by Cera Daniels
CHAPTER TWENTY
Five minutes after he'd warned her, he'd pressed the button on his remote. Nothing had happened. No bombs detonated, no gala attendants dead by the punishing flame of his vengeance.
A pity.
Faulty materials, perhaps. Improper placement. Haste. They'd found and guarded his packages strapped to the outside doors, then disarmed and removed each device without leaving a gap wide enough for him to examine one himself.
As he returned to his sanctuary he cursed. It would have been much simpler for them to die then. Now he would have to go hunting. Another night of silent tracking, clean kills.
It didn't seem right that the elite receive the same funeral as the others. Their deaths didn't need to be personalized. They didn't need to be acknowledged singly, but rather as one fallen entity. Corruption, greed, and affluence were supposed to die tonight. Vices buried and gone from the city.
But they'd lived.
He rubbed his chin. Why? He plucked a single showstopper bullet from its ammo box and reloaded a Glock.
Perhaps Fate had reached out and stayed his hand.
Perhaps they were saved for a reason.
As he had been.
The building had been riddled with good men and women of the police force, ready to stop him. Standing together for a common goal. Hope remained for the city yet. He sighed. Their guns had pointed the wrong way. He'd been there to save them.
Not that he blamed them for their ignorance. They had little control over those who had bartered their way into power, and they'd not glimpsed his vision of Relek City's glorious future, a future purged of the sores festering from the inside out.
The rot was exposed. Now all that remained was to purge it from the body.
He loaded a second bullet.
The fundraiser had tested his resolve. A distraction which had nearly led him astray. Whether his judgment had been deemed unfit to be served to them, or if McLelas, his business companions, the elite lords and ladies of the city were meant to live, that path had come to an end. Fate could have its victory. For now.
That must be it. He was meant for this greater mission. It was up to him to stop the flow of treachery that seemed to ooze from the groundwater into the city itself.
And yet, it stung to bear witness to the fall of the one woman he never thought would give in. A once true friend. Someone he could count on, a lifetime ago. Werner had been a good cop. A decent cop. A loyal officer. Now, she was another simpering pawn in McLelas's game of syndicate checks and balances.
She'd fallen.
She'd risen tainted.
A police detective, once righteous and moral, lured by the sensual aura of corruption. Fate could have the others, but it couldn't have her. His pity would have been wasted, but perhaps not his mercy. Ryan McLelas could not be permitted to keep her in his clutches. He tucked the gun into his shoulder holster and donned his trench coat. He had time. One small detour before the end? Yes. Detective Amanda Werner would be set free.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Visibility was low as a slushy mixture of lukewarm snow and rain pattered against the windshield. Ryan tapped impatient fingers on the dash of the armored truck they'd hastily disguised and borrowed from McLelas Financial's fleet. Shaw's guards changed shifts in under an hour. Instead of money, the truck would be ideal to transport their prisoners from Shaw's compound to the drop point at the docks. But if Klepto didn't get into place beforehand, one of the crews would get away clean.
"Can you at least try to break fifty?" Ryan asked.
"What was that?" Jay threw him a sidelong look. "'I drove my last truck into a giant freakin' manhole'?"
"Hilarious." Ryan slumped back in the seat, but a tired smile found his lips.
Jay chuckled, his eyes taking on an eerie glaze as he focused on the road for another few miles. Their soundtrack for the cross-town ride, a rhythmic clacking of a laptop keyboard from the back of the truck, picked up speed even as the Jay kept the truck to a steady too-damn-slow. The sounds abruptly stopped, and Zach cleared his throat.
"This is close enough. Find a parking spot," Zach said through the grating in the wall between the cab and the cargo area.
The plan was simple. After they'd timed the guards' movements and gotten into position, Ryan would work through the ground patrol to the north and west. His brothers would disable the sniper roosts, one on either end of Shaw's property, then drop in on the replacement goons, who, expecting to change out with Ryan's victims on the next rotation, would be filing in from the east and the shoreline to the south. Jay would take his reluctant cargo to meet the Organized Crime taskforce, while Ryan and Zach stayed behind to wreak havoc on the warehouse stores.
Ryan smiled. After the week he'd had, he was looking forward to causing a little mayhem.
They crouched two hundred feet from the perimeter to take a reading on the patrol pattern. Jay's pupils dilated in a rush. Thin, eerie rings of glowing silver overtook his usual blue-gray irises.
"Patrol's a little heavier than accounted for. Still a predictable pattern. Give me time to check the pace." Jay pushed his sleeve up and split his attention between the guards and the analog watch he'd strapped to his wrist, tapping it with a gloved fingertip every few seconds.
"Got 'em?" Ryan asked after a few minutes.
"South side of D4 is camera-shy. One more guard to go, then we'll be clear for fifteen."
Time enough for them to close in on the wall of the nearest compound and tamper with the rest of Shaw's closed circuit cameras. From there, they'd use the security hole as a launch point for their three-pronged assault.
Ryan nodded and they hustled down a side passageway. As he and his brothers dodged melted snow puddles, Ryan tried to reach out to his spirit guide for what felt like the thousandth time since that morning. I could use your help taking down runners.
"That's nice."
Ryan was so surprised to hear an answer he stopped moving, and Zach collided with his back.
"What's wrong?" Zach murmured.
"Nothing. Keep moving," Ryan said aloud. I know how much you enjoy a bad guy chase.
"Won't help."
What if I apologized? I shouldn't have yelled at you. Ryan paused. I'm sorry.
A thread of pained amusement slid toward his mind. "Your vocabulary improves by the day, Spiritwalker."
Where are you, Romeo?
"Protecting someone."
Jealousy crushed into him with unexpected violence. Ryan sucked in a breath of half-iced, half-salty air from the shoreline. He was not jealous of a dog. He couldn't be with Amanda. Period.
We've talked about this, Ryan thought.
"You talked."
Halfway to the relative safety of building D4, Jay held up his hand. The big, meaty guard who brought up the tail end of the rotation hiked his automatic rifle on his shoulder as he scanned the perimeter.
"You need to go to her. Talk to her, not me." A mournful whisper in his head.
She doesn't need me.
"She's your Spirit-mate." As if that explained everything. "Of course she needs you."
Ryan frowned. You're going to have to give me more than that. Every time I ask about Spiritwalkers and Spirit-mates, you dodge the question. You want me to talk to Amanda, I need to know what we're dealing with.
The guard stomped his feet and rubbed his hands together. Jay glanced at his watch with a frown.
Romeo tugged at his consciousness.
No. No Listening. Fighting the dog's attempt burned behind his eyes, then the sensation abated. Romeo, stop. We're in a hot zone.
"She's your Spirit-mate. She's bound to you, and through you, me. But she closed me out. It hurt. She hurts." Romeo gave a defeated sigh. "And so do you. It's too much."
A hint of paralyzing pressure cramped his chest, deep as a bruised muscle and raw as an open wound. Romeo? Are you injured?
Was his spirit guide lying somewhere in an alley, bleeding to death? If the dog had tried to protect Am
anda on his own, if they'd been attacked while Ryan wasn't there . . . Amanda hurt. His worry ratcheted up until his mind howled with denial. What if—No. She didn't need his interference. The woman had more than once proven she could hold her own in a fight.
"I thought I could ignore it, like you do," Romeo said with a whine.
I don't ignore blood. His palms began to itch with the need to seek out his spirit guide . . . and his Spirit-mate. Was Amanda okay?
"I'm not bleeding."
Then what? A broken bone? Ryan sent concern and a tiny bit of exasperation toward the dog. Then fear had him struggling for air. You're not trying to tell me Amanda's bleeding?
She was smart. Capable. Between her and Romeo, they could conquer any foe. More, she was safer without him bringing danger to her doorstep. So why did he want so fiercely to ditch this whole masquerade and careful plan, to leave the sea- and snow-wet air and guard over her personally?
"Broken heart."
Don't be dramatic.
Ryan didn't deny his heart ached. But not like this. Not these repetitive, almost-physical, tiny dagger stabs to the chest. Ryan could ignore feelings, could lock his emotions into the back of his mind . . . he started. Had he accidentally shoved the roiling emotions through the telepathic connection? Was he the cause of Romeo's discomfort?
"She severed our link, Spiritwalker. And you—I can't protect you. It's too much, even for me."
The guard moved into a lumbering jog along his route and Jay looked to Ryan for confirmation. Ryan stretched his ability over the compound to verify an extra guard hadn't closed in while they'd waited. Clear. He nodded, and Jay motioned to the camera-free zone as they moved forward with the plan. But halfway to their target position, Ryan realized Romeo hadn't been trying to share the pain. The dog had tried to shield him from it.
Ryan's consciousness yanked across the link, the full force of Amanda's rejection and his own turbulent emotions slamming back into his mind. His knees buckled. The telepathic connection battered him like a storm and Ryan's pain compounded, rioting through his thoughts like a feedback loop. His teeth clenched as he dropped to the ground on all fours.
When the starbursts faded from view, Zach and Jay were on either side of him. Silent. Watchful. Ryan winced as he moved from his knees to a seated position against the wall. At least they'd been able to get to relative safety. Over and over, he gulped the ice and salt breeze from the shoreline into his lungs.
Romeo?
No answer. Just a hollow place where his spirit guide should have been. It was like their link, as Romeo had suggested of his strange connection to Amanda, had closed.
"Your ears again?" Jay asked.
Cautious, Ryan gave his ability a push. If the telepathy no longer worked . . . but there, he could hear the guards blowing hot air on their hands, shuffling to keep warm on the north side of the warehouse. His breath puffed out with relief.
"No, it's Romeo," Ryan said. "I'm fine. Thanks for the assist."
"He bugging you with the telepathy thing?" Zach dropped beside him, scooting back against the wall as Ryan shot him a sharp look. "What? You never let me get away with 'I'm fine'."
The pain seemed to have vanished with the link, but he still felt phantom waves of agony.
Ryan pressed the heel of one hand to his chest. "This isn't the time."
"When is the time, bro? We don't hear our guides in here," Zach tapped Ryan's forehead, "and you never talk about it. We're pretty much following your lead, right? If our spirit guides'll pop up in our brains and it's gonna suck more than the rest of our cherished gifts, I think we have the right to know."
"Knowing won't help this mission. Keep your voice down," Ryan warned.
"So we'll what, talk about it later?" Zach asked.
Ryan nodded.
"Been there, got that lie printed on a t-shirt," Zach said with a snort.
"The time to talk was in your office this morning, and you put us off then, too," Jay hissed. He glanced at his watch, then squared his shoulders. "First your ears, now your spirit guide. Patrol won't circle back to this side for another ten minutes."
Time they should be spending disabling the security on Shaw's warehouses.
"Tell us now, or we leave you behind." Zach didn't flinch at the sharp look Ryan shot him. "Why should we trust you to watch our backs if you're compromised?"
Asked the man who had seizures and didn't know why. Ryan held the angry, useless words back. Romeo's attack on his mind wasn't Zach's fault, and dragging the hospital trip into this would needlessly tear at his brother's confidence.
"Why the third degree?" he asked instead. "Haven't I always looked out for you two? I don't put you in harm's way if I'm not confident we can handle the risks. We never act without a plan."
Zach's smile was hard. "Exactly. We. Not you taking the war and all of its battles on your own damn shoulders. You're no more a fucking invincible superhero than we are. And surprise: we don't expect you to be. Digging into mom's death, confiding our abilities to Brennan, playing chicken with a police detective—"
"Leave Amanda out of this." Ryan scrambled to his feet and shoved into Zach's face before the rest of his brother's words sank in. He balled his hands into fists. "Look, I'm not sharing your secrets with Brennan. I'd never betray you like that. Either of you."
Jay closed in from the left. "Then what was the folder on your desk about? The one covered in our ancestors marks."
"The one you didn't want to talk about," Zach added, his eyes hardened bronze to Jay's tempered steel.
"Me, okay?" Ryan growled. "Just some shit prophecy about me!"
Interest burned at him from matching glares and footsteps caught at his ears. Great. He'd yelled.
Ryan stepped back in a rush. "Guards converging on this position. Split up, head 'em off to the north and west. They can only see one of us at a time."
"Cameras are still up," Jay warned as he scooted up the metal rungs of a ladder built in to the outer warehouse wall.
"Then keep your heads down. Let Tor and Drak screw with those," Ryan said.
Zach had vanished without a word. Guards rushed Ryan from either side. He slammed his fist into the first man's nose.
Blood flew, and Ryan channeled his fury. Kick. Punch. Punch harder. A radio crackled somewhere to his right. Shift change would come early. None of these men—or their companions—could get away.
His ears caught the slick movement of an automatic weapon strap sliding off of a shoulder. Ryan hauled ass to the wall as bullets sprayed between the buildings. For once, the weather would work to his advantage. Sleet and shadows obscured him from view. Metal panels dinged, buzzing with fine tuned vibrations against his augmented hearing. One thug, two, three, went down to their own friendly fire.
No hiding Klepto's presence now.
The bullets stopped, and Ryan flung himself at the last unarmed guard. He aimed his toes at the back of the man's knee, connected, and dodged back to the wall.
"Come on out!" The click and snap of the guard reloading his weapon.
Ryan waited. The guard had yet to fire again, which meant he was waiting for Ryan to tip him off to his position. Idiot.
Ryan's foot nudged a flat piece of wood and he slid down the wall to pick it up. He crept close enough to hear the man murmuring curses under his breath. With one hand, he threw the block of wood across the walkway. Bullets spit into the empty darkness. Ryan's other hand plowed into his foe's ear.
The big man fought like a bear. Open, giant palms swatted at Ryan's head when the gun spun out of reach. Ryan found himself face-down in the gravel.
"So this is the infamous Klepto. You and your new partner think you can take this city?"
"News travels fast." Ryan twisted, the sleeves of his trench coat ripping at the seams.
They grappled again, and Ryan snagged the strap of the automatic weapon with his foot. He kicked, and it slid along the ground to meet his hand. Ryan shoved the barrel of the gun under the other man's ear and
pinned him to the ground.
"I think we're done here," Ryan growled.
"Go ahead. Kill me." The man struggled, but he wasn't going anywhere. "Shaw Family will reign no matter what you do, Klepto."
"I'd rather see how well my competition fares in prison," Ryan said.
The criminal laughed. "When I get out in a couple days, I'm gonna finish what you started."
The war? Ryan drove his elbow into the back of the meaty thug's head. Twice.
Ryan buried his frustration as a check for pulses found two of Shaw's men dead. Every death was a lost answer. It served no purpose. Unless one counted giving guilty men an easy way out. He brushed mud from his cargo pants and adjusted his hood before tapping on his earpiece.
"Reinforcements are down," Zach said, beating him to the victory.
"Clear here, too," Ryan added. "When the big one wakes up, I'd say he's due for one of your nice chats. Seems to know a great deal about the plan for that shipment."
Maybe Shaw Family intended to dominate the city in one fell swoop. The plan lined up with how much the syndicate boss had poured out of his bank account.
Ryan bent beside the big guy again. He checked around his neck and every pocket for a security card. Nothing. He shrugged as he stood. Maybe Shaw didn't let his hirelings into the warehouses.
"Coming?" Jay asked. "I'm betting it'll be warmer inside one of these buildings."
Leaving Zach to round up the survivors, Ryan helped his youngest brother crack the locks around the compound. They'd begun digging through crates by the time Zach called for Jay to take the wheel. Only one of them could make the delivery, and Jay's eyes made him the obvious choice to navigate their truck to the drop point, through the dark, the weather, and the ruined roads.
Zach ripped open the crate to Ryan's right.
Ryan sighed. "Are you waiting for me to ask how it went?"
"They think Klepto's the zealot," Zach said.
"They wouldn't be the first." Ryan yanked a small metal clasp off of the illegal, modified gun in his hands. "Is it the masks?"
