by Rebecca York
“Her brother would kill her?” Jonah asked.
“I’m not sure what he’d do. He was pretty angry—and barely holding it together. Plus he was babbling about her always wanting him to fail. You saw him march her into the house. From the way they were talking, it sounded like they never had a very good relationship. And I’d call him unstable.”
“But murder his sister?” Zack pressed.
“From what I heard, he sees this new drug as his big chance for fame and fortune. If he thinks she’s screwed that up, he could go batshit.”
“Then I say, attack the lab,” Brand said.
Knox’s head whipped toward him. “Jesus. I just told you we can’t do that.”
“He’ll be too charged up about his enterprise to be thinking about his sister.”
“And we’ll be in place to rescue her when chaos erupts,” Brand added.
Knox shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Too dangerous.”
“Nobody’s rushing off to put her in danger. Before we do anything, we’d better have the answers to some questions,” Cole said. “How many bad guys are here?”
“I saw four.”
“And two of them were with the brother?”
He made a frustrated sound. “Yes. But I can’t be sure if more are in the house. Or how many are down at the stable. Maybe we have to figure five plus the brother.”
“And maybe the chemist who’s making the stuff is no fighter,” Zack put in.
Knox shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“What about security? Did they catch you because they have a perimeter set up?”
He made an angry sound. “No. One of the guys was out in the woods taking a crap and spotted me. He’s the one who destroyed the phone.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. He wanted to say he shouldn’t have gone in alone, but he’d already said that.
Instead he said, “Thanks for figuring out I was in trouble.”
Jonah cleared his throat. “Maybe I can find out what’s going on with Maggie.”
Knox turned toward him. “How?”
“I may be able to view the scene inside the house.”
Knox struggled not to shout. “Then do it.”
“Give me some space.” Jonah sat down, leaning against a tree as he closed his eyes.
Everybody backed up, still facing him.
After a few minutes, he opened his eyes. “I can’t do this if you’re all standing there hanging on every twitch of my face.”
Knox wondered if he couldn’t do it anyway. Maybe Cole felt his tension because he put a hand on his arm. “We can go back to the SUV and get some of the stuff we brought.”
Yeah, maybe that would satisfy his need to do something, Knox thought. He glanced around and said, “But one of us keeps guard to make sure nobody sneaks up on Jonah while he’s working.”
###
Maggie figured she was in deep shit as Campbell hustled her into the house and up the stairs. She’d seen him go off the deep end a time or two, and now he showed the classic signs of paranoia.
“I’ll handle this,” he said to the other two men.
They stayed on the first floor while she was forced up the stairs to the bedroom she’d used when they’d come out here on family vacations. Picking her up like a sack of oranges, he tossed her onto the bed where she crashed against the wall and bounced on the mattress. She stared at him wide-eyed as she struggled to catch her breath. She’d thought he was out of control—but not this bad.
“Okay—stop playing games with me,” he snarled.
She made an effort to speak calmly. “I’m not playing games.”
“You were with the guy. You fucked him in your tent.”
“No.”
“You’re lying.”
She pushed herself up so that she was sitting with her back pressed against the wall.
“My relationships are none of your business.”
“Not my business?” he spat out. “That guy is a spy. He was going to compromise my whole operation.” He paused for a moment, considering. “What, were you in on this from the beginning? Is that why you were out there camping? You didn’t just happen to meet him in the woods.”
She wanted to ask if Knox was a spy or a werewolf, but she bit back the question.
Campbell was making an illegal drug. If she knew anything about him, he was probably using it himself. But that wasn’t what had made him unstable. From the first, he’d been the favored child. He hadn’t had to work hard for their father’s approval—until he’d gotten to high school and then college where he couldn’t keep his grades up.
He’d been jealous of her academic ability but scornful that she’d gone into a low-paying profession like nursing. In the past few years, she’d mostly kept away from him. But she’d heard from her father about some of her sibling’s get-rich-quick schemes.
Dad always seemed impressed when her brother started out on some enterprise—like using low-cost loans to buy crappy houses, fix them up and sell them for big bucks. Then he’d be disappointed when the scheme fell through. In the case of the housing, it was because Campbell hadn’t been willing to pay enough to hire workmen who could produce a good product.
Now he was into some drug scheme. Did Dad even know about it? Or was it a big secret—until success was assured?
All that ran through her mind as she struggled to come up with a way out of this mess. But she didn’t see one. She didn’t want to talk about Knox. And even if she did, Campbell wouldn’t believe her. Or if he believed part of it, he’d insist she was holding something back.
“Well?” he asked.
She lifted one shoulder. “Whatever I say won’t be what you want to hear.”
“Not in your current state. But I think there’s an effective way to interrogate you.”
“You’re going to torture me?”
“No, I’m going to give you an injectable dose of the stuff.”
As she heard the words, a zing of alarm went through her.
Her brother was still talking. “I think the drug we’re making will break your iron will.” He laughed. “You can’t lie if you’re too wigged out to think straight.”
“No!”
He grinned. “You don’t have much choice.”
“Campbell, don’t mess with me like this.”
“You made your own bed.” He laughed. “Now you have to lie in it.”
She could tell there was no point in pleading. Instead she thought of everything Knox had told her about the drug. It had seriously disoriented him, and the effects kept reappearing. Now she was going to get an injectable dose—which had to be stronger than breathing it.
All the disturbing information she knew from her studies of recreational drugs leaped into her mind. Reactions varied. If you were susceptible to something, you could get addicted the first time you tried it.
She winced, hoping that hadn’t happened to Knox.
“Get ready for a great high.”
Campbell walked to the door, opened it and called out, “Lane bring me one of those injectable doses we were working on.”
The moment his back was turned, Maggie sprang off the bed and leaped toward one of the windows. It was closed, but she grabbed a handful of the curtain and bashed her palm against the pane. It was old, and her fist crashed through.
###
On his way to the car, Knox heard the sound of glass breaking. Stopping in his tracks, he reversed directions and went running back toward the house.
Cole tried to grab his arm, but he savagely shook his cousin off and kept plowing ahead. Focusing on the room where he thought Maggie was being held, he was in time to see that something had crashed through the window glass. Not a solid object like a paper weight. A fabric, covering—something. Then he figured it out. She must have shielded her hand to break the glass.
For just a moment, he saw her face at the window as she looked wildly toward freedom. He prayed that she had spotted him, but he couldn’t be sure. In
the next second he saw her brother behind her, pulling her back. Then they were both gone and Knox was left feeling like the breath had been knocked out of him.
He might have rushed forward, but Cole and Zack had caught up with him.
They both held him fast. One of them slapped a hand over his mouth as they hauled him away from the house and back into the woods. He tried to bite the hand, but the werewolf’s grip was too firm.
Although they were out of sight of the windows, the two Decorah agents who had pulled him to safety kept their hold on him.
“Rushing in there won’t do you any good if you get captured again. This time they’ll probably kill you and ask questions later,” Cole said.
Knox growled deep in his throat.
“Nod if you’re not going to shout—or try to get away.”
He thought about it for a moment. They were right. Getting himself killed wasn’t going to help Maggie. Gritting his teeth, he nodded.
Cole took his hand off Knox’s mouth, and he looked up to see Jonah and Brand had joined them. He turned to the telepath, knowing he looked like a condemned man pleading for his life.
“Do you know what’s happening in there?”
It seemed like the world turned upside down before Jonah answered, “Yes. I finally locked onto the scene—I think because her emotions were broadcasting like a power plant about to explode. She tried to escape because he was going to give her the drug—and she was afraid she was going to talk about you.”
“Shit.”
He heard Jonah swallow.
“What?”
“He’s giving her a shot—not making her breathe the stuff. She’s a nurse. She’s afraid of the potency.”
“Christ.”
“We’ll get her out of there,” Brand said.
“How?”
“A diversion. Getting it ready won’t take long.”
“Great. If her brain’s not fried,” Knox spat out.
“There’s nothing we can do about the drug now. He’s administered it.”
All Knox could do was howl deep in his throat.
“You want me to keep trying to monitor her?” Jonah asked. “Or should I help with the setup?”
Knox felt as though the decision would literally tear him in two. But he knew he had to make it quickly
“We’d better all work together,” he said, knowing that if Maggie died in there, he would never forgive himself. But he also knew he’d end up dead if he simply rushed into the house to try and save her. And if the other Decorah men tried to join him, they’d get shot, too.
“What’s the plan?” he asked.
“We were in the middle of working that out.”
“Christ, you mean you’re just bullshitting me?”
“No,” Cole answered. “We have small explosive charges that will sound like gunfire. We have to set them out on one side of the stable.”
“Okay. Do it.”
Brand and Cole ran back to the car. Knox and Zack cautiously moved into position near the stable—making sure none of the drug guys saw them.
When the other Decorah agents returned, Jonah kept watch while the rest of them distributed the charges in the woods. They were designed to go off with a series of cell phone signals.
###
Up in the bedroom, Maggie blinked as she tried to focus on her surroundings. She thought the drug had put her to sleep for a few minutes, but she couldn’t be sure of that—or anything else.
Raising her gaze, she saw that Campbell was watching her with a curious expression on his face.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“Sick,” she managed to say, wondering if she was pronouncing the word correctly because it was hard to think and hard to make her mouth work properly.
“It’s supposed to make you feel good.”
She grunted.
“Do you feel good?”
“No.”
His voice sharpened. “Are you lying to me?”
She wasn’t even sure of the answer. She had never liked the feeling of being drunk. And she’d stayed away from drugs. Now she felt dizzy and at the same time euphoric. Was that supposed to be good? It certainly wasn’t her definition. She could just picture some poor jerks high on this stuff wandering around the streets, getting hit by a car or falling off a highway overpass.
“Tell me about the guy.”
“Huh?” Probably he was talking about Knox. No way was she going to give away anything about him.
“We were going to talk about your friend,” Campbell pressed.
“What friend?” She was feeling way outside the orbit of Saturn, trying to claw her way back to earth, but she knew she had one main mission—to keep her brother from finding out about Knox.
“You sound like you’re on a two-day bender.”
“Your fault,” she answered slurring her words more than necessary.
“If you don’t tell me what you know, I’ll kill him.”
“Who?”
Campbell kept his voice steady. “Your boyfriend.”
Did that make sense? He had said he wanted information about Knox, but if he didn’t have any information, how could he even find him?
She tried to work her way out of that dead end and couldn’t quite make it.
“What’s his name?” Campbell pressed.
“Mr. Spock.”
Her brother leaped up and slapped her across the face.
Her mouth stung and her eyes watered.
All she could do was stare at the man who had hit her. She’d known him all her life. She’d come to realize he wasn’t a very nice person. But this?
Her tormentor leaned over, shaking her. “His name. What’s his name? What was he doing snooping around? Is he a narc? Are you working with him? Was that why you came up here?”
“Not working with anyone,” she managed to say.
“You bitch.”
As she looked up, she was struck with an idea. “Oh God, no,” she screamed.
“What?”
“A dragon. It’s coming through the door. It’s coming to eat you.”
She cringed back against the wall, hoping she was hanging on to her sanity. Did she see a dragon or was she making that up?
Closing her eyes, she turned her head away.
“Jesus, cut it out,” Campbell shouted.
“I . . . can’t,” she whimpered.
She saw a hand raised to slap her again. The sound of gunfire stopped the attack.
“What?” she croaked.
Feet pounded up the steps. Pulling the gun from the waistband of his pants Campbell whirled toward the door.
When it opened, he fired two rounds at the man in the doorway.
CHAPTER 9
Everything inside Maggie went cold and dead. “Knox. Oh God, Knox,” she screamed. She clambered off the bed, her horrified gaze glued to the figure on the floor, blinking to make her blurred vision come clear.
Through the fuzzy effects of the drug, she finally saw it wasn’t Knox gasping in pain. It was one of the other men who had come to the campsite. The guy with the potbelly.
“Oh Christ, oh Christ,” her brother was saying over and over as he rushed toward the man. “Lane, I’m so sorry.”
He knelt beside the guy, who was bleeding from two wounds—one in his shoulder and one in his arm. Campbell had probably shot to kill, but his aim was way off.
“Lane, are you all right, Lane?”
“You drilled me.”
“I thought you were the other guy. The wolf man.”
Maggie watched her two captors as she desperately tried to make her fogged brain sort out reality. She’d thought Knox was rushing up the steps to rescue her. Campbell had thought the same thing, and he’d fired. Now he was sorry he’d shot his . . . She might have said friend if she’d thought he had any.
She couldn’t just lie here now. As a nurse, she should help the man on the floor the way she had helped Knox. But in this case, she felt no obligation to tend t
o him. She had to get away.
While her brother was crouched over his companion, Maggie struggled to steady herself. On wobbly legs, she started across the room.
Could she get past the men?
No. But there was still the window.
This time she reached for the desk chair and smashed it into the already ruined pane.
Campbell hadn’t been paying any attention to her as he’d leaned over the wounded man, but he heard the glass smash.
“Stop!” her brother shouted behind her. “Stop or I’ll shoot.”
Her thoughts might be confused, but she knew one thing—she wasn’t going to stop. The sound of his running feet boomed in her head as she plunged through the window, dropped a couple of feet and landed on the roof of the porch with a thud.
She tried to catch herself, but the surface was slanted, and she started rolling toward the far edge, glass spattering around her.
Somehow, she caught herself before she fell, hovering at the drop-off. The world was spinning. Or maybe her mind was spinning, or maybe both. Below her, the ground seemed to get farther away, then come springing up to slam her in the face.
Her hand hurt, and she raised it, seeing blood. She must have cut herself on the window glass. But that was the least of her worries. She had to get farther back toward the house or she was going to splat against the ground. When she looked up, she saw Campbell leaning out the window, the gun still in his hand.
###
As Knox sped toward the house, he heard the crash of glass again. Looking up, he saw Maggie hurl herself through the window and land on the weathered shingles of the roof. He saw her fingers scrabbling at the rough surface, unable to stop herself from sliding toward the edge.
The whole scene seemed to happen in slow motion as she slid toward disaster, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was too far away to even break her fall. His heart leaped into his throat as he kept running, struggling to suck in air. In the last moment before she tumbled into space, she caught herself and came to rest along the gutter.