by Crissy Smith
Jackson wiped his mouth with his napkin and settled back in his chair. “I let my other guys head home for a while to rest. They’d been up for over thirty-six hours.”
“So have you,” Kieran pointed out. Dakota could hear the concern in her lover’s voice.
“I feel better now I’ve showered, but I’ll catch some sleep when I can. I did get full reports from my men before I let them go,” Jackson said. “Unless you would like your agents to do the honors?”
Both Dare and Gabe waved him off as they continued to demolish their food.
“Guess not,” Jackson said with a laugh.
“Why don’t you start with your update first then,” Dakota suggested. “They can add anything they need during their sections.”
“Here, I brought this.” Dean jumped to his feet and hurried to the other side of the room, where the office was.
She hadn’t even noticed the rolling boards, extra computers, or boxes when she’d entered. Dean pushed one of the boards over—it had a copy of a map pinned to it.
“I circled the sections that were divided up today and figured we could just cross out what we’ve already eliminated,” Dean said.
“Good idea,” Jackson agreed as he stood. He strolled over to Dean and accepted the marker Dean handed him. “We’ve been able to reduce the areas we searched today, but what worries me is no one saw any sign of traffic. No vehicle tracks, footprints or anything. It makes me question if we’re completely off-base.”
He started to X out most of the map.
“I had that thought myself,” Damon said. “But even though we never found a sign of them, I can’t get over the feeling that we were closer than we thought.”
Jackson and Damon both looked toward Kieran. Dakota shifted in her seat so she could better see him as well. What was she missing?
“You felt it too?” Kieran asked quietly.
“What?” she and Remy questioned together.
Kieran turned his gaze to her. “Evil, there was a sense of evil around that place. It might be from something that happened long ago, but it’s just a feeling I had about halfway through.”
She nodded even though she couldn’t really say she understood. What did evil feel like? she wanted to ask, but that was a conversation for later.
“I agree,” Damon stated, drawing her attention. “I’m used to the area. I showed you where we run, but I’ve never sensed the wrongness in the mountains like I did today.”
“It wasn’t until the end for me,” Jackson said, pointing with his marker. “The closer to where my section butted up with yours.”
Kieran sat his plate on the coffee table before he stood. Dakota noticed the humans and the shifters in the room looked just as confused as she felt. Her lover took the marker from Jackson and made his own addition to the map. “This is where all the teams need to concentrate.”
“It still looks like a pretty good-size area,” Dakota commented.
“Yeah,” Kieran agreed. “But we might get a better sense of things when we get there.”
“We should go now.” Jackson grabbed Kieran’s arm.
“No,” Kieran replied gently.
“What?” Jackson shouted. “If it was you—”
“I’d want you to wait until it was safe,” Kieran interrupted. “No one has gotten any sleep. The shifters need to gain their energy back.”
“Then I’ll take my own people,” Jackson insisted.
“Who haven’t slept either. Probably haven’t fed as well. If we’re not one hundred percent prepared when we find where they’re hiding, they’ll kill Alex and anyone else they have.” Kieran gripped Jackson’s shoulder and pulled him in. “I know you don’t want him to suffer, but we have to be smart about this. They haven’t had Alex as long as they had us. They won’t have him as long.”
Jackson nodded and seemed to deflate. Kieran held his old friend and Dakota wished she had something to offer him as well. Kieran was absolutely correct. If they rushed in without a plan, they would end up getting themselves killed or captured.
She was surprised when Damon stood and walked over to Jackson.
“Today was a good day. We were able to get closer than I thought we would. We have a solid idea of where they might be,” Damon said. “Going in at dawn, we’ll be refreshed and ready.”
“Alex is strong,” Mitch told Jackson from his spot on the ground. “You know he’d agree with your friends.”
“Okay.” Jackson lifted up his hands. “Okay.”
Kieran led Jackson back to the chair, so Dakota looked over at Dean. “Were you able to find out anything else?”
“Mitch has been searching the database they keep when paranormals enter the city,” Dean responded. “I’m not even going to go into how illegal that is, by the way.”
“What database?” Mitch asked with a grin.
Dean glanced at him before turning back to her and rolling his eyes. “See? It’s nearly impossible to work with Walkers.”
“Hey!” Mitch complained.
“Anyway,” Dean drawled. “He thinks he has some possible suspects who arrived and were never spotted again.”
“Email me the files,” Kieran told him.
Mitch glanced at Jackson who nodded his permission. “Sure,” Mitch agreed.
“Anything else?” Kieran asked.
“We still can’t find Alex’s car,” Dean said.
“I’m not really surprised,” Kieran told him. “They never found my truck either.”
Dakota hadn’t known that. She barely remembered that was how they’d captured him in the first place.
“The best plan is to have two teams,” Remy told the group. “The search team we’ll make up and a backup of agents in case we do find them.”
“My Pack can serve as backup as well,” Damon offered.
“We still need to keep this as legal as possible,” Dean said. “Especially with the Coalition sniffing around.”
“Was that a shifter joke?” Remy asked Dean.
“If the collar fits,” Dean answered with a smile.
“That was pretty good. The collar remark too,” Remy told him. “Kieran must be rubbing off on you.”
Dean might not have paled, but he came pretty damn close to causing everyone to laugh and break the tension.
“This is what we do,” Remy said once he had all their attention again. “How we end this once and for all.”
Chapter Six
Alex couldn’t even lift his head any longer but that didn’t stop the sadistic shifters from pummeling his face.
He hurt everywhere. He was pretty sure several of his bones and ribs were broken and he was losing blood at an alarming rate.
To his horror, he’d been right before, when he’d thought whoever had him were the same men who had taken Kieran and Jackson so many years ago. So he knew this was just the beginning. He had seen the scars over Jackson’s body when they worked out together. Alex had known things had been bad, but experiencing them was a whole different matter.
It took a lot to get a Walker or shifter to scar. Most of the time the healing ability would take care of the marks, but a body, even a paranormal, could only take so much.
He heard the door open and a couple of new footsteps join them, but he was past caring how many people were present for his torture.
“This is the Walker?”
Alex didn’t recognize the voice, but that didn’t mean the guy hadn’t been responsible for beating on him. His neck was jerked back by a hand in his hair and he grunted.
“I don’t think he’ll last as long as the other two we had all those years ago. It’ll do for now, but don’t forget you promised to get me back the ones I lost.”
This time Alex knew it was the man everyone called Doc speaking. He’d told him with each new torment how Jackson and Kieran had responded. Alex didn’t claim to be as strong as the other two Walkers. He wished he hadn’t even felt a sliver of what they had.
The doctor and the newcomer both
crouched in front of him.
“Pity, this one won’t make it,” the newcomer said, slapping Alex’s face hard a couple of times. “I always love to see you work with the vampires. And I know what I promised you.”
Alex wanted to snarl and say he wasn’t a vampire, but he didn’t have the energy. What did it matter what this madman called him? The doctor was right—he wasn’t going to last as long as Jackson or Kieran had. He already wanted his pain to end.
“Do you know who I am?” the newcomer asked Alex.
He blinked in reply.
“No?” The laugh was chilling. “Your boss didn’t tell you about his old friend Bradley who he spent so much time with? How about Kieran? Did he mention me?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. He knew that name. In front of him was the shifter every Organization agent was after. Jackson had given Kieran access to all the files they had on this guy.
He had lost his mind some years ago and was convinced he could find out what made the Walkers live longer than shifters. Both had extended years of life compared to humans, but apparently Bradley wasn’t happy with the time he’d been given.
“Ah.” Bradley smiled. “So you do know me. My feelings were about to be hurt. I’ve just arrived, plane delayed, but I do hope you’ll be a little more entertaining than the shifters I’ve been getting videos of. Doc enjoys his work so much, but this time around I think we are wasting our time with the shifters. I thought it might be worth seeing the difference between your species and mine, but I was mistaken. The animals here just can’t stand this kind of experiment. Weaklings, all of them. I should have taken an Alpha.”
“You’re sick,” Alex mumbled. His words were slurred, but he hoped he got his disgust across.
“Possibly,” Bradley replied. Then he turned toward the doctor. “Please proceed. I’d like a show before I hit the town.”
The doctor’s eyes lit up. “I’ve been saving this part for you.” He disappeared out of Alex’s sight for a moment, but when he returned he held pliers in one hand and a bottle of blood in the other.
“No!” Alex groaned. He knew what was going to happen. Jackson had told him stories about this.
“Oh yes,” the doctor said as he waved the bottle of blood under Alex’s nose.
He tried. He closed his eyes, turned his head, bucked in his seat, but the smell of the blood was too strong. His fangs dropped down and his mouth was wrenched open.
The doctor placed the pliers in his mouth. “Smile pretty!”
Alex screamed as his left fang was ripped from his gums. Blood filled his mouth and he wondered if he would choke on it. His vision started to darken and he didn’t fight it. Maybe if he passed out, they would leave him alone.
Tears were running down his face as the doctor latched on to his right fang.
“I love to see them suffer,” Bradley said just as the doctor pulled.
He’d never felt pain like that before in his life. He’d been shot, stabbed, burned, but never had he felt this…this agony.
* * * *
Four hours of sleep. That was all Kieran had managed, but he was thinking it would be enough. It was probably more than Jackson was getting too. The events of the day were almost a guarantee they wouldn’t be sleeping easy for some time. He was going to have to decide what to do about his insomnia, but he had bigger worries at the moment.
In just a few short hours, they’d be going back out to the Red Rocks and Kieran had a feeling they were going to find what they were looking for and more. The thought filled him with just as much dread as it did relief. He wanted to find Alex and the others, but he wasn’t looking forward to seeing what had been done to them.
It would all be worth it in the end if they could catch these bastards this time. But Kieran doubted that was going to be possible. Every other operation that had them close to tracking down Bradley and his group had ended up with them arriving just days or even hours after the place had been abandoned. It was one of the reasons he’d almost agreed with Jackson earlier about going right away.
But he’d seen the exhaustion and strain on his friend’s face and knew no one in the room was ready.
He couldn’t risk Dakota, Remy or any of them in a fight as big as this. He needed to feed and knew Jackson had to as well. Hopefully his friend was taking advantage of the donors he kept on staff. Jackson had offered them to Kieran, but he always preferred to hunt for his own dinner.
That was why he was dressed in all black as he snuck out of the bedroom. Dakota probably wouldn’t say anything if she knew what he planned, but he hadn’t wanted to risk it. Her first instinct would always be to offer herself and Kieran avoided that conversation as much as he could.
He hated that he had to take someone’s blood. That the disease inside him that gave him his unique traits also kept him reliant on another. It was part of his life and he accepted what he had to do, but he didn’t want to involve Dakota.
Kieran strolled over to his laptop for a quick check before he headed out. There were several new emails, but the last one had him sitting down and pulling the computer closer. It was from Caspar and the subject line said BE CAREFUL.
He double-clicked on the message.
We tracked Bradley to Vegas. He was on a private flight that landed earlier this evening. We lost him at the airport. He knows you and Jackson are there. I’m on my way. Don’t do anything without me.
Kieran forwarded the email to Jackson with his own message.
We’re still on for dawn.
He was warning his friend, but he knew Jackson wouldn’t want to wait any longer than Kieran did.
Caspar shouldn’t be in the fight in the first place. If they could catch Bradley before Caspar arrived, then his boss would remain safe. He would have to digest the information about Bradley knowing where he was. It really should have dawned on him earlier that Bradley would be able to find Jackson easily enough. Jackson didn’t hide himself and was well-known around the world for the hotels and casinos he’d built.
If anyone was watching Jackson, then Kieran would have been found as well.
It just hadn’t crossed his mind that he’d put himself and Dakota at risk. True, he’d figured on Bradley being on the run, but Kieran should have known better.
He needed to get out of there.
Kieran stood, ignoring the rest of the emails. He would check them once he got back, but he had to go now. The need to run, to hunt was burning inside him with the rage of just hearing Bradley’s name. He strolled through the living room and out of the door. His fangs had already dropped and he was going to find someone who deserved to be on the bad side of him tonight.
The elevator took too damn long and Kieran fidgeted until the doors opened. He practically ran out. The casino was a lot quieter this time of morning than usual but still no one bothered him as his long strides took him across the lobby and to the doors.
The lights remained bright in the valet area, but he didn’t head to get his pickup or his motorcycle. Instead he strolled casually around the hotel building that would lead him onto the Strip. There were lots of alleys he could hunt in until someone deserved his attention.
It was actually quite a walk through the large parking area of the hotel until he reached the sidewalk. By the time he hit the street, he’d already calmed down. He still wanted to hunt, but his fangs had gone back inside his gums and he was once again in control.
“Going for a walk?”
Kieran shook his head before turning around. “You should be in bed.”
Jackson laughed. “Really? I’d be there alone. You have a sexy little shifter warming your spot.”
Kieran growled at him.
“Hey,” Jackson shrugged. “I’m just pointing out the facts.”
“How’d you know I left?” Kieran asked.
“You walked right past me. I figured I had better follow you to make sure you didn’t get yourself in trouble. If you hadn’t seen me, you wouldn’t have seen an attack either.”
�
�No one was going to attack me inside.”
“After the email you just sent me I wouldn’t be so sure. Bradley is just crazy enough to try to take one of us from my place,” Jackson pointed out.
Kieran blew out a breath, frustrated that Jackson was right.
“So where are we headed?” Jackson asked.
“You’re going back into the hotel and trying to get some sleep.” Kieran pointed behind Jackson. “I’m going hunting.”
Jackson rubbed his hands together. “I haven’t hunted in years.”
“And you’re not going to tonight.”
“Well, I’m not letting you go alone.”
“You don’t hunt anymore. Your face is too recognizable. If someone spotted you, your secret would be out.”
“I can handle it,” Jackson insisted. “Besides, it might do me some good to get my hands dirty. I miss the adrenaline rush. It’s not the same as paying someone to feed from.”
“You can’t kill anyone,” Kieran ordered. He didn’t kill anymore and couldn’t let Jackson do so. He was an agent, after all. Plus, Dakota wouldn’t like it.
“I know.” Jackson waved him off. “We’ve both gone legit.”
Kieran snorted. He might have cleaned up his act some, but he was still far from legit. “Let’s go.”
Jackson nodded before falling into step with Kieran. They were both dressed in dark clothing and both were big guys. No one smart would attempt to target them for a mugging or anything, so they’d have to find someone already committing a crime.
As Kieran led Jackson away from tourists and into the darker part of town, the city noises were muted, making it easier for them to hear for a couple of blocks.
“You do this often?” Jackson asked quietly.
Kieran glanced over to his friend. “Not as much as I used to.”
“Because of Dakota?”
“Not the only reason, but she’s probably a big part,” Kieran admitted. “Even after all she’s seen being with the Organization, she still believes in people. Sees the good in the world. I try to keep her away from the dark places. Even if that’s where I’m most comfortable.”
