by A. C. Arthur
They’d wasted no time climbing into the trucks to leave and Jewel would listen to no argument presented about her staying at Rendezvous until they returned. Ezra clearly remembered her pushing past him and getting into the back of the truck, telling him he was wasting time with his futile protests. Bas had chuckled at that, slapping Ezra on his back and saying, “Now you know how it feels to be blatantly disobeyed. I knew there was a reason I let her stay at Perryville. The woman’s got a lot of spunk and is braver than some shifters we know.”
“She’s a human,” Ezra had replied, knowing that what Bas was saying was actually his sort of blessing for Ezra having found his mate.
“And so is my companheiro. They are what they are, the same as we. You can spend your time trying to fight it, or you can concentrate on making her happy, for once in her life. This time, the choice is yours, guard.” The FL had walked away then, sliding into the front seat of the first SUV that would take them to Crowe’s residence in Phoenix.
Now, hours later, they were about thirty minutes away from Rendezvous with what they believed was unpurified damiana. Tereza, the veterinarian, and Dyson, the computer tech, were their best bets for analyzing the powder and verifying what it was. There were no chemists at Rendezvous and Bas hadn’t wanted to call any in.
The press had been all over the fire at Perryville as the death toll continued to rise there. Bas and Priya had gone back to the city only twice to talk to lawyers, shifter ones of course, that were deflecting some of the questions and accusations from him for the time being. The couple had already discussed the fact that a press conference was imminent, but per the Assembly Leader, finding and stopping Crowe was the priority now. Damage control would have to wait.
“I stabbed him, so he’s hurt. Maybe he’s at a hospital,” Jewel’s voice interrupted Ezra’s thoughts.
“Then at least he’s not working on his project from there,” Ezra told her, not really believing that’s where the bastard was, but wanting Jewel to have any measure of comfort she could.
“You’re sure you got everything out of the labs?” she asked.
“Whatever I couldn’t get off that computer in time, I destroyed. So unless there are more flash drives out there, yes, I’m sure.”
“And you killed everyone in there? The soldiers, all of them?” she persisted.
There was a tinge of sadness to her tone, a spot of fear in her eyes as she looked over to him.
“We don’t set out to kill, if that’s what you’re really asking me,” he told her, a little agitated at either the fact that she was looking at him like he might kill her, or that she was judging him for what he was. He couldn’t pick which one, but a muscle in his jaw clenched regardless. “Crowe is a maniac. He’s a trained killer and he’s using that training to control something that’s out of his league.”
She nodded, looking away from him to stare out the window. “Yes, I know that. He’s not stable on good or bad days. He’s going to be hard to stop.”
“But make no mistake, I will stop him. I will end this project of his and I will take him down. For everything he did to you, for all that he’s doing to innocent humans, and all that he’s trying to do to the shifters. I will kill him.” Ezra was deadly serious. He hadn’t been able to fake how adamant he was about his course, wasn’t willing to lie to her in any way.
She shrugged. “It must be done.”
“Jewel,” he began, sliding across the seat until his side was touching hers, his hand going to the nape of her neck.
It was the first time he’d touched her since they’d made love on the table in that room, the first time he’d allowed himself to enjoy their combined calor. The flash of heat was instant, the need intense, but not overwhelming as the darkness in him, the effects of his own encounter with the damiana drug were steadily subsiding. “I want you to know,” he began, only to be stopped by her fingers on his lips.
“No,” she told him. “This time there’s something I want you to know. I—” she began, but was cut off by the shrill ringing of a cell phone.
Ezra looked around, wondering where the ringing was coming from. He’d thought for sure he’d dropped his phone in that lab when he shifted, had figured it was lost. But this was a familiar ring. It was Jay-Z’s “Holy Grail,” and that ringtone had been programmed specifically for his brother.
After Ezra had looked on the floor and in the pockets of the seats in front of them, Jewel had finally put her hands between the seats and pulled the phone free. She handed it to him and their fingers touched as he took it from her. She smiled at him and everything inside Ezra said he should lean forward and kiss her, to take his mate, tell her he loved her, and let the rest be damned.
But the ringtone persisted, his brother called, and Ezra answered.
“What’s up?” he answered after putting the phone to his ear.
“Shya’s been kidnapped.”
Chapter 26
The chair soared across the room slamming with a loud thunk against the far wall where Leo, Aidan, Caleb, and Brayden had the good sense to duck. At the other end of the room X stood directly behind Nick, his hands folded in front of him as he watched his friend being torn apart by helpless rage.
At the table, Ary sat, crying as Kalina wrapped an arm around her in an attempt to console her. Rome stood at that moment, boldly placing a hand on Nick’s shoulder just as the Lead Enforcer was about to pick up another chair and toss it.
“We’re going to get her back,” Rome said as calmly as he could manage.
Tension was thick in the room, like a heavy fog had been draped over them all. When the truck that had carried Ary and Shya out of Havenway just hours before pulled up with a screech of wheels, Dr. Papplin was rushed to the medical center for attention to a gash at his side where one of the rogues had apparently taken a bite out of him, and Eli had known something bad was about to jump off. In seconds there was an eruption of noise, and screams, and crying and then Nick arrived and was told that his daughter had been taken. After that, all hell really broke loose. For at least fifteen minutes, the Lead Enforcer had stormed through Havenway, not really believing that his daughter wasn’t there, even though his mate was beside herself with worry. When he’d finally accepted the truth, the roar that ripped through him was phenomenal, echoing throughout the entire facility and alerting everyone close by that there was big trouble ahead.
Eli had immediately called Ezra. His brother needed to know that the guard who had trained them, who Ezra had been personally assigned to, needed him here like yesterday. His twin hadn’t been happy at all to hear the news of Shya’s kidnapping and had immediately requested the jet pick him up so he could return to Havenway as soon as possible.
Eventually, Rome had been able to get Nick into the conference room, where the top shifters were now gathered. Kalina had wanted to take Ary to her room, to have her try to get some rest, but Ary wasn’t having that.
“If there’s to be a rescue planned for my daughter, I want to know about it,” the curandera had argued.
And when her mate had taken her by the elbow escorting her to the conference room himself, nobody had dared question them, not even Rome.
Leo and Aidan were almost as angry as Nick that they had been set up and ambushed. Both of them bore scars of battle, but nothing serious and they now stood just behind Ary, their way of apologizing for the incident and showing support. The remaining two Sanchez brothers stood grim-faced as they looked to Rome for instruction. As for Eli, he stood near the Assembly Leader, ready to do whatever was asked of him to bring Shya home.
“Tell me again how this happened.” Nick spoke through clenched teeth, his chest heaving, fists curling at his sides as he tried to calm down. That wasn’t an easy feat since Nick had long been known as the most volatile of the three head shifters in the East Zone. His joining with Ary and the birth of little Shya had done wonders to calm him down, but everyone around Havenway knew that he was a ticking time bomb. Today, those kidnappers had man
aged to set off the wrong one.
“We had her surrounded,” Leo began, but Ary interrupted him.
“It’s not their fault,” she said, sniffling and sitting up straight in the chair. In one hand she clutched a tissue, in the other the blanket that had been draped over her daughter. “I should have waited for you to reply,” she told her mate. “I should have rethought everything Frank was saying and I should have known to trust my instincts.
“I felt it,” she continued. “The moment we stepped off that elevator it was magnified, that foreboding feeling, like you knew something was about to happen but couldn’t validate it, at least not until it was too late.”
Tears streamed down her face, causing Nick to frown even more.
“I tried to hold onto her, tried to fight him off and not shift and protect our daughter. I tried, Nick, I really did and then—” Her words trailed off as the hand that held the tissue went to her neck, to the bruises dark and angry looking and on bold display for everyone else to see.
“I should have been here,” Nick added, going to kneel beside his wife. “I shouldn’t have put work first. I should have known. Goddammit! Why didn’t I know!” he yelled, unable to hold onto that calm any longer.
“For the record, I don’t think Papplin’s to blame either,” Aidan added. This shifter had a long cut down the side of his face and neck where he’d told Eli one of the rogues had used a shard of glass to ward off the ass kicking he was getting.
“There’s no deceit there,” Aidan continued. “It’s his connection at the hospital that orchestrated today’s events.”
“Then that makes it Papplin’s fault!” Nick yelled, coming to his feet and getting in Aidan’s face. “He had no business talking to anyone outside of this faction about what was going on with my daughter!”
“Nick, he’s been trying to help Shya since she was born,” Kalina added softly. “I agree with Aidan, I don’t think this is Papplin’s doing.”
“He didn’t protect my child,” Nick rebutted. “He was supposed to save her life, not give her over to who the hell even knows!”
“I think I know,” Eli spoke up finally. He’d been watching from the sidelines, attempting to wait for either Rome to say it, or for his twin to appear with even more of the information he’d given Eli. But Nick looked close to his breaking point. At any moment now he was liable to shift, his jaguar taking off and going out to hunt for its child on its own. Since that was not going to help in any way, Eli figured he’d better say something now.
“It all circles back to that lab out in Sedona, the one Ezra went to investigate,” Eli said.
Rome looked to his personal guard and nodded, to show that he wasn’t angry in the least that Eli had jumped ahead of him to tell what was going on. But Eli had sensed lately that the issues with Shya had begun to weigh heavily on Rome and Kalina, that both the Leader and the First Female were more concerned with what was going on with their friends than the growing war around them. It was understandable and Rome was still doing a commendable job of juggling both, but Eli felt like now, he could offer a helping hand.
After he explained to everyone in the room the theory of the Genesis Project and had their undivided attention, he lowered the boom and hated how shocked and distressed Ary and Nick looked afterward.
“Ezra thinks they need Shya’s DNA to complete their supersoldier program. He’s seen one of their prototypes, killed it actually. It’s very close to matching us but there was something off. The DNA glitch must be big because Ezra said it was possibly the only reason he was able to kill it,” Eli finished.
Ary shook her head. “You’re telling me that they need my daughter to create some evil hybrid shifter?”
Rome nodded, clearing his throat. “The IT guy from Bas’s faction has already e-mailed everything he had to X. We’ve been analyzing the data, trying to be sure this was all accurate.”
“You knew?” Nick asked slowly, turning all his attention to Rome. “You knew and you didn’t tell me my child was in danger?”
Nick was in Rome’s face in seconds. Eli moved in quickly, getting up close to Rome to prevent any physical altercation between the two. Behind him Brayden and Caleb had filed in, offering their defense on behalf of the Assembly Leader as well. X, who had been longtime friends with both Rome and Nick, came up close to Nick, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Stand down, man, you know if Rome kept it from you it was for a good reason,” X told Nick sternly.
But Nick was having none of that. He jerked away from X’s hold, which was not easy since X was built like a battering ram.
“Bullshit! He should have told me!” Nick yelled, getting in Rome’s face again. “You had no right to keep this from me!”
“I had every right,” Rome retaliated, bumping his chest against his friend’s. “It’s my job, Nick! I’m the Leader of all these goddamned shifters, not you!”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone in this room! I only care about my family!” Nick yelled back.
“I know that and that’s why I didn’t burden you with scenarios that we weren’t sure of,” Rome told him, his voice still loud, but more restrained than Nick’s. “Ezra told us about this only six hours ago. By the time we received all the data and began looking at it Ary had already left Havenway. Leo had just radioed in their location when X verified the match in DNA strands through another shifter analyst that works down in Miami. The moment we heard that Shya was away from Havenway we went into action. I sent Caleb and Brayden into town to bring you back here ASAP. So don’t stand there and toss your accusations at me. I did everything I could with the information I had!”
“He’s right, Nick,” Ary said, standing to go to her mate’s side, putting her hand on his arm and effectively stilling the next string of curses that were bound to fall from his mouth. “Like I said, I should have trusted my instincts. I shouldn’t have left without talking to you first.”
“It’s not your fault either, Ary,” Kalina told her. “You wanted your child to be cured. That’s enough to distort any gut or animalistic instinct. That’s what being a mother is all about.”
“I want my daughter back,” Nick said, his voice strained, his fists clenched so tight his knuckles were white.
Ary laid her head against her mate’s arm. “So do I.”
“So do we all,” Rome added. “And we’ll get her back. I promise you that.”
“Only with my help,” a female voice from the far corner of the room sounded and Eli almost caught a case of whiplash as he turned so quickly in the direction it had come from.
There were about six other guards inside the conference room, ones he’d brought in with him just in case they were going to get orders to go out and search. Outside the conference room were another six. They were now on high security alert, all throughout Havenway and the surrounding areas. There would be guards everywhere, ready and waiting for whatever popped off next.
The new recruit, Rayna, was the one who had spoken.
“Who are you and what are you doing in here?” Rome asked.
“She’s Rayna Corpeta, a new Lormenian recruit,” Eli offered quickly. “She’s part of the team I assigned to keep close to Kalina, Nick, and Ary.”
“And I’m the one who knows who has your daughter and where they’re keeping her,” Rayna announced with a tilt of her head in Ary’s direction, her long hair swinging behind her as she moved.
There was a low grumble that Eli figured he was the only one to hear. As he gazed across the room he saw Nivea Cannon, a much more experienced guard who had been assigned to work with Eli, staring pointedly at Rayna.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Nick asked, one arm wrapping around his mate now. “How would you know this?”
Rayna walked closer, until she stood directly at the table, hands meeting behind her back. It was a subservient pose, one that Eli didn’t buy for one hot second. He kept his gaze on her, just as Nivea did, watching and waiting.
&nb
sp; “Before I came here I heard some talk on the streets about your baby and how nobody had ever seen it, but someone high up was looking for her. I never knew why. I didn’t know about today’s plan, had no idea anybody would ever actually make an attempt to kidnap her. When all the commotion started earlier I figured it out and now I have a good idea who has her. I can go get her, but I must go alone.”
Every shifter in the room stared at Rayna with death in their eyes. They all wanted to know how she knew what she knew and if she could be trusted. The mere mention of going to get Shya on her own sent up warning flags and rang bells that all but blared in the room. But Nick, the most explosive of them all, had been the one to speak first, and with a finality that nobody dared to argue.
He stepped away from his mate, walking slowly until he stopped directly beside Rayna. Grabbing the younger shifter by her shoulders and turning her to face him, he leaned down so that his brow was aligned directly with hers and said, “If there’s something you can do to bring my daughter back here safe and sound, I order you to do it. Right. Fucking. Now.”
* * *
They were following her. Rayna was absolutely sure without looking in her rearview mirror or even bothering to scent them. Eli and that jealous bitch Nivea were in the Jeep two cars behind her. The others were spread out, but they were there and they would be ready to pounce the moment she had that baby in her hands. For a split second she thought about calling to warn Darel. Then she decided not to. Things would turn out as she’d planned regardless of who was there to watch her.