Shadow Walker by Allyson James Read Free Book Online

went quietly. The nice FBI agent said that he saw no need for handcuffs, but I had no doubt Coyote that would have pulled them out of thin air if he’d wanted to.
    Coyote really did have an SUV waiting, black, with smoked-glass windows and metal grills on the inside. I had to wonder where he’d stolen it from.
    Mick and I were ushered into the backseat, and Coyote had the security guards lift Mick’s big Harley into the back. The local police weren’t happy, but I got the feeling they were just as glad to not have to deal with us.
    Coyote swung through town at top speed and shot onto the freeway heading east. He swerved around a couple of eighteen-wheelers in as much of a hurry to leave Flag as he was, his speedometer climbing.
    “What the hell was that?” I demanded as soon as I found words.
    Coyote grinned at me through the grill separating backseat from front. “Me saving your asses. Neat trick, huh?”
    “You couldn’t have magicked us out or made everyone forget we existed?”
    “Way more fun this way. I always wanted to pretend to be an FBI agent.”
    Mick put his arms around me. “Thank you,” he said.
    “Not a problem.” Coyote gunned the engine and swung around more trucks. We hit ninety and kept accelerating.
    “Who was that woman?” I asked, to take my mind off the vehicles flashing by much too swiftly.
    “Don’t know,” Coyote said. “But she sure wanted Nash. She was full of magic, though, so why would she risk Nash sucking it all out of her?”
    I wondered the same thing. The freeway dropped down out of the mountains, and Coyote drove faster. The SUV reached one hundred as we whipped around an RV and nearly rear-ended a flatbed.
    “Pull over!” I screamed.
    “What for?”
    “Just do it.”
    Coyote shrugged, swung across both lanes of speeding traffic, and roared the SUV down an off-ramp. He overshot the road at the bottom and rolled straight into the desert, skidding to a stop in a cloud of dust.
    “Out,” I said. I kicked the back door open and hopped down, my legs like rubber, and wrenched open the driver’s side.
    Coyote chuckled as he scooted over and let me scramble into the driver’s seat. But he was a god—if he wrecked the SUV, he’d survive. Mick could turn into a dragon and heal himself. Me, I’d end up in the hospital again, if I made it. I’d survived one accident this week—I didn’t want to go through another.
    Once we were on the freeway again, me driving at a careful pace, we continued to speculate on the woman but drew no conclusions.
    “I saw you in the wall,” I said, hands firmly on the wheel. Clouds were building up over the San Francisco peaks behind us, and I felt the icy tingle of an approaching snowstorm. “I thought I saw a glyph of you, anyway. Did you see the hands? Did you have anything to do with them?”
    “Nope. I saw you all banged up, and I contacted Mick through your mirror. I didn’t see anything else, babe. My eyes were only for you.”
    “Figures,” I muttered.
    The snowstorm hung back in the higher elevations, so the late afternoon was still sunny in Magellan by the time we pulled into the parking lot of the Crossroads Hotel. Coyote and Mick off-loaded his bike, and Coyote drove off in a burst of gravel, hopefully to return the SUV from wherever he’d acquired it.
    Instead of coming inside with me, Mick said he wanted to go back to the sinkhole and continue investigating. I wasn’t easy about him being out there, but those hand things had feared his fire magic, and he’d probably be safer from them than I’d been.
    Mick kissed me and held me hard, told me to keep resting, and said that he’d continue the healing process with me when he returned. I knew what he meant by that, and I warmed with anticipation.
    Cassandra was still looking over Ted’s list when I went in, her optimism that we could defeat the inspection beginning to fade. The sun was already sinking, but I wanted to solve one problem before I shut down for the night.