by Laura Taylor
“You know the answer to that one as well as I do.”
Melissa felt a cold weight settle in her gut. “I don’t want to entertain the idea that -”
“We have a mole in our ranks,” Leon told her flatly, then repeated it when she tried to deny it. “One of our members is a traitor. Think about it,” he added, and Melissa closed her eyes as if that could block out the reality. “The shifter escaped from the lab. Gianna Evans went missing.”
“It couldn’t be Gianna,” Melissa interrupted, feeling pleased that she’d at least figured that much out. “She went missing long before we even started planning this raid.”
“True,” Leon agreed patiently. “But then Kathy the lab assistant disappeared as well.”
“I thought maybe they’d tortured Gianna and she’d told them about Kathy,” Melissa muttered, feeling a touch foolish. “She knew plenty about the lab, if they’d really wanted to get the information out of her.”
“So we’ve started losing staff who are protected by only low-level security,” Leon went on, ignoring her interruption, “our main lab was broken into – or out of – and now someone’s given the shifters the heads-up that we were planning to raid their property. Only it turned out not to be their property after all.”
“It can’t be Miller. We revoked all his security codes. Didn’t we?” she asked, suddenly fearful. Surely they hadn’t overlooked such an important detail?
“Yes, we did. But there is one more thing we’re going to have to think about before we get too carried away with hunting down a traitor in our ranks.”
“What’s that?” Melissa asked, glaring around the estate. If the traitor was one of their soldiers, one of the field agents who had been searching the Lakes District...
“How the hell are we going to explain this to Head Office?”
The foyer at Misty Hills was a mess. Blood and dirt stained the floor, makeshift medical stations were set up in three places and a growing pile of swabs, bandages and other medical paraphernalia was sitting at the bottom of the stairs. Several of their number had been shot, one of the assassins was suffering minor burns from the grenade and one of the Grey Watch women had twisted her ankle tripping over in the dark. Silas, Baron had found out, had taken a bullet in the arm, confirming his suspicions that the man had been injured.
But by far the worst part of the situation was resting up against the far wall. Three bodies were laid out neatly, covered with sheets, and Baron sighed as he cast his eyes over them. Raniesha, Aaron and Rift, one of the Grey Watch women; honourable deaths, all of them, but that still left painful holes in their respective packs. Retrieving their bodies from the battlefield had been risky, and the effort had caused Tank to get shot in the arm as he’d carried Aaron’s body over his shoulder, but all of them agreed that it was worth it. Leaving them to be dissected by the Noturatii was not an option.
Kwan lay on the floor beside Aaron, one hand gently stroking his shoulder through the sheet. He’d taken the news of his friend’s death hard, a pained cry leaving his throat, even as Silas had forcibly bundled him into a van. Now, tears flowed from his eyes, but he made no other sound, and so far, no one had dared disturb him.
Baron’s clothes were still wet from his impromptu dip in the pond, but there was no time now for a proper shower, and getting another set of clothes filthy just seemed like a waste. The foyer was warm enough with several dozen people crowded inside, so he ignored the minor discomfort.
As he stood watching his Den try to pull themselves together, Silas wandered over to him, his arm now wrapped in a bandage. “How’s that scratch on your neck?” he asked, seeing the place the bullet had grazed him, but Baron shook his head.
“It’s fine.”
Seeing the direction of his gaze, Silas let out a sigh. “I can’t figure out if this was a marginal success or a complete fucking failure,” he admitted, sounding tired. By now everyone had heard that they’d inadvertently attempted to defend a pit of drug dealers, though no one had quite decided how to react to the news. “What the hell happened back there?”
“We went into a battle on short notice with insufficient intel,” Baron summed up the night grimly. “I thought about blaming the Khuli for this, but the reality is, she didn’t know any more than we did. If we’d had more time, we would have done a more thorough background check on the property, found out who owned it, hacked their phones or internet connection, you name it. If we’d had time. But we had twelve hours to decide if the Khuli was telling the truth, call in some assassins, notify the Grey Watch, put a plan together and make sure everyone was briefed well enough. So we could take the moral high ground and say we tried to do the right thing, but really...” He cast his eyes around the room. So much pain, both physical and emotional. “How’s Simon doing?” He was sitting against a wall while Luna stitched up a laceration on his leg. He and Raniesha, while not exactly a couple, had certainly been close, but Baron hadn’t had the chance to talk to him directly with all the other chaos going on.
“Shutting it all out at the moment,” Silas replied. “It’s not exactly denial, but he’s not really processing much right now either.”
Baron sighed. “I’m going to go sit with Kwan for a while,” he said after a pause. “Can you take my armour off for me?” In the struggle to get everyone safely off the battlefield and back to Misty Hills, he hadn’t thought to remove his canine suit. Silas nodded, so Baron shifted and stood still while Silas undid the buckles, tossing the armour into a corner with a dozen other sets, to be cleaned and sorted later. Still in wolf form, Baron slunk over to Kwan. He lay down against the man’s back and put his chin on his shoulder. With his free hand, Kwan absently reached over and stroked his fur. While patting each other in wolf form was generally considered to be a social faux pas, in this case it seemed oddly appropriate, and so Baron lay still, letting Kwan rub his head with one hand, while he held onto his best friend with the other.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Melissa checked her face in her compact mirror, dabbing a touch more makeup under her eyes. Her appearance wasn’t usually a concern, so long as she looked reasonably professional, but after getting absolutely zero sleep the night before, she was aware of the dark bags under her eyes and the pale, drawn way her skin looked. In the interests of appearing alert and on top of things, she needed a little chemical assistance before making her call to Mr Gerber. After all, a good Chief of Operations should be able to perform nightly raids on their enemies and still be sharp enough to run the office the next day.
Finally satisfied with her appearance, she put the mirror away and called up the video conference screen on her computer. Gerber answered quickly – he always did, which made Melissa wonder whether he ever took so much as a toilet break away from his computer.
“Melissa!” He greeted her with a smile, which actually just made his face look all the more floppy and wrinkled. “I believe congratulations are in order. Finding the shifters’ estate! I haven’t had a chance to read your report in full, but even so, an astonishing result. Well done.”
Melissa smiled, a blush covering her cheeks. “Thank you, sir. I have some excellent staff behind me. This one really was a team effort.”
“A team that you put together,” he reminded her, though that wasn’t strictly true. Leon had been assigned to her by head office, and most of the other staff she’d merely inherited from Jacob Green. But if Gerber wanted to sing her praises, she wasn’t going to correct him. “I’ve had my doubts along the way, but you’ve proved me wrong. It seems appointing you Chief of Operations was a good choice, after all.” Ah, yes, this was more like Gerber. Insults disguised as praise, or vice versa.
“I knew from the start I would have a lot to learn,” she said demurely, “but I’ve worked hard to fill some very large shoes.” She let her confident smile slip a little. “But as you haven’t read the full report yet,” – as subtle a reprimand as she could manage – “then I should point out, sir, that I really consider the ra
id to be a failure. A number of shifters got away – it was always assumed a few would escape,” she excused herself. “But the leader was among them. I had given specific instructions to the men to take him out, if at all possible. But once we’d discovered the location of the pack, perhaps I was too eager to shut it down. We could have taken more time to assess the property and perhaps run a more successful campaign as a result.”
As with all her conversations with this man, this one was a gamble. There was a chance she was just making herself look bad, but there was an equal possibility that Gerber would see the escape of the shifters and the loss of so many men as a failure. If she could pre-empt his disappointment by demonstrating that she’d already reflected on her own shortcomings and learned from them, she was a step ahead.
Gerber’s face scrunched up into a lumpy grimace. “How many of them did you kill?”
“It’s hard to say for certain, given that we know they took some of the bodies with them, but our best estimate is about fifteen.” Eight was a far more honest number, with eleven an optimistic top.
Gerber shrugged. “Well, I would hardly consider that to be a failure, regardless of who got away. That’s a sizable chunk of their pack. And if you’ve taken possession of their estate… well, I’d say the British pack is as good as dead.” That might have been true, if six of those men had actually been shifters in the first place. As it stood, the real number they’d killed could be as low as two.
“We’re still cleaning up from this raid, sir, but in the near future, I’m planning on turning our attention to the second, more reclusive pack. Historically, they’ve been far less of a threat to us, but I also think they’re going to be a lot harder to find. I should also let you know we’ve released a preliminary media report on the raid. The amount of noise we made would have attracted a fair bit of attention. We’ll trickle a few more details out over the next few days, but as far as the general public is concerned, this was a raid on a drug lab run by an international crime ring. The police tried to arrest them peacefully, but they responded with violence, so officers were forced to respond in kind.”
Along with trying to cover their tracks publicly, Melissa had also asked for urgent intel from their police contacts to try and find out who the meth lab had actually belonged to. There was a good chance they’d just seriously pissed off a powerful group of the wrong people.
Gerber made a non-committal noise. “Expect a bit of fallout for that one. Every time someone gets shot, no matter how crazy they were, someone kicks up a fuss about police brutality.” He shrugged. “But you’ve proved to be a competent leader, Melissa. I’m sure you’ll work it out.” He checked his watch. “I have a meeting in a few minutes, but once again, well done, and we’ll catch up again in a couple of days.”
“Thank you, sir. Bye for now.” She ended the connection, then looked up to see Leon watching her, a look on his face that was half amusement, half wry disbelief.
“What?” she asked blithely.
“Aren’t you afraid that one of these days all these lies are going to catch up with you?” he asked.
“No,” she said, a faint smirk gracing her lips. “All the evidence supports my current claim. The occupants of the property responded with guns and grenades, we have a collection of thuggish types in our morgue and a number of our soldiers have given eye-witness accounts of seeing some of the shifters during the battle. Anyone who wants to claim that the property wasn’t the shifters’ base will have to come up with significant evidence to prove it’s actually located somewhere else. And I truly wish them luck if they want to try.”
Leon shook his head, and it was hard to tell whether he admired her audacity or was simply glad that it wasn’t him who would have to explain himself to the hierarchy if anything went wrong. “There is one major flaw in your current strategy, you realise,” he went on, tapping idly at his keyboard. “Though I’m sure a lady of your intelligence has already figured this one out.” An acknowledgement of genuine capability, or snide mockery? “If we’ve told HQ we’ve found the shifters’ estate, then we can’t keep pouring resources into continuing to look for it.”
“Not overtly, no. But we can keep developing weapons, we can try to capture another live subject to keep running our science experiments, and as always, we’ll keep an eye out for any suspicious news stories on them. This pack hasn’t exactly been known for their subtlety. Sooner or later they’ll slip up and we’ll be back on their trail.” It was a neat, quick denial of a problem that would be keeping her awake at night for weeks to come.
Her computer beeped suddenly, and, grateful for the distraction, Melissa flicked over to her email account. A new message had come in from Head Office, and she opened it, scrolling through the -
“WHAT? NO!”
“What is it?” When Melissa didn’t reply, Leon hopped up and crossed the room quickly, reading the news over her shoulder.
I have received word from Li Khuli. She has succeeded in her assignment to kill Jack Miller. The shifters were scattered after the battle at their estate, and Li Khuli took the opportunity to execute him as he fled.
The report went on, but Melissa didn’t bother reading any more. She flopped back in her chair, cursing the screen.
“Isn’t this a good thing?” Leon pointed out drily.
“I wanted to kill him,” Melissa growled at him. “That was my job. I didn’t need some fucking Khuli interfering around here in the first place!”
Leon laughed outright at that. “It’s a braver person than me who would try telling a Khuli what to do.”
“Whatever,” Melissa snarled, annoyed again at the fact that he continued to be right. “Fine, well at least that’s one thorn out of our sides,” she said, trying to look on the bright side. After all, the leader was still out there, still fair game for her own efforts at murder and mayhem. One day, she told herself, making a real effort to control her temper. One day, she would look him in the eye and pull that trigger herself.
Baron sat in the library with Caroline, Andre, Heron and the older of the two female assassins. Her comrades had already been reassigned, the Council’s plane picking them up from Carlisle, but this one – Joselyn was her name – had been left behind to assess John’s behaviour in regard to his contact with the Khuli and to recommend an appropriate course of action to the Council.
“It’s a tough one,” Joselyn admitted, shuffling a small stack of papers in front of her. No doubt she’d been looking into the legalities of what John had done and had tried to find cases in the past that might have set a precedent. “Given the complexity of the situation with the Khuli, as well as the fact that Alistair has also been in close contact with her, I can tell you right from the start that I’m not going to recommend that John be put down.”
That was directed at Baron. His threat, in the middle of the pre-battle discussion, had not been an idle one – John had put their Den at risk, and there were consequences to be faced for that. But in light of the way things had panned out, he was rather relieved by the assassin’s announcement.
“John failed to inform his superiors that a Khuli was near the estate, and went so far as to openly socialise with her, neither of which are to be taken lightly, but there are two rather awkward details to keep in mind which make my job more difficult.” Joselyn glanced around the table, and it was an easy conclusion to reach that she was not currently enjoying her assignment. “The first is that John happened to be right; he claimed right from the start that the Khuli was not a threat to this Den, and as yet, she has failed to carry out any hostile move whatsoever against you.”
“Is it worth also pointing out,” Caroline spoke up, “that we don’t actually know what the Khuli’s final plans are? We haven’t seen her since the battle, and she gave no indication as to what she intends to do from here. It’s all very well to assume good intentions, but we don’t actually know for sure.”
“That has been taken into consideration, yes,” Joselyn said. “And a related issue
is whether you wish to continue living here, or evacuate to Scotland. While the Khuli has displayed no overt threat to this estate, it’s rather a bigger leap to assume that you’re necessarily safe here.”
“It’s something we know we need to discuss,” Baron said, glancing uneasily at Caroline, “but we haven’t made any firm decisions yet.”
Joselyn shrugged one shoulder, a concession to the ongoing complexities of their situation. “But more than that,” she went on, returning to her previous point. “It must be noted that John’s actions in talking to the Khuli on a regular basis may well have played a large part in humanising the shifters in her eyes. It’s possible that he is the reason why she didn’t kill you all.”
Baron expected Andre to argue about that one. He’d made no secret of his distrust for the woman hunting them, and he waited for him to spout off some theory about why a Khuli might let her prey live, some game she must be playing… but Andre remained silent.
Which meant that Baron himself was going to have to face up to the awkwardness of that latest announcement. “When Mark broke into the Noturatii lab,” he said finally, “there were two very good things to come out of it; one, we picked up Dee, and she’s become a treasured member of this Den, and two, we were able to launch a successful raid to recover Tank after he was captured. Mark’s situation wasn’t so different from John’s. He broke shifter law, wilfully and flagrantly, but certain benefits to us were realised as a result of it.” He glanced at Caroline, who nodded in encouragement; thank god, she seemed to be on the same page as him. “Perhaps something similar could be worked out for John.”
Joselyn regarded him critically for a long moment, and Baron braced himself for whatever she was going to say next. Did she know about his and John’s previous relationship? Had the Council told her anything about John’s past? Or was she flying blind, ready to carry out whatever order her masters dictated, without any context by which to measure it? “Given the opportunity to choose a punishment for him,” she asked finally, “what would you suggest?”
