“Go, Julio!” She aimed the gun, a Glock if she had to guess, and pumped two into the man’s chest before he could recover.
As Julio dashed down the hall, the man she had shot slumped to the kitchen floor. Ana took aim at the second man who was spinning in her direction, his own gun raised. Ana pulled the trigger quickly once, readjusted, and rapidly squeezed off two more shots. One to the head, two to the chest, just like her late police officer husband had taught her.
The second man was still falling to the floor when Ana sprinted down the hall, following the direction her son had taken.
Julio was standing in the doorway, waiting to see if it was his mother was coming after him, or if the men were, before he would slam the door shut and lock it. He peered past her to see if she was being followed, then backed into the room to shut and lock the door behind her. Ana raced into the room to the little safe tucked into the top of her closet.
“Are there any more of them?” Julio asked, after he got the door locked.
Oh, shit. Were there more of them? And did they hear the gunshots? “I don’t know. We’ll have to be extra cautious when we climb out the window.” With shaking hands, Ana managed to get the safe unlocked with the key she’d hidden at the other end of the closet. “I’m proud of you, Julio. Except for not locking yourself in immediately, you did awesome, kept your cool.”
Leveling him with a calm stare that camouflaged the terror racing through her, his own panic decreased a couple of levels, and he gulped before nodding calmly at her acknowledgment. This situation, whatever it was, would be hard enough to survive if either she or her son lost their shit. If she could keep herself from flying apart, then maybe her child, after all he’d been through, could make it without a nervous breakdown.
She strapped on the belt that held her husband’s old duty pistol and nabbed everything from the safe: handcuffs, extra ammunition, mace. Stuffing them into the belt that barely stayed on her feminine hips, she mused at how foolish she’d felt over the years caring for these items. Up until recently, she even went to the shooting range at least once a year to stay proficient in their use. It had seemed like a disservice to let the items sit and remain unused. But the truth was, when she would look at them, she could see images of a shirtless Julio Senior, sporting a chiseled chest and a washboard stomach, sitting on the couch after a long shift. He’d chat with her about his day, idly cleaning and polishing the leather and metal that made up the various tactical gear.
He had loved his job and had taken every bit of it seriously, even teaching Ana how to clean and maintain the gun and design emergency plans in case of a fire, or God-forbid, an invasion. Wistfully, Ana wished she could give her deceased spouse a hug and a thank you, because she kept those disciplined plans in mind. As soon as her son was old enough, they talked and trained on various scenarios, and decided on a code word. Originally intended for their “in case a stranger tries to con you into going with him” plan, “Pikachu” worked, beautifully to communicate to her clever child that something was wrong and he needed to follow their escape plan. This included exiting through her home office to arm herself with protection before they climbed out the window.
“Come on.” She crept up to the window with Julio glued behind her and tucked the curtain back slightly to look around outside. Seeing nothing, she tried to recall every detail from when she had pulled up to her house. “Do you remember seeing any unusual vehicles when the bus dropped you off?”
“Yeah, there was a van parked by Mrs. Mills’ place. It looked like a work van, and I thought it was weird because they do everything themselves.”
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 4
“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 while 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 h
is 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.
The Sigma Menace Collection Page 57