Nightshade cut a direct path to the woods lining the back perimeter. The thick vegetation would provide much needed cover and protection.
She needed to put some distance between herself and the house. Merc had seen her leaving and she knew without a doubt he’d be following. She’d nearly hit the tree line when a looming figure appeared like a ghost from the woods, blocking her escape. She pulled up short and threw her hands back, trying to protect the General.
The man towered over them. His soulless eyes as dark as his black painted face. He held a sidearm aimed straight at her head.
“Reaper, Jesus, you scared the shit out of me. How the hell do you move like that?” Rainier panted behind her.
Reaper didn’t blink.
“She’s fast, don’t let her out of your sight,” Rainier said, “Cotter will be out any second. We can handle him and then move out, I’ve got what I came for.”
Nightshade froze, sensing more than seeing Rainier move out from behind her, realizing she’d fallen straight into a trap. “What are you doing? I thought-“
“You thought exactly what I wanted you to think, Nightshade.” Rainier brushed an invisible speck of dust off his spotless tuxedo.
Nightshade. Her shocked expression must have shown on her face, because Rainier puffed up with triumph.
“Yes, I know your true identity. It wasn’t too hard to figure out after I pulled your medical records from the hospital in Germany. Very clever on Mankel’s part to transplant you as your twin sister. I wouldn’t have ever suspected a thing if you hadn’t been brought in so injured.”
“My scars,” she gasped, her hand itching to touch the scar on her thigh.
“Caroline didn’t have a single one. Believe me, I know,” Rainier’s voice dropped an octave and she had to fight off the rolling wave of nausea at his implication.
“I couldn’t have planned it better, though. I finally get my hands on the golden egg. So to speak.” He laughed, a deep full sound that would have been pleasant if it hadn’t come from the General. “Now all I have to do is wait on daddy dearest to swoop in, clean up my tracks, and you my dear, will disappear.”
He’d found out her identity and baited Mankel. His last words, I trust you, an ice pick to the chest. Rainier had been working with Cotter all along. Oh my God. “Mankel will never show.”
Rainier scrutinized for agonizing seconds before slowly saying, “He really did do a number on you. Damn. Gotta give the evil bastard credit for carrying out the charade this long. Do you really believe Jack Mankel could spawn a child?” Rainier laughed again, only this time evil completely filled the sound and sent a shiver down her spine. “Jesus, maybe I could take a lesson from him before I kill him.”
“What are you talking about?” She held her breath, her brain unable to process the possibility of the General’s words. It was too incomprehensible…too evil…
“Mankel isn’t your father.”
Rainier dropped that life altering bomb and Nightshade felt the ground tilt around her. Not her father… All those years of wanting his approval, needing his love; love that would never come.
Her heart contracted into a small hard ball and she fought for oxygen. There was too much truth to his words, too much confidence. All those years she’d prayed for Mankel’s love…and in one-minute Cotter had given it freely.
“Don’t look so shocked. It was genius really, using your sister to keep you in line and then holding you in his back pocket the entire time. You were his ace in the hole against Cotter.”
“But why? Why would he do that?” How could he lie to her for her whole life? He’d made up an elaborate story about Cotter kidnapping Caroline to control Mankel. Cotter had destroyed their family. Killed her mother… “My mother?”
“Ah, Sarah. She is the crux of the whole thing, isn’t she? Poor Cotter never had a chance after she set her sights on him. Sarah Foster was the one woman Jack Mankel ever loved, if he even knows how to love. If she hadn’t left Mankel, this whole situation may never have happened.” Rainier tapped his lip. “But then again, Sarah Foster was responsible for the creation of Operation Midnight.”
“Operation Midnight? I shut that proposal down. What the hell are you talking about Rainier? And what the hell are you doing with my daughter out here?”
Nightshade spun to see Cotter approaching, his usually loving gaze locked with deadly intent on the General. Her heart kicked back into gear on one explosive burst, sending a hard tremor down her entire frame. Cotter stopped at her side and gently touched her arm. “Are you okay?”
Nightshade managed a weak headshake, suddenly remembering Reaper’s presence. He’d melded back into the tree line, but when Rainier gestured for him, Reaper emerged. Just as big. Just as deadly. His weapon aimed at Cotter this time.
Her father.
Her real father.
Oh. My. God.
She’d been the bait. After all her training and planning, she’d ended up as the bait.
Nightshade tried to ease in front of Cotter but he shoved her behind him in a move of unshakeable protection. She knew the moment he spotted Reaper, because his already rigid stance went rock hard. Even a civilian knew when they were staring at death.
“Reaper is an excellent shot, Cotter, but he’s not perfect. You might want to take a step to the side if you don’t want to risk injuring your precious daughter,” Rainier sneered.
Reaper’s gun didn’t waiver a millimeter. His entire countenance held a remote detachment from any sign of human emotion.
“I’m going to fucking kill you.” He knew about her sister.
Rainier dusted off his suit, and straightened his jacket. “I know. I know. You’ll gut me, cut off my fingers, blah, blah, blah. That’s what they all say. Even Reaper here initially threatened violence, but that was before Operation Midnight. Eventually, you’ll meet the same fate.”
She studied Reaper more closely, looking for any crack in his calm veneer, but found none. He’d moved with the deadly quiet of a skilled assassin, but now, he looked more like a deadly machine. And yet, there was something about him that was eerily familiar… “What did you do to him?”
“I gave him a little dose of an experimental serum formulated by a very, very intelligent woman,” Rainier said
Cotter’s rigid frame trembled ever so slightly. “She didn’t want this, dammit. You know it.”
“Sarah might have had a few second thoughts in the end, but she wanted it. She wanted it just as bad as I did. As bad as you. And as bad as Mankel.” He took a small step forward. “Otherwise, she would have never come to you with the formulation in the first place.”
Nightshade went ice cold, held in a paralyzed shock.
“She didn’t want that.” Cotter pointed to Reaper. “You’ve sucked the humanity out of him. When did you start giving him the drugs? When did you start Midnight?”
“A very long time ago. I only brought you in on the idea a few years ago so that I could garner additional funding for synthesizing the old formula. I should have known your stupid sense of righteousness would interfere.”
Cotter shifted, just slightly, and Nightshade glanced down to see him slowly lifting the tail of his suit jacket to reveal a hint of a pistol. “My daughter has nothing to do with this.”
“Oh but she has everything to do with it.”
She went cold, her mind seeming to go distant as she tried to process the info overload. Rainier captured her team. He was doing some kind of sick experiment on them. He’d set her up.
Mouth dry, she said, “Why do you need me then if you’ve got the team? Why set up my father?”
The first time Nightshade sensed a crack in the General’s unruffled exterior. His eyes narrowed into sharp slits and he said in a low tone, “Because that bastard Mankel stole all the remaining samples of the serum. I’ve had Dr. Winter working her ass off trying to come up with the correct formula for proper synthetization, but despite rigorous testing and trial and error, we’ve been unable t
o correctly reproduce the effects. But your father didn’t destroy all of it. He left one sample.”
An anxious dread crawled over her and Nightshade gulped down the hard knot forming in her throat. “Your trial and error tests – who were the subjects?”
The General’s answering smile caused her dread to shift into fear.
“Your team. Only the most elite and strong can handle the effects of the drug. Unfortunately, Dr. Winters miscalculations on the administration caused some slight side effects. I couldn’t let her destroy my entire test base.” General Rainier cocked his head to the side, studying her, focusing on her. “But now that I have you, we won’t have to worry about that anymore.”
Her team, her sisters in arms – he’d been torturing them, performing some kind of sick experiment on them. “Are they still alive?”
“For now, Dr. Winters thinks she can reverse some of the side effects. We shall see.”
“What do you mean – now that you have me?”
“You are the key to reinstating Operation Midnight. Now that I have you we can pull the drug from your blood, and manufacture it on a full-scale operation. I’ll be able to sell it at whatever price I want. Can you imagine how much countries like Russia and China would pay for a drug that creates the perfect operative?”
Her head was spinning trying to make sense of it all. Rainier. Cotter. Mankel. They’d all been in on it together.
Mankel had known about Operation Midnight. He’d known about Mayhem. Nightshade started to shake. He sent her over here to raid Cotter’s computer for what then? “Mankel knew where my team was all along.”
But Rainier just shook his head. “He did not. Mankel might be a pro at disappearing, but so am I. He’s scrambling to get his team back, but he’ll never find them.” Rainier took a step closer and Nightshade leaned into Cotter, wrapping her hand around the pistol grip. She began to tug the weapon out of Cotter’s waistline.
“And you’ll never see them alive again unless you come with me.”
She froze. “What do you mean?”
Rainier said, “I mean, you are the key. Your blood is the catalyst—yours and your sister’s.”
She took a beat, tried to draw in a breath and failed. “How?”
“Who do you think was the original test subject?”
Holy mother of Christ.
Cotter stopped moving all together. “Sarah. She dosed herself, didn’t she?”
Rainier nodded, certainty lining his face. “Yes, she insisted. She wouldn’t test the drug on anyone else until she was sure it was safe. She must not have known she was pregnant at the time she did it.”
“And you let her?” Cotter roared.
“Of course I did. I needed her cooperation to get the formula. I’d have let her do whatever she damn well pleased.”
“You bastard!” Cotter lunged for Rainier, and Nightshade held firm to his pistol, keeping it in her grip as Cotter wrapped his hands around the General’s throat.
Rainier struggled, trying to pry Cotter’s hands off even as his face turned bright red. Nightshade stood rooted in shock at the knowledge her entire life had been a lie. She glanced down at herself, looking for some kind of quirk or difference that would show signs of the foreign drug in her system, but saw nothing different. Nothing to label her as the test tube that she was.
In a daze, she held out her hands, turning them over to study her palms and fingers. Nothing out of place there. Just a gun. She caught the pulse in her wrist. There. There was the truth. In her blood.
“It’s okay.”
Nightshade glanced up in shock at Reaper. His face exactly the same as before except his eyes… his eyes held compassion.
“You – you –” She couldn’t talk, couldn’t get her voice to work.
He nodded. “Yeah. He’d got my men, too.”
“Why are you helping him?” She wanted to scream. To shoot something.
“Because I needed to find you.”
“Why?”
Any semblance of compassion fled from his expression. “You’re not the cure. You’re the cause.”
Suddenly, Rainier bellowed and tossed Cotter back. Cotter stumbled but didn’t fall.
But that gave Rainier enough time to pull his own weapon and take aim at her father.
Nightshade didn’t think, she just reacted. She leveled the pistol and took aim. Rainier swung around, sensing her movement. As if in slow motion, Cotter dove sideways.
Rainier fired his gun. The loud retort ended in a sick thump and Cotter flew backwards, knocking Nightshade to the ground. She lay there, stunned and gasping for breath. And then she felt the warm, sticky blood soaking into her gown.
Not her blood.
Her father’s.
29
Merc caught the flash of gunfire from the back door and saw Marissa go down, Cotter on top of her. His chest thudded painfully. From here, he couldn’t tell if she’d been shot or Cotter. But he could see Rainier stalking forward, his gun aimed at the pair on the ground.
“No!” Merc roared and took off in a dead run, lifting his gun as he went. He squeezed off one round and missed. Dammit.
Rainier went to his stomach on the grass.
Another shot blasted in the backyard, but from Merc’s right. Merc dove left, rolling in the grass behind the fountain. There was a second suspect in the woods.
Merc checked his pistol. Only one fucking round left after that shit storm in the house. No one else on his team had seen Rainier and the girl leaving.
It was just Merc.
He drew in a breath and rolled to his stomach. He slowly peeked over the edge of the fountain to see Rainier getting to his feet and the other figure emerge from the tree line.
The entire world stopped. Merc’s vision blurred and flashed to that day in the streets of Afghanistan. His brother-in-arms in his arms. Blood covering him, dripping onto the dirt, his blonde hair plastered to his head from sweat. Reaper.
Suddenly the memories flooded back in painfully. Reaper standing in a glass cell right next to Merc’s, his hands pressed to the glass. Bright fluorescent lights blinking overhead. A woman in a white lab coat, her name in bold face type on her right breast pocket. Dr. Winter. He remembered sitting there calmly as she injected him with a pale orange fluid. And then a surge of pure unrefined raw power that followed.
Merc blinked and the memory disappeared just as quickly as it had come. Now he saw Reaper advancing on the pair on the ground. His teammate. His brother.
Merc jumped to his feet, holding his pistol aimed on Reaper, as he stalked forward.
Rainier spotted Merc and blanched. “Reaper, grab the girl. Now.”
Reaper shook his head. “No. It ends here. You can’t do this to anyone else.”
Nightshade tried to shove Cotter off her, but he was dead weight.
“I order you to holster your weapon soldier,” Rainier commanded but Reaper kept coming, unresponsive to the General’s commands.
Rainier hesitated only a second before lifting his pistol to take aim at Reaper.
Merc leveled on the General. “Don’t do it.”
“He can’t kill her. She’s the only one left,” Rainier kept his aim on Reaper.
“I’m sorry Merc, I know what she is to you, but she can’t be allowed to live. They’ll keep using her. They’ll use her blood to make more of the drug. I can’t let them do that.” Reaper now stood only a foot from Marissa, who lay trapped beneath the dead weight of her father.
“But we know what he’s doing now. We can stop him.” Merc edged closer to the group, carefully shifting his aim to Reaper. He couldn’t lose Marissa. Even if it meant killing his brother.
“He’ll never stop. He’s put too much into Midnight. You heard him, think about how much this is worth.” Reaper held steady in his aim. “He’s already done enough harm to our team and he’ll keep doing it. He’ll keep creating more soldiers like me if I don’t stop him.”
“Put the gun down, Reaper,” Merc said in a
desperate command.
“Listen to your brother, Reaper. Put the gun down. We can talk about this,” Rainier said.
Merc caught the General taking a small step backward, while keeping his gun leveled on Reaper. The urge to put a bullet in Rainier was so strong Merc’s hands shook, but he couldn’t take his attention off Reaper, who had his weapon aimed at Marissa.
“You never wanted to talk before. Not when I told you about all the side effects your program was having on my men. Not even when I begged you to stop. Why should I believe you now?”
What had Rainier done to him? The soldier standing before him with his gun trained on Merc’s woman wasn’t a man anymore. He seemed hollow and hard at the same time. A man without anything to lose.
Merc knew he believed he had no other choice but to kill Marissa. She was the only one left who could create the drug responsible for Midnight and for what sounded like the destruction of Reaper’s team.
Which meant that had been your team….
“I swear on my life I will help you take him down, but you can’t hurt her. I love her.”
That one muttered sentence seemed to penetrate Reaper’s haze and he finally glanced up, his black eyes meeting Merc’s with desperation. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Then don’t.” Merc knew he couldn’t live without her. No matter what happened, she was his heart and soul.
And even though it would nearly destroy him, he’d kill Reaper to protect her.
“You really think he’ll let them go?” Reaper said in a near whisper.
Merc slowly shook his head. “No, but I know we can save them. Together.”
Reaper lowered his weapon an inch and Merc desperately wished he knew what his brother was thinking. “I know where he is holding our team. And I have an idea of where he has hers.”
“Then help us.”
After what had to be the longest minute of Merc’s life, Reaper lowered his weapon. “Okay.”
A loud gunshot ripped through the night air. A bullet slammed into Reaper’s shoulder and he went to his knees.
“No!” Merc swung around, firing off his last round. His bullet grazed Rainier’s arm. The General dropped his gun and grabbed his arm and then he took off running toward the crowds around the front of the house.
Revenge River: Men of Mercy, Book 9 Page 25
