Riley stuffed the gun into a side pocket of her backpack and made sure it was secured. “Is he following us?” she demanded, scrambling to keep pace with Scott’s longer stride. She squeezed Linus tightly against her chest, almost hugging it, and felt the edges of the box through the canvas. Reassured of the weapon’s presence, she slipped the bag onto her shoulders and shrugged it into place.
Scott looked back over his shoulder without being obvious about it. “Car’s gone. He probably took it. I don’t see him heading in our direction on the street.”
Riley let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and grasped the strap on her bag tighter as she skirted around a scantily clad woman. “Why exactly did we do that?” she asked.
“Because we don’t know him,” Scott explained. “And we can’t risk trusting him. Not with this. If he wasn’t a vampire, then maybe, but considering what’s in that bag, I don’t want to risk it.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We should find somebody who is on our side to help us,” Scott said. “Only I don’t even know if anybody is on our side.”
“I don’t trust anyone else,” Riley admitted. “Zachariah…he seemed like he was helping us, but…I don’t know. He was hiding shit, and he didn’t seem inclined to giving us all of the information we needed to stay alive. That’s as good as trying to kill us in my book.”
“I thought the same thing,” Scott said. He slid his hand from her bicep to her hand and grasped it tightly, as if he wanted to maintain some form of connection between them so they wouldn’t get separated. Riley certainly wasn’t going to object. Her insides felt jittery and skittish, and she felt like she was waiting for the shoe—or a vampire—to drop from above. She fought the growing urge to look up. Surely a vampire wouldn’t attack them on a street bustling with Washington’s night-lifers, would it?
“What about Ashton?” Riley suggested as Scott led her across the street. “Maybe he could help us.”
Scott shook his head. “No, not Ashton,” he said. “I think he would side with Zachariah no matter what.”
Riley sighed. “Yeah, you’re probably right,” she acknowledged. “So you’re the plan man. What are we going to do?”
Scott tugged her into the darkened doorway of a closed storefront and dug into his pockets, searching for and removing his wallet. He thumbed through the contents and pulled out the credit card Zachariah had given them. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he started. “We need to go to ground and keep this thing away from all parties involved until we can figure out who we can trust with it.” He held up the credit card between his thumb and forefinger. “They’ll be able to track us with it.”
Riley gave him a slow smile and nodded. “And this is where my skills come in,” she said. “I’ve got a cache here in D.C. that we can raid. Money, weapons, whatever we need, it’s probably there.”
“First, I have an idea,” Scott said. “We’re going to buy plane tickets using this.” He waved the credit card. “Then we’re going to steal a car and ditch the card. It won’t take long for them to realize that we never got on the plane, but it will buy us a little time to split in a different direction.”
Riley laughed. “Classic misdirection,” she said with a smile. “An oldie but a goodie. I approve.”
“Covering my tracks is what I’m best at,” Scott said, shrugging as if it were no big deal.
“So where are we going then?” Riley asked, tucking a lock of hair that had slipped free of her ponytail behind her ear. “Or do you not know yet?”
“Well, first I want to go after that cache you mentioned,” he said. “The closest cache of mine is in Atlanta, so that’s not going to do us any good at this point. Then I want us to find the cheapest, most hole-in-the-wall motel we can find, something that we’d be least likely to be suspected of grabbing a room at, and I want to hole up there while we plan our next move.” He paused and patted at his pockets, pulling his cell phone free. “Give me your phone.”
Riley sighed and rolled her eyes, pulling her cell phone free from her pocket and passing it to him. “Damn it, I just bought this one,” she griped as he took it and set it on the concrete step beside his own.
“We’ll get you another one,” he promised, right before he slammed the heel of his shoe down on the phone. Riley cringed at the crunch of plastic and metal and looked away from the carnage as he crushed their cell phones to pieces. Damn but she loved her gadgets, and the violence before her was a painful thing to watch.
“Did you have to be so vicious about it?” Riley asked as Scott took a knee and fished the SIM cards out of the pulverized pile of cell phones.
Scott cut a glance in her direction and stuffed the cards into his pocket, then scooped up the phones’ remains and dumped them into a storm drain. “I will be as vicious as I need to be to keep us alive,” he said, motioning to her. “Now come on. We’ve got to move. Where is this cache of yours?”
“On the other side of town.”
“Shit.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “Well I’m sorry I wasn’t psychic enough to know that I should have set my cache up closer to this side of town,” she muttered. “Next time I place a cache, I’ll be sure to keep your needs and conveniences in mind.”
“Riley,” Scott said. Then he sighed and shook his head, letting whatever he had been about to say drop between them like a stone. He started down the sidewalk, and Riley followed, sticking close to him out of sheer pragmatism. “Did he hurt you?” he asked suddenly. The topic change sent Riley’s brains scrambling to catch up.
“What?”
“Zachariah. Your wrist,” Scott explained patiently. “Did he hurt you?”
Riley took a moment to think about it before she answered. The intervening minutes between their rush from the car and where they were now had distracted her from the pain in her wrist, but now that Scott had reminded her of it, the ache came back to the forefront of her mind with a vengeance. She grimaced and lifted her arm to look at it. “Hurts,” she admitted. “I think I can move it, though.”
“I’ll take a look at it as soon as we get to the motel,” Scott promised, sounding regretful. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“I should have jumped in sooner to help you,” he said. “I shouldn’t have waited until he had your arm before I put a stop to it.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Riley tried to assure him.
“He could have broken your arm.”
“But he didn’t, so don’t worry about it,” Riley said. She lifted her hand and rolled her wrist into a circle so he’d see that it was still functional. “See? I’m fine,” she said, trying to ignore the twinge of pain that darted through her wrist.
Scott sighed and shook his head again. “What about your side?”
“Doesn’t even hurt,” Riley said, truthfully this time. She slipped her hand back into Scott’s and gestured to the sidewalk ahead of them. “What do you say we set this plan in motion?” she said. “I’m ready to get to whatever motel we settle on so I can get a bloody bath.”
“Bad choice of words, Riley,” Scott commented.
Riley only laughed.
~*~
Zachariah’s frustration was almost overpowering. As he steered the car he and Scott had jacked from the hotel’s parking garage toward The Unnaturals headquarters—he’d opted to not go after Scott and Riley yet, as Riley was right about not trusting him with the weapon—he cursed himself for his stupidity and lack of openness with them. But it couldn’t be helped. It was too ingrained and instinctual to toss aside and spill to two people he’d practically just met.
Zachariah dug his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Ashton’s number. He’d told Ashton that he’d keep his distance for the man’s safety, but he didn’t want to dally anymore. Too much was going on, and he needed help. His natural instinct was to fall back on Ashton.
But Ashton wasn’t answering his cell phone.
Zachariah cursed again
and tossed the phone into the passenger seat, speeding up. His chest, stomach, and right bicep hurt where he’d been shot, and he could feel blood oozing from the wounds. But he was still alive—as alive as he could be considered to be, anyway—and his fury with himself drove him past the ache of his wounds and toward headquarters, where he’d hopefully find Ashton, who could patch him up without question or insistence that he visit a hospital.
At this point in his life, a hospital wouldn’t do him a lick of good.
Zachariah’s heart began to beat faster as he steered the car into Buzzard Point. His muscles ached, and he just wanted to lie on Ashton’s bed for an hour or two and rest before figuring out what to do next. For now, he supposed the weapon was safe from the vampires’ grasps—including his own—so he would trust Riley and Scott to keep it that way. Now he could focus on the primary reason Elise had taken him captive and turned him against his will: figuring out who had their dirty hands on her sister and freeing her. Because Zachariah couldn’t stand seeing a child victimized, vampire or not, and he wasn’t going to sit idly by while someone did so.
And considering the events of the night so far, he had a pretty damned good idea who had the young vampire.
A myriad of flashing blue, red, and white lights filled his vision, making his eyes burn and blinding him to the road ahead. He slowed the car to a stop, squinting and shielding his eyes against them. There were fire engines, police cars, and ambulances everywhere, emergency personnel swarming over a scene in the middle of the street. The nexus of the activity was right in front of The Unnaturals building. He swore and pulled over, slamming the car into park and darting out of it without bothering to close the door or turn off the engine. His hands shook as he dashed down the sidewalk, running as if his life depended on it, straight into the scene ahead.
“Not Ash, not Ash,” he breathed as desperation overcame him. He looked around the scene, eyes skimming across two mangled vehicles and a large quantity of blood on the sidewalk at the building’s front door. His stomach clenched at the sight.
He looked past it and, near the corner of the building, spotted two EMTs loading a stretcher laden with the body of a woman into an ambulance. It took him only seconds to recognize Angelique. Knowing she was the one Ashton usually turned to whenever Zachariah wasn’t available, he jogged to the ambulance and climbed into the back of it.
“Hey, you’re not supposed to be back here!” one of the EMTs exclaimed as he boarded the vehicle.
“I’ll be just a minute,” Zachariah said. He moved to the head of the stretcher where Angelique could see him. She was secured to a rigid board with straps and wore a collar that prevented her from moving, and when he looked into her eyes, she stared back at him with clarity. “Are you okay?” he asked her.
“I will be,” she said, her voice pitched low so only he could hear it.
“Ash?”
Angelique hesitated and then shook her head almost imperceptibly. She didn’t know. “He was with me until—” She broke off. Until she’d been shot, Zachariah filled in. “I tried to get him out of there. I tried to protect—”
“Shh, don’t worry, Angelique,” Zachariah murmured. He grasped her hand and squeezed it. “I’ll find him.”
“I know you will.”
He squeezed her hand one more time and then left her, stepping off the truck to head back to his car. Instead of passing through the scene before him, he skirted the corner of the building and walked along the rear of it. Though it was dangerous to contemplate, he went to the back door and keyed in the passcode to unlock it, slipping inside and pulling it shut.
The warehouse complex was quiet. A cluster of agents and researchers stood near the front of the building, talking amongst themselves, but there was no one near his and Ashton’s office. No one noticed him as he slipped into the office. He took a few moments to examine his surroundings. Ashton’s desk was in disarray—a sight he rarely saw—and his own was equally as messy. His machete was on top of the paperwork littering his cherry wood desk; he’d grab it on his way out the door, even though he didn’t need it anymore. He just felt naked without it.
Zachariah started toward the bedroom door but paused as he saw Ashton’s coffee mug on the floor, the handle broken off and the coffee splashed on the wall and staining the carpet. He picked it up and set it on the side table beside the coffee maker. It felt like sacrilege to leave the mug on the floor. Once it was back where it should have been, he drew in a deep breath and stepped into Ashton’s bedroom.
The scent of the other man hit him like a slap in the face. He stopped short and closed his eyes, grasping the doorframe as he simply stood there and breathed. Then he opened his eyes and examined the room for clues.
There wasn’t much to be seen. The bed was unmade and the sheets rumpled, a stray shirt hung half out of the hamper, and a number of books about vampires were scattered across the bed. He raised an eyebrow.
Despite the events of the past few days, the stress he was under, and the exhaustion he felt, Zachariah couldn’t stop the smile that spread across his face. Even with everything that happened and in the face of every rule the Agency and The Unnaturals had, Ashton was fighting for him.
He’d be damned if he didn’t fight for him in return.
Now he just had to figure out where to start.
A cell phone ringing broke the silence in the office. He stepped back into the office to search out the source; it was buried under the papers scattered all over Ashton’s desk, and the caller ID displayed Henry Cage’s name. He debated letting it ring through but decided against it; maybe Henry knew something he didn’t, and if he was going to try to find Ashton, he needed to start using every avenue available to him to collect information. He flipped the phone open and put it to his ear.
“Ashton?” Henry’s voice came through the earpiece.
“Nope, Zachariah,” he said, pushing some of the papers on Ashton’s desk around. There were a lot of notes about vampires, and he recognized a few scraps from his files. He almost chuckled at Ashton’s predictability.
“Where’s Ashton?”
“I was hoping you could tell me that, Cage,” Zachariah said. “The UHQ got attacked earlier, Angelique is on her way to the hospital in the back of an ambulance, and Ashton is missing in action.”
“Ashton is missing?” Henry exclaimed.
Zachariah rolled his eyes. “Did I stutter? Yes, he’s missing. I don’t know who took him or where they took him. Yet. But when I find out, they’re dead.”
“Good luck to you,” Henry said. “I might have something that’s somewhat connected to this.”
“Oh yeah? If it’s not Ashton’s current location, then I don’t want to hear it,” Zachariah replied.
“I think Brandon Hall’s got something to do with the twenty-seven murders,” Henry said, apparently ignoring what Zachariah had just said. “And I think he’s trying to frame Riley for it.”
“Oh, what, you just noticed?” Zachariah asked, rolling his eyes as he jabbed a key on the computer keyboard to look at Ashton’s computer. It prompted for a password—one of the few things about him that Zachariah didn’t know—so he abandoned it and instead shoved a few more papers aside. “I started suspecting that right about the same time a vampire told me that someone in the Agency was involved in all of this shit. And that it wasn’t a female agent, which ruled Riley right out.”
“What I haven’t figured out is the vampire connection,” Henry said.
Zachariah growled under his breath and pushed away from the desk. “He’s got a vampire doing his dirty work for him,” he said. “It looks like the only time he may have gotten personally involved in one of the assassinations was the Kevin Anderson one, when he presumably shot him twice from across the street. Otherwise, he had the vampire doing it for him.”
“How do you know all this?” Henry asked.
“Because the vampire told me,” Zachariah muttered.
“Well then,” Henry said. He fell silent
for a moment before asking, “So how in the world is he getting a vampire to do his dirty work?”
“He’s got vampire lady’s sister held captive under threat of death if vampire lady doesn’t do what he tells her to do,” Zachariah said, moving back to his desk and starting to dig for weapons without having to go to the armory.
“And how do you know all this?”
“Because vampire lady told me,” he said. “Now if you can’t tell me where Ashton is, then I have nothing more to talk about right now.”
“I don’t know where he is, but Vanessa and I will dig up what we can and call you back,” Henry promised. “Should I call you on your phone or his?”
“My phone, but I’m going to bring his with me,” he said. “Call me the second you know something.”
Zachariah hung up without waiting on an acknowledgement and stuffed Ashton’s phone into his jacket pocket. He’d found two pistols and a boot knife in his desk drawers, along with a couple of magazines of silvered ammunition. It wasn’t much, but coupled with his newfound abilities, it would be enough.
Now he just had to find out where the hell his partner was, and then he would be all set to storm the metaphorical castle.
Chapter Twenty
After they had purchased their red herring plane tickets to Dallas and gathered their weapons from the cache Riley had—in a dump of a storage unit in a neighborhood so rough that Scott was amazed that no one had broken into the unit yet—he found them a motel to crash in for the remainder of the night, his wallet sorely depleted of cash from the cab fares and his exhaustion whacking him on the back of the head like a two-by-four. Riley had been silent for the majority of the time they’d run their errands, and she didn’t speak until they’d entered the motel room at almost two in the morning.
“Who’s taking first watch?” she asked. Her voice was hushed, strained with a suppressed emotion Scott couldn’t identify. He watched as her dark eyes swept the room, taking in the water-stained wallpaper, the two double beds with their ugly comforters, and the clunky old television that didn’t have the courtesy to be a flat-screen. It was all a drastic step down from the hotel they’d stayed in previously; that had been Scott’s intention. Because who would have voluntarily gone from a four-star hotel to something that barely scraped a one?
The Unnaturals (The Unnaturals Series Book 1) Page 30
