Omega (23 page)

In a few minutes, he got a visual. The guys were armed with what looked like assault rifles, and Will would bet some of his stolen money that they had silver bullets in them.

He didn’t dare take down these guys so near the Omega entrance unless he planned to kill them, and they didn’t seem to have scented him. So he moved restlessly, setting his leg to aching again, watching them. They’d have to go back to town,
or wherever their lighttight space was, before dawn, and he’d slip into Omega.

Thirty minutes before sunrise, they finally walked away in the direction of Penton. Will waited until they were well out of scenting range before opening the hatch and climbing down.

“Where the hell have you been?” Randa stood guard in the exit room, her gun trained on him.

“Are you going to shoot me?” Will held his hands up in surrender, the building-supply bags dangling from his fingers.

“Maybe.” But Randa lowered the pistol. “I’m not sure I like it that we’re…whatever we are. Before, I could just get pissed off at you. Now I have to get pissed off
and
worried. What took so long?”

Will dangled the bag. “I’ve been playing Robin Hood. Want to see what I took from the big bad vampires?”

R
anda counted wallets spread on the conference table in the meeting room. None had driver’s licenses—not surprising since vampires couldn’t exactly spend a morning standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles and sign up to take a driving test. All had cash, however, as Will had expected. Although even he had been surprised to have gathered more than eight grand. Not bad for two hours’ work; the Tribunal must have been paying these guards well. At least it would keep the generators running for a while.

She could punch Will’s lights out for taking that kind of risk. Plus, it was clear from his account of his exploits he’d thoroughly enjoyed himself.
Idiot
.

The lieutenants had gathered to wait for Aidan, who had risked a trip out of Omega to call Margaret Lindstrom, the US Tribunal representative and an ally—or at least she had been an ally the last time they talked. Since Cage hadn’t been able to stay undercover, they needed to know what the Tribunal was up
to, what Meg knew about the financial freeze, and if sympathies still lay with Matthias or had begun to shift their way.

Mirren paced around the four walls of the room so many times Randa had lost count. “It’s taking him too long. Too fucking long.” Just as well, Mirren was muttering to himself. No one had the nerve to try engaging him in conversation.

Cage watched him awhile before turning to Will. “Can’t you hack into the bank account and unfreeze it?”

Will shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe, if I had unlimited computer time with Internet access. But not from down here, and not in the time I have when I go out in the evenings. If we could get Mark outside to make phone calls during business hours, he could probably work around it faster through normal channels since he set the account up. Is he stable enough to be doing something like that?”

Cage thought about it. “It might do him good to—”

“No, he can’t go.” Hannah had been slumped down in her seat and was staring at the floor. She sat forward so quickly Randa feared she’d overturn her chair. “Mark has to stay here, in Omega. He’s in danger if he leaves.”

Will reached over to grab her hand. Randa loved that he was so comfortable with the girl, even though half the time what she said had a high creep factor.

“Sweetie, do you know how he’ll be in danger?” Randa asked. Earlier, she’d said Mark would relapse into drug addiction if he left, but that was before Melissa came back. Randa wasn’t sure how well things were going between Mark and Melissa. They’d stayed away from everyone except Krys and Aidan, and Will was afraid their human bond wouldn’t survive her transition.

Hannah turned to look at Will and grasped his hand with both of hers. Randa’s gaze met Will’s, and he shook his head.

“What is it, Hannah?” Cage leaned forward. “Do you see something that has to do with Will?”

The girl squeezed Will’s hand so hard that Randa half expected blood and broken bones to seep through her fingers. “I can’t quite see it. Almost.” She gritted her teeth in anger or frustration—Randa wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.

Cage leaned closer to Hannah, who hadn’t taken her intent gaze off Will’s face. “Close your eyes,” he whispered. “Close your eyes and stop trying so hard. Relax your mind. Hold on to Will’s hands, but open your mind and don’t think. Try it.”

Hannah remained still for what seemed like a day and a half, although Randa figured it was more like thirty or forty seconds. Then a gasp and her eyes sprang open. “Will can get us out of this. Will and Randa together. And a human named Richard.”

Randa stared at Will, and she saw her own confusion mirrored in his raised eyebrows and slightly parted lips. Mirren stopped pacing to watch.

“Who the hell is Richard?” Will pulled his hand away from Hannah.

She smiled up at Cage. “It worked! Do you think it’ll work every time?”

He ruffled her hair and laughed. “I don’t know, love. But it’s worth a try. I imagine it’s one of those things that will get easier as you do it more.”

Randa gave them an exasperated look. “Uh, excuse me, but who is Richard?”

Hannah wrinkled her brows, which would have been cute if she hadn’t just laid the salvation of Penton at her and Will’s
feet. Plus Richard’s, whoever the hell he was. “I don’t know,” she said, then smiled. “But Aidan’s back.”

The mystery of Richard was forgotten for a while as Aidan filled them in. “It’s a mixed bag,” he said. “Good news, bad news.”

“First, the money. Matthias has pulled in favors and had the SEC freeze the Georgia account. But Meg is going to get some of her tech people to pull funds out of one of our overseas accounts. So we should have money”—he looked at the cash spread out on the table—“make that
more
money, in a couple of days. We might have to risk sending a human out to pick up a card she’ll leave for us in an Atlanta lockbox to access the funds.”

Mirren finally settled into a chair. “What about Matthias?”

Aidan looked at Cage. “As soon as you got Melissa out, Matthias came down like a brick shithouse on Edward Simmons.”

“Figured as much,” Cage said. “Edward and I knew that was a possibility. I doubt he’s intimidated.”

Aidan chuckled. “Far from it. He seems to have become our most open supporter, which has given Meg the balls to step up as well. Matthias still has the overt support of the Tribunal, mostly because so many are afraid of Frank Greisser, but it’s starting to turn our way. We just have to hold on.”

Aidan had no ideas about Hannah’s vision, either, but as if by unspoken agreement, Randa remained in the conference room with Will after everyone else had left. Mirren returned to his work on a new exit, still hoping to use Glory’s telekinesis to move the dirt. Cage stood watch in the exit room. Aidan went
to talk with Mark, trying to decide if they dared send him out during the day to help with the finances.

Will closed the door and sat across the table from her. “What do you think?”

Randa didn’t have a clue. “What is it we can do that the others can’t? Why would we be able to come up with a solution to this whole mess?”

She had been raking it over in her mind while Aidan filled them in on the Tribunal. “Obviously, your claim to fame is that you’re Matthias’s son, but I don’t see how to use that in any way that would involve you and some guy named Richard. I don’t have any direct ties to Matthias or the Tribunal—he’s only seen me that one time, right before everything fell apart and we had to go into Omega.”

Randa rubbed her eyes. The air-filtration system had gotten dust in it, and Will had been planning to fix it tonight. The common room sounded like a TB ward, what with all the rattling coughs from humans and vampires alike.

Will channeled his inner Mirren and started pacing. “I think the key to whatever Hannah thinks is supposed to happen centers on this Richard person, but I swear to God, I don’t know anybody with that name. Do you? A Rick or a Rich or a Ricky or a Dick? And if you tell me I’m a dick, I’ll be highly insulted.”

Randa barked out a laugh. She knew one Rick, but there was no way it was him. “The only Richard I know is my father, and no way is he the answer to our problems.” Her smile faded at Will’s thoughtful look. “What?”

“Tell me about your father, Ran. I know he’s a military guy—a colonel, right?”

“Right. He’s a retired colonel. He still keeps his finger in the military, but he does it through a private security firm.” She held
her fingers up like quotation marks when she said
private security firm
. It had been a running joke between Rory and her. Dad would go missing for weeks at a time after they’d been grown and out of the house, then make up nebulous business excuses for his absence. “Why? What could he have to do with this?”

She could practically see Will’s brain sorting, cataloging, and testing theories. “Think about it. If your dad’s the only human either of us knows named Richard, it has to be him. We’re in Omega virtually all the time now, so we aren’t likely to meet any new humans.”

Randa was getting a bad, bad feeling about this. She missed her dad and her brothers. She’d always wished she could let them know she wasn’t dead, even though she couldn’t imagine them in her life on any regular basis. But how could a retired army colonel help them?

Will continued to pace and repeated his request. “Tell me about your father.”

“Will, what are you thinking?” She picked up a sheet of paper off the table and began shredding it, just to give her something to do with her hands besides wring them. “How could my dad have anything to do with this?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve learned to trust Hannah’s visions. They’re usually half-formed but rarely wrong. Don’t forget, she was the one who forced me to focus on how to get Mirren away from Matthias month before last.”

Yeah, Randa remembered—Will had knocked her unconscious long enough to get out of town without her tagging along or following. That had been a real low in their relationship, and a month ago, if anyone had told her Will Ludlam would be the last person she thought of before daysleep and the first upon awakening, she’d have decked them.

“What do you want to know?”

Will took the seat across from her again. “You said your dad runs a private security firm. What does that mean?”

Good question.
“Once all of us kids grew up and either enlisted or moved away from home, Dad retired from the army and started hunting down some of the guys he’d commanded over the years, mostly Army Rangers. Real hard-asses. They all teamed up.” She pushed away the pile of shredded paper she’d amassed in front of her. “They spend a lot of time in Europe and the Middle East doing special missions—or at least that’s my interpretation of it.”

Will scratched his chin, drawing Randa’s attention to that talented mouth. She’d sure rather be doing something besides discussing her father. “So they’re kind of like one of those special-ops teams in the movies?”

She laughed. “I think so. That’s my guess, anyway. He and his buddies—talk about a pile of alpha males. Although, by the time I was turned, he’d already gotten old enough that he seemed to stay more on the strategic end of things, not running actual missions, or at least he was home more. Remember, I’ve been gone five years, and Dad certainly never confided in me or Rory—we were the babies. My older brothers might know, especially Robbie since he was a Ranger, but maybe not. It’s Dad’s MO to keep his business locked up tight. He’d say it was to protect us, but…” She shrugged. “Maybe he really is doing private security in Brunei, but I’m thinking not so much. My guess is he’s doing contract work for the military.”

“I have a little experience with military guys,” Will said. “A vampire can’t exactly go through boot camp, but I’ve taken evening training classes with some guys who had military backgrounds.”

Randa hadn’t known that, but it explained a lot about how Will handled himself under fire and knew how to move undercover. She tried to imagine her father and Will having a conversation and couldn’t do it, but it might be interesting. Or ridiculous. Or deadly.