Into the Fire (The Unseelie Court Book 4), Gwen Rivers [read full novel .TXT] 📗

would. I may have failed my tenth-grade civics class due to absence, but I know enough about the judicial system to understand that criminals get a trial. I’m in custody, I should get a trial.

Still, my insides twist.

We move past room after room with the same oval doors. If there are other prisoners in this facility, I don’t see or hear them. The corridor joins with another identical one. We turn left, then right. I barely stifle my frustration as we make yet another turn. I have a shit sense of direction, even on my best day.

Which this isn’t.

Aiden, I think. Now would be a stellar time for a helping hand.

But there is no reply. Our bond has gone silent. More than anything else, this has panic rising in my chest.

Underhill hadn’t caught the real Aiden. Nightweaver would have said.

Worry about yourself, I think. My welfare used to be all I worried about. But I have changed. Aiden has changed me.

Finally, we stop in front of a nondescript door that looks no different than any of the others. The guard to my right knocks three times and then stands back.

The door opens and I come face to face with a gorgeous woman. She doesn’t smile but satisfaction shines from her dark eyes. Her short stature does nothing to revoke her sense of authority. A gun rests at her hip. Is she one of the agents who’d shot me?

At least she’s not wearing a lab coat.

“Sit her there.” The woman gestures to a ladder-back chair. It has ankle cuffs and a bolt in the back to run a chain through.

I am frog-marched to the chair and bound to it. My bare feet freeze on the cement floor and when my ankles are bound, I can’t do anything except wiggle my toes.

“Leave us,” the female agent says once I am secure.

There is another of those hissing sounds as the door seals shut behind them.

She moves forward and unzips my hood. I suck in air in a greedy gulp.

“Nic Rutherford.” She circles the table to sit opposite me. Her eyes are so brown there is no distinction between iris and pupil. The intriguing color emphasized by a light dusting of eye shadow.

“And you are?” I put a little quaver in my voice and let my gaze dart around as though in panic. It isn’t hard to fake being terrified.

“Agent Yasmine Hanson.” She reaches for the single manila file folder on the table and flips it open. “I’ve been following you for quite some time. Since almost the beginning of my career.”

Her tone is conversational but I’m not fooled. The folder contains the picture of a dead man slumped over the backseat of a bus. A man I’d killed a few years ago in Nashville when he’d tried to rape me.

Schooling my features, I do my best featherhead routine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This has to be some sort of mistake.”

“Did you know, Ms. Rutherford, that this man, one Harrison Downey, was a convicted sex offender when you killed him?”

“Killed?” I manage a squeak. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

She narrows her gaze on me. Then she sits back and folds her arms over her ample chest. “Is that right?”

I nod, trying to sell the big-eyed innocent caught up in something out of her control, shtick. Lie and deny, bob and weave.

“What about Paul Anderson? Or Minnesota St. John?”

I shake my head even though my gut is churning. Those names are all on the IDs in my diary.

Agent Hanson raises one dark eyebrow. “I see. This is all a big mistake is it?”

I don’t like her tone. This woman has studied me, knows how I will play, but there’s no way out but through. “Yes, that is…I slipped out of the house to meet up with my boyfriend and then the next thing I know I’m being shot.”

“Your boyfriend. That would be Aiden Jager?”

Cold dread seeps into me. How does she know Aiden’s name? As the son of a god, he has the ability to blend in with the mortal world seamlessly. There would have been no paper trail, no way for her to find out about him.

The diary was one thing, but in order for Agent Hanson to know Aiden’s name, she had to have an immortal informant. Who? Someone who also knew to warn them about my goodnight kiss. Not Chloe or Addy. My aunts would never betray me.

“That’s right.” Aiden’s across the Veil. Safe from their reach. There’s no reason to deny our relationship.

“And is Mr. Jager also the father of your baby?”

“Baby?” I blink. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

She pulls a paper from the file and spins it around so I can see it. “We did a blood test on you when we patched up your wounds. See here?”

She points down at the block red print. Six weeks pregnant.

The world tunnels. No. No. I can’t be pregnant. Cannot. We hadn’t even had sex. It had been close but…

Is it possible?

Those midnight eyes survey my every twitch. “Congratulations, Ms. Rutherford. You’re going to be a mother.”

Mind Games

“There must be some kind of mistake,” I shake my head, unable to believe what the paper is telling me. “I’m only sixteen.”

Agent Hanson frowns. “It says here you were born in 2001. That means you’re eighteen.”

“Right.” Swift, Nic. I’ve forgotten that I’d missed eighteen months in the mortal world while I’d been screwing around beyond the Veil. I still feel sixteen.

Hanson’s dark eyes narrow. “This…changes things.”

“What do you mean?” No vivisection?

“I was under the impression that you were a serial killer. And yet you’re sitting there looking like nothing more than a teenage girl.”

“I am a teenage girl.” And so much more.

But the other woman shakes her head. “You’re not. I have the photos taken by one Gretchen Hamill and the diary with your fingerprints all over the licenses belonging to the victims. Look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t kill those people.”

I meet her