Rogue (Book 2) (The Omega Group)

by Andrea Domanski

  “I did have my suspicions, but not for something like this. I am as surprised at the depth of his hatred as I’m sure you are.” He turned to Carter. “And you, my friend, have visitors. They are waiting in the council office.” His smile was both warm and a little mischievous.

  The door to the office was ajar, and Carter heard two voices coming from inside as he approached. His heart sped when he recognized one of them. Gina. As he pushed through the entrance, she turned to him with an uncertain look in her eyes. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “No. I just… We wanted to make sure that Bill was apprehended. Is it over?”

  “Yeah. It’s over.” Carter looked to Gina’s companion—a tall man about the same age as him—and waited for her to make the introductions. When she didn’t, Carter offered his hand and said, “I’m Carter Mockta. It’s nice to meet you.”

  The man’s brow furrowed in confusion as he tentatively shook Carter’s hand. He looked to Gina, who also seemed confused. “You’re Carter? But I thought…”

  “He doesn’t look that different, John,” Gina said.

  John put his hands to his temples and shook his head. “Gina, I’m so sorry. I can’t explain it, but I’ve never met this man before.”

  Gina’s jaw dropped. “But you… He… How could that be?”

  Carter watched their exchange, trying to make sense of it. “What am I missing here?”

  Gina didn’t answer. Her white-knuckled hold on the table behind her seemed to be the only thing keeping her from collapsing to the floor. The faraway look in her eyes was unreadable.

  “Five years ago, Gina sent me to your village to deliver a message,” John said.

  Carter put his hand up to stop him talking. A powerful anger engulfed him in an instant. “Yeah, I know all about that. You told my best friend about my relationship with Gina and I was thrown out of my tribe like a piece of garbage.” He glared at Gina. “It wasn’t enough for you to just ditch me, you had to destroy my life, too?” Carter’s hands fisted at his sides as all of the rage he’d kept buried deep inside since that night came spilling out.

  John grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him away from Gina. “She’s been through enough, you selfish bastard.”

  “She’s been through enough? Really? I lost everything I ever loved that night, all because of her.”

  John stepped forward but was stopped by Gina’s hand on his shoulder. “He doesn’t know, John,” she whispered as a tear fell down her cheek.

  The look on John’s face would have been comical under different circumstances. His eyes widened as his mouth opened and closed. “You really don’t know? Oh God, what did I do?” John paced back and forth.

  Gina stood straight. “John, it’s okay. There was no way you could have known. But right now, I need a few minutes alone with Carter. Would you mind waiting outside?”

  John gave Gina a long, hard hug before walking away. He paused by the exit and looked over his shoulder at Carter. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am for my part in this.”

  A moment later, they were alone, sitting on the worn leather couch.

  “That night,” Gina began, “I wanted nothing more than to run away with you. I had such hopes for our future.” Tears streamed down her face as she spoke.

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  Gina swallowed, then lowered her gaze to the floor. “There’s something you don’t know, Carter. A few weeks earlier, I found out that I was pregnant. I was so scared of how you’d react that I didn’t tell you. When you asked me to run away with you, though, I knew that you’d want the baby as much as I did. I’d planned on telling you as soon as we met on the hilltop.”

  Carter was dumbstruck. The room around him spun as his breath quickened. The knot that formed in his gut threatened to explode as the implications of Gina’s story sank in. “We have a child?” he asked with a trembling voice.

  Gina’s tears fell even more quickly as she answered. “No. I lost the baby that night. That’s why I didn’t show up. I sent John to tell you what was happening, but…” Her voice trailed off.

  “But he mistook Bill for me.”

  “I guess so.”

  They both sat in silence for what seemed an eternity. Carter’s thoughts raced through everything he’d thought he knew about that night, until they settled on one horrible truth. “All this time, you thought I knew. You thought I’d abandoned you when you needed me most.”

  “And you thought I’d betrayed you.”

  “I’m so sorry, Gina.” Carter cupped her cheek in his hand and wiped away her tears with his thumb. The intimacy of the touch sent familiar shivers down his spine and, without thinking, he leaned in and gently kissed her trembling lips. When she threaded her fingers through his long hair, he knew he’d once again found his soul mate.

  When their lips parted, Gina looked at him the way she’d always done when they were younger. Like she knew everything about him and accepted—and loved—him anyway. “There’s something else I need to tell you, Carter. You have a right to know, but I’m afraid of how you might react.”

  Although he couldn’t imagine anything she could tell him that would elicit a stronger reaction than what she’d already said, he nodded his head and held fast to her hand. “What is it?”

  “The miscarriage that night wasn’t a natural occurrence. Our healer knew I was pregnant, and he did something to cause me to lose it. Some sort of herbal potion he slipped me at dinner.”

  Again, Carter was dumbstruck. When he saw Gina wince, he realized his grip on her hand had turned painfully tight, and he released it. “Why would he do that? Just because I was Havasupai?”

  “Because you’re a wolf. He’s been obsessed with getting the shifting ability for as long as I can remember. He thought our baby, with its mixed blood, would be everything he needed.”

  “So, why kill it? The baby could have grown up to be a shape-shifter and passed the ability down to his children.” Although he knew it was strange to be talking about his child and possible grandchildren as though they were real, it felt natural.

  “Dyami is old school, Carter. He still believes that sacrifices need to be made in order to receive blessings from the gods. He knew that the tribe wouldn’t allow him to kill a baby, but a fetus could be sacrificed without anyone knowing, and he could keep the… remains for whatever ceremony he’d planned.”

  Even for an outsider, the story would have been gruesome, but knowing it was his child who was murdered made the bile rise in Carter’s throat. “You knew, though?”

  “Not until years later. I found the recipe for the herbal concoction in one of his notebooks and confronted him about it.”

  “That’s why he apologized to you back in the hotel conference room.” It wasn’t a question. The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place faster than he could register them. That’s the betrayal Bill was talking about at the falls. He’d known what was happening five years ago and, instead of telling Carter, had twisted it and used it against him. He’d been planning on taking Carter’s place even back then.

  Determination flooded him. “I need to go see Dyami. He can’t be allowed to get away with this.”

  “No, Carter. He’s begged for my forgiveness more times than I can count. He really does see the error of his ways. If you go to him, guns blazing, the tentative truce we’ve finally built after a thousand years of fighting will fall apart. I can’t let that happen. Not now.”

  Carter held Gina’s gaze, marveling at her strength and integrity, before asking in a soft voice, “Why did you stay with them after you found out what Dyami had done to you?”

  “Where would I have gone? They were the only family I had left.”

  Gina’s mother had died when she was a little girl, and her father died when she was a teenager. She had no siblings. Carter’s heart sank as the reality of her situation struck him. Even when they’d been together, she often talked about how lonely her life was when they were apart. He could only imag
ine how much worse it must have been after she lost both him and their baby. His eyes welled up at the thought of her pain, and she reached out and laid a hand on his cheek.

  “It’s okay, Carter. It was a long time ago. I’ve made peace with it… mostly.” She gave him a weak smile.

  “Stay with me tonight?” he asked. Her smile pushed aside his anger and need for revenge, leaving only warmth and… love.

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter 26

  Carter tried to rub the feeling back into his fingers as he walked through the lobby at the El Tovar. Gina’s grip on his hand, at first a welcome sensation, became tighter and tighter as they approached the hotel. She was unnecessarily nervous, and Carter thought it adorable.

  The lush décor of the hallway was in stark contrast to the furnishings at the Supai lodge they’d stayed in the night before, but Carter wouldn’t have changed a thing. For the first time in his life, everything was exactly as he wanted it. Gina was at his side and, hopefully, would stay there. His father finally accepted his relationship with her and even asked him to move home. Of course that was something Carter didn’t want. He loved the life he had in Jacksonville and now that Gina would be with him, there was no reason to leave. But he did relish being given the offer.

  After a warm goodbye to his father, he and Gina made the hike to the hilltop, just like they’d planned to do all those years ago. It was a fitting start to their new life together. Bidzil, claiming he needed the exercise, joined them for a short while before turning around and heading back. His parting words of wisdom about their five-year-long misunderstanding were “Many of the truths we cling to depend on our point of view.” Carter thought it more of his usual sage advice, until the healer erupted with laughter.

  “That one is from Yoda and is for your friend, Han,” Bidzil had said.

  Once they reached Steve and Myrine’s suite, Carter paused to take in the sight of his very fidgety Gina. “It’ll be fine. I promise.” After she nodded her agreement, he pushed the already-ajar door open and pulled her inside with him.

  “It’s about time, man,” Han said. “We were about to leave without you.”

  Carter playfully punched his friend in the shoulder and said, “About that. Do we have room for one more?” Every head in the room turned and he felt Gina pull even further behind him. Stepping to the side, Carter announced, “For those of you that don’t know, this is Gina Ankte. She’s with me.”

  The initial looks of shock morphed quickly into smiles, then a few catcalls from Han and Myrick. His teammates were nothing if not accepting, and Gina visibly relaxed after their reactions.

  “Will I be able to get a ticket this late?” she asked.

  “No ticket required, lass. We’ve got a brand-spanking-new private jet on its way to the Grand Canyon as we speak. I, for one, can’t wait to get my ass back to the ocean.” Myrick was in his usual good spirits, and his attitude was contagious.

  The entire team was laughing and joking around with the camaraderie Carter had grown to love. He turned to Gina and planted a light kiss on her cheek. “Told you. I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.” That last bit wasn’t needed as Mirissa and Asteria trotted up and pulled her to the couch. Girly gossip time. Carter shook his head to rid it of the thought of all the embarrassing things Gina could reveal about him.

  When he reached Han, he noticed his friend looked anxious. “Waiting for the ranger to come and give you a tearful goodbye, Romeo?”

  Han’s eyes narrowed. “Of course not. We already exchanged contact info so I’m not expecting her.” A knock at the door had Han’s head swinging; then an ear-to-ear grin spread across his face. “Kell! You came.”

  Carter laughed as his friend left him high and dry and almost ran over Kell in his exuberance. Everyone seemed happy. Everyone, that is, except Myrine. Although she smiled politely when people spoke to her, she appeared distracted. He wandered over to where she sat on the sofa beside her husband. “Everything okay?”

  Myrine looked up at him and forced another smile. “Yeah, of course. It’s just…”

  Steve took over where Myrine left off. “She hates loose ends, and there are a lot of them in this case.”

  Carter couldn’t disagree. With Bill dead, they’d probably never get the answers they wanted, and that gnawed at him, too. Before he had the chance to reassure her, the sat phone on the table rang and Myrine answered it.

  “Hey, Julian. What’s up?” There was a moment of silence as Julian apparently spoke, then Myrine said, “Hang on a second. Let me put you on speakerphone.”

  Calling the team over, she laid down the phone. “Go ahead.”

  Julian’s excited voice blared through the small speakers, giving it an even more tinny quality. “I’ve been going through all the electronics recovered from the jet you had shipped to me and I finally figured out why I wasn’t able to get past the hack.” He paused as though waiting for someone to ask the question, but continued when no one did. “It wasn’t a hack!”

  More silence filled the room as eyebrows raised in confused looks. Myrine took the lead. “Okay, Julian. What does that mean?”

  “It means”—he sounded exasperated at their lack of knowledge—“that I didn’t fail. I couldn’t un-hack the hack because it never existed in the first place.”

  “Then, how did he take control of our jet?” Steve asked.

  “There was an override hardwired into the auto-pilot system. It was set up to piggyback on the jet’s communication signal. All he had to do was wait for you to get close enough, turn on his override, and he had total control. It was genius!” There was a moment of quiet on the phone, then, “Not that it wasn’t also dastardly.”

  “What kind of technical knowledge would be required to pull something like that off?” Carter asked.

  “Not a lot, really. He could have pieced the override together from other components with only a college-level understanding of electronics. Same goes for hardwiring it to the auto-pilot.”

  “So, anyone could acquire the know-how pretty easily, then,” Carter said.

  “Hell, yes. I could do it in my sleep. Now, flying the plane is another thing entirely.”

  When Julian failed to continue, Carter prodded him along. “Can you explain that?”

  “What’s to explain? Flying a plane is hard. It requires specialized skills. Once he had control, he had to actually fly it remotely.”

  Once again, all heads in the room turned to Carter. He answered their unasked question flatly. “No. Bill didn’t have the skills to fly the jet. I doubt he had the skills to make the override, either. That might be easy for Julian, but not for the rest of humanity. Certainly not for Bill.”

  Mirissa walked forward. “So, we got the wrong guy?”

  “I don’t think so,” Myrine said. “We know Bill kidnapped Carter and tried to kill his father. There’s no question about that. What we didn’t consider was that those things might be completely unrelated to our case.”

  “So it’s just a coincidence, then?” asked Mirissa.

  “Not a coincidence,” Carter said. “I caused it by coming here. Bill felt threatened so he escalated into a killer. It probably would have happened at some point, but my presence sped the process along. If another agent had come to investigate, there probably wouldn’t have been two sets of crimes.”

  Gina grabbed his hand. “None of this is your fault, Carter. We’re lucky you were here, even if it did push Bill to act faster. Had he gone off the deep end at another time, without you here, your father would be dead.”

  Carter squeezed her hand, gave her a quick smile, and then addressed the group. “There’s only one person who had the kind of access to the jet required to plant the override device. I needed the fuselage repaired after the gunfight when we landed. General Persaud sent his guys to do it.”

  A long silence followed until Myrick chimed in. “I’m not going back to the ocean now, am I?”

  Chapter 27

&n
bsp; “We have work to do,” Myrine said. “Ranger? Miss Ankte? Jackie will take you to another one of our rooms in the hotel. I’m sorry, but you can’t be here right now.” With a nod, Jackie gathered Kell and, after a quick, reassuring kiss from Carter, Gina. When the door closed behind them, the team looked to Myrine.

  “Are we sure that the general is behind this?” Han asked.

  “No, but it makes sense,” Myrine answered. “Think about everything that’s happened. The car bombs that were disarmed by his men, who happened to be in the area, conveniently carrying the proper tools. They said they saw Yavapai men messing with the trucks, but it could easily have been them.”

  “But, the general was furious with them for putting us in danger by leaving the vehicles unattended,” Mirissa said.

  “Or, he was furious with them for not finishing the job. He took the explosives to his lab and conveniently found nothing that could trace their origin.”

  Carter added, “The chopper he sent to pick us up at the airport was just late enough to give the shooter a chance to do his job. Persaud was even the one who pointed us at the Yavapai in the first place.”

  “Our delay yesterday with the helicopter could have been orchestrated by him, too. It was his man that killed Bill before we could get answers out of him,” Steve said.

  When Jackie came back, they gave her a quick update on what they were thinking. She wasn’t convinced. “What possible motive could he have?”

  Each person in the room looked to the next, but no one spoke up. Then Carter had a thought. “Could it be about his super soldier program? Maybe he somehow found out about our shape-shifting abilities and, I don’t know, wants to replicate them in his men.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Jackie said. “There are alternate scenarios for everything. He could just be the patriot he looks like.”

  “Maybe,” Myrine said. “But the override on the jet points to him, and him alone. There’s no alternate scenario for that.”

  Everyone in the room, including Jackie, nodded their agreement. But she still had a question. “What about the shooter at the airport? He was Yavapai, right?”