“I refuse to coerce her into possibly giving up her life,” Aaron said in a tone of utter finality.
“If she doesn’t, it may ultimately cost every human’s life,” Michael said flatly.
Samantha swallowed hard, the sincerity of Michael’s words smacking her right in the face. He was right, of course.
True, she had great reason to fear this task, but ultimately she was being selfish. If she didn’t aid them, others would very likely die—including many of the Fallen.
Maybe even Aaron.
And eventually, every human being on Earth. Every nephilim like her.
Oh, hell. There had never really been any choice to be made, had there? In the end she would always have agreed to go, because the alternative was unthinkable.
As her stepfather would have said, “Buck up, Samantha.” There was a job to be done, and she was just the person to do it.
Clenching her shaking hands into fists, Samantha summoned her nerve and shoved through the door into the dining room.
Conversation died instantly as everyone turned to her. Michael sat at the head of the table with Eva beside him, while Aaron sat beside Tayla. The familiar faces of Jason and Zach were there, along with several others whom she hadn’t yet met.
“I’m in,” she said.
Samantha had only a moment to note the stark relief on Michael’s face before she locked gazes with Aaron. His brows knitted together and he rose to his feet.
“Samantha—”
“No, you don’t have to say anything.” She took a deep breath and then turned back to Michael, who seemed to be the unofficial leader of the group. “I admit it, I’ve been selfish. I haven’t wanted to help because I was afraid. I am afraid. But I understand the consequences if I don’t aid you.”
“Samantha,” Aaron said again, this time softer, almost pleading.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I know I can do it.”
“Good,” Michael said.
Out of the corner of her eye Samantha saw Aaron’s shoulders bow and his head fall back in clear defeat.
“How long will you need to study the place before we go forward with our plan to infiltrate?”
“I’ll need to go out to the spot and survey it.”
“Wait. You can’t.” As if just recalling something, Aaron straightened his shoulders and turned to Michael. “She can’t do it, and you know it. Any angel in that prison will feel her presence as soon as she’s a few miles away. They’ll attack her immediately.”
“But they haven’t noticed the other Fallen in the area, have they?” Samantha said to Aaron. “Why should I be different?”
She could understand if she was still unmated, but from everything Aaron had told her, her essence had changed when she’d first made love to him. Blended with his.
“Angels can detect other angels within a certain distance.” Michael slowly sat forward in his seat, brows furrowing. “The other Fallen have never gotten close enough to the prison for their essences to be detected by other angels. They haven’t needed to, since their eyesight allows them to observe the place from miles beyond it. And Tayla’s special abilities allowed her to pinpoint the site of the prison from miles away, outside the zone of detection.”
“True, brother, but your mate can mask her essence,” Jason said softly, as if he could hardly bear to bring it up. “We were witness to that ourselves.”
Michael pursed his lips, throwing Samantha a considering glance. “How far away from an object can you be when you disrupt its electric signals?”
Good question. Samantha absently bit one of her fingernails. “I never really tested it.”
Aaron threw his hands into the air. “It would be suicidal to start testing her powers now.”
“I agree,” Michael said.
Aaron started to relax, but then Michael said, “We’ll have to create a diversion so she can get close enough to do what must be done.”
That earned a moment of marked silence.
“What kind of diversion?” Tayla finally asked.
“That is what we’ll need to decide once we conduct more surveillance.” Michael turned to look at Samantha. “I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with what information we can gather for you. At this point, surveying the property on your own seems improbable.”
Definitely not the way she’d prefer it, but...
“I can make it work,” she said grimly.
“Then it’s settled.” Michael slapped his hand on top of the table. “Lucas located an abandoned cabin within easy flying distance of the prison. We’ll camp out there while we conduct our surveillance. Those of us who are going will prepare our things. We’ll plan on leaving at nightfall. Given that the distance is so great, it’ll take us over a week of traveling to get there.”
God, that long?
”Do we have to travel by...you know”—she gestured to his wings—“the whole time?”
“I’m afraid so. It’s simply too dangerous to attempt to traverse the borders by foot.”
Samantha had figured as much. She gave him a shaky nod, and he rose to his feet. That seemed to be some unspoken cue for the others to stand and begin shuffling out. The men nodded to her as they went by, mumbling words of thanks. Finally came Tayla, who gave her a slow smile. “You made the right choice, you know.”
“I know.”
Eva was directly behind Tayla, and she surprised Samantha by giving her a quick hug. With a simple, “Thanks,” she was gone, leaving Samantha alone with Aaron and Michael.
Now standing mere feet away, Michael inclined his head. “You’re willingness to aid is appreciated. More than you know.”
There was no doubt as to the sincerity in his voice.
“I...thank you.”
Michael left, and now there was just her and Aaron. He’d barely moved an inch since she’d declared her intent to help, and now she felt weird...almost as if she’d let him down.
“I couldn’t say no,” she finally said.
“I know.” Aaron gave a humorless chuckle and raked a hand through his hair. “You wouldn’t be the amazing, wonderful woman I love if you could.”
His words startled her into utter stillness. He...loved her? No.
No, this couldn’t be. She didn’t want love. She couldn’t afford to love and lose again.
Not with him.
“I...” She crossed her arms over her chest and instinctively scooted backward. “When this is over...”
Her unspoken words hung in the air between them, so clear that she might as well have said them aloud.
I’ll be leaving.
A grimace of pain and utter desolation transformed his face, but the expression was so fleeting she couldn’t be sure. Smoothing his face into a blank mask, he nodded. “I understand. Just know this, Samantha. I’ll take what I can get. Whatever precious second you deem to give me. And I will cherish it always. A mere moment with you means more to me than an eternity of sunsets. A lifetime of moonrises. These past few days with you...you have been everything to me.”
Samantha bit back a gasp. The utter sincerity of his tone brought wicked tears to her eyes. Never in a million years had she expected such words to come from his mouth, and the need to repeat them back to him struck her so forcefully that she had to dig her nails into her palms to stop herself.
Furiously blinking the moisture back, she turned away from Aaron. “I’ll...I’ll go get ready.”
With those words, she blindly fled the room.
Chapter Twelve
The next several days were jam-packed with travel. True to Michael’s word, after just a few hours to ready their things—which in Samantha’s case meant borrowing warm clothes from Eva and Tayla—they left the compound bound for Alaska. Samantha had been forced to say goodbye to her newly discovered little piece of paradise. Who knew if she’d ever see it again?
Michael, Eva, Tayla, Ethan, Jason, and Zach traveled with Samantha and Aaron. Part of her appreciated the safety in numbers, but that also
meant they had to share the several safe houses they were forced to stop at along the way. She and Aaron found ways to make a little private time for themselves, but she couldn’t help but wish they could have a bit more solitude. After all, soon enough she might be…
No. She couldn’t think like that. It was tantamount to giving up before she’d even made the attempt. She’d think positively.
Miracles could happen.
After more than eight days of what seemed like nonstop flight, they finally approached the abandoned cabin where Lucas awaited them. It was close to dawn, and if Samantha had one thing to say about Alaska, it was that the place was freaking cold as hell. Beautiful though, with heavy layers of pure white snow blanketing the ground and mountainside.
Nestled in Aaron’s arms, she spent almost the entire ride with her face buried in his bare chest to prevent frostbite to her nose. Not even the full-face ski mask she wore was enough to fully protect her from the elements.
Aaron touched down in front of the rustic, logwood cabin. He kept his arms tight around her though, lending her his warmth as she reached up with her stiff, leather-clad fingers to clumsily pry the ski mask off.
Samantha took a long look at the cabin. Someone—Lucas she imagined—had stacked up piles of snow all around the log cabin until nothing was visible but the door leading inside. Now it more resembled an igloo than a cabin.
“Still alive?” Aaron asked, amusement coloring his voice.
She lifted a brow and turned back to Aaron. “Looks cozy.”
He shrugged. “Better than camping outside.”
Too true.
She studied his bare chest. “How on earth can you fly around like that in this temperature? I would think you’d be a popsicle by now.”
“You know angels feel heat and cold differently than humans do.”
Did they ever. His chest was still warm, for God’s sake. Not the usual scorching hot that it normally was, but still warm enough that she longed to keep her cheek snuggled into it.
Ethan touched down twenty feet away from them, with Tayla tucked protectively into his arms.
“Let’s get inside before we freeze our asses off,” Tayla yelled to her above the whip of the biting breeze.
“Good suggestion.” Aaron unwrapped his arms from around her but grabbed hold of one hand, tugging her forward and through the front door.
They entered the cabin to find a great room of sorts. The door opened directly into a seating area housing a beat-up, plaid couch, a coffee table, on which several old board games sat, and an old, dirty fireplace. A blond-haired man wearing a pair of dark blue jeans and a flannel shirt dozed in a seated position on the couch. Must be Lucas, given that he had the same good looks as the rest of the angels and no one seemed concerned to see him there. It was a shock to see a Fallen wearing a shirt, though. If Zach and Jason hadn’t been wearing shirts the first time she’d seen them, she would have thought they were all allergic.
Further back, along one wall, sat a round wooden table that seated four. A small but serviceable kitchen was separated from the rest of the great room by a long, rectangular counter. Everything in the cabin seemed old and battered but still usable. How all nine of them would fit here, however, was beyond her. And there was the whole matter of no electricity and a fireplace they couldn’t use because they didn’t want to attract the attention.
Yikes!
Thank goodness Lucas had had the foresight to snuggle in several electric blankets, which lay on the couch next to him. Otherwise she, Eva, and Tayla would be frozen to popsicles by tomorrow.
Michael stepped into the cabin with Eva beside him. He glanced around the room.
“It’ll have to do,” he muttered, as if reading her mind—or her emotions, perhaps.
Lucas gave a start at the sound of Michael’s voice and shot to his feet, his blurry eyes locking in on them. He saw Michael and relaxed. “You made it at last.”
“Traffic was a bitch,” Tayla joked, but nobody laughed. The tension in the air was all but palpable. Clearly everyone understood just how high the risks were here.
Lucas raised a hand and ran it through his hair. “Did you have any difficulty finding the cabin?”
“You did a commendable job covering the roof with snow,” Michael responded. “Had it not been for your directions, I’d have had quite a difficult time finding this place.”
“Good.” Lucas visibly relaxed.
“Anything new to report?” Michael asked Lucas.
“I’ve drawn a rough diagram of the prison and the surrounding area,” Lucas said, “given that Samantha won’t be able to get close enough to see it for herself until we concoct a plan to get her in undetected.”
Michael followed Lucas over to the round table set up against one wall of the great room. Bare-chested, he leaned over to examine the legal-sized piece of paper laid out on the surface. “What do you think, Samantha?”
She tugged off her leather gloves then unwound the scarf from her neck before unbuttoning her heavy wool coat and sliding it off her shoulders. Feeling like a soldier marching to the frontline, she stepped up to examine the diagram. Aaron fell in beside her, the heat from his body making her shivers subside. She didn’t even want to dwell on how good, how right, it felt to have him nearby.
The diagram depicted a rectangular, one-story concrete building built into a valley between two mountain peaks. Lucas pointed to the west entrance.
“The entire building is guarded by close to a dozen Consortium Guards,” he said. “But the west entrance is least guarded, likely because it is the most exposed.”
While the north and south entrances led out into what looked like forested area, the west entrance faced a clearing of land.
“How many guards are stationed there?” she asked.
“The guards wander the perimeter, so the number varies, but generally between two and three. Based on what I’ve seen, they are never allowed into the building, only come and go in shifts using a large land vehicle, so we don’t have to worry about encountering any of them on the inside. ”
That was good, but it would still be impossible to get in undetected while the guards were there. She might be able to mask her essence, but she couldn’t make herself invisible.
“That’s not all,” Lucas said. “Angels regularly fly in and out, usually during the morning hours. I’ve never seen more than five there at a given time, but some are members of the Tribunal.”
“Who?” Michael asked sharply.
“Ezekiel.”
From the way Michael’s hands curled into fists, she got the feeling that name meant something personal to him.
“Also”—Lucas hesitated, his gaze flicking toward Ethan and Tayla—“Marian.”
Tayla’s eyes flashed and she made a low growling sound in her throat, but Ethan took her hand and she calmed down.
“Marian was mated to Tayla’s father,” Aaron whispered in her ear. “She betrayed him. He was one of the Fallen who lost his life in the fire.”
“Oh.” Samantha gathered Tayla had actually known her angel father, but now definitely wasn’t the time to ask her about it.
Wait...if there were angels there...
“What about your former mate?” she whispered to Aaron.
His eyes widened then narrowed, as if he hadn’t even contemplated that possibility. He turned to Jason. “What of Elena?”
Elena? So that was the name of the cold-hearted bitch who’d betrayed Aaron?
Much to Samantha’s relief, Lucas shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen her.”
She let out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.
“So what do we do?” Ethan asked, his hand still tightly gripping Tayla’s.
“I think I have an idea.” Lucas slid his finger along the paper until it stopped over one of the three neighboring mountains that lay to the east of the prison. “This mountain lies four miles from the prison, outside the detection zone. The top contains a crater about ten feet dee
p. What if we stick explosives inside the crater and detonate them? Surely it will draw both the guards and the angels to the eastern side of the prison—”
“Giving Samantha time to break in on the west,” Michael said, adopting a speculative expression.
Aaron tensed beside Samantha. “That would certainly take care of causing a distraction, but it would also undoubtedly alert them that we know about the prison.”
“We may be able to make it look like a natural implosion if we work it right,” Lucas countered.
Michael stroked his chin in contemplation. “Even if we can’t, it should still give us the time to do what must be done, which is get Samantha inside. Even if they learn we know of their prison, would they ever expect us to hide a camera inside of it?”
Aaron let out a snort. “No, we’d be more likely to try and burn the place down.”
Michael nodded his head decisively. “I imagine that’s exactly what they’d assume, too. When they didn’t find us, they’ll think they thwarted our plan.”
Ethan let go of Tayla’s hand and started to pace the room. “At any rate, I can’t imagine them tearing that entire place apart to look for hidden devices.”
The sudden flight of butterflies in Samantha’s stomach prompted her to pull one of the chairs out and take a seat. “What exactly do I need to put in there anyway?”
“This.” Jason reached into his backpack and withdrew a black, velvet pouch. He opened it and slid out a wooden desk clock with antique claw feet.
“That?” she asked dubiously.
“It’s not what it seems. This clock actually contains a hidden camera and receiver.” Jason opened the clock to show her the camera inside. “See?”
“Once you’re inside, you’ll need to look for the room most likely to be a meeting place,” Michael said. “Place this clock in a spot where the camera will pick up the most activity. With any luck, we’ll get some incriminating evidence against the Consortium before the batteries give out.”
Samantha reached out to slide her finger along the cool mahogany of the desk clock. “Don’t you think someone will notice a strange new clock?”
“Perhaps,” Michael responded, “but with the number of people traveling through there, it should go unquestioned.”
For Want of an Angel Page 9
