Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (20 page)

In spite of the situation, Lucien
couldn’t prevent a snort of a laugh at the image that put in his
mind.

Basil chuckled, too. “I
ain’t sure that would fit our biker image,” he commented, “but
you’re hairy enough you don’t really look naked when you
are
naked.”

Lucien and Damien both glared at him
at that comment.

“
What the fuck do you mean
by that?” Damien demanded.

Basil uttered a snort of laughter and
shifted, leaping into the river.

“
I ain’t that damned
hairy!” Damien ground out.

Lucien looked him over and then looked
down at himself. “Fuck!” he muttered and then shifted and dove into
the river behind Basil.

They hadn’t just had to abandon their
clothing. They’d had to abandon the walkies at the same time—which
meant a serious problem with communications.

Fortunately, they now how Raphael’s
entire squad with them. The dark angels were able to follow the
SUVs without attracting attention and could leave one to watch
while one returned to report in case the hell hounds lost track of
the vehicles—even if the two SUVs split up.

Which is exactly what they
did.

They had another hard decision to make
then—whether to ignore Kane’s problem and continue to track Laurie
or split up. Michel resolved the issue by volunteering to track the
SUV carrying Kane. Since the angels had their walkies, he would be
able to report Kane’s situation and condition. Raoul went with him
for backup in case it transpired that Kane had a serious situation
that couldn’t wait for the others to arrive.

Lucien figured they were still in good
shape. They still had eyes in the sky—Maurice and Raphael. And that
meant they had five men to go in after Laurie.

* * * *

Laurie thought she was almost as
unnerved by the Feds as she had been by the kidnappers. She’d tried
to ask questions when they took her into custody and put her in the
SUV but all any of them would say was that she would have her
questions answered directly. They didn’t know anything and couldn’t
answer. They didn’t have clearance to answer or she didn’t have
clearance to have an answer. She was being taken to a secure
location and she would be told what her status and situation was
when she spoke with the agent in charge.

The ‘secure’ location looked pretty
much like any other federal office building from the outside—very
basic, utilitarian, non-descript. It didn’t actually look like
anything approaching a fort from the inside either, except that
there were guards stationed at the entrances and exits, so she
wasn’t certain of what they meant by ‘secure’.

They were considerate enough to ask if
she needed anything and when she asked if they had any place where
she could clean up a little, she was escorted by a female agent to
a bathroom that had a shower. The agent told her that she would
wait outside. Laurie didn’t know if that was meant to threaten or
reassure, but she was glad for the privacy.

She took a long, hot shower to wash
away the stench of the factory where she’d been held, the men that
had manhandled her, the battering, the sense of danger/threat, the
aches and pains from her misadventure and the chill. Her head was
aching a little more after the shower. She thought it might be
because she’d washed her hair and scrubbed her scalp, but she’d
found something in the back of her hair she thought might be dried
blood and simply rinsing wasn’t enough to remove the uneasy feeling
the wound had been contaminated with a zillion germs. The sting of
the soap was comforting in that respect even though she knew it had
probably only helped marginally if at all.

When she got out and dried off she
discovered someone—the agent she presumed—had brought a change of
clothing.

A federal prison jumpsuit, under
things, and canvas shoes.

How thoughtful!

She was shivering again by the time
she’d dressed and done what she could to rake the tangles from her
hair with the flimsy comb that had been provided. She more than
half expected to be shackled when she emerged. To her relief, she
wasn’t, but it still felt an awful lot more like she’d been
arrested than simply taken into ‘protective custody’ as they
claimed.

The female agent escorted her to an
elevator and then up five floors and down a long hallway. She was
shoved into what looked like an interrogation room. It wasn’t much
bigger than the elevator they’d rode up in and contained a small
desk and four chairs—two on either side. It wasn’t
occupied.

The door closed behind her.

She looked around the room, stared at
the cameras strategically placed near the ceiling for two different
angles long enough to determine that they were on, and then sat
down in one of the chairs and cradled her head in her arms. Until
she did, she didn’t realize how exhausted she was from her ordeal.
She supposed she shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t as if she’d exerted
herself a lot beyond the race from the cabin in the predawn hours
the day before? Earlier that same day? She discovered she’d
completely lost track of time. Struggle though she might, she
couldn’t straighten out the time line and finally realized that was
because she hadn’t been conscious/clear headed the entire time but
mostly the opposite.

She was pretty sure she’d blacked out
for a little bit after she was stunned, put in the car, and bound.
She hadn’t been ‘out’ the entire ride from the cabin to the boat,
but she’d feigned unconsciousness at least part of the time—same
once she’d gotten into the boat when the bastard had knocked her
down and she’d hit her head.

She thought only one full day had
passed, though, and it was the night of the same day she’d been
taken—maybe.

She wondered where they’d taken Kane
and if he was alright. Either the wound in his side hadn’t been as
bad as she’d feared, though, or Lucien had told the truth when he
said they healed amazingly fast. Unfortunately, even if the wound
wasn’t life threatening, it didn’t necessarily follow that he was
alright. They’d tazed him and shackled him, refusing to listen to
her or him when they’d tried to explain that he was a deputized
officer of the court who’d been tasked to protect her as a witness
to a major crime.

She hoped that didn’t mean they
actually knew who and what he was.

Not that she understood it herself,
but even though she knew she had next to no facts about them or
their situation, she had enough to figure out they were in serious
trouble if the government and/or military got hold of
them.

If the tale about the
vortex wasn’t true at all, the alternative was that the development
part of the story
was
true. They certainly hadn’t been born that way without some
kind of help! She’d seen them change with her own eyes. She’d seen
what they were capable of and that meant they’d been designed as
weapons by the government—in this world or some alternate. No one
else would have the unmitigated gall to experiment with human
beings!

It was outrageous that
they’d been made to think they
weren’t
human beings!

Despite her worry, she’d almost dozed
off when the door opened, jerking her to alertness once more. The
man that entered looked very business-like and totally alert—which
she wasn’t, which put her at even more of a
disadvantage.

“
I’m Agent Mixon,” he
said, cordially enough, offering his hand. “Did anyone give you any
refreshment? I got the impression you’d been without anything for a
while.”

She bet it was more than a fucking
impression! “They let me take a shower and gave me this nice
jumpsuit to wear,” she said sarcastically, ignoring the
hand.

He moved to a speaker by the door.
“Bring Ms. Stone something to eat and drink from the vending
machine.”

He settled at the desk then and put a
thick folder down, opening it.

Laurie had so many questions she
hardly knew what to ask first. “Where did they take Kane? And why
was he handcuffed? The DA hired the guys to protect me.”

He nodded. “Yes. I’ve been briefed
with the story. I’m sorry. I can’t tell you anything right now. I
don’t have that information.”

Lying bastard! And what the hell did
he mean by ‘story’! That part damned well wasn’t a lie! Maybe the
bulk of it …. It wasn’t like they’d had a lot of time to come up
with something convincing!

“
I just have a few
questions ….”

“
Well I have a
lot
of damned questions
and I’m not answering any of yours until I have some of mine
answered!”

He studied her for a long moment and
finally shrugged. “I’ll answer what I can, but I have to warn you
there’s a limit to the information I have.”

Laurie gave him a look of disbelief.
“What the hell is in that file, then? It looks thick enough to have
my life story and then some!”

“
I’m sorry. The contents
of the file are confidential ….”

“
Oh that is so much
bullshit!” Laurie burst out, but then clamped her jaws shut. She
was upset and the bastard was cool and collected. She was way more
likely to say something she shouldn’t than he was. “Do I need a
lawyer?”

He looked genuinely surprised. “Why
would you need a lawyer?”

“
This isn’t exactly what I
meant when I said I had questions,” Laurie said tartly. “The way
this is supposed to work is I ask and you answer. You don’t come
back with another damned question! But if that’s the way you want
to do this we can just swap questions until my lawyer gets here.
I’d like to call one now. I have the right to an attorney whatever
the hell you guys have come up with to charge me.”

“
You aren’t being charged
with anything that I’m aware of.”

“
No? Why am I here then?
Why the jumpsuit?”

“
Protective custody and
that is all that was available unfortunately. I have sent someone
to your apartment, however, to collect some of your
things.”

Outrage washed through Laurie. “What
did you do that for? Just who the hell gave you the right to go to
my place and go through my damned things?”

He flushed faintly. “As I said, you’re
in protective custody now ….”

“
I was
already
in protective custody and
they didn’t go through my damned personal belongings!”

“
This is federal
now.”

“
And you think that makes
it ok to go through my stuff? Why is it federal now when it wasn’t
before and the victim was a federal agent?”

“
The agent was killed in
Georgia. You’re right. It should have been a federal case, but the
people in Georgia were already investigating the case before we
discovered the victim was a federal employee and we allowed them to
retain jurisdiction.”

Federal employee? She
didn’t believe for a minute that the guy had
just
been an employee and not an
agent of some kind or that the Feds were unaware of his death!
Clearly, if this guy’s lips were moving he was lying!

She decided to take a different tact.
“He was there to watch me, wasn’t he? The kidnappers were after
some kind of plans. And I know my father used to work for the
government doing some kind of research.”

The man stared at her for a long
moment. “I did tell you that there were some questions I wouldn’t
be able to answer. That one pertains to national security, I’m
afraid, and I don’t have the clearance myself to answer
it.”

She thought that
was
an answer. It wasn’t
an accident that the agent was there, not a strange sort of
coincidence. They’d been tailing her in the hope of finding out who
was trying to steal top secret military/weapons plans and the agent
that was supposed to be watching her had been killed by somebody
the traitor had sent to kidnap her the first time. Or they
didn’t
have her father
and they’d had her watched in the hope of catching him. Either way,
no coincidence and they’d been using her. “Where are my brother and
sister and their families?”

“
That I can answer!” he
said, smiling tightly. “Your brother and sister and their families
were taken into witness protection eighteen months ago and
relocated.”

Laurie gaped at him in
complete disbelief.
Six
months before the attempted murder, or kidnapping
of her? “And nobody thought to tell me?”

“
They aren’t allowed to
communicate with family or friends after relocation.”

“
So what stopped
them
before
relocation? What stopped someone from the protection unit
from notifying me that my family hadn’t just
disappeared?”

“
We weren’t aware of your
existence at the time.”

Pain speared through Laurie, but,
regardless of the rift between them, she didn’t believe for one
moment that her sister and/or her brother wouldn’t have told the
Feds about her if they’d thought she was in danger! And if they’d
agreed to relocation and giving up everything and everybody they’d
known then they’d damned well felt threatened!