She stepped away and turned back to face the girl — no, woman. She just looked like a kid because she barely reached Mori’s shoulder. The other person who’d been watching her since her birthday was Jack Kellison.
“Are you with Kell? Is he OK?”
Robin looked up at her with a grin. “You handcuffed him to a nightstand, and wait until you hear what a freaking mess he’d gotten himself into when we found him. I haven’t laughed that hard in years. In fact, if we get out of this alive, I owe you a drink for making that big, bossy jerk eat a little crow.” She frowned. “I’ve tasted crow. It’s gamey.”
Mori relaxed a little. If the eaglet was making fun of Kell, things couldn’t be too bad. “Then he’s safe?”
“Nothing bruised but his big fat ego.” Robin grasped Mori’s arms and turned her again. “He and the other guys are taking out the security system, and then…” She pulled down the bedspread that covered Mori’s back. “Holy shit. I might have to kill the mofo who did this. Did he not even clean the wound afterward?”
“Don’t think so. Just dumped me on the bed and left.” Mori eased away from Robin, shuffled back to the bed, and sat, letting the bedspread hang off her back. To hell with modesty, although she could offer Robin some coverage. “You want a sheet?”
Robin shook her head. “I can do better than that.”
She walked back to the window, reached outside, and retrieved a plastic grocery bag from the rope. “Archer — he’s the guy who took the window out — slipped into your place and brought out a few things. But that back needs a doctor, although what kind of doctor…” Robin cocked her head, giving Mori an assessing look. “What are you?”
Mori’s first impulse was to lie, but what difference did secrecy make now, especially with these people who were risking so much to rescue her? “Dire Wolf.”
“Dire.” Robin frowned a moment as if consulting some inner database, then whistled. “I thought the Dires were, you know, long gone.” She mimicked a knife slicing across her throat.
Mori had to smile. She liked the eagle named Robin. “There are only about thirty Dire-shifters left. None of our brothers in the wild exist anymore. They’ve been extinct a long time, and the shifters aren’t far behind.”
“So is…” Robin stopped. “Never mind. There’ll be time to talk later.”
She dug in the plastic bag and brought out a small tube. “This is for burns, but now that I see it up close, I’m afraid to touch it. Better let Nik or Kell take a look first — they know more about injuries. Poor old humans have to deal with that kind of shit all the time, you know?”
Mori took the jeans and chambray shirt Robin handed her, and shook her head, smiling. “You guys couldn’t have picked a better shirt. Michael says I look like a Texas ranch hand in it.” Which had made it one of her favorites.
“Hope you don’t mind my saying it, but from what I’ve seen, Michael’s a total asshole.” Robin had slipped into a pair of jeans and slid a T-shirt over her head. She stopped at the sound of Mori’s laughter. “What?”
“Nothing.” Mori smiled. “You’re right. He is a total asshole.”
“Is he your alpha?”
Cautiously, Mori nodded. Again, why not tell the truth? Her own family had deserted her, and here, finally, was someone who seemed to be on her side. “Unfortunately, he is our alpha. I’ve known him my whole life and always thought he was a bully. But he’s so much worse than that.”
“Hmmmm.” Robin sat on the floor with her legs crossed. “What’s the Achilles heel of the Dire Wolves? We have to find a way to take your alpha down.” Robin’s eyes narrowed. “That going to be a problem for you?”
“God, no.” She wanted Michael out of her life, whatever it took. But she had no hope that this fierce little woman and a few Army Rangers could make a difference. “You don’t realize how strong he is, and how ruthless.”
Robin paused at the sound of a crash from somewhere downstairs, then shrugged. “Look, Mori, you’ve gotta get past this submissive-little-woman mentality. Strength is more this” — she tapped her temple — “than it is muscle and brute force. Let me ask again: what’s the mortal weakness of the Dire Wolves? All shifters have something. For the eagles, it’s lead. See, I told you. Now, you tell me. Is it silver, like the legends say?”
Mori shook her head. “Only for the smaller wolves. It doesn’t feel good, but it doesn’t kill us, because we’re so much bigger.” She hesitated. Other than traumatic damage to the heart, which would kill anything, human or shifter, the only substance guaranteed to kill a Dire was mercury. But could she hand over that knowledge to another species? That was a mortal crime among her people.
“Never mind for now.” Robin got up and began to pace. “Think about this, though. Without revealing what you are to the public, it’s going to be hard to get Michael Benedict arrested or convicted, or whatever the humans call it. I hate to sound like a bad movie, but a jail’s not going to hold him even if we had any evidence against him. Which, by the way, we don’t.”
“The governor.” Mori couldn’t believe her best hope for surviving this would come down to Carl Felderman. “If we can get him to tell us—”
Robin cut her off with a quick hand gesture. “He’s dead. Felderman told Kell and Nik what happened to him and admitted you had nothing to do with it. Those jaguarundi-shifters turned him into a hybrid, with the plan of controlling him in the governor’s office. He made a run for it after his press conference, and they ended up killing him. At least, someone killed him. Again, no proof.”
Mori let out a frustrated breath, grabbing the edge of the mattress as another wave of dizziness shot through her. When was this all going to end? She and Felderman had come down on opposite sides of every environmental issue faced by the state, but on some level, she understood where he was coming from and certainly never wanted him dead. And to turn him into a hybrid so he would do Michael’s bidding?
“Why would the jaguarundis let Michael use them this way?”
Robin started to answer, but a loud crash of splintering wood echoed through the room, followed by the appearance of a black cat so big he took Mori’s breath away. So big he’d been able to knock the steel door out of its wooden frame. Now, he used the door carnage as a ladder instead of going up the stairs.
“Is he supposed to be here?” Mori watched in awe as he gracefully prowled into the room on paws the size of salad plates.
“Yeah, this is Archer, but you can call him Kitten. He likes it.” Robin chucked the big cat under its chin, and the damn thing purred. “He’s the one who took out the window.”
Ah, Mori should have recognized the green eyes. He was too big to be a cougar. Black jaguars were extinct except for a few hundred left in South America. Apparently, as with the Dires, a shifter population remained. Obviously, Mori had underestimated the variety of Kell’s counterterrorist team — greatly underestimated it.
Robin scratched behind the cat’s ear, but pulled her hand away with a frown.
“You’re bloody. Are you injured?” preceded another man into the room, a guy with a deep tan, an armful of clothing (which he tossed toward the cat), and an angry expression on his face. “Shift, Archer. The blood is Kell’s, and we’ve gotta get out of here — now.”
Kell was injured? Mori jumped to her feet too fast and swayed as the newcomer stepped over and grabbed her arm to keep her upright. He was about Kell’s height, a little over six feet, with black hair and liquid eyes so dark they barely qualified as brown.
He pulled his hands away from her like he’d been scalded. “Shit.” He took a step back and shook his head as if trying to rid it of bad thoughts.
“What? Who are you? Where’s Kell?” Panic rose in Mori’s chest. If he’d been killed trying to save her—
“He’s downstairs. Let’s go.” The man gave her a probing look before he turned and ran back down the makeshift ramp and out the door.
The big cat had shifted back into the guy Mori had seen through the window. He pulled o
n the black clothing he’d worn earlier, but not before Mori saw the blood on his shoulder and chest — a lot of it.
He motioned for Mori to come with him. “Robin, stay and do wipe-downs, then meet us all at Nik’s.”
Robin had been quiet and serious since finding the blood. She touched Archer’s arm and spoke softly. “Is it bad?”
Archer ruffled her hair and smiled. “Nah. He just tangled with a jaguarundi or two. He’s tough.” He turned to Mori. “You ready? Can you walk, or you need me to carry you?”
Mori blinked. She was almost six feet tall. No man had ever carried her. No man had ever offered to carry her. And it wasn’t going to happen now. “Just let me go at my own pace, but thanks.”
“Here, wear these.” He reached in a pocket of his cargo pants and pulled out a pair of gloves. “If you need to hold onto the banister or the wall, you won’t leave prints.”
God, fingerprints. She looked around her at the bed, the walls, the bathroom sink. She’d touched everything in this room.
“Hey, you heard the man. Wipe-downs are my job.” Robin said. “Go find Kell. Seeing you safe will make him feel better. It had to bruise that big ego again to not be the one bashing down the door to rescue you.”
Mori nodded and gave Robin a small smile on her way past. In another life, they could’ve been friends. She didn’t dare hope for such a thing now. She might be getting out of Michael’s house, but she was probably now a suspect in Carl Felderman’s death as well as the bombing and kidnapping. She’d have to disappear someplace remote and obscure. And with her disappearance, the Dires would gradually die off. Despite everything Michael and her parents had done, that was not what she wanted.
The most important thing now was making sure Kell was going to survive whatever the jags had done to him. She followed Archer down the stairs, glad she had the gloves because she needed one hand on the banister and the other on the wall to avoid tumbling down them headfirst. Every step caused the shirt fabric to brush across her back so that by the time they reached the foyer, her every nerve ending sizzled.
She froze on the bottom stair. A smear of blood stretched from the living room door on the right — the scene of her branding — to the door on the foyer’s left, which led to the dining room, kitchen, and garage.
“Which of Michael’s guys are still in the house?” She knew the jags were here if they had fought Kell. Michael also had an estate manager who stayed at the house most of the time.
Archer grasped her elbow, urging her down the last step and toward the dining room. “Let’s just say he’ll need some new employees. Don’t step in the blood.”
Mori was sick of death, sick of feeling guilty and afraid and overwhelmed. But all she could focus on now was putting one foot in front of the other. By the time they crossed the dining room and the long, pristine kitchen, Mori was leaning on Archer more than she would have liked.
The garage door was open, and the hot wind hit Mori’s back like a slap when they exited the cavernous space and crossed the drive to a lawn-service van in the ugliest shade of green she’d ever seen.
The wind was steady, dry, and tropical, which had to mean the hurricane was on the move again. When they reached the van, the side panel opened, and the serious, dark-eyed man jumped out. Was it Mori’s imagination, or did he seem afraid to be near her? This had to be Kell’s Greek friend, Nik. Maybe he was just pissed off that she’d gotten his buddy in such a mess. She couldn’t blame him.
“Up you go.” Archer jumped in the back of the van and reached an arm out for Mori to grasp. He pulled her up effortlessly, slammed the panel shut, and headed for the front. Nik, if that’s who he was, had already climbed in and cranked the engine.
Mori turned and her breath caught in her throat. Kell lay on his back, stretched across the van’s floor, watching her. Even in the dim interior light, his blue-green eyes were vivid. Deep scratches scoured his right cheek, and his right shoulder looked like raw steak marinated in blood. He was still the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, and her chest ached to see him hurt.
His smile wasn’t wide, but it was genuine as he reached out his hand and grasped hers. “You were right. We’re such losers.”
CHAPTER 24
Kell had been patient long enough.
On the ride from River Oaks to change vehicles at the lawn-care lot, then on the journey to Nik’s downtown loft in his friend’s SUV, he’d been content just to look at Mori, to memorize the little laugh lines around her mouth, the slight slant of her brown eyes above the high cheekbones, the way she tightened her jaw when a movement hurt her back, the expressions of longing and regret and gratitude and fear, all warring for dominance on her face when she met his gaze. Their hands never left each other’s. She seemed to need his touch as much as he needed hers.
Nik had slipped them into the freight elevator and gotten them to his loft without being seen, and Kell remained quiet while Archer brought in his shifter clan’s doctor. The man had first sterilized Mori’s back while using a colorful slew of new curse words Kell hoped he could remember, and then plied her with antibiotics. Afterward, the cat doctor had used similar curses as he cleaned Kell’s scratch marks. Only the shoulder wound was deep, and everything else he stitched up with a deft hand…paw…whatever.
“Will I turn into one of those hybrid freaks?” he’d asked, and both the doctor and Mori assured him at least three deep bites were required for that to happen, and scratches didn’t count. Only saliva.
Kell had kept his mouth shut while Razorblade Robin came back from cleanup duty and turned domestic, cooking piles of fajitas and swearing she used goat meat, not rat. He thought it was only a slight improvement.
And he’d remained mute as Nik did his level best to avoid being near Mori. More than once, he caught her giving Nik puzzled looks, to which his friend was oblivious — maybe intentionally so.
There hadn't been much to say as they gathered late on Friday afternoon to eat around the small TV in Nik’s central living area — the whole apartment being one gymnasium-sized room with cleverly placed partitions.
The local NBC affiliate had three breaking stories its reporters were frantically trying to cover.
Hurricane Geneva, Category 2 and growing, had finally begun to move again, inching at a ponderous pace toward a projected landfall between Morgan City, Louisiana, and Corpus Christi, Texas. Unless something changed, Galveston could be ordered to evacuate as early as Saturday afternoon, and even Houston by Sunday.
The second story was the ongoing investigation into the murder of Carl Felderman, complete with images of the Co-Op offices, the exterior of Mori’s apartment, and then Mori herself. She watched it with a stony silence Kell could only interpret as fatalistic. They might have gotten her away from Benedict’s house, but she didn’t think she could be saved. He could see it in her eyes, a remoteness that had been broken only when Robin came back from the cleanup bearing Mori’s backpack.
The final story dominating the news concerned three mysterious murders in River Oaks, at the home of millionaire shipper Michael Benedict. One man had been shot, the second stabbed, and the third’s throat slashed. Michael had appeared on camera, giving an Oscar-worthy performance expressing his profound sadness over the deaths of his loyal staff members, but Kell recognized fury when he saw it, and Benedict was furious. In Kell’s opinion, Michael Benedict had gotten a free ride so far and had a big payday way overdue.
The time to talk had finally come, however, and Kell reached for the remote and turned off the TV. Archer and Robin settled in on the love seat; Mori sat cross-legged on the floor to avoid having her back touch anything. Kell had claimed the recliner, and Nik fidgeted and flitted from dining chair to sofa chair to floor and back again.
Gator was so damned happy to see everyone he made periodic tail-wagging rounds, but finally settled next to Kell, conveniently within ear-scratching reach.
“Requesting blackout.” Kell looked at each of them in turn, waiting for the nod
of agreement, until he reached Mori. “That means whatever is said in this room goes nowhere, not even to our commander, and we lay everything on the table. No lies, no half truths. You agree to this?”
Mori closed her eyes and nodded. He wanted to go to her and tell her it would all work out, that he could both protect her and exonerate her. But until he knew the truth, he couldn’t make those promises. And if he had to be a hard-ass to get the truth, then by God it was past time.
“First, has anyone talked to the colonel?”
“He called twice today.” Nik had finally taken a seat on the sofa chair for a while, his jiggling right leg the only sign he was stressed. According to Robin, Nik had been weird ever since touching Mori when they took her from Benedict’s attic. He must have seen something he hadn’t expected and hadn’t liked. Kell intended to find out what that was — from Nik if he had to, but preferably from Mori.
“How long you think we can keep the colonel on ice?”
Nik shrugged. “His last message was pretty hysterical, and I don’t mean funny.”
“I’ll call him later tonight, then.” What the hell he’d tell the man, Kell didn’t know. Maybe the truth. See if he could handle it.
“Next, update on the mission today.” He filled in his activity, up to the point where the second jaguarundi had parachuted onto his face. Seems Archer had taken down Travis’s brother in an extremely one-sided catfight. Nik had been forced to stab the tall guy when he pulled out a weapon of his own.
“That was the estate manager, I think,” Mori said, her first contribution to the conversation. “I met him once before, but don’t remember his name.”
Gradually, the reports came to a close, and there remained only one ten-ton rhino in the room: Mori and her secrets. Kell looked at her and nodded, and she smiled in return. Her hands were shaking, but her voice remained calm.
“I guess it’s my turn, then.” She looked at the floor and fiddled with the edge of an area rug. “Only, I’m not sure where to start. Maybe with this.” She pulled her backpack from where it had been propped against the side of the love seat and pulled out some folded sheets of paper. She handed them to Archer, who passed them on to Kell without looking at them.
Omega Force 01- Storm Force Page 18