Burned (24 page)

"Okay,
I'll see what I can pull up, but it's going to take some time, and it
will be expensive. Hacking the NSA isn't something that happens at
the drop of the hat."

Jack didn't
sound thrilled at being handed another impossible assignment, but he
also didn't sound like he'd heard Adri's version of events down here
yet.

"I don't
care about the cost—just make it happen as quickly as you can."

A second after
I hung up from Jack, my phone rang again. It wasn't a number I
recognized, but that was hardly unusual these days.

"Yeah?"

"I know
that you have every reason to hang up on me, but I implore you to
listen."

I knew that
voice. It was the man who'd been in the background of most of my
childhood memories, the man who'd supported my mother time and time
again, the man who'd still believed there was good in her even after
she'd been willing to let Kaleb sell Rachel off to Vincent. It was
Donovan.

"There is
one reason, and one reason only, that I haven't already hung up on
you. The last time we saw each other you did something that could
have gotten you killed. I haven't forgotten that. I do, however, want
to know how you got this number."

"This call
is encrypted—we can use names, Master Alec. As to the how, your
father has deeper penetration into the phone companies than you might
imagine. His people have been analyzing the phone traffic in Arizona
for days in an effort to track you down. They identified this number
as belonging to you less than an hour ago."

Donovan sounded
tired, like he was feeling every one of his two-plus centuries of
existence. I didn't blame him—right then I wanted nothing so
much as to just curl up in a ball and go to sleep in the hopes that
when I woke up all of my problems would prove to be nothing more than
a bad dream.

"I'm
dealing with a host of problems right now, and you've just told me
that every single communication I've had with any of my allies is now
suspect. This better not just be a social call."

"You're
dealing with problems because the Coun'hij—your father—has
an operative down there. I'll deal with the fact that your number has
been compromised. Kaleb has a virus that can go after specific
numbers—I've already loaded it up to the phone company and by
this time tomorrow your call history on that number will be wiped
clean—even the backup files will be corrupted and unusable.
That's not your real problem."

"You're
right—my real problem is that operative. They've already
created massive issues. Do you have confirmation who it is that's
been turned?"

"No.
Mistress Samantha put together the intelligence based on something
minor your father said in passing."

I wanted to rub
my eyes, but appearances were especially important right then. "Okay,
thank you for the heads up—I hope that you didn't take too
great of a risk in reaching out to me. Thanks for deleting my call
history as well."

"Of
course, Master Alec. May I ask what you're going to do about your
father's operative?"

"There's
only one person it could be. I'm going to hunt them down and kill
them."

After
everything else that had happened I shouldn't have been surprised by
the reaction I got out of my people as I hung up my phone. Jasmin was
the first to protest—even though she knew that she had no
chance against me if I took exception to her challenge.

"No. I
refuse to be party to that. Heath has always been decent to all of
us. You can't just execute him—not without more proof than
this."

"I just
got a call from someone in Sanctuary, a contact who gets bits and
pieces of Kaleb's plans. They just confirmed that Kaleb has an
operative down here, an operative Kaleb is overjoyed is making life
hard for us."

"That's
awfully convenient. You needed independent confirmation of your
implausible theory, and then within seconds of hanging up from your
call with Jack, you have it. We're not stupid, Alec. You had some
kind of code word in there that told Jack you'd been compromised and
needed him to call back to back up your story."

She turned to
leave. I let her take three steps—just far enough to confirm
that everyone else was going to follow her—and then I ripped
the cover off of the black hole in the center of my being. They all
collapsed between one breath and the next—even Carson.

"You will
hear me out. I'm not going to tell you who just called me, but it was
the one person still living in Sanctuary who hasn't lost my respect.
I believe them, and I'm going to act on their information. You may
not like that, but I don't need your help to execute one hybrid—not
even a hybrid as formidable as Heath. I'm not asking you along
because I need your permission to kill him, I'm ordering you to
accompany me because we still have a mission to finish up down here.

"You want
to go your separate ways? Fine. You can leave after we're done with
what we set out to do. We're either going to extract Jaclyn and all
of her people, or we're going to spring whatever trap Kaleb and the
rest are trying to close around her neck. You leave now, and our
operational security will be even more blown than it already is."

"And if we
refuse?"

There was a
level of hatred in Jasmin's eyes that I'd never seen her direct at
anyone but Brandon and Vincent before now.

"If you
leave there is a very good chance the Coun'hij's enforcers will pick
you up before you make it out of the state. If that happens you'll be
dead, but if you somehow manage to get past them, I'll hunt you down
once I've finished up with our mission down here."

I'd just
crossed a line that couldn't be uncrossed. Not with Jasmin—maybe
not with any of them—but it was Jasmin I was having the hardest
time dealing with. Somehow I'd never seen it. For years she and I had
been best friends. Neither of us had ever shown any evidence of
wanting to take the relationship beyond that.

Apparently
Jasmin hadn't been as happy as she'd seemed about that state of
affairs. It was too late to do anything about it now. I had to keep
focused on the bigger picture or people were going to die.

James skidded
to a stop, eyes wide at the fact that everyone else was lying on the
ground.

"What's
going on?"

"They were
going to leave before you came back to tell us all what you found."

The rift inside
of me was starting to oscillate as I reached the limits of how much
energy I could absorb. It was all I could do to avoid snapping at
him, but I knew I needed to keep my anger leashed. James was the only
person so far who seemed ready to believe that I might have been set
up.

"It was
just like you said. Adri's door was all busted up, and you'd
obviously been there—your scent trail headed straight away from
the motel."

I released them
all—I had to or I risked losing control of my ability and
making it obvious just how hard it was to keep so many people
immobilized at once.

"You've
all heard me out. Stay or go, it's your choice—just remember
that there will be consequences if you run out on me right now."

I turned just
in time to see Brindi's legs collapse. I caught her just before she
hit the ground.

Alec Graves
The Caravan RV Park
Tucson, Arizona

I knew exactly
what they were all thinking as I carried Brindi up into my RV and
closed the door behind me. I would have invited some of them in so
they could see that I wasn't going to do exactly the kind of stuff
that Adri claimed I'd been doing earlier, but that wasn't a
possibility—not given how pissed I knew Vicki had to be by now.

I was right—she
didn't even let me get Brindi to the couch before she came hurtling
out of the bedroom. I cracked open my ability while she was still
several feet away from me, and prayed that I still had enough juice
left to stop her from killing me.

With someone
else it probably wouldn't have worked. My first instinct had been to
try to stop her from transforming so that I could deal with her in a
less deadly form, but there just wasn't enough capacity on the other
end of my rift to absorb that much energy. There was however enough
of an absorption effect to shut down Vicki's gift.

I felt her
start to transform, felt the energy ratchet up, and then she realized
just how dangerous it would be to escalate like that without her
ability to see into the future. Instead of shifting to hybrid form
and ripping my throat out, she punched me in the face.

She was winding
up for another blow when I captured her wrist and pushed her down
onto the couch.

"I know
you're pissed that I would leave you stuck inside the bedroom while I
was out here making out with Brindi, but that wasn't me."

"It sure
sounded like whoever it was had Brindi fooled."

She practically
spat the words at me, but she hadn't shifted yet, so that was better
progress than I'd been expecting.

"Yeah, he
did have her fooled, but that doesn't change the fact that it wasn't
me. I walked in on Adri and Tristan an hour and a half ago. All I can
figure is that she decided her best bet was to start a nasty rumor in
the hopes that it would keep me too busy to tell everyone else that
she was playing me this entire time."

Vicki did a
double-take. "That's much more sophisticated than I would have
expected out of someone who didn't grow up among our people."

"Yeah,
apparently we've all been underestimating her ability to deceive. For
all I know, my people are leaving right now in the hopes that I'll be
too busy chasing everyone else to come after them. I'm surprised you
didn't hear all of that already."

"I've had
three privacy generators going in there—the last thing I wanted
to hear was you and Brindi going at each other again. Once was quite
enough. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going
after all of them. I got a call from someone just now warning me that
the Coun'hij has an agent down here—an agent who has reported
back saying they've managed to disrupt our operations—but I
don't know for sure who Adri is working with."

"Heath. If
you're telling the truth, it has to be him. Nobody else could have
convinced Brindi like that."

"Yeah,
that was what I thought too, but something like that is supposed to
be beyond even him. Right now it's still just my word against theirs
though. I need some proof—I don't suppose Shawn has a satellite
feed of this area for the last couple of hours that he can send over?
I've got Jack trying to get hold of that intelligence, but he said
it's going to take a while, and every minute that passes puts Adri
and the rest that much further away from us."

"You think
that was their plan all along, to split your forces up and then send
you off to chase them down, thereby creating a window of opportunity
for them to take out the Tucson pack?"

I shrugged. "I
don't know. I've gone from thinking that Adri is behind all of this,
to thinking it's all Heath, and then back again just in the last five
minutes. There are too many pieces that I can't get to fit together
quite right."

Vicki sighed.
"I should probably wait to tell you this until after Shawn gets
me the video feed that proves it really wasn't you in here with
Brindi, but what the hell—you only live once. Adri and the rest
are back at the motel where I left my people. I got a text from them
forty-five minutes ago asking me if they needed to be worried."

I wasn't sure
whether to feel relieved or even more worried. We hadn't been spread
across a thousand square miles, but I still had to find a way to get
to the bottom of what had happened.

"Get on
the phone to Shawn right away, please. We're going to need that
video."

**

I should have
known that things weren't going to be that easy. Fifteen minutes
later—as I was out trying to get the rest of my people ready to
move our operations to the motel where the Chicago hybrids were
staying—Vicki texted me to let me know that the only satellite
in the area had mysteriously stopped transmitting earlier in the day.

Kaleb and the
rest had obviously known that something was going to happen today and
they'd wanted to make sure that I wouldn't have a provable alibi.
Five minutes after I got Vicki's text, I was back in the RV and the
big vehicle was moving.

Brindi was
still unconscious, which meant that Vicki came out of the bedroom as
we pulled onto the main road. She obviously had something to say, but
I got my question out first.

"Did you
guys bring one of those portable EMP devices that Ulrich developed to
keep people from flooding the internet with videos of hybrids?"

"Yeah. I'm
assuming that you want us to use it to knock out all of the phones
and cameras at the motel before we get there?"

"Yes,
please. If you can target it carefully enough to avoid breaking all
of the vehicles in the parking lot that would be ideal, but one way
or another we need to make sure that the humans in the area don't
leak what's about to happen to the outside world."

Vicki nodded.
"Okay, I'll have my people deal with it, but I have a condition
in return. Don't kill anyone, Alec. If you want to keep Shawn and me
as allies, then that's the price."

"You're
afraid that I really was the one in here with Brindi and I'm going to
kill whoever could prove that."

"Not to
put too fine a point on it? Yeah. That's exactly what I'm worried
about. It wouldn't be the first time that some despot used a
situation like this to eliminate a rival."

"I'll do
my best, but you know how situations like this get—it's going
to be a mile past volatile."

She didn't
respond to that—we both knew that she was putting me in a
difficult situation. If I'd had any other choice I would have been
delaying this confrontation, but I was working against a clock this
time.