Mercury's War (22 page)

CHAPTER 13

    Ria laid her bling on the cabinet. It was quite a nice haul: several nearly perfect diamonds, emeralds so brilliant they were nearly blinding and a tiger’s-eye stone that swirled with magic and majesty.

    She slid the stones into a velvet bag, tied it off and tucked it into the pocket of her jeans, then flipped her sat phone closed and erased the speed dial set to go straight to Leo’s emergency number. Her threat to Dane. Had the bribe not pleased her, she would have called and tattled to hell and back.

    She wasn’t mercenary. It wasn’t the worth of the stones or even the stones themselves. It was the fact that they seemed to keep Dane from involving her in games that were too messy to consider allowing Leo to catch them in. She was a sucker for the games herself, but she did have a bit of caution. Dane had none.

    To say Mercury was upset over the payment was putting things mildly. There were still tiny, rumbling growls echoing in his throat. And those tiny sparks of blue hadn’t completely left his eyes.

    Feral displacement was a phenomenon that Breeds couldn’t control, though, and he had all the signs of it, but it was firmly under control. Dane still had his heart in his chest, and Rye still had his head on his shoulders. Ria was contenting herself with that even though she suspected Dane might have lost more blood than was wise.

    “Look at her, Rye.” His tone was amused despite the pain in it. “I’m surprised she didn’t pull her jeweler’s glass out.”

    She turned to face him, her insides still shaking, the knowledge of how close Dane had actually come to dying horrified her.

    “You have a trip scheduled to Asia next week,” she told him. “I expect natural pearls when you return.”

    He gave her a hooded look and glanced at the velvet bag. “I just paid you a fortune.”

    “Two fortunes aren’t enough for what you put me through tonight,” she snapped, feeling the tears clog her throat again. “You’ve lost your mind, Dane.” She couldn’t control the accent that slipped into her voice either, and she knew every man in the room could smell her pain and her fear.

    Dane grimaced at that, his gaze sliding to where Mercury attempted to place her behind him once again.

    “I’d say you’ve slipped the path a bit yourself, love,” he drawled. “Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’ve mated a feral?”

    “There’s no mating.” Mercury snarled the denial, and Ria thought her heart was going to break.

    Hell, he could have just remained silent.

    Dane stared between them, his golden brown eyes thoughtful for long moments.

    “My mistake,” he finally said slowly as he glanced to Rye. “She can’t do anything the easy way, can she?”

    Rye laid his head back on the couch and stared at the ceiling while Dane settled into the corner and stared back at the other Breeds in the room. Especially his brothers.

    “Don’t start,” she warned him as she slid around Mercury once again, certain Dane was going to begin baiting Callan and Jonas. “This has gone too far.”

    Dane shrugged. “Very well. You called for extraction. Pack your bags and I’ll have the limo sent from the private airfield we landed at. Rye and I hiked in. I doubt you want to take that path out, though. We’ll have you safe and sound in your own bed within hours. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

    Her lonely, cold bed. Without Mercury’s hard, warm body.

    She turned back to the others, her gaze moving over Callan and Jonas’s suspicious, savage expressions. They weren’t pleased, and they knew something was going on.

    “It’s gone too far,” she told Dane.

    He stared back at her coolly. “You’re going to get your heart broke, love. You know what that does to you. Makes Leo damned growly. And Elizabeth will try to fuss over you. You know how you hate that.”

    His voice was gentle, a reminder of how easily she could be hurt, and a warning. The warning came a second before Mercury’s arms surrounded her, warm and strong, and he pulled her close against his chest.

    His head lowered, his lips at her ear. “You’re not leaving.” He nipped the shell of her ear after growling the demand against it.

    Ria’s gaze remained locked with Dane’s, and she knew he saw what she was trying to hide even from herself.

    “We have to finish this, Dane.” She let her hands grip Mercury’s wrists, aware of the suspicion directed on her now. “It can’t go any further.”

    Mercury tensed behind her; Callan and Jonas watched her with hard, implacable expressions.

    “Well then, I guess that’s that.” He relaxed farther back into the couch, a mocking smile crossing his lips. “If I don’t make it out of here alive, be sure to tell the Leo I did him proud,” he chuckled.

    Ria shook her head and turned to Callan. “Pride Leader Lyons, it is my sincerest regret to inform you that I wasn’t sent here in any way to track expenditures by Sanctuary from the Vanderale support funds. As always, those have been given by the Leo, your father, and they have no strings attached.”

    Callan rose slowly to his feet, power humming through him, his amber eyes brightening, glowing as animalistic anger began to surge inside him.

    “What the hell have you two been doing in my fucking home?” He glared between them.

    “Protecting it.” Dane surged to his feet as well, drawing Callan’s focus from Ria to him. “Remember, mate, she’s my employee. You have a problem with that, you’ll take it up with me.”

    Callan swung back to Ria, the look on his face so filled with anger that for a moment she swore she was facing the Leo.

    “Back down, Callan,” Mercury growled, trying to push her behind his larger body again. “Let’s see what she has to say first.”

    “What she has to say?” Callan’s voice boomed through the cabin as Jonas moved warily to his feet. “You want me to hear what she has to say? She came into my home on a lie? Under this little bastard’s orders.” He shoved his finger toward Dane.

    “I should point out, Leo and Elizabeth
were
wed before my conception.”

    Callan turned and snarled in his face. Nose to nose. The rage emanating from him was a terrible thing to see.

    “See why he brings me bribes,” Ria murmured to Callan. “This is what I have to put up with when Leo finds out I’ve helped him in one of his games. But it’s usually my face Leo’s screaming into.”

    She moved to Mercury’s side, pushing at his restraining arm to no avail as Callan swung on her. He took one look at Mercury’s face before growling furiously and pacing to the other side of the room.

    “That’s what Leo does when Elizabeth gets in front of him,” she whispered to Mercury. Almost amused. If it had been Leo, she might have been amused, but who knew which way Callan’s genetics had actually swung?

    He turned back to them and glared at her. “I can hear every word out of your mouth,” he snapped.

    “Keep snarling at me.” She watched him warily though her tone was airy. “I’ll get half a dozen perfect pearls next week rather than the few scrawny ones he would have brought me otherwise.” She shrugged, burying her fear. When one dealt with Breeds, one never admitted to fear. Even to oneself.

    “What have you been doing in my home?” His tone sliced through the room, and Ria swallowed tightly. Even Dane appeared a bit wary.

    “Tracking the person or persons responsible for slipping information about Breed mating heat and age depression to a pharmaceutical company researching a drug to exploit its ability to work on the human body. Three non-Breeds have already died and one is missing due to that research, and scientific information regarding it is leaking from your home, Pride Leader Lyons.”

    “Impossible,” he snarled furiously. “Every transmission, every fax, every breath taken in that compound is monitored. There’s no way to slip that information out. Not without being caught.”

    “There is, though,” she told him softly. “If you’re trained in creating a code to carry it, then you can slip anything out. Unless someone trained to break that code finds it. I found the code, Mr. Lyons; now I just have to break it.”

    Silence filled the room. Jonas, Callan and Dane all stared at her in suspended disbelief.

    “You can pay up when we get back to the office,” Rye commented to Dane from his position on the couch. “I told you she’d do it in less than a month.”

    “Are you telling me someone within the estate house has been giving secrets to some fucking bastard Council researchers? And he knew about it?” His finger pointed imperiously to Dane.

    She breathed in slowly. “No, Pride Leader. Someone is selling secrets concerning mating heat to a drug manufacturer who is now experimenting on non-Breeds. And they’re doing it for money.”

    The roar of rage that shook the cabin had her flinching, and this time she stepped behind Mercury willingly. Because in over twenty years of dealing with the Leo, she had never, not even once, seen the rage in him that now filled his son.

    And Leo had never, in all the years Dane had been an adult, jumped for Dane as Callan did. It took Jonas, Rye and Mercury to pull him back, as Dane rose slowly to his feet and Ria watched the compassion flicker across his features.

    The moment he was pulled back, Callan jerked from the others’ hold, stalked to the other side of the room and fought for control.

    She watched his shoulders bunching, tensing, as Mercury moved back to her, obviously protecting her.

    “Perhaps we should have been a bit more delicate,” Dane commented with a snort. “It seems the pride leader has a bit of a temper.”

    “Ms. Rodriquez, is the Leo’s number on your speed dial?” Jonas asked carefully.

    Ria remained silent.

    “He’s on mine, whelp,” Dane grunted. “Would you like to call him and tell him what we’re investigating? Go ahead, split his loyalties between Sanctuary and the twins my mother just gave birth to before flying out to save her older son. I’m certain those babes don’t need her, even if they do appear to be ill at the moment.” Disgust laced his voice. “Why the bloody hell do you think he doesn’t know about it now?”

    That wouldn’t stop Leo from blasting her and Dane both with his anger, though, once he learned about it.

    “Callan.” Ria stepped forward, ignoring Mercury’s warning growl as Callan turned, his head lowered, those dangerous eyes watching her closely, the rage burning in him so close to the surface that it washed from him in waves. “Any coup needs an event to give it momentum. You were nearly killed and you’ve been recovering from it. Your senses aren’t back to peak, Sanctuary is ripe for a takeover. Someone is moving to destroy you from the inside out. If the information Dane uncovered is correct, then it’s only a matter of weeks before those secrets are completely shifted to the researchers. We can’t risk that. My job was to uncover the culprit or culprits. And there were very few people we were certain weren’t involved in this, until I had spent some time with those files myself.”

    “We knew you weren’t involved,” Dane told him, his voice harsh. “But other than that, we couldn’t be certain. Whoever is moving on you and getting this information out is a strong enough force that other Breeds, enough of them, may back him.”

    “There are very few Breeds strong enough to do that,” Callan snapped.

    “Exactly,” Dane agreed. “We couldn’t risk the information being leaked, and you trust your inner circle with your life. We had to make certain no one in that inner circle was involved before coming to you.”

    Callan turned to Mercury then. “There was no order to relieve you of your rank,” he told him. “And there was no order to confiscate your weapon, your uniform or to force you into testing.”

    “You have interoffice memos being falsified?” Dane’s eyes narrowed. “Are you using the tracking equipment we sent you last year?

    The caustic look Callan shot him was thick with disgust.

    “So you are.” Dane grimaced. “Have you traced them yet?”

    “We’re still working on it.”

    “Many of the memos coming from Sanctuary to the research institute and subsidiary contacts have come from one office,” Ria informed them then. “I’ve traced the information piggy-backing memos as well as scientific purchases to three locations directly connected to Brandenmore Research.”

    “Who?” Callan’s voice was dangerous, savage, the enraged primal male just beneath the surface rising to the fore once more.

    “From the Breed labs,” she said softly. “Dr. Elyiana Morrey’s office. And from Pride Leader Lyons’s personal computer.”

    Mercury braced his hands on the table and stared at the proof Ria had managed to slip from the files and electronic messages she had duplicated from the office she worked in at Sanctuary. Proof that their safeguards weren’t worth shit, because under the watchful eye of the security cameras she had managed to slip the most incriminating evidence against Ely from the labs. The evidence was pretty damned incriminating against Callan as well.

    “I’m not entirely convinced, either way in regards to Dr. Morrey’s involvement,” she stated. “But my suspicions against her have risen by the day. Her aggression when I refused to submit myself to her testing procedures upon my arrival. Her determination to induce the feral adrenaline in Mercury’s system, and her insistence that he be confined. Mercury was trained in a variety of highly sensitive and exacting areas before the feral displacement showed itself. And even after, many of the areas he excelled in still carried high ratings.”

    “How the hell do you know that?” Jonas snapped. “Most of the Breed records from his lab were destroyed.”

    “Vanderale Industries was hacking labs while you were still in nappies,” Dane sneered back at him. “We’ve had those files for years. Leo was arranging an op against that particular lab to rescue several of the Breeds when news hit that the labs were being hit. Mercury was one of the Breeds he was most concerned about.”

    Mercury glanced up at him silently.

    Dane sighed. “You’re trained in code, Mercury. Don’t bother denying it. We’ve seen your files. You’re trained to both create and crack sensitive coding. It was part of several of your missions.”