at Scotty. “Not Scotty the head of the UK Enforcers and the man we have to be nice to if we want to go to London during our European tour so you can introduce me to the Green Giant that Victoria and Julianna were giggling about?”
“He did no’ e’en stop to take a breath,” Scotty said to Russell in a marveling tone, and then glanced to Francis and added, “But yer bum’s out the window, lad.”
“My bum’s out the window?” Francis echoed with alarm and looked over his shoulder at his behind as if afraid he might have a hole in his trousers.
“It means you are talking nonsense,” Russell explained with amusement.
“Aye,” Scotty said. “Ye do no’ need me permission to visit London. All immortals are welcome so long as they behave.”
“And do as he says,” Beth teased, offering Scotty a sweet smile when he glanced her way.
Russell’s eyebrows rose slightly at her sass, and then he said abruptly, “Well, I am glad you are alive and well, Beth, because Mortimer is waiting on you at the house. Apparently, he has a job for you?”
“Oh, damn, yes, I should get going,” she said, her gaze shifting to the destroyed Explorer with a frown.
“We’ll drive ye back,” Scotty said at once. Taking her arm, he nodded at Russell. “A pleasure to see ye again, Argeneau.”
“It’s Jones this decade,” Russell said with a smile, referring to the last name he was using at the moment. “Francis’s family name of Renart is next decade, and then it will be Argeneau again the decade after that.”
“Jones, then,” Scotty corrected himself and gave a nod to both men before urging Beth away. They had to get back to the house. The plane would be there by now, waiting on them, and as busy as things were, the pilot would not be happy about having to cool his jets. Unfortunately, the delay would not be over even once they reached the house. Mortimer still had to explain the job to Beth . . . and tell her that Scotty would be going with her on this job.
“Wait, what?” Beth blinked in surprise at Mortimer’s words. They’d arrived at the house just moments ago. Sam had greeted them at the door and sent them to Mortimer’s office, where he had shocked her with the greeting, “I’m glad you were not injured in the accident. I do not think Scotty and Donny could have handled this job without you. It needs a delicate touch.”
Shaking her head, she said with confusion, “But I work with Tybo and Valerian. They—”
“Both took a knife to the heart,” Mortimer interrupted solemnly. “Rachel, Dr. Argeneau, would like them to take at least another day off to recover fully.”
“Oh,” Beth said weakly. She would have expected the two men to be mostly healed by now if they’d been given blood transfusions and such, but mostly healed wasn’t fully healed and she was no doctor, so it looked like she’d be stuck with Scotty a bit longer.