Omega Force 01- Storm Force

by Susannah Sandlin

  “OK, what the fuck’s going on?” He scratched behind Gator’s ears and motioned for Robin to move. No birds on the bed in his house. Nik took the chair beside his desk.

  She patted the mattress beside her. “Join me, and we’ll tell you.”

  Kell sat next to her, reached out for her hand, and jerked her toward him. “Quit screwing around and tell me what’s going on.”

  Robin scooted closer to Kell and sniffed his shoulder, then his neck. She grinned. “Oh, you have been a busy boy. Who was she?”

  Nik raised his eyebrows but kept his mouth shut. Like a best buddy should.

  “None of your business. Last time I’m asking. What’s up?”

  “It’s about the two guys I followed from Tex-La Shipping today,” Robin said, settling back on the pillows and clicking her teeth for Gator to join them, which he was happy to do. Kell needed to have a chat with that dog about who his master was, and appropriate behavior for visitors.

  “Yeah, speaking of that, why did you follow them instead of sticking with Mori Chastaine?” Kell had been thinking about Mori’s injuries. Whatever happened to her, whoever had happened to her, it had been either while she was at Tex-La or shortly afterward. If Robin had stayed in position, she might have been able to stop it.

  “These guys were shifters, and they looked like they were moving with a purpose,” she said. “I had to make the call, but gut instinct told me to stick with them.”

  Shifters at Tex-La? It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Kell didn’t know how many shifters there were in the world. Apparently there were all kinds, and they were relatively abundant. But he respected instinct, and as hard a time as he gave her, he’d learned to respect Robin.

  “What were they doing?”

  “I can tell you where they were going, but not why.”

  Kell turned to Nik. “She’s playing games. Spill it.”

  “Robin tracked them first to the Co-Op, then here to your apartment.” Nik leaned forward in the chair and propped his elbows on his knees. “They parked around back a few slots down from your space and then shifted.”

  A tingling sensation stole across Kell’s scalp. Those goddamn ugly cats in the parking lot. “Shifted into what?”

  “I’m not sure.” Robin twisted on the bed till she was sitting cross-legged facing Kell, with Gator between them. “Some kind of feline — a little bigger than your average overweight house cat.”

  “Black and gray?” Kell asked her. “Funny little round ears?”

  Robin straightened. “Where’d you see them?”

  Kell rubbed his eyes and thought about the two cats. “They were sitting on top of that brick fence that runs behind the back parking lot. Watched me get in the car when I left tonight. One of them even hissed at me when I told him he was ugly.”

  A comment that probably wouldn’t win him any friends in the cat-shifter club.

  Nik got up and paced. “I started to tell you to come to my place, but I knew we needed to get Gator. So the better idea seemed for us to slip in and wait for you here.”

  “They probably saw you, so you’re on their radar, too.” A stupid cat could be crouched under a plant in the courtyard with eyes trained on the door.

  “Give us some credit, man.” Nik took the chair again. “We got an extension ladder and broke in your back window. Figured the cats would be watching the parking lot and the front.”

  Kell pulled the curtain aside and looked at the small second-story window, which was covered in… “You covered my windows with fucking duct tape? That’s…kind of brilliant.” He crossed his arms, thinking. “But maybe they aren’t even here now. They could have followed me when I left earlier.” Had he led them straight to Mori? Or had Mori’s appearance at Tex-La somehow led the two shifters straight to him?

  “No, they can’t fly with the wings of an eagle,” Robin said dryly. “Even in a full-tilt run, I don’t think they could follow you through city traffic.”

  “Our guess is they’re watching you. Why, I’m not sure. But it had to be prompted by Mori Chastaine’s visit to Galveston this afternoon.”

  At Mori’s name, Kell closed his eyes. “What more do we know about Tex-La Shipping? Who owns it?”

  “I had Gadget send over a report an hour ago.” Nik laid a thin stack of papers on the edge of the bed. “There are about a hundred employees in the Galveston office, but the owner’s the most likely connection. Guy named Michael Benedict. He grew up in the Houston area before starting his shipping company in New Orleans. Keeps offices in Galveston, and he is currently in residence. He has a house here in River Oaks, where he lives part of the year, and the rest of the time he stays in New Orleans. Has a house uptown.”

  The man had money. Neither of those were cheap neighborhoods. “Direct ties to Mori Chastaine or the Co-Op?”

  Nik ran his hands through his hair and leaned back. “The only thing Gadget’s got so far is that Benedict owns a lot of land west of town in Brazos County and part of it butts up against the Quad-D Ranch, which is owned by the Chastaine family.”

  “It belonged to Mori’s grandfather, and her parents live there now.” Kell felt as if they were dancing around some big, glaring puzzle piece that would make everything fit together — the bombing, Mori, the shipping tycoon, the shape-shifters. “We’re missing the key. Trouble is, how do we find it?”

  “I don’t know,” Nik said. “But you need to move. Pack up whatever you can take without looking suspicious. I rented a car for you in my name, and it’s sitting at a lot downtown.” He flicked a business card with a key taped to it at Kell, who caught it and saw an address on North Main.

  “Let’s hang onto the car, but for now, I’m driving the Terminator.”

  “You can’t. It’s too risky.” Nik’s voice rose

  “He has to stay here. He’s the bait.” Robin got to her feet and stretched. “If Kell disappears, we’ve lost our connection to Mori and the Co-Op. If he disappears from his apartment but shows up at the Co-Op tomorrow, someone will just follow him again.”

  Kell gave Robin a rare smile. Smart girl. Eagle. Whatever. “Exactly. I need to maintain as ordinary a routine as I can. Robin, you tail me for a while; you can hide in a tree or something.” He ignored her snort. “Nik, I need you in Galveston. Hang out at Tex-La and keep an eye on Michael Benedict. Get a job there if you need to.”

  Nik nodded. “OK. You want us to stay here tonight?”

  Kell thought about it and said words he never thought he’d utter. “You go on home and get an early start in Galveston tomorrow morning. Robin can spend the night with me.”

  Since he was hiding in plain sight, there was no point in keeping the lights off, so Kell walked Nik to the door while Robin did a quick fly around to spot any stray cat-shifters skulking in the shadows. After a few minutes she landed on the balcony rail and squawked twice for all clear.

  “Be careful, man.” Nik clamped a hand on his shoulder and froze. “Oh fuck, Kell. You didn’t.” He jerked his hand back and looked at it as if it were burned. “Tell me you were just following the plan. You know, getting laid so you could get information.”

  Kell looked at him and shrugged, ignoring another squawk from Robin that sounded a lot like laughter. Guess touching his shirt had shown Nik a quick highlight reel of his evening. “I wish it were that simple.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The Co-Op offices had never been hotter, and it had nothing to do with the hundred-plus temperature outside. Mori got to the office at 9:00, and Kell was already there. She stood at the door, watching him curse at the computer. He looked tired, and when he leaned over to pick up a receipt that had dropped to the floor, his movements were stiff.

  Heat rushed across Mori’s face at the thought of why his back might be sore. She’d been stupid and selfish. She could have put Kell at greater risk by being with him last night. She hated that she was not the woman he thought — nothing like it. But, oh, she wished she could be.

  He looked up and smiled w
hen she opened the door and went inside. The chill of the AC was so delicious she had to stop for a minute, close her eyes, and enjoy the feel of cold air on her skin. When she opened her eyes again, Kell was in front of her.

  “Taylor’s not here yet. Are we still on for lunch?”

  She nodded. Her chance to grasp one last selfish slice of time for herself. “What do you want to do?”

  Blue and green were normally cool colors, but his eyes filled with heat. “I have some ideas, but they’re probably not appropriate for the office.”

  The thought made her heart speed up. She reached up to touch his cheek, run her thumb along the strong cheekbone, move toward him for a kiss.

  “Well, isn’t this an interesting way to start the morning?”

  Damn Taylor, and damn her for being careless. She stepped back, not sure how to respond.

  Kell took charge. “Don’t be jealous, man.” He smiled at Taylor, and Mori had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at his cocky, insincere expression. “Guess we’ll have to keep it out of the office. At least until lunchtime.”

  Kell winked at her and went back to the receptionist’s desk, ignoring Taylor’s wide-eyed gawk.

  Right. Work.

  “Tay, do you have the last quarterly donor report finished? I wanted to go over it this morning.” Mori went into her office and threw her bag on the floor next to her chair.

  “Sure, I’ll e-mail it to you.” Tay stuck his head in her office door. “Also, a reporter called yesterday looking for you and asking questions about our new volunteer. I told him all about our war hero.”

  Yeah, she knew exactly what he’d told Michael and what had come of it. She’d already decided before Kell showed up last night that she had to give Michael what he wanted in order to keep him from following through on his threats. But being with Kell had erased any lingering doubts. She had no choice. Tonight, she’d tell Michael she was his. At least her body would be his. Her heart would never belong to him, but she doubted he’d care.

  About 11:30 a.m., a call from one of the Co-Op’s biggest donors kept her on the phone for more than an hour, trying to reassure the man that the million he’d pledged over the next twelve months was not tied up with anything illegal, much less an act of terrorism.

  By the time she finally got off the phone, the pledge intact, it was a quarter till one. She grabbed her bag and was relieved to see Kell still at the desk, although he’d shut it down and had gotten engrossed in one of the books from the Co-Op’s small library. Ironically, the one on extinct and endangered species in the American South and Southwest.

  She cleared her throat, and he finally looked up. “Sorry that took so long. Are you starving?”

  “No, I’ve been reading about these species that used to be abundant around here but are extinct, or at least they’re thought to be extinct. I guess with a wild animal, it depends on how long it’s been since there’s been a confirmed sighting?”

  She nodded, propping a hip on the edge of the desk. “Like the Louisiana black bear we were talking about. Since they live in the wild, chances are good that somebody’s going to report seeing at least one in any given year. But it has been a while. Scientists will go in and confirm as best they can by looking for signs — bear scat or claw marks. If there are no sightings and no signs, eventually they’re considered extinct.”

  Kell turned to a page he’d marked with a sticky note and flipped the book around to face her. “The jaguarundi are interesting. They’re thought to be gone from Texas now — mostly, they live in South America. Are you familiar with them? Kind of ugly, I think.”

  Mori stared at the book, her pulse accelerating. What did Kell know? What was the likelihood that, out of every animal in the book, he’d zeroed in on the jaguarundi? All she could do was play dumb and stay cool.

  “Not the prettiest of the wild cats, for sure.” She took the book and studied the photo, which looked a hell of a lot like Travis. “I don’t know a lot about them. They’re in the puma family, a little bigger than a large house cat, I think.” And aggressive, territorial, and continuing to exist in Texas only within a shifter population, apparently. She handed the book back to him and gave him what she hoped was a carefree smile. “So, you ready to go? Have any place special in mind for lunch?”

  He closed the book and studied it a second before nodding. “You like Tex-Mex? There’s a new place over on Kirby I’ve heard good things about. I thought about Niko Niko’s again, but it’s noisy and we need to talk.”

  Talk. Mori didn’t want to talk, because what she had to say was one more lie on top of a stack of lies. She had to tell him she couldn’t see him anymore. That it would be better if he didn’t volunteer at the Co-Op. That she was planning to marry another man.

  “Sure, that sounds great. Which car?”

  Kell stopped at the door and gave her little hybrid a doubtful look. “I know I’m only a couple of inches taller than you, but I can’t see me squishing in that matchbox on wheels.”

  Mori laughed. “Then the Blue Bombshell it is.”

  “The Terminator. The car’s name is the Terminator.”

  They were both laughing when he pulled the Terminator into traffic, but silence settled over them within a block. Mori hated this awkwardness. They should have been in the throes of new relationship bliss, but Kell seemed as preoccupied and unsettled as she was.

  What an irony it would be if the thing he wanted to tell her was he didn’t want to see her again. She’d been thinking all along this was her decision, as if he didn’t have his own life and friends — and, who knew, even a wife somewhere. He didn’t wear a ring, but that meant nothing these days, and she’d never thought to ask him.

  What a dolt she was, mentally constructing this grand, tragic romance when, really, what they’d had was a one-night stand between two virtual strangers with great chemistry.

  “Here we go.” Kell wedged the behemoth of a car into a parking spot, and they got out without speaking further. The restaurant was one of those almost-too-cute adobe buildings, landscaped with cactus and palms. Most of the lunch crowd appeared to have cleared out, judging by the sparsely populated parking lot.

  Once they were seated and had ordered, Kell reached out and took her hand. He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and Mori held her breath to see what he’d wanted to tell her since last night. She figured this talk could go one of two ways. He could dump her, or she’d be forced to dump him. Either way, it was going to hurt.

  “I have to tell you, first, that I don’t regret last night. Not for a second.” He kept his gaze trained on their twined fingers. “I haven’t been with anyone since... I hadn’t expected to meet…” He clenched his jaw and looked down, as if searching for the right words. “You were a surprise. We were a surprise. So there are some things you need to know about me that…Oh hell.”

  He sat back in his chair and took a sip of his beer.

  Kell had secrets he wanted to tell her? Mori sipped her own beer, watching him. It had never occurred to her that Jack Kelly was anything more or less than what he said.

  “You were a surprise to me, too.” She thought about their first meeting — only four days ago but so much raw emotion had been crammed into those days, it seemed like weeks since he’d walked into the Co-Op. What she remembered most about her first encounter with Kell was the way he’d reacted to the Homeland Security guys, his posture rigid and his back to the wall so they couldn’t get behind him. It had looked like the kind of move a well-trained soldier might make on reflex. She realized she’d decided at that moment to trust him.

  “I don’t think there’s anything you could tell me that would change things. I don’t regret last night, either, and when you knew something was wrong and bullied your way in” — she looked up at him — “you took care of me. I saw who you were inside. That’s what matters.”

  “Right. But still—”

  A commotion at the restaurant’s bar, which lay a few feet to their right, drew their att
ention. “What’s going on?” Kell asked their waiter, who’d brought their plates but, like everyone else, was staring at the clump of bar patrons, all talking at once.

  “The governor has been found, and he’s alive.” The waiter set down the plates and poured more water in Mori’s glass. “Someone kidnapped him, I think.”

  Mori had a bad feeling about this and prayed that, whatever Michael had done to Carl Felderman, the governor would come back intact and with his mouth shut.

  Kell was leaning so far back in his chair she thought he might tip over. “There’s a TV behind the bar. Let’s go hear what they’re saying.”

  He was halfway to the commotion before she’d reluctantly risen from her chair. She eased between two of the waitstaff at the end of the bar, and sure enough, there was the old camera hog on-screen with a microphone stuck in front of him, having a press conference.

  “Turn it louder!” yelled someone from a table farther back in the restaurant, and the bartender reached up and pushed the button until the familiar drawl of Carl Felderman could probably be heard in Dallas.

  Felderman, always a thin stick of a man, looked horrible. Emaciated and pale, he spoke in a voice that sounded strong, but the hand he held up to adjust the microphone shook. Mori had never liked the man, but a deep stab of pity shot through her. Michael had caused this, at least partly because of her.

  Mori looked down the length of the bar and finally spotted Kell, staring intently at the screen with his hands on his hips. He’d never mentioned Felderman — had never talked about the bombing at all except in general terms — but she guessed everyone was amazed that he was alive. Except her.

  “I’m thankful to God that I’ve come through this ordeal, and I look forward to getting back to Austin and resuming my duties as governor,” he was saying. He pushed away from the table where he was seated, waved feebly at the crowd of reporters, and hobbled away, leaning on the arm of an aide. What had he said earlier?