Her lips parted, ready to accept him, but instead of kissing him, she moved past his mouth, brushing her lips across his jawbone and up to his earlobe. “I love you, Reece Buckley. Even though I’ve hit you and thrown you across the room, here you are, in my bed, so does that mean…”
“Victoria…” His eyes burned. “You have to ask… I’ve loved you from day one. I don’t need to fall to never want to leave your side. I don’t ever want to leave your side.” He moved his hands behind her neck and pulled her face toward him. “I do love you…with everything that’s in me.” He pressed his lips to hers, sealing his words with a kiss, a kiss he wanted to connect them forever. Her mouth moved greedily over his, opening up for him to consume her, make her his.
His heart raced, his lips tingled, and warmth rushed through his veins, but it wasn’t all consuming as before. It wasn’t that delicious pain he’d felt on the porch that had made his limbs feel as though they were on fire, powerless to move.
He pulled back after a few seconds. “What happened?”
“It’s not time, I guess.”
“Ahh…of course. You have a will of steel.” He laughed. “You are a beautiful but strange creature, Victoria, and I’m so glad to finally have found you. My soul has been missing something my entire life, but I never knew what it was. Now I know.” He laced his fingers with hers and rolled onto his back, pulling her with him. “You need to rest, darlin’. I’ll watch over you, okay? Tomorrow, we’ll figure out all of this together.”
She released a long sigh and closed her eyes. “That sounds nice. I’m so tired…”
Reece kissed the top of her head again and enclosed her in his arms. “I love you, Victoria Leigh Maher.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Reece awoke to dishes clinking and the low chatter of commercials from a television. He scooted off the bed as quietly as possible and peeked around the small wall separating the bedroom from the kitchen.
Victoria stood with her back to him, arranging food on a plate. She wore only a long threadbare t-shirt. He remembered her crawling out of bed last night and rummaging through her dresser, how natural it had felt. She’d crawled back in a few minutes later and had nuzzled up next to him, and he’d felt completely content.
He approached her as quietly as he could with the old wooden floorboards beneath his feet. Every step he took, he felt the slight dip, so he depressed his foot slowly to keep the boards from sliding against each other. He may have had SEAL training, but she was a creatus. His team leader had wondered how no one could ever sneak up on him. His brothers in the Navy had even nicknamed him ‘Eidolon’; not only because of his ability to hear anyone approaching, but his talent to infiltrate any stronghold, as though he were a phantom, unusual for someone of his height.
“You can’t sneak up on me, Reece,” Victoria said, not bothering to turn around or stop what she was doing.
“I was close. How far did I get before you heard me?” He closed his arms around her and kissed the side of her neck.
She turned in his arms. “You were actually pretty quiet, but I smelled you.”
“You know…our kids are going to hate that ability.”
The irises of her eyes grew so large it looked as though they were black onyx. “Kids?”
“What? You don’t like kids?”
“Umm…never been around them much, other than my brother, but I was away at school when he was real young. My father wasn’t able to nurture us as well as he would have liked after my mother died. And I’m not the babysitting type, I guess.”
He pulled her tighter against his chest, loving the closeness he felt. “I used to sneak up on my mom all the time… I guess I was training early to be a SEAL.”
She laughed. “You know…I can picture you doing that. Hungry?”
“Starving!” He buried his face into her neck again, nibbling. “And you smell delicious.”
She giggled and wriggled beneath his lips.
“Victoria, my dear…brave…tough,” he nibbled between each word, “superwoman, are you ticklish?”
“Uh-uh.” She said through clenched teeth. “Stop!” she cried out as he found more areas. “I’m serious.”
Reece pulled her back against the counter. “All this tough-girl persona you put out, and I discover I can take you down by tickling you.”
“Not if your hands are broken,” she growled.
He tightened his grip. “You’re nothing but a pussycat, darlin’,” he purred in her ear. “And I love it. Don’t ever change—” Reece cocked his head to the TV, dropping his arms. “What the…” He bolted into the living room, blood draining from his face.
Betty stood on her front porch. The reporter who’d just mentioned Meghan’s name—the words that had alerted Reece—held a mic in front of Betty’s mouth while she dabbed at her face with the blue paisley bandanna she’d always used as a handkerchief. “Bucky, you gotta find our baby,” she said through a sob.
Reece reached for the remote and turned up the volume. The screen cut to the news reporter in front of Betty. “According to authorities, the image is the same symbol found on victims in Boston, Massachusetts,” the woman said over Betty’s cries in the background.
The screen split between two women, the reporter in Betty’s front yard and a news anchor sitting behind a tall counter with News Channel 6 painted on the surface. “What’s the connection in South Carolina, Janet?”
“Not sure, Susan,” the reporter replied instantly, as though on script. “‘No comment,’ is Boston PD’s official stance at the moment, but we’ll keep you up to date as we uncover the story.”
As Victoria quietly approached him, Reece scooped his phone off the table by the door. She didn’t offer any questions or nonsensical comforts. She knew what was happening. Based on Betty’s comment to find Meghan, the rogue had kidnapped his daughter. He punched in the numbers, not caring who tracked him. They’d already discovered the one person he’d spent the last sixteen years trying to protect from the same fate as her mother.
Gran’s voice was nothing but moans when she answered out of breath.
“Betty, it’s Reece. What happened?”
“Meg’s gone,” she wailed.
“Gran, I know you’re upset, but you need to calm down and talk to me.” His heart felt as though it’d tear through his chest, but he had to stay calm. “How do you know someone took her? Where was that picture left?”
She sniffed loudly as she tried to pull herself together. “I went to wake her for work, as I do every mornin’… The police…they said she’d done run off o’er night. But I showed them the picture on ’er bed. One of the cop’s eyes lit up, said he’d seen that red ‘C’ on the nightly news.”
“Okay, Gran. You gotta trust me, okay? They don’t want to kill her. They’re not like them drug dealers I dealt with in Miami. They just want me.”
“Oh, Bucky, she’s all I got since we lost ’er mamma.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” He paused. “I’m out, Gran. I promise. No more jobs. No more DEA or government work. I can’t go through this again.”
“Find ’er, Bucky. Bring back my Meg,” she cried again.
“I promise.” Reece had never broken a promise, and he didn’t plan to start now. He hung up the phone and turned to Victoria.
“I’m so sorry—”
“Stop. This isn’t your fault, and we don’t have time—”
“It is my fault,” she screamed into her hands. “I’ll go to him if that’s what he wants—”
“Victoria, I said stop.” He grabbed her shoulders. “Stop. Please,” he said softer. “Please. I need your strength right now, not your guilt. He’s insane. He snapped that man’s neck in front of me last night without a second thought. This isn’t your fault, so just stop, okay? They don’t want just you. They want me too.”
“What...what do you mean?”
“Jonas approached me a few days ago, the night you and Mike picked up your stuff from your apartment. We we
re watching you and Mike, and he’d made a comment that I didn’t have to worry about you choosing Mike, that you were just best friends. But then I’d asked him what would happen if you chose me. He shrugged off my comment…said, ‘So be it.’” Reece wanted to comfort Victoria’s wide-eyed gaze that told him without words that she wasn’t comfortable that they’d been watching her, talking about her, but there just wasn’t time. “Jonas doesn’t just want you. He wants me. He wants the strongest creatus. He wants to start an army, so he’s starting with the half-breeds, the strongest of our kind. Which means he wants Meghan too.”
“Oh, no.” She stood up straighter, but tears still poured from her eyes. She wiped them away and nodded as though she understood.
“I need you to call Derrick,” he said. “No more waiting around.” He lowered his mouth to her ear, so no one could hear him. “We’re gonna find these guys, and I think I know where they are. We need someplace safe we can talk, though.”
She nodded again. “Derrick’s apartment. It’s soundproofed, break-in proof.”
“Call him. This ends tonight."
Derrick’s home was the largest apartment he’d seen. He’d obviously done well as overseer and hospital administrator. An entire wall of windows lined one side of the apartment that overlooked the city, and the table Reece sat behind was solid cherry with a thick, rich gloss. Maybe Jonas was jealous.
Victoria sat next to him, her hand burrowed in his. When she’d reached for him, seemingly unconsciously, he realized he needed her support too. He didn’t care what Michael thought as he glared across the table. The only thing that mattered was finding his daughter and ending the killing spree that had affected all their lives.
Reece had requested that only Derrick and Michael be here, and of course, he didn’t mind his human wife Kristina, but she’d said that she had things to do in the other room anyway. Derrick, he trusted completely. Michael, he wasn’t so sure about, but he’d know for sure in a few hours.
Once all eyes fell on him, Reece said, “From what I understand, you have a collection of safe houses around the state, but no one lives in them, so they are safe when you need them, correct?”
Derrick nodded, and it was evident that he understood immediately what Reece was getting at. “Makes sense. They never left, obviously, so all they needed was food.”
“Which, they can also find on their own,” Reece added.
Victoria squeezed his hand. “So, we start with the safe houses closest to Boston, right?”
“They’re all close to Boston,” Mike added, “in the event we need to hop on a plane. The safe houses are all within an hour’s drive of the city, in every direction.”
“How many?” Reece asked.
Mike shrugged. “Forty something last count.”
Reece blew out a breath. “Well, my suggestion is that we split up in pairs.”
“We’d be faster if we went alone,” Victoria offered.
“But not safer,” Derrick suggested. “Vic, why don’t you and I take the north-west residences, and Michael, you and Reece take the south-east homes.”
Mike laughed. “Reece—and me?” He shook his head and laughed some more. “That ought to be fun.”
Reece ignored Mike’s obvious distaste of him and allowed Derrick to do his job as overseer. It wasn’t the first time Reece had sat in a huddle, discussing how to take out a terrorist. And that’s what Jonas was. An extremist who thinks violence is the way to fulfill his cause. Even if Jonas wasn’t the killer, his radical ideals had birthed a monster, and it was Reece’s job to destroy monsters, human or not.
“It’s not about having fun, Mike, it’s about finding a killer. Let’s be careful too. No crazy crap. Some of our friends might be misguided, but they aren’t all crazy. Let’s take down Jonas as peacefully as possible. No sense making a martyr out of him.”
Mike jumped up. “When do we start?”
Reece couldn’t help but laugh. Derrick was smart. As head of security, Mike was in the best position for the family. Victoria had said that he also had a medical degree, but Reece had a difficult time imagining him in scrubs holding a scalpel. Mike would have made a good Marine. Gung-ho, ready for the front line. If Mike wasn’t the rogue, Reece was sure they’d find his daughter. If Mike was the rogue, though, Reece might have just signed his death warrant.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Mike peeled away from the curb, heading toward the highway, but Reece felt the larger man’s eyes rake over him. “So you supposedly let me beat you up, let Victoria knock you out, and then just sat back and watched us for a month?” he said through a chuckle; though there wasn’t even a pinch of a smile on his face.
Not wanting to infuriate the large man any more than he already had over the last month, Reece resisted smiling. “Yes.”
Mike rolled his eyes, something Reece’s daughter would have done. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why is that so hard to believe, Mike? Because you jump into everything feet first? Shoot first, ask questions later? That’s not my style. And for the most part, y’all treated me well. Even you…though you grinded your teeth together every time I brought up Victoria.”
“When this is over,” Mike flicked his eyes toward Reece’s side of the vehicle again, “You and me. No rules.”
Reece didn’t resist smiling this time. “I like the sound of that.”
Mike released a real laugh this time. “Yeah, well, you might not say that later.”
“No. I definitely will. If you want to spar with me when this is over, that means you don’t plan on killing me tonight.”
Mike glared at him again. “I’m not the rogue, Reece. If you’d done your homework fully, you’d realize that. The rogue tried to kill Kristina, which would have killed my brother. The one thing a creatus won’t do is kill their family. I’d die before I ever hurt my brother.”
Reece nodded. “I’m glad to hear that, Mike. So, do you think Jonas is responsible, then?”
Mike slowly moved his head from side to side. “The situation, yes. The rogue kills, I don’t think so. I’ve told Derrick that from the beginning. Jonas hates humans because of his father, and even though he might be a tad sadistic, along with being a bit too hyper and a go-getter who wants to be an important figurehead one day, he’s not irrational. In fact, he’s smooth, a natural born leader. Very likable.” Mike shook his head again. “He was my best friend.”
“I met Jonas. I didn’t get the feeling that he was out of control either, and I’d like to think that I’m a pretty good judge of character. What about his brother?”
Mike sucked his teeth. “Ry is crazy enough, and…he’s about the only creatus strong enough to take on Derrick. He has motive, and he wasn’t too happy when Derrick asked Jonas to leave. Jonas has been more than a big brother to Ry; he took over as father and mother, providing what Margaret no longer could after she killed their father.”
Reece digested the information, but there had to be more. Using human bodies was one thing; he could see Jonas doing that, offering up as a defense that he was just proving how despicable humans were. He didn’t even need to kill them; he could use their own murders. But the actual rogue kills had dripped of pure hatred, something had to have triggered that reaction.
“How does Ry feel about Victoria?” Reece asked.
“Crazy about her, but who isn’t? She’s something else, isn’t she? Even among creatus women, she stands out. Ry asked her out a few times when she was with Derrick, after Jonas left. But since Jonas returned, he stepped back…”
“Because he loves his brother more than anything,” Reece finished.
“Yeah…something like that.”
“So he wants to make sure she’s with one of them.”
“Maybe.”
“Hey,” Reece tapped the dash, “pull over at that Starbucks up ahead.”
Mike shook his head. “You’re in Boston, not the South, country boy. Don’t you know Bostonians frequent Dunkin’ not Starbucks,” Mike s
neered.
Reece laughed. “I don’t drink coffee, and neither do you, so what’s the difference? It’s not the coffee I want; it’s their WiFi. Their wireless service is better than basic encryption, offering higher authentication standards. I need to check my work email, and I didn’t want to do that at Victoria’s apartment.”
Mike pulled into the parking area and stopped in a fire lane. Obviously, Reece didn’t have to go inside to access the hotspot.
Reece flicked through the interoffice junk mail about health benefits, time off, a mandatory class on sexual harassment against coworkers. Even the government couldn’t avoid US laws enacted to provide a safe work environment, it seemed. Here’s your license to kill or be killed, but don’t forget to have your annual health checkup.
Finally, he clicked on an email from Cooper at zero nine hundred this morning.
Agent Buckley, as you probably know by now, your daughter is missing. The seal we’ve been researching in the Boston cases was at the scene, but there was also a letter in my office this morning. I didn’t want to scan it, and I’m even hesitant to mention its contents here.
Our suspect wants you to meet him in the garage of the building where you were held for several weeks—alone of course—at twenty-one hundred hours.
If you get this email, please contact me to set up a dragnet.
“Turn around, Mike, and call Derrick and Victoria on your phone, please,” Reece ordered. “We need to regroup.”
“What’s up?” Mike narrowed his eyes and scrunched up his nose as if he’d smelled something rotten, and Reece wasn’t so sure that there wasn’t something foul in the works.
Something was definitely off about this request.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Creatus Series Boxed Set Page 47
