Rogue Alliance

TWENTY-SEVEN



Restless didn’t even begin to describe the way Shyla was feeling as she sat in her car at the top of the knoll, a football field away from Victor’s house. The moon was nearly full and seemed to be staring in through the windshield, mocking her.

All day, as she fought off her hangover, she simultaneously battled against the sensation that she was dangerously on the edge of loosing it. Her skin was sensitive. It felt like tiny ants were crawling over her. She felt jittery and had a hard time sitting still. She knew it was just nerves but the knowing didn’t help ease the pain.

When she couldn’t take it anymore, she followed instinct and hopped into the car, bound for Victor’s. As she neared his drive, she had cut the lights and drifted past the gate and up the incline, parking well off the road at the top of the small hill where she would have good vision of his house in the small valley.

Off the case? How could they do that to her? Didn’t they know that they were throwing away the opportunity of a lifetime? She had already made so much progress with Victor, how could they toss all that aside just because they were paranoid?

She figured it had been at least an hour as she sat crunching on one Dorito after another, licking her fingers nervously as she staked the house. There hadn’t been much movement, until she saw someone stomp out the front door of the main house, cross the drive under the one streetlight which lit up that area of the property and up to Brennan’s apartment. Even at that distance she recognized Victor’s aggressive demeanor.

He had only been in the loft above the shop for maybe five minutes before he marched out to his car. She held her breath as she watched him pull out of the lane and drive in the opposite direction, towards town. Should she follow him? Should she sneak into his house and start digging. Should she just go home and call it night? She wasn’t in her right mind. She needed sleep.

Before she could make a decision, she caught movement on the far side of the house in the back field. Imagining a deer coming down to the creek that ran through Victor’s land, she narrowed her gaze and wished she had binoculars. A premonitory shiver ran up her spine. That was no deer. There was a man running a full sprint across the field. When he came to the fence he hopped it in one fluid motion and hit the ground running.

Her back was straight as she leaned forward and watched the intruder bypass the main house and swoop behind the shop. Whoever he was, he was on a mission and looked to be in a hurry.

She doubted it was a coincidence that he had waited until Victor had left. Common sense told her that he had been watching the house, too. She calculated where he must have emerged from the woods and guessed that her spot would have been out of his sights.

A million scenarios ran through her mind as she contemplated who in the hell was going to try to kill Brennan, but none of it mattered. Thankful that she had grabbed her gun before she left the apartment, she snagged it, bolted out of the Range Rover, and hopped the perimeter fence and ran as fast as she could.

The ground was uneven and had a lot of holes. She nearly fell on her face when her ankle twisted but she caught her balance and kept running despite the pain. When she reached the main house, she plastered her body against its frame and peeked around the corner. All was still. There was only one lonely light on above the shop. Wherever the intruder was, he hadn’t made his presence known yet. She imagined him hiding out in the back until Brennan went to bed. Or maybe he was scaling the backside of the building for an alternate entrance point.

With that thought, she realized she might not have much time to warn Brennan. Taking her chances, she dashed across the drive light on her feet. Without wasting a moment, she took the wooden stairs two at time and didn’t bother to knock.

Brennan was stepping out of his bathroom with only a towel wrapped around his waist. She held up a finger to her pursed lips as she quietly shut the door behind her.

She watched the myriad of emotions pass over Brennan’s face as he processed the situation. Shock, then confusion, then something close to understanding settled on his face as he looked at her with her revolver in hand. His jaw clenched.

She nodded her head and whispered.

“There is someone outside. I came to see Victor and saw the man jet across the field. He went behind the shop. I don’t know where he’s at now.”

Brennan turned, walked to the bed and grabbed his jeans. He let the towel drop revealing his firm, bare ass then jerked one leg at a time into the denim.

As he turned around she heard the faint sound of metal scraping against metal. It was brief but it was unnatural. Brennan had apparently heard it too. He stood stock still, his head tilted to the side and seemed ready to attack. He crooked a finger and beckoned her toward him.

She nodded and reached for the light switch. With a flick of the wrist the room was cloaked in shadows. Only the light of the moon shone in. Knees bent, and her gun held to her chest, she made her way toward Brennan.

They stood very close to one another. She could feel the moist heat rolling off his skin from the shower.

“He won’t be able to get in anywhere but the front door. I made sure of that,” Brennan whispered.

“You knew he was coming.”

The realization raised only more questions.

Brennan gave her a quick, knowing glance then looked away.

“He’ll figure it out soon enough,” he said, “go into the bathroom and wait.”

She shook her head.

“No.”

Brennan turned and gripped her by the biceps, squeezing hard, seemingly indifferent to the gun held between them.

“I’m not messing with you,” he said, “you shouldn’t be here. Now get into that damn bathroom.”

“We don’t have time for this shit. Let me go now, dammit,” she said through clenched teeth.

To her surprise he released her.

“Suit yourself.”

Again, a faint sound that she couldn’t quite make out drifted in from the far side of the shop. As she turned her body, she caught the lightning quick movement as Brennan’s right fist arced up and toward her. There was no time to evade the impact. She knew it would land on the right side of her jaw.



*



When she woke up, her jaw and gums were throbbing. Her surroundings were pitch black and her cheek was lying on linoleum. Memory flashed instantly. She sat up and knew she was in the bathroom. She felt around for her gun, but didn’t want to risk turning on the light. For whatever reason, Brennan was determined to keep her out of harm’s way.

Well, to hell with that. Standing slowly, a wave of dizziness caught her off guard and she leaned against the wall until the world felt solid again. Damn him for punching her in the face. What kind of man did that?

A slight creaking sound gave notice that the front door had been opened. Waiting for the next telling sound she held her breath. It was silent for too long. Slowly she opened the bathroom door and peeked out. The apartment was empty and the front door stood wide open. Had Brennan gone out or had someone come in?

She saw her gun on Brennan’s bedside table. Why in the hell hadn’t he held on to it? Slipping out, she tip-toed toward the night stand.

“Shyla!”

Shyla heard Brennan shout her name and turned just in time to see the intruder launch through the front door. Instinct had her sprawl to the floor. The sound of a gun-shot rang through the air and echoed within the walls.

From somewhere in the dark corner of the room behind the door, Brennan leapt out and jumped the attacker from behind. There were only three swift and violent movements before the man was on the floor and bleeding from his throat where Brennan had ripped out his jugular with his teeth.

Nothing about what Shyla had just seen seemed real. It all happened impossibly fast and ended with a gruesome murder.

Shock quickly gave way to fear. She scrambled to her knees and crawled to the bedside table, grabbing her gun.

“Stay back, Brennan,” she shouted, pointing it straight at Brennan’s chest.

He stared at her, his bare chest heaving, blood dripping from his mouth.

She should have seen rage or ugliness in him. But his eyes were sad and haunted as he looked at her. It was confusing. All of it was so confusing. She ran to the body and felt for a pulse at the wrist, knowing there would be none.

Looking up, Brennan was still standing above the body watching.

“What in the hell just happened here?” she demanded, standing upright.

Brennan turned away.

She stepped over the body and grabbed his arm.

“No way, you aren’t going to get away with the silence anymore. Not after this. You start talking now or I’m calling the cops.”

Brennan jerked his arm away.

“There’s nothing to tell. This guy tried to kill us and I killed him in self-defense. You came in with a gun. You obviously intended to do the same.”

“Yeah, with a gun. Not with my teeth. I mean, how is that even possible? You ripped his goddamn throat out. Who are you?”

“I should be asking you the same thing.”

“I’m not letting this go. Who or what are you, Brennan?”

His shoulders slumped as if defeated. He wiped a hand across his mouth.

“I don’t know,” he said, “your guess is as good as mine.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I’m an experiment. I escaped…well…Victor helped me escape from a genetic research institute. I’d been there since I was about sixteen. All memories from my life before are gone. I know nothing about where I came from or who I was before. All I know is what I’ve become.”

Shyla shook her head.

“This sounds crazy,” she said, but somewhere in the back of her mind she knew he was telling the truth.

“Crazy, pathological, amoral; those are all good descriptions of Dr. Shinto. He’s the doctor who made me this way. He could explain it perfectly: a gene slice here, micro-chip there, injections of hormones and any other thing you could imagine. All to create a super-human, he said.

“I crave blood. In fact, I need it to survive. I will die without it. Daily blood transfusions are what keep my craving down, but even then, years of training have made the yearning for taking a live kill nearly unbearable at times.”

“Training,” Shyly asked breathlessly, “what kind of training?”

It was morbid, but she had to know the details.

Brennan turned and shuffled across the floor.

“You really don’t want to know.”

Shyla looked down at the dead body they both seemed oblivious to and thought that this had to be the weirdest night of her life. And coming from someone who had stabbed her own dad to death: that said a lot.

“But I do want to know. I…I have to know. We all have a past, Brennan. It’s not your fault that you were someone’s guinea pig. I know what its like to be at the mercy of someone more powerful than you.”

She said it quietly, and her breathing was shallow as an old fear crept up.

“I know about your dad and mom.”

“The whole town does. It’s not a secret.”

The room was filled with deafening silence. They stared across the room over the dead body of their attacker.

“What now?” Shyla asked.

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“How did you know he was coming?”

Brennan grabbed a shirt out of the dresser.

“One of the big financial contributors to the institute hired a hit man to take me and Victor out,” he explained, “and this is him. I’m not sure if they’ll give up or send in another to finish the job.”

“You have to turn yourself in, Brennan.”

He gave a soft chuckle.

“I can’t ever go back to living that way; behind bars. I’ll die first.”

A pang struck her to the core. She’d never heard anything so raw, so brutal. There was no way that she would be able to do anything which would lead to his incarceration. It went against all of her training and ethical codes, but she just couldn’t do it. Rules were made to be broken.

She sighed and tucked her gun into the back of her jeans.

“I have more questions,” she said, “as I’m sure you have a few for me. But for now, I’m going to leave and go home. You handle this as you see fit. I was never here, you hear me? Not to anyone, especially Victor.”

She could see by the look on his face that he was doubtful. He would have no idea how suddenly fierce her urge to protect him was.

“Why?”

“Because it won’t make sense to anyone; how his throat got ripped out, why I showed up, why I have a gun…”

“Why do you have a gun, Shyla? And why are you out here?”

She wanted to tell the truth. It knocked on the forefront of her mind.

“I can’t sleep at night without one. I still have dreams,” she said, knowing he would remember their talk at the park, “and I was hoping to see Victor. I haven’t seen him since the arrest and didn’t want to wait until our date tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I understand dreams. But as you can see, Victor’s not here. He went into town. But I won’t tell him you were here.”

She nodded and, when there was nothing left to say, she turned to leave.

“Shy?”

It was odd to hear a nickname roll off his lips in such odd circumstances.

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

She knew he was referring to her relationship with Victor. A shiver ran up her spine.

“Okay. Will you be around tomorrow? Victor and I are supposed to get together.”

“No. I’ll be out of town on business.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll see you around.”

She walked out the door and down the steps feeling like she was walking through a dream. Nothing about what had just occurred could have been real. She was hallucinating or dreaming. But she knew she wasn’t.

Why was she protecting Brennan? Why was he protecting her? It was obvious he wasn’t buying her game anymore. Showing up in the middle of the night with a gun had sealed that deal.

She should stay away and forget about the case, about Victor, about Brennan.

There was no way she could do any of those things.