by Maya Banks
Were they scared?”
Scared? He wasn’t sure that was the appropriate way to describe his parents’ reaction the day he’d run home, terrified, to tell them what had happened to him. He sighed again. This was going to be a long story.
“My parents were…religious.” There wasn’t an easy way to explain their fanaticism or the fact that he’d grown up in an isolated, wary world. “I didn’t have many friends. In fact, most kids avoided me or made fun of my weirdness.”
“You mean they knew?” she asked in surprise.
He laughed softly. “I was weird way before I learned of my abilities.”
She pushed up from his chest and repositioned herself so that she could look into his eyes.
“My parents weren’t exactly role models when it came to parental love and devotion. Not to say that they abused me. They made sure I had food and clothing, but they were far more concerned with their duties to the church. I say church. I’d classify it more as a cult. I’ve been to church, and they don’t have much in common with the nutjob my parents followed.
“At any rate, I spent a lot of my childhood wishing I could disappear. I avoided any and all situations that would thrust me into the limelight. I was quiet and sullen.”
It was her turn to laugh. “But you could disappear.”
He rubbed his hand up and down her arm and ran his fingers over the curve of her elbow. “I didn’t know I could until I was ten years old.”
Her sound of shock was unmistakable.
“I broke my cardinal rule of never being noticed. Some dickheads were picking on a younger girl, and I knocked one of them on his ass. Then I ran like hell because there were four of them and only one of me, and I was a skinny, awkward son of a bitch. I hit a dead end in an alley and knew I was fucked. As I stood there waiting, knowing I was about to get the shit kicked out of me, all I could think was that I’d give anything to be able to disappear. And then the weirdest thing happened. I felt lighter. My vision changed, and I looked down and couldn’t see myself anymore.
“It scared me worse than the bullies I was facing down. But then they ran into the alley. I was so sure I was busted, but they couldn’t see me. They looked right through me and then ran back out.”
“Bet you didn’t think it was so scary then,” she teased.
He grimaced. “I was still scared shitless. I was in total panic thinking I’d never materialize again. And then suddenly I was back. Just like that. I ran the entire way home just seconds away from crapping in my pants.”
She laughed and rubbed her cheek over his chest, burrowing a little deeper into his embrace.
“When I got home, I burst into my parents’ Bible study. They were pretty pissed because no one interrupts the word of the Lord. Then I spilled my story, and all they did was stare at me like I’d lost my mind. Then my mother started muttering about the evils of television and how they needed to start a prayer session for little boys who told tales.
“I knew they weren’t going to listen to me so I shut my eyes and willed myself to disappear. This time I became smoke. It was the freakiest thing. I could see them, and I could see the wisps of smoke. I can still remember the looks of horror on their faces. I couldn’t hold onto it long, and I materialized again.”
He broke off and fell silent for a long moment.
She sat up again and touched his cheek as if she could sense his discomfort. Discomfort. What a word. He was reliving the day his parents had disowned him, and all he could drum up to describe the feeling was discomfort.
“What happened then?” she asked softly.
“They, uh, wigged out.”
“That bad, huh.”
He nodded. “Yeah. They packed up and left with the church. It’s kinda funny now. They thought I was the Antichrist.”
Her eyes were wide with shock. “They left you?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“Oh, Eli, I’m so sorry,” she said in dismay. “What did you do?”
He cracked a rueful smile. “Well, I can tell you what I didn’t do. I didn’t go around broadcasting the fact that I could do neat little smoke tricks. I was on my own until the local cops figured out my parents had split. They made a half-hearted effort to locate them, and I ended up in foster care.”
“Foster care?”
“Yeah, it’s sorta like an orphanage, I guess.”
She frowned.
“Not like yours, I don’t imagine,” he murmured. “Foster care is when a family agrees to take in a child who either doesn’t have parents or has been taken from them. Anyway, I was in and out of homes until I graduated high school. Then I joined the military, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“And your parents?” she asked. “Did you ever see them again?”
He cleared his throat. “Not exactly. I went to their funeral when I was eighteen.”
“What happened?”
“Mass suicide,” he said with a grimace. “Freaking cult they ran around with decided to pull another Jim Jones and kill themselves. The thing is, all during the funeral, all I could think was that they’d done me a huge favor by ditching me. If I’d stayed with them, I’d probably be brainwashed and dead alongside them.”
“Wow,” she breathed. “That doesn’t make my childhood sound so bad now.”
He wrapped his arms tighter around her. “I was okay, Tyana. No one ever abused me like they did you.”
“We’re both survivors,” she said simply.
He kissed the top of her head. “That we are, sugar. That we are.”
She wrapped her body sensuously around his, her legs twining like silken threads with his.
“Make love to me again,” she whispered.
She turned her face up to his and their lips brushed and held.
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Somewhere between the haziness of her dream world and the pleasurable aftermath of their lovemaking, Tyana heard the beep of her communicator. She struggled out from the layers of fog surrounding her like a comforting cloak and quietly extricated herself from Eli’s arms and legs.
“You all right, sugar?”
Eli’s sleepy voice brushed over her ears, the sound giving her a warm buzz.
“I think I just heard from Tits,” she said as she got up and walked naked toward the couch.
She dug into the backpack and pulled out the slim mobile unit. Eli came in behind her and sat down on the couch next to her as she opened the case and entered a series of passcodes.
In a few moments, the message flashed on the screen. She scanned rapidly over it. Classic Tits, no beating around the bush. Just the necessary information.
She glanced up at Eli who had leaned forward. “Esteban is currently holed up in Germany. Neu Ulm. Breeding ground for radical terrorists. Coincidence, huh.”
“Yeah, I doubt it,” Eli muttered.
“It’s not going to be easy to go in after Esteban,” she murmured. “That area is already under so much scrutiny. Security is tight. Tits arranged a house as well as a cover. We’re a team of photo journalists traveling through Germany. Still, it’s going to be risky.”
“Every mission is,” Eli said. “Esteban’s desire to stay alive will help us. He’s a rich son of a bitch, and I bet he’s lining some local pockets there. He probably funds half the terrorist activity.”
“Still think he’s working with the U.S. government?” she asked.
Eli’s face darkened. “I don’t know, sugar. I wish I did. I’m not naïve enough to discount the notion. Until it’s proven otherwise, I have to assume the worst. I’ve had to work at building a network for my team from the ground up again. It’s slow going. No idea who I can trust. After Adharji, my U.S. contacts dropped me like a whore with the clap. It’s why you’re going to be more help than I would be in locating and capturing Esteban. Falcon hasn’t been compromised the way CHR has.”
“I’m sure Jonah would disagree,” she murmured. “He�
�ll say that I’ve single-handedly brought down the entire team.”
“Not an optimist, is he.”
She laughed. “No. Not Jonah. Brooding bastard. That’s him to a tee.”
“Well, you’ve done your part. Now I have to get us to Germany.”
“Going to have a problem with that?” she asked.
Eli shook his head. “My pilot is here in Buenos Aires. He’s very well connected. But then I pay him a lot to be. He can get us into most airports under no scrutiny or cargo checks. If he can’t get us directly into Neu Ulm, he can get us close and we can hoof it the rest of the way. Either way, in a few days time, we’ll have Esteban.”
Tyana nodded. “Tits is going to make sure we have what we need at the house he snagged for us. He has a man at one of the Army bases.”
“All right, sugar. You get dressed, and let me make a few calls. I’ll need to round up the rest of my team and make sure they’re present and accounted for when we hit the airport. We won’t want to be hanging around for long.”
She leaned over and put her hand on his cheek then kissed him long and hard. “Thank you. I know you’re doing this as much for you and your team, but thank you.”
He kissed her back, sliding one hand behind her neck and holding her possessively. “Don’t thank me, sugar. I might get us killed yet.”
It was still dark when they assembled at the small airstrip on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Gabe, Ian and Braden were waiting inside the plane when Tyana and Eli boarded.
She glanced at the three men, gauging their mood, their demeanor. They were silent, alert and wary.
No one spoke until they were in the air, and then they gathered in the small lounging area in the middle of the plane. Eli relayed the information they’d received from Tits.
“It’s a risky job,” Eli said. “We have no back-up. We’re a five man team going into a relatively unknown situation with only sparse intel.”
Gabe snorted. “Like that’s anything new? It’ll be like old times, only this time we’ll expect to have no support instead of expecting it and not getting it when things go to shit.”
Ian nodded. “It won’t be anything we haven’t done before.” His gaze found Tyana. “The chemical you gave us. It works.”
She smiled faintly. “I’m glad. I hope it works longer for you than it did for Damiano.”
“Can we get more?” Braden spoke up.
“Assuming we don’t die and that Marcus is someone I’ll still have access to when this is all over with, I’ll ask him to examine you and Ian if you want. He’s the doctor who created the formula for Damiano. I don’t know a lot about it. Marcus explained that it was an inhibitor that reacts with and paralyzes the chemical receptors in the brain that apparently control the urge to shift.”
Braden nodded.
“That’s also assuming we haven’t become members of a newly formed Falcon hit list,” Eli said dryly. “I don’t imagine I’m very popular with them right now.”
Guilt crept over Tyana. Not only did she have to deal with the fact that she’d compromised Falcon and gone against a direct order from Jonah, but she’d put Eli’s team at risk by doing so. Jonah didn’t tolerate any threat to Falcon’s security. He’d definitely see Eli as a big one.
“Well if they kick you out, I’m sure Eli here will be more than happy to offer you a spot on CHR,” Gabe said slyly.
Eli shot him a quelling stare.
“Why isn’t Esteban on Falcon’s hit list?” Ian asked. “Why are we the ones going after this guy? Seems to me Jonah would want some payback for what he did to Damiano.”
Tyana shook her head. “Because Jonah doesn’t believe Esteban can help Damiano. And Jonah doesn’t know that Esteban was behind the chemical attack in Adharji. I didn’t know until I met Esteban in Paris, and if I had gone to Jonah with that information, he would have still shut me down.”
“Is Damiano that bad?” Braden asked. There was a hint of dread in his voice, as if he could see into his own future and knew that whatever Damiano had degraded to would eventually come to him.
“Marcus doesn’t think there is a cure,” she said softly. “He believes that if Damiano is going to survive he has to learn to cope and control his powers. His DNA has been altered. This isn’t some disease or sickness that can be cured by medicine.”
Ian stared at Gabe and Eli. “And maybe it’s sort of a sick twist on evolution. The strong adapt and the weak die off. Gabe and Eli seemed to readily adapt to their ‘powers’.”
Tyana stole a glance at Eli, who stiffened at Ian’s words. He hadn’t told them that his shifting ability came with birth—a freak aberration in his DNA at conception. And maybe now she understood why. They looked at Eli and Gabe as hope that they too would adapt and survive.
She turned her gaze to Gabe. He was the wildcard. The only one of the entire group who had actually been able to harness his abilities. Why?
He returned her stare with bland indifference.
But the inhibitor worked on him while it hadn’t on Eli. So he wasn’t completely invulnerable.
“Our objective has to be to take Esteban and make him talk,” Eli said, bringing the conversation back to the heart of the matter. “We don’t have room for emotion, rage or revenge.” He looked at Tyana pointedly, and she had an eerie sense of déjà vu, as if Jonah was standing in front of her lecturing her about going off half-cocked. “This is a job. Cut and dried. We go in, extract Esteban from his hidey hole, and then we can address the other issues that concern us and our wellbeing as a team. Understood?”
The others slowly nodded their agreement. Tyana dipped her head in acknowledgement.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was nearing dusk when they drove into Neu Ulm. Two vehicles drove down the small street toward the house Tits had arranged, lots of useless camera equipment in the back. The more useful equipment like guns and ammo were carefully tucked underneath.
They entered the driveway through a weathered archway covered with ivy. Tyana’s brow rose as she caught sight of the house. She was expecting a cottage. Not a big-ass mini mansion.
It was a two-story stone house covered in the same ivy as the archway. Square and boxy, but more importantly, there was a high fence around the perimeter offering privacy.
Eli parked in the semicircle drive in front of the door, and Gabe pulled in behind him. They all got out, and Tyana reached for her bag after checking to make sure her remaining knives were securely fastened to her person.
She waited for Gabe, Ian and Braden to catch up while Eli headed for the door. They each carried cases or bags.
“Nice digs you got for us, Tyana girl,” Gabe offered with a grin.
She started after Eli with the others trailing behind. Eli opened the door and pulled his pistol. Taking her cue from him, she gripped one of her knives in one hand and reached for her Glock with the other.
Behind her, there was a slight rustle as the others prepared to go in.
They walked into the darkened foyer.
Eli motioned toward the large living room to the right. Tyana stayed close behind him, and when they entered the living room, she flipped her backpack off and dropped it onto one of the chairs.
Eli turned as the others came in behind him. “We need to fan out and make sure the house is secure,” he murmured. “Meet back here in five minutes and we’ll figure out our next move.”
There was no warning for what happened next. Tyana heard Eli grunt, felt Gabe stumble beside her, heard Ian curse and Braden gasp. She whirled, her eyes widening in horror when she saw the multiple darts protruding from the men.
Then she saw Esteban step from the shadows of the dining room, three men with dart guns surrounding him. She yanked up her pistol and prepared to launch her knife with her other hand.
“Nicely done, Miss Berezovsky,” Esteban said as he walked further into the living room.
Beside her, Eli had crumpled to the floor, and he seemed almost paralyzed. But his accusing stare
found her. God, he couldn’t think she’d set them up.
And when things couldn’t get any weirder, the front door burst open behind her. She jumped to the side to assess the new threat but froze when she looked into the very angry eyes of Jonah.
Jonah, Mad Dog and Damiano swarmed into the room, assault rifles up. Tyana yanked her pistol back to Esteban.
“What did you do to them?” she demanded.
Jonah stepped in front of her, his gun pointed at Esteban. “You have what you want, Morales. Now we have what we want. I’d say it’s in our best interests to stand down. Or we can shoot each other and shed a lot of blood. Your choice.”
“Take her. She served her purpose,” Esteban said.
Mad Dog grabbed her wrist and Tyana yanked it away. “No! Goddamn it, Jonah, no! You can’t do this!”
Mad Dog yanked Tyana to him and applied enough pressure to her other wrist to make her drop her gun. He knocked her knife out of her hand with the butt of his rifle and then simply threw her over his shoulder and barreled out the front door.
Tyana looked back to see Eli and his men still helpless on the floor, but Eli’s gaze followed her the entire way. Cold rage burned in his dark eyes. Betrayal. Dear God.
Tyana exploded in fury, kicking and flailing at Mad Dog. Jonah backed from the house, his gun still trained on Esteban while Damiano hurried toward the truck that Eli and Tyana had driven to the house.
Mad Dog tried to stuff her into the SUV, and she fought like a deranged woman. She executed a kick to his midsection, knocking him back a foot.
“Damn it, D, hurry up with that shit,” Mad Dog barked out.
Tyana launched herself from the truck, her intention to go in after Eli and the others. Jonah caught her, and she punched him full in the face. His neck snapped back, but he retained his grip on her arm.
In the end, it took the combined efforts of both Mad Dog and Jonah to force her to the ground. Through tears of rage, she saw Damiano approach and then felt the prick of a needle in her arm.
She stared accusingly up at Damiano. “How could you?” she whispered.
“How could I not?” he asked.
The world swayed and blurred around her. She felt herself being lifted and then tossed into the backseat of the SUV. A hot tear slipped down her cheek as her eyes fluttered closed and everything went black.
Eli lay there, helpless fury blowing through his veins. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t shift. He just lay there like a fucking vegetable as Esteban’s men swarmed around his team.
She’d played him. Played him in the worst way. She’d made him care, and then she’d knifed him in the back.
Because of him and his stupid decision to trust Tyana, his team would likely die. He couldn’t save them this time. He couldn’t even save himself.
A hard boot rammed into his ribs, and he grunted in pain. He felt himself lifted by three men. He was thrown onto the couch, his arms twisted behind him and tied. His feet were bound next.
Gabe, Ian and Braden were receiving similar treatment as they were restrained.
Eli closed his eyes. He hoped to hell it was worth it to Tyana. He hoped whatever she got out of this deal would enable her to sleep at night. If he managed to escape with his life, though, he’d make damn sure she never had another night’s peace.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Tyana climbed back to consciousness, her head aching vilely, and her tongue
