Taken by Fire (27 page)

Phoebe would probably have rolled her eyes at the combination praise and spank. Mel just hoped her voice would work. “I
was captured by Maurice,” she said, remembering what Stryker had told her about the man who had captured them in Rome. “I escaped, but he got away before I could kill him. He’s a traitor. I think he’s the one who brought in ACRO.”

Alek snarled. “If you have proof of his treachery, I’ll make sure he drowns in his own blood.” He gestured to Ian. “Bind Devlin’s wrists and take him to my office.”

So far, so good. Everything was going according to plan. Alek would take Dev, and she would find the control room, where she would open up the entire facility to psychics, satellites, and every ACRO agent. At that point, the second wave would arrive, and Itor would go down.

Dev put his hands behind his back, and Ian cuffed him with wrist ties that he’d plucked from his pocket.

“Got anything to say, Dev?” Alek asked.

“I have a lot to say. In private.”

Alek cocked an eyebrow. “We do have a lot of catching up to do. We can go through my old photos. I believe I have a picture of your mother somewhere.”

Why would Alek have a picture of Dev’s mother? Mel made a mental note to ask Stryker later.

Dev’s brown eyes narrowed. “Are we going, or are you planning to bore me to death here in the hallway?”

“I’m planning something involving your death, but you definitely won’t be bored.” Alek smiled at Mel. “Phoebe, handle the destruction of ACRO’s forces, and then join me.”

“Of course.” She smiled confidently, relieved that this was all going so freaking well.

Alek grabbed Dev by the arm. “Come. We’re long overdue for our father-son talk.”

Mel gasped.
Son?
Staring in shock at Dev, she felt the ground shift beneath her. Her pistol fell from her numb fingers and clattered on the floor. Shit! Phoebe would never react like that, but before Mel could recover, Alek cursed. He knew.

“Stop her!”

She lurched to the side, summoning her power. But even as the tingle spread through her arm, a fist slammed into the side of her head, and it was game over.

G
abriel had been using his invisibility with greater ease over the past months. All the practice and training had paid off in spades and, thanks to the adrenaline rush, he was moving like a bat out of hell, taking out snipers and generally anyone else from Itor who got in any ACRO agent’s way.

It meant dodging some bullets—literally. Because when Gabe was invisible, he wasn’t bulletproof. He wore the vest so he didn’t have to watch his back as carefully, but even so …

He still had to split his energy between concentrating on not dematerializing at an inopportune time and using his strength to kick some ass, but he finally felt part of ACRO. He had a purpose.

He’d been built for this.

A single beep from his watch told him that Mel’s ten minutes were up. Her job should be done by now. Dodging debris flying through the air from Remy’s storms, he headed back to the meeting point to be apprised of his next moves.

As he approached the main ranch house, his gut twisted at the sight of Ender and Stryker behind the shelter of a brick wall, barking out orders to bleeding and beaten ACRO agents. Something had gone terribly wrong—the agents should be gathering to enter the facility by now.

Ender looked grim as he told Gabe, “The psychic shield hasn’t been shut off and none of the entrances except the one inside the house have been opened—Mel didn’t hold up her end of the bargain and we don’t know where she and Devlin are. It’s your job to find them—we’ll go in through the only entrance and take out as many I-Agents as we can.”

Emotions rocketed through Gabe—no doubt, they showed on his face but, for the first time, Ender didn’t call him on it.

No, all the men were close to Devlin—if he was killed, it would be too great a loss for ACRO to bear.

It can’t end like this
.

He choked everything back and said, “Let’s roll.”

“Stryker and I will go in first and make a path. You need to open up the facility and shut down the psychic shield. Fast.” Ender took off for the house, with Stryker right behind him, both ducking low and firing shots as they ran.

Gabe concentrated, felt the cloak of invisibility cover him like a stinging rain.

This time, he welcomed the slight pain that came with the changing.

Heart racing, he followed the two ACRO agents into the house and into the closet where the hidden entrance to the underground facility was located. They moved silently down the stairs, the passageway growing wider every ten steps, where narrow landings with blind corners made for potentially dangerous ambushes by Itor assholes. Three-quarters of the way down, Gabe’s impatience got the better of him, and he slipped between Ender and Stryker.

At the bottom, an I-Agent waited in ambush. Snarling, Gabe slammed the man’s head against the wall, and he went down. Fucker. These guys had Dev, and Gabe wasn’t going to show any mercy. Crouching, he snapped the enemy’s neck, looking behind him as Ender nodded his approval in Gabe’s general direction.

Gabe went down farther into the compound, descending into the depths with relative ease, since most of the security was on the first floor. Alek probably assumed no one could get past them.

Alek didn’t count on him.

This place had an underground underground, it seemed. He stopped, listened. Tried to hear Dev, but he possessed no damned psychic ability at all.

Yet he could feel the man vibrating all around him. They
were bonding on some level—and that was enough for Gabe to keep pushing forward. Yeah, he needed to open the facility and shut down the psychic shield, but if he found Dev first …

He stopped at a door and put his hand through. Then slid halfway in and saw Devlin and Mel … and Alek.

The room was solid stone and metal-encased. Fire- and bombproof. Maybe it could even withstand the entire compound falling on it when Stryker did his earthquake thing.

But it couldn’t withstand him.

D
ev wasn’t so much at a disadvantage because his hands were bound but rather because his psychic connection with Sam didn’t work in this underground fortress, leaving him vulnerable to Alek’s mind-reading ability.

“This is nice—we’ll have a chance to bond, like a normal, happy family.” Alek pyramided his fingers together as he glanced between Devlin and Mel, who had been seated on the floor next to him in Alek’s luxurious office.

Dev snorted. “There’s nothing nice about you, asshole.” For that, he was cracked across the side of the face. He spat blood out of his mouth and met Alek’s eyes. “Ah, Dad, I didn’t think you cared.”

“I care very much. You’re about to find out just how much, when your precious ACRO—and a portion of the free world—dies.”

A small gasp from Mel switched Alek’s attention to her.

Mel, who’d just discovered that she had a brother. Devlin had been careful not to look at her, even though he felt her trying to catch his eye.

She was stunned. No doubt scared … and hopefully worthy of having his trust.

“Where is Phoebe?” Alek demanded from her. “This is your betrayal.”

“How do you know it’s mine?” Mel asked, her voice sweet as
apple pie, making Dev proud as hell. “Maybe your precious Phoebe felt she could run the place better than you ever could. Maybe she and I kissed and made up and we’re trying to take over the world … or Itor, at the very least.”

“Don’t fuck with me, daughter dear. You’re going to wish you were dead when I’m done with you.” The sinister smile on Alek’s lips as he glared at Mel made Dev sick. “Remember that time in the lab? The four days you spent with my favorite psychic torturer and his lecherous assistant?”

Mel swallowed hard enough for Dev to hear. “I have information on ACRO,” she blurted, and so much for being on ACRO’s side. She crumbled faster than a goddamned cookie. “Stuff you can’t get from Dev because he assigns others to keep some things safe in the event that you get into his head again. I know what some of those things are, because I got real close to one of his agents.”

Dammit. It was as he’d thought—Mel could not be trusted, should not have been. She might have information that could hurt his agents … Stryker had been too unguarded.

Both men had let their guard down too easily. Devlin should’ve known that no man or woman spawned from Alek could be totally trusted.

He guessed that had to include him as well, even though it twisted his gut to think that way. Because this man in front of him … he’d killed Dev’s biological mother after she gave Dev up to his adoptive parents. Alek had caught her, and no doubt her death hadn’t been pleasant. Years later, he’d used a brutal mind-rape on Devlin, which allowed all of ACRO and her agents to be exposed to the great evil Itor was.

One of the most evil men Dev knew was his biological father.

Getting past that would never be easy. Getting out of Alek’s grasp could prove to be impossible.

Alek closed his eyes in concentration and then opened them. “You’re worried that Melanie sold you out. That I can get ACRO secrets easily now. That you’ve betrayed your entire organization
by putting your faith in the wrong woman. That you know no good can come from your biological family.”

“Always trust your gut, Dev,” Mel said softly. “That’s what Alek taught me.” She shifted, easing away from Dev, which was wise, because he really wanted to strangle her. “Father, I’ll tell you what I know about ACRO—and it’s a lot—in exchange for my life. I know you don’t want Phoebe dead.”

“Phoebe doesn’t have to die for what I have planned for you.” Alek strolled over to the wet bar, opened a drawer, and removed a leather box. “I’ve given you so many chances, Melanie. Because you’re my daughter, I’ve allowed you freedom and luxuries. But when this is over, you’ll have none of that. Your time in that body will be spent in chains, and I’ll make sure whoever I assign to watch over you knows that he can enjoy you as much as he likes.”

“I told you,” Melanie said, her voice trembling with desperation, “I’ll tell you everything I know. Please. Just … promise not to punish me. Promise, and I’ll tell you what I know about ACRO’s plans for the attack today. If I don’t, Itor will fall, and if ACRO gets hold of me, they won’t just torture me, they’ll kill me. Which means your precious Phoebe will die too. Ask Devlin.”

Alek didn’t have to ask. He could read Dev’s mind on the matter and Mel was right. Dev would kill her on the spot himself if given the opportunity.

Fuck
. Devlin needed to stop thinking about all this shit. Distract Alek so he couldn’t read his mind so easily—Dev had practiced his own form of a mind shield, but it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as the one the ACRO psychics used when they linked their thoughts with him, and it required a hell of a lot of concentration.

Taking a deep, calming breath, he put it into place, building it slowly while Alek was busy.
Keep him busy
. “Tell me more about my mother.”

There was a long, tense silence as Alek opened the box, palmed an object inside, and walked over to Mel. “What would
you like to know?” He gripped her arm and injected her with a syringe filled with green liquid.

“Why did she leave you?”

Straightening, Alek smiled. “Because I’m a bastard. Like father, like son.”

“And daughter,” Devlin muttered, and Mel laughed—
laughed
—next to him.

“Devlin, I thought you knew better than to trust anyone from Itor. Especially me.” And just like that, Dev knew Mel was gone, Phoebe in her place. “Alek, maybe we should let him watch the fireworks? It’s time, isn’t it?”

“See, Devlin,” Alek said, as he hit a button on some sort of touchpad mounted to the wall, “that’s the kind of forward thinking I appreciate in my offspring.”

A wall panel slid back, revealing a large flat-screen TV, on which was a feed from London’s bustling Trafalgar Square.

“I hate England,” Phoebe said. “So this is going to be very amusing.”

“Agreed.” Alek glanced at his watch. “In exactly nineteen minutes, my 2012 machine is going to perform a test run and send a killing concentration of gamma rays into London. And you have a front-row seat. We’ll make it a family night.”

“You sick fuck,” Dev growled, and then a familiar tingle of awareness washed over him, and he felt the soft brush of Gabe’s fingers on his wrists.

Excellent. In a moment he’d be free. The catch was that if Alek decided to go on an exploratory mission inside Dev’s head between now and then, both he and Gabe were dead men.

There were times when Phoebe hated her father. And then he’d go and do something that made her all warm and squishy with the nearest thing she could feel to love.

Maybe it was love. She wasn’t sure. The closest she’d been to the emotion was a few years ago, when she’d slept with an Itor agent named Jacques, and during the month they’d been together, she’d lost interest in all other bed partners. But then he’d gone and screwed some waitress.

Phoebe had killed the waitress instantly, but had let Jacques linger in agony in a hospital burn unit for three weeks before he died.