Omega Force 01- Storm Force (19 page)

Mori waited for Nik to argue,
but instead, he closed his eyes and nodded. “Understood.”

Kell turned to Robin. “Mori
needs to be off Benedict’s grid, and Cote Blanche is isolated.”

“Wait a damn minute.” Mori had finally had enough. “I
don’t know what Cote Blanche is, but I do know this. You can’t approach Michael
alone, Kell. You won’t live long enough to negotiate
where you’ll sit, much less anything to do with the bombing.”

The blue-green eyes she’d always found so rich and deep
had turned hard as brilliant marble. “Cote Blanche is my family’s cabin in
Louisiana, out in the middle of nowhere. And the plan’s not up for discussion.”

“I’m not one of your team members, so you can’t—” Mori
stopped as a pain shot through her right ankle, then another. Robin was kicking
her.

“Kell’s right.” Robin’s voice
held its usual chipper tone, but with more than a trace of sarcasm. “We’ll go
to the cabin in Louisiana — where there’s no electricity, by the way, and where
no one can reach us, including Kell, except by boat.
And never mind that there’s a hurricane headed for us. No problem. Let’s get
the women out of the way.”

Kell’s eyes had grown narrower
and narrower as Robin talked. When she finally stopped, he leaned toward her
and spoke through clenched teeth. “Are you finished with your bullshit, or do
you have any useful input?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.” Robin
slumped back in her chair and scowled at Kell as he
turned to Nik with instructions for Gadget.

“C’mon, Mori. We need to see if
we can scrounge up some food to take with us on our holiday in the swamp.”
Robin shoved back her chair and walked into the kitchen, so Mori followed.

Kell paused to watch them a
moment, suspicion causing those little frown lines to make a reappearance.

“Want us to take Gator with us?” Robin asked, pouncing on
a jar of peanut butter and handing it to Mori.

Relief relaxed Kell’s features.
“Yeah, thanks.”

As soon as he began talking to Nik
again, Mori turned to Robin in outrage. She, of all of them, should understand
what Kell would be up against in meeting a shifter
one-on-one. Before she could say anything, however, Robin held a finger to her
lips. She leaned toward Mori as she handed over a box of raisins.

Her whisper
was barely enough for Mori to hear and too soft for the humans to pick up on.
“Don’t worry. We’re not following orders. Goes against my
upbringing.”

Thank God Robin had finally
unruffled her feathers and agreed to take Mori to Cote Blanch without a fight.
Actually, she’d come around faster than he’d expected. Maybe she was finally
catching on to this business of following orders.

Kell had returned to Nik’s little
corner “office,” a nook set apart by bookshelves, and had spent the last
frustrating hour trying to line up someone in Jeanerette willing to rent him a
couple of boats in a hurricane — one for Robin and Mori, and one for himself when
he came in after his meeting with Benedict.

Kell’s usual marina operator had laughed and said Kell obviously had been gone from Louisiana too long if he
thought coming to Iberia Parish was a good idea right now. And fucking stupid
to boot if he thought anyone would let him take their boat into the wilds of
western St. Mary’s Parish before that storm came ashore.

The
“fucking stupid” part was probably right. Kell agreed
that going alone to confront Benedict would not be on his top ten list of things to do on a Saturday two days before a
hurricane was expected to make landfall.

Maybe the
weather would work in their favor. He’d pointed out to the colonel that if
Benedict knew Kell’s real name, it wouldn’t take much
to dig into his background and discover where he’d grown up. A little more
digging around in Jeanerette — very little — and he’d know about Cote Blanche. Kell might have been an only child, but there were Kellisons scattered all over Iberia and St. Mary’s parishes.

No doubt
Benedict could get that information, the colonel had conceded. But the man
wasn’t an idiot, and only an idiot would travel to a wooden cabin in a South
Louisiana swamp when a hurricane was chewing up the landscape. Assuming the
cabin didn’t come down on their heads, it should provide a safe haven for at
least two or three days. By the time Geneva had blown through, Michael Benedict
would be contained.

At least,
that was the plan. The way Colonel Rick Thomas saw it,
Benedict had backed himself into a corner. He figured the man had a strong
self-preservation instinct and a lot to lose — enough to recognize that he needed
a way out of this colossal fuckup that wouldn’t land him in jail, expose his
kind to the public, destroy his business, or get him killed. Colonel Thomas had
pulled some strings in higher places than Kell could
even imagine, and had devised the escape hatch Benedict needed.

Now, Kell just had to convince Benedict to take it.

Having
exhausted all the boat rental listings for Iberia Parish, Kell
went to his last resort — family. Scrolling through his contact list, he found
his cousin Trey’s number, took a deep breath, and hit
CALL
.

Trey Kellison was the son Kell’s
parents had wanted. He’d gone off to university in Lafayette, majored in
horticulture, come home to Jeanerette, and opened a feed ’n’ seed that now had
two satellite stores. He also married his high school girlfriend, fathered
three kids to carry on the Kellison name, and went to
Mass on Sundays. Trey was three years younger than Kell
and always managed to make him feel like a screwed-up perpetual adolescent.

If the shrimp boots fit.

“Jack?
What’s wrong?” Trey sounded half-asleep, and Kell winced as he looked at his watch. The cousins didn’t
talk often, and for Kell to call at 6:00 a.m. on a
Saturday, no wonder Trey assumed it was an emergency.

Except, it sort of was an emergency.

Less than
five minutes and only a sketchy explanation later, Trey had agreed to take Mori
and Robin to the cabin this afternoon, and to take Kell
out later tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on the weather. The readiness
with which his cousin agreed without asking a lot of details, and the fact that
Trey sounded surprised Kell would even think he might
not
agree, pricked at Kell’s conscience. He really needed to stop selling people
short. Let people help him. Maybe he’d get that whole asking-for-help thing down
by the time he hit forty.

Next, he
called Gulf State Auto Rentals and left directions on where they could pick up
the sedan he’d driven to Baytown. Robin and Mori could take Nik’s
SUV to Cote Blanche, and Kell would drive Archer’s
truck. Once he got his weapons together, they’d be set.

Except for one final call.

He stopped
on his way to the living area and watched Mori and Robin laying waste to Nik’s food supply, stuffing everything in plastic bags to
take with them. They were whispering furiously to each other, laughing
occasionally despite the palpable tension. The only reason they’d be whispering
was if they were talking about him or hatching some kind of scheme he wouldn’t
like. Maybe both.

“What are
you two up to?”

Mori jumped, and even Razorblade
Robin looked startled. Whatever they were discussing, it had consumed their
full attention.

Robin
recovered quickly, her face settling into its usual smirk. “I was telling Mori
about your cabin. We were thinking maybe we’d paint the walls while we were
stuck there during the storm. Girls love to redecorate, you know.”

“We were debating
colors.” Mori took up the lie, and the light in her eyes almost made him smile.
Almost. “Do you like pink? I’m thinking a pale-pink,
glossy paint would look great with all that wood on the inside. Or maybe an icy green, to tie in with the green of the swamp.”

“Oh,
definitely pink,” Robin said, pointing at Kell.
“That’s a little-pink-house kind of dude if ever I met one.”

Right. If they’d been talking about interior decoration when
he walked in, he’d eat his fucking watch.

“Fine, lie
to me. Whatever the hell you’re planning, let me just say this. Don’t do it.
And that’s an order.”

Robin
saluted. “No problem, Sergeant First Class Kellison,
sir.”

Kell shook his head. If he
could put the eagle-shifter in lockdown until this was over, he’d do it in a heartbeat, and Mori alongside her. But he had to focus on
Benedict and not wonder what these suddenly fast friends were plotting.

“Mori, I need Benedict’s phone numbers.” No surprise that
the Tex-La founder had unlisted info, and he didn’t want to use her phone and
slap Benedict in the face with the fact that she was with Kell
and not him.

She frowned and stared at him, pausing with a can of soup
halfway into a bag. “If you use my phone, he can track us here to Nik’s apartment, right?”

He laughed, and it sounded bitter, even to him. “At this
point, it doesn’t matter.”

He hadn’t
told the colonel this, but if Benedict rejected the offer to bail him out of
this mess, Kell would see him dead. One way or
another, he was determined that Michael Benedict’s days of tracking Mori were
about to come to an end.

Hesitant,
Mori retrieved her cell phone from her backpack, still propped against the
sofa, and turned it on. Kell looked at the leather
pack, thinking about last night’s meeting, about her expression when she’d
handed over that contract.

She’d found
it when she was a teenager. What would it be like to know your parents had sold
you, bargained away your future? Even if their intent had been a noble one in
the long run — to ensure the survival of their people — it had to feel like a
betrayal.

Mori had
been alone a long time, ignoring an unwanted future that was barreling up
behind her like an oncoming freight train, until,
finally, she couldn’t outrun or ignore it any longer.

It was a
truly fucked-up situation. Kell’s own family issues
paled beside hers. If anything, he’d been loved too much. He’d felt smothered
but never devalued, much less betrayed. Mori thought of herself as weak, but he
thought she might be one of the strongest people he’d ever met.

“Let me
give you his home number and his private office number.” She scrolled through
her contact list and read out the numbers as Kell
entered them into his phone. He hoped he’d never need them after today.

He called
the home number first, and a woman answered. He took a deep breath and began
the first part of the script, as the colonel had given it to him.

“I’m Jack Kellison, and I’m—”

“I know who
you are. Hold on.” The woman sounded like a true queen bitch, cold and
arrogant. A perfect match for Benedict, in other words. Maybe
the real fiancée.

Benedict’s
voice was anything but cold. Clipped words, voice just short of a growl. The
man was mad as hell. “Where is she?”

Mori’s
location was definitely not on the script. “I’ve been authorized to make you an
offer to end this situation — a generous one.” And more than the bastard
deserved. “Where can we meet?”

Kell could virtually hear Benedict shifting gears, and when
he spoke again, his voice conveyed nothing but good
humor and reasonableness. Anyone who could change emotional
direction that thoroughly and that quickly was either an extremely good actor
or an extremely crazy fuck.

Kell suspected the latter.

“I’d love
to meet with you, Mr. Kellison.” Benedict paused. “Or
should I say Sergeant Kellison?”

So he’d
done his homework. No surprise there. “Whatever you prefer,
Mr. Benedict. Should I come to your house?”

Out of his
peripheral vision, he saw Mori vigorously shaking her head, but at least Robin
had reached up and clapped a hand over her mouth to keep her quiet.

“No, I was about to leave for my office in Galveston. The
island will be under mandatory evacuation by mid-afternoon, and I want to
retrieve some files in case Geneva proves as deadly as Ike.”

Kell had been deployed when
Hurricane Ike hit in 2008, but the storm had torn up everything from Central
Louisiana to Corpus Christi, with Galveston almost at ground zero.

“Fine. Galveston it is.” Kell glanced at his watch. Traffic headed toward the coast
should be nonexistent. Coming back would be another matter. “Say in an hour?”

“I look forward to it.”

Yeah, Kell just bet he did.
Ending the call, he saw Mori and Robin standing side by side, frowning at him.
But this wasn’t up for discussion. “You need help getting the food to the car?
You got everything Gator needs?”

Gator had been pacing restlessly between the library and
the kitchen, sensing the way dogs do that something was afoot and fearful he’d
be left out. Upon hearing his name, he stood and cocked his head at Kell, ears alert. “Sorry, big guy.” Kell
scratched his spotted, floppy ears. “You have to keep an eye on things at the
cabin.”

At the word
cabin
,
Gator got his tail mojo going. God, Kell loved that goofy dog.

“We’ve got everything.” Robin hefted a box of food and
supplies almost as big as she was. “I’m just gonna
take this to the car. Meet you down there in five, Mori?”

“I’ll be there.” Mori spoke to Robin, but her gaze was
fixed on Kell. The door clicked shut behind Robin,
and he was alone with her for the first time since the hotel in Baytown.

“I know I can’t talk you out of this, but please be
careful. Don’t turn your back on him. Don’t believe anything he tells you.” She
slid her arms around his waist and kissed him, her
lips soft and warm. He gave himself over to the moment, trying to convey in the
movement of his lips and tongue everything she’d come to mean to him.

Did he love her? Kell didn’t
know the answer to that question. It was too soon. Theirs was a foxhole
relationship, born amid danger from a common enemy. He knew only that he never
wanted to say good-bye to her. Even when he’d just been a fake volunteer at the
Co-Op, he hadn’t wanted to say good-bye.

A salty tear hit his tongue, and he stepped back, using
his thumbs to wipe away the tears that streamed down her cheeks. “I’ll be at
Cote Blanche tonight — tomorrow if the weather’s too crappy for me to get there
after dark. You gonna be OK?”

Her eyes were still glassy with tears, but she laughed. “Kell, Robin and I are both shifters. I think we can handle
a little wind.”

Yeah, she had a point. While he was learning to ask for
help, he’d have to develop a taste for pride. If he was going to have a
relationship with a woman who could throw him the length of a football
field — and he had little doubt Mori could do that if provoked enough — he was
going to have to swallow a lot of it.