Authors: Rachel Caine
He was silent for maybe a second, and then said, “I’ll have the intel ready before you get here.” She didn’t doubt for a moment that he would have someone, somewhere, who owed him enough of a favor to make it happen.
“Pat—” The line was already dead. He hadn’t said good-bye.
Mr. French, who’d been woken up by the sudden stop and the emotion radiating out of her, whined in concern and licked her arm. She leaned over and hugged him, and said, “We’re going to find her, baby. We’re going to find my sister.”
He barked as if he agreed and settled down in the seat as she put the car in gear and headed home with absolute disregard for speed limits.
God, if he’s decided she’s of no further value to him
…Mercer was not a nice man. If he decided that Annie wasn’t useful, he’d dump her like a bad date. In Annie’s case, that meant no more shots, and no more shots of Returné meant a slow, agonizing, and gruesome death. She could already be far along the path.
He’s luring you,
the cooler part of her brain warned her.
That wasn’t just Annie being resourceful and getting her hands on a cell phone. He wanted her to call. He wants you to go rushing in to save her.
Maybe. But honestly, Bryn couldn’t see how else to play it. Annalie was her sister, and she’d been innocent in all this, a victim. There was no way Bryn could play it safe if there was even the remotest chance that Annie could be rescued and out of Mercer’s hands.
She also knew what Pat was going to say. She just didn’t want to hear it.
Chapter 5
T
he first words McCallister said to her as she and Mr. French rushed inside the mansion’s big entry hall were “This way.”
“Do you have the information?” Bryn asked, dumping everything but her phone next to the door.
“Yes. Come with me.” He’d taken off his suit jacket and tie, and his pale blue shirt was wrinkled, the first two buttons opened—he looked unexpectedly vulnerable to her, somehow. She was so used to seeing him completely
together
. As she followed him, he said, “Bryn, you have to expect that this may be—”
“A trap,” she said, well aware of the tension in her voice. “I know. Just help me find her, Pat. I
need
to find her. Please, don’t tell me the dangers, just…
help
.”
He said, “I will,” in a soft, flat voice, and closed the door behind her. She hadn’t paid attention to where they were going, but in the sudden rush of stillness, she realized that they were in Patrick’s personal office…a place she’d rarely gone, simply because the door was always shut, whether he was inside or not. It was a warm, book-lined room of dark woods and maroon fabrics, with soft
gold light fixtures that lit but didn’t dazzle. The desk was massive and heavily carved, and the chairs matched. It was all very masculine and Victorian, except for the gleaming, ultramodern laptop sitting on the tooled leather desktop.
Pat lifted his gaze to hers and said, “Info’s on the laptop screen. I printed a copy for you to take. But make no mistake, Bryn: I might be willing to accept letting you go alone on Pharmadene’s black flag op, but not on this. No way in hell. So I’m coming, too. I’m not entertaining any arguments. If you tell me no, I’ll just take another car and beat you there.”
“I wasn’t planning on trying to shut you out,” Bryn replied. “I’m scared. I’m scared for Annie.”
“And I’m scared for
you
. You’re too desperate to find her, and that’s a liability. Slow and careful. That’s how we’re going to find her, and how we’re going to get her back safely, without losing anyone else. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” she said, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Do you think he ordered her to make that call?” Jonathan Mercer’s moral compass—if he’d ever had one in the first place—had shattered into a million sharp pieces when he’d helped create Returné. What was left was something Bryn didn’t really understand at all. Mercer was capable of anything…of luring them in to be killed, most obviously, but he was utterly unpredictable. He might just be screwing with her to entertain himself. Or to let Annie go…If Annie was still under his control, she’d be a perfect Trojan horse.
Or maybe, just
maybe
, her sister had somehow won her freedom and needed, desperately, to find safety.
Pat sank down in the desk chair, holding both her hands in his. “I think if Mercer wants to have a chat with you, he’d think using Annie to arrange it was just good business,” he said. “So until we find out differently, we
have to assume that he knew she was calling, at the very least. It wouldn’t be safe to do anything else.”
She looked past him at the screen. It had a cell phone number on it, but he quickly crashed her hopes by saying, “The number’s not useful in itself; it’s a throwaway. But I have the cell’s last GPS location. It’s been switched off, but you were right. It was at a marina, right here.” He brought up a map, and pointed. “It’s not exactly the yacht club. The place is a favorite for drug smugglers. If we go, we go in armed and ready.”
“
If
we go?”
“Mercer—”
“Pat, Mercer didn’t set this up. If he had, he’d have at least had her give the location to feed to me, wouldn’t he?” Even as she said it, it had a hollow ring and she knew it. She wanted to believe that Annie had gotten free of him, that she could be saved. Could be
fixed
.
And at the same time, she knew that was bullshit, but she couldn’t let it go.
Pat, however, was going to make her do it. “Knowing we could grab the number off your records and get the GPS coordinates? No. He gives you more credit than you give him, Bryn.” He leaned forward, capturing and holding her gaze in his intense stare. “I
will not
let you throw yourself away on this. We’ll play the game, but we’ll play it safely. You don’t go charging in, are we understood? Say yes and mean it, or I zip-tie you and leave you here while Joe and I go on our own.”
“You
wouldn’t
.”
“You think not?”
She couldn’t actually swear that he wouldn’t. McCallister could be coolly ruthless when he needed to be, and he might think that he
did
need to be right now, with her. “I could probably get those zip-ties off. I mean, skin and bones do grow back on me.”
A smile shadowed his lips but didn’t show itself plainly. “Probably,” he said. “But it’d slow you down.”
“So does a bag over the head.”
The smile, never really present, disappeared completely. Pat’s grip on her hands tightened, then deliberately loosened. “I will never,
never
do that to you,” he said. “You believe me?”
She did believe him, and always had—from the moment she’d first seen him on her second birth, she’d somehow believed in his essential goodness. And on impulse, she leaned forward and kissed him—caught him by surprise, for once, and for a second his lips were soft, yielding under hers before pressing forward, parting, meeting hers with equal amounts of need and longing. His tongue stroked gently over her mouth, and there was a buried wildness in her that broke free when she allowed it entrance. His body was tense against hers, and his hands traveled slowly down her sides, curved inward, cupped her hips, and pulled her tighter against him. She had no idea what drew him to her with such constant and consistent force, but it was always there, that buried attraction that required only a moment’s slip of control to surface. It was wildly sexy, but more than the pure attraction of him, there was a kind of beautiful strength to Patrick that she couldn’t begin to define.
Why he wanted
her
was such a mystery to her, but there was no question in her mind, no question at all, how much she wanted
him
. She wanted to blot out the world with the red race of pulses and bodies, the damp solace of kisses and sweat and hot, mind-wiping sex. She needed to feel
alive
, with Pat,
now
.
But she couldn’t. Because of Annie.
So she sucked in a deep, angry breath and backed away.
McCallister reached for her, but when he saw the look
on her face, he let his hands fall back to his knees. He pulled in a deep breath, dropped his head against the cushion of the chair, eyes narrowing. “I still mean it about the zip-ties.” He
almost
succeeded in making it sound as if nothing had happened between them. Almost. But there was color in his face, and his lips were damp, and she couldn’t stop zeroing in on them.
On the shining focus in his eyes.
“I know,” she said. “And I want to…continue this. But if she’s out there, if Annie’s out there and loose, we need to find her before Mercer can. Please.”
It had been unfair of her to do that to him, but he only nodded and said, “Then we go in five minutes.”
He meant five minutes to tell Liam where they were going, put on body armor (Bryn didn’t need it to survive, but she did admit that
not
being shot was still preferable), and arm up with what Patrick kept on the premises—almost as complete a selection as Joe Fideli had in his workroom. Patrick and Joe had been friends a long time, and there was no doubt that part of what had built that foundation was how similar their backgrounds were—if they’d served together, they’d never spoken of it, but Bryn wouldn’t have been surprised.
Joe almost certainly provided Patrick’s armory.
It was five minutes on the dot when she met him downstairs. He was holding a shotgun and sliding a handgun into the holster he wore.
“Are you sure that’s enough?” she asked, as she checked her own sidearm. He handed her extra clips for her belt pouch, and after ensuring the magazine was ready and there was a bullet in the chamber, she safetied the weapon and put it away. “Remember who we’re dealing with.”
“I’m well aware,” Pat said. “But your sister’s in the middle of it, and as much as he probably deserves it, we
can’t take the risk of killing Mercer. So pick your shots. Joe’s our backup. He’ll have the heavier stuff.”
She hadn’t seen him call Joe, but it didn’t surprise her that he’d managed to fit the call in while her back was turned. As she watched, Pat readied a small bag with more extra clips, shotgun shells, and three sealed preloaded syringes. “You said that Annie didn’t sound so great. She’ll need boosters, if so.”
“Manny’s formula?”
“No,” he said. “Pharmadene standard’s all we can spare. We don’t have enough of Manny’s to use for anyone but you.”
He strapped on his own bulletproof vest with smooth, competent, almost instinctive motions, and Bryn was suddenly struck by the fact that he was the at-risk one in this equation. She could take a bullet. So could Annie. So could Fast Freddy, Mercer’s slimy little thug, equally Revived.
But not Patrick McCallister. He was still alive, and vulnerable. “Pat, you don’t have to do this with me. I can go alone and just check it out. I promise, I won’t do anything stupid.”
He glanced up at her and smiled—a real smile, one that lit up his eyes, crinkled the skin next to his mouth, and made her shiver somewhere deep. “I’m not that fragile,” he said. “Trust me. And I need the practice.”
She sincerely doubted that last part. Pat looked about as comfortable with weapons as anyone she’d ever seen; his movements with them were precise, careful, and had the grace of incredible familiarity. He’d never told her
exactly
what his military experience had been, but it must have been far, far more intense than her own. And the fact that he’d survived it without too many visible scars told her that he was either seriously good at it or lucky, or both.
It was a very good combination, if so, because right now, she could use some serious luck.
And so could Annie.
Pat was right about the area of the marina.…It was murky, industrial, poorly lit, and in a part of town where the police traveled in numbers if they came at all. As she braked the dark sedan in a spot as far from the wan security lights as possible, another vehicle coasted to a stop beside her—a big pickup truck, in the same basic, lightless black. She knew it by sight: Joe Fideli’s vehicle. It wasn’t a surprise when he stepped out, dressed for battle in dark gray urban camo, with a black watch cap over his shaved head. As Pat had promised, Joe held the heavy arms: an FN P90, or a look-alike. The military had classified it as a PDW, a personal defense weapon, but it was capable of some fearsome offense and was probably highly illegal to carry around in the wild.
That was the weapon she could see, but she had every confidence that Joe had a selection at his fingertips. He was the kind of Boy Scout who came prepared.
Joe leaned against the bed of his truck as she and Pat got out of the sedan. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said. “Going for a midnight sail?”
“Nobody goes for a midnight sail out of this marina unless their passenger is a hundred pounds of coke,” Pat said. “Thanks for coming out.”
Joe shrugged. “You know. Five hundred channels on TV, nothing’s on. What’s the op?”
“Annie called me,” Bryn said. “She may be out here somewhere.”
Joe looked toward the marina and the bobbing shadows of ill-kept boats. His eyebrows rose, just a little. “Somewhere,” he repeated. “So, very specific intel, then. That’s
always just so great. We got a plan, or is it just as poorly defined as our objective?”
“It’s loosey-goosey,” Pat said. “But we haven’t got much of a choice. If she
is
out there, she’s in trouble and she needs help. Joe, I need you to stay put and watch our backs.”
“Right. I’ll be lurking here, by the transformer. Pat, what channel are you on?”
“Three,” Pat said, and reached up to touch a control on his earpiece. “Test.”
“Got ya.”
“I don’t get one?” Bryn asked. The two men exchanged a look.
“You don’t leave my sight,” Pat said. “So you don’t need one.”
“Are you
kidding
? There must be a hundred boats here. If we stick together, we’ll never get through this in time!”
“Nonnegotiable,” Pat said. “Are you coming?” He was already walking away.
Bryn looked to Joe for some kind of support, but he just shrugged. “He’s the boss tonight. Sorry.”