“Just trust me, Lana. It may be important.”
“Are they holed up near a train yard, Gabriel? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“How do you know? Where did you get that information?”
“That’s just the problem, my little terrier. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how I came by that particular piece of information. I’m not even sure I believe it until I prove it. So let’s just take it one step at a time, shall we?”
Lana smacked a hand against the steering wheel. “God, you are the most exasperating man I have ever run into! You can’t give me a straight answer about a goddamn thing! And I’ll show you little terrier—I’ll take a piece out of your ass, you big ugly hound!”
Gabriel laughed, the unaccustomed sound riding on a bloom of feeling welling up out of his chest. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself the luxury of letting down his guard, he was surprised at the emotion that spilled out. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed without irony.
“I take it back. You’re not a terrier. You’re more like a targa, a wildcat with poisonous fangs from a . . . place . . . I once visited. Small, but very dangerous.”
“You’re making that up.” But she was smiling at him, disarmed by his reaction. She licked her lips, as if her mouth had gone dry, sending a shaft of hot desire spinning through him. He saw her throat working as she swallowed. “By the way, laughter becomes you, Mr. Cruz. You ought to try it more often.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aboard the Bloodstalker, in Orbit, Earth, Sector Three
Trevyn Dar sailed an endless sea of data, sifting the currents for the information he needed. He was naked as he navigated that vast ocean, stripped of the insignia of his rank, the responsibilities of his station. He was no longer commander of the Bloodstalker, brother of Kinnian Dar, second son of a great house of Thrane. He was free. He could almost imagine himself to be happy. It was with disappointment, even a sense of desolation, that he recognized his search was over almost before it had begun.
For someone of his talents, the information systems of this planet were elementary, almost crude. Encryptions were easily broken, firewalls quickly collapsed. Trevyn could follow the name he had been given like a hungry seathrasher follows chum, even though the files he had cracked were encumbered by layers of security encoding. He had found the orders given to take Asia, the men assigned to the job, the passwords and code names and accounts associated with the task. Now it only remained to find the men Earthers called “black ops.” The job the Thranes were on Earth to do would be finished within hours; the boy would be in Kinnian’s hands onboard the Bloodstalker before another day had broken on the planet below.
Trevyn took care to reinforce the shields at several levels of his conscious mind. Kinnian’s snares were everywhere, the threads of his intrusive control forming a sticky web ready to catch any unwary thought, any unlucky emotion that strayed outside the proscribed pattern. For Kinnian’s benefit, Trevyn went over his search for information on the whereabouts of Asia Roberts in the upper levels of his mind, step by painstaking step. And while the search replayed on an endless loop for Kinnian’s diversion, Trevyn hid deeper in his mind to consider what could be done to lessen the stain of this job on his immortal soul.
The boy could not be saved, that was a given. They had been paid a generous retainer upfront and promised a small fortune on delivery of the package to Sennik on Minertsa. But Sennik had not mentioned the woman. Kinnian would consider her expendable. If she was attractive, he would use her himself for a while, then sell her for a profit. Unless he thought Gabriel had some interest in her. In that case, he would torture her, then kill her, just to spite their half-brother. Trevyn would spare her that fate, if he could.
He could not risk another direct contact with Gabriel. He still maintained a fragile link with his sibling, camouflaged within a tangle of meaningless threads leading nowhere, but to use it too often invited Kinnian’s attention. Instead Trevyn went deeper into his mind, to a level below verbalization, below visualization, to a place free of conscious thought, free of emotion, a place of pure energy and light. From that place he sent out a call, a beam of formless energy directed at that like place in Gabriel’s mind, bypassing all of Kinnian’s traps, both in Trevyn’s mind and in Gabriel’s. When he had made the connection, he rose to the subconscious level of his half-brother’s mind and left a message, one calculated to lead him in the right direction without placing him in too much danger.
Then, as swiftly as he had come, Trevyn withdrew, and prayed that Gabriel would understand what he had been asked to do.
Gabriel stared at the sensor data as it scrolled across his compscreen, wishing he had a larger holographic unit with him. Another disadvantage of working with a local—he had to pretend to use their outdated technology. Details were hard to resolve on the screen, and the details were what he needed. The rail depot was dotted with and surrounded by warehouses and industrial buildings and within earshot of any number of residential neighborhoods. Looking for a white van in all that territory was like trying to find the proverbial lump of coal in an asteroid belt.
Sam’s first officer on the Shadowhawk, a huge, dark-skinned Partaran with a mind like a criminal chess master, had sorted through the images first and sent Gabriel only the most promising scans. Commander Maatik had even devised an image recognition program to further reduce the number of scans anyone would have to look at. Still, the images rolled on, with no white van to be seen. At least no white van in any pattern that made sense—nothing parked in front of a house or a warehouse, nothing leaving and coming back regularly from one location, nothing helpful for the last twenty-four hours.
Gabriel pushed to his feet and began a short-leashed pacing in the limited confines of the motel room. His muscles twitched with restless, unfocused energy; his skin chafed under the weight of his clothes. Something he could not grasp teased at the back of his mind—a name he couldn’t remember, features that wouldn’t resolve into a recognizable face, a date, a time, a bit of data out of place. Exactly what he had forgotten was lost to him. He only knew there was something he needed to—
Damn it! I don’t have time for this!
If he hoped to clear his mind by stepping away from his work, he was quickly disabused of the notion. Any calm he managed was shattered with a single riveting thought—Alana Matheson. She had left him alone at the motel while she got established at the Little Rock FBI office, but she refused to leave his mind. Gabriel wasn’t used to working with a partner, especially one who looked like an angel and smelled like heaven. He had to ask himself if the limited information he’d managed to glean from her was worth the risk of having her so close he could taste her.
Christ! Just thinking of her made him so fucking hard he couldn’t stand up.
Gabriel’s pacing brought him back up against the desk and in sight of his compscreen. Again, he felt the squeeze of desperation around his heart. Now that Kinnian was involved, time was running out. If his brother found Asia and Jack first . . . blood, red and liquid as wine, pooling at his feet, his sister screaming, his mother moaning over and over again, Dios! Dios!
The Blood Legion could not be named even as his sister’s husband lay dying at their hands on the cold stone of his mother’s entry floor. Everyone knew who was responsible, but no one would part their lips to speak the name of the society that ruled Thrane in secret. It was said that Kylan Dar was not just a member of the Legion, but its Master, until his death. But even a Master would have his enemies, and his son might have his uses.
And now the one who had taken his father’s place—and his power—hunted Gabriel’s own quarry.
“No!” he muttered, sitting down at the desk again. “You won’t have these two, ri shalssiti pultalfa. These two are mine!”
There was a rapid pounding on the door behind him, startling him nearly out of his skin. When he yanked open the door, Gabriel was sur
prised to see the afternoon had advanced to sunset in the world outside.
Alana stood framed in the last of the sun’s buttery light, her eyes narrowed to read his body language. His pulse and respiration shot up to accommodate her.
“Hey.” Her slow drawl turned him inside out. “Kinda hot out here. Can I come in?”
Gabriel forced himself to relax into a grin. “Sorry. Of course.” He stepped aside; her body brushed his as she passed, and he gritted his teeth.
She stopped short in the middle of the room, her glance darting from the compscreen on the desk to the satchel containing his clothes on the bed. She turned an astonished face up to his.
“Where did all this stuff come from?”
“I had Sam and Rayna send it out from Nashville.” His only elaboration was an innocent shrug. He didn’t care to explain the delivery service had made use of technology onboard Sam’s Shadowhawk, a technology unknown to Earth science.
“Same day delivery?” Lana tilted her head at him. “Damn, that must’ve cost you. I’m clearly in the wrong business.”
Gabriel shook his head. “Not the wrong business necessarily. Just the wrong employer.”
She grinned at him, lighting up the room. “So true.” She turned back to the compscreen. “Whatcha looking at?”
His foul mood returned with a vengeance. “Sens—uh, satellite photos of the area around the railroad yards.”
“Oh, that again, huh? I see you’re not having any luck.”
“I suppose you can say you’ve had a breakthrough?”
She straightened from the desk and blew out a breath. “No. Can’t say as I have. Little Rock bureau has been cooperative enough. We’ve set up a pretty good surveillance net on the main roads in and out of town with state and locals, but we have no idea if they’re even using the same vehicle. We haven’t had any sightings all day. Even bogus ones.”
He ignored an illogical urge to break something. “They’ve gone to ground.”
“I believe you, Gabriel, but what am I supposed to do?”
He had no answer for her. He could only stand glaring at the compscreen, willing it to speak to him. They were there somewhere, his gut told him so. But where?
She put her hand on his bicep. “Come on, mi Cubano. Let’s go for a ride. This motel room is way too small for you and all that dark energy, too.”
“Gracias a Dios, querida.” He felt his heart grow lighter in his chest. “I am more than happy to be out of this dungeon. Maybe we could get something to eat, too. I’m starving.”
With a press of a finger, he shut down the compscreen, leaving his fruitless search behind. Then he followed Lana out the door.
“Feel better?”
Gabriel looked up at the twilight streaking purple through the orange and pink of the lost sun. “Much. At least I have no fear that I will starve to death anytime in the next solar orbit.”
“Solar orbit,” Lana repeated. “If by that you mean year, I agree with you. You ate like you might not get another chance.” She slid into the driver’s seat and smiled at him as he settled in next to her.
He shrugged. “You never know what could happen. I walked out of a restaurant one night and woke up in a prison on another . . . uh . . . continent the next morning. I didn’t eat again for five days.”
She stared at him. “You’re a dangerous man to go out with, you know that?”
He looked back at her, a smile tugging at his mouth. “Are we going out?”
“No, but I’m not sure your enemies would make the distinction.”
“You’re right. Still, I think you’re safe for the moment. Where to now?”
“Thought we might cruise the neighborhoods around the rail yard, what do you say?”
His grin revealed a wolf’s eagerness. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“Sometimes it helps to get a feel for the territory. Just being there can give your intuition a kick, you know? Like there’s some kind of vibe to pick up.” She glanced at him. “Something like you were doing at the rest stop, I guess.”
“Yes.” She had her own abilities, he realized. Untrained, likely discounted and ignored by others, but real, nonetheless. He wondered how much she relied on them without even being aware of it.
“I play this little game with myself.” She threw a shy glance his way. “Wanna play?”
Querida, there are so many games I would like to play with you. “Why not?”
“Okay.” She settled in behind the steering wheel. “There are two freight depots in town. The larger Union Pacific yard in North Little Rock and a closer, smaller yard near the airport. Which one strikes you first?”
Not what I had in mind. Gabriel’s brows came together in a puzzled frown. “Closest, I guess.”
She nodded at the exit signs above the highway ahead of them. “There are three exits that can take us in that direction—Ninth Street, Roosevelt Road and Frazier Pike. Which one comes to mind first?”
“Roosevelt.” His smile returned as he caught the spirit of the game.
“Roosevelt it is.” She passed the Ninth Street and the airport exits. The exit for Roosevelt came up right away, and she gave him another choice. “East or west?”
He didn’t hesitate. “East.”
“No waffling. I like that.” The exit ramp dumped them out onto a busy commercial street clogged with evening traffic, businesses vying for attention on both sides. “My gut says we’ll need to get off this street into a residential neighborhood. North or south?”
“North.”
“How many blocks up? Give me the first number that pops in your head.”
“Three.”
“Shit! You’re going to make me turn left across all this traffic without a light?”
“Sorry. Just take the next light. We can circle back.”
She did as he suggested and almost immediately the traffic dropped off. Convenience stores and gas stations were replaced with duplexes and bungalows on a broad, two-lane street lined with parked cars. Lana slowed the car and lowered the window, scanning from one side of the street to the other.
“This is still too visible for a safe house.” Gabriel’s arm hung out the window as he took in the night air. “They’d be further off the main road.”
Lana nodded. “Turn now? Or give me a number.”
“Turn left in four blocks.”
They went on like that for a while, zig-zagging across the residential blocks, letting their instincts lead them. At last they sat at the end of a street, lingering at a stop sign with another choice before them. Across the street, a fence and a field of patchy grass and broken bottles separated the neighborhood from the rail yard. Gabriel could hear the trains braking and scraping along the rails.
“Left or right?”
The feeling he had forgotten something returned to haunt him, stronger now than ever. He’d had a few hours of relative peace, but now Gabriel felt as if his skin was on fire. A sense of intense déjà vu hit him, as if he’d been here before and left something behind, though he’d never seen the place before.
“Gabriel?”
He shook his head. “Left.”
She turned, and within a block he heard a whisper, deep in his mind. Save the woman, if you can.
“Meadowlark.”
Lana’s head snapped around. “What?”
“We’re looking for Meadowlark—street, drive, road.”
“How . . .?”
“Don’t ask.” A sense of dread gathered in his chest.
She turned back to the road. “There.” She pointed. A street sign indicated Meadowlark Drive to the left.
“Take it.” His heartbeat accelerated. “Number fifty-seven.”
Lana craned her neck to read the numbers on her side of the street. “Eighty-two. . .three blocks down, then. On the right.”
Night was descending in a rush now, the late summer sky a deep purple overhead. Shadows were thick along the street, among the parked cars and on the slumping porches of the tiny,
ill-kept houses. The neighborhood looked worn out, ready to give up, besieged by the noise and the fumes of its industrial neighbors.
And there was something else here. Gabriel felt it grow closer, sharper, as the car slowly rolled toward Number 57. His eyes strained to make out any movement along the street, any shadow cast against the light. Nothing moved.
He strengthened the protections in his mind and sent out a gentle, tentative feeler. There. A hum, as of high tension wires. A crackle and a buzz warning of danger. Kinnian. There was no way to tell how many were with him without a visual count. Gabriel had to remain shielded; he didn’t dare use his mind and risk exposure.
“Drive past the house without stopping, and try to find a place to park the car around the block.”
Lana looked at him. “Why are we whispering?”
His lips quirked upwards. “Sorry. There are others watching the house.” He held up a hand.
“I get it. Don’t ask you how you know.” Her voice was as quiet as his now. “Watch me driving past the house.”
As they drifted past Number 57, Gabriel took note: no lights on in the house; an innocuous, grey rental sedan in the drive; a large, black SUV on the curb opposite; a closed garage; blinds shut tight on all visible windows; no name on the mailbox; no flowers, no toys, no random items of any kind in the yard or on the porch. Also no shrubbery and nothing close to the house to provide a hiding place. The house itself was set a bit apart from its neighbors in the middle of the lot, with a chain link fence surrounding the back yard.
But in the farthest corner of the neighboring yard a shed huddled against the fence. It was enough to provide some cover if they could reach it from the alleyway behind the houses without being seen.
“Take the next right. Park the car.”
Lana looked past him, saw what he saw and nodded. She slid to a stop around the corner, just in front of the entrance to the alley.
They sat, motionless, watching the street for a long moment. The cars parked along the street were empty. The alley was dark and still. Two houses up, a driveway was full, people congregated on the porch and inside the brightly-lit house—a party in progress. Further down, children played on a scraggly front lawn. No one turned a face in their direction.
Trouble In Mind (Interstellar Rescue Series Book 2) Page 15
