Blaze of Secrets (Asylums for Magical Threats) (31 page)

The interrogator kept his eyes trained on Jaxton’s face as he clicked again, this time showing Kiarra still unconscious, but naked from the waist up. Jaxton couldn’t tamp down his growl.

Those were Kiarra’s breasts, and they were meant for him and only him.

Jaxton tugged at his hands, but the rope held firm. He looked around the room again. The interrogator

had forgotten to shut the cabinet door when he’d retrieved the laptop, and inside were trays of medical

instruments. If he could find a way to stun his interrogator and get to the open cabinet, Jaxton might have a chance of getting out of here and finding Kiarra.

Jaxton focused back on his interrogator and the man gave a cool smile. “So you do care for her.” He

leaned in a little closer. “Then I’m going to make this perfectly clear: For each session you refuse to answer my questions, I will bring the little first-born bitch to this room and have fun with her, right in front of you.

Piss me off enough and I’m going to fuck her till she can’t walk, then bring in some of the other guards and pass her around.” The man grabbed Jaxton’s hair and yanked his head back. “Should I get her right now

and prove my point?”

No fucking way in hell.
Jaxton growled louder this time, his control gone as he strained against his bonds. He didn’t notice that the lights started to flicker or that the laptop sparked and went dark. “You touch her and I will fucking tear you apart.” He pulled at his bonds again, but this time they started to stretch. “I will fucking kill you.”

The man eyed the lights, but focused back on Jaxton. “Empty threats, Ward.” The man stepped away

and headed for the door. “I’m going to get her right now and prove to you that I don’t bluff. I bet the first-born whore will spread her legs for me if I threaten your life.”

“No!” Jaxton shouted, causing more lights to flicker and sparks to fly. This bastard didn’t deserve to be in the same room as Kiarra, let alone touch her. Jaxton gave a final tug and the ties around his arms gave way.

His feet were still bound, but Jaxton lunged for the bastard and shouted, “You will
not
fucking lay a hand on her.”

Sparks had started to fly again, and the man covered his ears right before Jaxton slugged the man’s jaw.

They both went down, but Jaxton kept his position on top and took hold of the man’s shoulders. He banged the man’s head against the ground. “Where is she?”

The man stared at him wide-eyed. Jaxton barely noticed the blood running from the inside of the man’s ears before he slammed him against the floor again. “Where?”

“Wh-what are you?”

Jaxton growled and the man winced at the sound. The lights continued to flicker. His initial haze of fury was fading, allowing reason back into his brain.

If the electrical shorts were limited to this room, someone would probably come to investigate. Jaxton

had a few minutes at best, so he pulled the man up to his face and said, “Tell me where she is and I might not kill you.”

“I-I don’t know.”

Disgusted at how quickly the man’s nerve had vanished, Jaxton slammed the man’s head against the

floor, knocking him unconscious. He didn’t have time to waste with a blathering idiot afraid of a few

growls and some flickering lights.

He needed to get out of this room, and quickly.

Jaxton frisked the guard and took his access card and gun before freeing his own legs and heading for

the door. The room in Kiarra’s photos had looked similar to this one, so he only hoped that Kiarra—and

Millie, for that matter—was being held in the same facility.

Jaxton slid the security card through the panel next to the door. The light turned green, and he went into the hallway. As much as he wanted to singlehandedly rescue Kiarra and Millie on his own, he wouldn’t risk their safety. His first priority was to find a room with a phone and call for backup.

Gio stood at the foot of Calton Hill in Edinburgh. While he waited for his contact to arrive, he stared up at the purplish-blue sky of twilight and tried to forget what he’d just seen. But not even the beautiful canvas of the sky could block out the picture Ramirez had sent to his phone, the one showing Kiarra with a bruised face and split lip.

Gio wondered why, despite explicit instructions to the contrary, Ramirez had shared his handiwork. Did

he suspect what Gio had done with Millie Ward? The picture might be a veiled threat, telling him that

Ramirez would continue to reject Gio’s authority until some condition was met.

Whatever the reason, seeing his sister’s battered face after all these years wasn’t sitting well with Gio’s conscience. Once this meeting was over, he’d contact his father and seek out his next assignment. The

sooner he finished his investigation concerning the experiments inside the AMT, the sooner he could decide what to do about it. If the abuse of first-borns was widespread, he couldn’t ignore it and do nothing.

A tall figure dressed in jeans approached and stopped a few feet from Gio’s location. Gio kept his face

neutral despite the surprise; it wasn’t his man Huang, but he recognized the blond man from the personnel files.

When Dr. Ty Adams spoke, it was in a gravelly American accent. “It was the season of light.”

He’d find out later how Adams had learned the correct pass phrase.

Gio gave the required response. “It was the season of darkness.”

How apropos.

Gio started climbing the steps of the hill and Adams followed. Only when they were far enough up the

hill, where the wind would cover their voices, did Gio speak up. “Care to tell me why you’re here and what this is about?”

Adams shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Only if you promise to turn F-839 over into my

care later tonight.”

Gio stopped and turned, wondering what Adams wanted with Kiarra. Using every trick of arrogance

he’d learned during his five years at Harrow, he said, “You’re hardly in the position to negotiate, doctor.”

Adams raised his left eyebrow, the one divided in two by a scar. “I can play this game too, son. I have

information your father would love to hear.”

Gio kept his face impassive. He was determined to keep the upper hand. “He wouldn’t be pleased to

hear you’ve been keeping something from us.”

“But everyone knows that I’m the only scientist in the world who can do what I’m doing, and Sinclair

won’t touch me. So, can we stop fucking around and get on with it?”

Gio appreciated Adam’s direct matter—a stark contrast to most Brits he knew—and nodded. “If your

information is valuable, and you can provide proof, then we may have a deal. What do you know that is

worth all this finagling?”

Adams took out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, and turned it toward Gio. “Take a look for

yourself.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

As Kiarra stared at the man standing in the doorway, all she could think about was how the resemblance

was uncanny.

From the rough features to the slightly too long blond hair, the man looked just like Ty. Only on closer inspection, when she noticed the lack of a scar through his eyebrow and the straighter nose, did Kiarra

realize it was someone else.

Despite what they’d done to her earlier—hitting her when she’d refused to answer a question—she

couldn’t resist asking, “Who are you?”

The man stared down at her ripped shirt and Kiarra forced herself to remain calm. Partitioning her

emotions had been the only way she’d survived so many years of being a guinea pig inside the AMT. As

long as she acted detached, male staff members had usually left her alone when they’d realized that she

wasn’t the slut her reputation suggested.

It was strange to think that she’d learned something useful from her stint as a lab rat.

She focused back on Ty’s double. The man who’d tended her face and bruises a few hours ago had

murmured something important about using her split lip and ripped shirt as leverage. True, people seemed to be able to take pictures and instantly send them anywhere in this day and age, but she had a gut feeling that Jaxton was in the same facility, in a room not that far from her own. If she could get Ty’s double to leave within the next ten minutes, the start of the evening meal would give her a small window of time to escape this room and go searching.

The lookalike finally met her gaze. “I can see why my brother risked his career to fuck you. You might

be on the thin side, but your tits more than make up for it.”

She just caught herself from frowning. “Ty doesn’t have a brother.”

The double smirked. “That he knows of.”

What the hell?
While a small part of her wanted to know more, Kiarra noted the time and decided it wasn’t worth it. She needed to get this man to leave.

She forced a bored expression on her face. “Well, as you can see, Ty isn’t here.”

“He isn’t the one I came to see.” The man strode forward and took Kiarra’s chin in his hand. “You are.”

The look in his eyes was unsettling, made creepier by the fact that they were the same shade and shape

as her former researcher’s. He leaned closer, and when he ran his hand up her arm, the first flutters of panic formed in the pit of her stomach. Only the experiences of the last few weeks, and thoughts of reaching

Jaxton, gave her the strength to maintain her bored composure.

Ty’s supposed brother moved his head to the side of her face, and she felt his breath on her ear. “As

much as I would love to piss off my brother, I can’t kill you.” The man brushed her cheek and it took every fiber of her being not to call forth her fire and toss him against the wall. “But, before I do the job I was hired to do, I plan to use you to make Ty lose his shit.”

She was about to ask what job he’d been hired to do, but then his hand moved to cover her breast, and

Kiarra clenched her jaw. The situation was deteriorating fast. She had wanted to avoid drawing attention to herself, but if she wanted to go looking for Jaxton, she had no choice but to make a scene.

Despite being in a neutralization chamber, she’d earlier confirmed that her fire was still active. The

guards had been careful, tying her hands behind her back to face north and not south, but those rules no longer applied to Kiarra. She sure as hell didn’t know if she were a Talent or not, but her unique abilities were going to allow her to stop waiting for someone else to rescue her.

It was time for Kiarra to take care of herself.

On the fourth attempt, Jaxton finally located a room with a phone. He didn’t know how closely they

were monitoring the compound, and while security cameras might’ve already picked up his escape in the

halls, there was also the danger that making an outbound call could trigger an alarm. Still, he didn’t have time to try and contact Neena via his dreams, so he was left with the next best thing—hoping Aislinn would answer his call.

He took out the gun he’d swiped from the guard and released the safety before positioning his body to

monitor both of the doors in the room. If the guards came through one door, he might be able to fight his way and escape through the other.

He dialed the number and each ring seemed more like an eternity than mere seconds. On the third ring,

a familiar Irish voice answered, “
Jax, Darius is right outside the facility and I’m going to patch him
through
.”

Not wasting time on frivolities and getting straight to the point was Aislinn’s way. Jaxton followed the same philosophy and would worry about the “how” of the situation later.

Darius came on the line and said, “
Nessa’s with me and knows the layout of the place. Just tell me what
room you’re in and we’ll be there.
”

Jaxton trusted Darius, but it wasn’t only his life on the line. Jaxton wouldn’t risk Kiarra or Millie’s, so he asked, “Nessa, as in Vanessa, the woman who tried to kill Kiarra?”

“
Yes, I’ll explain it all later. Just know that she’ll help us, but won’t betray us.
”

Aislinn chimed in, “
I second that.
”

Two trusted comrades outweighed his doubts about the shadow-shifter. “Fine. The plaque outside the

room said ‘Research Manager’ on it. But to get Kiarra out, I need to talk with Vanessa. Put her on the

phone.”

A shuffle before a condescending voice said, “
Yes?
”

“Are all of the exam rooms in the same wing?”

“
As of last month they were.
”

He pushed aside his curiosity at that statement, aware that he had been on this call too long already.

“Right. Tell Darius I’ll be in the research wing, looking for the others. I can’t stay here.”

With that, he hung up the phone and strained his ears. No, he’d been right. There were definitely noises coming from behind the door he’d entered a few minutes before.

Jaxton went to the door on the opposite side of the room and swiped the stolen keycard. But the light

flashed red, denying him access.
Fuck
.

Normally he would take a stand, but without knowing how many people could burst through that door,

Jaxton couldn’t chance it if he wanted to save Kiarra or his sister. He pried open the plastic cover of the security panel and hoped like hell that he remembered enough from Marco’s lessons to get the blasted door open.

The noises from the hall grew louder as he fiddled with the wires. Finally he cut the juice and pushed

the door, and was relieved when it slid open.

He stepped through the door into in a small observation room, complete with monitors, a desk, and a

few chairs. His eyes went to the two-way mirror, and he froze. On the other side of the glass was a man

leaning over Kiarra, his hand on her breast.

Jaxton growled and everything started to vibrate. He needed to find a way to break the two-way mirror

before the bastard laid another fucking hand on his woman.