Anna found her ensemble surprisingly comfortable. Her calf-length, seafoam blue skirt afforded her ample room to run and kick. Even better, it contained a hidden pocket below the hip that gave her access to the Kimber Ultra TLE holstered on her thigh. The .45 felt reassuring there.
Her blouse, covered in a busy floral pattern, allowed her to move freely. Too bad she couldn’t say the same for the Kevlar vest beneath. Though the weight posed no problem, the arm openings felt tight, rubbing when she moved, and no matter how she adjusted the thing her boobs remained squished. Satterfield hadn’t complained, but Anna had a feeling the Order could bury that girl in cement, and she would go down thanking them for the privilege.
They passed a sign that read, “Welcome to Lucas Falls, South Carolina. Population 6,432.” Rotary and Lion’s Club symbols hung from the bottom.
“Have you ever been here?” Anna asked.
“No,” Matt said.
Anna waited for more. None came.
She lowered her voice. “Is there something wrong?”
“Wrong?”
“Do you hate me or something?” Anna threw her hands up. Five days ago, Matt had barged into Lipe’s office in search of her. He had threatened a draw sergeant and probably would have turned the man inside out if he had barred the way. Now he acted like Anna didn’t exist.
“What?” Matt’s voice went up two octaves.
“You heard me. It’s not that loud in here.”
Matt flicked his gaze to the rearview mirror and then back to the road. “I don’t hate you, Carver.”
“We’ve been in this godforsaken van for hours, and that’s the most you’ve said to me since we left. What’s your problem?”
Matt glanced at her from the corner of his eye and swore.
“What? Look, if you don’t want me on this mission, complain to Lipe. He sent me.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“Dammit, Carver.” Matt ran a hand through his sandy hair and shook his head. “I like you. Okay?”
Anna sat back in her seat, the air gone out of her lungs. “What does that mean?” For a moment, she honestly wondered if she had missed a code phrase in the mission briefing.
“You heard me. It’s not that loud in here.”
Anna’s heart sped up. For the first time in hours, she forgot the mission. Everything suddenly made sense: Matt’s sidelong glances at her during training, the way he sometimes met her gaze without realizing it, his mad dash to find her when he heard she had been shot trying to escape. She focused on him. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything.”
“I like you, too.”
“That’s exactly the kind of anything I meant.” Matt rechecked the rearview mirror, which made Anna turn.
Satterfield continued to snore. Benson looked like he had dozed as well, music still blaring.
“We like each other. What’s wrong with that?” Anna asked. “Does the Order prohibit dating? That wasn’t part of our briefings.”
“It’s inappropriate. I’m an instructor at Den. You’re a recruit.”
“Not for long. In a few weeks—”
“Stop. Seriously. Let’s focus on finding this girl and getting back to camp.”
Anna felt her lips compress the way they always did when she grew angry. “Fine.”
Matt glanced at her. “Now you’re pissed.”
Anna popped her knuckles, a nasty habit from her youth. “No, you’re right. We have a mission.”
“Carver, look, I’m—dammit, I missed my turn.” Matt slowed and pulled into the breakdown lane. The van bumped and shuddered across a set of rumble strips.
Satterfield started awake with a little yelp. She shot up, staring around, face damp with sweat. “Everything okay?”
Anna stared at Matt for a long moment. He had done that on purpose. Finally, she turned to Satterfield. “Everything’s fine.”
They turned off the main road onto a red clay and gravel lane. The van creaked and shimmied its way across ruts and potholes, finally rousing Benson from his music-induced stupor. He moved forward to sit beside Satterfield.
“Is this it?” he asked, peering through the front window at a dilapidated trailer coming into view on the left.
Anna didn’t know Benson. She had met him for the first time this morning. He spoke with the speed and heavy accent of a New Yorker, talked incessantly when he wasn’t listening to his music, and asked a lot of dumb questions. But he was top of his class in Bravo Platoon, a sime on par with Satterfield, and cool under fire, according to his reputation.
“Yeah,” Matt said.
Emily Stone’s trailer, a rundown single-wide painted white with brown accents nearly indistinguishable from the rust coating its walls, occupied a grassless lot hemmed in on all sides by similar homes. Much of its lower skirting was bent and warped, or else nonexistent, exposing the black tires underneath.
“No cars in the drive.” Matt shut off the van and sat for a moment, scanning the trailer’s exterior.
“Think maybe Stone’s at work?” Satterfield asked.
“Let’s find out.”
Matt and Benson mounted the steps, Matt first, leaving Anna and Satterfield to stand in the weeds, sweating. Matt claimed real Mormons did it that way, but Anna figured he didn’t want to stand next to her.
Fine. It wasn’t as if she had intended to date the guy. But why did he have to admit his feelings if he was going to ignore them?
Focus. Matt Snow didn’t matter right now. Freedom alone mattered. She had to find Emily Stone before the Indrawn Breath. Then she could start searching for her family.
Anna tried to ignore the guilt borne by that thought. Gunny Lipe had pitted her freedom against that of Emily Stone. To save herself, Anna must entrap another in her place. It wasn’t fair, but it was trickle-down unfairness, the kind where either you play the game, or you lose.
Anna refused to lose.
No one answered at Matt’s knock. He tried again. Anna drew hearing and caught the sound of a television, muffled, playing some commercial about buying gold.
Without hesitation, Matt slammed an open palm against the chintzy door. It banged open as if hit with a shotgun blast.
The place smelled heavily of dog, cigarette smoke, and blood. Anna pulled her Kimber from its holster as the others retrieved their weapons.
The front door opened onto the trailer’s cramped living room. The TV Anna had heard outside proved to be a flat screen lying face down on the purple carpet. Next to it lay the inert bodies of three animals: a German Shepherd and two cats. Each had been stabbed repeatedly, throats cut. A long carving knife jutted from the dog’s ruined side.
“Holy shit.” Benson nearly tripped over Satterfield when he caught sight of the pets.
“Quiet.” Matt held his Glock in both hands, pointed down the trailer’s short hallway. He motioned for Anna and Satterfield to search the kitchen, a narrow space separated from the living room by one thin wall. Matt headed for the bedrooms, Benson in tow.
Nothing seemed amiss in the kitchen. Besides a crap ton of dirty dishes in the sink and some cat food strewn across the dingy linoleum, the place looked undisturbed.
Anna had made up her mind to follow the boys when Matt and Benson returned empty-handed.
“Nothing,” Matt said at the women’s inquisitive looks.
“Who killed her pets?” Satterfield asked.
“Breathers,” Matt said.
“Why?”
Matt pursed his lips. He scanned the refrigerator, festooned with letters and notes pinned to its metal face with magnets.
“You’ve seen this kind of thing before, haven’t you?” Anna asked.
Matt plucked an envelope off the fridge. It looked like a bill with a pink forwarding sticker on the front. “We need to check this address.”
“You didn’t answer our question,” Anna said. “Why did the Breathers do this?”
Matt stared a
t his charges, face set, jaw tight.
“Yeah, I’ve seen this before, that’s all I can say. It’s Order business. If this is too much for you, stay in the van. Now let’s move.”
The home of Mr. and Mrs. Paul G. Stone, parents of Emily Stone, was a two-story brick affair with three dormers in the front and a tidy planter full of purple irises next to the broad porch. A large, black SUV stood in the driveway.
The neighborhood looked every bit the upper-middle-class suburb Anna-the-slinker had never lived in, with its chemical green yards and shiny black mailboxes. That was why the scream, emanating from some interior room of the Stone house, chilled Anna to the bone. Muffled and far too weak for human ears to catch, it felt as out of place as a fly in an operating room.
Matt raised a fist, signaling the group to stop. They stood on a narrow cement walk in front of the garage, four missionaries, heads cocked, listening. At another gesture, and with inhuman speed, they drew their weapons.
Matt tried the front door. He shook his head and tried peering through the windows.
“No good,” he whispered.
Anna’s hands shook. She drew calm to complement the speed and strength already surging through her body.
Matt pointed at her. “Bust the door, then drop. I’ll be right behind you. Benson, Satterfield, bring up the rear.”
They all nodded. They knew what to do. Small team assault had been the focus of their last two weeks of training.
Anna aimed a draw-enhanced kick at the door, just beside the knob. Though the steel hardly dented, the door’s wooden frame splintered with a crack. She dropped to one knee, blocking the door’s rebound with her body so that Matt could barrel past her into the main hall.
A man with a crew cut appeared at the opposite end of the hall. He wore a silver Nike jogging suit and carried a SIG P238. Without hesitation, he aimed at Matt and squeezed off a round.
By the time crew cut had decided to shoot, Matt had already darted left down an adjoining hall, leaving Anna a clear lane of fire. Weeks of charm-enforced training took over. Anna lined up her shot and pulled the trigger twice. She expected to see the guy drop.
He didn’t.
Faster than Anna could track with her Kimber, crew cut scurried back into the home’s living room, putting an interior wall between them. Anna’s double tap opened twin holes in the paneling where he had been.
Satterfield and Benson rushed past Anna just as Matt reappeared in the hallway. They followed him into the living room and a grotesque scene of carnage.
A man lay dead on the floor. Blood oozed from his nose and the corners of his lips. He had been beaten to death but showed no signs of puncture or gunshot wounds.
Above him, on a plain brown couch, sat an overweight woman of perhaps forty-five. Her hands were bound at the wrists with nylon cords, her mouth gagged with a neon green ball affixed to a muzzle. And she had no eyes. Where her eyes should have been were two bloody holes, leaking gore onto her face. Her chest rose and fell; she was alive but appeared unconscious.
Two young women sat on a love seat adjacent to the blinded woman. Neither appeared injured. The one with raven hair pressed a small pistol into the blonde’s ribs.
The dark-haired one was Anna’s little sister.
“Melody?”
“Anna Rose? The hell are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here? Mel, how—”
“Stop,” said a man standing over the body on the carpet. In her shock, Anna hadn’t noticed him, but at the sound of his voice, her attention skittered away from her sister like metal shavings drawn to a magnet.
Everyone, even Matt, had frozen.
“Matthew Snow.” The man drew out Matt’s name with exquisite relish, the tone so alluring it made Anna’s mouth water. “I had heard you went rogue. I didn’t want to believe it. Are these your new team?”
Matt adjusted his grip on his pistol, which he had lined up on the speaker’s chest. “Don’t make me kill you, Lord.”
The other man chuckled as if he weren’t in mortal danger. “Put down your weapons,” he said. “All of you.”
Anna placed her Kimber on the carpet, ashamed at having drawn it in Lord’s presence. Benson and Satterfield did likewise.
“No,” Matt said without taking his eyes off Lord. “He’s charming you. Use your charm. Fight it.”
“You too, Matt.” Lord turned his full attention onto Anna’s team lead. “Put the gun down. You can’t clench against me.”
Matt stiffened. A tremor ran through his arms, his back, down his legs.
“Stop, Matt,” Anna said. “Put your gun down. It’s okay.”
Matt seemed to deflate. He dropped his gun to his side.
Lord turned to Anna. He wore an expensive suit tailored to fit and accentuate his athletic frame. His dark brown eyes fell on Anna, and she nearly swooned. “Melody, how is it you know this woman?”
“She’s my sister, Anna.”
Lord smiled, a look of pleased delight that sent tremors of elation down Anna’s back. “Sisters? Why, that’s marvelous. I see the resemblance. Are you a sime as well, Anna?”
“You’re a sime?” Anna gaped at Melody, who beamed and nodded before turning back to Lord. “Yes, I’m a sime.”
“That’s marvelous, Anna. Tell me, do you work for Matt here?”
“Don’t answer him!” Matt struggled to lift his gun. His hand shook with the strain, but the barrel rose no more than an inch. “He’s charming us. Draw your own and fight it.”
“You haven’t taught them to clench?” Lord asked.
Matt shook his head.
“That was shortsighted of you. Not that it would do them much good. Still, foolish on your part.”
Trembling, Matt raised his pistol almost to his waist.
Lord nodded at crew cut, who blurred forward to cuff Matt with the back of one meaty hand. Matt spun half around and crashed onto the Stones’ coffee table.
Part of Anna wanted to run to Matt—a small part mostly eclipsed by her yearning to impress Lord. She didn’t move.
“Do you know these other two, Melody?” Lord caressed Satterfield’s chin.
Anna’s lips curled as a shiver of jealousy washed through her.
“No,” Melody said.
“Pretty.” Lord tilted Satterfield’s head this way and that, admiring her face.
She gave a demure smile. “Thank you.”
With Lord’s attention diverted, Anna clenched. She didn’t do it to escape his charm. She did it to prove Matt wrong. A suave, trustworthy man like Lord had no need to bamboozle anyone. His charm came naturally, just like his debonair magnetism. The man was a fox. Yes, she had laid down her gun at his request, but why not? He posed no threat to her or anyone. As for his questions, who could fault natural curiosity?
“Do you work for Matt Snow?” Lord whispered to Satterfield.
“Yes. No.” She giggled like a little girl, flustered. “We all work for the Order. Matt’s our team lead.”
“Shut up.” Matt had risen to one knee. Crew cut struck him with his SIG. Something cracked inside Matt’s face.
Anna’s mind cleared as her clench took hold. Her heart trip-hammered in her chest and her breath caught. The reality of the situation sent a spike of fear through her brain.
“What is the Order?” Lord pressed his lips to Satterfield’s cheek, speaking the words softly against her lower jaw, intimate, like a lover.
Anna had to act, but how could she without dropping her clench? Crew cut was watching her. She got the feeling he would be happy to slug her with his SIG, given the opportunity. Or maybe shoot her out of hand. Without drawing she couldn’t stop him either way.
Time to gamble.
Anna dropped her clench and drew charm. She struggled to focus it on Satterfield and Benson. Though her draw was deep, she had little control of its direction. She hoped her efforts could nudge the others into waking up enough to free themselves, assuming Lord’s charm didn’t overwhelm her first. In t
he meantime, she had to fight.
On top of her charm, she drew speed and dexterity, her hands blurring as she clamped down on Lord’s wrist, spinning him away from Satterfield. Using their combined momentum, Anna smashed a point just above Lord’s elbow with her forearm. It made a satisfying crunch as the joint ripped apart, bending backward at an unnatural angle.
Lord screamed, injured arm tucked to his side.
Satterfield, though rocked by the attack, nevertheless caught her Glock G19 when Anna tossed it from the floor. Benson fumbled his, dropped it.
Anna squeezed off a round at crew cut, but he dodged. She fired twice more, missing both times. The bastard possessed a powerful draw on discernment; he evaded her shots before she could pull the trigger. In a flash, he closed the distance between them, moving faster than she could react. He slammed the knife edge of his palm down on her wrist, and she heard her bones snap like twigs. A bolt of pain shot up her arm. Then, a malicious grin on his face, crew cut jerked her bodily into his outthrust knee. All the air fled Anna’s lungs. The pain had hardly registered before he flung her sideways to crash into Matt, who had been lining up for a shot at him.
Satterfield and Benson fared no better. Though they attacked as a team, crew cut evaded their blows with ease. He smashed Satterfield’s nose with a savage elbow and then, flowing smoothly from one attack to the next, dove into Benson low at the knees, dropping him to the floor like a wrestler. Two hammer blows later, Benson lay unconscious and bleeding on the carpet.
Lord grimaced as he tried to forcibly jerk his injured arm straight, but the elbow refused to give. It hadn’t broken cleanly. He must have possessed a powerful draw on pain tolerance to endure that kind of trauma without much reaction, though beads of sweat did pop out on his forehead.
“Can’t heal this till I can get it set properly.” His eyes fell on Anna, who lay in a pile of broken coffee table. “You’re going to pay for that, woman.” He started toward her.
“David, no.” For the first time, Melody stood from the couch. She retained her pistol but let it hang at her side.
“No?” He raised a dark eyebrow at her.
“She’s my sister. Please, no.”
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