Out of the suite, through the elegant lobby where I’m dimly aware that the few people who are around stare at me, and onto the street. I’m barefoot, disheveled, and on the verge of breaking down completely. It’s as though I’m trapped in the gestation chamber again, only this time I’ve made the mistake of thinking that I can breathe. Instead, I’m drowning in anguish, shame, and defeat. Only one thought holds me together--I have to get away.
A few blocks from the hotel, the spear of Pinnacle House stabs the sky. I tear my eyes from it and focus instead on the flash of green a little distance away. I’m near the park, which means that I’m just about a mile south of the McClellan mansion. I can walk there.
I set off, driven by the desperate need for sanctuary, a place where I can lick my wounds and at least try to recover some part of myself. But I’ve gone only a few yards when I’m stopped.
Three large men in dark suits emerge from a black car parked at the curb and block my way. For a moment, I think that they’re Ian’s men, keeping watch on the hotel while he’s there. But an instant later, I realize my mistake when one of the men speaks into his personal link.
His words send a bolt of icy terror down my spine.
“Tell Mister Davos that we have her.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Ian
I know something is wrong before I open my eyes. The bed’s too soft, the sun’s coming from the wrong direction, and my cock is limp. It’s that last one that gets my attention. I always wake up with wood. It’s not a boast, it’s just a fact of nature that makes me no different from most guys.
But not today. My cock has decided to sleep in. The last time that happened was right after a halo jump went wrong. I opened too low, came in too fast, and ended up with a broken leg and a nasty concussion. Considering what could have happened, I was lucky.
I don’t feel that way right now. An alarm bell is going off in my head. A skull-splitting claxon telling me to haul ass and figure out what the fuck has happened. I’m out of the bed, scratching my chest idly as I glance around the room before I realize where I am. L’hôtel Perle with its well deserved reputation for discretion. I remember arriving last night…sort of…I wasn’t alone.
I was with…Bo Peep? I have a vague memory of a sexy shepherdess bumping into me after I left the Council meeting.
Please god, tell me I didn’t check in here with her and her sheep. Amelia might forgive me for a lot of things but not--
Amelia! Oh, fuck!
My whole body jerks as the memory of what really happened last night rips through me, a fusillade of images each more erotic than the next. I feel as though I’ve been gut punched. Hard on it comes a wave of fear worse than any I’ve experienced in battle. Where is Amelia? After what I did to her, she could be in shock, broken, in need of help. A wave of panic threatens to overwhelm me. I must be the last person on the planet she wants anything to do with but I’ve got to find her all the same.
A quick search through the suite reveals nothing except a handful of clues. A discarded thong on the antechamber floor along with the mask and shoes that I remember she was wearing. Rope lying beside a chair. I tied her there and then I…
The balcony, the bedroom, throat fucking her. It gets worse. In the dressing room, I find a long strip of black lace that I vaguely remember taking off her robe and using to tie her hands. And nearby… a jeweled butt plug, the aquamarine stone in the handle twinkling at me.
I double over, my hands braced on my knees. It’s all I can do to breathe. Self-loathing threatens to consume me. She was a virgin a few weeks ago. She’s had next to no time to adjust to me, the world, or anything else. And I did that? Worse yet, I remember all too well how much I enjoyed it and everything else that I did to her. Even now, there’s a part of me that wants to do it all over again.
My hands are shaking as I find my link and call Hollis. The moment he answers, I ask, “Is Amelia there?”
He’s silent for a moment, digesting the full meaning behind the question and no doubt trying to figure out what has me going over the edge. “I thought she was with you.”
“No. Tell Gab to get on it. I need her found now.”
I call Edward next. He picks up right away but that’s the last of the good news.
“She’s with you,” he says after I ask. “Isn’t she?”
“She was. I need to find her.” I can understand her not going to Pinnacle House but if she hasn’t returned to the McClellans’ park side mansion… What the hell does that mean?
“Shit, Ian, what happened?”
“I don’t know.” It’s a lie. I know damn well why she ran. I just don’t know where to and the options are narrowing quickly.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he says and I remember that Edward has connections where I don’t.
“Find her,” I plead, not trying to hide the fear that is exploding in me..
I dress. I leave the suite. I walk out of the hotel and stand on the street. I’m an automaton, acting purely on instinct. All I can think of is Amelia. I don’t even remember making the quick walk to Pinnacle House.
Gab is waiting for me when I hit the operations floor. She takes one look, starts to say something, and thinks better of it. Instead, she says, “We have a problem. Someone’s blocking access to the sat feed. It’s a hack, a good one. Clarence is working right now to break it. We should have something soon.”
I close my eyes against the wave of combined fury and fear that threatens to take me to my knees. Gab is the best there is, if she says it will be soon, then it will be. Nobody, certainly not Amelia, will be helped if I can’t control myself.
That thought’s almost laughable considering how I lost all control last night. But at least if I have to wait, I can satisfy my suspicions about how that happened.
“I’ll be in Medical. Let me know when you have something.”
The in-house hospital that’s a state-of-the-art facility is empty, my guys who were injured in the Crystal Palace attack having all been released. Only Doc Norris is there, which suits me fine. He’s a grizzled old s.o.b. who I’d trust with my life, and have done more than a few times. He gives me a funny look when I tell him that I want a tox screen run but he doesn’t argue. I cool my heels for a few minutes before he returns with the results.
He doesn’t pull any punches. His bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows lower as he glares at me. “You’ve been dosed with an illegal street drug. Can I assume that you didn’t take it voluntarily?”
“Fuck, yes. What is it?”
He reels off a chemical name that means nothing to me, then adds, “They’re calling it Jekyll/Hyde. It’s being billed as a nice, cheap high with a few bells and whistles that the legal stuff doesn’t provide. But it’s really a sophisticated smart drug with very nasty side effects, at least in some cases.”
A chill moves through me. I have to force myself to ask, “How so?”
“All recreational drugs break down inhibitions. That’s why people take them. This one does the same but it’s also designed to identify and eliminate structures in the brain that are associated with the long-term repression of powerful impulses, essentially letting the psyche loose to do whatever it damn well pleases.”
The knowledge that I behaved as I did last night because I was drugged does absolutely nothing to ease my sense of guilt and remorse. How could it when all the drug did was free me to do what I wanted to anyway?
“What’s it doing on the streets?”
Norris shrugs. “Good question. All I can tell you is that it’s been showing up in emergency rooms for the past week or so. In some of the people who take it, it’s triggered full-blown psychotic episodes during which they’ve harmed themselves or others.”
My gut tightens as I think of Amelia. I’m hanging on to a shred of hope, praying that she’s all right, when the significance of what Norris just said sinks in. “Only some? What about the rest?”
“People without particularly dangerous impulses just find the d
rug to be liberating. On the other hand, the poor bastards with the darkest urges get the ultimate bad trip. For them, once Jekyll/Hyde does its work, there’s no putting the genie, or maybe I should say the monster back in the bottle.”
A bolt of shock rips through me. Bad as the situation is, I haven’t factored in the possibility that I might be permanently affected. I feel as though I’ve just walked off the edge of a cliff. If there was ever a chance of making amends to Amelia, it’s gone. She would never be safe with me again.
“However,” Norris is saying, “the good news is that it doesn’t look as though Jekyll/Hyde is going to be around for long.”
I’m still reeling from the bombshell he’s dropped on me but I force myself to ask, “Why not?”
His smile is grim. “Twenty-four hours ago, the bodies of two neurobiologists were found hanging from lamp posts in Marseilles, France, near a warehouse that contained a lab where the drug was being made. The scientists’ throats were cut and they were left to bleed out in the street. The lab itself went up in flames. Word is that Jorge Cruces was responsible.”
I’m not surprised. The lamp posts may be a little over the top but Cruces is known for his ruthless administration of the drug laws. When governments finally admitted what a waste of lives and money the war on drugs had been, they turned it over to the one group of people who knew how to do it right--the drug dealers. In return for keeping the really bad shit off the streets--and all of it out of the hands of minors--Cruces gets unfettered access to a world market for his own legal products, conservatively worth trillions of dollars a year.
“It must have cost a shitload to design and manufacture that stuff,” Doc muses. “Why would anyone put that kind of resources into a product that was guaranteed to attract the attention of the guy who both controls the legal drug market and has the authority to go after anyone who tries to do business outside it?”
The who and why behind Jekyll/Hyde may be a mystery to Norris but I have no doubt who’s responsible. Davos is one of the very few people who knows enough about my past to realize where I’d be most vulnerable. He has the wealth and power to get Jekyll/Hyde made and he wouldn’t hesitate to field test it on the streets to be sure that it worked. The poor bastards who will never get their lives back were just his guinea pigs. One more crime he’s going to pay for.
“The tox screen shows that it’s still active in your system,” Norris says. “Granted, you seem to be okay but the sooner we get it flushed out, the better.”
I’m surprised to learn that I’m still under the influence. Aside from the fact that I can’t think about Amelia without feeling like there are two men inside me--the guy who wants to protect her and the one who wants to fuck her again and again--I seem to be functioning normally.
“Not happening. We’re ramping up to a mission.” I have to believe that. Gab and Clarence are going to find her and when they do--
Doc’s expression hardens. “You’ve been drugged, which means that until proven otherwise your decision-making capability is in question. To put it bluntly, you’re in no condition to lead.”
He’s right. Moreover, he’s got the guts to give it to me straight. I have to respect that. “Colonel Hollis will run the mission. I’ll just be along for the ride.”
Doc isn’t happy but he’s smart enough to know this is the best he’s going to get. Even so, he says, “All right but once it’s over, I want you in here for a full check-up. You’ve been exposed to a potentially dangerous drug. We need to be sure that there aren’t any lingering effects.”
In my gut, I know that it’s too late to worry about that. But all I say is, “Fair enough.”
On the way back to operations, I do what I know that I have to. Amelia isn’t with her brother or grandmother. She’s become friends with my mother and sister but I don’t think she’d go to them. In the unlikely event that she did, I would know by now. That leaves just one other person she could have turned to.
“No,” Sergei says after I tell him why I’m calling. He sounds a little hung-over, like he’s got his own excesses from Carnival to deal with. But as soon as he realizes what’s happening, he’s fully alert. “I haven’t seen Amelia. What have you done?”
Give the Russian credit, he cuts to the chase.
“I’m going to find her,” I say, not even pretending that I don’t understand him. “Whatever it takes.”
“She loves you.”
What the hell?
“It’s obvious. When I tell her to imagine that you are there, watching her dance, she becomes… More than any woman I’ve ever seen.”
I shouldn’t be hearing this from him but I’m grateful all the same. His words are the only spark of light in the darkness closing in around me.
“If she contacts you--”
“I’ll do whatever she wants,” he says calmly, “and you can go to hell.”
Fair enough especially considering that I’m there now.
Gab is paging me as I walk back through the doors to Operations. She doesn’t pull any punches. “You aren’t going to like it.” I hear the sympathy in her voice. Gab knows what it is to love, which means she understands how far a person will go to defend what matters most to them.
“Tell me.”
“Clarence came through; we’ve got the sat-feed back. Amelia was picked up outside L’hôtel Perle going on ninety minutes ago. Black SUV, looked like a classic, gasoline powered if you can believe that, with three guys in it. We’ve been able to trace the vehicle. It went south, about a mile, then took a ramp leading down to what we have to assume is an underground garage or other facility. From then on, we’re blind.”
“Where were they exactly when you lost them?”
“Forty-second and Fifth, near the old library.”
That shock I felt back at the hotel when I realized what I’d done was nothing compared to what hits me now. I’m free falling in zero gravity and there’s no way to stop.
I must look as bad as I feel because Gab takes a quick step toward me. “Boss, you okay?”
Somehow, I nod. I even manage to speak, although it feels like someone else is talking. The real me is screaming in rage and fear.
“Yeah, fine. You’re sure about the location?”
“Absolutely, the old main branch of the library.”
The neo-classical masterpiece that looks like an ancient Greek temple has been a landmark in mid-town Manhattan since the early twentieth century. Guarded by stone lions, it used to be open to the public. Nowadays, it’s strictly a preserve of the elite. A-list charities hold their board meetings there, planning the galas that take place in the cavernous former reading rooms where generations of scholars worked to banish ignorance.
But even with all the changes, the library still guards its secrets. Beneath the building and stretching out under the adjacent nine-acre park are two underground levels that used to hold millions of books, all long since digitized. That space, too, was repurposed.
I haven’t set foot beneath the library since the day when I was sixteen years old and decided that any fate was better than being the man my father wanted me to be. Now Amelia’s trapped there. But not for long. I’ll do anything to save her from my worst nightmare. Even if that means unleashing the darkest demons inside me.
Chapter Thirty-two
Amelia
The men who took me from in front of the hotel don’t speak during the short drive. I’m in the back seat, trapped between two of them with the third behind the wheel. Their presence makes any attempt to struggle useless. They ignore my demands to be released, staring stoically ahead as though I’m not even there.
Small details stand out in high relief--the smell of the leather seats, the faint whiff of gasoline that is so rare in the city, the citrus-spice scent of the soap one of my captors uses. All of it swirls through my mind, clashing with the panic that threatens to consume me.
Everything that has happened from the moment Ian announced that we were going to Carnival through m
y own unbridled behavior to the instant when he cried out for Susannah overwhelms me. I’m numb, hardly able to move, much less think.
A smothering sense of unreality settles over me. I can’t believe this is happening. The men were waiting for me but how? Someone--it has to be Davos--must have known where I was. That’s disturbing enough but how could he have anticipated that I would bolt from the hotel so impulsively, with no thought for my own safety?
My stomach drops when I realize that we’re turning onto a ramp that leads below the street. On the surface, I still have some hope of escape but once we’re out of sight--
Instinctively, I lunge for the door handle. The two men scarcely react. One simply puts a hand on my wrist and squeezes hard. The pain that shoots up my arm is so intense that I’m afraid he means to break the bones. I freeze, which seems to satisfy him. After a moment, he nods and lets go. A sense of dread closes in around me. Too vividly, I remember what Ian believes is Davos’ intent--to use me to discover how the customized imprinting was done. I can imagine all too vividly what that would require. Anything, even death, would be better than losing the very essence of myself.
We descend down the ramp, first one level, then another until finally the vehicles stops in a parking garage. Several cars are nearby but I don’t see any other people. One of the men gets out, reaches into the back seat, and drags me after him. The second man exits on the other side. In the few seconds that they’re separated, I see what may be my only chance to escape. Wishing more than ever that I’d enrolled in the self-defense class that I wanted to take rather than just thinking about it, I bring up my knee and slam it into the crotch of the man holding me. Although I put all my strength into the blow, he doesn’t double over but he does give a harsh grunt. His hold weakens just enough for me to twist free.
I run but not fast enough. As I reach the bottom of the ramp, I’m tackled and knocked to the cement floor. All the breath rushes out of me. The man who brought me down gets to his feet and aims a kick toward my stomach.
Anew: Book Two: Hunted Page 26