Love in Electric Blue (Westlake Enterprises) (21 page)

“Keep out of my head,” J.D. spat, wanting to hit something—someone—hard.

“You keep thinking violent thoughts, use Hunter as a punching bag,” Thorne advised.

Hunter blinked. “Huh?”

“No one betrayed you, so quit the drama,” Thorne continued. “Luc had a vision of Remy with her uncle. It was meant to happen, and it
has
to if she’s going to stop him.”

“Why not tell me all this before? Why am I the last one to know anything?”
Why didn’t she tell me?

Jurek answered, “Because you never would have gone along with the plan. You and Remy are too close to each other to be effective. Or at least, you were. Carter is expecting you to come after her. That’s where we come in.”

“How?” It physically hurt to know that the woman he loved was right back where she’d been ten years ago, at the hands of a psychotic asshole who got off on torturing in the name of science. Unbidden came the thought he tried to suppress—
she left me behind again
. “He’s going to hurt her.”

“Yes, he will,” Max said calmly. “Unless you get moving. I’ve already looked through David Bellamy’s thoughts, and he’s been as honest as we’d hoped. I know where the laboratory is, but we need to move now. Once Carter uses his machine to harness and steal Remy’s energy, there will be no stopping him.”

“Shit. You mean to tell me he got that thing to work?” Talk about OCD. Carter had been trying to create people with superpowers back when J.D. had been there. The man was three shades shy of sane. He couldn’t think he’d actually be able to steal Remy’s abilities? Could he?

As he recalled the events of the night, he realized he’d been shot with the same dart that had incapacitated his woman. “How long was I out?”

“A few hours,” Thorne answered. “Yeah, I helped you shrug off the drug. A mind push cleared you—that’s why you’re up and moving when by rights you should be dead to the world for another twenty hours or so.”

“And that’s our advantage,” Max said. “Carter won’t expect you so soon. We need that leg up on him. From what David shared, Carter’s been running through doped-up psychics at a rapid rate. Many are dying, and the others lose their faculties.”

“Living vegetables,” Thorne said softly. “What a nightmare.”

“Lennox is a real danger,” Max added. “The man’s happiest when hurting people. He was bad before, but now he’s outright crazy. David believes he might have his own abilities as well. But that’s something Carter doesn’t know or want to know.”

“What about Mike Brooks?” Cole asked. “We going in to rescue him too?”

Max frowned. “From what I’ve gathered, Mike is up to his eyeballs in deceit. He’s a willing participant in Carter’s brutality. No, he’s not someone we need to save, but someone to arrest.”

“Fine by me.” Hunter cracked his knuckles, and J.D. picked up on the thread of violence in his energy.

He blinked and looked around him, feeling with senses he normally kept buried unless working on his computers. Now, with Remy’s life at stake, he’d do whatever he had to, to bring her back. Then he’d paddle her ass for leaving him behind…
again
. He couldn’t believe she’d done that.

Though angry and hurt, he shoved the emotions aside. He stood with Thorne’s help, shaky but steadying as the seconds ticked by. “So what now?”

“Now we snap the trap closed and rescue our insider, who was more than willing, by the way, to sucker her uncle into seeing her as a helpless woman.” Jurek gave a grim smile. “Note, we don’t need to be easy about this. Carter’s no longer someone needing to be saved.”

“As if he ever was.” But J.D. knew what Jurek meant. Westlake Enterprises normally cleaned up messes while adhering to the law. But the ISPP had been taken down years ago for a reason. The government didn’t trust Carter then, and apparently they didn’t want him alive now.

“Sounds like a plan. You guys can fill me in along the way.”

They turned to the doorway when Max took hold of Cole. “Not you, Cole. You’re going to the clinic nearby. Jurek has a few friends in town who can help.”

“But I—”

“He’s not asking,” Luc added from the doorway.

Behind him, two big men stood waiting. Two of Jurek’s men, friends of J.D.’s, actually. He waved. The larger of the two nodded back.

“Oh, come on. You’re using Westlake pricks to keep me here? A little ironic, huh, Uncle?” Cole glared, but Max shrugged away his pique.

“Whatever works.” He narrowed his gaze, and J.D. knew communications had passed between uncle and nephew.

“Fuck. Fine. But tell Remy she owes me when you see her again.” He smirked at J.D. “I’ll take my payment in a date.”

J.D. didn’t respond until he came nose to nose with Cole. He put a hand on Cole’s good shoulder and squeezed. In seconds, the big man passed out from the electrical shock, caught by the guys standing behind him.

“Damn.” Thorne whistled. “I don’t suppose you killed him?”

“Nah. Just a warning. Remy’s mine.” He glared at the rest of them.

Thorne nodded, but J.D. saw the laughter he didn’t share. Hunter outright grinned.

“And another one bites the dust,” Jurek murmured. “Way too much romance involved in company business, I’d say.”

“Amen to that,” Max agreed. “But he’ll ground her, and that’s a good thing. I’ve been worried about losing my IT rep for some time.” He turned to J.D. “You ready to save your girl?”

“I was born ready.” He paused as they entered a larger suite that looked expensive. “Just where the hell are we, anyway?”

“Still in Atlanta, and we have a short drive ahead of us,” Hunter murmured. “Two hours to Augusta, Georgia, where Remy and Carter are waiting. You in?”

J.D. nodded, feeling his strength slowly return. “You know it. Let’s go.”

Chapter Sixteen

“You understand you’re going in as a decoy,” Jurek said for the fourth time in five minutes.

“Yes, I get it. I’m fine.” J.D. stared at his boss, worried. Jurek had never seemed so ill at ease on a mission before. Had Luc or maybe Rafe warned him of bad things to come?

Jurek pulled him aside, away from the others talking around the table where plans and blueprints were laid out. Their makeshift control post, located in an empty warehouse down from the Augusta airport, served as a jumping-off point for this operation.

Carter had cleverly situated his laboratory in the city just two and a half hours northwest of Savannah and southeast of Atlanta. From this location in Augusta, he had access to the Savannah River Site—a nuclear power station—Fort Gordon, should he need advanced communications systems, and the Medical College of Georgia for medical needs.

With the airport down the road from the industrial area he’d overtaken, he had an easy escape route should he need to make haste. With the money he’d accumulated from Brooks and a few other privately donated sources, Carter could most likely buy his way out of trouble.

They had to take him out now.

“Jurek?” J.D. asked. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Jurek snapped. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Me?”

Jurek frowned. “You were a young man when I first saw you, bloodied, beaten, nearly dead. You spent the last ten years with me, J.D. Of course I’m worried about you. This is Benjamin Carter, an extremely dangerous individual who has it out for you. And you’re so far gone on Remy that you’re not thinking straight.”

“You’re really worried about me.” J.D. stared at his boss. Jurek saw him not like an employee, but like someone closer. As if someone had painted him a picture, J.D. saw the past with clear eyes. He always went to Jurek with problems. From the time he’d been brought in to work at Westlake Enterprises, he’d had an open-door policy with the boss. He did whatever Jurek asked him, without question, because he knew Jurek was one of the good guys and had earned his loyalty.

In turn, Jurek had given him the same. How had he never seen that before?

“Don’t get overly dramatic,” Jurek said, sounding calm and in control of himself once more. “I can’t afford to lose you. Once Max has Remy back, she’ll be all over our records if you’re not here to protect us.” Jurek smiled at him. “With two people so in tune with circuitry and the power behind it, I don’t think either Max or I relish working against one another without someone to buffer us.”

“Yeah, I get you.” J.D. coughed to clear his throat. When it came down to it, Jurek had always been there for him. Like an honorary uncle, kind of. Or a father.

“Good.” Jurek slapped him on the back. “Now get your ass in there, take Carter out, and save Remy from herself. Girl has a real head on her shoulders for the technical stuff, but, you ask me, she’s no field agent.”

How many times had he been nagged about taking care in the field, since he was still considered the new guy at it, even after a year? “Yeah, I hear you. Being away from the desk isn’t for everyone. Don’t worry, Jurek. I’ll get the job done.”

Hunter nodded. “Sounds about right. Unlike you Buchanan idiots, we have a decent success rate.”

“Shut up, Conan.” Thorne glared at J.D. over his shoulder. “And, you, quit sucking up to your boss and get your ass over here. You’re on, princess.”

Excitement and adrenaline coursed through him, adding to the waves of power J.D. forced himself to hold close. He’d need to shield himself while being ready at a moment’s notice to face this dangerous adversary. Failing wasn’t an option. He had to get Remy back in one piece.

“Thorne, you’re sure she’s okay?”

“I felt her up here.” Thorne tapped his forehead. “She’s groggy but in one piece. But she wants us to hurry the hell up. Carter’s got big plans, and he’s waiting on you.”

Go time. J.D. took a deep breath and let it out. “Okay, amateurs. Stand back and watch how a professional handles this particular psychopath.”

An hour later, just as his watch struck noon, J.D. did his thing. After rendering the guards unconscious with a carefully gauged electric shock, and disabling the security cameras, he walked through the doors of a rundown warehouse. Past the junk and bodies strewn all over the floor, he followed the blueprints they’d reviewed and neared the far corner of the warehouse, where the door to what should have been a closet stood.

He held out a hand and pushed his energy past the locks and security holding fast the closet’s steel door. It popped open and he pulled it wide, then let it swing closed behind him.

With a thought, he commanded the elevator to lower four flights, to the floor where Remy should have been taken. The experimental sector, according to David Bellamy.

Fuck of it was, the layout J.D. had studied was an
exact
copy of the original Institute he’d once escaped from.

Ignoring the unease skittering down his spine, he countered his disquiet with a reminder. Before, he’d been a boy on the verge of adulthood, dealing with the death of his father and crazy Carter out to control him body and soul. Now, he was a man full grown, one who had a woman and a life to pursue outside of these concrete walls.

He refused to allow Carter to control him any more than he needed to get the job done. Once he and Remy left this dismal place and destroyed the lab, they’d never look back.

The elevator came to a halt and he exited, not surprised to find Lennox and a dozen guards with guns aimed at him. He ignored them and took a quick look around. The floors were of a commercial-grade tile, the walls a cold whitewashed block. Overhead, fluorescent lights gave the space an artificial, antiseptic look. Home sweet home. Different place, same look. It was like he’d never left.

“Joshua.” Lennox nodded. He held up his gun for a better view. “Tranquilizers, not bullets. We obviously want you alive. We have Lizzie, so if you want to see her again, no tricks.”

“Not yet,” J.D. agreed. “And it’s J.D. now. Not Joshua.”

Lennox shrugged and nodded for him to follow the guards.

They walked down the hallway and turned left into another hallway lined with glass walls, allowing views into the rooms they passed. Some were empty, others had blank-faced men and women in hospital gowns.
Like a fucking zoo.
He could only imagine what Carter had done to the poor bastards still strapped down in some of the rooms.

They passed one room still being cleaned, mounds of flesh and pools of blood making the cleanup slow going.

J.D. maintained his composure, reminding himself that Carter would never kill Remy until he’d gotten her near J.D. again. Experiments, curiosity—Carter would need to see them together. Then he’d either gut J.D. or kill Remy outright. J.D. had time. He had to work this the right way. Backup waited for him.

“You’re in. Good.”
Thorne remained a part of him, in his mind.

“You know, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad you’re with me. If anything goes wrong, you get Remy out—”

“Nothing will go wrong. Focus, numbnuts. I’ve got fifty says you come out unscathed. Hunter bets you break a leg or a hand and need to be carried out. Be strong.”
Mental laughter accompanied the warning. Idiot. Yet J.D. felt better that Thorne didn’t seem too worried about the mission.

“Remy’s good. Hurry it up, will you?”
Thorne prodded.