Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 Page 7

  “Her who?” Dominec asked, looking entirely too intrigued for Adrian’s comfort. “This that Organization bitch you’ve got a thing for, Hawk? That explains why you went apeshit on me. I know she’s hot as fuck, but trust me, the only good Organization doc is a dead Organization doc.”

  “Shut up, Dominec.” Grace threw him a glare. “You’re in enough trouble.”

  “Me?” Dominec asked with exaggerated innocence.

  “Yes, you. What is your fucking damage? You just decided to go all slasher-movie and thought no one would notice?”

  He shrugged. “They resisted.”

  “Sure they did.” The building shuddered again and Grace cursed. “Come on. No more fucking around. We can sort out the details later.” She jerked her chin toward Dominec. “Dumbass over there used too much explosive. The building is going to come down.”

  “Then I used exactly the right amount of explosive.”

  “Shut up, Dominec. And go fucking report to Kye already.”

  The tiger bowed mockingly, but obeyed her command, slipping out into the hall.

  Grace tipped her head to better see the woman half-hidden by his body. Rachel had been silent, but chose that moment to whisper, “Are they all dead?”

  With Dominec gone, Adrian let himself turn sideways to look at her. Her shoulder blades were pressed against the far wall of the lab and she was shivering, arms wrapped around herself, her pupils as big as dinner plates.

  “Fuck, she’s in shock,” Grace groaned, coming the same conclusion he had. “You need a hand getting her out?”

  “I’ve got this.”

  He caught her nod out of the corner of his eye, never taking his focus off Rachel. With quick, near-silent footsteps, Grace retreated down the hall after their resident psycho. Leaving Adrian alone with the woman he’d once thought would be his salvation—and an inexplicable, directionless rage.

  Rachel had tried to be invisible as the Hawk and the scarred one fought over her like two feral dogs over a juicy steak. She’d held her breath when the tall woman with the short blonde hair and Rambo’s arsenal strapped to her body had appeared in the doorway. She’d managed to hold it together until the woman mentioned the slasher flick in the hallway. And then she’d started to shake.

  The Hawk was supposed to be her savior, but when that yellow gaze swung back to lock onto her, she knew her fantasies about a heroic rescues were just that—fantasies. She’d pictured this moment a thousand times in the last few weeks and it had always been some stupid movie-perfect scene. No blood on the face of the maniac backing him up. No disturbing scent of death wafting in from the hallway. No fear. In her fantasy, this moment was triumph, not horror. Her brain couldn’t seem to reconcile the two. Even the air she was breathing felt wrong. Thick and strangely cold as the world got fuzzy around the edges.

  Shock, the blonde one had said. Yes. That sounded accurate. She tried to remember the treatment, but her brain wasn’t connecting the dots. Shivers rippled over her body, radiating out from her spine.

  “Rachel.” The Hawk flicked his fingers at her, an impatient summons. “Come here.”

  Her gaze traveled from the beckoning hand across his body to lock onto the other one, held loosely at his side and still gripping the gun like an extension of his arm.

  “I’m not going to shoot you,” he snapped, clicking on the safety and tucking the gun into his belt with a practiced motion. In the same move, the Hawk withdrew another, strangely shaped gun from its holster at his waist. “This goes faster if I don’t have to tranq you and carry you out. Come here.”

  There was anger in the words. Anger in his eyes. She couldn’t make sense of it. This wasn’t Noah, who had kissed her like she was his salvation. This wasn’t even the man who’d been all business as he’d been her partner on countless shifter escapes. This man demanded he come to her merely to assert his authority.

  “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

  He cursed softly and reached for her, the movement so fast she flinched away with a squeak of alarm before she realized he was simply taking her wrist to feel her pulse, a detached calm cooling the fire in his gaze. “Not all of them,” he said.

  Not all of them were dead. That was supposed to be comforting?

  Who had survived? Madison Clarke? She seemed like a survivor. She’d been here earlier, but she had a feeling Madison would have an escape route mapped out for just this kind of occurrence and she would never allow herself to be taken alive. It would be the average working stiffs like Rachel who were left to fend for themselves when it was time for the Organization to answer for its sins.

  The faces of all the people she’d seen and worked with in the last few weeks passed through her mind in rapid succession. How many were dead? Sure, none of them had helped her even though several had to know she was there against her will, but many of them were in the exact same position she had been. Prisoners in their own way. No one who worked for the Organization was wholly innocent, but no one deserved to be blood spatter smeared on the face of the scarred shifter.

  “They weren’t all bad,” she heard herself protesting, the words distant and muted.

  “I know.” Noah still held her wrist, his grip gentle as he began pulling her toward the door.

  “No.” She resisted, it was important that she stay here—the bomb—but her efforts didn’t have any more strength and focus than her fuzzy, swimming thoughts.

  “Come on, Rachel. We have to go. We never stay long enough for them to send in reinforcements.”

  She couldn’t imagine the Organization sending reinforcements. They seemed more the types to burn the place to the ground until nothing was left but a napalm scar. Either way, she couldn’t leave. The anklet…

  “I can’t.”

  He turned on her so swiftly she stumbled, his rage briefly penetrating her shocky haze. Only his hard grip on her arm kept her upright as he snarled down at her. “Why the fuck not? Are you so loyal to them now?”

  Loyal? She would have laughed if she hadn’t been so busy gaping at him incredulously. He actually thought she was loyal to the Organization. After she’d gotten him out. Gotten a hundred and fifty shifters out. Admittedly, she was to blame for the months he spent in Organization custody, but he had to know she hadn’t had a choice in that. Was it so much to ask that he trust her for five minutes?

  Anger cut through the fog, clearing away her daze and sharpening her next words to a razor’s edge. “I’m not loyal to them, you ass. I have a bomb strapped to my ankle.”

  Chapter Nine

  The light on the anklet still blinked green, thank God. Along with the emergency lighting, whatever sent the signal to her anklet to keep her from blowing up must be supported by the back-up generators. Which meant she hadn’t been blown to kingdom come when the power was cut, but it also meant she couldn’t get out now, even if the walls were about to come down around her ears.

  At the word bomb, the Hawk spun back to her so quickly she swayed away and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her by the wrist. He steadied her for only a second before kneeling and shoving her loose pant leg up to reveal the anklet it had partially covered.

  “If I leave this room, it explodes.”

  His hand wrapped gently around her calf—making her shiver in distinctly inappropriate ways before he cursed low, without looking up from the device. “You can’t leave,” he repeated.

  “I tried to tell you—”

  But he hadn’t been listening. Just as he wasn’t listening now.

  “Kye,” he barked into the empty room, and it took her a moment to realize he was talking into some kind of communications device. “Who do we have who can diffuse a bomb in a hurry?”

  Rachel held her breath, waiting through the long silence that followed before he looked up. “He’s sending someone,” Noah explained. He glanced back down at the device and jerked
his hand away from her leg as if startled to find he had still been holding her, his thumb gently brushing her skin.

  The building shuddered again, releasing another spray of rubble from the ceiling and the Hawk lurched to his feet. He cursed and began to pace in the tight confines of her lab. Two steps to the incubator. Two steps to her cot. Two steps to the centrifuge. Back to the incubator.

  “You should go,” she murmured. “No sense both of us being trapped down here if the building comes down.”

  He didn’t deign to respond beyond a single fuming look.

  Two more tight circuits of the room and then the Hawk came to attention, calling out, “We’re back here,” long before she heard the thud of running footsteps.

  A slim young man with a pretty, boy-band-worthy face skidded to a stop in the doorway, looking a little green. “Motherfucker,” he swore, “the hallway is full of—”

  “Get it together, Mateo,” the Hawk snapped, cutting him off before he could say what the hallway was full of, but from the smell of it, Rachel had a pretty good guess. Noah pointed to her ankle. “We need you to disable that so she can leave without setting it off.”

  A calm focus instantly fell over young Mateo and he rushed to kneel at Rachel’s feet for a closer look. He made a soft humming noise and pulled a set of tiny tools out of his back pocket. As he poked at the anklet, Rachel’s heart rate tripled. Noah stood back, arms folded tightly across his chest as he watched the proceedings like the proverbial hawk.

  “You’re awfully young for an explosives expert,” she said softly, trying not to distract the boy, but needing the reassurance that he knew what the hell he was doing.

  “I don’t know shit about explosives,” Mateo said matter-of-factly, doing nothing good for her blood pressure. “But I know electronics and almost all triggers are composed of computer elements these days. Diffuse the trigger, you diffuse the bomb. Usually.”

  Usually. How comforting. “And you know how to diffuse the trigger?”

  He hummed again, peeling away the outer casing of the anklet to reveal the wires and chips within. Mateo cursed under his breath.

  “Mateo?” she squeaked.

  “What is it?” the Hawk snapped.

  “It’s not good news, but it’s not terrible either,” Mateo said, looking toward the Hawk rather than her. “They used the good shit. To short this mother out, we’ll need to seriously fuck with the temperature of the main chip. Dry ice, an acetylene torch—something extreme. See what you can find.”

  “There’s liquid nitrogen in a canister in the second freezer over there.” Rachel pointed and both men shot her incredulous looks—doubtless wondering why anyone would keep liquid nitrogen on hand—but the Hawk quickly collected the canister and knelt beside Mateo. “Try not to give me freezer burn,” she requested, feeling a little light-headed at the idea that she could have frozen off the damn anklet detonator at any time, but also terrified that it wouldn’t work and they’d all be blown to pieces.

  Rachel closed her eyes, lacing her fingers together in old habit and praying fervently. The last few years had been hard on her relationship with God, but she was still a preacher’s daughter. She gathered up every last ounce of her faith and poured it into the prayer.

  She didn’t look when she felt the chill of intense cold close to her skin, holding her breath and redoubling her prayers. There was a crack, like ice breaking, and the pressure that had been a constant around her ankle for the last several weeks abruptly loosened.

  “Mateo, you’re a genius.” Noah clapped him on the shoulder as she opened her eyes, both men straightening.

  The building groaned ominously around them. Before Rachel could thank the young man, he was swearing and bolting for the door.

  Noah caught her hand and met her eyes, and for a brief, flaring moment she thought she saw something in them. Something fierce. Something tender. Something that held the promise that perhaps she hadn’t killed everything between them with that sedative injected into his back.

  He swore under his breath and wrapped one hand around her nape, the warm weight unbearably familiar. Then he was bending to take her mouth with a kiss that was dominant and demanding and seized absolute possession, reasserting his claim on her soul, as if there had ever been a doubt.

  Another of those defining moments, that kiss. When she realized she was the kind of woman who would always melt for this man, even when the world was falling down around them.

  It didn’t last long.

  The soft pneumatic snick was the only warning she had before a sharp pain pricked her arm.

  She jerked back, confused to see the tranquilizer dart sticking through her sleeve. She wanted to ask why. And why now, when he could have just tranqed her the second he walked in the door. But those thoughts were quickly drowned by the drugs flooding into her blood stream until only one thought remained.

  I guess I deserved that…

  Adrian caught Rachel against his chest as her legs buckled, tucking away the tranquilizer gun and lifting her over his shoulder. She flopped there bonelessly as he charged from the room. His feet skidded a bit on the blood-slick linoleum of the hall floor, but he found his footing and raced past the lifeless faces of her colleagues.

  He hadn’t planned on tranqing her. In his anger, he’d wanted her to see the bodies, as a warning, a reminder that he was the only thing standing between her and a violent end—but then she’d looked at him, her big, brown eyes so open and trusting, so fucking hopeful and he hadn’t been able to do it.

  Tranqing her was the easiest solution. He wouldn’t have to explain to anyone why he’d done it. They would all assume she’d resisted. No one needed to know it was his own unwanted softness toward her that had prompted him.

  And no one needed to ever know about the kiss. It hadn’t happened. It was already forgotten.

  She wasn’t light and though he was almost back to top shape, he was breathing hard by the time he reached the top of the stairs and wheezing like an old man when he burst out of the building into the parking lot beyond where Kye was organizing the loading of the bound prisoners onto a van.

  Whether or not to take hostages from the Organization strikes had been hotly contested at the pride. Many wanted everyone who would threaten them exterminated to make a point. Others didn’t want anyone who had ever been involved with the Organization anywhere near pride lands. But in the end, Roman had prevailed on his pride to accept the wisdom of containing their enemies, at least until they knew more about them.

  The first few incursions had been against Organization facilities that specialized in holding shifters, the transit points—so there had been far more refugees released than hostages captured—but this was a different sort of installation. This facility was almost all Organization scientists—so the prisoners far outnumbered the rescued shifters.

  Adrian hitched his own prisoner higher up on his shoulder and crossed to Kye to get his assignment for transportation back to the pride. They would split up, dozens of cars taking multiple routes and changing vehicles multiple times to ensure no one would lead the Organization back to the pride.

  For the first time, Adrian found himself resenting the necessity, eager to get Rachel back on pride lands where she would be safe. Though he still wasn’t sure whether he wanted her protected or at his mercy. Both perhaps. His feelings for her were far from clear—though his body still undeniably wanted her. The press of her thighs against his forearm as he held her in place over his shoulder was enough to stir his blood.

  Inside the van, one of the prisoners huddled against the window, peering at him through the glass, eyeing Rachel’s unconscious form slung over his shoulder. She was a frail-looking brunette, with her hair falling forward over her face, nearly obscuring her wide, terrified blue eyes. She looked too much like Rachel, and he avoided looking at her, not wanting to soften toward either woman.

 
Kye started to tell him to put Rachel with the rest of the prisoners, but must have realized who she was by the look on Adrian’s face and quickly changed his tune.

  A couple of the shifter soldiers nudged one another and pointed as he carried her to their designated car, whispering among themselves. The general attitude toward Rachel in the pride had changed drastically in the last few weeks. After the first successful raid, someone had leaked that the schematics had come from her and shifters rescued by her group began to fall out of the woodwork at the pride, singing her praises. His own reputation had improved as well when rumors had begun to fly about the infamous Hawk, doing a lot to smooth his way and gain the trust of the other lieutenants and soldiers. But where he was admired, she was worshipped.

  Adrian tucked Rachel inside the car as behind him the building groaned and shuddered. It still hadn’t collapsed, in spite of all their haste, and he overheard some discussion of whether they should intentionally blow it up now that everyone with a pulse had been evacuated.

  If the choice was left to him, he would have flattened the fucking place, but he didn’t stir himself to enter the argument. He wasn’t a full member of the pride. He knew when to pick his battles. And it sounded like the argument was tipping in his direction anyway.

  Five minutes later, Grace gave the order and the shifters all paused to watch as the building blew with a satisfying boom. Then they all dove into the cars—and some shifted and dove into the wilderness—scattering like cockroaches when the kitchen light came on and leaving nothing for the Organization to find but rubble.

  Now if only he could be as decisive about what to do with the lovely doctor.

  Chapter Ten

  The air smelled of winter—or what she’d always imagined northern winters must smell like while she was growing up in the South. Pine and cold—if cold had a smell. Rachel focused on that—did cold have a smell?—distracting herself from the throbbing in her skull.