by Anya Nowlan
“Perhaps it would be better if he had his twin with him,” Spade mused, as if he were talking to himself and there was no one else in the room to cut into his train of thought. “But obviously that isn’t the case.”
It was like he was adding fuel to the fire and even Rio’s face twitched in rage now.
“Do you know where he is? Where they’re keeping Rhamos?”
A silence fell on the room as Spade pursed his lips lightly, his gaze tracking to Rylen, floating in that infernal vat while a team of scientists were trying to figure out a way to bring him out. Finally, he looked to Rio and then over to Ryker and Kayla, all three of them essentially holding their breaths, waiting for his answer.
Kayla could see it in his damn green eyes. Of course he knew.
Of course.
“I don’t think that would change anything here right now. Regardless of whether I know or not, your child hardly has that much time to wait. I’d suggest focusing your attentions on him until you can.”
With that, he nodded to them in dismissal and then turned around to exit the room. The tension in the room could be cut with a knife, though it lifted remarkably the moment the door closed behind Spade. It was like he brought his own damn pressure system into every room he walked into.
“I think I’ll go talk to him,” Dice said grimly. “See if I can find out anything more. Stay strong, you three.”
Dice exited quickly and Kayla could see him turning in the same direction as Spade had. She’d garnered that the two had been friends once, but there seemed to be no love lost these days. No wonder, Spade didn’t exactly strike her as a man she’d like to be friends with in any circumstances.
When Ryker released her from his iron grip, she slumped weakly down on one of the chairs. Touching her hand to the glass, she watched as one of the doctors got up on a footstool and carefully took one of Rylen’s arms out of the goo by opening the lid on top of the tube. He drew blood before gently placing his hand back inside and sealing the container.
His arms looked so skinny and pale, though she could see muscle clearly under the skin. He looked like a normal five-year-old boy, perhaps a bit stronger than he should have, but it was impossible to think that he was maybe hours away from dying.
“What do we do now?” she asked numbly, not raising her gaze to Rio or Ryker.
Endless accusations rang in her head, most of them directed at herself and then a healthy few at Spade. But as much as getting stuck in her self-loathing seemed like a likely way of spending her day, she couldn’t give up now. Not when there was still a chance.
“Spade was right about how things would be a lot better if Rhamos was here,” Ryker said, his voice gravelly. “That’s probably why they got split up in the first place. Shifters heal way too fucking fast if their Alpha twin is with them. Probably made them hard to test on that way.”
Kayla frowned slightly, finally sparing Ryker and then Rio a glance. She’d read up about shifter physiology after she’d had the boys, and the psychology. A lot of the information that shifter communities seemed to take as self-explanatory and clearly evident never seemed to make it into the books, though.
“So you’re saying that if they were together, they’d heal faster and have a chance at fighting whatever it is that has been done to them?” Kayla asked, wanting to be sure.
“Yes,” Rio said simply, leaning on the glass and watching the doctors run the blood sample and compare notes with one another, one of the technicians skittering into the room with some new news.
“Then we need to get Rhamos back. Right now.”
Kayla’s heart beat wildly in her chest as she said that. Her body, which had felt completely drained and exhausted a few moments ago, was filled with new life suddenly. There was a plan of action on the horizon, something she could do. It made her shake out of her self-imposed misery and come to life again.
“I don’t disagree, Kayla, but we don’t know where he is,” Ryker said, frowning.
A small smile crept over Kayla’s lips. It felt almost alien to be smiling at a time like this, but she had good reason.
“Sure, that’s right. But you forget that I’ve spent the last four years getting information out of people who didn’t want to tell me anything.”
“I don’t think any of those people were like Spade, though,” Rio noted darkly.
That quelled her enthusiasm a little. She couldn’t disagree with that one.
But if Spade knows, there has to be someone else that does…
“Do you know where his office is?” Kayla asked, glancing at the two men.
“I don’t think he has one,” Ryker said. “Not here anyway. We’re not in Nevada that much.”
“Kayla, don’t get reckless. Rylen needs you and Rhamos does as well… If you get yourself shot over something that’s a fool’s errand anyway, we won’t be able to live with ourselves.”
Rio came to sit on his haunches in front of Kayla, taking her hands in his. His touch was warm and comforting and Kayla wanted nothing more than to get lost in it, but this wasn’t the time. Her stomach twisted when she thought of what they could become after this. If they lost their sons, there was no chance in the world that she could ever be happy with either of these wonderful men who’d carved such a big piece of her heart out and made their mark on it.
“He’s right. We’ll talk to Spade, we’ll get the information out of him one way or another. But you need to stay out of it,” Ryker said, putting both hands on her shoulders.
She glanced up and stayed quiet for a moment, mulling it over.
I can only tell them what they want to hear. If I don’t do that, they’ll tie me to a freaking radiator somewhere so I wouldn’t end up ‘hurting myself.’
The thought didn’t come with a modicum of fuzziness to it. Everything was severely fucked up, yes, but it was nice to know that they still cared, at least a little.
“I promise,” she said.
Mentally, though, she was crossing her fingers as hard as she could.
Thirteen
Ryker
Being closer to Rylen didn’t make things any better.
It was around five hours later that the doctors allowed him, Rio and Kayla into the medical room so they could be nearer to Rylen. The room was practically empty now, with only a nurse coming to check in every now and then. Ryker knew that somewhere in the vast compound of The Firm’s Nevada research facility, people were working tirelessly to figure out what was going on with his son, but standing there in front of him, helpless, Ryker felt like there wasn’t nearly enough being done.
Worst of all, he hated the fact that he couldn’t do anything.
Rio was sitting on a chair right in front of the tube of clear liquid, his face lit by the blue glow of the small lamps set in the backs of the contraption. One of the first things Ryker had done when he’d finally been allowed into the room was take stock of the engineering of one of those pods. As far as he could tell, it was solidly built and all of the connections were tight and well-pressurized.
Not that he needed to know that. But it gave him something else to do than stare into the abyss and watch it wink back at him.
“This is bullshit,” Rio said, his voice having none of the emotion and anger that his words did. “I can’t believe the only thing we can do is just sit around here.”
Ryker nodded mutely, stopping his incessant pacing for a moment. For the better part of the last hour, he’d been walking back and forth the length of the room. He was expecting to wear a groove into the cold, hard tiles soon enough.
They’d sent Kayla off to sleep about two and a half hours ago, when she almost collapsed against the clear sheet of glass in the viewing room. None of them had slept in over forty hours now. Adding in the time they’d spent in bed in Poland… well, if Rio and Ryker weren’t shifters then there would have been no way in hell they could have still been walking around.
But exhaustion was something that really didn’t seem to set in that easily w
hen your kid was fighting for his life, apparently.
“We tried. Dice tried. I don’t know if Spade actually knows where Rhamos is, but the odds are we couldn’t get him here fast enough anyway. It has to help that we’re here, at least,” Ryker said, voicing his darker thoughts.
Indeed, Rylen’s vitals had perked up a little since they’d been allowed in the room. It was a shoddy alternative to having his twin close, but parental connections helped a little when it came to healing, at least. Another option would have been to find a healing dragon but there weren’t a lot of those around and Ryker wasn’t particularly sure that their kind of magic would really help with the kind of chemicals that Rylen had been pumped full.
Since the scientists weren’t sure what he had been injected with, only that they didn’t have whatever it was, then Rylen had slowly been slipping into withdrawal. His body had begun convulsing every now and then and they’d hiked up the oxygen in his mask to make it easier for him to breathe. He was a fighter, but a body that young wasn’t supposed to wage wars against itself. Especially not without help.
I can’t believe this is how things were meant to be, Ryker thought numbly, looking at his son.
Rylen looked a lot like he and Rio had at his age. Long, strong limbs, a wild mop of blond hair and high, defined cheekbones with a squared jaw. It was odd, looking into a vision of his past and seeing it pictured in such a fragile way.
Rala was his age when she died, he thought suddenly, the hint of a memory ripping through him like a hot knife through butter.
It wasn’t a mental image he needed, the one of his baby sister getting her throat cut by a worthless, sadistic hyena. His hands rolled into fists and the extent of his failures to keep the ones he loved, or should have been there for, crashed upon him like an avalanche.
“We should have looked for her harder,” Rio said after a pause, making Ryker shake out of his thoughts for a second. “Kayla, I mean. We should have fucking found her, we shouldn’t have given up.”
“We didn’t. It was pretty clear back then that what we needed from her was too much of her to ask. We both know that,” Ryker said, attempting to sound dismissive.
It didn’t come out as resolute and certain as he wished it had.
Rationally, again, he knew he was right. They hadn’t been together for that long, the three of them, and they were all messed up kids back then. Ryker and Rio would only become more fucked up over the years and in retrospect, it was unfair of them to place a burden as large as they had on Kayla’s shoulders. When she had said that she felt like she couldn’t fix them, when they were talking back in Poland, the amount of guilt that echoed through Ryker was unbearable.
Because that was exactly what they’d been expecting her to do. To fix them. To take all the darkness within them and turn it into light, because of how she made them feel every time they were around her.
While romantic, in a way, it wasn’t fair to her.
“Yeah, well, we still shouldn’t have given up,” Rio said, and Ryker had no counter for that.
He wasn’t wrong.
Ryker and Rio both jumped a little when the door was pushed open roughly and a grinning, wild-eyed Kayla entered the room. The smile on her lips wavered and died as soon as her gorgeous blue eyes took in the sight of her son’s prone body. She averted her gaze, the obvious flash of remorse on her pretty features almost too much for Ryker to bear.
I can’t believe I could still be angry with her for leaving us… She had every reason to.
It seemed like today was a day for uncomfortable and unfortunate realizations.
“Did you get some rest?” Rio asked, standing from his chair.
“About an hour,” she said, nodding.
Kayla checked over her shoulder to see if the door behind her was closed. Then, having confirmed that it was and they were alone in the room, she pulled out a thin memory stick from the pocket of her leather jacket, holding it up between her fingers.
“But I got something a lot more interesting as well.”
Ryker reacted lightning-fast. He crossed the few steps separating her from him and closed his hand around hers, hiding the shiny metal stick from view. He pressed their hands between the two of them and grabbed her in a tight, close hug, his lips right by her ear.
“If that is what I think it is, you shouldn’t be showing it off here where there could be cameras all over the place, Kayla. Now tell me that you didn’t do anything as stupid as I think you did.”
He implored her to tell him the truth, giving her a stern, commanding look that she met with equal fire. He’d always loved how that woman wouldn’t back down an inch, though now, when he needed her to have a little faith in the process, it was quickly becoming less than ideal. And yet, oddly sexy as hell.
“I did what I had to do,” she whispered as Rio came closer as well. “I couldn’t just stand by and watch Rylen die.”
“What did you do?” Rio asked, frowning.
“What did she do? I’ll tell you what she did. She went behind Spade’s back and stole from him.”
Ryker’s expression was a picture of sternness as he stared down at the tiny, curvy body of his mate. Between him and Rio, they’d captured her in an impenetrable wall that should have meant that she was safe from everything, but in reality had failed her more than Ryker had ever thought possible.
“I had to,” she said after a moment that seemed to drag on forever.
Kayla tried to pull herself away from Ryker but his hand snaked around her waist securely, holding her in place. He dipped his head lower again and slowly, a smirk stretched over his lips.
“You did. And you’re so much fucking braver than anyone has a right to be, Kayla Malone. Now tell us what you found out so we can go get our son back.”
Fucking hell how I love this woman!
Why the spirits had decided to bless him and Rio with a woman so impossibly brave and badass was completely beyond Ryker. But no one would catch him complaining about it.
Fourteen
Rio
They had left with little more than Rio’s own gear bag and whatever Ryker managed to cobble together of his without rousing too much suspicion.
Getting out of the compound in the middle of the night without alerting half the world was a feat of its own, but that was where a keen understanding of human psychology and a bit of good luck came into play. As soon as Kayla had told Rio and Ryker about what she’d found out, the plan came together at once.
The first step? Get out of The Firm’s territory.
The second step? Well, that was still up for debate.
Sneaking through one of the cargo areas had been the best way to go. Ryker had hotwired a big Ford F-150 truck, solid black and showing signs of wear from a recent mission. They’d all climbed in and driven through the open gates after a truck that came from The Arctics’ lab. So far, so good.
“So where are we going again?” Rio asked, glancing at Kayla who was sitting next to him in the front seat.
Ryker was sprawled out in the back. It had been a half an hour since they’d gotten out of the compound and while Rio’s heart was still pounding frantically in his chest, Ryker seemed to have put all the excitement behind him already. The man was out like a light, snoring so loud that Rio had to turn the music up in order to fill the space with something other than Ryker’s pleasant nasal tunes.
“A town called Oakley. It should be northwest from here,” Kayla said, shrugging out of her jacket and tossing it on the back seat.
“Oakley. Sounds benign enough,” Rio said, shrugging his shoulders.
He wasn’t the least bit surprised that things had come to this. Of course Kayla would take it upon herself to go sneaking around in the building, and of course she would steal data from one of the mainframes, the workstation left unattended by one of the many techies running around, trying to save the lives of several shifter kids that night. And on top of that, of course both he and Ryker would think it a brilliant idea to steal
from The Firm and go off on a little vigilante mission of their own.
Because that was what they did, right?
Or at least that was what a pair of worried fathers would do, faced with the option of sitting idly by and watching their son die or going out on a limb and seeing if they could change something about it.
In short, everything was going exactly how he would have assumed it to go. Not only had he found out that he was a father and his and his brother’s mate was still alive, but he’d also rescued one of his kids and was now on a guerilla mission to save the other one all in the span of forty-eight hours. It all seemed about right to him.
Rio shook his head, chuckling.
“What is it?” Kayla asked, twisting her neck to look out of the back windshield. “Did you see anyone coming after us?”
“No, nothing like that,” Rio said, glancing at the rearview mirror.
They’d made it on the highway now and if no one had come after them yet then the odds were good that they weren’t going to for a while either. Their disappearance was likely noted already or would soon be, what with all three of them having left Rylen’s side, but it would take even The Firm a bit of time to realize where they’d gone off to.
Considering that even they weren’t entirely sure of that yet, Rio figured they were safe for a bit.
“I was just thinking that it has been a crazy few days. I haven’t really had a chance to sit down and digest everything that’s happened.”
“You can say that again,” Kayla said with a sigh, brushing back her raven hair out of her face and gathering the strands up in a high ponytail. “I’ve been on the road for years now and I thought I’d seen everything but The Firm? You guys operate on another level.”
“We have to. Competition makes you step up your game, you know,” Rio said, pulling a hand through his hair and leaving it on his neck for a bit, feeling the tension there.