The Van Alen Legacy

Oh, gross! She’d stepped in something icky. Beyond icky. It squished beneath her foot—a wet, gasping sound. Whatever it was, it was sure to ruin her pony-hair boots. What was she doing wearing pony-hair boots to a reconnaissance mission anyway? Mimi Force lifted her heel and assessed the damage. The zebra pattern was stained with something brown and leaky.

Beer? Whiskey? A combination of all the bottom-shelf alcohol they served in this place? Who knew? For the umpteenth time this year, she wondered why on earth she’d ever signed up for this assignment. It was the last week of August. By all rights she should be on a beach in Capri, working on her tan and her fifth limoncello. Not creeping around some honky-tonk bar in the middle of the country. Somewhere between the dust bowl and the rust belt—or was it the rust bowl and the dust belt? Wherever they were, it was a sleepy, sad little place, and Mimi couldn’t wait to leave it.

“What’s wrong?” Kingsley Martin nudged her. “Shoes too tight again?”

“Will you leave me alone?” she sighed, moving away from him, making it clear she found the alcove they were hiding in too close quarters. She was tired of his teasing. Especially since, to her complete and utter horror, she discovered she was starting to like it. That was simply unacceptable. She hated Kingsley Martin. After everything that he’d done to her, she couldn’t see how she could feel otherwise.

“But where’s the fun in that?” He winked. The most infuriating thing about Kingsley—other than the fact that he had once tried to bring about her demise—was that somewhere between chasing down leads on the beaches of Punta del Este or through the skyscrapers of Hong Kong, Mimi had started to find him . . . attractive. It was enough to make her stomach turn. “C’mon, Force, lighten up. You know you want me,” he said with a smug smile.

“Oh my god!” she huffed, turning around so that her long blond hair whipped over her shoulder and hit him square in the face. “As if!” He might be faster and stronger than she was—the big man on the Venator team, and for all intents and purposes her boss—but really she should be the one leading them, as she outranked him in the Conclave hierarchy. If you could call that sorry group of cowards a Conclave.

Kingsley Martin had another think coming if he thought he had any chance with her. He might be too cute for words (damn those rock-star looks), but it didn’t matter one iota. She was not interested, no matter how much her pulse quickened whenever he was near. She was bound to another.

“Mmm. Nice. You don’t use the hotel shampoo from the airport Hilton, do you? This is the good stuff,” he purred. “But is it the conditioner that makes it so soft and silky?”

“Shut up . . . just—”

“Hold on. Save your speech for the after-party. I see our guy. You ready?” Kingsley interrupted, his voice serious now, controlled.

“Like a shot.” Mimi nodded, all business as well. She saw their witness, the reason they were a few miles outside of Lincoln, Nebraska (that was it! She remembered now) in the first place. A former frat boy, probably just shy of thirty, with a baby beer gut and the beginnings of middle-age “carb face.” He was the type of guy who looked like he’d played cornerback in high school, but whose pounds of muscle had turned to fat after a few years behind a desk.

“Good, because this is not going to be easy,” Kingsley warned. “Okay, the boys will bring him to that corner booth and we’ll follow. Square him off and then go. No one will notice as long as we don’t get up. Waitress won’t even bother to come around.”

It was easier and more painless to enter the mind of another during REM sleep, but they didn’t have the luxury of waiting until their suspect had drifted off to la-la land.

Instead they planned to barge into his subconscious with no warning and no consideration. Better that way: there would be no place for him to hide. No time to prepare. They wanted the unadulterated truth, and this time they were going to get it.