Highland Son (Highland Sorcery: A New Dawn) Read Online Free

There.” Weapons guy leaned back and placed his hands on his lean stomach. “We’ve been around. How ‘bout you folks? How long you all been holed up here?”
    Fine. They were going to play it that way. No need to lie about anything they most likely had figured out on their own.
    “Eight months.”
    “Eight?” That seemed to surprise them all going by the way they looked at each other. The same guy, apparently their spokesman, frowned. “Eight months in one place and the Sifts haven’t…”
    He had the grace to not finish the sentence. Eat them. They hadn’t been eaten yet .
    “They’ve tried. We’re not that easy to kill.”
    They weren’t buying it, which in their place, Jewel wouldn’t either. She couldn’t tell them what really had kept the monsters away. She couldn’t tell anyone. And now that Lance was gone, keeping silent was all the more desperate.
    She pulled the silver tray closer to herself. “Look. We really do just want to know about you, what you’re doing in the area. And then if you want, you can go. You can understand that, can’t you? A group like ours has to be cautious.”
    “Sure. We can understand that, what with thieves and militant marauders looking to take any cache they come upon.”
    Jewel tugged the sides of her knitted cap down on her head. “You’re not…?”
    “If we were, would I say so?” Weapons guy’s grin was so happily predatory she could very well believe he was a marauder.
    “I suppose you wouldn’t.” This was getting her nowhere. “How ‘bout we start simple. I’m Jewel and that’s Miles.”
    “All right. You can call me Ethan. That’s Alexander.” He flicked his thumb toward the lanky man at her side and then nodded toward the blond man across from him. “This is Dez.”
    “Ma’am.” Dez tipped his chin.
    Alexander. She wanted so badly to look at him, see how well the name fit to the man. She also wanted to hear him speak again. She’d never heard a voice like his with those slight inflections that sent a heady warmth down to her core. He’d only spoken to her a little when he took his weapons, but she hoped to hear him again. She kept her gaze on Ethan.
    He rolled his shoulders. “So what’s the name of your leader, the older guy who was barking out all the orders?”
    Jewel pressed her lips together. So he went right into interrogating her. Well, if it made him feel in control… Again, she wouldn’t be revealing anything they wouldn’t eventually be told, but truthfully so far all she’d gotten out of them were their names while she kept giving them answers. If this was a game, she was losing.
    But it wasn’t a game to her. She came to them with a purpose and if it meant playing the fool and telling them everything they wanted to know, it was worth it. “Sheppard.”
    Dez set his empty bowl carefully back on the tray. “Why isn’t Sheppard in here asking questions for himself?
    “He will be.”
    “Making us sweat it out for a while. Well you can tell him we don’t sweat, darlin.”
    “That’s not what he’s doing. I assure you. He had another pressing matter.”
    Three sets of lips curved downward in disbelieving frowns.
    But it was true. The moment they’d gotten back, Sheppard, Hank and Trevor went back out for who knows why. They did that every so often without explanation. She clearly was not in the loop.
    She sighed. She hadn’t learned a thing other than these guys didn’t crack easily, handled themselves and their weapons well—military grade weapons that Sheppard would give his eye-teeth to get his hands on. Nor did she get to hear Alexander’s husky voice again. Well, no matter because whatever else these guys were, they were fighters and survivors, which meant Sheppard would do his best to recruit them. Which also meant they weren’t the people Jewel dared place all her trust in.
     

Chapter Two
     
     
    Alexander listened to the lock turn in the door, closing them in the room again. Maybe they should have