Burned

by Dean Murray

  That wasn't the way that facial recognition worked, and we both knew it. Every time I drove under a traffic camera or stepped into a store with video feeds, there was a chance that I would throw an electronic flag somewhere and bring half a dozen Coun'hij enforcers down on myself. I was taking my life into my own hands, but I couldn't bring myself to stay where I might have to see Alec again.

  "I know that you're hurting right now, Adri, but leaving our group isn't the answer. You need to stick with Heath and me. We can't guarantee your safety, but we can come close."

  I opened my mouth to argue with him, but he talked over the top of me.

  "We'll go with you—all of us. That way you'll be safe and never have to see Alec again."

  "I appreciate the offer, Taggart, but we both know that can't happen. I'm mad as hell, but that's not a good reason to let the entire Tucson pack die."

  Taggart was already shaking his head. "You're missing the bigger picture here, Adri. Whether we go with you or not, this coalition is finished. None of us can afford to ally ourselves with someone who can lie with impunity. If Alec can do this to you after telling everyone that Brindi was nothing more than an obligation, then we can't trust anything he's said to us up until now. Everything—including the intelligence that brought us down here—could be nothing more than a ruse to lure us into a position where Kaleb and the rest can kill us.

  "Whether you want us to leave or not is beside the point, Adri. We're all leaving here—within the hour. It's just a question of whether or not you'll agree to come along."

  Chapter 16

  Alec Graves

  The Caravan RV Park

  Tucson, Arizona

  I left Adri's motel room at a run, and I didn't slow down until I was out of sight of the main road and all of the buildings. Even then I slowed only long enough to strip out of my clothes and shift forms. Back home I would have been risking punishment for shifting out in plain sight, but that was the last thing I was thinking of as I tore away from the RV park, all four legs a blur.

  I ran without paying any attention to where I was going, or how far I'd traveled. I couldn't get lost, not with a nose that was sensitive enough to retrace a trail that was days old, but I needed to get away from everyone. I couldn't bear the thought of looking anyone in the eyes—not after Adri had made such a fool out of me. She was right, my inability to see her deception before now called into question my very ability to lead the wolves and hybrids I'd gathered together down here.

  I ran for nearly half an hour before my conscience started bothering me. My anger and shame hadn't grown any weaker, but with every step I took I knew that I was carrying myself further away from people who were depending on me to defend them. Maybe I would ultimately lose control of both groups of shape shifters, but for now I owed it to them to get them all out of Tucson alive.

  I fought off the guilt for another twenty minutes before I finally turned around. Every step I took was a dagger being driven into my side, but once I got started moving I knew I had to keep pressing forward. If I stopped there was just too much chance that I would turn and run away.

  Part of me had been hoping to be able to sneak back to my RV without being noticed by anyone, but I knew that wasn't going to happen as soon as I crested the small rise just outside of the RV park. My RV was surrounded by people, and they all seemed to be demanding that Brindi move to the side and let them enter. As I got closer I was able to hear them.

  "He's not in there, and before he left he made it clear that I wasn't supposed to let anyone inside."

  Jasmin bristled at Brindi's words. "You don't get to tell us what we can or can't do. You're less than nothing. You have no standing inside of our pack. You're nothing more than a dirty sk—"

  Carson grabbed Jasmin by the arm and pulled her back out of reach of Brindi. "He's not in there, Jasmin—his scent trail clearly left here an hour ago and didn't return. If you want to know where he is, then track him—his SUV is still here so he can't have gone very far."

  Jasmin ripped her arm free and turned on Carson with a fury that would have gotten her into a fight if she'd been dealing with someone less even-keeled than Carson.

  "That's what I've been trying to tell everyone. I tried to track him. He walked away from here and headed off to the motel, but then his trail just disappeared."

  "Somebody picked him up in a vehicle?"

  "No—I'm not an idiot. No vehicles crossed over his trail at any point in the last hour. He disappeared. I've never seen anything like it. That's why I want answers out of this human skank. Isaac's people have been gone for more than twenty minutes and when I tried to find out what was going on, that Nellie chick threatened to rip my face off. She's a submissive through and through, but she was ready to go eight rounds with me if I pressed the issue."

  Jess moved over to stand at Jasmin's back. "I got more than that out of Dominic. They are leaving because Adri caught Alec getting ready to screw Brindi. They are all freaked out because nobody knew that Alec could lie that well. He's told all of us that he didn't return Brindi's obsession."

  Shock at what I was hearing had slowed my pace, but the fury and fear that the wind was carrying to me weren't the kind of thing I could let fester. I needed to be down there dealing with the rumors.

  Even now I was having a hard time believing that Adri had started such a nasty rumor about me just to hide her own transgressions. She hadn't seemed the least bit concerned about me walking in on her and Tristan at the time, but she must have had second thoughts about what that information would do to her relationship with Taggart and the others.

  I raced down to my people and threw myself into the air, changing between one heartbeat and the next.

  "Everything you've heard in the last hour has been a lie. Earlier today I walked in on Adri and Tristan making out in Adri's room. I…it was too much for me to deal with so I left. I've spent the last hour and a half running in the hopes it would clear my head. I'm sorry that I left you all here like that—it was the wrong thing to do, but I won't be repeating that mistake again."

  I expected everyone to nod and relax. Instead everything from their scents to their body language was screaming that they were getting more confused and distrustful by the second.

  James pushed his way through to the front of the crowd, and when he spoke there was a pleading note to his voice that I hadn't ever heard out of him before.

  "So you walked in on them, and then came back here and made out with Brindi as a way of getting back at Adri?"

  "No, of course not. I walked in on them and then I left directly from Adri's room. I haven't been back here since I woke up. I never made out with Brindi—that's just a red herring that Adri threw out there to convince Isaac and the others to leave. She must have thought that would be enough to keep everyone from finding out what she did, but I'm not going to let her get away with it. I'm going to call Jack and get him to send over the satellite feeds for this area. We're going to track Adri and the rest down, and I'm going to make her acknowledge what she did in front of everyone she cares about."

  Carson was shaking his head. "You can't force Isaac and the rest to bend knee to you right now, Alec. They'll fight you on it. I'm not even sure—"

  "No. They don't get to play the free will card on me—not right now, not after abandoning our operation on nothing more than Adri's say-so, on nothing more than a bald-faced lie that would have taken less than two minutes to confirm or disprove."

  "It's not a lie."

  I rounded on Rachel, quivering with rage, and only the fact that she was my sister and a human stopped me from throwing her into the side of my RV.

  "How dare you. Is this why you wanted to rejoin us? So you could undermine me? It's not going to work, Rach. The fact that you're the only other heir to the monarchy isn't going to carry any water with the packs. If you were a shape shifter it might be enough, but a bunch of hybrids aren't going to agree to follow a human."

  Rachel looked as terrified as she sme
lled, but she refused to back down. "You're not listening to us, Alec. It's not a lie. Look at everyone, and then look at Brindi. You're right, I'm not a shape shifter, but even I can tell she's got a guilty conscience."

  Rachel was right. I looked at Brindi, and the guilt streaming off of her was so intense that I couldn't believe I hadn't smelled it already. She looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere, but she squared her shoulders.

  "It's true. I'm sorry, Alec. At one point I would have done just about anything for you, but I'm not that person anymore. I want to be with you so badly I can barely think sometimes, but not like this."

  I shook my head, trying to understand what I was hearing. It didn't make any sense. I knew Brindi. We'd spent an incredible amount of time together over the last few weeks. She wasn't a very good liar. She did okay for a human, but I'd caught her in several lies early on in our acquaintance, and she'd had a lot more on the line back then than she did right now.

  Even more mind-boggling, all of the incentives were pointing the wrong direction. By lying and telling everyone that we'd made out—that Adri had caught us making out—she was cutting herself off from everything she'd seemed to like about her life lately. Adri and Taggart couldn't possibly keep her in spending money forever, and even if they could, she was risking her life by doing this. She was addicted to me—so much so that she'd nearly died just a few hours ago.

  "Have you found someone else you can transfer your skin addiction to? It's the only rational explanation for why you'd be lying right now."

  "What? No. I'm not lying, Alec. You came back a few minutes after you left, and you kissed me. We…we were making out, and then Adri walked in on us."

  My beast was getting angrier by the second, but my emotions weren't that straightforward. I felt like someone had pulled the rug out from under me.

  "I don't know what is going on here, but I promise you all that I haven't kissed Brindi. I walked in on Adri and Tristan and then I left. That's it. I know that Brindi smells like she's telling the truth—maybe she really believes that's what happened, but it's not."

  Carson shook his head. "Isaac and Taggart wouldn't have pulled their people out like that unless they were convinced that Adri was telling the truth. When you add in Brindi's testimony it becomes all but impossible to believe your version of events."

  Grayson had been standing quietly in the back of the group, but now he spoke up. "It's a lot more likely that you are an expert liar than that both Brindi and Adri are both capable of lying with impunity."

  His voice was incredibly dispassionate for someone who had flown down here in the hopes that I would be able to offer him the redemption he needed. His calm delivery was more convincing to the rest of my people than any impassioned accusation could have been.

  I tried to put the pieces together. Was Grayson in on it? It had been hard enough to believe that Brindi would be working with Adri on an effort to discredit me.

  In the human world, the world where everything was more straightforward, the possible explanations for all of this would have been limited, but we didn't live in that world. I suddenly realized just how blind I'd been.

  "It was Heath. I walked in on Adri and she realized that she had to convince everyone that I was the bad guy. He came here pretending like he was me, and then she walked in on the two of you. She planned it from the start, and his ability to control what people see and smell meant that there wasn't any way you could have known it wasn't me."

  I had them—not all the way, but there was finally an explanation for what had happened, an explanation that would mean they could still trust me. They needed that hope almost as badly as they needed to breathe. We were all wanted men and women, and there was a limit to how long any of us could survive simply by running. They needed me, needed me to serve as a focal point just as much as they needed me to help fight their battles.

  I had them right up until Brindi opened her mouth again. "It was you, Alec. I want it to be Heath, but I've brushed up against Heath before and he doesn't feel like you do. It felt like you. It was the same buzz, the same everything…just more."

  I shook my head. "No, this is the answer. I can't explain it all—not yet—but somebody used their power to set me up. Maybe Heath's power is broader than we've been led to believe—maybe it wasn't even him. I don't know for sure what happened, but that wasn't me."

  Between one breath and the next it hit me. "Go to Adri's room. I put a big hole in it, and my scent will be there from before Adri came over here. There's hard evidence that my story is the truth."

  James took off without waiting to see if anyone was going to join him. I pulled out my phone and walked several steps away before dialing Jack. Based on the way that everyone was shifting around as though unsure if they should be stopping me from making that particular call, I didn't want them overhearing Jack's half of the conversation.

  "Hey, it's me. I need you to get your hands on a satellite feed from this area for the last hour. Half of our force picked up and left without telling me what was going on. I need to track them down—the sooner the better."

  "Okay, I'll see what I can pull up, but it's going to take some time, and it will be expensive. Hacking the NSA isn't something that happens at the drop of the hat."

  Jack didn't sound thrilled at being handed another impossible assignment, but he also didn't sound like he'd heard Adri's version of events down here yet.

  "I don't care about the cost—just make it happen as quickly as you can."

  A second after I hung up from Jack, my phone rang again. It wasn't a number I recognized, but that was hardly unusual these days.

  "Yeah?"

  "I know that you have every reason to hang up on me, but I implore you to listen."

  I knew that voice. It was the man who'd been in the background of most of my childhood memories, the man who'd supported my mother time and time again, the man who'd still believed there was good in her even after she'd been willing to let Kaleb sell Rachel off to Vincent. It was Donovan.

  "There is one reason, and one reason only, that I haven't already hung up on you. The last time we saw each other you did something that could have gotten you killed. I haven't forgotten that. I do, however, want to know how you got this number."

  "This call is encrypted—we can use names, Master Alec. As to the how, your father has deeper penetration into the phone companies than you might imagine. His people have been analyzing the phone traffic in Arizona for days in an effort to track you down. They identified this number as belonging to you less than an hour ago."

  Donovan sounded tired, like he was feeling every one of his two-plus centuries of existence. I didn't blame him—right then I wanted nothing so much as to just curl up in a ball and go to sleep in the hopes that when I woke up all of my problems would prove to be nothing more than a bad dream.

  "I'm dealing with a host of problems right now, and you've just told me that every single communication I've had with any of my allies is now suspect. This better not just be a social call."

  "You're dealing with problems because the Coun'hij—your father—has an operative down there. I'll deal with the fact that your number has been compromised. Kaleb has a virus that can go after specific numbers—I've already loaded it up to the phone company and by this time tomorrow your call history on that number will be wiped clean—even the backup files will be corrupted and unusable. That's not your real problem."

  "You're right—my real problem is that operative. They've already created massive issues. Do you have confirmation who it is that's been turned?"

  "No. Mistress Samantha put together the intelligence based on something minor your father said in passing."

  I wanted to rub my eyes, but appearances were especially important right then. "Okay, thank you for the heads up—I hope that you didn't take too great of a risk in reaching out to me. Thanks for deleting my call history as well."

  "Of course, Master Alec. May I ask what you're going to do about your fat
her's operative?"

  "There's only one person it could be. I'm going to hunt them down and kill them."

  After everything else that had happened I shouldn't have been surprised by the reaction I got out of my people as I hung up my phone. Jasmin was the first to protest—even though she knew that she had no chance against me if I took exception to her challenge.

  "No. I refuse to be party to that. Heath has always been decent to all of us. You can't just execute him—not without more proof than this."

  "I just got a call from someone in Sanctuary, a contact who gets bits and pieces of Kaleb's plans. They just confirmed that Kaleb has an operative down here, an operative Kaleb is overjoyed is making life hard for us."

  "That's awfully convenient. You needed independent confirmation of your implausible theory, and then within seconds of hanging up from your call with Jack, you have it. We're not stupid, Alec. You had some kind of code word in there that told Jack you'd been compromised and needed him to call back to back up your story."

  She turned to leave. I let her take three steps—just far enough to confirm that everyone else was going to follow her—and then I ripped the cover off of the black hole in the center of my being. They all collapsed between one breath and the next—even Carson.

  "You will hear me out. I'm not going to tell you who just called me, but it was the one person still living in Sanctuary who hasn't lost my respect. I believe them, and I'm going to act on their information. You may not like that, but I don't need your help to execute one hybrid—not even a hybrid as formidable as Heath. I'm not asking you along because I need your permission to kill him, I'm ordering you to accompany me because we still have a mission to finish up down here.

  "You want to go your separate ways? Fine. You can leave after we're done with what we set out to do. We're either going to extract Jaclyn and all of her people, or we're going to spring whatever trap Kaleb and the rest are trying to close around her neck. You leave now, and our operational security will be even more blown than it already is."