Felderman slumped in his seat. “You know about sh-shape-shifters?”
“We do,” Kell said. “And we’ve seen those two before, and we know who they work for. What did they want with you?”
“You know who they work for?” Felderman’s eyes were wide, bloodshot, and frightened. “They were the only ones I saw. One was named Travis. I don’t know the other.”
He stood up, starting in one direction toward Nik, then swerving back toward Kell. Panic was taking hold. “They’ll kill me if I talk. I have to get out of here. You have to let me leave.”
“Governor, we can’t help you unless you tell us what the endgame is.” Kell nodded at Nik, who moved to take a position in the narrow foyer leading to the door. Felderman didn’t look physically capable of making a run for it, but it would be stupid to give him the opportunity. “We know Travis and the other shifter work for Michael Benedict. He’s running the show. What we don’t know is where you fit in or why Emory Chastaine is involved.”
“I don’t know about her.” Felderman paced halfway toward Nik, then turned and paced back. Back and forth, again and again. “I was told what to say. That she was behind it. That I had seen her.” He stopped and looked at Kell. “But I didn’t see her. I swear, I don’t know why they wanted me to blame it on her.”
Kell turned to keep the frantic, pacing man in his sights. “What about Benedict?”
“Oh God, oh God.” Benedict ran a shaky hand over his thin hair. “I never saw him, but they talked about him. He’ll have them kill me. They bit me, and now I can’t…”
Kell looked at Nik in question, but he shrugged. “Now you can’t, what?”
“I can’t control it.” Felderman gasped as if struggling for air. “It’s going to happen, and I can’t…”
Speechless, Kell watched as the governor’s face grew rounder with what looked like a painful shifting of bone, his pupils elongating to slits, hair bristling from his cheeks in uneven clumps. Felderman cried out in pain as his shoulders narrowed, and he dropped to his knees. The hands resting on his thighs were half hand, half…black-and-gray paw.
Kell had reached up to unholster his gun when the change started, but froze with his fingers on the snap.
“They turned you into one of them?” This time, it was Nik’s voice that shook. “I didn’t think it was possible.”
Neither did Kell. When Robin and the kitties had schooled them on the ins and outs of shape-shifters, they’d insisted that the old legends of being bitten and turned into new shifters were false, that shifters were born and not made.
Tell that to the governor of Texas. Tears ran freely down Felderman’s cheeks, dividing into rivulets around the clumps of fur. “I’m not one of them. I’m a freak. Just a freak. What they call a hybrid. They tell me I won’t do this if I calm down. How the hell am I supposed to calm down?” His voice had grown higher and whispery thin.
“Jesus.” Kell swallowed hard, trying to sound calm. “What is it they want from you?”
“Everything.” Felderman’s tone dropped to a whisper. “On every decision, every bill, every law that needs my signature, I will follow Travis’s orders, and Travis gets his orders from Benedict.”
Kell frowned. So Benedict would be running the state according to his own agenda — at least as far as the governor’s power extended. “Or what? What will they do if you don’t follow orders?”
Felderman was openly sobbing now. “I have to follow the orders of my hybrid-maker. That’s the way it works. Whatever Benedict tells Travis and Travis tells me, I…I can’t refuse. I’ve tried, but it’s like my mind loses its ability to control my thoughts.”
Holy fuck. Kell wasn’t even sure what to ask the man, and the implications were staggering. True, Benedict didn’t control the legislature, only the governor himself. But what was to prevent him from doing this on a larger scale? On more lawmakers, or judges, or the fucking president, if he got ambitious or power hungry enough?
“What happens if Travis dies?” Nik asked. “Then are you free of the compulsion to follow his orders?”
Felderman had calmed a little, and his fur began to recede. “Travis said if he died, I’d die, but I don’t know whether that’s true or if it was just a way to control me.” He got to his feet and took a step toward Nik. “I don’t care what it does to me. Will you kill him?”
Nik and Kell exchanged glances.
“We’re not in the killing business, Governor,” Kell said. They might be forced to kill the guy, but not unless it was self-defense. He was kind of relieved to find he still had some lines he wouldn’t cross, and he had to assume they extended to Michael Benedict. Within reason. “What we want is evidence against Benedict. Can you give us that?”
Felderman collapsed into the chair. He’d aged twenty years since the bombing. “They’d never let me testify in a trial; they’d kill me first or compel me to lie. And what if I…change in public? I don’t even know how I’m can go back to Austin like this. It just happens.”
What a fucking mess. Kell blew out a breath and looked at his watch. It was 3:00 a.m., and they needed to get back to Nik’s and plan the mission. Should they force the governor to go with them? It would keep him out of Benedict’s hands, and it would keep the existence of shape-shifters from being sprung on the public in a terrible way. But Kell had found another line he wasn’t willing to step over — kidnapping an elected official, even under these circumstances.
“Governor, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Kell considered his words carefully. “I can’t promise you that we can fix this. But if you want to come with us, we’ll keep you safe and away from Benedict’s people until we figure out what to do.”
Felderman scrubbed his palms across his face, which had shifted back to its normal, narrow dimensions. “Who do you work for? Why should I trust you any more than them?”
Kell shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to tell you that. Only that we’ll keep you out of sight until we find a solution you can live with.”
Felderman’s nod was no more than a barely perceptible tilt of the head. “Why not? I can’t stay here forever. Word’ll get out. It always does.”
Faster than he suspected, assuming Milkin’s call meant the jag knew Felderman was at this hotel.
“Good.” Kell stood up. “We’ve got a room down the hall. Let us make a few arrangements, and we’ll get you out of here within ten minutes.”
Felderman’s self-assurance was rebounding quickly. He stood and held out his hand for Kell to shake. “Thank you, whoever you are. Anything’s better than letting them find me.”
“We’ll be back in a few.” Kell edged past him and followed Nik out the door. They didn’t speak until they’d crossed the hallway and were again ensconced in Archer’s room.
“I’m betting somebody’s already looking for him.” Nik crossed his arms and frowned thoughtfully at the door. “Let’s take him to one of our safe hotels.”
“Agreed.” Kell scrolled through the texts and calls that had come in since he’d muted his phone before going into Felderman’s room. “The colonel called again — that’s three times. And Archer is texting stuff about Benedict’s security as he finds it. We’ve got enough to work out a—”
He halted, frozen, at the sound of breaking glass and a loud pop from the hallway. Or from a room across the hallway.
If it was one thing Kell recognized, it was the sound of a rifle shot.
EPISODE 6
CHAPTER 21
Mori adjusted the thin bedspread she’d wrapped around her shoulders, unable to find a position that didn’t make her want to scream and claw her way outside her body.
For a while, she’d clutch the spread around her in an attempt to trap enough body heat inside to warm her cold, clammy skin, all the while keeping the rough fabric away from her back. An hour later, she’d be sweating as if baking from the inside. She should have been famished after at least fifteen or sixteen hours without food — not that Michael had left h
er with a watch — but the thought of it sparked waves of nausea.
She’d tried shifting twice for warmth, but hadn’t been able to call upon the power and focus it required. Shifting wasn’t painful, but it consumed a lot of energy. She’d shift spontaneously if threatened, as when Michael had branded her, but needed to stay in human form to heal.
The inability to shift, plus her erratic body temperature, flashed warning signs that an infection could be setting in already. Who knew if the wound had been cleaned or not? Her guess was that it hadn’t. Michael had probably carted her to the attic in her shifted form, dumped her on the bed, and sashayed off to enjoy an evening with his real fiancée.
Sleep would promote healing, but pain and anger and fear had blocked sleep from reach. The blinking red dots in each corner mocked her with the reminder that unknown sets of eyes followed her every move.
She turned her back to the camera nearest the bed and lowered the spread to bare her back more fully. “Michael, if you’re listening, I need a doctor. I need antibiotics. You’re not going to get your new generation of Dires if I die of infection.”
The monitor remained black, the house silent but for the gentle hum of the air-conditioning system. The red light blinked with malevolence, like the Eye of Sauron from atop Mount Doom.
Good Lord, if she were mentally likening her dilemma to the quest of a hobbit in Lord of the Rings, maybe the infection had already spread to her brain. After all, she’d spent at least an hour last night staring through the window at a golden eagle.
The big raptor had strutted awkwardly from side to side, its long talons gouged into the wood of the broad sill, its glossy reddish-brown wings sweeping across the glass. Occasionally, it would stop and watch her with sharp, golden eyes. A few times, it pecked on the glass with the end of its curved beak, as if trying to break its way inside. Mostly, it looked past her. Around her. Like it was checking out the room and she was blocking its view.
Finally, with a squawk and a flutter of feathers, it had flown away. Mori had remained in the chair pulled up to the window, shivering and sweating in turn. The more time that passed, the more she thought she’d imagined the whole bird thing. She’d thought an eagle had followed her to the ranch on the night of her birthday, after all. Which, even then, had seemed paranoid and stupid.
Maybe her stressed-out brain had conjured up its own avatar for impending madness.
At last, dawn’s gray sky ushered in shades of gold and peach to signal the beginning of another day. The first Friday of the rest of her miserable life. Mori shivered and wondered if a hot shower would help the chills that had settled deep in her bones, and maybe wash away the self-pity that created nothing but a sense of helplessness.
Knowing Michael, there was no hot water. She shuffled across the room to the bathroom, the edges of the plaid bedspread dragging on the wooden floor behind her like the train of the world’s ugliest wedding dress.
She’d have to keep the water off her back, where she thought even a touch as light as one of her imaginary eagle’s feathers would prove unbearable. Unlike the rest of her, that scorched patch of skin between her shoulder blades still felt as if it were blanketed in hot coals.
The contrast of heat and chill left her dizzy after the exertion of walking the eight steps from bed to bathroom. She leaned over the small dressing table in the bathroom with a hand clutched to either side of the white porcelain, waiting for the spins to slow down and her vision to clear. She ran some water from the faucet into her cupped palm, drank it, and continued to hang over the sink until she knew she could keep it down. Yay, me. I didn’t barf.
When her legs felt more like muscle and bone and less like rubber, Mori turned to examine the small shower that had been installed in the corner. Looking somewhat like a phone booth with clear glass sides, it at least had knobs for both hot and cold water. She opened the door, but as she reached to turn the knob, a red light in the corner over the toilet caught her attention. Another damned camera pointed right at the shower. The idea of showering under the invisible gaze of Michael or creepy, ear-tugging Travis made bile rise in her throat.
She scanned the rest of the room. No other cameras were visible, and since the toilet was underneath it, at least she could pee without feeling eyes were on her.
Screw the shower. It would’ve been hard to keep her back dry, anyway. Maybe she’d never shower again, then, and see how Michael liked her after a month or two.
With a sigh, Mori walked back into the bedroom and stopped short. Either madness had finally taken hold or the eagle was back. She still hated Michael, which meant she was sane, and it was daylight now. No way was this an avian figment of her imagination.
It hopped from side to side on the broad sill, holding something in its mouth. At first, Mori thought it was a leaf or a bit of trash the bird might be using to build a nest — was this even nesting season for raptors? But as she drew nearer to the window, she realized what the bird gripped in its wickedly curved beak was a small sheet of paper. With writing on it. And her name at the top.
Heart pounding, Mori glanced up at the four cameras, each in turn. Only one looked as if its field of view might include the window, and even then, it would be at an oblique angle. Her watchers could see her at the window but not what was outside.
Her heart sped at the thought of help arriving, then slowed just as quickly. Who knew she was here? And what did a freaking eagle have to do with it?
Mori resisted the urge to rush to the window and draw the attention of whoever was watching — maybe Michael, checking on his property before going to work. She paced around the room a few times, moving slowly, mindful of making any sudden turns to further irritate her back.
Finally, on her third pass, she stopped in front of the window as if pausing to look at the world being denied to her, praying that whoever had taken the early-morning Mori watch would think nothing was amiss.
The eagle raised its head to help her better read the note, then remained still as she drew closer. Neat block letters marched across the page, three short lines of black ink on a torn-off piece of what looked like hotel stationery.
MORI — HELP COMING.
AVOID WINDOW.
ACT NORMAL.
A laugh escaped her before she could stop it, and she turned from the window quickly. There was nothing normal about any of this. But…Help was coming! She couldn’t stop the hope that awoke inside her, drifting like smoke around the hard lump of fear in her heart and rising above it to send her brain humming. It might not be Kell; it could be anyone. At this point, she didn’t care, as long as she got out of this room, out of this house.
Her gut told her it was Kell, though. He was the only one who might figure out where she was and might care enough to do something about it. It certainly wasn’t her parents, and none of the other Dire males would dare defy Michael.
Her memory had etched Kell’s face into her mind, wearing the expression she’d seen just before walking out of the hotel room in Baytown. Begging her to trust him, to not try to handle things alone, to let him save her. Some part of her had known that beautiful, fearless, clueless man was going to come for her. He knew about Michael, or at least had strong suspicions about Michael. He knew just enough to march right into Michael’s plans. And no matter how good he was at his job, how smart or well trained, Kell would not be prepared to fight shape-shifters.
Or would he? He’d asked about the jaguarundis — had used the term shifter. In the chaos following that conversation, she’d forgotten that detail, and remembering both ramped up her hope for herself and her fear for Kell.
Better she never be rescued than allow him to fall into Michael’s hands.
Mori hadn’t prayed in a long time. She’d been raised on a peculiar combination of mystical Dire lore and Texas Bible-thumping that never made sense to her. But she prayed now, silently, constantly, like an endless loop of audio streaming out pleas for help. She didn’t dare pray for rescue. Only that if Kell came for he
r, he not be killed or caught.
By the time Mori made another slow walk around the room, the eagle had disappeared. The excitement had turned her chills to heat again, so she loosened the spread around her and returned to the bed. Curling up on her side, facing the window, she could watch for the eagle’s return without attracting attention.
Twice, she thought she heard noises from outside, and it took all her willpower to stay in place. As time dragged on, the chills returned, and she pulled the bedspread around her more tightly, moaning as it pressed on her back like the fiery hand of an angry god. Because if he was up there, he must be mighty pissed off.
For what seemed like hours, she lay in a twilight state between a doze and a trance, eyes trained on the window as if Kell himself might come bursting through it in a spray of shattering wood and glass. When something finally did appear at the window, it took a few seconds to register.
It was a rope, dangling from somewhere above.
She dared not move lest whoever watched her on the cameras suspect anything, but her breath caught when a pair of boots lowered into view, followed by long black-clad legs, a tool belt strapped around a narrow waist, and finally, a pair of broad shoulders and a strong-jawed face framed by long black waves of hair. A man with eyes such a brilliant green he had to be wearing colored contact lenses.
He cupped gloved hands around his eyes and peered through the glass, his gaze scanning the room before it finally locked on Mori. He held a finger up to his mouth.
Quiet. She could be quiet, although it wouldn’t surprise her if the microphones in the room could pick up her heartbeat. It thumped so hard she could feel streaks of fiery heat reverberate across her back at every beat.
Willing herself to remain still, Mori watched as the man looped the lower end of the rope around his upper thighs and waist, deftly knotting it into a makeshift seat. With both hands free and his boots planted on the outside wall for stability, he felt around the edges of the window, fumbled with his tool belt, and pulled out some type of wrench.
Omega Force 01- Storm Force Page 16
