Without Regret (Pyte/Sentinel #2)(6)
Author: R.L. Mathewson

A throat cleared in front of him. “And this is the man I brought you to see, Isabella,” a familiar voice announced.

Oh…..shit.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he looked up and swallowed, hard. The first thing he saw was his grandmother glaring at him from her spot at the head of the long oak dinner table. The two priests standing behind her looked more amused than anything. No doubt living with the Williams was more entertaining than living in a rectory.

He frowned as his gaze landed on a small woman being held between two large Sentinel males who looked completely bored. His eyes automatically continued further to the left to find Eric standing a few feet away from the trio with his arms folded over his chest, looking really pissed off.

Eric opened his mouth to say something, but Chris wasn’t listening. His gaze for some reason shot back to the woman. Once there he couldn’t look away. She was short, even shorter than his sister Jill. Her long wavy honey blonde hair made her look even smaller. Intense green eyes matching his own openly glared in Eric’s direction. Beautiful didn’t describe her, cute in a little sister kind of way was the best description he could come up with, but he wasn’t looking at her like she was his sister.

It didn’t matter that he was in a room with several priests, his grandmother, and his boss. He couldn’t stop devouring her with his eyes. There was just something about her. Damn, he even liked her lips. They were so cute and kissable. His eyes dropped to her little round chin down to her littleHe may have groaned. There was nothing little about that particular area. Holy shit, he didn’t know if it was because they were on such a small woman or what, but they looked huge. Were those double D’s? He frowned, how the hell did the woman stop herself from falling over? He gave himself a mental shake and forced his eyes to move down.

Eric was saying something to him, but right now he couldn’t care less. Hell, this whole house could be on fire and he wouldn’t be able to stop his perusal of her. His eyes dropped to a small waist, very generous h*ps and short legs he’d kill to see without those baggy cargo pants. He’d be willing to bet everything he had that her legs were short, but very shapely.

She was so sexy and adorable. All he wanted to do was go over to her lick her entire body and bury his face betweenHe froze.

He wanted her. Holy shit, he wanted a woman! This was it. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He needed to get the hell out of here and calm down before he scared the shit out of her. Carefully he stood up, bringing a sputtering Joshua with him as a shield and started to back up towards the door. He dragged Joshua with him since there was no need of giving everyone in the room a view of the painful erection he was sporting.

“Let me go, you prick!” Joshua said, struggling to get away.

“Joshua!” Grandma chastised.

“He’s cutting off circulation to my balls! If you want great grandchildren, woman, do something!” Joshua sputtered as he tried to free himself. Chris ignored his sad attempts to escape and dragged him towards the door.

He paused in the doorway, never taking his eyes off her and said, “I think we need to talk, Eric.”

***********

“Can I get you anything?” Eleanor, an older woman and now one of her captors, asked.

Isabella thought it over for a moment as she looked around the cozy, yet large dining room. There were two exits from the room and both were blocked. Although she didn’t think it would make much of a difference if there were a dozen unguarded opened doors in the room since she was handcuffed and standing between two human size boulders.

“Freedom?” she said, trying not to sound too hopeful.

The older woman simply gave her a warm smile.

“Sorry.”

Damn.

“I meant something along the lines of a drink or something to eat,” she said pleasantly.

Isabella was starving and really thirsty, but there was no way she would eat anything they gave her. It would probably be laced with something. She was ninety-five percent sure that someone somehow spiked her food last night. It was the only sane explanation as to what happened last night otherwise……

No, she would not think about last night because clearly last night, or rather early this morning, she’d had some seriously frightening hallucinations. Just as soon as she escaped, or preferably when they released her, she was hauling her buns in for a CAT scan, MRI, X-ray, drug testing and whatever other tests would explain the insanity of the last twelve hours.

“I’m fine, thanks,” she said at the same time her traitorous stomach betrayed her with an embarrassingly loud growl.

Eleanor smiled politely.

“I’m fine,” she said tightly.

“If you change your mind let me know,” she said before walking back to her spot near the priests, or rather the two crazy men dressed like priests since she was pretty sure that she was in some kind of commune at the moment, who stood watching her intently.

The two men by her side and their leader hadn’t moved away from her since they picked her up at a private airport two hours ago. She wasn’t sure if they thought they were protecting her or preventing her escape.

Either way it was annoying, but not as annoying as their questions. Since she had no plans to answer them she decided to sit back and buy her time until they finally got sick of asking questions that she wouldn’t answer.

It wasn’t that she had a particular problem with most of their questions. She didn’t. She’d just seen enough XFiles episodes and movies to know that as soon as she gave them what they wanted they wouldn’t need her anymore and she was as good as dead. So she kept her mouth shut and didn’t answer a single question.

She was actually quite proud of herself. Eric, the obvious leader, had been very aggravated with her after two hours of failed interrogation. If she continued her closed mouthed tactics no doubt they would be forced to let her go.

For the first couple of hours after her abduction she tried to find some logo or evidence of what company they belonged to, but nobody said or did anything that would even hint at a company name. Now she was thinking more along the lines of a cult obsessed with getting its hands on her program. Obviously they’d done this before. One thing was clear; whoever was calling the shots was desperate for her program.

Anyone who was willing to risk everything or at the very least a stint in prison for kidnapping her was not someone who should get their hands on this particular program. She didn’t even want to imagine their plans for her program or how much damage they could do with it. All she knew was that she needed to get away sooner rather than later and she needed to destroy Tattletale, her program, before they got their hands on it.