Hawk's Revenge: Lone Pine Pride, Book 3 (7 page)

She couldn’t imagine the Organization sending reinforcements. They seemed more the types to burn the place to the ground until nothing was left but a napalm scar. Either way, she couldn’t leave.
The anklet…

“I can’t.”

He turned on her so swiftly she stumbled, his rage briefly penetrating her shocky haze. Only his hard grip on her arm kept her upright as he snarled down at her. “Why the fuck not? Are you so loyal to them now?”

Loyal? She would have laughed if she hadn’t been so busy gaping at him incredulously. He actually thought she was loyal to the Organization. After she’d gotten him out. Gotten a hundred and fifty shifters out. Admittedly, she was to blame for the months he spent in Organization custody, but he had to know she hadn’t had a choice in that. Was it so much to ask that he trust her for five minutes?

Anger cut through the fog, clearing away her daze and sharpening her next words to a razor’s edge. “I’m not loyal to them, you ass. I have a bomb strapped to my ankle.”

Chapter Nine

The light on the anklet still blinked green, thank God. Along with the emergency lighting, whatever sent the signal to her anklet to keep her from blowing up must be supported by the back-up generators. Which meant she hadn’t been blown to kingdom come when the power was cut, but it also meant she couldn’t get out now, even if the walls were about to come down around her ears.

At the word bomb, the Hawk spun back to her so quickly she swayed away and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her by the wrist. He steadied her for only a second before kneeling and shoving her loose pant leg up to reveal the anklet it had partially covered.

“If I leave this room, it explodes.”

His hand wrapped gently around her calf—making her shiver in distinctly inappropriate ways before he cursed low, without looking up from the device. “You can’t leave,” he repeated.

“I tried to tell you—”

But he hadn’t been listening. Just as he wasn’t listening now.

“Kye,” he barked into the empty room, and it took her a moment to realize he was talking into some kind of communications device. “Who do we have who can diffuse a bomb in a hurry?”

Rachel held her breath, waiting through the long silence that followed before he looked up. “He’s sending someone,” Noah explained. He glanced back down at the device and jerked his hand away from her leg as if startled to find he had still been holding her, his thumb gently brushing her skin.

The building shuddered again, releasing another spray of rubble from the ceiling and the Hawk lurched to his feet. He cursed and began to pace in the tight confines of her lab. Two steps to the incubator. Two steps to her cot. Two steps to the centrifuge. Back to the incubator.

“You should go,” she murmured. “No sense both of us being trapped down here if the building comes down.”

He didn’t deign to respond beyond a single fuming look.

Two more tight circuits of the room and then the Hawk came to attention, calling out, “We’re back here,” long before she heard the thud of running footsteps.

A slim young man with a pretty, boy-band-worthy face skidded to a stop in the doorway, looking a little green. “Motherfucker,” he swore, “the hallway is full of—”

“Get it together, Mateo,” the Hawk snapped, cutting him off before he could say what the hallway was full of, but from the smell of it, Rachel had a pretty good guess. Noah pointed to her ankle. “We need you to disable that so she can leave without setting it off.”

A calm focus instantly fell over young Mateo and he rushed to kneel at Rachel’s feet for a closer look. He made a soft humming noise and pulled a set of tiny tools out of his back pocket. As he poked at the anklet, Rachel’s heart rate tripled. Noah stood back, arms folded tightly across his chest as he watched the proceedings like the proverbial hawk.

“You’re awfully young for an explosives expert,” she said softly, trying not to distract the boy, but needing the reassurance that he knew what the hell he was doing.

“I don’t know shit about explosives,” Mateo said matter-of-factly, doing nothing good for her blood pressure. “But I know electronics and almost all triggers are composed of computer elements these days. Diffuse the trigger, you diffuse the bomb. Usually.”

Usually.
How comforting. “And you know how to diffuse the trigger?”

He hummed again, peeling away the outer casing of the anklet to reveal the wires and chips within. Mateo cursed under his breath.

“Mateo?” she squeaked.

“What is it?” the Hawk snapped.

“It’s not good news, but it’s not terrible either,” Mateo said, looking toward the Hawk rather than her. “They used the good shit. To short this mother out, we’ll need to seriously fuck with the temperature of the main chip. Dry ice, an acetylene torch—something extreme. See what you can find.”

“There’s liquid nitrogen in a canister in the second freezer over there.” Rachel pointed and both men shot her incredulous looks—doubtless wondering why anyone would keep liquid nitrogen on hand—but the Hawk quickly collected the canister and knelt beside Mateo. “Try not to give me freezer burn,” she requested, feeling a little light-headed at the idea that she could have frozen off the damn anklet detonator at any time, but also terrified that it wouldn’t work and they’d all be blown to pieces.

Rachel closed her eyes, lacing her fingers together in old habit and praying fervently. The last few years had been hard on her relationship with God, but she was still a preacher’s daughter. She gathered up every last ounce of her faith and poured it into the prayer.

She didn’t look when she felt the chill of intense cold close to her skin, holding her breath and redoubling her prayers. There was a crack, like ice breaking, and the pressure that had been a constant around her ankle for the last several weeks abruptly loosened.

“Mateo, you’re a genius.” Noah clapped him on the shoulder as she opened her eyes, both men straightening.

The building groaned ominously around them. Before Rachel could thank the young man, he was swearing and bolting for the door.

Noah caught her hand and met her eyes, and for a brief, flaring moment she thought she saw something in them. Something fierce. Something tender. Something that held the promise that perhaps she hadn’t killed everything between them with that sedative injected into his back.

He swore under his breath and wrapped one hand around her nape, the warm weight unbearably familiar. Then he was bending to take her mouth with a kiss that was dominant and demanding and seized absolute possession, reasserting his claim on her soul, as if there had ever been a doubt.

Another of those defining moments, that kiss. When she realized she was the kind of woman who would always melt for this man, even when the world was falling down around them.

It didn’t last long.

The soft pneumatic snick was the only warning she had before a sharp pain pricked her arm.

She jerked back, confused to see the tranquilizer dart sticking through her sleeve. She wanted to ask why. And why now, when he could have just tranqed her the second he walked in the door. But those thoughts were quickly drowned by the drugs flooding into her blood stream until only one thought remained.

I guess I deserved that…

Adrian caught Rachel against his chest as her legs buckled, tucking away the tranquilizer gun and lifting her over his shoulder. She flopped there bonelessly as he charged from the room. His feet skidded a bit on the blood-slick linoleum of the hall floor, but he found his footing and raced past the lifeless faces of her colleagues.

He hadn’t planned on tranqing her. In his anger, he’d wanted her to see the bodies, as a warning, a reminder that he was the only thing standing between her and a violent end—but then she’d looked at him, her big, brown eyes so open and trusting, so fucking
hopeful
and he hadn’t been able to do it.

Tranqing her was the easiest solution. He wouldn’t have to explain to anyone why he’d done it. They would all assume she’d resisted. No one needed to know it was his own unwanted softness toward her that had prompted him.

And no one needed to ever know about the kiss. It hadn’t happened. It was already forgotten.

She wasn’t light and though he was almost back to top shape, he was breathing hard by the time he reached the top of the stairs and wheezing like an old man when he burst out of the building into the parking lot beyond where Kye was organizing the loading of the bound prisoners onto a van.

Whether or not to take hostages from the Organization strikes had been hotly contested at the pride. Many wanted everyone who would threaten them exterminated to make a point. Others didn’t want anyone who had ever been involved with the Organization anywhere near pride lands. But in the end, Roman had prevailed on his pride to accept the wisdom of containing their enemies, at least until they knew more about them.

The first few incursions had been against Organization facilities that specialized in holding shifters, the transit points—so there had been far more refugees released than hostages captured—but this was a different sort of installation. This facility was almost all Organization scientists—so the prisoners far outnumbered the rescued shifters.

Adrian hitched his own prisoner higher up on his shoulder and crossed to Kye to get his assignment for transportation back to the pride. They would split up, dozens of cars taking multiple routes and changing vehicles multiple times to ensure no one would lead the Organization back to the pride.

For the first time, Adrian found himself resenting the necessity, eager to get Rachel back on pride lands where she would be safe. Though he still wasn’t sure whether he wanted her protected or at his mercy. Both perhaps. His feelings for her were far from clear—though his body still undeniably wanted her. The press of her thighs against his forearm as he held her in place over his shoulder was enough to stir his blood.

Inside the van, one of the prisoners huddled against the window, peering at him through the glass, eyeing Rachel’s unconscious form slung over his shoulder. She was a frail-looking brunette, with her hair falling forward over her face, nearly obscuring her wide, terrified blue eyes. She looked too much like Rachel, and he avoided looking at her, not wanting to soften toward either woman.

Kye started to tell him to put Rachel with the rest of the prisoners, but must have realized who she was by the look on Adrian’s face and quickly changed his tune.

A couple of the shifter soldiers nudged one another and pointed as he carried her to their designated car, whispering among themselves. The general attitude toward Rachel in the pride had changed drastically in the last few weeks. After the first successful raid, someone had leaked that the schematics had come from her and shifters rescued by her group began to fall out of the woodwork at the pride, singing her praises. His own reputation had improved as well when rumors had begun to fly about the infamous Hawk, doing a lot to smooth his way and gain the trust of the other lieutenants and soldiers. But where he was admired, she was
worshipped
.

Adrian tucked Rachel inside the car as behind him the building groaned and shuddered. It still hadn’t collapsed, in spite of all their haste, and he overheard some discussion of whether they should intentionally blow it up now that everyone with a pulse had been evacuated.

If the choice was left to him, he would have flattened the fucking place, but he didn’t stir himself to enter the argument. He wasn’t a full member of the pride. He knew when to pick his battles. And it sounded like the argument was tipping in his direction anyway.

Five minutes later, Grace gave the order and the shifters all paused to watch as the building blew with a satisfying
boom
. Then they all dove into the cars—and some shifted and dove into the wilderness—scattering like cockroaches when the kitchen light came on and leaving nothing for the Organization to find but rubble.

Now if only he could be as decisive about what to do with the lovely doctor.

Chapter Ten

The air smelled of winter—or what she’d always imagined northern winters must smell like while she was growing up in the South. Pine and cold—if cold had a smell. Rachel focused on that—did cold have a smell?—distracting herself from the throbbing in her skull.

This must be what a hangover felt like. She’d always been careful not to overindulge in the past—initially because she didn’t want to disappoint her parents and in recent years because losing control while the Organization was watching her was a dangerous business. But this definitely felt like hangovers she’d read about. Throbbing head. Achy muscles. A heavy reluctance to open her eyes.

And a chain around her ankle.

Rachel frowned, shifting again, and again heard the clink of metal and felt the weight of it dragging at her leg. That opened her eyes in a hurry.

She sat up, flinging off the light blanket that had covered her and groping for her ankle. This time instead of the detonator that had been her constant companion for the last weeks, her fingers met cold metal. The two-inch band of silver was smooth and shiny. New, by the look of it. Loose enough not to chafe, but snug enough that she’d have to break several bones in her foot to get it out. The chain was long and slack, trailing off the bed and across the floor.

She wore the same clothing she’d had on when they captured her at the lab—slacks and a turquoise long-sleeve button-down blouse that was now hopelessly wrinkled. Her shoes and socks were nowhere in sight and a bandage stretched over the ball of her left foot. Rachel frowned, wiggling her bare feet and felt a cut stretch and pull on the bottom of her foot, though there was little pain. Had they put a tracker in her? Taken one out?

It wouldn’t surprise her if the Organization had tagged her from day one. Perhaps it was for the best that she hadn’t been able to escape with Noah. She may have led the Organization right to them.

He was nowhere in sight, her hawk. He’d left her, alone in a cabin of some kind. The only light was courtesy of a weakly flickering camp lantern dangling from a hook near the door and the moonlight sneaking through holes in the threadbare curtains, but it was enough to see the rustic timbers crisscrossing on the ceiling and the rough-hewn furnishings that looked like they could have been pulled out of a Jack London novel.

The long snake of a chain was secured to a black pot-bellied stove in one corner, giving her full play of the single ten-by-twelve room and access to a smaller-than-standard door—which she desperately hoped led to a bathroom, considering the pressure on her bladder.

She scrambled out of the bed, pulling the chain behind her, and rushed to make use of the facilities—which were, thank heavens, of the modern variety and not a latrine to match the rest of the backwoods décor. Her body’s needs seen to, she washed up and splashed water on her face to banish the last of the drug-induced lethargy. There was no mirror, but she didn’t need one to know she probably looked like something the dog had been keeping under the porch. Her mama would be horrified by her lack of gentility, but Rachel didn’t have time for vanity.

She quickly took stock of her surroundings—the bathroom was unextraordinary. Narrow shower, toilet and tiny pedestal sink all crammed into a space smaller than most closets. There was toilet paper and a cake of brittle soap beside the faucet, but otherwise no toiletries to speak of. Certainly nothing that could be used as a weapon or a tool to help her escape. Not that she was planning an escape—but it certainly spoke to Noah’s frame of mind that he hadn’t even left so much as a toothbrush for her to use against him.

The main room was just as bare. There was a small kitchenette—but the cupboards were empty. Not even a box of Cheerios to reward her for her efforts. The cooler held only bottled water and, realizing how dry her throat was, she snagged one and popped the seal, drinking half of it as she studied the rest of the room. A slab of a table with two heavy-looking chairs, a bed that was more glorified futon than proper mattress, a sturdy footlocker with a massive padlock at the foot of the bed, and, of course, the pot-bellied stove, squatting beside a pile of firewood.

She nudged one of the chairs out from the table and perched on it, once again scanning her limited range. She couldn’t quite reach the windows or the largest door, the one she suspected must lead outside. She could be two feet from another building or two hundred miles and she wouldn’t know it.

Was this a shifter commune? Or some remote cabin where they kept their prisoners who could not be trusted on their land?

Night had fallen, but her sense of time was all muddled. She must have lost at least nine hours, but for all she knew she’d been drugged for days. The Organization had been known to move shifters around the world while they were unconscious. She couldn’t put it past the shifters to have done the same to her. Heck, she hadn’t even been a hundred percent sure where she was
before
Noah captured her at the lab, so figuring out how far she’d been taken was pretty much a lost cause.

Noah…why wasn’t he here? It seemed wrong that they would just leave her alone, unsupervised. Though the chain around her ankle was enough to keep her from going anywhere. She wasn’t a super-spy. Not like him.

Where the hell was he? Didn’t he
want
to see her? He hadn’t kissed her like a man who was going to leave her to slowly starve to death in the woods.

The shifters wouldn’t kill her. There was no point in it. She wouldn’t believe Noah could be so vengeful. And he was still Noah beneath the angry layers of the Hawk. She was convinced of it.

This could be a test to see if she would try to escape. But he couldn’t know her so little that he thought she would run.

Though really, how well did they know one another? They’d worked together for years, courted for a few weeks, and then she’d had him imprisoned and experimented on before helping him escape and becoming a prisoner herself. Theirs wasn’t exactly the kind of relationship that had been conducive to sharing soul secrets. Not that she ought to be thinking in terms of relationships. She bet he wasn’t.

But what
was
he thinking? If she could just see him, just look in his eyes while she asked him what they had planned for her—

The door opened as if in response to her half-thought prayer, and there he was. A tall, thin silhouette with a slightly stooped posture. If he’d cultivated the slouch to be less threatening, it failed abysmally. He still radiated that fierce intensity, yellow eyes seeming to glow in the dark shadows of his face.

“Noah.” The name slipped out on a whisper, absent her intent. She stood, hovering uncertainly behind the table.

He stepped over the threshold, hooked the door with his foot to flick it shut and dropped a heavy bag to the floor with a thud before turning those gleaming yellow eyes on her again. “Don’t call me that.”

Right. Of course he wouldn’t want to be reminded that she’d helped him build his ark of shifters, escaping two by two. She was the enemy. How dare she forget? “What do you want me to call you? Master? Sir?”

“Adrian,” he snapped, cutting her off.

She caught her breath, shocked. “Is that your name? Your real name?”

He smiled, and it wasn’t friendly. “No point hiding it from you now. I’m going to personally make sure you’re never in a position to tell any of your Organization buddies about me.”

She clenched her teeth, biting back her irritation.
Do not argue with your jailer.
“I don’t have Organization buddies,” she said, ignoring her own counsel, one hand fisting where it rested on the table.

“No? Then it won’t bother you to know we leveled that building and everyone who was still inside it?”

“Of course it will bother me. Death is always a loss—”

“Not all death.” His face, always sharp and angular, seemed even more jagged with the ferocity of his expression as he stalked closer, looming over her in a way that made her grateful for the table between them. She was tempted to sink back into the chair, but forced some starch into her spine.

Her emotions were a mess—so grateful to be here with him, away from the Organization, and so frustrated with the injustice of the way she’d been shackled and treated like just another Organization villain. Injustice won. “Have you forgotten everything I did for the shifters for the last four years?”

“I haven’t forgotten
anything
.” He propped his fists on the wood, looming closer. She fought the urge to fall back.

“You have to know I didn’t have a choice. When I sedated you at the hotel—”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he snapped, shoulders stiffening.

“The schematics worked, didn’t they? I got you out. I got you information that could take down the Organization.
I did that
.”

“So you’re the victim here, are you, Doc?”

“I may not be a victim, but I’m not the only villain in the room,
Adrian
.”

He jerked at the sound of his name and straightened, pivoting away from the table and storming to the kitchenette—though it was probably an unsatisfying distance to storm off, since the room was small enough he made the stove in two steps.

She swallowed thickly, able to get a full breath now that he’d stopped eating up all the oxygen in the room with his proximity. She studied the lines of tension in his back. He’d grown strong again since his escape and there were muscles there again, where once he had been skin and ridges of bone. Remembering the way his body had been all but concave when she found him in the labs, her irritation retreated, leaving only a wash of guilt. She sank uneasily back into the chair, gripping the edges of the seat.

“Where are we?” she asked tentatively.

He didn’t turn, but she saw his fingers tracing the lines of the sink, as if remembering the shape of it would sooth him somehow. “Does it matter?”

“As long as we’re far away from the Organization, no. It doesn’t.” She wanted to rise, to go to him, but something about his rigid posture stopped her. She didn’t know how to deal with this version of him. “Thank you for getting me out of there.”

He did turn then, frowning. He studied her for so long she grew self-conscious, smoothing her hair and tucking the stray strands behind her ears. He’d once told her how much he loved her hair, twirling it around his long fingertips and using it to tug her close, his lips just teasing hers on the edge of a kiss.

It had been a risk, being with him, but desire had made her reckless, the danger adding a delicious tension…or maybe that was just him. The world was always sharper and brighter in his arms.

“I can’t make you out, Dr. Russell,” he said finally, folding his arms.

“Ask me anything. I won’t lie.”

And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, the words were wholly true.

She didn’t have to lie. She didn’t have to smile for her bosses while her stomach churned at what they were doing. She didn’t have to feel her heart beating out of her chest as she smuggled out a shifter, praying desperately that all the pieces were in place and all the codes she’d been given were still active.

No one was going to catch her now. Noah—Adrian—wouldn’t kill her if she failed to cooperate. The shifters had an honor the Organization had never possessed. It was why they were at such a disadvantage in the silent war.

For the first time in an age—hell, maybe
ever
—Rachel was free to tell the truth. To be herself. It had been so long, she wasn’t entirely sure she remembered who that was anymore, but she was finally free to find out.

Free.

The chain around her ankle was tangible irony, but it couldn’t diminish the feeling that rose up in her chest and filled her eyes with tears.

Adrian’s raptor gaze immediately locked on the moisture and his frown darkened. “Crying won’t gain you anything.”

“It’s not a ploy,” she said, her tone sharpened by his lack of trust. “I’m just relieved.”

“Relieved,” he repeated dubiously.

“I don’t have to lie anymore.”

“All right.” He crossed back to the table, pulled out one of the heavy chairs and spun it on one leg like it weighed nothing more than a feather. Resettling it with the back braced against the table, he straddled it and braced his forearms across the back. His yellow eyes gleamed. “Tell me all this truth of yours then.”

“All of it?”

“Backing out already?”

She wet her lips, mind racing. This was a test. She’d always been good at tests. Her emotions would go quiet, her mind calm and sharp, and she’d see the answers rising out of her memory, clear as day. But this wasn’t like other tests. She had a feeling he wouldn’t let her retake this one if she failed to give him the right answers.

There were thousands of truths she’d been swallowing over the last four years, but only one that seemed to matter. One regret that swallowed everything else. “I would never have betrayed you if there was any other choice that would have saved your life.”

His eyes went distant. Yellow always seemed such a bright warm color; she’d never known it could be so icy cold. “Is that so? And the way you were with me, they made you do that?”

“No, Adrian. Everything between us was real. They came to me, when we’d been seeing one another for a few weeks, called me before the Board of Directors.” She remembered the terror of that meeting. The way her heart had beat so fast and hard she’d been grateful there were no shifters in the room to hear the blatant tell. Mr. Washington, the Chairman of the Board, had watched her with his eerily pale gray eyes, unblinking as he slid photos across the table. Photos of her with Noah. “They’d been following us. They knew who you were, but they didn’t know what we were doing. The shifters we’d helped escaped were still safe from Organization hunters. They didn’t suspect me yet. They said if I helped them acquire you, it would prove my loyalty.”

“So you proved it.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” She started to reach for him, but pulled her hands back when his expression darkened, knotting her fingers at the edge of the table. “They knew who you were already. They would have kept hunting until they acquired you, one way or another, and if I tipped you off they would have known instantly that I wasn’t to be trusted. Everything I’d done in the last three years would have been called into question and they might have uncovered the entire operation. At least this way, I was still in a power position in the Organization. I was able to get more shifters out and start working out an exit strategy for both of us.”