Tracon

By Amanda Flieder

A weekend fling was exactly what Maggie needed before heading back to work on Monday, and the cowboy who came with a solid guarantee of disappearing by Sunday, perfect! But Devlin has other plans. The first stage of which is to get himself and Maggie out of the country before they both get murdered. With Ranger Seekers closing in fast, Dev just has to convince the girl he’s never met to let him rescue her, skip town, and survive the next two years underground. He can do that easy... probably.

Just because dragons don’t exist, that doesn’t mean they didn’t...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Jun 21, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463725528

Amanda Flieder

Amanda Flieder lives and works in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The author of The Centurion's Woman trilogy, she is currently plotting out the next series and enjoying being immersed in the excitement that Steam Punk offers.

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Prologue

Get out of bed, lazy bones.

The lights in the room flared to life, defeating the purpose of the blackout curtains. Maggie groaned and rolled over, pulling the blanket over her head and burying her face in the mound of pillows she normally slept on. Or rather in, if she had to get honest about it.

Seriously? her mom asked. I take the day off work and this is what I’m greeted by?

We weren’t supposed to meet up until eleven, Maggie complained, her voice muffled by the pillows.

And, my dear Margaret, it is now twelve thirty.

What? Maggie exclaimed, sitting up and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes so she could read the clock beside her bed. It’s not even nine yet, she added flatly, rolling her eyes and glaring at her mom.

I know. But now that you’re up, we can go for a nice breakfast and spend the whole day together, Millicent beamed at her daughter.

I hate you a little bit more right now.

Of course, Millicent agreed. But in half an hour when you’re ordering pancakes drenched in blueberries, you’ll completely forgive me and we can plan out where to go find new shoes.

Maggie grinned up at her mom. It had been just the two of them forever, and they’d always been close. For the past ten years, it was also almost a ritual for Millicent to come by on the first weekday of Maggie’s time off after a difficult case closed so that they could spend the day together shopping and gossiping, and then dinner and a movie.

Maggie stood up and hugged her mom, then shuffled into the little bathroom for a quick shower. Millicent had already put an outfit on the bed—complete with what underwear to wear—when Maggie came back to her room.

Seriously, Mom? Maggie called, holding up the lacy panties and matching push-up bra.

You never know who you’re going to meet. Her mom grinned back from where she was sitting at the kitchen table, slash counter.

I think I’ll save these for the bar Friday night, then.

Maggie swapped out the underthings for something more suitable for shopping all day as her mom giggled. Millicent was almost a professional gold digger, and a damn good lawyer, and had no shame in encouraging her daughter to find a ‘more comfortable’—in her mind—living arrangement. Maggie spent a lot of time rolling her eyes. She loved her little apartment and didn’t mind the small salary, but she did enjoy the great clothes and occasional parties that her mom provided. Besides, Margaret was married to her job, so the time needed to stay looking as good as her mom did, on top of the university courses and current events research to stay conversationally current that her mom did, were completely impossible.

That’s meant to be worn as a dress. Millicent frowned mockingly at how her daughter was dressed.

I’m taller than you, so it’s essentially a shirt if I wear it like that, Maggie countered, smoothing the fabric at her hips.

You’ve got the legs, you should flaunt them, Millicent winked.

As normal, Maggie rolled her eyes and dragged her mom off the chair and over to the door, both of them laughing.

You promised me blueberries.

Mm-hm, and hot coffee, Millicent added.

And pancakes! they both exclaimed, laughing again, as Maggie locked the door behind them.

Chapter 1

Devlin Elite sat at the bar and stared into his drink. It was his third Scotch, and he knew it was way past time that he should be leaving. The Rangers had been steadily closing in, his parents and brother had gotten out of the country last week, and he was pushing his luck sitting here like this. He told himself that this was beyond stupid, again, and took another sip.

The regulars that he’d been watching had showed up like clockwork, right at ten, with that scent hanging around them. The first time he’d thought the scent was coming from the woman he was watching, but a planned ‘mistake’ encounter outside the bathrooms had gotten him close enough to smell that it was on her, not from her. His family had been looking for the one at the source of the scent for a few years now, but no luck. It came up suddenly, in unexpected places, but they never could find out who she was. The woman he was watching was the most consistent lead that he’d ever found, and for the past two months he’d been coming here—to this shitty dive of a bar—every Friday to see if she would lead him to the owner of the scent, or if the elusive woman would come here. So far, no luck.

The instinctive feeling of the Seekers looking for him touched the soft spot in the back of his mind. He blocked it easily, they were minimum a few hours away from the city, and he went back to scanning the bar. More than a few women preened in his direction and he dismissed all of them in a glance. The one he was looking for, or rather smelling for, wasn’t here. Again. And it was coming up on eleven thirty. One of the women who’d preened at him walked over and leaned back on the bar beside him, resting her elbows in a spilled drink and pushing her breasts out as far as she could.

Need a ride, cowboy? she purred.

He glanced over her from head to toe; pretty face, good hair, great body, and an outfit that left just enough to the imagination to keep a man curious. It was too bad that he was keyed up and could only smell the very Human pheromones, the fruity flower perfume, and the last two guys that she’d recently had sex with.

Not tonight, he replied, turning back to his drink.

It was fairly easy to look discouraged, and she slipped a little closer to him so she could sympathetically pat his arm.

I’m staying for another hour if she doesn’t show up, she said, tucking a slip of paper into his shirt pocket.

He finished his drink in a gulp and didn’t bother to look at her again so she sauntered off. He ordered another Scotch and glanced around the bar. He figured he could make it to the airport undetected if he left here by one, and that would get him in the air while the Rangers were still scouting where he’d been today. He grinned into the new glass. His crazy wanderings today would keep them busy for a while, probably buying him another two hours; he’d randomly criss-crossed the city about seven times, not including that little two-hour foray in the sewers. They’d be able to jump a couple of loops he’d made, spreading out and covering where his paths had crossed, but he’d made certain that they’d have a lot of ground to cover as they searched out his scent.

The air around him shifted as the bouncer let in another group of people. The smells from the street almost covered it, but he caught a glancing whiff of the scent he was looking for. He checked the table, but the woman who often wore the fragrance was dancing, which put her cross-wind to the door. He was just about to reach for his wallet and drop whatever cash was in it on the bar when the door opened again and the cop who’d been all over the news last week walked in. She smiled up at the bouncer and kissed his cheek.

The smell was coming from her. Detective Margaret Freeman. Millicent Freeman’s daughter. He wracked his brain for how this could even be possible, because the Tracon tendencies were known to be recessive in the Freeman line, so both parents had to have Tracon bloodlines, and Millicent had mingled in that social circle for only the past couple of years. Her great grandparents had been the ones to voluntarily excommunicate themselves. The family had—of course—been watched in case they were recruited by Rangers, but Millicent and Margaret were the last of the line and, if the records were correct, both recessive.

Something had to have happened to Margaret a few years ago, when he and his family had started noticing the unfamiliar scent, which had triggered the recessive tendencies into being active. Near death experiences had done that in three recessives in recorded history. He tried to think of any news stories just before the smell had started showing up where a cop had gotten hurt and came up blank.

Devlin stared at her, his thoughts grinding to a halt as he fought to get his instincts under control. What his gut told him to do, with Rangers only hours away, was grab her and get out now. Get to his family as soon as possible and plan out their next aliases in the isolation of the caves. His brain’s attempts to override that action screamed something about attempted kidnapping of a cop being the dumbest, and probably last, thing he’d ever do. She’d have him locked up before midnight, and the Rangers would finish both of them off by dawn.

He needed to be smart about this, so he got himself under control and forced his eyes back to the drink in his hand, wishing ruefully that he was able to actually get drunk. He was going to have to be smart, and funny, and present himself as attractive to her, while he was nervous and feeling out the soft spot every five minutes, which made him look vacant. He was going to have to pick her up the old fashioned way, knowing that she hadn’t been interested in rich playboys since she’d started university with the intention of joining the force when she was eighteen. He cursed under his breath that a rich playboy was his public alias for this pretended life. That alias wouldn’t work, he knew it, because she wouldn’t go for that personality. He was going to have to be himself if this had any chance of working, and himself hadn’t successfully picked up a female on purpose for at least never.

She was hugging the woman he’d pretty well been stalking every weekend for the past couple months when he glanced over. They were close friends, he felt it over the link, near and dear like sisters. He’d never met a recessive, and the last one who’d gone dominant had died about a hundred and fifty years ago, about 75 years before he’d been born, but he’d studied that the ones who were sensitive didn’t have control over the link. He couldn’t have expected her to be broadcasting like this, though… which he suddenly figured out would make it possible to pick her up.

It was an effort not to snarl when she hugged the man and the connection over the link turned up a few degrees. There was no strong emotion from her, so it was just sex; friends with benefits. The relief almost left a taste in his mouth when he felt her getting rejected. Another woman he’d barely noticed the last few Fridays was introduced and the emotion over the link was the mental equivalent of a shrug and a handshake, with underlying frustration. Margaret had been looking forward to an easy, no-strings encounter this weekend.

Devlin drank the two ounces like a shot and ordered another, the look on the bartender’s face giving him an excuse to grin. He could easily offer a no-strings weekend for her. Get them both out of the city well ahead of the Rangers, find out if she was aware of being Tracon, and maybe even find out one or two tendencies she had ahead of the testing and save her some of the tests. Then he could answer questions for her. She was a detective; she was going to have a lot of questions. Women liked confidence, and detectives liked straight answers. He could do both. He could be himself, and still be confident and honest. He could use the link and absolutely catch and hold her attention and get both of them out of the country so they would not get murdered before tomorrow morning. Probably.

Chapter 2

Maggie watched Ryan head back out to the dance floor with his new girlfriend and tried not to cringe too badly when Vicky’s stare landed on her.