Sabotaged (The Sundance Series Book 3)

by C. P. Rider

  It took him a moment, but he responded. "Yes, I know how many. Ibarra kept me informed."

  And with that admission, I realized that not only did my own father know that I'd been kidnapped, he'd left me there. Hell, he probably hired Sampson to kidnap me in the first place.

  "What is wrong with you, Dad?" Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes. "You left me in that place. Me. Your daughter."

  "Not for any longer than absolutely necessary."

  "Sampson knew where I was the whole time because he took me there. You could have come for me. You could have sent Lucas. You could have saved me so much pain."

  "That's not true." He stood, took his empty mug to the sink. "Ibarra was working his own angle. When he got the calls from Alpha Gold and Garrett Harris to pick you up, he contacted a subcontractor we sometimes work with, and that person eventually notified me. But that wasn't until days later. In the meantime, Ibarra had to go through with the kidnapping or it would have blown his cover with Harris."

  "Why would Sampson and the subcontractor call you about me?"

  "They thought you might have value to the organization. Neither of them knew you were my daughter. Ibarra just thought the brokerage might want to recruit a spiker, which would, in turn, get him help from us in bringing down that particular sanctuary. He was desperate to save those children."

  "He was willing to trade me to get what he wanted."

  "Yes. For his godchildren." My father stared hard at me. "Can you honestly say you wouldn't have done the same? You let a prehistoric alpha leader find out what you are to save a kid you barely knew."

  I hated that he was right. I would have done the same in a heartbeat. "I didn't know Lucas was a prehistoric when I did that."

  "Right. And would it have mattered?"

  I didn't respond, because we both knew the answer. "Why didn't your agency go in when Sampson asked for your help saving the children?"

  "At the time, we were stretched thin. We had half the manpower and twice the cases. In good conscience, I can't send an inadequate team out to take down a sanctuary. Some of these places have their own armies. I intended to investigate, but it might not have been in time to save the children, which was Ibarra's entire focus. He was successful. The children are safe."

  "So he's working for you now?"

  "Yes. And frankly, I'm glad he is. We had no idea that sanctuary existed, Cornelia. All those half-dead shifters we pulled out of there yesterday? They're alive because Ibarra made a call."

  I sat back down in my chair and jabbed my finger at him. "Let's say I believe you, and that's a big if after how much you've lied to me. How could you leave me there for even a minute knowing what people like that did to my mother?" I rubbed my upper arms, suddenly chilled.

  "I knew you could hold your own. José taught you well. Ibarra says you used virtually no hesitation and no restraint when you spiked the sanctuary guards. He says you defended yourself instinctively."

  "Harris made me …" I swallowed. "He made me spike other paranormals. Said he'd hurt the children if I didn't do it. I killed a shifter who didn't deserve it, Dad. Because it was him or me. And you could have…" I trailed off, so heavy with sorrow that I couldn't finish my thought.

  "Prevented it. I know. I'm sorry." His mouth turned down and his brows dropped over his eyes. "There was no other way."

  "They were going to turn me into a crossbreed, Dad. My biggest fear. And Sampson tried to use his ability to strip me of the will to fight back. And you knew, didn't you? Did you tell him to do that?"

  "No, I did not." My dad stared hard at me, his gaze intense.

  That was the look. The one that reminded of the time I got caught stealing a pack of gum from the store. He'd marched six-year-old me back inside, made me apologize to the manager, and had me sweep the front walk as my penance. That was the father I remembered. Not the man I knew now, with his lies and half-truths, and shades-of-gray version of morality.

  "I want to believe you. I just … don't. And you won't allow me to spike you, so we're at an impasse."

  "Cornelia."

  My head ached. I was tired and overwhelmed, and I wanted to go home. I wanted to put on my prairie girl pajamas and fuzzy socks, crank up the air conditioner, and watch a documentary from my bed. I wanted buttercream roses and prickly pear margaritas and my bakery.

  And I wanted Lucas.

  Heartbroken and exhausted, I flopped back in the chair. "Whatever you want me to do, you should get it over with. Because I'm going home. I'm beaten, I'm broken, I'm done."

  My dad sat up in his seat, straightened his tie. He was all-business again, the caring father persona swept away as if it had never been. "I want you to see if you can pick up a location in Harris's head. We got a tip there's another sanctuary in—"

  "Sir, we need you." One of my dad's agents burst into the room. He was young, tall, and as nondescript as a mid-sized beige sedan. He was also a shifter—a lion, if I wasn't mistaken. Funny how I could easily read him, but still couldn't see a single true thing in my own father's head.

  "What is it, Lewiston?"

  "Garrett Harris took something. He's lying on the floor of his cell, unresponsive."

  I had been wrong.

  About many things, but particularly about the house. It wasn't typical at all, really, but, like my dad, you had to look below the surface to see the peculiarities.

  Literally.

  Dad ushered me down the hallway and pushed me into a small closet. He stepped in after, along with the agent who'd come to get us, and closed the door. The back of the closet snicked open. The agent pushed on the wall, which opened onto a darkened staircase. Only the first tread was illuminated.

  They didn't need much light to see as they were shifters and probably had excellent night vision. But I did, and I wasn't about to take a chance. It would be just my luck to escape a sanctuary and then turn around and take a header down a flight of stairs and break my neck.

  My dad addressed the situation before I could. "Lights, Lewiston. My daughter can't see in the dark."

  "Yes, sir."

  Once the area was lit up, we descended a flight of stairs, pivoted on a compact landing, then descended another flight. We did this twice, and wound up in front of a thick, steel door.

  "James Bond, eat your heart out," I murmured.

  "This part is a little old school," Lewiston replied, "but sometimes low tech is best."

  Dad leaned into a panel that I assumed was doing some sort of reading—"Retina scanner," he said when I asked—and we all walked into a closet-sized room with a particle board desk and no one seated at it.

  A cheery blue Back in Five! sign was propped up on a blotter. Lewiston lifted the blotter and pushed a button beneath it, which opened a door in the wall behind the cheap desk. It was so well-hidden I wouldn't have known it was there if I'd come here alone.

  I was starting to feel a bit like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.

  I followed my dad and Lewiston through the door. My first thought was that the room was too big, far too large to be a part of the house above it, but then I realized that the house was only an entrance to this place. It was, in essence, a large door.

  "What is this?"

  Once again, Lewiston answered me. "We call it the base."

  The floors were white linoleum, the walls unsealed concrete. The whole place was roughly constructed, but I had a feeling that, regardless of its lack of aesthetics, it was secure. One wall was covered, floor-to-ceiling, with flat-screen monitors. There were fewer people operating them than I would have expected, only around seven or eight, but every screen was illuminated and focused on a different building.

  "Suspected sanctuaries," my dad said, as he guided me across the room and down a short hall to another door. "Harris is in a cell over here."

  There were a lot of cells. I counted twenty, and there was another doorway on the other side of the room that probably led to more. The cells were more like cages, small and barred and sec
ured to the wall. There was room enough to stand up if you were under six foot. Inside each one was a cot, and that was it.

  Lucas was crouched inside one of the cells along with a couple of agents. He had his hands pressed to Garrett Harris's head. "Bastard took a human drug. I can't tell what, but his pulse is weak. If you want information from him, better get it now."

  I hadn't intended to spike the warden. I'd pictured myself arguing with my dad about his using me, refusing to play any further part in his goddamned organization, and demanding to go home.

  In the moment though, I did the exact opposite. I thought of Estie, Leah, and Milton. I thought of Tellis and the shifters in the cages, slowly dying due to the warden's stupid experiments. I thought of Aaron Greenfield, the gorilla shifter with a son to protect. I thought of the hurting and the killing I'd been forced to do to survive.

  Without so much as a nod in anyone's direction, I stepped up to the bars. I drew energy from Lucas, gripped the warden's brainwaves, and spiked into his head, fast and hard. The moment I had him was obvious. The warden's entire body jerked as if in the grip of a seizure and the people gathered around him turned as one toward me.

  Only Lucas smiled.

  "Move." A hybrid fox shifter wearing a white lab coat pushed his way into the cell. He was carrying a syringe in one furred hand. "Let me try something."

  He jammed the needle into the warden's muscled thigh and his brain snapped to attention, which made it easier for me to pull out the information I needed. A sluggish brain was harder to hold onto.

  "What are you injecting him with, Rhine?" one of the agents asked.

  "Naloxone," the fox shifter replied. "It's used to reverse an opioid overdose in humans."

  "How do you know he took an opioid?" Lewiston asked.

  "I don't. Figured he's going to die anyway, so why not try it?" He nudged the warden's arm with his toe. "He still with us?"

  "Yes," I said.

  Lucas sat up. "He looks better. Good call."

  Rhine pursed his lips, peered down at the warden's fluttering eyelids. "Humans. So predictable. We keep a supply of Naloxone on hand for guys like him." He strolled out of the cell. "Depending on how much he took, one dose might not do the trick. I'll get an IV set up."

  My eyes slid shut. I was still inside the warden's head, still picking through the garbage in his brain, though I'd already gotten what I needed from it.

  "He took the opioids as he was getting out of the SUV. His hands were cuffed in front of him, so he had access to his front pocket and his mouth." I pulled out of the warden's head, opened my eyes. "Chandra warned you that he wasn't secured tightly enough."

  "Yeah. Smart move, not listening to the one person who knows her shit when it comes to securing someone," Lucas drawled. "What kind of outfit you running here, MacLeod?"

  "For the love of—no one patted him down?" My dad swiped a hand over his head. "None of you are amateurs here. Can you please stop acting like it?"

  Lewiston swallowed nervously. "I searched him, sir. I didn't find anything."

  "He probably had them in that weird little pants pocket that no one uses. The one that's supposed to be for a pocket watch or something?" Lucas stood, grabbed the warden by the elbow and the pants leg, and hoisted him onto the cot in the back of the cell. "Sneaky bastard." He looked at me. "Did you get anything?"

  "Yes." My gaze traveled from Lucas to Lewiston and the agents to Garrett Harris to my dad. My eyes must have been doing that glowing thing again, because Lewiston took a small step back and whispered, "Shifter eyes."

  Lucas climbed out of the cell and walked up to me, brushed my hair out of my face. "You okay?"

  "Yeah."

  "What did you get from him?" my dad asked.

  "Everything. I got everything."

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  "Five locations in the southwestern United States, six in the northwest. Four south of the U.S.-Mexico border, and five on the western Canadian border. This might be the biggest break we've ever had." My dad said as he continued to write down the information I was giving him. "Names, high in the U.S., Mexican, and Canadian governments. Methodology, indoctrination practices, security resources—"

  "Why did his superiors tell him so much?" Lucas shifted in his chair.

  There were three chairs in the office, one behind my dad's desk and two in front of it. Lucas, my dad, and I were seated. Lewiston leaned against the wall.

  "That's the thing. They didn't. He wanted to make himself important to the higher-ups, so he took it upon himself to find this stuff out."

  "You're saying he did our work for us?" Lewiston, who had removed his tie and rolled his sleeves to his elbows, looked less boring now. His lion shone in his eyes as he regarded the cells through the doorway of my dad's office.

  "Pretty much."

  Over the last few hours, I'd read and gotten to know the agent a little more and found him to be a good man—honorable and hard working. He was doing a thankless job, and in the interest of anonymity he wasn't allowed to disclose his identity to the people whose lives he helped save, but he worked tirelessly at it.

  Definitely one of the good guys.

  The jury was still out on my dad.

  "Is there anything else you can recall? Anything at all?" my dad asked.

  "No." I yawned, rubbed at the back of my neck. "But I can try reading him again, if you want. Maybe I missed something."

  "Perhaps later, when he is fully recovered." My dad clicked the button on his pen. "Although it sounds like you were able to read him well."

  Lucas spoke up. He'd been surprisingly cooperative and even helpful during our time here, despite his reservations. "Neely and I are going home. She gave you Harris, even spiked the others you brought in. She's hurt and exhausted, and wants to go put on her little old lady pajamas and fuzzy socks and fall into bed."

  "They're not little old lady pajamas," I grumbled. "And how did you know that's what I was thinking?"

  "I can read you like a book, telepath." He waggled his eyebrows at me, gave me a grin that didn't reach his eyes. He was worried about me.

  "Yes. Get some rest. Thank you, Cornelia. This information is going to help a lot of people." My dad looked as if he might hug me but changed his mind. I was glad. I wasn't in the right place to be hugged by him. Not yet. Maybe not ever again.

  After arranging to meet up in a few days, Lucas and I left the base and drove home. I'd been prepared for a long talk about everything that had happened, but the second we hit the interstate, I fell asleep. I awoke as we pulled into Sundance a little over an hour later.

  "Welcome back to consciousness."

  Without asking me, Lucas headed toward his place.

  "Hey, where are you going?"

  "Don't, Neely."

  "Don't what, Lucas?" I said in the same tone of voice as he'd used.

  "I can feel your resistance. If you don't want to sleep in the same bed as me, that's fine, but I'm tired. I need to rest and if you're not where I can find you, where I know you're safe, I won't be able to do that. You're staying at my house tonight."

  "It's the afternoon."

  "Don't be a smartass. It feels like night and we're both exhausted."

  "You don't be an alphahole. I just suffered through a lot of being ordered around, and if you think I'm going to put up with any more of it, you'd better have another think coming."

  "I'm worried," he said softly.

  "That doesn't mean you don't owe me an apology for behaving like a high-handed jackass." I played with the lock charm on my bracelet.

  Jaw set, he stared straight out the windshield.

  "I'm waiting."

  "I apologize for being a high-handed jackass." He peered at me from the corner of his eye. "If you stay with me, I'll let you sleep with Lestat."

  "Just so you know, you are not sweetening the deal with that offer. The last time I slept with your cat, he chewed an inch off my hair." I crossed my arms over my chest, wincing when the muscles
in my shoulders and neck pulled stiffly. "I can't stay. I need my pajamas."

  "You left one of those prairie girl nightgowns at my place. It's in the top drawer of my dresser, along with several pairs of panties and a pink bra. You have clean clothes in the drawer beneath it. Your cell phone is there, too. I picked it up from the bakery after you went missing."

  "But no fuzzy socks. I need fuzzy socks."

  "You took those home and I'm not stopping for them. I'll take a pair of my socks and roll them around in one of Lestat's beds. Voila. Fuzzy fucking socks."

  I scowled at his profile. "This blows. You're a bad host."

  "Yeah, yeah. So, are you staying with me?"

  "Yes. But you sleep with the cat."

  We both slept with the cat.

  Because as cranky as we were with each other, we felt more at peace when we were close. That's why, when Lucas left the bed at six a.m. the next morning to meet with Dan and Amir, I felt a loss, a tiny pinch, that reminded me that I was more settled when he was nearby.

  Sleep was impossible after that, so after I fed Lestat, I decided to drive Lucas's beat-up Rezvani to the bakery. I told myself it was because I wanted to shower in my own bathroom, with my own products, but it was really because I wanted to be alone in my own space. I needed to take stock, and in order to do it properly, I needed to be in a place where I felt entirely me.

  Sundance was quiet. Everyone that needed to go to work had already gone, since it was an hour drive to most places of employment outside the city. The only things accompanying me on my drive to the bakery were a couple of crows and some tumbleweed clumps rolling past. As I hung a right at the post office and drove past the Dusty Cactus saloon, I felt a homecoming of sorts. It was as if months had passed since I'd last been here, yet it had only been eleven days.

  Today was Saturday. I'd had to check my phone to be sure.

  I pulled into the bakery's rear lot and parked, then unlocked the back door and let myself into the bakery. It took me a moment to realize there was an actual door, instead of a piece of plywood. I wondered who had taken care of that. Probably Earp, as whoever it was had given Lucas a key.