Текст книги "Taken by Midnight"
Автор книги: Lara Adrian
Соавторы: Lara Adrian
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
One of Chase’s main objectives in the months since Dragos turned tail and ran was to start peeling back those layers in the Agency. To get closer to Dragos, the Order would need to get close to his lieutenants without tripping any alarms. One careless move could drive Dragos even deeper into hiding.
The operation was covert in the extreme, made all the more delicate seeing how the Order’s best hope of success lay in the hair-trigger, volatile hands of Sterling Chase and his trust in an old friend who was only as loyal as Chase promised him to be.
On the passenger-side dashboard, Chase’s cell phone began to vibrate. “That’ll be Rowan,” he said, grabbing the phone and answering the call. “Yeah. We’re waiting. Where are you?”
Brock stared out at the swirling snow through the windshield, listening to Chase’s side of a conversation that didn’t sound like good news.
“Ah, fuck—anyone dead?” Chase went quiet for a second, then hissed something nasty. At Brock’s questioning look, he explained, “Got detoured by another call. Darkhaven kid let things get out of hand at a party. There was a fight, then a feeding on the street outside. One human is dead, another ran off on foot, bleeding bad.”
“Jesus,” Brock muttered.
The dead human and a feeding taking place on a public street was bad enough. The bigger trouble was the escaped witness. It wasn’t hard to imagine the hysteria that a savaged human could cause, running around screaming the word “vampire.” To say nothing of what that same bleeding human could incite among Brock’s own kind.
The scent of fresh, spilling red cells would be a beacon to every Breed in a two-mile radius. And God forbid there were any Rogues left in the city. One whiff of an open wound would be enough to send the blood-addicted dregs of the Breed population into a feeding frenzy.
Chase’s jaw was taut as he went back to Mathias Rowan on the cell. “Tell me your guys have the runner contained.” From the harsh grate of the curse that followed, Brock was guessing the answer to that was no. “Goddamn it, Mathias. You know as well as I do that we’ve got to get that human off the street. If it takes the entire Boston division to track him down, then you do it. Who’s down there with you from the Agency?”
Brock watched and listened as the conversation continued, observing a side of Sterling Chase he hardly recognized. The former Agent was cool and commanding, logical and precise. The unpredictable hothead that Brock had grown accustomed to as a member of the Order seemed to take a backseat to the crisp, capable leader sitting beside him in the Rover now.
He’d heard that Chase had been a golden boy with the Agency before he’d joined the Order, though you couldn’t have proved that by Brock in the year that he’d been working alongside him. Now he felt a kindling new respect for the former Agent, as well as a gnawing curiosity about the other, darker side of him, which never seemed far from the surface.
“Where are you at, Mathias?” Chase motioned to Brock to put the vehicle in gear as he spoke to his Agency contact. “Tell you what, you let me worry about whether the Order needs to get involved in this. I’m not asking permission, and you and I never had this conversation, got it? Save it for when I get there. We’re already heading your way.”
Brock turned the Rover onto the street and followed Chase’s directions as he cut off Mathias Rowan’s audible protests, then stuffed the cell phone back into his coat pocket. They sped deeper into the city, toward the industrial wharfs, where a lot of the younger crowd—humans and Breed alike—met for late-night raves and private, after-hours parties.
It wasn’t hard to find the scene of the killing. Two unmarked black sedans were parked at a dockside warehouse. Several Breed males in dark coats and suits stood around a large object lying unmoving in the filthy snow of the lot adjacent to the building.
“That’s them,” Chase said. “I recognize most of these men from the Agency.”
Brock swung the Rover into the area, eyeing the group as all heads pivoted toward the approaching vehicle. “Yeah, that’s them, all right. Useless and confused,” Brock drawled, assessing the Agents with a glance. “Which one’s Rowan?”
He needn’t have asked. No sooner had he said it than one of the group broke away from the others, stalking over at a brisk clip to meet Brock and Chase as they got out of the vehicle. Agent Mathias Rowan was as tall and broad as any one of the warriors, his thick shoulders bulky mounds underneath the heavy fall of his tailored dark wool coat. Light green eyes flashed with intelligence and annoyance as he approached, skin stretching tight across his high cheekbones.
“Understand you Agency boys are having a little trouble tonight,” Chase said, pitching his voice loud enough for the rest of the gathered Agents to hear him as well as Rowan. “Thought you might need some help out here.”
“Are you fucking nuts?” Rowan growled, low under his breath, for Chase alone. “You’ve got to know any one of these Agents would just as soon tear your limbs off than have you walking into the middle of their investigation.”
“Yeah?” Chase replied, mouth quirked into a cocky grin. “Been a slow night for me so far. Might be interesting to let them try.”
“Chase, damn it.” Rowan kept his voice low. “I told you not to come.”
Chase grunted. “There was a time when I was giving the orders around here and you were the one following them, Mathias.”
“Not anymore.” Rowan frowned, but there was no animosity in his expression. “We’ve got three Agents in pursuit of the runner; they’ll get him. The building has been cleared of all humans, and any potential witnesses to the incident have been scrubbed of all memory of the entire night. It’s handled.”
“Well, well … Sterling fucking Chase.” The snarled greeting carried on the wintry breeze, across the snow-tossed industrial lot from where a couple of the other men had broken from the pack to amble over.
Chase glanced out, eyes narrowing on the big male in front. “Freyne,” he growled, spitting the name like he couldn’t stand the taste of it. “I should have known that asshole would be here.”
“You’re interfering in official Agency business,” Agent Rowan said, louder now, intending to be heard by all. He shot Chase a cautioning look, but spoke with the kind of uptight arrogance that seemed to be as standard issue in the Enforcement Agency as their GQ suits and polished shoes. “This incident doesn’t concern the Order. It’s a Darkhaven matter, and we’ve got the situation under control.”
Grinning dangerously at the two approaching newcomers, Chase stepped around his friend with little more than a sidelong glance. Brock followed him, muscles twitching in readiness for battle as he registered the air of menace rolling off the pair of Agents who’d come to confront them.
“Jesus Christ, it is you,” said the one called Freyne, his lips curled back in a sneer. “Figured we’d seen the last of you after you popped your Rogue nephew last year.”
Brock tensed, caught off guard by the comment and its deliberate cruelty. Outrage spiked in him, yet Chase appeared unsurprised by the heartless reminder. He ignored the jibe, an effort that must have taken incredible control based on the steely clench of his jaw as he brushed past his former colleagues on his way to the scene of the killing.
Brock kept pace with Chase’s long strides, cutting through the eddying flurries of snow, past the tinted window of an idling sedan where the Darkhaven kid who’d let his hunger rule him waited inside. Brock felt the weight of the Breed youth’s eyes on him as he and Chase passed the car, their images—two heavily armed males in black fatigues and long leather coats, unmistakably members of the Order—reflected in the glass.
On the ground near the building, the snow was stained deep red where the struggle had occurred. The lifeless corpse of the slain human had now been zipped into a body bag and was being loaded into another Agency vehicle parked nearby. The blood was dead and of no temptation or use, but the coppery tang was still strong in the chill air, making Brock’s gums tingle with the emergence of his fangs.
Behind them, footsteps crunched in the snow and gravel. Freyne cleared his throat, apparently unable to let things lie. “You know, Chase, I’ll be straight with you. No one could blame you for putting the kid down.”
“Agent Freyne,” Mathias Rowan said, a warning that went unheeded.
“It’s not like he didn’t have it coming, right, Chase? I mean, shit. The kid was Rogue, and there’s only one good way to deal with that. Same way you deal with a rabid dog.”
As determined as the other Agent was to taunt, Chase seemed equally determined to tune him out. “Over there,” he said to Brock, pointing to indicate a trail of heavy spatters tracking away from the scene.
Brock nodded. He’d already spotted the path the runner took. And as much as he personally wanted to leap on Agent Freyne and take the smug bastard down a peg or ten, if Chase was able to ignore him, Brock would do his best to do the same. “Looks like our live one ran off toward the docks.”
“Yeah,” Chase agreed. “Judging by the amount of blood he’s spilling, he’s too weak to get far. Fatigue will take him down in under a mile.”
Brock looked back at Chase. “So, if the area’s been swept and no one has found him yet—”
“He’s got to be hiding somewhere not far from here,” Chase said, finishing the thought.
They were about to head out in pursuit when Freyne’s chuckle sounded from behind them. “Putting a bullet in the kid’s brain was an act of mercy if you ask me. But you have to wonder if his mother felt the same way … seeing how you killed her son right in front of her.”
Chase froze at that. Brock glanced at him, saw a muscle ticking dangerously fast in his rigid jaw.
While the rest of the small group moved out of the immediate area, Mathias Rowan stepped in front of his Agent, fury vibrating off every inch of him. “Damn it, Freyne, I said shut the fuck up and that’s an order!”
But the son of a bitch just wouldn’t stop. He navigated around his superior, putting himself right in Chase’s face. “Elise is the one I pity in all of this. That poor, sweet woman. To have lost your brother Quentin in the line of duty all those years ago, then you take her only child before her eyes. I guess it’s no surprise she’d look for comfort somewhere—even among the thugs of the Order.” Freyne made a vulgar sound in the back of his throat. “Fine-looking female like that could have had her pick of eager males in her bed. Hell, I would have gladly sampled some of that. Surprised you never did.”
Chase let out a roar that rattled the ground. In a blur of movement that not even Brock could fully track, Chase launched himself at Freyne. The two big males crashed down to the gravel and snow, Chase pinning the Agent beneath him, pounding his fists into his face.
Freyne fought back, but he was no match for Chase’s fury. Observing it up close, Brock wasn’t sure anyone could stand up to the feral rage that seemed to pour out of Chase as he landed one punishing blow after another.
None of the other Agents made a move to stop the altercation, least of all Mathias Rowan. He stood back, silent, stoic, the rest of his subordinates seeming to gauge their response on his. They would have let Chase kill Freyne, and whether that killing was deserved or not, Brock couldn’t allow the brutal scene to play out to its seemingly foregone conclusion.
He stepped up, put a hand on his fellow warrior’s churning shoulder. “Chase, my man. It’s enough.”
Chase kept hammering, even though Freyne was no longer fighting back. Fangs stretched huge in his mouth, eyes blazing with the amber fire of his rage, Chase seemed unwilling—or unable—to bring the beast in him to heel.
When one of those bloodied fists recoiled to strike another blow, Brock caught it in his hand. He held fast with all his strength, refusing to let the hammer fall again. Chase pivoted a wild look on him. Snarled something raw and nasty.
Brock slowly shook his head. “Come on, Harvard. Let him be now. He’s not worth killing, not like this.”
Chase glared hard into his eyes, lips curled back off his fangs. He grunted, animalistic, then swung his head back around to look at the sputtering, bloodied male still pinned beneath him and semiconscious in the muck.
Brock felt the tight fist in his grasp begin to loosen a fraction. “That’s it, my man. You’re better than this. Better than him.”
A cell phone trilled nearby. From his periphery, Brock saw Rowan put the mobile to his ear and pivot away to take the call. Chase was still huffing and dangerous, not yet willing to let Freyne loose.
“They got him,” Agent Rowan announced, his calm statement cutting through some of the tension. “Two of my Agents found the runner hiding under a delivery truck down by the wharfs. They’ve scrubbed his memory of what he witnessed and will drop him near a hospital on the other side of the city.”
Brock gave a faint nod of acknowledgment. “You hear that, Chase? It’s over. We’re done here.” He let go of Chase’s fist, trusting him not to escalate the situation with Freyne or any of the other Agents still gathered around, watching in anxious silence. “Let him go, Chase. This shit is finished.”
“For now,” Chase finally muttered, his voice rough and dark. He snuffled, shook off the hand Brock placed on his shoulder. With rage still rolling off him, he delivered one last punishing blow to Freyne’s battered face before springing up to his feet. “Next time I see you,” he growled, “you’re a dead man.”
“Come on, Harvard.” Brock steered him away from the area, not missing the pointed look that Mathias Rowan leveled on them as they headed back toward the Rover. “So much for diplomatic relations with the Agency, my man.”
Chase said nothing. He followed behind a couple of paces, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs, his body throwing off aggression like a nuclear blast.
“I hope we didn’t need that bridge back there, because you may have just torched it,” Brock said as they reached the vehicle.
Chase didn’t answer. Nothing but quiet at Brock’s back. Too much quiet, in fact.
He pivoted around. All he found was a lot of empty space where Chase had been standing just a second ago. He was gone, vanished without excuse or explanation, into the snowy night.
CHAPTER
Sixteen
A couple hours after dinner with Alex, Jenna was seated in the Breedmates’ war room, at the very conference table where she and Brock had opened a door that likely neither one of them had been prepared to walk through. But she tried not to think about that. She tried not to think about Brock’s sensual mouth on hers, or his skilled hands, which had given such intense pleasure even as he drew away her grief and inhibitions.
Instead, she rooted her attention on the discussion taking place between the women of the Order who were gathered in the room to review the status of their mission to locate the captives being held by Dragos. Only Tess was absent from the meeting, the pregnant Breedmate having apparently begged off to rest in her and Dante’s quarters while keeping little Mira company, as well.
“She’s not feeling ill, is she?” Alex asked. “You don’t think the baby might be coming early?”
Savannah gave a mild shake of her head as she rested her elbows on the table. “Tess says she feels great, just a little tired. It’s understandable. She’s down to just a few weeks now.”
There was the faintest hesitation in her voice, then her gaze drifted subtly toward Jenna. A silent curiosity lingered in her eyes. At that moment, Jenna noticed that Savannah’s palms were pressed against the table. Her slim black brows lifted slightly, and it was obvious from the partial quirk of her mouth that her Breedmate talent for reading objects with a touch had just told her—no doubt, in vivid detail—of the passionate kiss Jenna and Brock had shared on that very surface.
When embarrassment started to make Jenna look away, Savannah merely smiled in serene amusement and gave her a small nod as if to say she approved.
“You know, Dante’s got a pool going on the delivery date,” Dylan piped in. “Rio and I have our money on a Christmas baby.”
Renata shook her head, the blunt ends of her dark hair swinging around her chin. “New Year’s Eve, you wait and see. Dante’s son would never miss an excuse for a party.”
At the far end of the table, Gabrielle laughed. “Lucan will never admit that he’s looking forward to having a baby in the compound, but I have it on good authority that five bucks was placed on December twentieth recently.”
“Is there something special about that date?” Jenna asked, caught up in the excitement and genuinely curious to know.
“It’s Lucan’s birthday,” Elise said, sharing Gabrielle’s humor. “And Tegan put a hundred dollars on February fourth, knowing full well it was much too late to be in the running.”
“February fourth,” Savannah said, nodding with serene understanding.
Elise’s smile was tender with memories, bittersweet. “The night that Tegan found me hunting Rogues in Boston and tried to put a stop to it.”
Dylan reached out and squeezed the other Breedmate’s hand. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”
As the chatter of small, everyday things gave way to more serious talk of pursuing leads and formulating new mission strategies, Jenna felt her respect growing for the smart, determined mates of the Order’s warriors. And despite the earlier assurances that Tess’s exhaustion was nothing to worry about, she found herself concerned about her, too, feeling as though the fabric of the gathering was missing one of its most vibrant threads.
A thought struck Jenna as she quietly observed, taking in the faces of the other women in the room: Somehow, she had begun to consider all of them her friends. These women mattered to her, and so did their goals. As adamant as she was that she didn’t belong in this place, among these people, she realized that she wanted to see them succeed.
She wanted to see the Order defeat Dragos, and there was a part of her—a very determined part—that wanted to have a hand in making that happen.
Jenna eagerly listened as Elise discussed the status of the new sketches she and Claire Reichen had been working on with Elise’s artist contact in the local Darkhaven. “It should only be another couple of days before we have finished sketches to work with. Claire has been amazing, making sure every detail is just as she recalls it from her dreamwalk into Dragos’s lab. She’s got meticulous notes, and her memory is incredible.”
“That’s good,” Renata said. “We’re going to need all the help we can get. Unfortunately, Dylan and I have run into a slight snag on Sister Margaret.”
“She’s living in a home for retired nuns down in Gloucester,” Dylan interjected. “I spoke to the administrator, and told her that my mom and Sister Margaret used to work together at the women’s shelter in New York. I didn’t mention what we were really looking for, of course. Instead I set it up as a personal call, and asked if it would be possible to visit with the sister sometime and chat about her years of volunteer work—maybe reminisce a bit about my mom. The good news is, Sister Margaret loves having company.”
“So, what’s the snag?” Jenna asked, unable to keep from jumping on this new intel trail herself.
“Dementia,” Renata replied.
Dylan nodded. “Sister Margaret’s been suffering from it for the past couple of years. The house admin said there’s a good chance she might not remember much about my mom or her work at the shelter.”
“But it’s still worth a try, right?” Jenna glanced around at the other women. “I mean, any lead is a good one at this point. There are lives on the line here, so we have to make use of everything we can. Whatever it takes to find those women and bring them home.”
More than one head turned with surprise in her direction. If any of the Order’s women thought it strange that she was including herself in their efforts to locate the missing Breedmates, none of them said a word about it.
Savannah’s gaze lingered on her the longest, a look of gratitude—of friendship and acceptance—shining in her gentle eyes.
It was that easy acceptance, that sense of kindness and community she’d felt from each of these special women from the first day she awoke, that put a knot of emotion in Jenna’s throat now. It overwhelmed her, nearly choking her up to feel even for a second that she could be part of something as tight knit and comfortable as the extraordinary extended family that lived and worked in this place.
“All right. Let’s get to work,” Dylan said after a moment. “There’s a lot to be done.”
One by one, they all went back to their tasks, some reviewing open file folders, others taking up positions in front of the war room’s many computer workstations. Jenna drifted over to one of the unused PCs and fired up an Internet browser.
She had almost forgotten her message to her friend in the FBI Division Office in Anchorage, but as soon as she accessed the email site, she saw the reply waiting in her in box. She clicked the message and quickly scanned what it said.
“Uh, you guys,” she said, feeling a little jolt of excitement and triumph as she read her friend’s reply. “You know how you’ve been trying to get some intel on TerraGlobal Partners?”
“Dragos’s corporate front,” Dylan said, already coming over to see what Jenna had.
Alex and the other women were close behind her. “What’s going on, Jen?”
“We’re not the only ones interested in TerraGlobal.” Jenna glanced up at the eager faces gathered around her. “An old buddy of mine in Anchorage ran a basic inquiry for me. He got a hit.”
Savannah blew out a disbelieving laugh as she read the email message displayed on the monitor. “The FBI has an open investigation on TerraGlobal?”
“According to my friend, it’s a relatively new one. It’s being headed up by someone in their New York office.”
Gabrielle gave Jenna an approving smile. “Nice work. We’d better go inform Lucan of what you’ve found.”
The evening was only half over, but already he considered it a triumphant success.
In the dark of his private helicopter, Dragos smiled with deep satisfaction as his pilot guided the sleek aircraft away from the twinkling winter landscape of the busy capital city below and out over the dark water of the Atlantic, heading north, toward the second of his scheduled appearances tonight. He could hardly wait to arrive, anticipation for still another victory making his blood run faster in his veins.
For some time now, he had been cultivating his most useful allies, gathering his assets in preparation for the war he intended to wage, not only against his own kind—complacent, impotent cowards who deserved to be trampled under his boot—but also against the world at large.
Tonight’s private receptions were crucial to his goals, and only the beginning of what would be a staggering offensive strike that he was preparing to deliver on both the Breed and humankind alike. If the Order feared that his grasp extended dangerously deep into the power brokers of the vampire race alone, they were in for a very rude awakening. And soon.
Very soon, he thought, chuckling to himself with eager glee.
“How long before we touch down in Manhattan?” he asked his Minion pilot.
“Fifty-two minutes, Master. We are right on schedule.”
Dragos grunted his approval and relaxed into his seat for the remainder of the flight. He might have been tempted to call the evening flawless, if not for one small aggravation that stuck stubbornly in his craw—a bit of annoying news that had reached him earlier in the day.
Evidently some lowly desk jockey working for the Feds in Alaska was sniffing around in his business affairs, making inquiries about TerraGlobal Partners. For that, he blamed the Order. No doubt, it wasn’t every day that a mining company—fake or otherwise—went up in a hellish ball of flames, as his little operation in the Alaskan interior had done at the hands of Lucan’s warriors.
Now Dragos had the added irritation of having to contend with some public servant gas bag or environmental do-gooder trying to advance a career by going after a villainous corporation for God knew what offense.
Let them dig, he thought, smugly secure that he was free from any potential fallout. There were enough layers between himself and TerraGlobal to keep him insulated from nosy human law enforcement or interfering backwoods politicians. Failing that, he had assets in place who would ensure that his interests were protected. And, in the grander scheme, it didn’t matter.
He was untouchable, more so every day.
Before long, he would be unstoppable.
That knowledge kept the edge out of his voice when his cell phone rang with a call from one of his key lieutenants. “Tell me where the operation stands.”
“Everything is in order, sire. My men are embedded in positions as we discussed and ready to move forward with the plan for tomorrow at sundown.”
“Excellent,” Dragos replied. “Inform me when it is done.”
“Of course, sire.”
Dragos clapped the phone closed and slipped it back into his coat pocket. Tonight was a triumphant step toward attaining the golden future he had designed so long ago. But tomorrow’s move against the Order—the viper’s bite they would never see coming—was going to be an even sweeter victory.
Dragos let the thought settle over him as he tipped his head back and closed his eyes, savoring the promise of the Order’s imminent, final defeat.
