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CHAPTER NINE

“You’ve arrived back just in time for lunch, Miss Zoey,” Penrose greeted warmly when Zoey walked in after driving herself and Hunter back to Tregarthen House.

“And I see you have brought our earlier visitor back with you.” The butler beamed with approval.

“Will you be joining Miss Zoey for luncheon?” He directed the question at Hunter.

“I—”

“Is my uncle still in his study?” Zoey interrupted. Much as she liked Penrose, her priority right now was to talk to Edgar as soon as possible.

“Mr. Wallis?” The butler’s eyebrows rose. “I’m afraid he left shortly after you did.”

“Left to go where?” she demanded.

Penrose’s brows rose even higher at the aggression in her tone. “He didn’t say.”

“Any idea when he will be back?”

“He didn’t say that either.” The butler winced at his lack of knowledge of his employer’s movements. “He did take an overnight bag, his briefcase, and the helicopter, though, so presumably, it’s not somewhere close enough for him to return tonight.”

Zoey was stunned to learn Edgar was no longer here. That he had left shortly after she and Hunter had.

Dear God, was it possible Edgar had gone back to Scotland, taking the journal with him, meaning he was armed with the evidence of the existence of dragons? If so, then she and Hunter needed to get back there as quickly as possible too?—

“Thank you.”

Zoey looked up to see Hunter giving the butler a charming smile to accompany those obviously dismissive words.

“And I am very much looking forward to joining Zoey for lunch,” Hunter added smoothly. “Cottage pie is on the menu, I believe?”

“It is indeed, sir.” Penrose returned the warmth of that smile. “Can I instruct Cook that you will be ready to dine in ten minutes?”

“I—”

“That sounds wonderful, thank you.” Once again, it was Hunter who answered the older man.

“What are you doing ?” Zoey hissed the moment the butler had disappeared down the hallway leading to the kitchen. “We don’t have time to sit and eat lunch if we’re going to be in time to stop Edgar from hurting anyone else.”

“As soon as Penrose told us Wallis was no longer here, I warned my brothers through our telepathic link of the possibility of Wallis arriving in the Highlands, specifically at our location, in the next few hours,” Hunter told her grimly.

“In the meantime, you are human, and as such need to be fed every four hours or so to maintain function and strength.”

“And you don’t?” she accused.

His wide shoulders moved in a shrug. “Dragon shifters can sometimes go days without food if we have to. But today we don’t need to, because your cook has made you a cottage pie.”

Her brow lowered in a frown. “How did you know that?”

“Because I was outside listening earlier when you arrived and spoke to both the butler and Edgar Wallis.”

“Because a dragon shifter’s hearing is enhanced too,” Zoey acknowledged.

“Exactly.” He smiled before sobering. “In the meantime, we have a little under ten minutes before luncheon is due to be served. I suggest we use that time to search Wallis’s study for any clues as to whether or not he really is off chasing dragons and, more accurately, their treasure.”

Zoey inwardly admitted this plan sounded far less chaotic than her own proposal as to what they should do next. Besides, Mrs. Chenoweth’s cottage pie really was delicious.

She chewed briefly on her bottom lip. “How are we going to get to Scotland?” Hunter had a severe problem fitting into her car, so she couldn’t see them driving all that way. She also couldn’t imagine those wide shoulders fitting into the seat on any of the trains or planes used for domestic travel.

“Guess.” Hunter’s answer was voiced as a challenge.

The longer Zoey stared at him, the more convinced she became that she could once again see those flames flaring and dipping in the dark depths of his eyes.

She swallowed. “We never did finish that conversation… When you said earlier that you flew here, did you mean as a dragon?”

Hunter grinned. “I did.”

“And are you expecting the two of us to fly back there the same way?”

“I am.”

“Will we get there before Edgar?”

His jaw tightened. “Well before.”

“How would that even work?” It boggled her mind even trying to envisage herself perched precariously on the back of a dragon as it flew them both to Scotland. “And don’t laugh at me,” she warned when she saw the humor in his eyes.

Hunter dampened that amusement when Zoey continued to glare at him. “Your car will be safe if left here?”

“Yes.” Her glare didn’t lessen in the slightest.

He nodded. “Then we ensure you are warmly dressed, I pick you up in my arms and cradle you against the warmth of my dragon chest, and then I fly us both to my home.”

Zoey liked the idea of being snuggled against his dragon chest. “Won’t someone see us… You have the ability to shield our presence from the people below or in planes flying nearby,” she guessed when she saw his raised eyebrows.

“I do,” he confirmed mildly.

It was impossible. Insane. And yet…

A yearning had begun to grow inside Zoey. It increased and grew at the idea of Hunter flying both of them, as his dragon, up to the Highlands of Scotland.

How amazing would that be!

Scary too, but amazement easily won out over any negative emotion.

Instead of looking overwhelmed, as Hunter had expected Zoey to be, her eyes had begun to glow and there was an excited flush to her cheeks. Because she was excited to fly back to Scotland with him in his dragon form?

Hunter really hoped that was the case!

“We have limited time,” he reminded briskly. “We should search Wallis’s study now that he is no longer here to stop us.”

“Of course.” Zoey shook her head as she broke eye contact with him. As if, for several moments, she had become lost in the flames Hunter knew were dancing in the darkness of his eyes. “It’s this way.”

Hunter allowed Zoey to lead the way down a hallway to Wallis’s study. Although, after watching the house for two days and nights, Hunter already knew exactly where that room was.

The book-lined study held the aroma of pipe tobacco and the musty smell of old books. The desktop was completely bare, and when they tried to open the drawers beneath it, they found they were all locked.

It took Hunter a matter of seconds to establish that the top two drawers were for ornamental purposes only. He easily opened the remaining six.

“I’m not even going to ask how you did that,” Zoey dismissed wryly.

Hunter grinned at her before they did a thorough search of all six of the available drawers. There was no laptop in any of them, which meant it had probably been in the briefcase Penrose mentioned Wallis taking with him.

Nor was there any sign of the brown notebook Zoey told him she had seen Wallis looking through when she arrived earlier, which Hunter had also seen in the man’s possession. Hunter believed the notebook must also have been in Wallis’s briefcase.

“Does this seem odd to you?” Zoey’s query broke into his thoughts.

Hunter turned to find her standing behind the desk looking at the drawers either side of the foot well.

He moved to stand beside her, assessing the two sides of the desk before speaking.

“It does seem a little odd that the top two drawers were only for ornamentation— What are you doing?” he prompted when Zoey began to feel under and along the ledge at the back of the desk.

“Ah-ha.” Her cry of success was accompanied by a click, and then the whole top of the desk silently lifted on hinges at the front of the desk.

Zoey pushed it open the rest of the way, the ease with which it did so telling them that the desktop was lifted often.

“I knew it! I damn well knew it!” she accused when the completely open desktop revealed a laptop, three surveillance screens, and listening equipment in the compartment beneath.

“That sneaky bastard has been watching us all for years .” She looked at Hunter with pained eyes.

“Why would he want to spy on everyone in this way?”

Hunter would take a guess that Wallis’s years of hunting for evidence of dragons had resulted in him becoming completely paranoid, even within the confines of his own home.

But those cameras also posed the question whether the reason for Wallis having departed so hastily earlier was as a direct result of his having listened to Zoey and Hunter’s conversation.

As the tech expert in the Drake family, Hunter was quickly able to turn on the laptop and gain access to all three recordings on the surveillance screens.

The first one allowed the viewer to move between cameras placed in all the bedrooms.

The second one covered the rooms downstairs.

The third one had screens that surveilled the outside of the house.

“There is nothing else on the laptop other than the recordings for twenty-four hours before those memories are wiped and then started again,” he told Zoey as he pressed the necessary keys to bring up the recordings from earlier today.

The pictures were in black-and-white, but there was no doubt they were looking at and listening to Hunter and Zoey talking in the sitting room before Zoey had suggested they move outside.

The voice recording of outside was a little more patchy, but even so, Hunter was able to hear them discussing the way in which Ben McGregor had died.

Showing Edgar Wallis that Hunter’s arrival at Tregarthen House wasn’t accidental but deliberate.

As a direct response to that, Wallis had boarded his helicopter and left this house and Cornwall almost immediately afterward.