Blood and Bone: (Royal Blood #6) (13 page)

Marcus Jackson was my last hope. Talk about a twist of fate.

M
ercy didn’t show
up at the rendezvous point.

I checked my watch again, then the mirrors on the car I sat in, but the road was dark and empty. There was no way I could trace her considering the fact the whole area was some kind of black spot for radio waves. I supposed that’s why Moltke chose this area, or if it wasn’t a fault in the telecommunications network, he’d employed some kind of tech to block anything in a mile radius of the factory. That was the most likely scenario. Black spots were rare in metropolitan areas. With more and more satellites being shot into space and towers being erected on empty land, being connected seemed to be a God-given right.

Still, I began to squirm in my seat, wondering what I should do. I wasn’t field trained. The first time I’d fired a gun on a mission was last night, and look how that turned out. I saved Mercy then, but how could I storm a factory full of bad guys? All I had going for me was a lucky shot.

A van roared past my position, its red taillights disappearing into the distance. I had a bad feeling about this. A really, really bad feeling.

I glanced at my watch again. Mercy was fifteen minutes overdue.

My phone began to vibrate against my ass, and I jumped a mile, my heart hammering wildly in my chest. Once I’d calmed down, I pulled it out and glanced at the screen. The number was blocked.

Shit, it was Moltke. It had to be, right? Calling to lure me into a trap or to negotiate a ransom or
something
.

Still, I answered it because Mercy was overdue, and if I had any hope of finding her, it might be this phone call. Hell, it might be her on the line. I definitely had to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Jackson?” It sounded like Mr. Blood. I mean, Agent Cassel.
I mean, X
.

“You’re dead,” I declared, my body beginning to dampen with sweat. “This is a trick.”

“Jackson, listen to me,” X barked. “The van that just passed your position? Mercy was in the back of it.”

My position? The van? I glanced out of the window of the car. How did he know I was here?

A knock on the window beside my head sent me into a frenzy, and I dropped the phone, fumbling for my gun.

“
Jackson
.”

My gaze collided with X, who was standing right outside the car. “You’re dead!” I yelled at him. “Get away! I’ll shoot you!”

“I assure you, I’m very much alive,” he drawled. “And I’d rather you put the gun away.” He raised an eyebrow. “Can you even find it?” He pulled at the handle, but I’d locked myself in the moment Mercy had gotten out. “
Unlock the door, Jackson
.”

Unlocking the central locking, X yanked open the door and shoved my shoulder. Climbing awkwardly across the center console, I landed in the passenger seat.

“I don’t get it,” I said, watching him reposition the seat. “We saw your picture…”

“What picture?” he asked, gunning the engine.

“In the assassin’s pocket. He had a picture of you with your face scratched out.” I sucked in a sharp breath, remembering how destroyed Mercy had been when she’d found it. “
Mercy thinks you’re dead.
”

X frowned, but it was the only thing that moved his expression as he pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator. My body pressed back into the seat as the car sped down the road, following the trajectory the van had taken.

“What assassin?” he asked after a moment.

“Moltke ran a hit on us last night,” I said.

“He what?”

“Mercy got him,” I said proudly. “You should have seen her. Talk about
badass
.”

X scanned the road, looking for the van, but nothing but dark back roads lay before us. Eventually, he chose to turn let.

“Did you see which way the van went?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“No.”

X curled his lip in distaste and continued to drive, canvassing the area for any traces of the elusive van that held Mercy Reid. I knew it was a pointless exercise, but there was nothing else we could have done.

By the time we made it to the main road, the van was long gone.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

X thumped his fists against the steering wheel, and I leaned away, not wanting to get in the way of an angry assassin.

“Why didn’t you use coms?” he barked. “We could be tracking her right now.”

“We couldn’t use them because of the jammer,” I said. “That whole area was a dead zone.”

“
You let her go in there alone?
”

“I had to,” I replied, fear beginning to rise. “It was our only option to get to Moltke or at the very least the Veltium-34.”

“They’ve got her drugged in a coffin,” he said. “They’re going to bury her alive.”

My blood ran cold. “What?”

“Where could they take her…” he mused, ignoring me completely.

Leaning over the seat, I fumbled for my laptop. “I can triangulate some options based on location and time.” I opened the screen and shoved in the USB dongle that would give me data capabilities. “I can take into account cemeteries, soft ground, abandoned lots, construction sites…”

“The river?”

“No, the tides would make it almost impossible to bury anything of that size… Not long term. It wouldn’t take long for the…
coffin
…to be exposed.” I glanced at the clock on the screen. “It’s been almost two hours since the van passed my location. Whatever drug they gave her wouldn’t last very long…” I hesitated as I realized Moltke had planned for her
to wake up
. Holy mother of…

“I know,” X said. “It’s not going to be nice.”

I ran through the maps I had available, but they were crap at best. Knocking up some code, I worked my way into the MI6 satellite array through a backdoor and searched for one that was currently over London. Even though I worked for them, accessing the data like this had forced me to break about a dozen anti-terrorism and cybercrime laws. Mercy was worth it.

“What’s taking so long?” X asked, beginning to get agitated.

“It takes time,” I said. “I’m fast, but it still takes a while. Give me a break.”

A screen flashed up onto the laptop as my program hooked into a satellite, and I ran the execute, and locations began to pop up of possible sites where they could have taken her. There was one about a mile away from our current location that we could start with. It fit the profile, but before I could open my mouth to direct X there, my phone began to ring.

The dramatic tones of
Eye of The Tiger
began to shrill through the car, and X raised his eyebrow. “What the fuck is that?”

Mercy’s number was flashing on the screen, and I almost dropped the laptop on the floor at my feet.

“My phone,” I said, answering it before X could take it from me. I figured the last thing she wanted to hear when she was buried alive in a box was her dead boyfriend.

“Mercy?” I asked. “Mercy, can you hear me?”

“Jackson…” She sounded groggy, the call dropping in and out.

“Listen to me very carefully,” I said. “We need to conserve as much battery power on your phone as possible. Are you hearing me?”

“I… I can hear you.” There was a pause. “Battery…”

“Yes, Mercy. The battery. I need you to do something for me the moment I hang up, okay?”

“Okay…”

“You have an iPhone, right? I need you to turn on the Find My iPhone app.”

“
Seriously?
” X asked beside me.

I stuck my finger in my ear, blocking him out. “Did you get that, Mercy?”

“Find my iPhone…” she mumbled.

“We’re coming,” I said. “We’re going to get you out of there, okay?”

“
Find my iPhone
…”

The call dropped out, beeping coming down the line, and I glanced at the screen as it went dark.

“Are you shitting me?” X practically roared. “You’re putting her life in the hands of a fucking
mobile phone app?
”

“We’re time poor. It’s the best and easiest solution. It will give us a general location based on GPS, then I can narrow it down by rigging up a scanner that will detect the radio frequency given off by mobile devices…” I hammered on the keyboard and logged into Mercy’s Apple account, hoping to God that she had activated the app.

“Mobile device? Every fucker and his dog in this city has a
mobile device
.”

“Have you got any other ideas?” I yelled at him. “Have you, X? Because I’m the only one here with the above average IQ. All I’ve got is my brain and a laptop. I’m not a super hero fucking assassin!
I want to get her back as much as you do!
”

X raised his eyebrow. “So you do have a pair of balls down there.”

“Shut the fuck up,” I shot back, bringing up the Find My iPhone app. A dot appeared on the map, and I declared, “There! She’s there!”

X leaned over and checked the location. “I’ll get us there. Do you have what you need for your scanner?”

“Give me your phone,” I demanded, holding out my hand.

Thankfully, he didn’t hesitate. Getting to work, I ripped his phone to pieces and began assembling the components I needed to turn it into a device that scanned for radio waves. Opening the glove box in front of me, I pulled out a screwdriver I’d seen rolling around and began prying the radio from the console.

By the time X pulled the car into a space at the location Mercy’s app had pinpointed, I was putting the finishing touches on the device. It looked like a pile of shit, but what was I meant to do while riding in a speeding car?

“We’re here,” X said.

Glancing up, I saw rows of headstones stretching out before us into the darkness.

“They put her in a grave?” I asked. “Literally in a grave?”

“Does that thing work?” X asked, ignoring my stupidly obvious question.

“We’ll see in a moment,” I replied, placing the battery from his phone into the back of the scanner. The screen lit up, and I let out a whoop. “We’ve got ignition.”

Jumping from the car, I darted forward through the rows of graves, following the signal. X was hot on my heels as the beeping got louder.

“This isn’t an exact science,” I said. “It’ll bring us within range. We’ve gotta find her by looking for disturbed earth… Here!” The signal had reached a plateau, which meant we were close. “She’s around here someplace.”

X grabbed my arm and gestured for me to look around. “Where?”

Hesitating, I saw the freshly filled graves and counted five.
Five
. We couldn’t dig them all up in time.

“You’ve got the brain, Jackson,” X said. “Which one is the most likely?”

I didn’t have time to think about it. I rushed forward and stuck my hand into the earth of the closest grave. “Not this one.” I rushed to the second as X disappeared—probably looking for a couple of shovels. The next grave was the same as the first. The earth had been packed in hard. “Nope.” Falling to my knees at the third, I had a good feeling when my fingers pushed through the dirt easily. When they buried Mercy, they would have been hasty, filling the hole in quickly.

Rising to my feet, I saw X running toward me with a pair of shovels in his hands. “This one! It has to be this one.”

He didn’t answer. He just threw me a shovel and began digging like a madman. Since the earth hadn’t been packed into the hole, it’d just been backfilled and left to settle on its own, it wasn’t that hard to move. For a puny weakling like me, it was easy going…until I cracked a sweat.

We’d gotten to four feet when X grimaced, his hand coming to rest over his shoulder. When he pulled it away, it was damp with blood.

“You’ve been shot,” I declared, putting two and two together.

“Give him a gun, and he thinks he’s Sherlock fucking Holmes,” he drawled, leaning back against the wall of earth.

“Let me dig. You’re no good to her
really
dead, you know,” I said, ignoring his smartass comment and shoveling twice as fast. My chest felt like it was going to explode, but the thought of Mercy suffocating right underneath our feet had me pushing through it.

X climbed out of the hole and fell onto his back as I continued digging.
Gotta get her out
, I thought. Mercy Reid was one of the few people at work who seemed to understand a fool like me. I rambled, suffered anxiety attacks, spoke in riddles no one seemed to understand even though it made complete sense to me… She got that I was different but didn’t compensate. She treated me just like she treated everyone else. It was weird, but it was what I wanted.
I had to save Mercy Reid.

My shovel hit something hard, and I glanced up at X. “This has to be it.”

I scraped away at the dirt, exposing what was below…pine. If it were a proper coffin, a nice one that people were usually put inside of, it’d be a nice polished rosewood or whatever funeral homes used or up-selled to grieving families.

“
This is it!
” I exclaimed as X jumped down into the hole beside me.

We scraped the last part of earth away, enough so we could pry up a plank of wood. It snapped as we wrenched it away, X wincing as the effort tore through his shoulder.

Peering into the darkened hole, I made out the shape of a body inside. Pulling out my phone, I turned on the flashlight, and my heart leapt as it revealed an unconscious Mercy.

“Holy fuck!” I exclaimed.

Wrestling with another plank of wood, we opened up the hole so it was large enough to get her out. I dragged Mercy from the hole, X taking her from my arms as I collapsed in a heap on the grass. He leaned over her, checking for a pulse, his expression full of emotions I’d never seen him wear before. I knew he loved her, but I’d never
seen it
. I sure as hell saw it now.

“Is she…?” I asked, heaving in breath after breath.

“She’s alive,” he said, clutching her limp body against his chest like she was the most precious thing in the world. “
She’s alive
.”