He rammed himself against the wall in a haze of fury, driving his shoulder into it like some possessed linebacker, but to no avail. Instead of falling into the wall and landing in his desired location, he slammed back against the concrete ground, kicking up snow in white, billowy puffs.
Nina dragged him upward, brushing him off. “Dude. Concentrate. I want to get to her as much as you do,” she warned, her sloe eyes riddled with worry.
He shook off the hard landing and focused, aiming for the cafeteria just like the last time with but one mantra. Save Penny.
Sam’s entry to the cafeteria left him almost crashing into the same table Phoebe had narrowly missed.
Phoebe. He had to save Phoebe. He would save Phoebe.
Closing his eyes, he summoned the image of Darnell. Enormous. Covered in gold chains. Generous. Loyal.
With a shimmer Sam would have sworn was just a play of light if he hadn’t seen the evidence of Darnell’s out-of-thin-air appearances before, Darnell was there. He gave Sam the thumbs-up sign, and they headed to the spot Sam had shown them on the new plans for the underground portion of O-tech Stinky had sent.
Letting Nina in was as easy as it had been the first time, and on silent feet, they were in.
That he’d missed this secret location all the while he’d worked here could only mean he was burnt out. He’d missed things the agency would have had his head for, and it had everything to do with his careless stupidity. While he had no choice but to reevaluate his future career plans due to his strange upgrade in life, now he really had to admit it would have been over anyway. A fuck-up of this magnitude would haunt him forever, and leave him at a desk job if he was lucky, at least until they found out they had a vampire FBI agent punching a keyboard.
Passing through doors, and forging up flights of stairs, Sam forced himself not to dwell via the martyr system while they located the elevator Phoebe had found. With but a silent look between the three of them, a look that screamed a million emotions, Nina pressed the button and stepped into the open doors as Sam and Darnell followed her.
All three of them watched the floors descend—somber—determined.
Into the belly of the beast.
NOW Wanda was the one pacing as they texted Sam, Nina, and Darnell what Marty had told them. If nothing else, according to Marty while she was on her way out the door and headed for O-Tech, a bitch was goin’ down tonight, and when she did, Marty wanted to be the one to put her down.
Phoebe shivered, going over the information Marty had shared in fits of spewing rage.
Someone would pay tonight.
Someone would bleed.
Someone would die.
And all Phoebe could see in her head was Sam and Penny. Nina. Darnell. The man who’d been so violated. Fear welled up in her throat, nearly choking her, gluing her feet to the floor, cementing her hands together. She should be with them. In the midst of this chaos, she should be helping create order.
Archibald placed a shawl around her shoulders, pulling her to him for a moment and whispering with fierce conviction, “I, too, shall see to Mistress Penny’s well-being. Never you fear, Phoebe, for there will be an abundance of love. She will bake cookies with a manservant who has cooked for kings. She will learn the manners of a proper lady from a dutiful servant who has raised duchesses and dukes from wee seedlings. She will laugh in the sunshine—wear ribbons of the finest silk in her hair. She will walk in the park with me as her faithful caregiver. She will and more. And I shall never, ever let harm toward her ladyship come to pass.”
Leaning back against Archibald, his weathered hands at her shoulders, she clung to them before letting her head drop to her chest. Her eyes drifted closed—and she pictured Penny with Archibald.
In the sunshine at the park with buttery shafts of golden light shimmering on her long, dark ponytail captured by a streaming, pink ribbon.
Laughing. Smiling. Loved.
With those vivid images of a Penny free from the confines of nurses and doctors in her head—Phoebe slipped away.
Like literally.
SAM shot a curt nod over his shoulder at Darnell and Nina when they hit the end of a long hallway, signaling them the coast was clear. If what Phoebe had said was fact rather than described from her heightened fear, they should be close to the room where they’d held the man. If she’d counted right, there were approximately five doctors and a big goon with a Russian name.
If …
Fuck. There were too many ifs.
But he didn’t have a choice. It was now or never.
Slipping down the hallway, Sam rounded the corner with Nina and Darnell close, locating the double doors of the room Phoebe had described. He held up his hand for them to wait while he listened—assessing the situation.
The distant rumble of muted voices made Sam stick a finger in his ear and lean in. Yet, the harder he tried to get clarity on the words he knew he was hearing, the less he was able to makes sense of them. It was like listening to a conversation held underwater. What the hell?
Then something occurred to him. Something that wrenched his gut. His senses—his vampire senses—were beginning to fail him.
And so it began.
Nina’s hand touched his back, making him whip around. Her intense eyes connected with his in concern, but Sam just shook his head, cocking it to give another listen.
Though strangely warbled, Sam knew the tone of the voice he heard. Knew it as if he’d heard it all his life. As if his ears had been made to respond to that voice alone.
Phoebe.
They had Phoebe. In that room full of horrors she’d described so vividly to Wanda. It was all he could do not to gag.
Which meant someone’s death was imminent. At his hands. And it would be so ugly. So ugly and painful.
PHOEBE popped her eyes open; grainy and hot, they scanned her surroundings while she fought a chronic throb in her head.
Hoo-boy. So this wasn’t good. Not good at all. If Sam and Nina found out she was here—that she’d disobeyed their super orders, even if it had been a complete accident—she was probably worse off than if she ended up fireplace-kill.
She slammed her eyes shut, tightening the shawl Archibald had given her around her shoulders, ignoring the fact that she was actually feeling the cool chill of the room, and wished herself back to Sam’s apartment.
Please, universe, if you have any mercy at all, get me back to Sam’s because Nina’s gonna kill me.
Opening her eyes again—she jammed a knuckle into her mouth. Her eyes flew to the door in fear. As though her parents were going to walk through it and catch her sneaking out of her bedroom window.
Except, there were much bigger worries than some lame parents and a good grounding lying just outside that door.
She had to get out before she was caught.
Yet, something shoved in the corner of the room caught her attention. The head of the poor man—the same man who’d been gutted like a market fish—poking out from beneath a white sheet on the same gurney he’d been on when she’d seen him earlier. Her hand instantly went to him; trembling, she pressed her fingers to his scarred neck. Deep sorrow tore at her, clawing, clinging to her every nerve ending. Goddamn these animals!
“No, no, noooo!” she almost screeched, the words slipping unbidden from her mouth before she was able to stop them. Phoebe choked, covering her mouth. “Oh, my God. I’m sorry,” she cried into the still of the room. “I’m so, so sorry. I tried to get here in time. I swear …” She dry-hacked, pulling the sheet back up over his face, rambling words to console someone who could no longer hear her. “I’ll find out who you are. I’ll do whatever that takes. I swear I will. I’ll make sure you’re buried with the respect you deserve. But not before I hunt these motherfuckers down and rip them to shreds. In your honor, I promise you, they’ll all die before I leave this earth. They’ll die and it will hurt—so bad,” she hissed out.
Footsteps caught her sensitive ears just as a rush of singeing heat att
acked her flesh. How was she experiencing any kind of sensitivity after not having felt a thing since this began?
Phoebe winced, her eyes frantically searching for somewhere to hide until she could assess who was walking down that hallway. A closet … She remembered a closet where someone had hung their lab coat.
Her head whipped around to locate it and she made a mad dash for it, reaching for the handle and twisting the steel until she broke the lock on it to lunge herself inside.
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness of the interior of the closet with vampiric ease.
And that’s when she saw Penny. On a gurney just like the one the man had been on.
She would rip these animals apart—shred their intestines, puncture their lungs with her own teeth—if a single hair on Penny’s head was disturbed.
Knee-weakening relief attacked her legs when she saw the rise and fall of Penny’s chest. She was asleep. Thank God, she was asleep.
Phoebe pulled Penny’s limp hand to her cheek, scrunching her eyes shut and clinging to it. “Everything’s okay, honey,” she forced out. “If you can hear me, everything’s fine because I’m here. I love you, Penny. I love you.” Tucking her sister’s slender hand under the blanket, Phoebe actually prayed they’d sedated her for what was to come. She didn’t want Penny to witness the brutal end she planned to dole out to these bastards.
The voices grew louder, as did the buzzing in her ears, and the endless pounding in her skull. Sparks of white-hot flames began to poke at her skin like molten embers from an open bonfire would if you stood too close.
She tamped down a cry of fear when a searing pain hit her square in the stomach. She bit the inside of her cheek to squelch a sob.
And she listened. Squirming in her own skin, she listened for the animals to file in.
Because when they did—she’d kill them all. She’d take every single asshole out in order to keep Penny away from these monsters.
“DUDE!” Nina whispered hot and fierce against Sam’s ear. “What the fuck is wrong?”
Sam clasped his head, gritting his teeth—the buzzing had turned into a rapid-fire banging in his brain and a shooting pain attacking his chest almost disabled him. He couldn’t think clearly for the pandemonium erupting in his body. “It’s fine. Just listen,” he ordered, grinding out the words. “Phoebe’s in there. I hear Phoebe.” If he had anything left in him when this was over, he was going to kill this woman who’d so captivated his heart.
Darnell nodded with a vigorous bounce of his head, his eyes screaming his worry, his voice low and chilling. “Yeah. Thass her a’ight. She talkin’ to somebody. We need to get to gettin’ here. Now!”
Nina’s eyes burned with anger when she cocked her head to listen, too. Her fists wadded in clear fury. “I’m going to eat Bad Listening Skills Barbie for lunch, goddamn it!”
Sam ignored everything but getting to Phoebe. “We need to move!”
But as with all good plans—and in Sam’s vast experience, sometimes a covert op was a lot like those horror movies you watched and the soap operas Phoebe had compared their situation to—you really did need someone to be your audience so they could scream, “Look behind you, you dumbass!” Especially when you did something stupid like forget to cover your back. You’re really slipping, Sammy …
In flashes of white coats, muddy work boots, and the craziest most convoluted gun Sam had ever seen, they were caught and a warning was sounded.
“I wouldn’t move, if I were you. I know what you all are, and with one spray of these guns, you’ll be extinguished,” a voice taunted from behind, gleeful and filled with hatred.
Someone slammed into each of them, dropping them to their knees with the sharp crack of bones when they hit the cement floor. Sam instantly clasped his hands behind his head, encouraging Nina and Darnell to follow suit with his urgent eyes.
His first concern was Nina and her mouth. He shot her a warning glance, and she flashed her murderous eyes at him but said nothing.
Large, callused hands grabbed at them, yanking them upward and forcing them to move toward the very room they’d planned to storm. Those bizarre guns pressed to their backs, the wide nozzle ends jammed close against each of them.
Darnell stumbled on the strings of his high-top shoelaces as he walked, his eyes vivid and hot with an emotion that was a stark contrast to the twinkle usually written in them.
Nina’s jaw was tight—flexing and grinding as she so obviously fought the urge to control her rage. Sam couldn’t help thinking how proud Wanda would be that Nina was showing such unbelievable restraint. Her anger was so thick, it seeped out into the air—it was palpable—nearly visible and wildly chaotic. And still, she remained silent.
In the name of Penny …
They were launched into the room with the double doors, skidding and sliding until they stopped short of the far wall.
Nina’s nostrils flared, her eyes meeting Sam’s as she directed him to the closet.
Fuck. Phoebe was in the closet. He could smell her perfume—the same pear-scented perfume he’d reveled in when they’d made love. If she could just stay put.
“Turn ’round!” someone gruff with poor diction roared.
As each of them turned to face their attackers, Nina was the first to react. In words. Those words that could cut you to the quick or simply cut out all the bullshit. “You? It’s you?” She threw her head back and laughed, her mouth wide—the cackle was meant to mock, to debase. When her head lifted, her eyes gleamed just the right kind of crazy. “Oh, you motherfucking, spineless, ass-licking freak. You’d better hope whatever you got in that gun works, panty wipe. ’Cause if I get my hands on you, I’ll rip your limbs off, and while I do? I’ll pick my fucking teeth with your skinny-assed bones!” she screamed, straining against the hands Sam and Darnell had each placed on her arms.
The man who Nina had verbally assaulted swung the freakish gun Phoebe’d described wide and cracked Nina under the jaw with it.
Darnell growled, but he held his tongue while Sam’s blurry eyes assessed. Two thugs plus the blond man. Clearly the brains of the outfit. Three guns total. Three guns with foreign ammunition he had no idea how to stop.
The gun pointed at them, glaring and white. “Oh, Nina,” the doctor Phoebe had depicted so vividly admonished. “Still so classy. Tell me. Have you given up on the word fucktard and graduated to the big-girl name-calling?” He flapped a hand at her and smiled—charming, cold. “But that’s neither here nor there, now is it? In fact, I encourage you to lob any and all protests. It makes for a much more invigorating kill.”
Nina growled, making Sam latch on to her arm while a bone-jarring pain ripped through his arm and headed straight for his temples. He fought a grunt—fought it like if it were ripped from his throat, he’d explode into a million pieces. And still, the question remained. Who was this man? How did Nina know him?
The placid face of the blond doctor made Sam take great pause. This was the face of a madman. His expression was devoid of anything—even the joy he claimed he would take in killing them.
He was the worst kind of sociopath, if Sam was reading him correctly. If the classes at the agency he’d taken were proof, there’d be no reasoning—no deal making, no distracting.
The only hope they had left was the element of surprise from behind.
Fucked would probably be the best adjective Sam could give this scenario.
They were fucked. There was no one left—behind or otherwise.
IT wasn’t just fear that tore at Phoebe—it was a shredding, screaming pain, crawling all over her body—upward until her scalp was on fire. Yet, she clung. Who was this man Nina clearly knew? How could she possibly keep them from pulling the triggers of those guns she knew they had trained on them. On Sam.
Her hands blindly grabbed at the interior walls of the closet; her fist went to her mouth to keep the howling scream from pushing its way out of her throat at bay.
Realization crashed around her. This was it. Wha
t was happening to her right now was what had happened to Meredith and Alice and Raymond Schaeffer.
But it was going to happen before she got Penny to safety.
No. No. It would not. By all that was holy, she would stop this. Think, Phoebe—think. Surely there’s a soap opera scenario you can call on.
Think, damn you. What would the great Leticia Halloway from Eagle’s Crest do?
“SO I guess you want to know who I am and what I’ve been up to?” the blond man asked. “I’d only consider that a fair request. After all, I will be the one to help you meet and greet with your maker. Clearly, you should have a name to grudge on. Nina and I know each other, er, socially,” he said with clear disdain. “But we’ll get to that later. So for now, shut up. Got that?” He winked at her.
Nina grunted, but Darnell held her fast, pulling her to his padded side.
Nina knew him? All this time and it was someone the women of OOPS knew?
He ran the tip of his finger along the top of the gun with a sensuous pass, like it was his lover. “First, the why, and I’ll be brief. Not long ago, maybe four years or so, my world fell apart. I blame one person, and one person alone. That person will, along with all of you, die a heinous death. Much like the ones I’ve already doled out to that CIA agent Meredith, who was foolish enough to think she could stop me and save my test subjects.”
He spread his arms wide, the crinkle of his lab coat shredding Sam’s eardrums. “This is Project Eternal. A project that was four years in the making. Four years of hatred for one woman who took everything from me. Now, some would call me diabolical or crazy—whichever adjective most makes you comfortable. I just call me awesome sauce. But I can’t take all the credit. I didn’t do this alone. I had help from someone who almost hates this person as much as I do. Almost. Though, she only lost some silly man over what happened. But a grudge is a grudge—no matter the source. Some of us seek retribution out of scorn—and others, others like me? They seek it out of revenge.”
Accidentally Dead, Again Page 31
