by Nina Croft
The thoughts whirled in her head as she led the two werewolves down the dark corridors. Maria seemed to gain strength with each step she took and soon she was walking unaided.
Anya stopped by a small ground floor window at the back of the building, and she turned to face Travis.
“The alarm will go off when I break the window. You’ll have about two minutes to reach the perimeter.” She pulled the gun from out of her pants and held it out to him. “Here, take this.”
He shook his head. “Keep it. We’ll shift as soon as we’re out of here.”
“Wait until you’re over the wall,” Anya said. “There are cameras inside the grounds.”
He looked at her closely. “You’re not coming with us?”
“I can’t. I have something I need to finish here.”
“Okay and thank you. We owe you a debt.” He turned back to the window.
“Wait,” Anya said.
Travis and Maria both turned to look at her.
Anya bit her lip. “Tell Natasha that I would have liked to meet her.”
“Who are you?” Maria asked again.
This time Anya answered. “I’m Natasha’s sister.”
Without waiting for a reply, she raised the pistol and smashed the glass, knocking out the jagged edges. Immediately, the shrill ring of the alarms filled her ears. “Go!”
Maria scrambled through the window, dropping to the soft grass below. Travis followed. He glanced up once then they were both away. Racing across the lawn. It was only a hundred yards to the wall and within seconds they were over and had vanished into the night. Anya stood for a moment until she heard the howl of a wolf then she turned and hurried away.
Natasha was alive, and Anya wanted to live so badly it burned a fiery pit in her chest. She had only one chance—to find a supply of the medicine they gave her. If she found the pills, it would buy her some time; without them, she would be dead within days. She remembered Sebastian saying he had given one to a doctor for analysis. Maybe they would find something. Maybe they would help her. But how likely was that? She might have saved two of his people tonight, but she had also caused the death of one of them. Jonas had died because of her. Sebastian would never forgive her for that.
She made her way back to the medical center. In the distance, she could hear the thud of booted feet. They’d go first to the window where the breach had been, but she didn’t have long.
She forced down the panic and looked around her. Where would they keep them? She started on the overhead cabinets, methodically taking out tubes and bottles, tossing them on the floor behind her when they proved useless. By the time she’d finished the cabinets, her panic was rising again. She emptied whole drawers onto the floor, crouched down and pawed through the contents, but found nothing. They had to be here somewhere.
The door clicked open.
Anya whirled around, reaching for the pistol.
Too late. She stared into the barrel of a gun and watched as the finger tightened on the trigger.
Chapter Eight
“She’s still alive,” Tasha said.
At her words, Sebastian paused his pacing of the office and turned to face her. “Sorry?”
“Maria. She’s still alive. I can sense her.”
He should have felt relief, but nothing could ease the black guilt that saturated his mind. Maria might be alive now, but for how long? They were no closer to finding where she had been taken, and he’d allowed the one person who might have had that information to escape.
Tasha sat on the edge of the sofa, nibbling on her lower lip. “It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it is.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but Jack spoke first. “He’s right—it is his fault.” He shook his head, his green eyes mocking. “How the hell did this woman manage to knock you out?”
Sebastian had no clue. He’d swear the jug had been nowhere near her hand, but then his mind had been on other things. He had a flashback to the feel of her hot wet mouth engulfing his cock. The sweet taste of her on his tongue.
Even now, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He shifted uncomfortably.
“Ahh,” Jack said. “That’s how.”
“Am I missing something?” Tasha asked.
“At a guess, your esteemed alpha allowed his dick to overrule his brain.” Jack studied Sebastian, one eyebrow raised. “I’d like to meet this woman.”
Sebastian scowled. “Well, it doesn’t look as though that’s going to happen any time soon.”
The front door slammed. A moment later, Riley hurried into the room, closely followed by Travis and Maria, both dressed in grey sweatpants and matching T-shirts. Clothes left in the foyer for any returning wolves.
Sebastian leapt to his feet, the tight band around his chest easing. Maria looked a mess, her whole body drooping with exhaustion, but she was alive. She was also staring at Natasha, a curious look in her eyes.
“Sit down,” Sebastian ordered.
The two sank side by side onto the sofa, and Riley handed them both a drink.
“Now tell me what happened,” Sebastian said.
Travis swallowed his beer in one gulp then looked at Sebastian. He appeared surprised at the question. “Weren’t you expecting us?”
“Why would I be expecting you?”
“You sent the woman to get us out of there.”
“I didn’t send anyone. We didn’t even know where you were being held.”
Travis frowned. “She told me you’d sent her. Why would she lie about that?”
“So we would go with her,” Maria answered the question.
“What did she look like?” Sebastian asked.
“Tall, slender, shoulder-length blond hair.”
Sebastian’s whole body stiffened as a wave of hope washed through him. “Anya.” It had to be Anya, but nothing made sense. Why would she knock him out, then go back and rescue his people?
“Who’s Anya?” Tasha asked.
Maria looked at her strangely. “She said she was your sister.”
Tasha jumped to her feet. “What?” She spun around to face Sebastian. “Did you know?”
“Not the sister bit. Anya is the assassin who tried to kill me.” Sebastian ran a hand through his hair. It was beginning to make sense. Not good sense, but sense. “We’ve been following leads to find your family,” he said, getting the thoughts straight as he spoke. “We’d traced them to an organization called the Agency that we’ve been investigating for years. They’re a private company, but big, with connections everywhere, in the military, the government. My guess is we got too close and they picked up that they were being investigated. They sent someone to take out pack members. Then two nights ago they sent an assassin to kill me.”
“Well, they obviously didn’t succeed,” Jack drawled.
“We were ready for them and managed to capture the shooter. It was a woman. Her name was Anya.”
“And you let her seduce you, knock you on the head, and escape.” Jack’s tone held disbelief.
Sebastian stared at him through narrowed eyes. “It wasn’t quite like that.”
“Then how was it?”
Sebastian sat in silence for a moment. Tasha came to stand beside him, put a hand on his arm, and he stared up into those golden eyes. Eyes filled with hope. “Tell me about her,” she said.
He took a deep breath. “She was ill. I don’t know what was wrong with her, but I took her out of the cage…”
“Why?” Jack asked.
“I thought she was dying. Nobody should die in a cage. Connor didn’t know what was wrong with her, but she had some pills. I gave them to her and she seemed to get better. She wouldn’t talk though. Wouldn’t tell me where they were keeping the pack members they’d taken.” He crossed the room and poured himself a drink, came back to stand before Tasha. “Then you told me Jonas was dead. I was going to make her talk. Do whatever I had to.”
“So you thought you’d fuck her, and she’d be so impressed tha
t she’d tell you everything,” Jack said. “Instead, she whacked you over the head and got away. How the hell did you let that happen?”
Sebastian frowned. He thought back to that last memory of her. His head between her thighs, the taste of her on his tongue, her hands curled into his hair, gripping his skull. Both hands. It didn’t make sense. How could she have hit him? “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I’d swear she couldn’t have hit me, but something did. A jug actually, a stone jug, but it was on a table across the room. How… ” He broke off and shook his head.
“Telekinesis,” Natasha said.
“What?”
“When I was a prisoner at the Facility, they did tests on me. Tried to make me move things with my mind. I could never do it. But maybe my sister can.”
“Christ,” Sebastian muttered.
“So is she working with them?” Jack asked.
“She must be,” Sebastian replied. “She was good, and she’d been well trained. If we hadn’t been expecting her, she would have taken me out.”
“If she works for the Agency, why did she free Maria and Travis? And if she changed her mind, wanted out, why didn’t she come with them?”
“She said she had something she needed to finish,” Travis said.
“What?”
Sebastian could hear the frustration in Tasha’s voice.
Travis shrugged. “She also said to tell you, she would have liked to know you. It didn’t sound as though she was expecting to see you anytime soon. If at all.”
Sebastian heard the words, and fear trickled down his spine.
The Agency had to know she’d helped his wolves escape. And from what he had learned of them, they were a ruthless organization and would not take her betrayal lightly. Was she already dead? His whole mind rejected the idea.
Tasha had dropped into the chair behind her. “Oh, God. Why didn’t she come back? Why did she have to stay behind?”
Her question echoed Sebastian’s thoughts. Had she stayed because she was afraid of Sebastian? That he would want revenge for her escape?
Jack went to his wife, picked her up and sat with her in his lap. He stroked the long red hair from her face and murmured to her. “We’ll find her. We’ll get her back.”
“How?”
“We know where she is,” Sebastian said.
“Yes,” Jack replied. “But unfortunately, they know we know. We’re going to have to move fast or we’ll get there and find them gone.”
“There’s another scenario. They know who and where we are. They’ve come after me once. These guys have an army at their disposal. What’s to stop them coming after us first?”
“Would they risk the exposure?”
Sebastian shrugged. “They know what we are, that we won’t involve the authorities in this. I think they’ll come after us here.” He stood thinking for a moment. “Riley, I want you to get everybody out. Take Maria, but we’ll need Travis to lead us back there. Leave somebody out in the woods to watch this place. I want to know if anything happens.”
“Where do you want us to go?”
“You can go to my place, in the city,” Jack said. “It will be safe. Tasha will go with you.”
“No, I won’t.”
Jack looked at her, something passed between the two of them, and Jack nodded.
“Okay, let’s get out of here.”
Sebastian’s cell phone rang. He listened for a moment then shoved it in his pants pocket. “I think we’re too late. There’s a breach on the perimeter wall. It looks like they’re already here.”
Then the world exploded in a ball of light.
Chapter Nine
Anya lay on her back on the table, the steel icy cold against her spine. She wasn’t restrained in any way, but she couldn’t move. They’d given her some sort of drug and she’d lost all track of time. Now, her mind was alert, but her body refused to obey. She could turn her head just slightly, but beyond that, she could feel nothing. She closed her eyes tight and tried to control the panic that clawed at her insides.
All around, she could hear movement. They were tearing the Agency down, moving out. Soft footsteps crossed the tiled floor. They stopped beside her.
“I know you’re awake, Anya.”
She opened her eyes. Dr. Latham stood looking down at her. She’d always thought he had the coldest eyes she had ever seen, pale blue like ice.
“You can speak. Why did you do it? Why did you let them go?”
She tried to shake her head, but still couldn’t move. She swallowed. “You lied to me. You told me my sister had been killed.”
“So your sister is alive? We weren’t sure.”
The question gave her hope. They’d been asking Maria about Natasha, it was obvious they didn’t know where her sister was.
He studied her for a moment. “We did it for your own good. You were obsessed with finding your sister. It was probably a mistake to tell you about her existence.”
“Why did you?”
“You were becoming depressed. We thought it would give you something to live for. Hoped to regain your loyalty. You were a valuable asset. We didn’t want to lose you.”
An asset. Anya winced at the word. That was all she had ever been to the Agency. This man had known her from when she was born, but he still didn’t see her as a person.
“So what else have you lied about?” Latham asked. “Is Sebastian Quinn really dead?”
She didn’t answer, and he shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter anyway. We sent a team to take them out. I just got a message that the house has been destroyed.”
A wave of anguish swept through her. Sebastian couldn’t be dead. He’d been more full of life than anyone she had ever known. But maybe her sister was still alive. Maybe she could somehow regain the Agency’s trust, escape, find somewhere to belong.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“I’m not taking you anywhere.”
Latham reached out a hand and stroked a finger down her face. She flinched.
“It’s a pity,” he said. “You hold a certain sentimental value for me. You were the first of my creations. It’s why I kept you alive for so long. Now I’m afraid you’ve outlived your usefulness, and we can no longer trust you.” He smiled then, but his eyes remained cold. “Well, almost outlived your usefulness. I’m sure we can learn some interesting facts from studying your brain.
She looked beyond him. A medical cooler box stood on the table beside him. Suddenly she realized what he meant to do. She struggled to move, but the drug held her bound.
“Don’t worry, you won’t feel a thing.” He was right. She felt nothing as he slipped the needle into the vein at her wrist.
She watched, despair flooding her mind as he depressed the plunger.
Gunshots sounded in the corridor outside. Something moved in the open doorway. Anya rolled her eyes to look, and hope filled her mind, as the darkness took her.
***
Sebastian leapt across the room. He knocked Latham to the floor and stared down at the woman on the steel table. Her eyes were closed. He could see no sign of life. He laid his hand on her throat and felt not the slightest flicker, though her skin was still warm.
“You’re too late—she’s dead,” the man spoke from the floor.
Sebastian growled low in his throat. “What have you done to her?” A red haze of rage covered his eyes, fury surged through his body, and his wolf rose within him. He dropped to his knees and grabbed the man around the throat, shaking him. “What have you done?”
“Sebastian, leave him.”
Jack’s voice cut through the fog of rage.
“Sebastian! Connor is here. He’ll help her, but we might need Latham alive.”
He looked up to see Connor leaning over Anya’s body. Forcing down his fury, he loosened his grip on Latham’s throat and rose to his feet.
“Can you do anything?”
Connor picked up a bottle from the table beside them and read the l
abel. He nodded. “I think so.” He turned to Jack. “Pass me my bag.”
He rummaged through the contents and came out with a syringe. “Open her shirt,” he said to Sebastian. “Quickly. This has to go direct to the heart.”
Sebastian tore open the buttons and spread the shirt. He didn’t breathe as Connor rubbed one finger down over her chest, over the gentle swell of her breast, feeling for the gap between the ribs. He held up the syringe and stabbed it into her heart, depressing the plunger in one swift move.
For a moment, nothing happened. Sebastian swallowed the fear rising up inside him. He reached out to shake her, as her whole body convulsed. Her back arched, and she came up off the table. She collapsed back and her eyes opened. She stared around; her gaze caught Sebastian and held him.
“You’re alive,” she whispered.
Relief washed through him. “So are you.” He grinned. “Was I supposed to be dead?”
“Latham said…” She paused. “It doesn’t matter.” Her gaze left him and fixed on someone behind him. Her eyes widened in wonder.
He turned to see Tasha standing beside him. She reached out a hand and touched Anya’s cheek. “I’m Tasha.”
Something passed between the two women. Anya managed a faint curve of her lips.
“I’m Anya.”
She closed her eyes. Sebastian stroked her cheek and glanced across at Connor. “Is she going to be all right?”
“She should be. Maybe a little weak for a while, but once the drugs clear her system, she’ll be fine.”
Anya’s eyes blinked open and for a moment horror flared in the golden depths. “He was taking my brain.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “He was going to dissect my brain.”
“Shh,” Sebastian murmured. He wiped the tear with the pad of his thumb. “He can’t do anything anymore.”
She relaxed then, the tension draining from her body as she faded into unconsciousness once more. Fear welled up, and he turned to Connor.
“Don’t panic. She’s just asleep,” Connor said.
Sebastian nodded. “Get back to the house,” he said. “They might need you.”
