But what about Dobson? What about the wolfen that had killed Jason? Where did he fit in?
He… He was right in front of her. As sure as she knew her own name, she knew Dane was Dobson. Shock swept through her, her knees felt brittle—one step and she’d be forced to crawl.
She blinked away the pain, anger and tears threatening to strip her strength away. It made perfect sense now. He’d avoided the Banoth and pretty much threatened her afterward. He’d given Hugh info from his “contacts”. And out of the corner of her eye at the park the night they’d rescued Trey, hadn’t she noticed him help a Wolf Seeker up, rather than knock him down? She’d thought it impossible at the time. Thought her eyes were playing a trick. They weren’t fooling her now.
But why had he killed Jason? Her pulse sped up, her vision blurred. For five long years, she’d waited for this moment.
Adrenaline kicked up fury inside her, and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to leap across the room and break his neck.
“Looks like the meeting found us,” Hugh said, shaking Tess from her thoughts.
He’d figured it out too, and the urgency to leave the suite dissipated. In its place roared an urge to whip out her weapons and kill. But she didn’t do that anymore. Her brain was falling back on memory, going on autopilot. She’d killed for a living for so long she didn’t know anything else. Not when she stood there harboring so much hostility she wanted to lash out and destroy everything around her.
She hated feeling like a fool. How long had Christian known she’d been searching for Dobson? How much had Dane told him about her relationship with Hugh?
Why was she ordered to eliminate him?
Glare from the setting sun ricocheted around the hotel room while silence sounded louder than thunder. She noticed the wheels turning on her enemies’ faces and wanted to stop them from whatever they were planning. For the first time in twelve years, she felt absolutely nothing but contempt for her boss.
“It’s nice to finally put a face to the name, Dobson,” Tess said, expelling a deep breath. In relief? In worry? She didn’t know. Suddenly, numbness spread out from her core, and thinking coherently became questionable.
Was she resigning herself to the end of the line?
Hugh snarled, but kept still, and once again Tess appreciated his restraint. He knew how important this moment was for her.
“You like my face, huh?”
“Screw you, Dane. I hate your face. And I hate you,” she said.
Dane stared back and smiled. “No shit. You wear your heart on your sleeve, Tess.”
No, she did not. Her heart was well-guarded. Asshole.
“At least you do now,” he added. “Five years ago, you could’ve fooled me.”
His words threw her into outrage, and there was no containing her anger anymore. Quickly, she reached into her bag and pulled out her gun. She shoved her chair back with her leg to give herself a little more standing room, and spread her legs for solid balance. Then, with a steady hand, she aimed the weapon at Dane’s heart.
She couldn’t figure out why no one in the room moved. Maybe they saw the wild in her eyes, the need to get revenge no matter the cost. Whatever the reason, in Dane’s case, he’d finally grown a pair of balls and didn’t flinch as she fixed her gaze on him. He wasn’t backing down, and she fought the urge to skip the explanation. Two shots. All she needed was two shots.
“Why did you kill Jason?” The detached tone of her voice pleased her.
Dane glanced at Christian before answering. “It wasn’t cold blooded. I was defending myself.”
“That’s bullshit.” And the last thing she expected him to say.
“You heard me. Jason was going to kill me.” He moved a step closer.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hugh scoot his chair back and lean closer to the edge. She gave a silent thank you that he was ready to pounce if necessary.
“Why?” she demanded, doubting Dane’s honesty, but needing to hear his reason anyway.
He glanced at Christian again. Cut a discomforted glimpse at Hugh. “He was sent to eliminate me.”
She laughed. “Funny. Now how about the truth, asshole?”
“It could be true,” Hugh muttered.
Tess bit her bottom lip. Hard. “What?” she whispered, her eyes never leaving Dane.
“There was a hit out on Dane,” Hugh said. “He’d gotten into some trouble and pissed off the wrong people. We knew it was P.I.E. and we’d hoped to get him out of the mess without any casualty. I didn’t make the connection to Jason until this second.”
She darted a glance at Hugh. He was staring at her with apology.
None of it made sense. Her head swam with confusion. Was Hugh implying that Jason worked for P.I.E.? That was impossible. She would have known.
With a heavy, bored sigh, Christian rose to his feet. He’d ditched the knife for a gun. And had it trained right between her eyes.
“Don’t!” she shouted to Hugh as he jumped to his feet ready to attack. She didn’t know what kind of bullets Christian had, but she guessed they’d take care of her and a wolfen.
She swung so her gun pointed at the man who had saved her all those years ago. Who had promised her a better life. “Now I’d say we’re evenly matched. Hugh can take care of Dane, and you and I can come to some sort of arrangement.”
“I’ve always admired your confidence, Tess,” he said. “But we already have an arrangement.”
The reminder made her legs weak. “I suppose we do.”
“And in case you’re wondering about Jason…” His eyebrows lifted and the vilest smile Tess had ever seen spread across his ruthless face. “He was an eliminator.”
“You’re lying. He would have told me. I would have known. It wouldn’t have been a secret.” The gun in her hand wavered a fraction. She fought the threatening tears.
“Jason was part of a group of top secret eliminators. No one knew who he was but me. He, on the other hand, knew who you were long before you broke protocol and told him.”
Tess heard the words but couldn’t make sense of them. Jason had known about her all along and still kept his occupation secret? She let her mind race back to the time they’d spent together. He’d always kept her at arm’s length, never divulged his deepest thoughts or desires, no matter how often she’d prodded him. She’d attributed it to them being displaced as children, thought he was still piecing together his purpose. She sure the heck was. But she knew now that wasn’t it. Jason purposely never let her all the way in.
He’d lied to her. Just as she’d lied to him.
But his lie was worse.
She locked away Jason’s memory for good. Whether he’d truly loved her or not, she didn’t know. But she didn’t need to kill Dobson anymore to clear her conscience.
“Why is this all coming to blows now? What does this have to do with Hugh and the Night Runners?” Her mental frame shifted one hundred percent to Hugh and getting him out of here alive.
“With Hugh out of the picture,” Dane said, “I take over as leader of the Night Runners. A position I’m entitled to. A position that will allow me to grow and integrate the pack with other wolves and make sure we’re a force to be reckoned with.”
“So this whole elimination is your doing? You came to P.I.E. and ordered the hit because there was no way in hell Hugh was going to make you next in line?”
Dane fumed. “Fu—”
“Why didn’t you let the Banoth’s poison kill me?” Hugh said, calm, steady.
“If the pack had found out I wasn’t carrying and let you die, they’d never support me as the next alpha. They will when I tell them I tried to stop the hit and your last words were for me to take over.”
“What about Trey?” Hugh asked.
“He’s also meeting an untimely demise,” Christian said. “And Dane didn’t come to me. I went to him. P.I.E. is moving into the future. A future where eliminators will be virtually unstoppable.”
“Because
they’ll be shifters?” Tess’s arm tired. Sooner rather than later, she’d need to shoot or run like hell.
“Exactly. It’s no longer about Veiler or human. It’s about good versus evil,” Christian said.
“I thought that’s what it was always about. What you want to do is enforce your version of good and evil. You want power, not justice.”
Daylight barely trickled into the room now, and Tess blinked several times to adjust her vision. The eerie red glow streaming in from the window allowed enough visibility to make out whole bodies, but little detail. If someone didn’t take action, they’d soon be in total darkness. Fine for wolfen—not so good for her.
She glanced at Hugh. He’d remained uncharacteristically quiet, but with such little light she couldn’t see him well enough to read his expression.
“Precisely,” Christian admitted.
“Where’s Trey?” she asked, even though she had the sinking feeling it didn’t matter But if there was a chance they got out of this alive and could save him, they needed to know.
Quiet filled the room.
“He’s under attack as we speak.” Dane took a few sidesteps toward the couch, aligning himself with Christian.
Tess felt heat radiating off Hugh, and knew the mention of Trey took away any control he had left. A split second later, the wolf in him emerged and he lunged toward Dane. Dane shifted and the two collided in midair. Ferocious growls spilled from their mouths. They hit the floor and rolled, filling the empty space between the sitting area and bed. A sick feeling hit Tess in the gut. Dammit, Hugh.
Suddenly, a gunshot sounded and both wolfen stopped, stiffened. It took Tess a moment to realize it wasn’t her gun that fired.
She lowered her arm. Pain and discomfort radiated through her shoulder. She’d been shot. Christian had shot her.
It was hard to tell in the dark, but she was certain the bullet had only grazed her. The spot burned but didn’t pulse. She lifted a hand to touch the laceration and felt blood trickle rather than spurt. A Band Aid and Tylenol would fix the wound.
“Don’t even think about it,” Christian hissed. “If anyone moves a muscle my aim will be much better next time.” He kept the weapon trained on her as his disposition wavered between frustration and satisfaction. The thin smile she barely made out on his face irritated the hell out of her.
He’d pay for making her bleed.
“What do you want?” she breathed, even though she felt she could run a marathon if she had to.
“You’ve got a job to do, Tess. Or am I to take it the reason you didn’t answer my earlier question is because the wolfen means more to you than Kensie and Francesca?”
Goddamn him. Bitterness wove through every muscle in her body. If something were going down in L.A. with Trey, she could bet the same held true for Kensie and Francesca. And there was no way she’d be able to save them if she didn’t follow through with her elimination.
That had to be the master plan. Get Hugh and herself to San Diego, make sure she eliminated him, then get back home to a nice, neat, new partnership between P.I.E. and the Night Runners. What an idiot she’d been not to see it.
“I had your word we’d keep to our deadline,” she said.
“Time’s up.”
This was it. The moment she’d dreaded. The moment she wished would never come. She forgot about the pain in her shoulder and felt a swell of anguish in her chest instead. Her lips went dry, her eyes burned.
Showtime.
She lifted her arms, pointed the gun at Hugh and pulled the trigger.
Hugh felt the impact of the shot and fell to the floor. His eyes shut. Dizziness filled his head. Not from the blast, but from the fact that Tess had actually followed through with her assignment. It had taken her all of ten seconds to act on her boss’s ultimatum.
Guess he didn’t mean much to her after all.
He heard the scuffing of furniture, registered heavy breathing and grunts from Dane in the near-dark room. Tess had shot him in wolfen form, which meant his superhuman strength and tissue regeneration immediately got to work repairing internal damage. But like the Banoth’s poison, those attributes wouldn’t help him now. This time nothing could help him. He remembered the pain after the Banoth’s poison had infiltrated his system and expected this to be the same.
But this pain was entirely different than final suffering. This pain radiated through his body, but wasn’t unbearable. In fact, he could swear his body fought the intrusion. Recovery sensations swam through his blood, and a jolt of warmth spread out from his chest like he’d been given a shot of epinephrine.
Because, he realized, the pain wasn’t in his chest, it was lower, near his hip. And he’d bet money the bullet hadn’t been tipped with mercury.
Tess had shot him to save him.
She did care.
And he’d fight for her to the bitter end in return.
He opened his eyes and, wavering slightly, got to his feet. It would take a few minutes to regain his full strength, but his determination to get Tess to safety trumped physical limitations. The wolf in him had never been stronger than at that moment. Savagery, unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, flooded his body and mind.
His predator instincts took over and uncivilized vengeance erased any hint of humanity inside him. Tess was his mate—different enough, special enough, to tame him—and no one would take her away.
Thankful for the dark filling the room, he took in his surroundings unnoticed. Tess and Dane were in a fistfight. Hugh smelled the blood leaking from her arm, heard the labored beats of her heart. She wouldn’t last much longer. Christian sat at the computer, light from the screen outlining the back of his head. Hugh didn’t know if he was planting information or looking for it, but neither mattered. The man had a gun and needed to be taken care of first.
He snuck behind Christian in a silent second, wrapped his arms around the man’s neck and rendered him unconscious. With a nice easy push, the guy slumped forward onto the keypad. A quick glance at the screen and Hugh noticed that his personal records were uploaded and Tess’s name appeared more than once.
It looked like the asshole had every intention of framing her by connecting her to a Veiler and thereby making her death justifiable. Hugh’s blood boiled at the thought. Christian must have figured out there was no chance in hell she’d go along with the restructuring of P.I.E, which meant the organization that trained her couldn’t trust her to keep her mouth shut. Dane had no doubt used his human-sentient abilities to sense Tess’s skepticism, her doubts about killing him. And once it became clear she wouldn’t eliminate an innocent man, she went from ally to enemy. That had left one option. Kill her too.
A growl escaped his mouth and in less than a second, he stood poised to pull Tess from Dane’s clutches. She was pinned beneath him, her back arched over the side of the couch. Even though she’d been shot, she fought with everything she had.
“Let her go, Dane.”
His words drew Dane’s attention and a startled look spread across his furry face. Tess took advantage, got a knee to Dane’s groin and pushed his chest hard. She threw her legs over her head, doing a back somersault onto the couch and putting distance between the two of them.
“Why the hell did you get up?” she shouted, standing on her knees and taking quick inventory of the room.
“Why the hell didn’t you use mercury?”
Her eyes darted back to him. She didn’t have to answer. His night vision zeroed in on his new favorite color and her eyes told him everything. She loves me.
“Get out of here, Hugh. Let me take care of this.”
Dane body-slammed him before he could tell her he had no intention of going anywhere without her. They hit the carpet hard, Hugh on his back, the landing an unpleasant reminder he still needed to recover from the gunshot.
Hugh forced Dane to the side and readied his claws and fangs for battle. Dammit, Dane. He didn’t want to hurt his pack mate, no matter their differences, but there wa
sn’t any other way. Dane wouldn’t agree to any sort of truce or just disappear. He had too much pride, too much fight in him, for that.
They staggered to their feet and circled each other. The only way to kill a Night Runner with bare hands was to break his neck. Would it come to that?
A split second later Dane made a move. His aggression was to Hugh’s advantage. Hugh grabbed his arm, turned away and pulled Dane over his shoulder, throwing him to the floor. Dane landed on his back and quickly tried to get up but Hugh nailed him with a right hook that drove him back to the carpet.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Why the fuck are you doing this?” Hugh pressed his knee into Dane’s gut to pin him down.
“You and I will never make the same choices,” Dane spat. He reached for Hugh’s thigh and dug in his claws.
Hugh yanked his leg away, the tips of Dane’s claws ripping his jeans and puncturing his skin. Hugh struggled with what to do next. Did he go for the jugular? Or continue wrestling until he tired Dane out? The thought of things ending this way bothered him more than they probably should, but he couldn’t help it.
“Hugh, look out!” Tess shouted from behind him.
Too late. A lamp clobbered him on the side of the head, the electrical cord about to go around his neck. Hugh backpedaled out of reach, stopping when his back hit the side of the coffee table. The blow to the head stung and his vision blurred until he blinked away the pain. He reached behind him, hoisted the table over his head and sent it crashing down on top of Dane. The wood table broke and splintered, but only slowed Dane down for a moment.
In the next second, Dane looked ready to pounce. But not at him.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Tess cried out.
What was she talking about?
He wanted to turn his head to look at her, but didn’t dare take his eyes off Dane. The wolfen growled and dove for a spot on the floor behind him and to the left. Hugh twisted to see what the commotion was about and caught a glimpse of shiny metal as Tess lunged for the same spot.
Her gun.
It wouldn’t do her any good against Dane. She’d slow him down if she pegged a few rounds into him in quick succession, but Dane could do serious damage to Tess.
Veiled Target (A Veilers Novel) Page 26
