Riley smiled at him almost beatifically. “Scott, I always know what the hell I’m doing.”
“Yeah, and that’s what scares the shit out of me.”
~*~
Scott was pacing again. He’d been doing so most of the day, ever since Zachariah had shown up and revealed what had happened to him when the vampires had captured him. It wasn’t because of any stress or worry he felt, though he was experiencing both in spades. It wasn’t even because of the stiffness and soreness he felt over being shot with the Taser the evening before, though he certainly felt that in every inch of his body, like he’d run five miles nonstop. The main reason he paced, though, was because of the concern he felt over Riley and her insistence that she be the one to go into Brandon Hall’s offices, alone—because if his intuition was right, and it usually was, it was likely that Hall was a traitor. And if Hall was a traitor, then the danger to Riley when she went in alone was increased tenfold, because there was no telling what Brandon Hall was capable of. And if Riley went in by herself, she’d have no backup, no one to bail her out if she got in trouble. And she would get in trouble; Scott had no doubts about that. The woman hadn’t developed an Agency-wide reputation for causing problems for nothing.
It wasn’t that he was strictly worried about Riley. She was a covert, the same as him, and while her training hadn’t been as intensive as his own—what with his additional training in the SEALs program prior to his enlistment with the Agency—he was sure she could hold her own in a typical fight. But a fight with Brandon Hall wouldn’t be a typical fight. Trainers and mentors were notorious for not teaching their apprentices all of their tricks, and he wasn’t sure if Riley would be able to fight back against Brandon and come out the winner in the end.
Scott glanced at Riley as he passed the foot of the bed again. The woman stood by the bed, leaned over, thumbing through the papers from the folder they’d stolen. He could see gears spinning in her head, her mind working over the problem that had presented itself to them that morning, her dark hair slipping half out of the messy ponytail she wore it in. Her fingertips danced over the pages, sorting them into stacks, her pretty face drawn into a frown. The look in her brown eyes was desperate as she flipped through the papers. Scott wondered what she was looking for, and he took a step toward her as the dawning realization that she searched for evidence to prove his assertion about Brandon wrong flitted through his mind. She didn’t want Brandon to be a traitor. And who could blame her? She had been as close to Brandon as she’d been to Kevin; hell, as close as nearly all agents got to their handlers and mentors. The whole idea of killing off other agents, maybe even her former lover, was probably nothing short of devastating for her.
As he forced himself to move away from her lest she take offense at his staring, the thought occurred to him that maybe she was too emotionally involved for this. He turned around to say so, but he changed tactics at the last second to ask instead, “You’re not planning to confront him, are you?”
Riley didn’t look at him as she answered. “Of course not,” she said, but there was something in her tone that set off alarm bells in Scott’s head.
“Riley, don’t you even think about it,” he said in the sternest voice he could muster.
“I’m not.”
“You better not,” he added. “Not without backup. People like Brandon Hall and Henry Cage…they’re dangerous. Far more dangerous than you realize.”
Riley snorted and picked up a paper from the pile in front of her, narrowing her eyes as she skimmed over it. “Not as dangerous as I can be.”
“No, you’re nowhere even near their league,” Scott argued. “You’re good, granted, but you’re nowhere near as good as they are. They’re old guard. They developed the very same techniques that you think will give you the chance to beat them. But newsflash, Riley: any one of them could wipe the floor with both of us at the same time if they so desired. There’s a reason they’re handlers and we’re not. And if you think they taught you everything they know, then you’re kidding yourself. They don’t teach us shit. We have to learn over half of our skills on our own out in the field, which is precisely why so many agents get killed within their first five assignments.”
“You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know,” Riley shot back. “What do you expect me to do? Just take your word for it that Brandon is a murderer?”
“We’re all murderers, Riley, or have you chosen to forget that fact?” Scott snapped.
“But we don’t murder each other!” Riley nearly yelled. She clenched her fists at her sides, as if she were struggling to not strike out and hit him. Scott almost wished she would. Maybe then the fight would go out of her and the argument would end. “We kill people who actually deserve it, like drug lords and kidnappers and child molesters and murderers and terrorists. We track down and capture or kill escaped fucking convicts! We don’t kill other agents!”
“Are you sure about that?” Scott asked. And even though he tried to stop it, the bitterness seeped into his voice. “Can you say with absolute certainty that some of the marks you’ve tracked down and eliminated weren’t fellow agents?”
“I know they weren’t!”
“No, you don’t,” Scott said. He took half a step closer to her, and though it could get him into trouble, he brushed his hair away from her ear and said in a voice that barely qualified as a whisper, “How do you think Internal Affairs handles agents suspected of going rogue?”
Riley took a fast step back from him, and he caught her by the arm before she could get too much further away from him. “You’re lying,” she accused, shaking her head. “You’re fucking lying.”
“What reason would I have to lie about it?” Scott asked. “I’ve been in this business for longer than I care to think about, and I’ve done a lot of shit that makes me feel like a horrible human being. I curse the fact that I was stupid and gullible enough to fall for the Agency’s slick words about patriotic duty every damn day that passes, and it’s made even worse by the fact that I can’t get out.” He said the last three words emphatically, trying to push home the fact that there was no escaping the jobs they’d both been roped into. “We can’t get out, Riley. There’s no out clause. There’s no retirement. You can’t just leave. You can’t walk away from this. And you know what the punishment is for even trying? Because I do. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve issued it.” As Riley’s expression slipped from disbelieving to horrified, Scott pushed further, pulling her close to him again and hissing out, “And who do you think was in charge of that part of Internal Affairs?”
The expression of dawning realization on Riley’s face was a horrible thing to see. She started to take another step back but hesitated, then moved closer to him instead. “You’re not…you can’t be serious.”
“I’m afraid I am,” Scott admitted. “It’s why I can wholly believe that Brandon is involved in the murders of all twenty-seven of those agents. Because he’s done it before, and I’ve seen him do it, in the most brutal ways possible.” He let go of her arms then, taking her face in his hands and making her look at him. “He’s incredibly dangerous, whether he seems that way to you or not. That is why I do not want you to confront him. He’d have absolutely no compunctions about killing you, even with your shared history.”
Riley’s eyes darted over his face, as if searching for the evidence that he was telling the truth. She must have found it, because she looked away from him and let out a breath. “Okay,” she murmured. “I won’t.”
“So, knowing what you know now, do you at least have a plan in place for your little excursion into Brandon’s offices yet?”
Riley shook her head and moved away from him to return to her study of the papers littering the bed. With that movement, the tension that had been hanging over the room like a wet blanket began to dissipate. “You forget fast, don’t you? I’m the type that prefers to improv, remember?”
Scott snorted and shook his head, the stiffness in his shoulders loosening
up. “I know that,” he said, “but I was hoping you’d at least come up with something to start with.”
“Why, so you’ll feel better about me doing this?” Riley asked, a knowing look in her eyes as she glanced at him.
“Precisely,” Scott said. He saw no point in denying it. Riley would see right through any denials he made anyway.
“I thought so.” Riley abandoned her leafing through the papers and moved back to him. “I’ll be fine, I promise,” she said. “I know how to handle Brandon. I’ve been doing it for eight years.”
“And that’s my concern. Don’t get over-confident.”
“You worry too much.”
“And you don’t worry enough.” He paused, hoping his words would sink in but knowing they wouldn’t. “What time do you intend to go to his offices?”
“Brandon keeps irregular hours,” Riley began, her voice snapping into a tone that suggested she was all business. “Always has, probably always will. I think he thinks it makes him unpredictable. What the idiot doesn’t realize—or fails to acknowledge, since I’ve warned him about it repeatedly—is that in his attempt to be unpredictable, he’s become ridiculously predictable. And, as a result of his presumed unpredictability, he’s let his guard down. So, like I said before, Brandon might be good, but I’m better.”
Scott studied her with renewed appreciation. “So where’s the chink in his armor?”
“Sunset,” Riley answered. “Or just right before. It’s when he most frequently leaves the office, either to go home or to go out for dinner if he’s pulling an all-nighter. It’s probably my best chance to get into his office and have time to search for anything useful without having to worry about him walking in on me.”
“Sunset? Isn’t that pretty dangerous?” Scott asked. He glanced at the bathroom door again, indicating the man—the vampire, he mentally corrected—on the other side. “I mean, that’s when they come out, isn’t it? You’re not concerned you’re going to run into one of those?”
“Last time we ran into some, I killed three of them by myself,” Riley said. “I think I’ll be fine.”
“God, I hope so,” he said. He rubbed at his eyes as another wave of exhaustion washed over him, and then he checked his watch. “Look, it’s almost one in the afternoon. You’ve got several more hours before you make your move to Brandon’s office. Why don’t we try to get some rest before then so we can be fresh for whatever comes once the sun sets?”
Riley looked down at the papers scattered over the bed for a moment and then shifted her eyes to his face again. “I think I can deal with that,” she agreed. “But only if you help me clean up this mess.”
Chapter Eighteen
When Zachariah woke up, his neck was stiff and his lower back hurt from sitting slouched against the bathtub all day. Exhaustion pounded at his temples, and his eyes were cloudy with sleep. He closed his eyes again and took in a deep, ragged breath. Somehow, he’d instinctively known the moment the sun had dipped below the horizon, like he had an alarm clock installed in the back of his mind. It was a strange feeling.
He pushed the sleeve of his dress shirt up to check his watch; it was nearly eight. Sighing, he climbed to his feet, the cramped muscles in his thighs protesting the movement, and clung to the edge of the sink as he tried to get his bearings. Hotel room. Riley. Scott. He stared at himself in the mirrored wall over the sink. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and his skin was even paler than the night before, beginning to take on the porcelain-like pallor that all of the vampire elders had: stark white and flawless, like marble or limestone. He touched his cheek with a fingertip and closed his eyes.
There were twinges of something tweaking at the back of his mind, sensations and feelings that weren’t his own. Exhaustion, worry, stress, even a burst of anger. A smile twitched at the corner of his lips. It was Ashton’s emotions he felt, he realized, the hectic turmoil that always passed over the man’s face when things weren’t going his way. Elise had told him it was possible to make a mental connection with a person, but he hadn’t known it would be like this.
Zachariah pressed both hands to his face and rubbed his cheeks vigorously, as if he could massage the nonexistent warmth back into them. He splashed warm water on his face three times, and it was only then that he began to feel well enough to face the world outside the bathroom door.
He scooped up his leather jacket and shrugged it on. As he did so, he found himself reaching out with his senses beyond the bathroom door, assessing the hotel room on the other side. He wasn’t alone in the hotel room; someone was moving around, papers rustling and soft words muttered under breath as the person beyond talked to himself. Fishing his sunglasses out of his jacket pocket, he slipped them on and unlocked the door, stepping out into the hotel room with only a small flutter of nervousness in his gut.
As he emerged, he looked around the room, scanning his surroundings before settling on Scott. He was pacing back and forth alongside the bed, grimacing at a cheap cell phone, as if he’d developed a personal grudge against it. Zachariah stepped toward the other man, stopping a few feet away, tracking Scott with his eyes as the man rotated on his heel and strode back toward the bed again. Scott glanced at him but didn’t say anything as he scowled and jabbed a few buttons on his phone. “Where’s Riley?” he asked.
“Don’t you think I wish I knew?” Scott grumbled, mashing another button on his cell phone. His thumb hovered over the green call button, but he didn’t press it. “She went out on a fact-finding mission.”
“What sort of a fact-finding mission?” Zachariah asked. Scott glanced at him again but didn’t answer. His silence spoke for itself. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“I’m not sure why I should,” Scott muttered.
Zachariah raised an eyebrow, letting it arch above the top of his sunglasses. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“What do you think it means, Zachariah?” Scott snapped. He stopped his pacing and turned to face him, staring at him, his eyes locked onto Zachariah’s sunglasses as if he could see right through the dark lenses. “We’re taught from the moment we entered the Agency training program to trust no one. And now I’m faced with the prospect of trusting you with information about Riley and her activities when you’ve given me absolutely no reason to go against my training!”
“You’ve already gone against your training,” Zachariah pointed out. “Just by helping me, you’re going against it.”
“Don’t fucking remind me.”
Scott went back to his pacing after that. Zachariah watched him silently for several minutes, wondering at his change in attitude since that morning. When Zachariah had first arrived at the hotel, Scott had seemed confident, though frazzled at the early morning intrusion. And even as Zachariah had laid out his revelations of what had happened to him, that confidence hadn’t wavered. Instead, even knowing the potential consequences, Scott had stepped up to the plate and agreed to help him. Zachariah didn’t understand why. Scott was very much a by-the-book kind of agent; it was half of the reason why Ashton had personally chosen Scott to be brought over to The Unnaturals program. Which was why his seemingly borderline impulsive agreement the morning before had so surprised Zachariah.
That didn’t explain the man’s newfound agitation, though. Perhaps he was beginning to regret his decision.
Unless, of course, Scott’s agitation had nothing to do with him. And in that case…
Zachariah looked at the sheets of paper scattered across the bedspread. He went to the bed and began to shuffle through the papers, examining each one to see what he might glean from them before approaching Scott for information. He frowned as his eyes lingered on the signature on most of the forms, and he didn’t glance at Scott as he asked, “So what have you two learned? Anything useful?”
“Oh, you mean other than the fact that Brandon Hall might be a traitor?” Scott sniped.
Zachariah raised an eyebrow again and nudged a paper aside with a fingertip. “Is it sa
d that I can say that that news would not totally surprise me?” he asked. He paused as he looked at one of the forms, and then he asked, “So what did you find out that makes you think that he’s a traitor?”
Scott turned around from the window to face him, his eyes flickering to the forms scattered on the bed. He blew out a breath and ran a hand through his dark hair, obviously a nervous habitual gesture, before he said, “Other than what we found in those papers, not a whole lot. Just call it a gut instinct.”
“Agents live off of gut instincts,” Zachariah pointed out. “You shouldn’t ignore it if it’s talking to you.” He dropped a fingertip on top of one of the papers and frowned. “I don’t think this is his handwriting,” he said, testing Scott and his commitment and level of trust to Riley. “It’s a pretty good copy, but something about it is a little off.”
“Riley says it is,” Scott replied.
“I thought you said you didn’t trust her.”
“Well, I trust her on this one.”
“And yet you won’t trust me,” Zachariah said.
“Why don’t you start proving why I should? Why don’t you give me some fucking information on why you came after Riley and me to transfer to begin with?”
“It’s classified,” Zachariah said.
“Wrong answer,” Scott snarled, his tone low and promising violence.
Anger washed over Zachariah, and he lunged forward, grabbed Scott by the front of his t-shirt, and slammed him against the nearest wall. The cheap-looking print of a ship at sea rattled on the sheetrock before the entire framed photograph fell to the floor with a crack.
“Let me go,” Scott ordered coldly.
The Unnaturals (The Unnaturals Series Book 1) Page 27
