by Amelia Jade
“Kim, he’s just given up any single bit of leverage he might have had on either of us by going to the media with that story. There is nothing he can threaten us with now. Which means he thinks he’s won. So he’ll find some way to rub it in before you go. Trust me, that’s how his mind thinks. He’s not entirely sane. To him, this is all a giant game. He’ll see you arrive at the airport, alone and trying to hide. He’ll suspect I’m nearby but unwilling to make a scene unless he actually threatens you, which he won’t, since he thinks he’s already fucked your life over. I won’t be right with you, because that would draw too much attention to you because of my size. Someone might recognize you. So he’ll take the chance to come gloat. Which is when we’ll pounce, because we have no reason not to.”
“Except for my well-being,” she pointed out.
“You’ll be fine. It’s Morgan that won’t,” he replied, his face going flat, voice growing dark.
“What are you going to do to him?”
“I’m going to kill him.”
Chapter Twenty
Kim
She felt lonely. Scared.
No, not scared. Petrified. This was the single riskiest thing she’d probably ever done in her entire life. Kim had been in gunfights where she’d felt more confident emerging without any harm to her person.
What was it about Morgan, and Pyne, and Rokk, and all the other D1-clearance-looking people that had her so wary of walking into the airport? They screamed danger more than any hardened criminal with a gun ever had. She just couldn’t figure out how they did that. It was like they just exuded danger.
Pyne and his friends she trusted; they seemed to be on her side. But she felt flimsy around them, and Morgan was just like them. He could probably kill her with a snap of his fingers, based on the muscles he possessed, if they were anything like Pyne’s. That was dangerous.
The cab driver pulled to a halt out in front of the terminal. “Here we are, miss.”
She nodded and passed him some bills to cover the trip.
There was no reason to doubt that the plan couldn’t go according to their design. Pyne, Rokk, and a full half-dozen men were already inserted into the airport hours ago via luggage and deliveries.
Kim, meanwhile, had left the base and made herself visible to anyone watching from a distance, which everyone assumed Morgan would be doing. Even if he wasn’t, she was taking the exact return route that he’d taken to arrive there in the first place. It felt like years ago now that she’d tailed him to a new country on a near whim.
It seems to have worked out okay in some ways. If we can solve this and convince everyone back home I was just working undercover the entire time, maybe everything will work out. Maybe.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Kim shut her eyes, trying to pretend she’d not felt the vibration, but it was impossible. There was no ignoring it. What the hell did Morgan want now? He must have seen her arrive and was going to creep her out. Eyes closed down to slits, she pulled her phone out and glanced at it.
It was from Pyne. Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, she opened it.
I’m here for you, Kim. I’m here now, and I’ll be there for you whenever else you want it. You can count on me. I’m not going to let you down. Not in any way.
The entire thing reeked of him trying to say more. He was telling her they were in position, ready to go, but he was saying something more. Something directly to her, about them. Why couldn’t he be like this in person? All it would take was a little talk that started with a few lines like that, and maybe she could open up and come to terms with how she was feeling by telling him. But she was too scared to do that. Not without knowing he felt some of the same emotions bubbling around inside her, confusing her, teasing her. Intriguing her.
Her fingers went to start texting him back when someone cleared their throat. “Um, miss? Do you need a hand with any luggage?”
Kim looked around. She was still in the back of the cab. He was sitting there, doing nothing, waiting for her to get out. “Oh my goodness!” she cried, shoving her phone away and exiting the car. “I’m so sorry! Thank you, I’m good.” She only had the one bag with her, which was more than she’d arrived with.
She moved into the terminal and followed directions to get in line to have her things checked. This was her biggest fear. Getting through security. These were trained agents dedicated to keeping everything safe for those who flew in the country. How could they fail to recognize a woman whose face had been plastered all over every news outlet in the past ten hours or more? It seemed inconceivable.
The agent beckoned her up to the booth. “Boarding pass.”
She handed it over.
“Passport.”
That went next. This was her biggest fear. Her real name was written on it. The name on the news. If someone had flagged her in the system, she was going to be caught right here, right now.
The agent punched something into her computer and paused to look at it. Her eyebrows lowered.
Oh no. She’s made the connection. She knows who I am.
Kim slowly turned her head, making note of the other employees in the room, trying to figure out the best route out of there when the alarms began to ring out.
The silence dragged on and on, while the agent read whatever was displayed on her screen.
Growing impatient with the delay, Kim almost spoke up to ask what was wrong. If they were going to come after her, she just wanted to know or not. Enough of the suspense, she couldn’t take it anymore!
“There we are. Thanks for visiting.”
Her passport was shoved back across the counter to her. She was free to go. Kim held in the sigh of relief as she moved on to the scanners. She wasn’t carrying anything that would get her stopped there, and just as expected, her bag cleared.
The agent who watched the metal detector as she went through it just nodded, but as she passed by he leaned in closer. “It’ll be fine, we’re all over. Just stay calm.”
Only her training prevented Kim from giving anything away. “Thank you, it’s been a lovely time. I just wish I’d been able to spend more time exploring.”
The agent smiled and nodded. “It’s a big place.”
“That it is.” She grabbed her bags and departed.
She’d done it. Everything had gone according to plan so far. Now all she had to do was kill two hours. They’d decided to play it safe and send her to the airport at around eight, two hours before the ten o’clock flight to a major airport where she would catch her connecting flight overseas. To home.
Two hours would hopefully be enough time for Morgan to make an appearance. Part of her hoped he wouldn’t show at all. Another side of her hoped he would show, and show quickly. The anticipation of the showdown was starting to get to her.
Feeling a rumble in her stomach she sought out the nearest sandwich joint in the terminal and ordered up a late dinner. Somehow in the midst of all the preparations she’d completely forgotten about eating. Now with nothing left to do but wait, her system was reminding her of that fact.
She was just taking the first bite of a meatball sandwich when someone slipped into the seat across from her.
“Hello, Kim.”
Appetite gone, she dropped the sandwich and sat back. “Morgan. What are you doing here? Going to come back with me and turn yourself in?”
The big man leaned forward on the table, the little metal supports bending precariously under his weight. “Absolutely not,” he said happily. “I’m an unknown here, and there is so much to exploit. So much money to be made. I might not have gotten what I wanted from Pyne, but seeing you like this, oh, it’s going to be too much.”
“Seeing me like what? Eating a sandwich?”
“No,” he snarled suddenly, forcing her even farther back into her seat. “Destroyed. Disgraced. In chains or in exile, it doesn’t matter to me. Knowing that I did this to you is going to break Pyne, and I relish knowing that. Some things ar
e sweeter than money.”
Kim looked around. This wasn’t where they’d planned on the confrontation taking place. It was too populated. Her flight was a small plane leaving from an offshoot of the terminal. That was where they’d hoped Morgan would make his appearance. On a corner and down a level, so that they could cordon it off and prevent any harmless bystanders from getting injured.
“You’re an asshole, Morgan,” she snapped, getting to her feet, sandwich forgotten. “You know that? Pyne told me what happened. It’s all your own fault. He didn’t do anything to you.”
Kim knew what she had to do. She had to keep his attention focused on her, while making her way to the designated area. That was her job now. If that meant taunting him, making him angry so that he didn’t clue in to what she was doing, then so be it. He wouldn’t hurt her. Hopefully.
“Yes he did!” Morgan hissed, following, sticking close but never quite touching her.
“You’re delusional. You invested your own money. He never told you to. That’s not his fault.”
“He knew it was going to fail!” Morgan insisted. “He knew something was wrong, and that’s why he didn’t invest his own money. But he never told me what it was. Don’t you see? He wanted me to fail. He was out to get me.”
She looked skyward. “Seriously? I wasn’t even there and I can see the holes in that logic. Like first of all, why was he out to get you?”
“Because,” Morgan said with a grin. “I had someone in my life. He didn’t. Pyne was a jealous one. He wasn’t about to let that slide, not when I was happy and he wasn’t.”
“So he purposefully set you up for financial ruin?”
“Yes.”
“And the whole robbing banks, killing people, and generally being an asshole? How did he get you involved with that, exactly?”
“I needed to prove to Pyne that he wasn’t so superior after all. So I stole a lot of his money. The physical stuff, at least. He was smart enough to change the passwords on his electronic accounts before I could access them, though it was close. Still, I made off with so much. That dunderhead never thought to revoke my access. The idiot,” Morgan chuckled.
“That’s called trust, you traitorous, backstabbing coward,” she snapped, increasing her speed, heading toward her terminal. “You’re pathetic.”
Morgan reached out to grab her, but she slipped her arm from him. “Don’t touch me. If you do that, I’ll say you hit me. I don’t think the police would like that very much.”
“The police can’t do anything to me,” he scoffed, but he seemed slightly more wary about touching her now.
“Oh, I’m sure if they have cause they can bring in those who can do a lot to you,” she threatened, wondering if he would realize she knew there was something special about him.
Morgan rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. It doesn’t matter,” he said, sounding like he was justifying it to himself, pretending like he was still in charge. “You’re toast anyway. They’re going to court-martial you. Dishonorable discharge on your public record. Nowhere will ever hire you again, if you don’t end up in jail.”
He followed her down the escalator into the smaller part of the terminal, away from most of the passengers. Hopefully. Kim’s mind was too busy focusing on the idea of going to jail.
“You don’t have any evidence on me doing actual wrong,” she said. “Nothing that will send me to jail.”
Morgan flopped down next to her as she chose a seat. “Oh, don’t I?” he asked mysteriously.
Chapter Twenty-One
Pyne
He watched anxiously at the bank of cameras.
“That sonofabitch!” he snarled, exploding with anger as Morgan tried to take Kim’s arm. “I’m going to kill him.”
The human airport security worker looked up at him wide-eyed, then glanced at the other large figures that filled his room. From elsewhere in the room heads turned to look over at them, then looked away.
Rokk came up and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Calmly, brother mine. Calmly. We have to do this by the book. You know what that means.”
“I know. I don’t have to like it,” he grumbled, taking a deep breath to try and let some of his fury dissipate. “It’s just seeing that asshole think he can lay a hand on Kim, it just…”
Rokk nodded. He understood, Pyne realized. He had a mate too, one he would protect violently if necessary. Who he had protected in such a way. Pyne remembered the rogue soldier who’d become obsessed with his brother and tried to kill his mate Linny, just so that he might have a shot at the dragon shifter himself. It would have been hilarious if the soldier hadn’t come so close to succeeding.
“You know,” he said, looking out the windows onto the tarmac on the opposite side of the room. “I understand now why they called him Thor.”
In the distance the sky lit brightly as lightning flashed behind the clouds. A storm was moving in, one to rival his dark mood. Pyne could feel it in the air, the charge, the promise of thunder and lightning and rain.
“It’s been a long time since any of our kind have truly had to use our powers to the maximum,” Aric said, stepping up next to the twins. “Especially out in the open. But nature feeds off us. Your anger, it oozes off you. I can feel the energy you’ve pulled in. The air around us can feel it too. And so a storm comes yet again.”
Before Pyne could reply the human guard spoke up. “They’ve crossed the line.”
“Shut it down,” Pyne snapped, whirling to look at the screen as they passed the barrier line that they’d agreed upon hours ago.
The guard said something into a walkie talkie, and on the screen soldiers that had come with him from Fort Banner poured out of hidden doorways and immediately began directing anyone coming that way back the way they came, creating a large zone.
From farther down the hallway a janitor pulled his bucket along. The soldiers let him pass without incident.
“I should be out there.” He flexed and unflexed, shaking out his hand before repeating the gesture with his left. “If something goes wrong, she’s too far away.”
“It will be okay,” Aric assured him. “Let them get it closed off before you confront them.”
“Are we sure all this is legal?” the security guard asked. “I mean, you guys are just soldiers. Are you even allowed to do this on home soil by law?”
Great. He had to go and develop a brain now?
“Technically?” Pyne asked, wincing. “No. But we’re the good guys, and that’s a grade-A asshole who happens to be from a foreign country, trying to stir up shit.”
The guard looked at him in astonishment. It was the most information Pyne had given out since they’d essentially stormed the area. The administration had of course protested, but Major von Kemp had the governor in his pocket, and one quick phone call sorted it all out.
Pyne suspected that would all change. Bringing in Morgan wasn’t going to be an easy job. Nor a clean one. There was going to be damage. It was his job to limit it, since the trio of them had promised Major von Kemp that any repairs would come out of their own pocket. Pyne hated promising to spend his own money without knowing how much, but if it meant protecting Kim and apprehending Morgan after all these years, he wouldn’t hesitate to bankrupt himself.
“How much longer should we wait?” he asked impatiently, watching the soldiers continue to move people away. “Shit, straggler!”
A human had emerged from a bathroom behind the line of soldiers. He glanced at them in surprise, but then turned to continue on his way.
The guard radioed, and the janitor turned around on his walk and went up to the passenger. Something was said, and the passenger hurried back down to the soldiers and through their line.
“He’ll get anyone else out,” the guard said proudly. “Then he’ll get himself clear.”
Pyne was shaking his head, his eyes on Morgan, who, while talking to Kim still about something as they sat, was now beginning to look around. He m
ust have heard something.
“No time,” he stated. “We need to go. Now.”
Aric tried to stop him, but to everyone’s surprise Rokk intervened. “No, he’s right this time, Aric. I can feel it. We need to be there, and we need to be there now. Something isn’t right. Look at Morgan. He’s starting to wonder where everyone is.”
The trio of them pushed out of the security room, down a hallway, and then burst out the door onto the concourse. Pyne wished that taking the other door onto the tarmac was faster, but that would take them all the way around the terminal. This way he could just sprint through it.
Plenty of people would see them go flying by, but hopefully they’d be too stunned to realize they shouldn’t be moving that fast. The wind from his passage built up as he ran, and Pyne thanked his lucky stars they’d been able to do this at night while it was far less crowded. There was room for the shifters to truly open up, and they shot down the concourse, nothing but blurs to those who saw them.
Blue energy began to arc and spit around Pyne, courtesy of his building temper as his eyes remembered the way Morgan had reached for his mate.
“Cut it out, Pyne,” Aric ordered. “We need to arrive calmly, so that Kim can be extracted safely without him resorting to threats.”
He nodded, and willed the energy halo away. It faded just as they reached the line of soldiers. A middle-aged woman with a short haircut was standing close to one of the officers, haranguing him, wagging one finger and doing her best impression of the “Can I see your manager?” woman that everyone hated.
Pyne made sure to pass her close by as he simply dove over the soldiers. There wasn’t enough room to jump—he’d have gone into the ceiling—so he leapt forward, hands outstretched, going right over the top of the lady he already hated. As he passed he reached out with his right hand and just sort of…flicked.
Instantly every hair on the woman’s body stood on end as static shock washed over her. She screamed. Everyone around her laughed.
Soldiers cleared, Pyne fell into a roll and came to his feet, he and his fellow shifters coming to a slow jog. The stairs and escalator ahead of him went down, but then the terminal curled back in on itself. Instead of going down that way, Pyne simply cleared the railing and dropped to the ground thirty or so feet below, his legs bending to absorb the impact.
