by Sydney Croft
She shuddered, and Logan took her hand. The strength and comfort that came from that simple gesture put butterflies in her stomach. She’d denied it before, but she really was falling for this man.
Taking a deep breath, she continued. “It’s amazing how normal people can look on the outside but be so twisted on the inside.” He squeezed her hand, and she smiled before squeezing back. “Anyway, I stopped having sex for a long time because of that.” Until she’d spied Creed in a bar and had been fascinated by the tattooed, pierced man. Then there had been a string of men because of her Seducer assignments, each one eating away at her soul and self-worth.
“Then there was the asshole who beat me. That was three years ago. You’re the first since then. And … you’re only the second who hasn’t traumatized me with visions.”
The other was Creed, and though she’d gotten a reading from him, she hadn’t seen anything horrible in his head. He’d been decent, honorable, and his nature had been reflected in the images and thoughts she’d gotten from him. It had been such a relief, such a wonderful experience—not to mention the fact that the man was an incredibly skilled lover. Annika was one lucky woman.
Sela eyed Logan, because he’d proven to be as talented as Creed, just in a different way. A way that made her burn hotter each time they came together. Creed had been amazing, but there had been a distance between them—not surprising, given that their time together was supposed to be a one-night stand. And he’d held something back, whereas Logan had given everything, even that first time, when they hadn’t known each other any more than she and Creed had. Hell, she and Creed had at least talked for a couple of hours before they’d done the deed, and she’d liked him.
She couldn’t say that about Logan. She’d barely known him and had hated him on sight.
“Who was the other guy?” Logan’s voice was a little rough, laced with a thread of jealousy that was sweet.
“Just someone I work with.”
“So you see him? A lot?” The jealousy had thickened in his tone. “With your cryptozoology job?”
Her mouth went dry. “Yeah, about that …” Oh, God, this was going to hurt. He was going to hate her.
Logan’s eyes narrowed, gaze alert, and for a second she thought he’d figured it out … but then his head came up. “Do you hear that?”
She frowned. “Hear what? Do you have bionic hearing?”
He gave her a clipped nod, and then he was on his feet and from nowhere he’d drawn a pistol. “Stay here.”
“Logan—”
“Stay!” he barked, and darted out of the tent.
She didn’t listen. She wasn’t a helpless girl. She was a trained ACRO agent, with more skills than the average person. Covertly, she slipped out into the early morning darkness. She eased to the rear of the tent, to where a group of newcomers stood in the middle of the camp, surrounded by Logan’s armed men.
The newcomers didn’t have weapons. But that didn’t mean they weren’t armed. No, these people were far more dangerous than anyone in the camp knew or could imagine, and an icy chill ran up Sela’s spine.
These people were Itor.
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Chance called to her softly through the rolled fabric window, and Marlena moved quickly across the tent, stood on her cot so she could see him through the sheer fabric.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Are you alone?”
“Yeah. I’m okay. I needed to be free, to figure out what the hell I can control about this thing living inside of me. What I can’t.”
“Did you?”
“I’m not a chupacabra right now, if that’s what you’re asking.” He managed to make it a joke and she laughed a little. “I haven’t been going far. I can’t go that far from you.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“I don’t mind that, you know.” He paused. “I keep thinking, if we’d met before this, maybe … maybe things would’ve been okay. Maybe we would’ve ended up together.”
Oh, God. Her throat tightened and she put a hand to her mouth. Finally, she managed, “I know I would’ve liked you no matter when we met, Chance.”
At this point, she wondered if she should tell him about who she really was before she wasn’t able to hide it any longer.
ACRO would soon send agents in to save the day. It would be great for Chance—if anyone could cleanse his blood from the infection the chupacabra had given him, the ACRO scientists could. But would he see the opportunity for what it was if he was blinded by anger at her for lying? “I’ve got to ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“If there was a way for you to stay the way you are—half man, half chupacabra—would you?” It was such a stupid question—she knew that. Knew he’d have no way to understand why she’d ask it.
Especially when she knew the answer.
“Why would I want to be half an uncontrollable monster who scares the shit out of everyone? There’s not enough money in the world to make me stay the way I am now. It’s not fair to you either.”
“I could really fall for you, Chance.”
“The way I am now? You’d have to be some kind of saint.”
“Far from it.”
“Marlena, I’m going to hunt the chupacabra down myself. It’s the only way to ensure nothing like this happens to anyone else.”
Tell him about ACRO, about everything. He needs to be here when the ACRO rescue team arrives. “You can’t do that,” she said urgently. But there was no response. He was already gone—and she knew what she had to do.
CREED WAS IN A MEETING WITH THE OTHER GHOST HUNTING department staff when Dev burst in, no warning, and yanked him out. Raised eyes from Creed’s supervisor followed them both out of the room and Dev didn’t give two shits.
He only knew that Creed was hurting Annika—and that was something he’d sworn to Dev he’d never do.
“What the fuck, Devlin?” Creed demanded, once they were outside.
Dev fisted his hands and kept his voice low. “What the hell aren’t you telling me, Creed?”
Creed raised his chin—he knew exactly what Dev was talking about, and that wasn’t a good sign.
Dev continued. “Annika came to me, apologized. She’s falling apart, and that’s when you decide to tell her you don’t want to have kids with her?”
Creed paled. “It’s not like that.”
“Then you’d better start telling me what it is like.”
“I don’t want anyone else to know this, not even Annika.”
Dev nodded—Creed was asking Dev to do a mind shield over their conversation. The psychics who worked here were all above reproach—both men knew that. This was more out of respect for Annika, that she wouldn’t be the last to know about something that concerned her. “My office,” he snapped, began walking.
As Creed followed, he tried to channel Oz, the way he’d done countless times since his brother died. Of course, it was hard to hear anything through Kat’s incessant chatter of I told you so, and fuck it all, it appeared Oz’s spirit wasn’t going to come out and help him now.
All too quickly, they’d walked past Christine and into Dev’s office, the door closing ominously behind Creed.
He felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room, felt it spin a little, and shit, he hadn’t felt this bad in a long time. He reached for the arm of the couch, and Dev was helping him to sit and ordering him to breathe, and that almost made Creed smile.
For a few minutes, he simply sat there, following Dev’s orders and ignoring Kat, until he knew he couldn’t put off his confession anymore.
Finally, he spoke directly to his spirit. Out loud, because Dev knew all about her. Everyone at ACRO did. “All right, Kat, I know I’m supposed to tell Ani,” he muttered. “Shhh for now, okay? Devlin and I have to talk.”
Kat quieted down, but she stayed close. Creed shifted on the leather couch under Dev’s scrutiny. “I was going to tell Annika, I was just wait
ing for the right time. Fuck, I knew she was upset.”
Dev waited—none too patiently at this point.
“Oz … made a prediction,” Creed blurted out.
Dev blinked. “He never told me about a prediction concerning Annika and pregnancy.” Dev’s jaw tightened. “Tell me everything, Creed. Is Annika in danger?”
“She could be. So could I. Oz wasn’t specific, dammit.” He scrubbed his hand over his face. “I was hoping … you could ask him.”
Dev didn’t answer, stared at Creed, unblinking.
“I’m sorry—I know that would be hard on you, contacting him. You probably don’t—”
“I have, when it’s necessary,” Dev said softly.
Creed leaned forward. “There’s something about pregnancy that’s deadly for either me or Annika. I never thought it would be an issue—she didn’t want kids. So I don’t know if I’m going to die when she gives birth, or if she will. And I want kids—shit, I think, if Annika was ready, she’d be a kick-ass mom. And I should’ve told her and now everything’s fucked up.”
He leaned back against the couch, his head beginning to throb. “I’ll find her now. I’ll tell her everything. But how the hell could I ask her not to have this baby if it’s what she really wants?”
Dev didn’t answer, not immediately. And then Christine was knocking on the door frantically, not waiting for Dev to answer before barging in.
“The pilot, ah … Captain Walker, he radioed—Akbar and Stryker found Annika and Gabe on the plane.”
Dev’s expression went deadly, as did his tone. “The plane to the Amazon?”
Christine took a step back. “Um, yes.”
And just then, Kat screeched so loudly, Creed fell to his knees and covered his ears in a futile attempt to stop the sound. He was vaguely aware of Dev touching him, talking to him, but he could only focus on what Kat was telling him.
It was nothing he wanted to hear. Ever. Shit. “Dev …”
“What is it?”
He looked up at his boss and friend. “A message … Kat got a message from Oz. He said … four are going in, but only three are coming out.”
Only three are coming out of the jungle alive.
ANNIKA’S HEAD WAS KILLING HER. THE PEOPLE YELLING AT her didn’t help much. And what the holy hell was all that shaking and jolting?
“Annika? Get up!” Akbar’s thickly accented voice drifted down to her, along with the distinct smell of engine smoke. Were they on a mission? In what, a truck going over a dirt road littered with logs?
Groaning, she sat up. Blinked. There were crates all around her. Akbar was kneeling in front of her. Stryker was digging static line chutes out of a storage crate. Gabe was watching with the expression of someone who was in a fuckload of trouble for something. Gabe! Everything came back in a rush, and she realized that she hadn’t stopped him from stowing away on the cargo jet, and in fact, they were now in the air in said jet.
“You fuck!” She lurched to her feet, and then nearly went down when a wave of nausea bitch-slapped her. Both Gabe and Akbar caught her, which was good, because the plane was pitching and rolling. Were they in a storm?
“FARCs nailed us in the right wing with an SA-7 or 14 … some sort of surface-to-air. Both engines are out,” Akbar said. “Pilots have climbed and leveled so we can jump before they put down.” He peered into her eyes with his dark ones. “You have been injured.”
“You think?” She touched her bandaged temple and winced. “How bad?”
Akbar, the only one among them with formal medic training, ran his thumb over the bandage. The thick leather cuff on his wrist that kept his spurs hidden brushed her cheek. “Hard to tell. You have been in and out for hours. But it is nothing compared to the knocks you will take if you go down with the plane.”
Good point. And now that some of the fog had cleared, she remembered waking up a few times before falling back to sleep.
“We gotta go!” Stryker shouted. “We’re too low for the thousand-foot min for a HALO—we’re going for a static line jump.”
Shit. Annika hated those. HALO chutes allowed for steering precision landings. With static chutes, though, you hop and they pop, and you were at the mercy of the wind. Groaning, she engaged her internal autopilot, donned her jump gear and loaded up with weapons.
Gabe had done a couple of jumps, so he wasn’t totally clueless, but just in case, after Stryker finished gearing up, he made sure Gabe was ready. Akbar double-checked Annika, which would have annoyed her under any other circumstance, but right now she just wanted some painkillers. Could she take them while pregnant?
Akbar hit the toggle for the cargo ramp, and as it leveled out, letting in the first rays of the morning dawn, Annika braced herself against a crate. “How did I get hurt?”
Stryker shot Gabe a glare. “Apparently, you were trying to stop him from riding along, and you slipped and hit your head.”
Right … but she was never so clumsy. Why would she—she sucked in a harsh breath, remembering that she’d tried to electrify Gabe, but failed. She reached for her power, but she might as well have been digging for water in the desert. Oh, God.
The plane shuddered, sending Gabe wheeling into her. She grabbed him, almost grateful for the distraction. The intercom crackled, and the pilot’s voice, calm and cool, told them that he’d have a jump zone for them in two minutes.
“Okay,” Annika said. “You have two minutes to brief me on what the fuck is going on.”
Stryker slid a hunting knife into his chest-harness’s sheath. “We’re going into the GWC camp to extract two agents, take down the operation and seize a mythical, man-killing creature.”
She snorted. “Is that all?”
Akbar grinned, exposing straight, white teeth that contrasted with his tan skin. “Itor might be there.”
“Ooh,” she said, returning his grin. “Things are looking up.” Well, maybe not, since her power seemed to have left the building. Oh, and she had a head injury. And was pregnant. Crap.
She shook herself out of the pity party, because no matter what, she was in fucking awesome shape, was deadly as shit, and being pregnant didn’t turn women into glass figurines. She’d known agents who had run freaking marathons well into pregnancy.
Akbar lost the smile and turned to Gabe. “Kid, if this plane were not going to be making a crash landing, I would make you stay with it, and when we got back to ACRO, I would have your ass thrown in a detention cell for a year, and the only action you would see is when you got tasked for hard labor around the base.” Gabe stiffened, but wisely kept his mouth shut, and then he dropped it open when Akbar handed him a Sig P226. “But you are here, and we have to work together. No screwups. Try to remember every drop of your training, and do not be a hero.”
Wow. Akbar was a lot nicer to Gabe than Annika would be, given that she wanted to shove him out of the plane without the benefit of a parachute. But she got what the man was doing. If Gabe didn’t feel like he was part of the team, he was going to make mistakes, his confidence shot.
Akbar clapped a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “We have each other’s backs, yes? I have yours, and I trust you to have mine. You good with that?”
Gabe swallowed shakily but his nod was firm and strong. “Yeah.” He turned to Annika. “Look—”
“No.” She held up her hand, because now wasn’t the time to get into what had happened. They had to survive the mission first. And then she’d kick his ass. “What Akbar said. For now, that’s good enough.”
Stryker gave a thumbs-up, and then he signaled that it was time to go.
BEFORE HE’D GONE TO TALK TO MARLENA, CHANCE HAD BEEN hanging around, trying to gain any intel he could.
He discovered that when he was close enough to the subjects who were talking, it was much easier to filter out the excess noise. He’d moved silently, years of training on his side, and heard part of a conversation he wished he hadn’t.
Logan and Sela were talking in the command tent—about the chup
a, Logan’s sister … and him.
And some company named Itor.
What do they want from you? Sela was asking Logan, who said, The chupacabra. That’s why I’ve been looking for it for the past month, trying to bring it in alive. And now, they know about Chance too.
It didn’t take a fucking genius to figure out how the rest of this would go down. Logan’s dad planned on trading Chance for Logan’s sister. And hell, Chance could almost fucking understand that … but he was sure as shit not going to let the original chupacabra continue running wild.
He couldn’t have that on his conscience.
He’d already grabbed one of Shep’s knives when the man wasn’t looking and poached Randall’s rifle as he sat outside of the tent’s door, and he was off, into the jungle in the dark of night.
He ran, fast and sure-footed, but came to an abrupt stop when he realized someone—or something—was following him. They were slower, to be sure, and too fucking loud to be much good as recon.
“Who the fuck is there? Come out before I shoot you,” he called quietly. Within seconds, there was more crashing and Marlena stumbled out of the brush. Under the glare of the flashlight, she looked scratched and bruised, and she was out of breath.
But she’d tracked him. It was something he wouldn’t have expected from a cryptozoologist’s assistant, but he’d suspected there was so much more to her than that—which was why he’d been trying to get her to admit it. He’d been praying she hadn’t been part of Logan’s team, playing him this whole time.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
She moved toward him. “It’s too dangerous for you to be out here alone. If I can’t talk you out of it, I’m coming with.”
“How did you get away from the guard?” he asked, and she shrugged.
He narrowed his eyes at her. He’d fallen in love with her, but that didn’t mean he completely trusted her.
