Free Kiss of the Phantom: Sexy Paranormal (Book 3, Phantom Series) by Julie Leto Page B

Ben’s face while he knelt over a patch of dried blood on the carpet.
    “You think she’s hurt?” he asked.
    Cat pushed away her exasperation and fingered the watch she’d slid into the pocket of her slacks. Rugged in condition and techie in design, the slim and feminine timepiece she’d found near the stairs matched Mariah’s psychic signature. But that’s all she could sense. If Mariah wanted to be found, Cat’s special gift with objects might have allowed her to key into her location. But as it was, the last thing the woman wanted was for anyone to know her whereabouts.
    With a sigh, she closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to at least get a bead on the state of her health. Enough people had gotten hurt in this quest to reunite the Forsyth brothers and stop the K’vr from possessing the magic of the formidable Lord Rogan. Mariah didn’t deserve to die just because she’d been greedy in stealing the stone when Ben had warned her to leave it alone.
    Truth was, if Ben had been Cat’s ex-lover rather than her current one, she might have ignored his advice, too.
    “She’s fine,” Cat replied.
    Ben glanced at her with wary eyes. “You’re certain?”
    She gave a noncommittal shrug. “Well, you know her better than I do, but she’s proved resourceful so far. I don’t think you need to worry about her too much.”
    Ben blinked, as if shocked by her suggestion. “I’m not worried about her.”
    Cat turned and headed into the bathroom. She and Ben didn’t need to have this conversation now, especially when she knew that confronting Ben’s residual feelings for Mariah meant she’d have to confess her own growing sense of insecurity. Best just to focus on the task at hand.
    After paying a hefty bribe to the night clerk, they’d learned that the police had found one man unconscious after the people in nearby rooms had called the front desk to report a loud disturbance. Another witness reported seeing a woman matching Mariah’s description tearing out of the parking garage, alone but in a damned big hurry. Though the cops had taped the room off, Cat’s donation to the bored employee manning the front desk gained them ten minutes to look around. And they were running out of time.
    Cat couldn’t help but wonder if following Mariah was worth the trouble. She’d beaten them to an artifact in that dank and dense forest of Valoren, but neither Cat nor Ben knew exactly what she had. For the past six months, they’d been trying to find artifacts associated with Valoren, Lord Rogan or the Forsyth family. Ben had checked with some of his old contacts and, to his surprise, learned that his former partner in crime had flown to the exact part of Germany where the little-known Gypsy enclave had once been. Convinced this was no coincidence, they’d followed. They still didn’t know how or why Mariah had come to learn about Valoren, unless, as Cat suspected, she’d been tracing Ben’s reemergence in archeological circles and had simply tried to beat him to an important find.
    Which she had.
    Unfortunately, the item she’d nabbed for profit meant much more to Ben than financial gain. It could contain a connection to his family—a family he didn’t even know he had until a year and a half ago.
    Suddenly, Ben’s hands slid over Cat’s shoulders, his fingers kneading into the knotted muscles at the base of her neck. “What’s wrong?”
    “Men shouldn’t ask that question unless they really want to know the answer,” she replied. “Don’t expect a coy ‘nothing’ from me.”
    Despite her mild annoyance, his chuckle did more to alleviate the stress in her body than his increasingly delicious massage.
    “Only an idiot would associate the word ‘coy’ with you, sweetheart.”
    “True,” she conceded. “Maybe it bothers me a bit that we’re spending all our time tracking down your ex.”
    “She has something we need,” he replied simply.
    “And she’s your ex.”
    “With very good reason,” Ben