by Megan Crane
“I guess we’ll find out,” Rory said with a laugh.
No one else laughed.
Sometime later, Jonas turned off the main highway. He let the navigation system lead him through a series of winding, pretty back roads, circling around the old orchard to drop them on the far side. A good mile or so back from the various structures identified on Oz’s latest map.
He stashed the car and they all rolled out, then prepared to take their previously agreed-upon positions.
“We’re in position in New Jersey,” Isaac said into everyone’s comm unit. “Updates to follow.”
“Roger that,” Jonas replied. “Approaching the perimeter of the farmhouse.”
The team fanned out and began to move in. The sun had come up while they were driving, and it lit up the budding, gnarled trees that made up what was left of the old orchard. They went in fast but carefully, because everyone was certain that if this was the right place, it had to be alarmed—if not outright booby-trapped.
That only meant they needed to be both swift and sure.
For a solid ten minutes, there was radio silence as the whole team moved into place.
“I’m around to the front of the building,” Bethan said into the comm unit, not sounding the least bit out of breath, even though she must have run full out in tactical gear, plus weapons, to get there. Because of course she wasn’t out of breath. Jonas ordered himself to listen to her, not her breathing. “There are no cars in the drive, but there’s clear evidence of significant recent activity. It’s a little muddy and there are tracks. At least four vehicles, by my count.”
“Any visible signs of life from within?” Jonas asked.
“Negative,” Bethan replied.
Jonas had taken the rear of the farmhouse. He settled into the best vantage point he could find while the others called in their various positions from the outbuildings.
No signs of life all around.
But that could mean anything. Including the possibility that they were being watched right now. More than a possibility, to Jonas’s mind.
He scanned the back of the farmhouse, seeing no movement. Then on his second scan of the scene before him, his gaze caught on a window on the second floor. It was cracked open, and he knew instantly that wasn’t right.
“I don’t see anything out back,” he reported. “But there’s a cracked open window on the second floor.”
“This part of the world can still get cold this time of year,” Rory replied. “I don’t think people leave windows open if they’re not planning to come back real soon.”
“Agreed,” said Griffin. He had taken a position high on the barn’s roof, with an overview of the house. “I’m in position and see nothing moving anywhere, but I don’t like it.”
“Do any of those outbuildings look the least bit scientific?” Bethan asked.
“Negative on that,” Blue said. “There are three. Two look like sheds. Unused sheds with overgrown vegetation in front. Still a possibility that they could be entrances to some kind of subterranean situation, but my gut says no. And the third doesn’t have four walls. It’s wide open; I can see straight through it, and there’s nothing there.”
“Same on the west side of the property,” August chimed in. “The old barn is missing windows and has ancient cars packed inside. Unless it’s all Hollywood-level misdirection, I don’t think anyone’s been in this place in years.”
“Ditto the garages down by the main road,” Rory said. “Locked up tight and dusty.”
Jonas scanned the back of the house again, his senses telling him that this was the place. Even if there hadn’t been tire marks on the front drive, he had that feeling he knew well enough to treat like another piece of navigational equipment. He just knew.
“We have to take the house,” he clipped out. “Rory, stay down by the road. Bethan and I will take point. Blue, August, get into position to cover, then join us.”
There was a quick series of assents, and then it was on.
Jonas felt himself slip into that particular space that he’d always liked best. The heightened danger. The adrenaline and cortisol. And all the grueling training that let him use all that to do things regular people couldn’t.
He didn’t have to see his teammates. He knew where they were. He knew them, so he knew how they would move, how they would cover him, how they would follow orders when necessary and take their own initiative, too.
These war games were the only time he felt alive. Or connected.
Or they were, something in him suggested. Until Bethan.
But this was emphatically not the time for such thoughts, especially if they were true. He assured himself he’d handle it all later. He’d face what needed facing, honestly. That was who he was, whatever else he wasn’t.
Here, now, there was the mission.
He headed toward the farmhouse’s back door at a low run, not liking the fact that he had to expose himself for a little too long while he made the break from the surrounding trees. He assumed Bethan was experiencing the same problem, and there was nothing for it. Some situations required stealth and cover. But this one wasn’t one of them.
Jonas made it to the back door, automatically checked his weapon, and then took approximately three seconds to work the lock.
He opened the door, that prickling sense of his on overdrive as he stepped in.
It just wasn’t right. He didn’t believe that an individual like the one they were chasing would leave a door like that. So easy to open. Too easy, when the same person had tracked Alaska Force without their knowledge and abducted the Sowandes without a trace.
But he shoved that aside as he conducted a sweep of the first floor. He found nothing interesting in the kitchen or the living room, and he was finishing an initial walk-through of the dining room when he met Bethan coming down the stairs from the second floor.
Because she’d known he would handle the first floor, so she’d gone upstairs without asking for confirmation. Working with her had never been anything but seamless.
Not now, he growled at himself.
“I found your window,” she said in a low voice, her eyes still scanning around them, as if she were waiting for an armed response team to leap out at any moment. Just like he was. “There’s nothing personal in the room, but it was recently used. The other rooms on the second floor are stripped of any bedclothes, pillows, and so on. That particular room has two made-up twin beds, one of which looks more rumpled than the other.”
“Someone’s been staying there.”
Bethan nodded. “The window is typical for an old house like this and is too swollen to open fully. Now it’s stuck. This might be going out on a limb, but my guess? They stuck Iyara in there, she tried to escape, and couldn’t.”
“Why the sister? Why not the scientist?”
“Just a feeling.” Bethan didn’t quite grin at him, which still felt more personal—more intimate—than it should have. “It doesn’t feel like a man was in there. Also the twin beds are kid-sized. Sowande is not a small man.”
Jonas nodded, tucking that away. “Attic?”
“Crawl space,” Bethan replied.
And then they waited. Until they both heard the faint, almost to be confused for some far-off bit of wildlife sound that Jonas knew was the others joining them.
Sure enough, moments later, first Blue, then August, materialized.
Jonas nodded at them. “Get ready for whoever was here to come back. Rory, if they show up, don’t stop them. Let them come. Meanwhile, Bethan and I are going to take a look in the basement.”
“Check,” Rory said over the comm unit.
“You got it.” August was already moving to take a position overlooking the front drive.
Blue nodded, then melted off to the west side of the house, where a private dirt lane wound around and came in from th
e orchards.
“Ready?” Jonas asked Bethan.
She jerked her chin in an affirmative. Then she fell in behind him as he headed for the back of the house and the door to the basement he’d seen on his first pass through the kitchen.
“Old houses like this are creaky,” Bethan murmured as they moved. “If anyone’s down there, they already know we’re here.”
Jonas’s personal alarm system was still working overtime.
“It’s too easy,” he muttered.
Bethan made a noise of agreement. “The front door was unlocked.”
That didn’t sit right. Jonas considered as they went into the kitchen, then nodded toward the basement door. “I guess we know we’re in the right place.”
And there was no choice. That was the way missions like this went. It wasn’t about identifying the threat. It was about neutralizing it.
They stood at the door to the basement, and the look they shared seemed to swell in him—
Later, he told himself sternly. He would deal with all this, somehow, later.
Bethan nodded jerkily, like she was in his head. Then she went and put her hand on the doorknob.
At the same moment, the comm units went wild.
“Abort!” came Isaac’s voice, louder than usual. “Warehouse, abort! Bomb set to detonate. Repeat, abort!”
Two hours north, Jonas and Bethan froze. No one on their team spoke, and still, Jonas was sure he could hear their agony, loud and clear.
They could hear their friends and colleagues shout to one another down in that warehouse, a state away.
Then thirty seconds later, everything went silent.
Another thirty seconds passed, but Jonas stayed where he was, frozen in place. Watching all the shock and sickness in him wash over Bethan’s face, though she didn’t let them land. And he had the stray thought that there were some intimacies no one should have to share.
“One minute since detonation,” he bit out in the comm unit, his voice flat and commanding, because that was all he had. That was all there was. “Warehouse, report.”
But there was nothing.
Another whole minute dragged by.
“The blast could’ve taken out communication in all directions,” Blue growled from his position.
“Two minutes out,” Jonas replied. And there were protocols. Their line of work required it. He shut his eyes for a moment, but only a moment. “We have to move. Rory, get Oz on tracking duty and proof of life. Blue and August, maintain your positions. Griffin—”
“Anything so much as breathes too loud,” came the sniper’s voice, even colder than usual, “and I’ll drop it.”
When Jonas’s gaze found Bethan again, she swallowed. Making him wonder what look was on his face. He didn’t know, which was telling enough.
She reached out and touched his arm. Briefly. And then, before he could comment on that or lash out at her or grab her tight, she turned to the basement door again. She eased it open with no visible shake in her hand, then stepped inside.
Bethan slapped on the light switch and moved double-time down the stairs. Jonas was at her back, taking in the situation as she moved. They made it to the foot of the old unfinished stairs without incident, then paused. He looked around, finding the place cramped and damp, with a musty smell thick in the air.
It looked like every basement he’d ever bothered to imagine.
It was also a lie, he realized in the next instant.
“This basement is the wrong dimensions,” Bethan said in an undertone.
“Check,” Jonas replied. “Also, no dust or cobwebs.”
She was already moving, skirting the wall that held an old sink, laundry facilities, and an open cabinet packed tight with what looked like gardening supplies. The wall next to the cabinet was smoother than it should have been. Out of place. She squatted down, and Jonas came up behind her to look over her shoulder.
On the ground, there were clear signs of a door swinging open and closed.
It took her only moments to look around and find the lever, almost hidden behind the cabinet.
“You’re covered,” Jonas told her.
“Any reports?” she asked, because it was possible he might have heard something on a private channel.
“Negative,” he said.
And he couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t think about the explosion, or what might have happened at that warehouse. This was what they trained for. The ability to do their jobs no matter what.
No matter who they lost.
Bethan threw the lever, then pulled open the heavy door. Jonas was unsurprised that behind her, on the other side of the door, there was a high-tech medical facility. Unsurprised, but suddenly a lot more alert.
Bethan moved inside, looking around, taking in the lab. It was a large place, stretching out much farther than the foundations of the house. Everything looked sterile.
And more, empty.
They went in farther, looking around as if they expected the Sowandes to appear out from under a lab table. But there was nothing. Only medical supplies and cameras everywhere, telling Jonas that this place was under surveillance. Live surveillance, if the red lights were any indication. He didn’t bother pointing them out to Bethan, sure that she’d seen them, but decided to go and see if he could disable one.
Until behind them, the door swung shut. And the air-conditioning switched on with a hum.
“Well,” Bethan said after a moment. “That’s not good.”
And they both turned when a large screen on the wall nearest them crackled to life.
A moment later, there was Dominic Carter. A smug, disembodied head.
“Oh, hey, Judson,” Bethan said casually. Jonas had the deeply uncharacteristic urge to hug her, but didn’t. “Weird that you keep turning up in the strangest places. Like a basement in the middle of nowhere.”
The other man bared his teeth, looking nothing like the smiling fool he’d played in California.
“Congratulations,” he sneered, and laughed. A creepy sound Jonas did not want to hear again. “You’ve just been infected with SuperThrax. I hope you enjoy the rest of your life. The current estimate is forty-eight hours before you start getting sick, and then a brutal, painful race to the finish. I can’t think of any two people who deserve to suffer more.”
And then, with another laugh, the screen went blank.
Twenty-one
After the screen went dark, neither Bethan nor Jonas moved.
Bethan could feel her heart in her chest, and her pulse hard in places like her wrists. Her neck. Her temples.
And all she could see was Jonas.
He looked the way he always did, stern and austere and stark—except for his eyes. They were far too dark. Ravaged. Filled with a ferocity she’d never seen before.
She didn’t know whether that should scare her. When what she really felt was something like guilty and grateful at the same time that if this thing were really happening to her, he was here to share it.
“What’s happening down there?” Blue asked.
“Not like he’s a trustworthy source,” Bethan said. She didn’t speak into her comm unit, but even as she said the words out loud she knew she was hedging. Trying not to say something for fear the act of saying it would make it real.
Suddenly, that seemed foolish.
“We’re going to need to contain this,” Jonas replied, his voice gravelly, and also not broadcast to the rest of the team. “Whatever the situation is.”
But neither one of them moved.
Bethan could feel the very air around them pressing in on her, like a big hand tight around her throat. She tried to breathe, deep. She tried to push that hard grip off, gain an inch or two of space, because she couldn’t allow herself to break down. Not now. Not if all she had left was forty-eight hours and
a grim finish.
That’s more than Isaac had—
But she couldn’t go there.
Jonas didn’t reach for her. He didn’t wrap his arms around her, put his chin on the top of her head, or do any of the things he had done what felt like a lifetime ago in her cabin. And still, the way he looked at her, that pressure on her throat eased. She managed a decent breath.
“We have a situation,” he said into his comm unit, his eyes still on her. “Bethan and I have been potentially exposed to SuperThrax. We’re going to need a containment unit, medical personnel, and if I’m making a wish list, an antidote.”
There was a long silence. Not unlike the one that had followed the explosion earlier.
Bethan refused to let herself think about that. She couldn’t afford it. Not now.
“On it,” Blue said eventually, his voice forbidding.
Bethan knew that if she stayed where she was, looking at Jonas like this, she would do something they would both regret. Right here in this sterile death lab where Dominic Kerrigone, or whoever he was, was clearly watching their every move. But this was no place for emotion, so instead, she went over to the door to see if it had sealed them in when it shut. She studied the latching mechanism as best she could but didn’t pull the door open, because there was no need to expose everyone else in the house.
“I don’t think we’re actually locked in here,” she told Jonas. “But I don’t want to take the risk.”
“Understood.”
For another moment, their eyes seemed to catch. Bethan could feel her heart speeding up, that grip at her throat, but she knew there was no point in acknowledging it. Anything she said would only make this worse.
“Okay,” Jonas gritted out, his dark gaze flashing. “Let’s see if we can find anything in here, since we’re not going anywhere.”
A task was good.
They each took a separate side of the lab space and explored. They opened drawers, rifled through notes. Looked for anything and everything that might give them a clue as to what had gone on here.
While they were at it, they disabled the monitoring system. And once that was done, Jonas picked up a wastebasket from under a desk and shook out a few balled-up pieces of paper. He spread them out on one of the lab tables between them, ironing out the crinkles in the paper with his big hands, forcing Bethan to remind herself that the point was the paper and what was written on it. Not his hands.
