They’d not been able to reach Laney on her cell since then. Worry settled into the pit of Casey’s stomach. Laney was a sweet girl. She was young as far as supernaturals went, and hadn’t a clue what she really was. She thought she was the caregiver to the men in the hotel, but in reality it was they who looked after her, a young, unmated supernatural female.
And now she was missing.
“Answer me!” shouted Casey.
The one with pink hair lifted a brow nonchalantly. “Why? You’re not interested in the truth. You have your own reality and whatever I say you’ll believe to be a lie.”
“Say it anyways,” demanded Casey.
“Laney, at last check, was alive and well and in the care of one of my men. Her fear for you lot brought us here. I see her concern was unwarranted,” he said with a grunt.
Truth, pushed Gus at Casey.
The onyx-eyed one snorted. “Fucking never thought to mention we were walking into crazy-supernatural land.”
“Are you telling me the hit team wasn’t yours?” asked Casey, thankful Gus was near, because Casey wasn’t sure he could be objective when it came to Laney. She was important to him. He’d been drawn to her and protective of her from the moment he found her on the streets—a punk-nosed girl barely in her teens at the time. It wasn’t until tonight that he’d fully understood the reason why.
Pink Hair shot Casey a look that said what do you think?
Casey exhaled slowly, his body coiled with the need to strike someone, anyone, in regards to Laney being unreachable. “What did they want with her?”
“Can we please kill them now, Captain?” asked the one with dark eyes.
Bill stopped pacing and pointed at the man. “You’re a big mean, meanie.”
The man rolled his eyes. “That one’s elevator stopped visiting all the floors.”
Truth, pushed Gus.
Casey nearly laughed. Yes. It was true. Bill was crazy but good-hearted.
“What does a hit team want with Laney,” Casey pressed. “And what does a were-lion and a werewolf want with her?”
The men shared a look and then both of them locked gazes with him. The pink-haired one surveyed him, keeping his hands on his head. “What are you?”
Casey ignored the question. “Answer me.”
“We want Laney. Laney. Laney,” said Bill, chanting her name as he stomped around the room like a tin solider wound too tight. “Laney. Laney.”
“For fuck’s sake, Captain,” said the dark-eyed one. “Two seconds, that’s all it will take. Let me kill him.”
The pink-haired man smiled. “No. James would not want harm to befall these men because they’re important to the girl, and from what you told me, the girl is important to him.”
“She better not be his mate.” Duke groaned. “Look at the amount of crazy she brings to the table. Man, James will have this lot as in-laws.”
Casey’s gut clenched. “This James is who Laney met online? The one she had a date with tonight?”
Pink Hair nodded. “Though the date did not go as planned. Obviously.”
The dark-eyed one stood and Casey made no move to attack the man again. Something deep down told him he may have been wrong about the two men before him. That they might not be the enemy after all. The man stretched and then tipped his head back and forth, his neck cracking.
“I’m too old for this shit,” he said. He met Casey’s gaze. “The little hacker and James have had the hots for each other since they started talking. They had a date tonight. It went sideways when a hit team showed. Probably from the same dicks who sent one here.”
Casey gasped. “Laney?”
The guy lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. We came here at James’s request to make sure you three crazy fucks weren’t harmed and you all waylaid us.” He shot an angry look at Bill. “And you are like a fucking monkey—jumping on me the way you did. I should have snapped your neck.”
“Meanie,” returned Bill, putting his thumbs in his ears and waving his fingers before blowing the man the raspberries.
The guy groaned. “And whatever you have going on in this room won’t let either of us reach out and check on James or the girl.”
Casey knew what he meant by reach out. He meant with his mind. Gus’s telepathic skills far exceeded the average supernaturals, so he could still function normally within Casey’s place, despite Casey turning on a makeshift L.A.R.D. device to block supernaturals from sending out mental signals to one another or receiving them. Casey had activated the machine right after the hit squad had attacked and been defeated.
“I fucking hate crazies,” said the man. “Captain, reconsider letting me kill them. At least let me off the noisy one who acts like a monkey on a sugar high.”
Bill stuck his tongue out at the man. “Meanie.”
Truth, pushed Gus.
Casey glanced at the guy still on the floor. “Who are you with? What agency?”
The man stood and kept his hands on his head and Casey was pretty sure it was out of common courtesy and not because he couldn’t break the cuffs. “Quid pro quo.”
Casey sighed. He’d get nothing more unless he offered something of value. “At one point, I had level-one clearance. I don’t anymore. So, what are you? Shadow Agents?”
“Do we look like tortured souls who can’t play nice with others?” snapped the dark-eyed one.
Casey nodded. “Yes.”
“Duke,” said Pink Hair. The man faced Casey. “PSI.”
Casey tensed and weighed his options. He could run again and go to ground. He’d been doing it for decades. If he did, he’d never find out if Laney was well. And he’d have to leave Gus and Bill behind with PSI because neither of them could go on the run. They simply weren’t equipped for it anymore in their advancing years and fragile mental states.
Once, Casey had been a mortal man. Not anymore. He’d not aged a day since he’d signed on to be part of the Immortal Ops Program. That had been just shy of a century ago. He’d been one of the first men to be brought, officially, into the program’s folds.
He’d not been the last by any means.
If PSI was here, nosing around, it wouldn’t be long before those who headed the I-Ops would realize who he was. An Outcast. A wanted fugitive in their minds. A failed attempt at greatness.
If I run, Laney could die.
She was important to him on a level he couldn’t explain. She was like family and he’d been running a long time. Too long. He’d see her safe and then go.
He locked gazes with the captain. “Captain Casey Black, former Immortal Ops Agent.”
The man narrowed his gaze and then sighed. “Outcast?”
Bill stopped stomping and demanding Laney and put himself before Casey as if to protect him. While sweet, it was unwarranted. “Leave him alone. He’s not broken. He’s not damaged,” said Bill.
Pink Hair lifted a hand. “Relax, small man,” he said to Bill. “No harm will come to your friend. In fact, I know a group of men who have been looking for him.”
Casey grunted. “A whole fucking government has been trying to track me and kill me.”
“I’m Corbin Jones,” the man said. “And information recently came to light about you and others like you, Captain. You need to understand something. The I-Ops themselves weren’t part of what was done to you and the others like you.”
“The rejects,” offered Casey in a bitter tone.
“The men who went above and beyond for their country only to see that very country betray them,” corrected Corbin. “The I-Ops and their colonel were only just given files on you all. They thought you all dead. All of us did.”
“Then who has been hunting my kind?” asked Casey.
Duke grunted. “Fucking traitor dicks who we’re gonna find and rip the heads off of. Nobody fucks with a soldier. Nobody.”
Bill stuck his tongue out at the man again.
Casey looked to Gus, waiting for his thoughts on it all.
Gus met Casey
’s gaze, surprising him. “They speak the truth,” said Gus, and Casey nearly lost his footing hearing the man speak out loud. “These men and their friends are not the enemy to you or us. But they do not understand the full layout of the war. They know only the recent battles. There are heads of the war who wear masks of bravery and honor, who pretend to be friend when they are foe. Who have secret agendas in line with those who seek world domination. They believe in their cause.”
Corbin popped his cuffs off. “Let me guess, brain and telepathic testing subject?”
Casey nodded. “This is the first time I’ve heard him talk in all the years I’ve known him. He’s always just communicated telepathically.”
Gus stared out the window and Casey realized the man had said all he had to say on the matter. He focused his attention on Corbin. “You going to lock me up?”
“No. Your crime was trusting your country,” returned the man. “Can you kindly stop doing whatever it is you’re doing that has prevented us from linking with our teammates? We would like to check in and make sure…”
A big redheaded guy in a kilt came bursting in, weapon in hand, pointing it at Casey. “Hands up!”
Casey rushed him and in the blink of an eye had him disarmed and the weapon trained on him. He prepared to fire.
“Casey, no!”
“Laney?” he asked, lowering the weapon, looking to the side as Laney came running in with a man wearing leather pants that he looked totally out of place in. Another man entered the room, and he too had on leather from head to toe, but he looked like he didn’t mind it. Plus, with his long dark hair and eyeliner, it suited him.
“Why is Striker on the floor?” asked the newcomer.
Corbin snorted. “Because Casey put him there, Boomer. Welcome to the party. James, why are you wearing leather pants? You look like a deranged biker.”
The one Casey had noted seemed uncomfortable in the leather pants blushed. “Might have had an incident with doing a full, uncontrolled change. Needed some clothes. Boomer had extras in the SUV.”
Laney tossed her arms out and hugged Casey. “You’re alive? I thought a hit team was going to come. Ohmygod, we should go in case they do. Bill? Gus?”
Bill smiled and waved. “Laney!”
Gus merely stared off into nowhere.
Laney teared up. “You’re all okay. I’m so glad no one came to hurt you.”
“Oh, a hit team showed,” said Duke. “But the Lone Wolf here took them out all on his own. Handed us our asses too.”
Corbin walked to the man on the floor in the kilt. “Handed Striker his as well. For that we are forever thankful to you.”
“What the hell are you?” asked the man called Striker. “Because yer nae human with that strength and speed.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course Casey is human,” said Laney, releasing him and stepping back. It pained Casey to know there was trust in her voice and he’d violated it. He’d lied to her. She wasn’t one to trust easily, and when she fully understood that he’d betrayed the trust he’d spent so long gaining, she would shut down on him. She’d never be able to wrap her mind around the true danger she was in.
Casey had been naïve at her age was well. He hadn’t realized what lived among humans. What was really out there and what others were willing to do to protect those secrets. He knew the costs. He’d suffered them more than once and he wouldn’t allow her to be hurt.
“Laney,” he said. “We need to talk.”
She motioned to James, paying Casey no mind. He knew her better than that. Knew she’d heard him but was trying to give him an out, a way to avoid hearing the truth. It was a truth she wasn’t prepared to have confirmed.
“Casey, this is James, the guy I had a date with tonight and these are his friends. Something really bad is happening,” she said.
Casey snorted. That was the understatement of the day. “I know.”
She narrowed her gaze on him and then looked around the room. She was putting it all together. “What happened in here? It’s trashed.”
“Bad men came to kill our Laney,” said Bill, patting his knees and then clapping his hands as if playing a game of patty cake all by his lonesome. He’d been known to do stranger things. “Casey and his wolf said no. His wolf came out and it let them know that our Laney was not to be harmed. Nope.”
“Casey and his wolf?” Laney paled and then bent forward, looking as if she might be sick. James moved closer to her and rubbed her back. She touched his thigh and Casey considered forcing the man to get the hell away from Laney. Mating energy coated the air around them and Casey’s overdeveloped senses picked up on it right away.
Fuck.
He did not want her mated to a PSI Operative. A supernatural male who lived a normal life was his choice—not that he got to make one. Destiny had other plans. And she seemed to need his comfort at the moment so he allowed it.
“Casey is a shifter, isn’t he?” she asked James.
James’s gaze met Casey’s and there was compassion reflected back. “Sweeting.”
Casey sighed. The moment of truth was upon him. “Yes, Laney. I am.”
She looked up at him. “All the stories you told me about the government and the experiments on humans to make them into animal-like soldiers, it wasn’t just theories you heard, was it? You weren’t telling me stories you made up. Were you?”
He shook his head. “I lived it.”
We should go, pushed Gus. Now.
Casey looked to Corbin. “Gus says we need to leave. Believe me, he’s right. He must sense something big coming.”
Laney frowned. “Gus doesn’t talk.”
“He does, but not in ways most can hear, hon,” Casey said, hating that they’d kept the truth from her. They’d only wanted to keep her safe. The less she knew the safer she would have been.
Damn her curiosity.
She gasped. “Danger? Someone shouted danger in my head earlier. It was Gus, wasn’t it?”
Casey shrugged. “He might have. Even I’m not clear how he does what it is he does. I do know if he says we should go, he’s not playing around.”
“Let’s take this show on the road,” said Duke. “I fucking hate standing around waiting to be attacked again. We can debrief somewhere safe. Can we leave the little loud one?”
“Bill comes with us,” stated Casey clearly. “As does Gus. I want them safe.”
“Laney needs to rest,” said James, drawing Laney closer to him. “She’s been through a lot and I want her checked over before we do anything else.”
“I’m fine,” said Laney.
It pained Casey to tell her what he’d had to do. He knew it would upset her. “Laney, your computer system.”
She blinked up at him. “What about it?”
Bill lifted his hands in the air. “Casey was a bad, bad boy. He broke it.”
Laney’s eyes widened. “What?”
Casey exhaled slowly. “When I realized the hit team was looking for you and not me, I did what needed to be done to protect you. I know how much that computer meant to you but, Laney, the information you’d been digging for, it nearly got you killed.”
She said nothing as she turned, taking James’s hand in hers as she headed for the door. Casey tried to follow, but James glanced over his shoulder and shook his head, as if sensing it wasn’t the time.
Chapter Sixteen
Bertrand snarled as he held one of his pets by the throat. “Tell me again how they escaped?”
The hybrid, a mix of man, bat, vampire and tiger, shook its head as best it could with Bertrand’s claws biting into its flesh. “We don’t know, sir. We sent a team. We found a cleanup crew in the alley, disposing of our team’s bodies.”
Bertrand’s vision narrowed as red filtered into the rims of his view. “You and the others are weak. You let a hacker and an injured shifter bring you all down.”
“No, sir. No. I’m sure they had help,” the hybrid said, pleading with his eyes for mercy.
It
wasn’t in Bertrand to grant anyone leniency. He twisted quickly, tearing the hybrid’s throat out and flinging it aside, his gaze finding the row of other hybrids, none saying a word. They knew he possessed the power. That without Bertrand they would not continue to receive the injections they were now dependent upon for their survival.
“What of the other team?” asked Bertrand, fire in his belly. “The one sent to the location the girl lived?”
“Dead,” whispered one of the men. “All dead.”
This was what he got for dealing with the bottom of barrel in regards to trained professionals. If he was ever going to get Gisbert and the other heads of the Corporation to see him as a leader, he had to act now. He couldn’t take this defeat lying down.
“If you want something done, you have to do it yourself.” With that, he clicked his fingers for a towel, waiting before one appeared, and then wiped his hands. It was time he took matters into his own hands. He would pay Hagen a visit and he would get what he needed once and for all.
Chapter Seventeen
James took the now-cooled mug of tea from Laney’s hand and pushed her damp hair from her shoulder. This woman had seen him at his worst—eating hybrids while stuck in a bloodlust shifter state—and she still somehow managed to see something good in him. He couldn’t understand why. She had agreed to come to his home with him, rather than a safe house. Even after all she’d seen and been through.
The worst first date ever.
Here she was, in his home, on his sofa, her smell coating everything, and he loved it. Shame pushed through him. She’d had a hell of a night and he was thinking of how good she smelled.
They’d stopped first at his lab, where he’d looked her over, making sure she wasn’t harmed. He’d also taken samples of her blood and had another, trusted doctor at PSI, working to see what he could find. Patterson swore he’d call the minute he learned anything conclusive. James had already phoned him twice, seeing if he could speed up the process. PSI labs were equipped with technologies other labs, even top-notch ones, weren’t. Things that seemed more sci-fi than real. A perk of the job.
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