On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (6 page)

Sabrina gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, rubbing her temple. It wasn’t just her bodily injuries or the stress of having somebody after her. It was them. This Brood. Their personalities, their tensions, their constant energy were causing her senses to overload. She had a low tolerance for social interactions. Every nerve she had was hyperalert from attempting to maneuver safely through the undercurrents swirling around her. She wanted to sleep and blot them all out but was unwilling to leave herself vulnerable again.

She opened her eyes as Zeus reached behind him and secured the scalpel-sharp blade near the small of his back.

“Who are you all, anyway? Not police. Not FBI. Possibly ex-military.”

“
We
,” Terry said, spreading his arms magnanimously, “are the good guys.”

She snorted. The others laughed outright at the absurdity of the declaration. The only one of them who could possibly pass for good was Coen. In her opinion, not even Mama or Terry pulled it off. Despite their ease and concern, there was something hard about them. They both seemed a bit too complex to fit the simple description of “good guys.”

“Though I didn’t birth them,” Mama said, “these are my brood. My later-in-life adopted children, if you will. Each of them is special to me. Each has special skills, special sensibilities. None of them are good in the standard meaning of the word, but they have been committed to helping me in my endeavors.”

“Which are?”

“Maybe it’s not the best idea to tell the stranger who Kragen wants bad enough to have snatched from her home a lot about who we are, Mama,” Price cautioned.

The older woman shrugged, watching Sabrina with praying-mantis stillness. “I’ll take a chance on her. She doesn’t strike me as one ready to share secrets.”

“Did you forget Kragen has a pretty sadistic way of handling people who don’t want to share their secrets?” Lynx asked.

Mama waved the concerns of both men away. “Stopping soulless men and women from destroying the lives, innocence, and souls of others is what we’re about,” she told Sabrina. “Sometimes, like now, we act independently, choosing to go after people and organizations others either turn a blind eye to or truly don’t know about. Sometimes we contract out to others for our various services.”

“Like contracting with the government?”

“Well, that question’s a little dicey,” Terry said.

“A lot of times governments employ the people who need killing,” Zeus said, reaching for her leg and draping it over his shoulder as if it were his pet python. He reached under the pant leg and stroked her bare skin. She’d noticed he needed to keep his hands busy. It must be a testament to how tired she was that she didn’t object. The repetitive motion actually eased the tension in her body instead of causing her revulsion.

“Bluntly stated, but Zeus is correct,” Terry said. “Sometimes people have prices. Governments harbor people all too willing to be bought.”

Sabrina let her head fall back on the love seat and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t sleep, just rest, listen, ask. She didn’t have the energy or the mental capacity to answer any more of their questions without accidentally saying something she shouldn’t say.

“So what happens next?” she asked.

“You rest, dear girl. We’ll watch over you,” Mama said.

“I take care of myself,” she muttered. “I always take care of…” She sighed, overcome by a crescendo of darkness.

“WEIRD THING OUT at the warehouse, Mama. It might have nothing to do with nothing, but we thought it best to check in around it,” Lynx said.

“What did you find?”

Lynx was silent for a moment. “Fresh wounds, bruising, multiple contusions on the head and throat areas of the kidnappers. At least two of those men took a hell of a beating. Didn’t think it was your style to beat ’em first and slice them up after, Zeus.”

Zeus paused in his downstroke on Sabrina’s leg. “I just cut.” He shrugged. “Nothing more.”

“Ante up, Lynx. I told you he didn’t do it.” Big Country rubbed his fingers together, anticipating his winnings.

“It was her,” Price said. “It had to be. More than likely the third or fourth man knocked her unconscious from behind. Something about that woman just doesn’t sit right. I don’t trust her.”

“
You
not trust, Price?” Coen said. “So surprising.”

“Sounds like she had it rough growing up, makes sense she would know how to defend herself when attacked,” Big Country drawled.

“I don’t see her beating the shit out of two grown men like that,” Coen argued. “I held her when she was on that warehouse floor. She was shaking with fear; there was no fight in her.”

“I don’t like it,” Price said.

“You don’t like much,” Coen stated.

Zeus looked up to see Bride watching him stroke Sabrina’s leg. She looked perplexed. He winked at her. She sneered at him.

“So what does it mean to you that she turned the tables on her attackers?” Big Country asked.

“It means we may want to watch our backs around her,” Price said. “Doesn’t anyone else find it peculiar that after the last few strikes against the Consortium, there’s a stranger in our midst, a supposed victim of Kragen, who has the ability to do what no one in his organization has been able to do since our first attack—put a face to their unknown enemy. A big coincidence our last mission involved exposing their role in the exploitation and abuse of the women in Hallow’s House, and we just
happen
to intercept information that, coincidently, leads us to a woman taken for Kragen.”

“Maybe we acted too hastily bringing her here, but we couldn’t have just left her there,” Coen said.

“You don’t seem so confident in her innocence anymore. Wonder what she’d think about it?” Zeus said.

Coen had the good sense to avert his gaze.

“Should we really be having this conversation with her right here? She could be detailing everything we say,” Lynx said.

“She’s asleep,” Zeus confirmed.

“No harm, Zeus,” Price said, “but I’m not quite ready to trust the judgment of a man who isn’t always an active part of this reality. Who just happens to think he’s strengthened by some spirit-possessed blades.”

Zeus didn’t take offense. He didn’t care about Price’s opinion or his ability to perceive reality. He’d said what he knew. Sabrina was asleep. Shifting, he pressed his back more fully against the base of the love seat and brought both knees close to his chest, placing his feet flat on the ground. He liked the feel of Sabrina’s leg pressed flush against his shoulder and chest, her foot dangling limply near his navel. Slowly he removed the flip-flop and massaged her leg from knee to toe.

“Should he be doing that?” Lynx asked Big Country.

“You gonna make him stop?”

“Hell,” Lynx said, burrowing deeper into the recliner, “it’s not my leg.”

“Zeus, you really shouldn’t handle her body without her permission,” Almaya said. “But she is indeed asleep and will likely stay that way for the next five or six hours depending on how her body metabolizes the sedative I put in her drink.”

Price leaned forward, placing his elbows against his knees. “So what are we going to do?”

“We know she’s clean,” Big Country said. “No tracking or electronic devices attached to or in her. Checked her at the warehouse, and she didn’t trigger the system when she entered the bar. Kragen’s group has no extra eyes or ears on her. In that sense she’s truly lost to him right about now.”

“We know, for whatever reason, Kragen wants her,” Terry said. “Either she’s working for and with him, or she truly needs to be protected from his plan for her. And, guys, have no misunderstanding, he will be in a cold rage over this. Unlike the attacks on the Consortium, the women are damned personal for him.
She
is personal to him.”

“Can you dig deeper into Sabrina’s history?” Almaya asked.

“Can a bat shit acid?”

“I hope that means yes,” Coen said to Price, who nodded wearily. The man who’d led the warehouse run looked close to burned out, tired to his soul.

Is that what working with the Brood does to well-meaning men, Zeus wondered.

“What about Kragen?” Big Country asked.

“Lynx, you, and Bride?” Mama requested.

“Consider it done.”

“Sniff him out; put a tail on him; call him our bitch,” Bride mumbled.

She was weird. Not like a normal woman. If the need to have Sabrina hadn’t been dominating his attention, he would have made Bride his new project. Her strangeness spoke to him.

“Should we move Sabrina to a different location?” Coen asked.

“I’ll take her,” Zeus volunteered. “We’ll hole up, work some things out till Almaya says it’s safe to return.”

Almaya hushed the objections that erupted around the room.

“Thank you for the offer, Zeus, but we’ll keep her here. Between you, Terry, and me, I’m sure she’ll be well looked after.”

As gracious as she was, and as much as he respected her courage, he didn’t like being told no. That’s why he didn’t usually ask for anything. Almaya had approached him about a month ago, after he’d just ended a hunt. She hadn’t been afraid of him when he’d been wild-eyed and soaked in blood. She’d talked to him easy, not like she knew him but like he knew her, trusted her. Her courage and his curiosity were the only things that had kept him from killing her. No sane person should’ve approached him when he was on a hunt and expected to live. Yet here they both were.

“What about me and Coen?” Price asked.

“Until we have some direction, you can hang out here. But I do have a small errand for you,” she said with a slight smile that held a hint of guilt.

“Yeah?” Price asked, looking wary, reluctant.

“Simple drop-off. Juarez will want to return to his family to heal. You will take him there.”

Coen groaned, and Zeus wondered if Juarez’s family was as irritating as Juarez was.

“He’s going to be in a hell of a bad mood when he’s conscious again,” Price said.

“I can dispose of him,” Zeus offered. “It’ll be quick. He bitches, I cut out his tongue. Solves the problem of his overworked mouth permanently.” There was something about this group that made him feel generous.

“We’ll drop him off, Mama.”

Zeus shrugged. He didn’t want to be separated from Sabrina anyway, but with her asleep, she wouldn’t have even known he’d been gone.

“It’ll be interesting to learn how Kragen reacts to the message Juarez left in the glove compartment of the kidnapper’s truck,” Lynx said.

“What message?” Price asked, tensing.

All eyes except Big Country’s, which closed in disgust as he shook his head, turned to Lynx. “Like Juarez, seems you need to learn the art of shutting the fuck up, brother.”

“Using the digital printer in Big Country’s van, Juarez printed one of the pictures I took of Sabrina when we first arrived at the site. He put it in the glove compartment of the truck after writing ‘Look what I found’ on the back,” Lynx said, looking uncomfortable.

Zeus pressed his cheek against Sabrina’s knee. “Bet you all wish I had sunk my blade a little deeper. I can still drop him home if you like.”

“What the hell were you both thinking?” Almaya demanded.

Old Mama doesn’t sound so benevolent anymore, Zeus thought as she snapped at Big Country and Lynx.

“Just for the record, I was finishing up in the warehouse. I didn’t find out until after,” Big Country said, holding up his hands in surrender.

“Taunting Kragen is not a smart idea,” Terry said.

“That’s only if Kragen is the one to pull the photo,” Mama said. “It’s just as likely that the police, the fire department, some random civilian could find the message. They’ll figure out there’s an unidentified woman linked to the warehouse, and they will also be looking for her.”

“Naw,” Big Country said. “Lynx drove the truck to a place in the hills up from the area. Kragen has a tracking device on it. His people will more than likely be the ones to find the photo. The warehouse isn’t tied to Kragen in any obvious way, so there shouldn’t be a link to him, the truck, or the bodies inside the warehouse.”

“So what, we wait as Kragen heads back home, locks down all his less than legal activities, and waits until it’s safe to go after Sabrina again?” Price asked.

“He won’t hole up. It’s a matter of pride and ego,” Terry said contemplatively. “Remember, she’s personal to him. This will be an opportunity for him to display his superiority. He’ll accept the challenge. He’ll come for her just like he came to the Bay Area to get her in the first place.”

“Just so you all know, I told Juarez not to leave the photo,” Lynx said.

A pillow flew, hitting Lynx dead on in the face.

Mama’s satellite phone rang, and Terry reached beside him to answer it. “Yeah?”

There was a pause as Terry listened; then he rose, waving them toward the decompression area. Almaya preceded him to the lower level, reaching for the television remote.

“Thanks, London. Keep us updated on the police’s investigation,” Terry said before disconnecting.

Zeus watched the others trail behind Almaya like well-trained puppies. He heard the television turn on, heard the channel being changed to a news report in progress.

As the others huddled around, blocking the sight of the television screen, Zeus looked up and over his shoulder. Finally he had Sabrina to himself. Unlike at the warehouse, this time he didn’t mind being left with her. He wanted it, wanted it bad, wanted walls and doors with bolts and a… No, he didn’t even need a bed.

“
Eyewitness Randy Leon reports he made a phone call to 911 when he heard a violent confrontation happening in his neighbor’s apartment. Mr. Leon was unable to identify the assailants but was able to identify a dark-colored truck fleeing the scene. If you are just joining us, a missing persons report has been issued for Sabrina Samora, who is believed to have been violently assaulted and abducted from her home. Her assailants are as yet unknown, but the police have issued an all-points bulletin for an extended-cab, dark-colored pickup truck, with the first three digits on the license plate of 5DT…
”

“And whose idea was it to leave the photo in the glove compartment again?” Terry asked.