“What’s he saying?” she asked Alexei.
“Um. He’s very angry.”
He stopped then, and spun to face them. “I’m going to gut them with my bare hands,” he hissed – actually hissed, like an enraged puma, hands leaping up to shoulder-height, curled into claws.
“Dude, that’s kinda dramatic,” Lanny said.
Nikita took an aggressive step toward him.
And Trina got to her feet, slapping her hand down on the table. “That’s enough. Everybody, that’s e-fucking-nough, okay? Someone drugged Sasha, and took him, and that’s terrifying and awful, but we have to do something about it. We can’t do anything if we’re bickering and getting theatrical about it. Okay?”
Surprisingly, Nikita backed down first. He went back to pacing, without the Russian cursing this time.
Lanny looked at her. “How do you want to play this?”
A smile touched her mouth before she could help it; she didn’t want to smile, not when things were so serious and Nikita was so upset, and Sasha was God knew where. But it was so much like the old Lanny, the guy who’d never had a problem deferring to a woman and who’d always said she had better ideas than him.
He smiled back, faintly.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. Then, warming to the notion: “I need a notebook. And a pen.”
“I’ll get you one,” Colette said, and Trina had no idea how long the psychic had been standing in the doorway.
“Thanks.”
“A notebook?” Nikita asked, voice mostly a growl.
“Don’t knock the process,” Lanny said. “We can’t all just barge into a house with Stalin’s blessings and steal everybody’s vodka.”
Nikita said something soft and vicious under his breath.
“What the hell did you guys drag me into?” Jamie asked, but he seemed to be talking to himself, and sounded resigned besides.
Colette returned bearing a leather-bound journal that seemed too special to write in, and an honest-to-goodness fountain pen.
Trina opened up the cover and started a detailed case outline, from the night she and Lanny found Chad Edwards’ body in the alley to just a half hour ago, and Sasha’s abduction. Everyone save Nikita – who kept pacing like a madman – crowded around her chair and studied the notebook over her shoulder.
“Okay,” she said when she was done, sitting back and reviewing her tidy notes. “I’m going to assume that Chad isn’t the first person Alexei’s taken too far.” She glanced at him for confirmation and received a tight, blushing nod. “But I think he must be the first person who’s made the news for getting up off a morgue slab and walking out into the street. That got the Institute’s attention. They had their pet wolves start sniffing around, and they found not just one, but several vamps in town, and a wolf. Which, judging by their own wolves, and their ‘Project Kashnikov,’ they’ve been trying unsuccessfully to create some mentally-sound, fully-functional wolves for a while now.”
She glanced up, giving the others a chance to chime in. Nikita had come to stand at the far end of the table, she saw, arms folded, scowling down at the wood grain of the tabletop.
“Okay, so,” she continued. “They tracked us here. Colette’s wards worked, obviously” – she would have loved to know how, after watching the burning herb ritual Colette had performed – “but they knew we were close. And if they had tranqs, that means they had a trap. My question is this: did the mean to catch Sasha? Or is he just the first one to take the bait?”
“My question,” Nikita said, “is where is he?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious he’s at the Institute,” Trina said, careful to keep her tone neutral. “What sort of containment unit would they need to hold him?”
Nikita made a face, shook his head. He looked like a man struggling to think in the midst of mind-numbing rage. “Concrete. Strong metal. He can take most doors down – silver.” He glanced up at her, and the look in his eyes made her want to shiver. “You can control immortal things with silver.”
“The old silver bullet trick, huh?” Lanny said.
Trina elbowed him. “Not helping.”
Nikita started to pace again.
Trina said, “I’m going to call Dr. Fowler and set up a meeting.”
That got a reaction. “What?” everyone said in unison.
All but Lanny, who nodded beside her. “Yeah.”
“You can’t–” Nikita started, the same moment Jamie said, “That sounds like a really bad idea.”
Trina sliced a hand through the air, and, miraculously, they fell silent. “Hear me out. I’m going to meet with Dr. Fowler alone, in public, while the rest of you get into the Institute and see if you can find Sasha.” When there were no immediate protests, only thoughtful silence, she offered a bare smile. “I can’t sniff anyone out, or Jedi Mindtrick anyone, but I can cause a distraction. And get some useful intel out of the idiot. What do you say?”
Lanny sent her an approving look.
Jamie buried his face in his hands.
Alexei looked at her appraisingly, head cocked to the side.
Nikita sighed, and finally nodded. “Carry a gun.”
She felt her smile widen. “I’m never not carrying a gun.”
14
Farley, WY
There was a restaurant attached to the hotel, an IHOP knockoff with vinyl booths, silk plants, and a breakfast buffet to die for. That was where Jake went looking for his targets, and that was where he found them.
Before he left base – well, the garage – Ramirez had pulled him aside, hands on her hips, and said, “Why are we dragging our feet? We have the targets in range; let’s close in and make the arrest.”
He’d silently wondered if questioning his authority was a personality trait, or something she’d picked up after she was discharged; a show of frustration much like his own with her situation. Her file indicated that she had no family and had enlisted at her local recruitment center on her eighteenth birthday. She’d poured her life into the Army – and barely escaped with it. Maybe she’d been promised a possible return to active duty and was chomping at the bit just like him.
She hadn’t been touched by Ruby Russell, though; hadn’t felt the physical shove and the tingle of her skin healing.
So he’d frowned at her and said, “These two have evaded eight recovery teams, and killed seventeen men.”
Her brows had shot up.
“We’re going to do this slowly and carefully. I’m off to do recon, and I’ll let the rest of the team know what I find.”
She hadn’t argued after that, and the others had been content to keep playing small town blue collar workers. Now here he stood on the blue rug inside the restaurant, gaze going across the room to the table where Rooster Palmer and Ruby Russell sat eating breakfast.
Jake took a moment, before they noticed him, to study them.
Palmer held himself like a hunted man. Elbows on the table, head low, eyes up, shoveling in food mindlessly; it was fuel for him, something to keep his body going, and nothing he enjoyed. Jake could see the bulge of a gun at his hip, and the shadow of another in the shoulder holster visible under the unzipped halves of his jacket. There was a picture of him in the file back at the garage, a handsome, stern-faced kid in his dress uniform. He’d aged since that photo was taken; nearly died. If his discharge paperwork was to be believed, his doctors hadn’t expected him to ever regain full mobility. And yet Jake had seen him haul the girl out of the restaurant, strong and very much mobile.
Across from him, picking choice bits off plates of sausage, and bacon, and hash browns, and French toast sticks, Ruby looked bright and vibrant as a little twist of flame, her russet hair capturing the light, her sweet face alight with simple happiness.
The made a strange tableau: the hardened warrior and the lively sprite of a girl. Too close in age to be father and daughter, too far apart to be lovers. Brother and sister maybe. Or, the truth: high-level target and self-made bodyguard.