Unfortunately, the seat belt was designed to hold a person with assorted person-sized bumps and lumps, not a flat mirror, and the glass kept slipping down into a more horizontal position. If she’d had a single piece of luggage, she might have crammed it at the base of the frame, on the floor, but as it was, they were traveling outlaw-light. The only things in the SUV were three empty fast-food bags from the lunch they’d grabbed at the airport and a handful of maps and pamphlets he’d snatched from a newsstand while leaving.

As she leaned over to adjust it yet again, he muttered something in that mysterious language of his, and suddenly a book tumbled out of the mirror, narrowly missing her nose, followed by several more. She ducked out of the way. She’d broken her nose once already, that day at the climbing gym, and it was crooked enough, tipping slightly to the left.

“Wedge them at the base,” he commanded.

She blinked. “You have books in there?”

“I’ve accumulated a few items over the centuries. Things I believed Lucan wouldn’t miss. Once stolen and in transit, when the opportunity presented itself, I picked up still more.”

She arranged the books at the foot of the mirror, laying them end to end, gawking at the titles: Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time; Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language; Pliny’s Natural History; The Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Universe; and Geographica, a massive book of maps and charts.

“Like a little light reading, huh?” she muttered. Personally, she went for Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series (she was a Ranger-girl herself) or any Linda Howard book, on those rare occasions she got to read for pleasure. Which was like once a year.

“I have endeavored to keep up with the passage of the centuries.”

She glanced into the mirror. After seeing him in the flesh only a short time ago, it was weird to be seeing him as a one-dimensional, flat figure in the glass. She didn’t like it at all. She was beginning to resent that mirror. Resent that it could take him back anytime it wanted to. She shook her head. A few minutes ago she’d been glad it had reclaimed him. Now she was irritated that it had. Would she ever be of a single mind around him? “For the day you’d finally be free? That’s why you kept up?”

He stared down at her, burnt-whisky gaze unfathomable. “Aye.”

Free. After eleven centuries, the ninth-century Highlander was going to be free in a little over two weeks. “Seventeen more days,” Jessi breathed wonderingly. “God, you must be climbing the . . . er, walls . . . or whatever’s in there, huh?”

“Aye.”

“So, just what is in there, anyway?” She tested the glass by shaking it gently, and deemed it secure enough. It shouldn’t slide now.

“Stone,” he said flatly.

“And what else?”

“Stone. Gray. Of varying sizes.” His voice dropped to a colorless monotone. “Fifty-two thousand nine hundred and eighty-seven stones. Twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixteen of them are a slightly paler gray than the rest. Thirty-six thousand and four are more rectangular than square. There are nine hundred and eighteen that have a vaguely hexagonal shape. Ninety-two of them have a vein of bronze running through the face. Three are cracked. Two paces from the center is a stone that protrudes slightly above the rest, over which I tripped for the first few centuries. Any other questions?”

Jessi flinched as his words impacted her, taking her breath away. Her chest and throat felt suddenly tight. Uh, yeah, like, how did you stay sane in there? What kept you from going stark raving mad? How did you survive over a thousand years in such a hell?

She didn’t ask because it would have been like asking a mountain why it was still standing, as it had been since the dawn of time, perhaps reshaped in subtle ways, but there, always there. Barring cataclysmic planetary upheaval, forever there.

The man was strong—not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. A rock of a man, the kind a woman could lean on through the worst of times and never have to worry that things might fall apart, because a man like him simply wouldn’t let them. She never met anyone like Cian before. Twenty-first-century society wasn’t conducive to churning out alpha males. What did a man have to hone himself on nowadays, test himself against, build character on? Conquering the latest video game? Buying the right suit and tie? Smacking little white balls around a manicured garden with ridiculously expensive sticks? Doing battle over the parking space nearest the store?

“Nope,” she managed. “No other questions.”