by Faith Gibson
“Then I’ll return home this afternoon and get started.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible.” Ramey narrowed his eyes. “I allowed your father the freedom to work in his own home because he and I had been friends a long time. Until I know I can trust you, you’ll be working in the lab here in New DC under my direction. There’s an apartment set up on site, and that’s where you’ll be living.”
Lucy’s insides froze. Not only was she going to be doing something that was more than likely illegal, she was going to basically be held prisoner while she did it. She had to get word to the Hounds and to Tamian. Dinner was probably out of the question, but she had to go back to the dorm and gather her things. She would use that time to call him and apologize.
“Should I gather my things from the dorm now or later?”
“You should get them now as you won’t be coming back this way for a while. I have something I need to take care of while you’re doing that, but I will meet you outside the dorms in twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes wasn’t a long time to get out of the office building, gather her things, and alert the others to what was going on. Lucy didn’t bother to wait to be dismissed. She stood and opened the door to find another agent standing there. “Agent Barnes will accompany you,” Ramey said.
Well, shit. That narrowed her timeframe further. As she followed the other agent to his waiting sedan, Lucy racked her brain to figure out how to tell the Hounds and Tamian what was going on. If only they could read each other’s minds. Once they reached the dorm, Lucy didn’t bother trying to keep Barnes out of her room. He’d been sent to watch her; that much was obvious. Since she hadn’t unpacked, there wasn’t much to do except grab her toiletries.
“Will you be a dear and grab my garment bag out of the closet?” Lucy asked. The agent rolled his eyes but did as she asked. While his back was turned, Lucy grabbed the burner phone and said, “I’m just going to grab my toiletries and freshen up. Girl stuff, you know?” That was enough information to make the man snarl, but it worked. Lucy stepped into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. She sent a quick text to the Hounds and Tamian letting them know she was being taken somewhere to work for the unforeseeable future.
Both Tamian and Monk returned her text immediately, but it was Tamian’s she read.
Tamian: Are you in danger?
Lucy: If I don’t cooperate, probably.
Tamian: This will sound odd, but are you able to block your mind?
Lucy: Huh?
Tamian: I can’t speak to you mentally, and I should be able to.
Lucy: Is that a gift all Gargoyles have?
Tamian: No. But you are special to me, and I should be able to hear your thoughts unless you’re blocking me.
Lucy: I’m special? Dammit, I have to go. I’ll work on the mind thing. And I’m sorry about dinner.
Tamian: Don’t worry about dinner. Keep yourself safe until I can get to you. I will get to you, Lucy.
Barnes knocked on the door. “Let’s go.”
Lucy shoved the phone in the bottom of her toiletry bag, flushed the toilet, and turned the water on. “Hold your horses, Barnes.” The door flung open, and the agent filled the doorway. “Seriously? You’ve never heard of privacy?” Lucy turned the water off, dried her hands, and grabbed her toiletry bag. She shouldered past the man, scowling as she went. As a shifter, she was stronger than most humans, man or woman. If she wanted to hurt him, she could. But that wouldn’t do her any favors toward getting out of her contract.
Lucy slid the straps of her duffel over her shoulder and extended the handle on her suitcase. She walked to the door and waited for Barnes to open it, and then she strode through in front of him. Lucy needed to curb her attitude, but with each step she took, she was getting closer to being locked up in a lab somewhere with no escape in sight. Her father’s lab flashed through her mind, and Lucy shivered.
Tamian said he’d come for her. That might be a good thing. Then again, it might end her career in the GIA and send her straight to jail. She’d have to worry about that later, because Ramey was waiting outside the dorm in a nondescript white van. Barnes opened the back door, tossed her garment bag in, and walked away. Lucy placed her other bags inside before climbing into the passenger seat. As she closed the door, a chill ran down her spine.
Lucy paid attention to each turn they took while searching the area for the Hounds. The urge to twist her ring was strong, but she resisted. The tracker would allow the Hounds to trace where she was going without having to follow too closely. Still, Lucy knew they were out there hiding. Watching. So was Tamian. Thinking back to their text interchange, she smiled inwardly at being called special, but when she remembered him asking about reading her mind, that had her frowning. Did she want him to read her mind? Most of the time, her thoughts were as mundane as the next person’s, but there were some nights she couldn’t escape images of Tamian when she was lying awake in bed.
The deep rumble of a Harley caught Lucy’s attention. She knew without looking it was one of the Hounds. They had eyes on her, and that eased some of the tension in her body. Did Tamian also have eyes on her? He’d followed her to New DC; so somehow, he’d known she left town. Ramey crossed the Potomac River, heading west, and Lucy took that opportunity to open her mind up to Tamian. She didn’t know how that worked. She couldn’t block her thoughts; therefore, she didn’t know how to project them either. Giving it a try, she concentrated on him – his light green eyes. His massive wings. His sleek body. Her own body heated from the inside out at those images, and she really didn’t need to be squirming in the passenger seat with her boss sitting next to her.
Too soon, they were across the river and heading away from the city. “Here, put this on.” Ramey was holding a blindfold.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but I am. The facility’s location is need-to-know basis only. Put it on, Agent Ball.”
Lucy did as instructed. He drove for another hour, making so many turns Lucy couldn’t keep them straight. He might have taken her around the city just to throw her off.
“You can remove the blindfold.”
Lucy did, blinking her eyes to readjust to the bright daylight. They pulled behind a nondescript, four-story building, where a sliding door rolled up, and he eased down the ramp into a dark bay. The door was closed behind them as he turned the motor off.
Ramey angled out of the van, leaving Lucy to gather her bags. The same man who’d closed the bay door walked toward the van pushing a large cart. He opened up the back of the vehicle and wordlessly removed what looked like short body bags. Lucy gaped at the sight but was blocked from the view when Ramey reached around her to grab her garment bag. “Follow me,” he said.
Lucy walked a few paces behind Ramey down a long hallway. The man with the cart was behind Lucy, and when they got to the elevators, the three of them stepped inside. Ramey scanned his security badge over a sensor and pressed the B2 button. “Test your badge,” he said, pointing to the sensor. Lucy swiped her card in front of the light, but it remained red. Once the car had descended to the bottom floor, the doors opened into another hallway, and Ramey didn’t wait for Lucy to exit. He strode with purpose until he reached a set of double doors. Instead of using his badge, Ramey pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door, pushing it open and entering before Lucy.
Asshole.
“Do I get a k—”
That was the last comprehensible thought she had as she took in her surroundings. Lucy had thought Lucius’s hidden room was bad. That was child’s play compared to the scene laid out before her.
“What the hell is all this?” she asked, backing up toward the door. She couldn’t go far, because the man with the cart was blocking the entrance.
“This is your job, Agent Ball. Don’t act like you are a stranger to such things. The previous scientists left their notes on the desk, but if you’re as smart as your father, you won’t need them. I expect you to be able to continu
e where he left off.”
“I’m not acting, sir. I can promise you I’ve never participated in anything like what is in this room. The experiments Lucius and I performed were on slides and in petri dishes. This” – she waved her hand around – “is so far out of my comfort zone it’s in the next dimension.”
“That’s too bad for you.” Ramey pulled a set of papers from his inner coat pocket. “You see, Agent Ball, when I requested you be assigned to this department, I was handed the reins to the conditions of your employment. Your baggage became my problem, and that means your tenure is now in my hands. You do the job I require of you, and I’ll consider releasing you from your contract in the timeframe previously specified. You do anything that makes me believe you’re not working to your full capacity? I’ll make you wish you’d taken the jail sentence. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Lucy ground her molars together to keep from going Gryphon on the man’s ass. She had no doubt there were security cameras in the room, and it wouldn’t do for her to get caught slashing her talons across his face.
“Your living space is through that door on the far wall. You’ll find everything you need to live for however long it takes to complete your assignment. I’ll leave you alone to unpack. After that, you should familiarize yourself with the equipment as well as look over the papers left for you. Oh, and I’ll need your cell phone. As you might presume, what we are doing here is highly classified. Sensitive information that needs to remain in this laboratory.”
Lucy pulled her work phone out of her bag, handing it over, doing her best not to show any emotion. If he knew she had a burner phone hidden with her toiletries, she had no doubt he’d ask for it as well. “There is a telephone on the desk that you can use to call the infirmary in case of emergency.” As he shoved her phone into his coat pocket, he said, “I’ll check back later to see how you’re faring. Carl, lock up when you leave,” he told the man with the cart.
Lucy didn’t respond as the jerk walked off, leaving her in the middle of a nightmare.
Chapter Eleven
When Tamian got the text from Lucy, he rushed to the rental car and headed toward the dorm. Tessa offered to ride with him, but he asked her to stay at the hotel in case he needed her on the computer. He’d just pulled up across the street when Lucy exited the building, followed by a man, presumably another agent considering the way he was dressed, carrying her garment bag. After tossing the bag into the van, the man got into a sedan and drove away, leaving Lucy to get into the passenger seat. Tamian called the license plates of both the van and sedan into Tessa, just in case they needed to run them later. Tamian hung back from the van, able to follow at a distance and still keep them in sight.
His plan to sneak into Lucy’s room had been thwarted when she sent him a text earlier than expected. He’d wanted to be waiting so they’d have a chance to talk without fear of being overheard before he took her out for dinner. It would be hard to discuss shifters around human ears. He also didn’t know how much privacy the Hounds would give her, if any. There was too much he didn’t know about Lucy’s situation, and now, it looked like it would be a while before he found out anything.
Two motorcycles were following closer to the van, and Tamian figured them to be Hounds. He wasn’t the only one looking out for her, and for that he was glad. At the moment. Having been the one watching out for Tessa when she and Gregor got together, he understood wanting to protect his sister. Or in the Hounds’ case, their niece. However, things would be different when he and Lucy got together. They weren’t two Gargoyles finding their mates. They were two species of shifters, who, as far as Tamian knew, had never mated before. Knowing nothing about her kind – if she was a shifter – put him at a disadvantage. He couldn’t very well go up against the Hounds to defend himself with regards to mating with Lucy if there was something about her specifically that would keep them apart.
Just as the van turned to cross over the river, Tamian got caught behind several vehicles at a red light. There was too much traffic for him to go around, so he had no choice but to wait. When it turned green, Tamian sped as quickly as possible, trying to catch up with Lucy, but it was too late. There was no sign of the van on the open highway, so Tamian turned around and drove down every side road there was. He had to hope the Hounds were able to track her location, because he had nothing.
Before he drove out of the area, Tamian first tried calling Lucy. It immediately went to voicemail, so he sent her a text and told her he lost her in traffic. He then reached out to see if she was able to unshield her thoughts. After several unsuccessful attempts, Tamian headed back toward the city. He often pondered why the fates made it so hard for some of the Goyles and their mates to come together once they met. Several of their cousins had been able to find their intended and bond with them quite easily, but for most of them, it had been a challenge. And maybe that was the point of it all, to see if they were worthy of the mate bond.
Never expecting to find his own mate, Tamian had let himself believe that if and when it did happen, things would go smoothly because he was special. He would meet his mate, he would ask her out, and after taking her dozens of flowers and spending hours talking and getting to know one another, they would immediately bond and live happily ever after. Hah. He’d been reading too many of Tessa’s romance novels. Those dreams had been nothing more than youthful folly, having seen his parents and Jonas and Caroline together. Tamian didn’t date many females over the years, but those he did, he compared to Tessa, because to him, his sister was the perfect female. No one ever met his expectations. Not until Lucy.
Now he understood why. Tamian loved his sister more than life. He was part of her and she him. But Lucy was his mate, and that bond was beyond compare. He had faith they would be able to find their way to each other and make things work, even if she were a different type of shifter. While he waited on Lucy to get away from her obligations to the GIA, Tamian wanted to talk to someone regarding these shifters. His first thought was Rafael, but Xavier was his father as well as his true King. He would start there out of respect.
Having called Tessa to give her a heads-up about what he wanted to do, she had a video chat going with their parents by the time he got back to the hotel. Tamian wiped his hands on his jeans before taking a seat next to his sister on the sofa. “Hey. I guess Tessa already told you a little of what’s going on?”
“She only mentioned there are shifters in your area who aren’t Gargoyle,” Xavier said.
“Have you ever heard of there being a species besides ours?”
“There was always talk, going back as far as when I was your age, but as far as I know, nobody ever met one. It was just hearsay.”
“I can attest to the fact that it’s true, but as for the type of species, I’m still in the dark.” Tamian went on to tell them everything that had transpired with Lucy and how she admitted to studying Gargoyles. “I don’t know how she was able to get Gargoyle DNA. We didn’t get that far into our conversation. It was a topic I was going to broach this evening at supper, but with her job being reassigned, that’s not going to happen.”
“Can you reach out to her with your mind?” Elizabeth asked. Not all mates could speak silently, but she and Xavier could.
“Not as of yet. I even asked her about that, and she said she would try to let me in. So far it hasn’t happened. Either she’s too caught up in work to try, or she isn’t able. We only spoke of it a couple hours ago. I won’t stop trying to reach her, though.”
“Good luck, Son. If anyone can reach her, you can.” Tamian only nodded at his father. Xavier had never given any indication he had much faith in Tamian. The lump in his throat threatened to give his emotions away, so he let Tessa say goodbye for both of them.
“You really don’t understand how much he loves you, do you?” Tessa asked.
“He’s never really been the type to express his feelings. It caught me off guard. Anyway, I’m going to try to text Lucy again.” Tamian waited after hitti
ng send, but his message came back as undelivered. Taking a chance, he dialed the number, but the call was dropped before it even rang. He tried several more times with the same result. “The calls are dropping,” he told Tessa.
“Wherever she is probably has interference set up. Why don’t you see if Julian can track her somehow?”
“She was using a burner phone.”
“Yes, but whoever she was with probably has their work phone on them. If he can figure out who was driving the van, he can also figure out their phone number, or at least their home address. I’m seeing a little interrogation work in our near future. While he’s at it, see if Jules can get a recent photo of the driver. It may take time, but we can ask Jonas to configure a prosthetic for you. Just in case.”
After Tamian spoke with Julian, he closed his eyes and concentrated on his mate. After a few seconds, it was faint, but there was something touching the corner of his mind. Something that could only be Lucy. He knew this because it was soft yet urgent. Everyone had their own unique signature brain wave, and this was one he’d never encountered before.
“Lucy, are you there?”
“Tamian!”
“Lucy. Talk to me, Sweetheart.”
“Tamian... I...”
“Lucy? Lucy!”
Godsdamnit. Tamian continued trying to reach her, but it was no use. The urgency in her thoughts had him ready to go get her right then, except he had no idea where she was.
Carl pushed past Lucy, coming to a stop alongside four autopsy tables. One by one, he unzipped the black body bags, flipping them over and releasing the contents. He didn’t so much as grunt as his skinny arms strained with the weight of the contents. Lucy swallowed back the bile threatening her throat when a resounding thud echoed in the large room as human torsos were dumped without preamble onto the tables. At least, she thought they were human. The heads, arms, and legs had been removed without surgical precision, evident by the jagged flesh. There were two males and two females who may or may not have been human. Lucy couldn’t be certain without examining their DNA. If they’d had their heads, she could have checked their gums for evidence of fangs. Considering she’d never studied an actual Gargoyle, Lucy was at a loss as to how to detect whether a body was one of their species. Gargoyles looked human even after shifting, except they had additional fangs, claws, and the males had wings. Gryphons could bare their fangs or claws, but as for the rest of them? They completely shifted into their lion, or eagle, or both – their Gryphon. Once they began the shift, it was all the way, or not at all.
