The Unnaturals (The Unnaturals Series Book 1)

by Jessica Meigs

  “Where’s it being kept at?” Riley asked. She set the photo on her stomach and tucked her hands underneath her head, trying to ignore the soreness that stabbed at her back. There was a pause as Scott flipped a page, and then he drew in a breath of surprise.

  “It’s in the Smithsonian,” he said.

  Riley sat up at that. The photograph fluttered to the carpet and half under the edge of the bed. “The Smithsonian?” she repeated. “They expect us to break into the Smithsonian? Are they insane?”

  “Quite possibly,” Scott acknowledged. “This explains Brandon’s reaction to your smash-and-grab comment.” A knock at the hotel room’s door interrupted anything else he would have followed up with. Riley and Scott turned to look at the door as one. “Who is it?” Scott called out.

  “Front desk,” a man replied. “I have a package for you. It was requested that we hold it at the desk until you’d settled in.”

  Riley and Scott exchanged a look. Scott gathered the paperwork and snatched the photo off the floor. Then he went to the lounge chair in the corner and slipped the papers underneath its cushion. As he did so, Riley moved to the door and stood on her toes to peer out the peephole. A thin, reedy man with a shock of sandy blond hair stood in the fish-eye view of the peephole, wearing an ill-fitting uniform jacket with the Hilton hotel logo emblazoned on the breast pocket. He looked fidgety and nervous, as if he hadn’t been on the job long; he appeared more suited to hibernating in his mother’s basement playing video games than working as a bellhop at a four-star hotel. Riley glanced at Scott to make sure he was done hiding the papers, then unlocked and opened the door. She slipped a hand to the small of her back and wrapped her fingers around the .22-caliber pistol underneath her shirt, even as she positioned herself to be partially shielded by the door. It never hurt to be prepared.

  “Hi,” Riley said, reaching inside herself and pulling out the chipper-newlywed persona she’d stored there. She gave the bellhop a dazzling grin and noted his too-long pants and the rolling red suitcase beside him.

  “You are Mrs. Hampstead, right?” the boy asked.

  “Oh, thank goodness, my cousin finally got here with that,” Riley replied, letting out a laugh. She released her grip on the pistol. This boy wasn’t a threat. “The airline lost our luggage, and we didn’t have a thing!” She held a hand out, and the bellhop passed the case’s black handle to her, letting her roll it inside. He seemed speechless in the face of her breathless exclamations. Riley looked over her shoulder and called, “Honey, come tip the poor man so he can get back to work, would you?”

  She’d be damned if she handed over her own cash on this assignment.

  As Riley hauled the suitcase inside, Scott brushed past her, wallet in hand, to tip the bellhop. Out of the corner of her eye, Riley saw him pass the bellhop a bill and then, as the young man stammered out his thanks, shut the door in his face.

  “Well, that was rude,” she said, lifting the suitcase. It was heavier than she expected, and she staggered sideways as its weight threw her off balance. She steadied herself and slung the bag onto the end of the bed; the aching muscles in her shoulders protested the movement.

  “I’m not exactly known for my social graces, thank you,” Scott said from behind her. Riley snorted and reached for the zipper, but a hand on her elbow stopped her before she could pull it open. “Do you think it’s safe to open that thing?” he asked, raising an eyebrow as he glanced between her and the suitcase on the bed.

  “Why wouldn’t it be safe to open?” Riley shot back. “It’s our drop case. Brandon or one of his lackeys delivered it for us. Standard procedure for assignments where the agents aren’t given time to pack. Or have you been out of the field long enough that you’ve forgotten that?”

  “How do you know it’s not a bomb?” Scott asked.

  Riley rolled her eyes. “A bomb? Are you serious?” she asked. She raised her eyebrows and turned to face him. “Why would the Agency stick a bomb in the suitcase?”

  “Who said it was from the Agency?” Scott shot back. “Look, if it was me and I wanted to assassinate two agents without engaging in a hand-to-hand fight, I’d do something sneaky like, I don’t know, sticking a bomb in a suitcase that they were expecting. That way, when they got it, they wouldn’t think twice about opening it and blowing themselves to Hell.”

  Riley raised her eyebrows and gave him a funny look, a smile quirking at her lips as she tried to not laugh. “You are a devious, twisted man. I like that,” she said. She waved her hand at the suitcase. “So if you think there’s even a remote possibility that this thing is rigged, how do you suggest we clear it before opening?”

  Scott pushed her aside. “Let me take a look,” he offered. He dropped to a knee beside the case and started to study the area around the zipper. Riley watched him for a moment before she spoke again.

  “Do you even know what you’re looking for?”

  “Yes, I know what I’m looking for,” Scott grumbled. “I was trained in munitions as a SEAL. That training was only enhanced when I joined the Agency. Believe me. I know how to spot an IED.”

  Riley watched for twenty minutes as Scott examined the suitcase, circling it and running his fingers over every inch of its surface, studying the areas around the zippers, even removing the handle and the wheels to check for red flags. Once those twenty minutes had passed, he straightened and grasped the zipper, easing it open. Riley cringed, expecting something to explode at any second, and she realized she was holding her breath when nothing happened. She let the air out of her lungs in a whoosh and gave Scott a relieved look. “You had even me worked up for a bit there,” she admitted, jostling him aside to flip the lid of the suitcase open now that the possibility of danger had passed. “And I never get worked up.”

  Riley focused on the interior of the suitcase. It was packed with several changes of clothes for each of them and other necessities that normal couples would have taken with them on a trip. That didn’t account for the case’s weight, though. Riley moved the clothes aside, pausing to pull several holstered sidearms and spare magazines from the folds of the fabrics. When she saw the laptop at the bottom of the suitcase, encased in its soft, zippered sleeve, she grinned.

  “I swear, these guys think of everything,” Riley said, slipping the laptop out of its sleeve. She retrieved the wall charger and dropped into the desk chair, setting the computer on the desk’s surface reverently.

  “That’s their jobs, isn’t it?” Scott commented. “If they didn’t think of everything, well, we’d be shit out of luck.”

  Riley snorted. “You say that like none of us agents is even remotely resourceful,” she said. She jabbed the power button on the laptop and, as she waited for it to boot up, leaned back in her chair and swung it around to look at Scott. He studied one of the sidearms she’d taken out of the suitcase. He ejected the magazine from the weapon and looked into it before jamming it back into place and pulling the slide back to chamber a round. Then he stuffed it back into its holster.

  “We all have our moments,” Scott conceded. “What are you doing?”

  “I figured I better pull up a map and take a look at this place we’re supposed to go to tomorrow,” Riley answered. She looked at the computer and discovered it was done powering up, so she spun her chair back to it, put her fingers to the keyboard, and began to set up the computer the way she preferred. Scott watched her with amusement, and as she pulled up a mapping website and keyed in the address to pull up an overhead view of the place Ashton Miller had told them to go to, he dragged the ottoman from its spot in front of the lounge chair and deposited it beside Riley’s computer chair, sitting on it so he could get a look for himself.

  The page loaded, pulling up the map and dropping a tag labeled with the letter “A” on the address in Buzzard Point. It was a large block full of dirt and construction vehicles. Confused, Riley clicked the zoom feature to draw it closer to the street level. The map pixelated and gave her an error message. She frowned, refreshi
ng the page and trying again, only to have the same problem occur. She sat back in her chair and frowned. “Huh. Would you look at that?” she murmured, half to herself.

  “What’s that mean?” Scott asked. He rested his elbows against his thighs, staring at the screen as intently as he’d examined the pistol.

  “Means the Agency’s found a way to keep 1982 S Street off the map,” Riley said. “That probably took some serious pull.”

  “You’d be surprised at how compliant places like that tend to be,” Scott said. He stared at the screen for a moment more and added, “So we can’t take a look at it on the computer. What do you say tomorrow afternoon we drive over there and check things out for ourselves ahead of the meeting?”

  “What do you say we go right now?” Riley suggested. She rose out of her chair, ready to go, her hand drifting to the lid of the computer to flip the screen closed.

  Scott shook his head. “No, now’s too soon,” he said. “You heard Brandon. The Agency wants us to take our time with all this and get to know each other. I think I’d rather take my time too. I don’t like having to rely on someone I don’t know to have my back.”

  “Hey! I’d have your back!” Riley protested.

  “Yeah, you say that, but I don’t know that.” Scott sighed and shook his head. “This is a debate for another time, okay? Let me take you to dinner.”

  Riley sat up more attentively. If anything could get her to focus on whatever task was in front of her, it was the proposition of food. “What kind of dinner?” she asked.

  Scott held the Agency’s credit card up for her to see. “The expensive kind.”

  ~*~

  When Ashton Miller strolled into 1982 S Street, he walked like a man being followed, his head down and his pace rapid despite the ache settling into his left hip. He ignored the pain and limped down the white hallway to the equally white desk at the end, where a security guard sat, flipping through a magazine of a pornographic nature, judging by the way he scrambled to hide it as Ashton stopped at the desk. Ashton pulled his ID from the breast pocket of his suit coat and handed it to the guard for his perusal. The guard glanced at him and then the ID—it wasn’t like Ashton was hard to identify, a fact he was painfully aware of—before he handed the ID card back to Ashton. “Welcome back, sir.”

  Ashton didn’t answer. He slipped his ID back into his breast pocket and moved around the desk. He fished his access pass from another pocket and waved it in front of the panel set in the wall. The white door, almost invisible against the wall, slid open.

  “Get rid of the trashy magazines while on the clock or I’ll get rid of you,” he said to the guard. Then the door slid closed behind him, and he found himself standing in what felt like a whole other world.

  Home.

  Ashton paused inside the door, closed his eye, and breathed in. The crisp, clean scent of lemon and bleach and air fresheners tickled his nose—the constant cleaning of the warehouse was an affectation on Ashton’s part, but he was the one who had to live there, and he refused to live in a smelly junk pile—and the sounds of agents working reached his ears. Ashton opened his eye and scanned the room, checking that everything was running as he’d set it up to.

  To his left sat eight workstations, the tables covered with the pens and markers and stacks of research gathered by the white-coated scientists that were studying the different creatures The Unnaturals tracked. The sight of two scientists with their heads bent together as they discussed something on one of their clipboards reminded Ashton that he should be expecting an updated report on the newest discoveries that evening.

  Clockwise from the scientists’ workstations, in the center of the warehouse, stood what Ashton called the holding cell—“holding” because whatever got locked inside ended up executed within a week. Two scientists and three field agents were gathered around the built-in Plexiglas window, talking and gesturing at what was inside the reinforced room. If Ashton remembered correctly, there was a newborn vampire inside the cell—a live one, which was a rarity to get the opportunity to study. He contemplated going to get a look at the youngling, but he shook his head. He’d had enough contact with vampires in his life as a field agent that he didn’t feel the need to look at another one. If he’d seen one, he’d seen them all.

  Bring him a live demon, though, and he’d be singing a different tune.

  Directly to Ashton’s right was the armory, where most of the specialized weaponry The Unnaturals required was made or modified to suit their purposes. As he watched, one man examined a machete-like blade similar to the one Zachariah carried around, and another man checked bullets before snapping them into magazines. Guns and bladed weapons of all types were stored on racks lining the armory’s walls, and the entire area was enclosed in a reinforced steel cage. Only those with special access were allowed inside.

  Tearing his gaze from the sights around him, Ashton started forward, crossing the warehouse to the enclosed offices at the back of the building. He stopped by his and Zachariah’s shared office first, stepping behind his desk to power on the wall of security monitors behind it. His fingers danced over his computer’s keyboard, and the monitors flickered to life. He didn’t look at them right away; instead, he turned his gaze onto the cherry wood desk across from his own mahogany one. The leather chair behind it was empty. Not that he had expected otherwise. Zachariah rarely spent significant time in the office; the man was a field agent through and through, and he embraced it with the fervor of a man who had found his true calling in life.

  Ashton had been the same way once. Not anymore.

  Letting out a sigh, Ashton turned his back on the other desk and began to study the security monitors, searching for anything out of place. It was a habit he’d developed when he’d been stuck in a wheelchair recuperating from the disaster of a mission two years before, and it was an unnecessary one. It wasn’t a necessity for him to have his own security monitors. The real security put in place by the Agency—in the elevated manager’s office up a flight of steep metal stairs that Ashton had difficulty navigating—had their own security monitors to watch. But the inherent paranoia that had been engrained into him during the ten years he’d spent in the field wouldn’t let him entertain the idea of not having security monitors he could access. So he’d installed them, including additional cameras that covered the angles the Agency’s security cameras didn’t, with Zachariah’s assistance.

  Ashton was halfway along the wall of monitors when he heard the door ease open and someone creep inside, making an attempt to slip in without Ashton hearing. He fought off the smile that twitched at his lips and folded his arms, leaning against his desk. “Nice try, but not quite,” he said without turning around.

  Zachariah heaved a sigh. “What gave me away?” he asked with exasperation.

  “You’re still putting your right foot down too heavily,” Ashton said. “That’s going to be the death of you if you don’t lighten up on it.”

  “I don’t think it’s humanly possible to move that quietly.” Zachariah crossed the room, abandoning his attempts to be silent, and mimicked Ashton’s stance alongside him. They stood in a comfortable silence for several moments, staring at the screens, before Zachariah broke the quiet with, “I talked to Brandon after the meeting.”

  “Did you get what you wanted?” Ashton didn’t look at him; he wasn’t done with his routine checking of the monitors.

  “You were supposed to be with me, backing me up, you know,” Zachariah replied.

  “Why? Did you handle it badly? You know what you’re doing.”

  “Doesn’t change the fact that you ditched me to deal with Brandon on my own.”

  Ashton rolled his eye. “Hall isn’t that bad. He’s just high-strung and stubborn as hell. You can handle stubborn just fine; you deal with me all the time.”

  “You’re different. I deal with your stubbornness voluntarily.”

  “You haven’t answered my question. Did you get what you wanted?”

  “Yes
, I got it,” Zachariah said. “Most of it, anyway. I’ve had a hell of a time convincing Brandon that Riley needs to be kept an eye on, but he finally agreed to have it looked into.”

  “What about Scott?”

  “Brandon’s convinced he won’t be willing to go back into Internal Affairs,” Zachariah said.

  “Brandon’s probably right.”

  Zachariah moved away from him then, crossing the office to the counter bearing the coffee maker and its accessories. “Don’t tell me that. My whole hope in this rests on Scott agreeing to be back in Internal Affairs.”

  “I’m telling you, he’s not going to do it.” The coffee pot burbled, and Zachariah sighed again. “Why are you so determined to have Ms. Walker investigated anyway? I mean, I know you’re essentially a by-the-book kind of man, but I don’t think she’s bad enough to warrant an investigation by Internal Affairs. She’s just a smartass. Nothing in the rule book against that.” He smirked. “Besides, if I recall correctly, you used to be a fair bit like her, you know.”

  “Things change,” Zachariah said. “And it’s not the smartassery that makes me want her looked into. It’s the situation with Kevin Anderson. Have you read the file?”

  “Yes, I’ve read the file,” Ashton replied. “Repeatedly, since you kept shoving it in front of me. The whole mess was investigated six months ago and properly swept under the rug in order to prevent The Unnaturals from being common knowledge in the Agency. The secrecy of The Unnaturals was more important than any specific agent’s death.”