The Mercenary and the Shifters (The Turning Stone Chronicles) by C.D. Hersh Page B

upward.
    “The faster we go, the sooner we’ll catch them,” she said.
    He accelerated a couple more notches. “What’s the speed limit?”
    “About ninety six kilometers per hour.”
    “In American miles per hour?”
    “How would I know, ye daft idiot. I’m Scottish.”
    Mike laughed and gunned the motor again. Mary Kate peeked over his shoulder and watched as the speedometer climbed. When he reached 128 kph her breath caught. Thirty-two kph over the speed limit. She searched the narrow road ahead. Not a car in sight.
    “Still doing okay?” Mike asked.
    If he was trying to scare her, she wasn’t going to give in. “Yes,” she hollered over the sound of the wind rushing by.
    Mike revved the bike to 145 kph. A rush of adrenaline surged through her. Bloody hell! The man was a speed demon. She hugged him tighter. A mass of white dots appeared on the horizon.
    “Don’t hit the sheep!” she yelled.
    Mike backed the accelerator off, coasting to a more reasonable speed, yelling like a banshee as they neared the sheep. The animals scattered off the road, and they cruised past them.
    “You can quit squeezing the life out of me,” Mike said.
    “Sorry. I didn’t mean to. Ye might want to slow down a wee bit. Ye wouldn’t want one of the remote cameras to catch ye and get ye a speeding ticket.”
    The speedometer dropped to 112 kph. “Couldn’t Eli fix it for me?”
    “Aye. He could, but he wouldn’t.”
    “Sounds like a stickler of a guy.”
    “Aye. He is.” And he wouldn’t approve of what she was feeling right now. Not one bit.
    She aligned her body behind Mike’s and let him take the buffeting wind for her. It would be nice, for once in her life, to be behind the man charging into battle instead of at the front of the fray. But she had made promises. Loyalty and the Society covenanted her to keep them. Most of all, she was bound by her responsibility for losing Rhys and Alexi’s child. He was, according to Eli, key to winning the war with the rogues, and she had screwed up.
    Alexi had downplayed Eli’s response when she’d asked about it. However, she suspected Eli would be angry. An angry Keeper of the Stone was not someone she wanted to face.

Chapter 11
    The call he’d been waiting for came shortly after dawn. Falhman grabbed the landline phone from his bedside.
    “We’re in the air and should be tae yer penthouse by five this afternoon,” said a heavily brogued voice.
    “It’s about time you called, Ewan,” Falhman barked into the receiver.
    “We ran intae a wee bit o’ resistance in the form o’ a giant grizzly and two highly skilled female shifters.”
    “Grizzly?” Falhman asked. The only grizzly shifters he knew about belonged to the McCraigen clan. “What were the women’s animals?”
    “I dinna know. They fought in human form. One had red hair, the other long black hair.”
    “Did you kill them?”
    “Sean and I were outside for most of the fight waiting for the others tae let us know where the baby was. We dinna see who was left standing.”
    “Who is with you?”
    “Just me and Sean.”
    “Two women and a bear killed ten of my men?”
    “Three shifters and two humans. Another woman was there and a man joined them.”
    “Five took down ten of you?” Who were these people? “Did you get the boy?”
    “Aye, but there was a wee problem.”
    It was a good thing the man was 30,000 feet in the air, because if he’d been standing next to him, Falhman would have killed the idiot. “What kind of problem?”
    “There was more than one child. We dinna know which was your son. We hadtae take them both.”
    Shit! If they’d have killed the opposition he wouldn’t have to worry about repercussions. Now they’d kidnapped his son and someone else’s child. Quite possibly another shifter’s child.
    “They appear about the same age,” his underling said. “Maybe even brothers.”
    Brothers? Did LJ have two babies? The birth records hadn’t mentioned twins. Then he