by A. C. Arthur
“This is where the e-mail said to come. The drop-off is being done here, tonight,” Bas said solemnly.
“Well, there ain’t nothing here for us to intercept now, is there?” A shifter by the name of Kaz, who acted like Paolo’s personal shadow, asked with a chuckle, only to receive a scathing glare from both Bas and Jacques.
Paolo wasn’t as subtle with his reprimand, punching Kaz squarely in the chest. “If the FL says this is the spot, this is the spot!”
Kaz nodded tightly.
“Take those five with you and go around that side, check every building, and yell if you see something,” Bas instructed Syfon. “You,” he said, pointing to Paolo, “start down that end and work your way into the center.”
As the shifters dispersed Bas looked to Jacques, and continued. “You and I will take the back.”
“Kaz, you come with us.” Jacques snapped his fingers at the tall, muscled shifter and picked up his pace behind Bas who had already begun walking around to the back of the building.
Bas’s plan tonight had been to come here and intercept the drug shipment, to hopefully grab the ones doing the drop and take them back to the bunker for questioning. By morning he would have a complete written report to send to Rome. Something, a tiny slither at the base of his spine, told Bas things weren’t going to go according to his plan.
They walked slowly, each of them looking around. Bas could sense the other cats around him, all ready to break free and hunt by way of their true nature. But they knew it wasn’t allowed. Bas preferred to fight in human form whenever possible. And after his latest stay in D.C. he was more than adamant about the nonshifting rule he’d implemented the moment he’d taken charge of his own zone. Jacques understood that rule just as well as Bas did and made sure to enforce it throughout the training of all new guards on their team.
“They’re here,” Jacques announced, interrupting Bas’s thoughts.
“Where?” Bas asked, shaking off the memory of D.C. as best he could and looking in the direction of his Lead Guard.
Jacques inhaled deeply. “The rogue stench is strong and coming from that middle unit there.”
Jacques nodded and Bas pulled out his M9, holding it by his side as he moved. Jacques carried a similar sidearm as they’d both at one point been Marines. Bas was more comfortable with the M110 semiautomatic sniper rifle and carried one in the back of his truck at all times. But tonight called for something a little less formal, or at least that’s what he thought as he approached the building.
They were about ten feet away from the gleaming gray steel door that was totally out of place in the otherwise condemned building.
“Pretty state-of-the-art for one building among so many others that don’t even have doors, don’t you think?” Jacques asked.
“Complete with a control pad and if I’m guessing correctly, by looking at the cord running around the door and the windows, a security system as well,” Bas observed.
From his side Jacques coughed and frowned. “And the stench grows worse. I’m calling for the others,” he said, turning his face a little more to the right so he could speak directly into the com link in the collar of his shirt. “Back lot, center building. Now!”
“Too late!” Bas yelled, raising his arm to take aim about two seconds before a hail of bullets blasted through the front window of the building they’d been approaching.
There was no cover to take so instead Bas and Jacques dropped to the ground, rolling until they were close enough to the building to stand with their backs against the wall. In the distance the others came, Bas could hear them although he couldn’t scent them. The aroma that filled his nostrils—even though they were in the midst of battle—wasn’t of shifters. Still, he knew the matter at hand took priority and thus lifted his arm, aimed the gun, and jumped through the front window of the building.
Jacques was right behind him yelling, “This way!”
Inside was dark and damp, glass crunching beneath their booted feet as they moved farther back.
“There’s a light,” Bas yelled. It was a faint light but it was there and so were the shadows moving quickly in the distance.
“Go!” Jacques yelled, but Bas hadn’t realized he’d stopped moving.
They both ran toward the light. Bas saw another shadow and finally picked up the scent. Rogue. With a growl he turned in the opposite direction of the shadow and fired. There was yelling now, coming from all directions. Urgent words in their native tongue of Portuguese, more in English.
“Fixe os pacotes! Fixe os pactoes!” someone yelled.
“Shoot their asses now!” came another deep command.
“Mover-se! Mover-se! Mover-se!”
“Not so fast,” Bas murmured as he turned the corner where he’d tracked the voices. Two burly men stood over a hole, one pulling on a rope with all his strength. With one shot he took out the first guy’s right kneecap. With the other—and because this fool had thought he was faster pulling a blade from the side of his leg, lifting his arm he prepared to throw it—Bas shot clean through his wrist, hearing the knife fall to the floor with a clank.
The rope slipped from his grip, a whirling sound catching Bas’s attention. He looked up, then down and cursed. “The stash is down here, Jacques!”
More footsteps sounded behind him as Bas acted on pure impulse, jumping down into the hole without another word.
“Dammit, Bas. Hold up!” he heard Jacques say from behind.
The two of them landed on their feet even though Bas figured they’d gone about fifty feet down into the earth. Dust kicked up beside them but their eyes opened wide at the sight of brick after brick of what Bas knew was the savior drug, created by the infamous rogue, Sabar. But that wasn’t all he saw. There were two more sealed crates with large red, white, and black labels on the side. Kneeling down, Bas wiped away some of the dust to see the name and post office address for Comastaz Labs. Cursing, he slapped his palm on the box, the other hand fisting at his side.
Months ago Bas had reported to Rome and the other FLs that Comastaz Labs, the government-run facility that processed official FBI data and DNA by day and worked on nuclear weapon research by night, had been broken into.
“I want all of this taken to the bunker. Now!” Bas informed Jacques. “And find out where this tunnel leads.”
Using the rope that still dangled down the hole, Bas climbed up, coming to the top to see two of his guards cuffing the men he’d shot. Bas went to the one who screamed like a girl because his knee had been blown to shreds. He put his foot on his chest and applied pressure until the man lay flat on his back. He was definitely a man and not a rogue. Both of them were or they would have shifted by now.
“Where are the others?” he asked. “Who the hell are you working for at that lab?”
“Fuck you, man! You shot me!” was the glowing retort.
Bas pointed his weapon between the man’s eyes, leaning in closer and whispering menacingly, “I’m going to shoot you again if you don’t answer my questions.”
“We don’t know!” the other guy yelled from behind Bas.
His wrist was dripping blood but it hadn’t stopped Kaz from pulling his arms behind his back and putting cuffs on him. The man’s dirty face dripped with sweat, the army fatigues he wore dingy and about three sizes too big for his body.
“How did you know to come here then?” Bas asked. “Who paid you to come here and pick up these boxes?”
“We just got a text that said to be here and that we’d be paid when the shipment was on the way,” Hole-in-the-wrist told him.
“Shut up, you stupid snitch! We’re both dead if we talk.” The one-knee bandit had a lot of rage in him and a stupid sense of bravado.
“These porcos don’t know nothing! Just keep your mouth shut until we can get a lawyer!”
Bas grabbed him by the collar of his Van Halen shirt, lifting the man right up off the floor and plastering his back to a wall with a loud thud.
“No lawyer and n
o police. I’m gonna kill you and leave your rotting body in this desert if you don’t give me a name. You got that?” Bas told him by way of his final compromise.
The amount of drugs he’d seen down in that tunnel was enough to wipe out at least a couple of neighborhoods in a metropolitan city, or worse, the drugs that were laced with the herb damiana could create such psychopathic people they’d wipe out the infected and the innocent in the span of a couple of weeks. But those two instances, as bad as they seemed, weren’t what really had Bas worried. The crates from Comastaz were. He needed to know what was in them, who had shipped them to this location, and why. What he was certain of at this point was that seeing the name of this lab again, only months after first receiving reports of questionable dealings going on at the government facility, was no coincidence.
“There are more out here!” someone yelled from behind Bas. “Move out!”
Bas cursed, dropping the one-knee guy onto the floor and running back through the building to the window where he’d made his entrance. There were more out front, two of them that were now surrounded by his shifters.
“Stand down!” Paolo ordered, pointing his semiautomatic at them. The others in the circle, six more, held their guns trained on the two in the center as well.
Bas moved closer, his spine tingling with each step, the ripple of his cat pacing impatiently just beneath his skin. His ears were trained on the matter at hand, the sounds of running feet, painful yells, cursed demands. His eyes zoned in on the two in the circle, who stood back to back, knees bent, arms extended as if they were ready to pounce at any moment.
Paolo continued to yell at them, the two prisoners yelling back. Tension rose from the asphalt like a thick haze of smoke. Eyes glimmered in the night, changing, shifting. Bas cursed. He ran toward the circle, gun raised.
“Stand the fuck down!” Paolo yelled once more.
Then there was a growl, a deep guttural sound that signaled everything was about to change. One of the prisoners fell to the ground on his knuckles and knees and Bas knew what was coming next.
Paolo fired instantly, the others around him following suit, and the bodies crumpled on impact, muted roars echoing through the night.
Bas came to a stop, looking down at the carnage, blood staining the asphalt, human bodies with shifter eyes crumpled and dying. Paolo and the others passing high-fives like they’d won the damned lottery.
“Enough!” Bas yelled, his patience long since vacating the premises. They’d been about to shift, which would have in turn caused his soldiers to shift, and then there would have been an all-out catfight in the parking lot. And not the kind a man generally wanted to see.
“Clean this up. Load them in the truck and get inside to help pack up everything in that tunnel,” he instructed Paolo, who he knew was the ringleader of this particular group. The shifter had a penchant for egging on confrontations and while he was a good soldier, Bas knew it was well past time to rein him in. He’d already said as much to Jacques. A meeting in the next couple of days was now a priority.
But for now, they needed to clean up and get out of here. The likelihood that someone had heard the commotion or the gunshots was slim since they were in such a remote part of town. Still, he didn’t like them being out in the open with the desire to hunt too fertile in the minds of his shifters. The sooner they got out of here and back to Perryville, the better.
His thoughts turning in circles, he intended to go back in that building and interrogate or intimidate those dumbass wannabe runners some more while his men packed up everything they’d seized from the tunnel. But just as he turned around something stopped him dead in his tracks. Something that had been nagging at him since they’d taken to the road on this trip, possibly even before he’d left Perryville. He inhaled deeply, felt every muscle in his body stiffen. Then his cat rose up, stretching languidly, purring almost softly. Bas looked around, his eyes hurriedly scanning the perimeter and then he cursed once more.
* * *
Priya’s heart beat like a dozen racehorses as she was jostled back and forth along the back floor of the SUV.
“Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” Over and over she berated herself for the split-second decision she’d made at the resort.
After finally finding her room she’d wanted to waste no time getting to Perry. But she needed to find him first. Unlike back in D.C. she didn’t have the opportunity to follow him upstairs on the elevator then walk right up to his room and knock. That had been her plan with Reynolds until Perry had intervened. Now she’d wondered how she could get a face-to-face with the owner of this lavish resort. Easy, she’d thought, make a complaint about this lavish resort then demand to see the owner as the only source of recovery for the acting management. It was a foolproof plan, or so she thought as she exited her room, slipping her key card into her back pocket and carrying nothing else but the key chain she’d impulsively purchased at the gift shop in the lobby. It was a bronze replica of the Perryville logo she’d seen when she’d visited the Web site online to make her reservation. Priya had no idea why she’d purchased it as this was not a vacation and she didn’t need to take home any souvenirs—all she needed was to get the information they wanted, by the time they’d dictated, or her brother would die. Just as she was headed to the front desk to lodge her complaint she glanced out the doors to see a line of vehicles: a dark-colored SUV in front and several smaller silver ones behind. After Lolo’s warning about the black truck following her in D.C. and the two she’d seen on the street—along with Perry and his fine-ass bossy self—she should be leery of these vehicles altogether. Instead she felt the thrill of a connection, a link to the direction she needed to follow.
Forgoing the front desk Priya headed directly through the main lobby’s glass doors. The scene reminded her somewhat of standing outside of the Reynolds Building earlier today, except there were more trucks and more men. Still, she was certain this type of entourage could only be for one person. And wasn’t it just like the smug, well-dressed millionaire to require such an elaborate motorcade for his travels. She frowned at the complete waste of money and effort just to prove he had more money than most of the human population.
She was just about to head for the first vehicle when it pulled off. The second one behind it followed suit. The lights to the third one came on and she saw the wheels turning as if it were ready to pull off. There was only one more vehicle still idling so she had about two seconds to decide what to do.
“Now or never,” she whispered before running across the walkway, barely missing two other females in bikinis who must have been on their way to the pool. The last vehicle’s driver was preoccupied by the two bathing-suit beauties.
Priya took that opportunity to open the back door, saying a silent thank you that it had been unlocked. She slipped inside, pulling the door closed as quickly and quietly as she could. The screech of tires ahead most likely muffled the sounds she made as she pulled her legs up so she could fit on the floor. On the seat above there were blankets and duffel bags. She pulled them down covering herself completely and waited, holding her breath and praying she didn’t get caught. The driver’s door closed and the vehicle pulled off in the next two seconds.
They drove for what seemed like forever and she struggled to remain still. It wasn’t a strong point of hers, keeping still, that is. She’d always been active, always wanted to keep moving, for fear that if she kept still, her father would notice her and decide he had yet another punching bag.
Perhaps she could have fallen asleep, it seemed like they were in the truck for so long. But a little thing called fear of being caught kept Priya’s eyes wide open until the moment the vehicle came to a stop. She actually held her breath while the driver stepped out of the truck and she could hear other doors slamming in the distance. Never in her life had she gone this far for a story. Sure, she’d camped outside of Senator Baines’s offices after they’d found his daughter’s and his mutilated bodies months ago, just to be the first one at
her paper to get an actual quote from his administrative assistant. Unfortunately, Reid Clack, who was currently assigned to the political section of the paper, had already interviewed the brother-in-law and the daughter’s boyfriend. All of which trumped the vague and rehearsed statement the ditzy admin had tossed her when Priya had just about accosted her as she’d jumped from the bushes near the front porch of Baines’s midtown home.
Then again, that story hadn’t been nearly as important as this one. It didn’t directly involve her and her family. If she allowed herself to even think beyond that point she would admit that some of the things that were going on in D.C. did mysteriously link back to Reynolds and now to Perry. But none of that was Priya’s main priority.
She sat up when she thought she could hear footsteps moving away from the vehicle. Peeping over the console between the two front seats she could see nothing through the front window but darkness. Not a very good sign since she had no idea where she was at the moment and had no weapon to help her should she actually be in a dangerous predicament—more dangerous than being caught in this truck by Sebastian Perry? she wondered.
Priya couldn’t even see the men who’d gotten out of the vehicles, it was so dark. Cursing, she kicked at the duffle bags and the blanket she’d pulled over herself, then decided on second thought to look around in the vehicle for a flashlight because this darkness was not going to help her one bit. The first duffle bag had clothes in it, men’s clothes, she thought. The second bag also had clothes, but beneath them were handcuffs and rope. Holding the cool metal in her hands, Priya frowned, wondering what these were used for. A salacious thought entered her mind and she quickly dropped the cuffs back into the bag, shaking her head. “Not even gonna go there,” she whispered and kept looking through the bag. No flashlight.
Cursing again, she climbed into the front passenger seat and opened the glove compartment. Surely everyone kept a flashlight in there. Everyone but whoever owned and drove this particular vehicle. Without another choice she opened the door and stepped out into the night air.
