Despite the unrelenting exhaustion resting on his shoulders, he motioned toward the bathroom and said, “Why don’t you go take a shower and get some rest? I’ll take the first watch. I can wake you up around four to take over.” Riley didn’t answer, just nodded and headed in that direction, walking as if she were in a daze and clutching her backpack like it was a lifeline. The bathroom door clicked shut and, moments later, he heard the shower turn on. Satisfied that she was doing as he’d suggested, he made sure he had a door key and slipped out the door, pulling it shut behind him.
When the taxi had dropped them off in the motel’s parking lot just thirty minutes before, Scott had spotted an alcove near the front of the motel, stuffed with vending machines and the holy grail of an agent trying to be incognito—a pay phone. Pay phones had become rare enough in the age of the cell phone that Scott knew that he needed to use it while he had the chance. Digging spare change out of his jeans pocket, he dropped an obscene amount of it into the slot and dialed Henry’s number. He answered on the first ring.
“Who is this, and what are you calling me for?”
“Henry, it’s Scott,” he said. He heard a breath of relief escape the older man through the line, but he surged on without pausing. “We’ve got the box, and we’re laying low. Do you have any updates for me?”
“I can’t tell you how good it is to hear your voice,” Henry replied. “Vanessa and I have been worried about you.”
“No need to worry about us,” Scott said. “We’ve got what we were after. I can honestly say mission accomplished.”
“That’s good to hear,” Henry said. Then his tone changed, becoming even more serious. “I just got off the phone with Zachariah. Ashton’s missing.”
“Missing?” Scott exclaimed before he could stop himself. He tightened his grip on the receiver and pressed it harder to his ear, even as he angled his body to scan the parking lot. It was still and quiet. “What happened?”
As Henry filled him in, Scott stayed on high alert, watching the parking lot for anything human and inhuman that might come after them. He listened as Henry told him about the attack on The Unnaturals headquarters and the dead and wounded agents, and when he was done, Scott could only mutter, “Fuck.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Scott scanned the parking lot again and breathed out slowly, mulling over what Henry had told him. “What do you advise we do?”
“Lay low,” Henry said immediately. “Do whatever you need to do, but lay low.”
“Got it,” Scott said. “I’ll let you know if anything changes, but expect radio silence for a while. I don’t want to risk making another phone call.”
“You two be careful,” Henry warned.
“You too, Henry,” Scott said, and then he hung up. The phone rattled as the change dropped into its reservoir, and then he bought a couple of candy bars with the rest of his change before retreating back to the room.
When he opened the room’s door, the sight of a pistol greeted him, up close and personal. “Geez, Riley, put that thing away before somebody gets hurt,” he snapped, putting his hands up where she could see them. They were empty, save for the candy bars, and her eyes zeroed in on them immediately, just like he’d figured they would.
“Mister, you just bought yourself a ticket back into this room without any bullet holes in you,” she said, snatching the bars from his hand. She stepped back to let him into the room, the pistol dangling from one hand as she tore the wrapper open with her teeth. Her dark hair hung loose around her shoulders in wet locks, dampening her t-shirt. She stuffed the second candy bar into her back pocket as she asked, “Where did you go, anyway?”
“I had to use the phone,” Scott said. He closed the door and locked it, then turned back to her. She already had a large bite of the candy in her mouth, and she raised an eyebrow questioningly as she chewed.
“Find out anything useful?” she asked once she’d swallowed it.
“Other than the fact that The Unnaturals headquarters has been attacked and Ashton is missing?”
“What?”
Scott recapped everything Henry had told him, adding, “We’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do. Henry wants us to lay low.”
“Fuck that,” Riley said. She shook her head and rewrapped her candy, setting it down on the bedside table. “I say we go out and track down Ashton.”
“Zachariah is working on that,” Scott replied. “We’ve got to keep that thing,” he pointed to her backpack, which was lying on the bed, “safe.”
“And? We can do that and look for Ashton at the same time!” Riley protested.
Scott raised an eyebrow. “What’s got you so intent on helping somebody you don’t know all of a sudden?” he asked. “You’re usually a lot more…reticent.”
“I am not,” Riley said. “I just…look, he might be in a bad situation. He might be in some sort of imminent danger and need help. And I don’t know if I can just sit by and let someone die again when I have the skills that could help them.”
It was with that statement that Scott started to understand why Riley was objecting to leaving Ashton to his own devices. “You’re scared you’re going to end up with another Kevin Anderson situation on your hands, aren’t you?”
Riley didn’t look at him as she flopped down onto the edge of the bed. “So what if I am?” she asked. “And I’m not scared. I never get scared.” He wanted to call her out on that, but he didn’t have the heart to do it. “I just don’t want to see him suffer if he doesn’t have to. Not if I can stop it.”
Scott ran his fingers through his hair, pushing it back off his forehead. He grabbed the chair at the small, battered table near the window and dragged it over to the door. “You need to get some sleep,” he said. “I’m going to take watch like I said earlier. Once the sun comes up, we can discuss our options further.”
Riley gave him a grateful look that made him glad he’d made that suggestion. She flopped back onto the bed, tucking her hands behind her head as her legs hung off the side of it. Scott had just turned his attention to the closed door and begun to resign himself to a long, boring two hours of absolutely nothing when Riley spoke again.
“Damon Hartley was in Brandon’s office earlier.”
Scott twisted around in his chair to give her a wide-eyed look. “What?”
“Hartley was in Brandon’s office,” Riley repeated. “I ran right into him when I was trying to get away from that bitch secretary that was trying to kill me.”
“Wait, you’re telling me Hartley was in the office at the same time you were and he didn’t massacre you for being in a place you weren’t supposed to be?” Scott asked. “What the hell’s up with that?”
“Beats me,” Riley admitted. “I ran into him and fell, and he just stood there for a minute looking at me. Then he stepped aside to let me by and left. Didn’t even say a word.”
“Strange,” Scott commented. It seemed like the mysteries were piling up faster than he and Riley could solve them. He set the thought aside for now. The man had let Riley go, she was still breathing, and that was all that mattered. He could stew over the why’s of it later, when they were cleared of the current obstacles mounting in front of them.
God knew they had enough going on without adding anything else to it. Now he just had to worry about what else would throw itself into their paths before all was said and done.
~*~
When Ashton surfaced from unconsciousness, he discovered he was in an unlit room, secured to a chair with liberal amounts of duct tape. His head throbbed, and his eye was scratchy from being closed for so long. He closed it again, taking a sparse moment to assess himself for any injuries that would impair any attempts to escape. He was shirtless and barefoot. His arms had been wrenched behind him so painfully that it felt like his shoulders would pop out of their sockets at any moment. He resisted the urge to squirm in the chair, knowing the movement could alert someone to the fact that he was awake, and tried to remember wha
t had happened.
As the events of the attack on headquarters rushed through his mind’s eye, he felt like he was going to puke. He remembered Angelique going down, and he hoped she wasn’t dead. If she was, he’d personally track down the bastard responsible and kill him himself.
Through his musing, he could still hear the words: “Just the man I’m looking for.” The voice had sounded so familiar at the time he’d heard it, but the memory of who it belonged to eluded his grasp. He scowled and opened his eye again, waiting impatiently for it to adjust to the darkness of the room so he could try to identify where he was.
The rattle of a chain and a whimper broke the silence, and Ashton tensed. There was someone in the room with him. He could feel it. His breath grated in his throat as he tried to decide if he should call out, but before he did, the sound of a whisper, childlike and innocent, cut through the air.
“Are you awake?”
Ashton hesitated, unsure if he should answer. He didn’t know who or what was in the room with him, and so therefore he didn’t know whether or not they posed a danger to him. But if they did, he probably would already be dead, he considered. They’d have killed him while he was unconscious before he posed a threat to them in return. Besides, his brain rationalized, it had sounded like a child. He wanted to meet the sick, psychotic bastard who kept a child tied up in the dark like this and string him up by his entrails.
He cleared his throat and said in a voice that was just as soft as hers, “Yeah, I’m awake.” He waited for an acknowledgement from the girl, but when she didn’t say anything, he asked, “What’s your name?”
“Chloe,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Ashton,” he replied. He turned half of his attention onto his bonds, trying to gauge the odds of him freeing himself. “Where are we?” He tightened his muscles, straining to pull his arms apart to try to stretch the loops of duct tape around his wrists.
“I don’t know,” Chloe said.
Well, that wasn’t any help. But then again, he shouldn’t be so hard on her about it, either. She was just a girl, and he doubted she was a trained agent like he was. For all he knew, she’d been just as unconscious as he had been when he was brought in.
“How long have you been here?” Ashton asked. His words came out strained as he pulled harder against the tape. Jesus, would nothing break duct tape?
“Months and months,” Chloe said.
What the hell was this place? A sex dungeon? Who kept a kid from her parents for months on end just to keep them? There had to be something nefarious going on around here.
“Well, if I have anything to say about it, we won’t be here by the time the sun comes up,” Ashton said with his characteristic stubbornness.
“It’s not that easy,” Chloe said. “I can’t—”
The sound of a lock clicking open interrupted her, and she fell silent. Ashton stopped his struggles and tensed, waiting on whatever was coming their way. Light flooded the room from the open doorway, and then a light flashed on above their heads, illuminating the room with a sickly yellow glow from a single bare light bulb above his head. Ashton blinked rapidly, his eye watering as it struggled to adjust to the sudden change in lighting. Once his pupil finished constricting, he looked up and found himself staring into the cold blue eyes of Brandon Hall.
Everything clicked into place then, and Ashton knew that Brandon wasn’t here to rescue them. He tried to lunge off the chair at the man as hot anger flashed through him. “You son of a bitch!” he snarled. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Brandon slammed his fist against the side of Ashton’s face in a fierce backhand, and a burst of pain shot through Ashton’s cheek and jaw at the impact. His head rocked to the side, but he clenched his teeth, not letting a single sound escape. “I’m the one that’s asking questions here, not you,” Brandon said. “Where is it?”
Ashton shifted his jaw, trying to determine if it was broken. Once he was sure he could speak without an unreasonable amount of pain, he glared at Brandon and snapped, “Fuck you.”
“Want to play it hard, huh?” Brandon struck him on the face again, and the chair tilted sideways. His fist grasped Ashton’s shoulder, fingers digging painfully into the joint, and he righted him before hitting him again. Ashton felt the skin above his left eyebrow split open with the blow, and he gritted his teeth as blood began to ooze down into his blinded eye. A chain on the other side of the room rattled. “Where is it?”
“I’m sure if it was in your mother’s bed, you’d know it,” Ashton quipped.
Brandon scowled. “You must really be a sucker for pain,” he said. He reached to his belt and pulled free a KA-BAR knife from a sheath Ashton hadn’t noticed. “That what you and Zachariah do when you’re not busy?” Ashton tried to kick him, but the duct tape around his ankles prevented it. Brandon twirled the knife and waved the sharp black blade in his face.
“Don’t you fucking talk about Zachariah,” Ashton said. “He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Bullshit,” Brandon said. “He’s got everything to do with it. Because, knowing you, he’s the one you gave the box to.”
Ashton felt a cold flood wash through him. “What makes you think I’ve had the box?” he asked. “I’ve never laid one single finger on the damned thing.”
“Bullshit,” Brandon said again. “Where is it?”
“I don’t have it, and I don’t know where it is,” Ashton said.
“Stop lying to me, or I’ll cut your tongue out,” Brandon threatened. Something about the tone of his voice suggested to Ashton that the man would do it too. “You had Riley Walker break into my office and steal from my fucking desk!” he snarled, his voice rising in anger. “And you had her kill my secretary! I know she brought you that box. I want to know what you did with it!”
“Even if I knew, what makes you think I would tell you?”
Brandon’s eyes seemed to flash red with the force of his anger, and he drew a pistol from its holster. Instead of pointing it at Ashton like he expected he would, he aimed it across the room and squeezed off a single shot. The sound made Ashton startle, but the yelp of pain across the room sent a dart of horror into his heart.
Ashton tried to lunge off his chair again, but Brandon shifted the aim of his pistol to Ashton’s forehead. “I’m going to let you stew on that for a bit,” he said. He circled around the back of the chair, and Ashton felt the bite of his knife’s sharp blade in his right forearm. He hissed and jerked in the chair again. “While you think about it, I’m going to go make a phone call,” he said, his voice gruff. “Have fun.” Then he turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving the light bulb over the door on.
Ashton sat still for a long moment, feeling blood oozing down his face and arm. He could hear Chloe whimpering on the other side of the room. That sound eked into his ears, finding his brain and finally kicking it into gear. “Chloe?” he hissed. When she only continued to whimper, he strained against the tape again. This time, it tore clean through, and he tried to ignore the pain in his shoulders as he leaned over and ripped the tape from his ankles, breaking it free. He nearly fell out of the chair as he scrambled from it to head to the other side of the room where Chloe’s voice had come from.
A young girl who looked no older than twelve lay on the concrete floor near the corner, curled up on her side with her pale arms wrapped around her stomach. A mess of thick blond curls fell across her face, and her eyes were closed as she whimpered. A thick cuff was wrapped around one of her skinny ankles, a heavy chain running from the cuff to the plate bolted into the wall. The girl was dirty, her once-pretty white dress filthy, her tights torn. Her shoes, like Ashton’s, were missing. And a stain of blood was rapidly spreading across her stomach.
“Son of a bitch, that sick mother fucker,” Ashton growled. He pushed her arms aside and pressed his own hands to her wound, causing her to yelp in pain at the pressure. “It’s going to be okay, Chloe. I promise it will be.”<
br />
“I’m not going to die,” Chloe whispered, her hand grasping his wrist. “I just need…” She trailed off, and Ashton pressed his hands even harder against her abdomen. “I just need my sister.” She rolled onto her back, hissing through her teeth.
Ashton gasped and jerked back from her as he saw a set of pristine white fangs in her mouth. “Fuck, what are you?” he exclaimed before he could stop himself.
The girl continued to lie on her back, panting through the pain. Her hand flexed against the concrete, as if she were trying to reach to him. “You’re a smart man,” she mumbled. “You figure it out.”
“God, just when I thought my life couldn’t get any worse, I find myself trapped in a hole with another damned elder vampire,” Ashton grumbled. “You know, the last time I ran into one of you guys, you tore my fucking face open. Not to mention what it did to my chest.”
“Not something we condone,” Chloe said. “My sister would have killed him if your friend hadn’t beaten her to it.”
“Who is your sister?” Ashton asked.
“Her name is Elise,” Chloe said. “She’s a…well, you know what she is. She’s the one that I feed from.” She touched her stomach and looked at her hand, examining the blood on it as if she were fascinated by it. “I was taken in December. I’ve been here ever since, and I haven’t been fed much. Animal blood, but it doesn’t do much of anything for me. I don’t know why they’re keeping me here.”
Ashton ground his teeth together as he watched the vampire girl on the floor. “I think I do,” he said, but before he could elaborate on it, the lock on the door clicked. As the door swung open, Ashton slipped in between the door and the girl on the floor, protecting her despite his instincts to avoid her at all costs.
The Unnaturals (The Unnaturals Series Book 1) Page 31