Lawful Claim

by Marie Johnston

  Pride swelled in her. She and Julio had occasionally butted heads in the past, and more frequently as he grew older, but he was an intelligent kid and took after his dad with his acute awareness of his surroundings. “Okay, we get out the window and head through the neighbors’ backyards to get to the woods. We can make our way to a gas station and call for help.”

  “Those men weren’t cops.” It was statement, not a question.

  “No, not of any sort.” Other than the sick feeling the men gave her, everything about them screamed criminal. While their clothing and gear said they came from some organization, it was clear it wasn’t a good one. The other evidence, they had broken into her house and didn’t offer much of identification or explanation, which supported the evil that permeated the air in her kitchen.

  Lifting the window panel out and setting it on the floor, she popped off the screen, extremely grateful she had made sure to practice window exits in case of a fire.

  “I’m going to help you down. When you hit the ground, get behind the shrub in case someone is watching for us.”

  Her heart thudded in her ribs, waiting for a shout or pop of gunfire, as she lowered Julio to the ground. A low groan could be heard filtering down the hallway. Ana almost let out a yelp and dropped her son, but held on, and as soon as he cleared the landing, she climbed out herself. Those men should be dead; her aim was true. How could they be making noise of any kind?

  No sirens could be heard. All her neighbors were still at work, and any gunfire heard by latchkey kids waiting at home would’ve been mistaken for TV or video games. Holding Julio’s hand, she dragged him behind her as they cut across her yard and into the adjacent neighbor’s yard. There would be no going back to see if the men were really dead or making sure they were. In case there were more, or the wounds weren’t fatal, she and Julio needed to put the burners on and get gone.

  As they ran, Ana didn’t let go of Julio’s hand, and made sure she kept a pace he could maintain. Her mind planned their next move. There was a gas station over a mile away where they could use a phone. She could use her cell phone, but since the men were in her house, did they monitor her cell? It sounded far-fetched, but this morning, so did an abduction. Why would they want her and her son?

  “Mom,” Julio huffed after they cleared one yard’s chain link fence. “Do you think Dad will come save us?”

  Ana’s brows crinkled in surprise. “We can call Griffin after we call the police.” She didn’t think her son had let Griffin in enough to think of him as “Dad.”

  “No,” Julio pressed, “Dad, not Griffin.”

  The distain that dripped off his voice when he spoke her fiancé’s name did not go unnoticed, but confusion overruled her dismay that her son really did hate the man she planned to marry. “What do you mean?”

  They’d slowed, both of them checking for suspicious people, both having their nerves stretched razor-thin thinking they would be chased any minute. Soon they would clear the houses and could take to the trees to follow the main road to a telephone.

  “You know. Dad.” Julio stressed again, like it was so obvious. “He saved me from the river.”

  A chill settled into Ana’s bones. What had happened to Julio that night to make him think his dad had helped him out of the river? She’d never really thought of the afterlife and what was possible. But say there were ghosts and shit. Her husband had died before Ana could tell him the good news. Julio Senior didn’t know he was having a junior before he died.

  Julio Senior had been working the night shift when she came home from school and took the pregnancy test. They hadn’t been trying to conceive, were waiting for her to be done with school, but life had its own plan and that night there was an extra line on the testing stick that explained why she’d been so tired and cranky.

  That night she had all kinds of plans running through her mind. Should she put a bun in the oven and let her husband guess at the innuendo, or just tell him outright? Then the dreaded knock on the door came. Her heart in the pit of her stomach, she opened the door to Julio’s police chief and shift sergeant, and she knew, knew, she’d lost her best friend and lover.

  “I know what you’re going to say, Mom.” Julio broke in before Ana could remind him that his father died well before he was born. “But I swear it was him. I mean, I couldn’t see him very well in the dark, but he sounded just like I’d imagined and looked just like all the photos we have. ’Cept maybe a little older looking, a little sad.”

  Ana chose not to say anything until they cleared the houses and could hide behind a nice, big cottonwood. Then she pulled her son to face her, hands on his shoulders. “Tell me exactly what happened that night.”

  “It’s just like I told you, but a guy came to help me out of the river, made me swear not to tell anyone about him. I know it was Dad.”

  “Honey, it couldn’t have been your father.”

  Julio stared down, sadness blanketing his expression. “I didn’t tell you cuz I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

  Of course she didn’t believe him. His father had been dead for over ten years, burned so badly they couldn’t have an open casket; forensics used the massive amounts of his blood at the scene that hadn’t turned to ash to confirm his identity. It’d taken her hours and hours to clean the grit out of his gear once it was returned back to her, but doing so helped her feel close to him. It was something to hold onto because he’d been taken away from her decades too soon.

  “Are you sure this man was real and not imagined?” Either her son’s mind conjured a savior during a dire time or some Good Samaritan helped her son and wanted to remain anonymous. Maybe a homeless guy had come to his rescue?

  “Mom.” Julio rolled his eyes and looked at her like he did when she asked if he was sure he brushed his teeth and hair before heading out for school. He always did, but the mom in her couldn’t keep from asking.

  Ana decided to table the mystery man discussion for now and concentrate on survival. She clutched his hand and pulled him deeper into the trees.

  Chapter Four

  “You’d better fix this,” Madame G hissed into Agent G’s ear, as he was forced to his knees. An unknown force cut off his air supply, and he gaped like a hooked fish. Barely able to nod, he managed to move his head enough for her to see that her words were absolutely crystal.

  Sucking in a new, sweet breath, Agent G tried not to collapse and claw at his throat for the invisible vice that had been locked onto his windpipe, waiting to crush it at her command.

  Agent G knew his ass was toast as soon as her cool voice had invaded his mind, summoning him to her suite at the compound. He had been commanded to stay far away from Sigma’s Freemont sprawl as he carried out his mission, and what a mission it was. Sure, he traded some power and influence for his sweet gig, but he was still alive and had a shit-ton of authority, all while carrying out Madame G’s vision of dominating the entirety of shifterkind. And he still kicked back with a cognac every night, instead of answering to some other arrogant Agent.

  “My apologies, Madame G.” It was dangerous to apologize to the dark mistress. It showed weakness, but he needed to stress that the epic fuck-up was not his fault. Not this time. “Agent H and Agent I assumed the kid would come home and be alone for a few minutes while Ana ran late like normal. Then they could use him to get Ana to come without a fight.”

  Air was forced out of Agent G so fast that he flew forward and nearly kissed the floor hard enough to lose some teeth. Catching himself with a sharp jar to his arm, he tried to suck in air, his gut caved like a heavily-booted foot had just kicked him. All this, without Madame G laying one finger on him.

  “And why is that Agent G?” Her rage seethed. “Could it be because you thought to dispose of the kid without having my express orders to do so? Did you not think the Esposito woman wouldn’t keep a closer eye on the boy after that?”

  Yeah, he should’ve thought of that. Should’ve realized Ana would deviate from her normal routine for a whi
le until she felt Julio was safe again. But he’d been so panicked after his last confrontation with Madame G. The one where he thought to boost his standing with her and reveal to her that he thought Agent E had interacted with his family, that he was maybe not the utterly committed Agent she had molded him into.

  Instead, she had been livid, and Agent G felt pain unlike any he’d ever known before, and that included his transition to Agent status. The agony was as if he burned from the inside out while someone repeatedly kicked him the nuts.

  “I have plans for that boy,” she had said through clenched teeth. She’d stalked in front of him as he’d writhed on the ground in pain, bleeding from his ears and nose. Then she abruptly faced him and had given her orders. “Bring the kid in. Bring them both in.”

  Agent G had been sent with specific instructions for when to snatch Julio and Ana and ran off with his tail between his legs. Everything was going as planned until he couldn’t reach either Agent H or Agent I by radio. Then he went to the house and found them reanimating, thanks to whatever shit Madame used making them into Agents. At least until Agent G had found them, shot them each in the head again, and sawed their heads off with Ana’s dull-ass butcher knife.

  Breath whooshed back into his lungs, and he almost collapsed again at the relief. “I’ll bring them in as you command.”

  “Yes. You will. And if you fail again, you will know pain and a death unlike any I have ever doled out before.” The coolness of her voice was back and that was a nasty sign. If he had any chance to redeem himself at all, it would be through Ana and Julio, and whatever Madame G had planned for them.

  *****

  Rhys Fitzsimmons stared at the photo on his computer. A pathetic activity he found himself doing every time he sat at his desk.

  Dani had enlarged it and cropped out the other teens, leaving only her, and sent it to him. He wasn’t lusting over the female, that’d be sick. She was what, maybe all of seventeen in the pic? But he just couldn’t not look at it. She was so youthful, so happy, grinning, holding a shovel from some do-gooder project all the teens in the photo had helped with.

  She was listed as Alexandria King. Sarah Young, Bennett’s mate, claimed her as an aunt. She was previously thought to have been killed by Madame G in her intrepid hunt for a specific vampire-shifter hybrid. Madame G then ruthlessly hunted Sarah, incorrectly informed that Sarah was the hybrid, and not Alexandria, the female they knew as Agent X.

  Rhys’ mind worked over that knowledge. Sometimes the jagged scar along his side throbbed. The one where Agent X had knifed him with a blade lined with pure silver. No one ever got that close to him, but his first scent of her had taken him off guard. At which point, she properly stuck him like last year’s turkey and yanked down. Rhys thought he was going to cough out his liver after that, and sometimes when it rained, it still bugged him, sending achy tendrils through his side.

  ’Course back then, all they had were themselves to patch each other up. Now they had a sort of doctor, Garreth, and the mending was done a bit more competently, and with a steadier hand than a hyped Guardian who was pissed as hell, wanting revenge.

  The knife hadn’t hit his liver, but was close. It hadn’t penetrated as deeply as it could’ve, and for the most part, he had mended completely. At least where it counted. Wasn’t that the theme of his interactions with Agent X? Almost. Nearly. Close, but not critical. It wasn’t too long ago that he began to suspect Agent X was more than a diabolical Sigma drone. That maybe she was after a different endgame than Madame G. But it could be wishful thinking.

  Except, when he looked at a vibrant Alexandria, her brilliant green eyes alive with joy, not a care in the world other than hanging with the other honor students, he wondered, what if?

  What if she weren’t employed by the most evil organization known to his people, under its most vicious, evil leader? What if she had been allowed to live in a world where bad things didn’t happen to good people?

  Bad things. And that’s why he couldn’t quit staring at the picture. The young girl, so alive, so brilliant…Yet he knew what she would have been forced to endure once held in Madame G’s clutches. All of her innocence—stripped. All of her optimism—destroyed. Her life—no longer her own.

  He suspected the Agent he couldn’t quit obsessing over still fought the good fight. If she didn’t, and she had to be destroyed? Rhys shook his head, scrubbing his face with his hand and clicked his screen off.

  *****

  “What’s doing, Biggie? You’re acting like a virgin heading to her first prom with the captain of the football team.” X had called him Biggie since the first day they met.

  She was inspecting him as they drove back to Freemont, their mission having been wrapped up extra quickly thanks to E. It was supposed to have been an overnighter and although he and X had many slumber parties in the car because hotels were out of the question, E made quick work of interrogating the shifter spy so they could head back. In fact, he was damn near merciless, so much so that X had intervened before the spy stalled himself into a beheading. It was a bullshit mission about a shifter colony that not even Madame G gave a shit about, one that was just being monitored per Sigma’s orders.

  “Are you saying I’m agitated, X?”

  “Not at all, Biggie. I think you’re worried I’m going to pop your cherry.”

  E’s lips quirked despite the raw feeling of foreboding he’d had for days. Considering the emotions he and X normally existed under, the foreboding had nearly driven him insane. Training his eyes back on the road, he considered, for like the hundredth time since he’d rescued his son, what to tell X.

  Let’s just lay it out there. “A few nights ago, I saved Julio from some thugs who tried to drown him, and I think Madame G found out. I think that’s why she sent us on this insignificant assignment. I’m worried she’s planning something for my family.”

  It wasn’t often X was speechless, and from the way she was blinking at him, he’d just blown her away. He knew her too well: she wouldn’t panic, she wouldn’t question him ceaselessly, she wouldn’t demand the entire story.

  “Drop me off before you turn off to the compound, and I’ll run back while you go check on Ana and Julio. If anyone asks, you kicked me out and didn’t tell me why. And I’m fucking pissed about it, by the way, and all of your secrecy.” X had his back and the less she knew, the better.

  E’s jaw clenched, and he pressed harder on the gas. They were finally on roads that Sigma paid good money to some very corrupt officials to not be patrolled very well. His mind worked through the deep shit he might possibly be in.

  “Who do you think saw you or figured out that you helped Julio?”

  E shook his head. “No clue.” He ran through that night with X, and she stared out the car window for a minute.

  “And the list of suspects of who might want Julio dead and who Julio could tell about the unknown man that saved him is?” X crossed her arms, turning her head with an eyebrow cocked, and E knew she had come to the same conclusion as him. It was preposterous, should be an outrageous assumption—but yet here he was, with his female wolf-shifter partner, hunting other wolf-shifters, for a bunch of humans and vampires. So yeah, preposterous happened.

  “Exactly.”

  Chapter Five

  “Mom, your phone’s ringing again.”

  “Yes, Julio.” Ana tried to remain patient. Her damn phone wouldn’t stop ringing. As much as she hated making Griffin worry, she just didn’t trust that her phone hadn’t been somehow tampered with. Not after finding men in her house, even though her phone never left her side. But they were in her house! What if they’d been there before? Or, dammit, what if all those spy shows weren’t so far-fetched and they could still find her just knowing her phone number?

  Yet, she couldn’t shut the damn thing off because her city girl senses were worth shit in the woods. It should only be one or two miles to the nearest gas station, but staying out of sight in the trees meant she also couldn’t see wher
e they were going. Cue downloading a compass app so they wouldn’t walk as far off as the river. Again.

  “Are we there yet?”

  Ana suppressed a sigh and thought to herself, Does it look like we’re there yet? They were both tired, hungry, and scared, and it would not make the situation better if she bit Julio’s head off, especially since she had almost lost him twice in the last week.

  Tears burned the back of her eyes. Who would do this to her sweet little boy? Sure, with her, he could cop an attitude, be insolent, and frankly disregard her orders to clean his room. But according to his teachers, he was a quiet, introspective, intelligent young man who stayed away from the drama schoolboys can create and joined in any trading card game he could.

  “Mom, do you hear that? Maybe it’s Dad.”

  Ana cocked her head and stopped walking, Julio halting next to her, her heart breaking just a little at his hopes that it would ever be his father’s voice.

  Then, a faint, “Ana!”

  “Griffin!” She turned toward the sound, pulling Julio with her, ignoring the disappointed sound he made.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea? The way he’s hollering, maybe the bad guys will just follow him.”

  While Julio had a point, Ana would feel better with another person protecting them. “We’ll just follow his voice, but don’t shout back.” It sounded as if Griffin was near a stretch of road that turned off the main road for parking to hike the river trails.

  Nearly dragging her son behind her, Ana forced herself to slow down so she wouldn’t cause them to face plant into the ground. It was hard enough for her to remain upright, crossing the uneven ground in her pumps and dress pants.

  They continued on until she could finally see her fiancé stomping through the trees, not far from the rugged parking area. “Griffin!” she whisper-yelled.