Assassin's Promise (Red Team #5)
Elaine Levine
Chapter One
Greer lay on his bed, naked and sweating, sucking air like a marathon runner. Can dead eyes still see?
He shot a look around his room, making sure the ghouls had only been in his dream.
He was alone.
He ripped the twisted sheet away from his legs and walked over to the window. Dawn was still an hour away, but already the sky was a pale lavender. He slid the large glass panel open. Cold air seeped inside, spilling over the windowsill and down the wall to wrap around his feet and ankles like the icy fingers of dead hands.
He pressed his face against the screen and breathed the crisp alpine air through the musty screen mesh. He hated ghosts. They were the rodents of the supernatural world. All they did was mess stuff up. Like his head.
Christ Almighty. Can fucking dead eyes still see? he wondered.
And whose eyes had he seen in his dream, anyway? He’d memorized the faces of everyone whose lives he’d ended in case they showed up later in unwanted ways. All of them had been men; the eyes he saw in his nightmare were female. Who was she? Someone he already knew or someone he’d yet to meet?
He straightened, withdrawing from the questions he couldn’t answer. Centering himself, he closed his eyes and calmed his racing heart with slow, deep breaths. He could feel his energy pulling back inside of him, closer and closer to his inner core, until nothing was left of him in the outside world. He was invisible, one with the atmosphere, inseparable from his surroundings.
Numb to his body and his life.
He let himself exist in that empty zone for a few more minutes, then shut the window and headed to the bathroom for a shower. Hot water pelted his back from a half-dozen showerheads. He bent his head, letting it spill off the sides of his face as he shed all thought. Or tried to.
The nightmare was beginning to fade, but it left behind the black residue of his panic. This wasn’t the only go-round with that dream. He couldn’t remember the first time he’d seen the woman. Weeks. Months. Who knew?
Breakfast was almost over before he made it down to the dining room. His stomach was still twisted from his dream. He didn’t eat, just filled a coffee mug so no one would pester him with questions.
He wasn’t the only one who was self-absorbed; Max and Hope followed him into the room. They looked tired and happy. Replete. Max nodded at him as he held Hope’s hand and led her over to the buffet table.
“We’re meeting downstairs in fifteen,” Kit announced to the few who were still at the table.
Blade grinned at Eden—now his wife. It was the first day back at work after their big wedding celebration over the weekend. He had no difficulty imagining how Blade wanted to spend those minutes.
Greer took his coffee and walked out the patio door. The joy-joy of the couples echoed uncomfortably inside him. He sipped the black brew and looked across the wide, double-tiered lawn behind the house. The tent, carpets, and furniture from Blade’s wedding were gone, but flattened areas on the grass showed where they’d been.
Owen stepped outside and paused long enough to take a read on him. The nightmare had left Greer in a strange pall with sluggish reflexes; he was slow to shutter himself from the boss’s penetrating gaze, an invasion that ended only when Greer stopped focusing on himself and zeroed in on Owen—an energy maneuver that, in his early days on the Red Team, always netted him a hundred on-the-spot push-ups. It did its job. Owen pulled away. When he moved down the patio into the den, Greer followed him, leaving his mug on one of the patio tables.
Man by man—and Selena—the team presented themselves downstairs in the bunker’s meeting room. Owen, as usual, leaned against the back wall.
“First things first,” Kit opened. “We got the report back on Lion’s DNA. His sample had no hits. So it looks as if King isn’t in the system.”
“Or,” Greer said, “Lion’s father had himself, and his relatives, erased. I would have done that, if I were playing the game he is.”
Kit nodded, then looked over the table to Owen. “Interestingly, your friend, the rogue Red Teamer, Wendell Jacobs, was also no longer in CODIS.”
Owen didn’t seem surprised. “He’s on the lam, and he’s covering his trail.”
“Maybe Jacobs is King,” Kit said.
Owen didn’t blink or shift his position against the wall. “While he’s capable of being King, I don’t think he is. We’re getting closer to whoever is King, though. I can feel it.”
“Maybe Lion was lied to,” Max said. “Maybe King is his father in a figurative sense, the way a cult leader is called ‘Father.’”
Kit nodded. “Which leads us to the Friendship Community. Greer, get over there and scope them out. They’re involved in this—we need to know how.”
“Lion said the community sometimes leaves food and supplies for the watchers,” Max said. “He talked of Armageddon, too. Those weirdos are in this up to their necks.”
“There’s a professor at the University of Wyoming who’s been studying cults,” Greer said. “She’s researching the Friendship Community. I’ll go talk to her.”
Kit nodded. “Good. What have you discovered so far about them?”