The pain always started at the top of his spine and descended with paralyzing agony. He could already feel the burn begin. It would seem that hearing Vasquez’s name and knowing Sam just might get a go at him after all had shot the hell out of his coping mechanisms.
He had to get the hell out of there and find somewhere to hide. Fast.
He stood. His knees were already shaking. Both Emerald and Erin looked up. “I’ll be back. Why don’t you two keep an eye on Jared for me?” He nodded at the monitor. “Whatever happens, don’t go in there, and don’t let anyone else either. I gave Jared my word on that. Okay?”
Emerald nodded. Erin only gulped in air. She didn’t look too steady about the instructions. In fact, she looked as if she were about ready to bolt into the cell right now. Not good. Jared would be torqued if he knew they were here.
Sam narrowed his gaze at Erin. “He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he turned and hurt someone. You hearing me? You want to keep your man, you let him do this his way. Got it?”
“I got it,” she said.
“Good.” His voice already sounded like jagged glass, cutting his own ears. At the last second, Sam grabbed his coat off the hanger next to the door. He had to be prepared if this was going to be a rough one.
Thank God the hallway was empty. Ten feet down and to his left was the utility closet. He made it almost all the way before the first stab of pain ripped down his spine. His left leg buckled, and he went down hard on his right knee. The groan escaped before he could stifle it. Stuffing the sleeve of his coat in his mouth, he bit down on the soft material and grabbed for the doorknob of the closet just as another pain shot through him. His shoulder slammed the door open, and he fell inside. His body spasmed. Rolling, he managed to shut the door, closing himself into the darkness, before he lost the use of his legs.
The next pain had his back arching off the cold floor, slamming his head against the cement. His teeth clenched down tight on his coat, and a gut-pulling moan escaped. Son of a bitch. This was a bad one.
The door opened. Sam blinked at the brightness before he registered the fact that Emerald stood there.
“Holy bleedin’ hell, Sam. What’s wrong?”
He jerked his coat sleeve from his mouth. “GET. OUT,” he managed to say before another spasm tore down his spine.
“Fook that,” she said. She shut the door, bringing back the darkness, but he knew without a cringing doubt that she’d just shut herself in the closet with him. The feel of her palms on his cheek and on his chest confirmed it.
God. He couldn’t handle this. But he couldn’t stop it. He was no longer with Emerald in the closet. He could no longer feel the cold hard floor or smell the cleaners. He was in Belize, hanging upside down in a tree, naked. The soles of his bloody, swollen feet were being beaten with a hard stick. And that was just the preshow. Vasquez and his whip came next.
Annette pulled onto the shoulder of the road about fifty yards from the obscure utility entrance to Sno-Med’s research center and drew several deep breaths. She’d removed her car tag and had replaced it with a Tag Lost and Applied For sign, making her about as anonymous as she could with so little time to plan.
Her hands shook, and her mouth was so dry she could barely swallow.
You can do this, she told herself…repeatedly. The world had turned black and miserable since the thunderstorm Aragon had disappeared into. Dark clouds and drizzling rain had snuffed out the moon and stars, leaving an eerie fog chilling the mountain air.
Two hours had passed, yet she still felt the imprint of his hand against her chest. Still had the image of his body rising up out of the tub. Still sensed his power and his strength. And she could still see the question in his deep, dark eyes when he’d asked, “Why the need for untruths?”
Something in that look, something in his voice, got to her as much as his heated touch. She’d obviously jerked him from something very important, something he had been in a hurry to get back to, and yet he’d shown concern for her. And she’d treated him…badly. Had indeed lied to him.
But what was she supposed to say? The phone call tonight had been the first crack in the black void that had swallowed Stef. It could be a setup—it seemed way too coincidental that the fire at the center had been just yesterday, and now, after all this time, she’d heard from somebody. And if it was a setup, they sure wouldn’t be expecting her two hours early and going in under the radar, so to speak. She prayed she could get into the center without anyone seeing her.
On the other hand, it was possible the fire had been a catalyst for the call…especially if Cinatas was dead. Annette’s pulse sped as she realized that this could be a real lead at last.
Grabbing her backpack, Annette rechecked her stash of things she’d collected from her office in Twilight just a little while ago. She wore all black with her hair tucked into a black cap that she’d pulled close about her face. She’d collected everything she’d thought she needed, plus more. As the utilities at Sno-Med were shut down because of the fire, she’d brought the twenty-five-pound battery-powered generator she kept for medical emergencies. Besides the pepper spray she kept in her desk drawer, she had gathered a lighter, a spray can of disinfecting alcohol, and a scalpel. Around her neck, she wore a one-gig flash drive to store computer data on, and before she left, she’d dumped a detailed note into Emerald’s mail slot. Their offices were next door to each other near the town of Twilight’s main crossroads. In case something went wrong, Annette wanted to make sure she didn’t just disappear without a trace, as Stef had.
She’d started out confident and determined, but now that she was out in the night all alone, she was having second thoughts. Breathing deep, she focused on her goal—finding Stef. Every surgeon was a risk taker—it took that to open up another human being and cut—but every good surgeon weighed the odds and chose the safest route possible. Had she done that?
She’d come early and armed. Somewhat.
If the building was as they had shown it on the television video clips, then the damage from the fire would probably make getting into the facility fairly easy. Firemen had hacked down doors and busted windows in their battle to access the blaze. According to reports, only the fourth floor and part of the third floor had suffered severe damage. And from what she remembered of the building’s layout, the Infectious Disease Department was on the north end of the first floor.
No doubt there’d be a couple of guards. Or an army of them. She gulped in another breath, her palms growing damp beneath her black leather gloves. What then?
She could always wait on the edges of the forest and see who showed up at midnight. It was worth a try. Exiting the car, she slid on her backpack and made her way into the mist-shrouded woods, her cell phone clutched in her hand. Having the sheriff on speed dial was a precaution. Having Aragon’s warm amulet stuffed into her pocket was a reminder that…anything was possible. And with it, she wasn’t quite so alone. It wasn’t rational or logical, but it worked.
Fifteen minutes later, she sat against a tree and wondered what in the world she was going to do next. There wasn’t one guard walking the perimeter of the center. Nor was there an army. There were four guards, each patrolling one side of the building, pacing up and down in the rain, looking miserable. If there had been one or two, she would have felt confident in trying to sneak in. If there had been an army, she would have immediately given up. But four…at that number, she had to try, but it was going to be hard.
She needed a good distraction.
When you need it fast, use Moe’s To Go.
She slipped a little back into the thicker part of the trees and pulled out her cell phone. A quick 411 call got her the Arcadia number, and she punched it through.
“Moe’s goes all the way to you! Whaddaya need?”
“Four large coffees and four steak sandwiches with fries. I need them delivered to the Sno-Med Center.”
“Whoa. Didn’t that place burn?”
“I’ve got a crew w
orking late in cleanup. They’re wet, tired, and hungry. How soon can you get it here?”
“Thirty minutes. Will that be cash or credit?”
“Cash. Get it here in twenty, and I’ll give you an extra twenty. When you drive up, beep your horn six times, and I’ll meet you out front.”
“Okay, lady. What’s your nam—”
Annette hung up the phone, then moved around the perimeter of the building to line herself up with the closest, easiest route inside, which happened to be in the back. After that, she waited and prayed the guards at least would go look at the honking delivery guy.
Twenty-one precious minutes later, the first horn blast had her perched in the shadows at the edge of the woods, watching the back guard run to the corner of the building to get a peek at what was happening out front. Two more horn blasts had the guard moving toward the front. Annette slipped from the trees and ran like hell, pulse roaring in her ears and lungs burning because she refused to gasp for air. She made it to the door, found it locked, and blinked against the dizzying wave of panic that gripped her. She ran along the building in the opposite direction the guard had taken and nearly fell to her knees with relief when she found a broken window.
Gripping the glass-riddled sill, she lumbered ungracefully inside, hitting her shoulder as she met up with a chair. She teetered off balance a second before she fell onto her back on the floor, arched over her backpack like a flipped turtle. She didn’t think her heart had ever beat as fast and hard as it was beating now.
That, plus a giddy elation that she had actually gotten inside, had her feeling more alive than she’d felt in…two hours and thirty-two minutes, when Aragon had his hands on her.
Hell, honesty wasn’t a girl’s best friend. She rolled to her side and eased to her feet, keeping a close ear out for anything. The place was completely black, as she knew it would be. With the entire electric system shut down, there’d be no alarms to worry about. Only locked doors—something she’d forgotten to consider.
Dragging out her penlight, she quickly moved through the room and luckily found the door to the hallway open. Once the guards figured out that none of them or anyone they knew had placed the order, they would likely search the building. Hurrying, she saw that all the doors were open along the corridor, so she randomly shut some as she passed. She didn’t want the room she planned to invade to be the only door shut if the guards came looking. She reached the department in less than five minutes, and leaned against the door once she closed herself inside. She was almost too afraid to move.
Surely the guards would investigate. She had to hurry. The room was undamaged and in complete order. So if there was information to be had about Stefanie as the caller suggested, then it should still be here.
Annette set her mind to surgical mode—the place where she shut everything else out but exactly what had to be done and how quickly she needed to do it.
There were five computers in the room, four at what appeared to be data-logging stations for lab techs and one at an official-looking desk in a glass-walled office on the left. Everything that could possibly be white was: floor, walls, counters, chairs, and ceilings. And from what she’d seen so far, the entire facility followed suit, as if it were one big padded room for the insane.
She set up the generator and connected the computer to that, successfully booting it up, only to stare at the screen asking for her password. She thought she heard a door close, and her heart doubled its beats, making her body break out in a cold sweat. Breathe. Focus.
Another noise had her switching the monitor off and ducking beneath the desk as she stretched her black shirttail over the tiny light denoting that the computer was on. Then she held her breath as the door opened and a light beam swept the room.
How could they fail to find her? Surely her fear alone had to be a shuddering beacon, waving madly through the airwaves. But the light disappeared, the door closed, and somehow she found the intelligence to breathe and move again, and to face her biggest hurdle yet.
She was an idiot! Of course the computer was password-protected. Everyone these days protected their files. But she couldn’t give up now; she had to try. What had the caller said?
Meet me in the Infectious Disease Department at the Research Center at midnight. She’s in the computer there under X files. Tell no one and come alone, or I won’t show.
It was a long shot, but at the moment, she didn’t have anything to lose. She typed “X-files” and was denied access, then typed “X files” and “files X,” and then just an “X,” with the same result. It was eleven fifteen. Sweat beaded her brow, but her mind stayed sharp. The man had laughed after his X-files comment, as if it were a private joke. People didn’t do and say things without meaning. She tried “Fox” and “Mulder” and “David Duchovny” and its variations. Nothing. “Gillian Anderson”—“Dana Scully”—came next. She hit pay dirt with just “Scully.”
The user’s personal settings appeared on the screen, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of the desktop icons, and she had little time to explore. She typed “X files” into the search window and pressed enter.
When X-files1, then 2, then 3, and on and on, popped into the window, she located a USB port and inserted the flash. By then the computer was at a hundred X-files and counting. It was now eleven thirty. Time to secure a position to observe who arrived at midnight to meet her.
Five minutes later, on the two-hundredth found file, she stopped the search, highlighted what she had, and copied them to the flash. She was out of time. Still, she refined the X-files search to include the keywords “Stefanie Batista,” but nothing came up. Her stomach twisted with pain and disappointment.
Had this been nothing but a wild goose chase? A lure to get her out here and alone? Way out of time, Annette disconnected the flash and shut down the computer. She repacked everything except the drive, tucking it beneath her shirt, and the alcohol canister, which she slipped into an outside pocket on the backpack. The lighter went into her jeans pocket, and her scalpel into her gloved hand.
She searched about the desk and inside its drawers, looking for anything to identify the operator of the computer, but came up with zilch. No business cards, pictures, name tags, cartoons, nothing personal. But as she stood up from the chair, she realized that a lab coat hung over the back of it, with a name tag. Dr. Steven Bryers.
At eleven forty she slipped from the room, automatically heading for the room directly across the corridor. She changed her mind at the last second and dashed down the hall to the ladies’ restroom. She had a glimpse of white marbled walls and floors, white paint, and a row of white-frosted windows lining the outside wall before she snuffed out her light. Moving to a window, she unlatched one, making sure it would pop open with a touch, then wedged a handful of paper towels in the door to keep it open enough for her to see down the hall.
With the Infectious Disease Department in her sights, she sat down to wait, feeling like she’d just completed a successful operation. Any second Mr. X, possibly Dr. Steven Bryers, would make an appearance. She’d identify him, then make her escape.
The muffled sound of booted feet upon the carpeted hall had her anticipations high until she discerned more than one person coming her way. And they were making no attempt to be quiet either. Had the guards returned?
“Nyros, I am putting you in charge of this facility. Until I find Cinatas, no one is to have access to this building. No matter what mortal authority attempts to enter, you stop them by whatever means you find necessary. Just make sure those means aren’t traceable.”
“I understand.”
“That order includes all members of the Vladarian Order as well, except for me, of course. Is your team prepared to enforce that?”
“With pleasure, Pathos.”
“Then we understand each other. Since one of them was with my offspring when this happened, I want the facts before anything can be altered. In the morning, I will have trucks waiting at the tunnel’s entrance. Any and al
l sources of data are to be loaded onto the trucks. With all the blood and laboratory samples already airlifted to Corazon de Rojo, by noon tomorrow this facility should be a shell, empty of anything but equipment.”
Damn! She was going to chew Sam out. The blood samples were already gone! And tomorrow the computers would be too! Some surveillance.
The men came into view, and Annette pinched herself to assure she wasn’t having a weird nightmare. A reddish aura surrounded the smaller of the two men. His features had a macabre edge to them that made them inhuman in appearance, completely unlike the large man who strode at his side. Wearing a black leather coat, black pants, and black shirt à la The Matrix, that man exuded a power that radiated brighter than the other man’s glow, even though he stood in shadow. All that Annette could make out was an impressive physique and what she thought might be long blond hair.
“I will see that it is done,” the glowing man said. The larger man turned and paused, bending toward the red light and revealing the most beautiful male face she’d ever seen. Perfectly sculpted, perfectly set features, perfectly—? She shook her head. How could she know that when she could hardly see him?
“The red demon faction is proving to be very valuable, Nyros. Don’t give me cause to—” The larger man fell silent and sniffed the air.
Before Annette could even blink, he moved like a blur down the corridor and flung the restroom door open. She fell back against the tiled wall with a scream that didn’t even have a chance to echo before he hauled her to her feet and pinned her to the cold marble with an iron hand clamped against her throat.
Chapter Five
W HAT WAS WRONG with him?
He felt out of control.
He’d thrown his sword away.
He wanted to taste blood, smell its salty sweetness as he ripped into flesh with his fangs.
The Lure of the Wolf Page 6