Beloved Predator (Beloved Series #2)

Five

WARNING: The following chapter contains sexual content and is intended for a MATURE (18+) audience

Patrick

Something was wrong.  The look on Ari's face when she dashed upstairs was unsettling enough, but the silence from upstairs made me wary.  I held my hand up to silence Georgia.  She stopped talking and looked at me with raised eyebrows.

"Did you hear that?" I asked quietly. 

"Hear what?"

The sound of a motorcycle was all I needed to know to confirm my suspicion.  Muttering to myself I ran out to the patio just in time to see Ari speed away from the house.  I yelled after her, knowing it wouldn't do any good.  A few seconds later she was gone.

"Fuck!" I yelled angrily and walked back into the house.  "We need to go right now."

"Do you know where she's going?" she asked, following me out the front door.

"I have a pretty good idea, but I'll know for sure once we're on the road and I can turn on the locator."

She motioned me toward her car parked in the driveway, a black Kia SUV.  As soon as we were on the road, I turned on the app to locate Ari's phone.  The green icon flashed and showed she was travelling northbound on Interstate 5.  I checked the locator frequently to make sure she hadn't changed course.

Georgia's soft voice broke the silence.  "How much did she tell you about me?"

"Ma'am, in all honesty, she never mentioned you.  I just found out about her arrest a couple weeks ago."

She nodded.  "We've had a...difficult relationship over the years.  I was one of the arresting officers when she was picked up in 2007.  One of the agents roughed her up during the arrest and I broke it up.  He made her lay on the steps in the basement and while she was laying there a spider crawled all over her face.  I'm not a fan of spiders myself, so I helped calm her down and got the agent to quit yelling at her.  She was such a scared little girl."

"That explains why she avoids basements."

"As soon as she calmed down, she told us where to find what we were looking for.  That's when I knew she wasn't a hardened criminal.  Just a young girl who got mixed up with the wrong people.  Unfortunately, she got a little combative on the trip to the field office and I had to restrain her.  I'm sure you know how well that went over."

I laughed a little.  "Yeah, she has that stubborn streak in her."

"How longer have you known her, Mr. Reynolds?"

"Please call me Patrick.  I've known her for almost eight years."

She smiled.  "And how long have you been in love with her, Patrick?"

"Almost eight years."

"Lord knows that girl thinks me the devil because there were times where I had to take a hard line.  But it was in her best interest and it kept her safe.  I was the one who originally went to the prosecutor about getting her a deal."

"And I'm willing to bet she doesn't know that either, Agent Kaplan."

"It's Georgia, and she doesn't," she sighed.  "How bad was it for her in Toronto?  My son didn't give me any details."

"He almost killed her.  Only thing that saved her was he called 911.  She was in a medically induced coma for a week because of the swelling in her neck and he damaged one of her carotids when he strangled her.  She had to have surgery to repair it.  Her voice hasn't still completely recovered."