Their Improbable Mating [Paranormal Protection Unit 3] (Siren Publishing Allure) (2 page)

“Nah, I’m good, thanks,” Aidan said, sitting in a chair. “So, how’s it going?” he asked curiously, grabbing the can of cashews off his brother’s desk. “You getting it all down?

“Getting there,” he murmured, taking a bite. “Some of it I can’t even look at, but if we get the invite I suppose I’ll have to.” He just didn’t want to know how twisted he was supposed to be, damn it.

“Skittles did his research, that’s for sure,” Aidan agreed, picking out a cashew here and there to munch on. “I got a brief read of some of the early material and knew you weren’t going to like it.” His brother really wasn’t into kink or bondage of any sort. While Aidan didn’t mind trying new things and even experimenting, his twin was against anything that objectified women in any way. How they’d come from the same egg, he’d never know, but he loved him nonetheless and resisted the urge to tease him and his missionary ways.
Heh, “missionary.”

“He said he dug through old case files from the various government agencies worldwide, did a background on l’Aurette, and tried to find a few similarities and commonalities so that I’d ‘fit’ in,” he muttered with a scowl on his face.

Watching him, Aidan nodded slowly. “If it’s too much, Allister, I can take your place,” he offered softly but already knew the answer.

“No, I’m doing this.” He’d seen too many families torn apart by such sick bastards. They talked the girls into believing they were talent agents, photographers, or various other ploys. Then, when the women showed up at a predesignated area, too often alone and in a secluded spot, they vanished without a single trace, never to be seen again except on a morgue table.

“All right, well, I’m around if you need me to bang things around with.” Aidan got up and, stealing a couple more of the cashews, he set the can back on the desk. “Hit me up if you need me, bro,” he said, but he knew his brother. He’d internalize and keep it all locked away never to see the light of day again.

“Thanks.” Allister knew his brother worried for him, knew about his personal mission in life and just why he, Allister, was in the Teams. Yeah, he was all for saving the world from mass destruction, nuclear threats, terrorists, and everything else, but those that preyed on the innocent held a special place in his soul. He was determined to see them all go to that special place in hell for all eternity.

* * * *

Shifting in his seat, Allister peered out the darkly tinted windows. An itch between his shoulder blades warning that something was off just wouldn’t go away.

“What’s wrong, bro?” Aidan asked from his spot in the driver’s seat, his normally long white-blond hair tucked up in a way to make it look like a short cut, heavy sideburns and a goatee pasted on his mug. With the dark glasses and pale makeup with shading he looked like an entirely different person. It was damned creepy talking to him.

“Don’t know, just a bad vibe.” He met his twin’s gaze in the mirror.
I’ve got a tickle between my shoulders that won’t let up. It’s also getting worse the closer we get,
he sent through the mental connection he and his brother shared.

Do we bail on this?
Aidan asked, trusting his brother’s instincts just as Allister trusted in his.

No, we keep going,
he said softly,
but keep an eye out for law enforcement. Skittles said that between the Feds and Interpol they’ve been trying to build a case on l’Aurette for a while.
That their chatter nearly dropped to nothing in the last day made Allister twitchy, big time.

Copy that.
His twin’s jaw hardened more and Allister knew he was searching everything as they drove in at a sedate pace to the meeting spot. He wasn’t dallying along, but he was going cautiously. No reason to spook the target if they could help it. Plus, it gave them all a chance to get a visual lay of the land. Satellite mapping was great, but things changed over time, and having a look was necessary for their sanity and the op.

“Heads up, boys,” Mac said from the front seat. “We’re coming up on the party,” he told everyone in the SUV as well as the Team waiting on the sidelines.

Adjusting his tie, Allister forced himself into the role, one that would challenge his every moral. But it had to be done, for all those l’Aurette had and for all those that couldn’t be saved.

“The most unpredictable part of any mission is not the mission so much as the players that are in action.” This mantra had been drilled into her mind from the time that she was able to walk. Born the only female to a shit load of hard-core Marines was not any girl’s idea of a great girly childhood, but when you added to it the fact that she hadn’t “bloomed” as a girl until she was in college, it was even harder.

As she looked at herself now though, she wanted to amend her daddy’s words. The most unpredictable part in any mission wasn’t the players so much as what they did to the others. She was shaking, the drugs that she had been pumped full of flooding her senses and making her unable to make a clear and conscious thought.

Hold onto sanity, hold onto yourself. Don’t give in. Don’t give up
, she kept telling herself. They all knew where she was. The tracking chip that had been embedded in her skin was still giving off her location. She needed to just keep faith that they would get her out of this hell before too much longer because they had to know just what she was going through, thanks to the little chip that was not only a tracker but also a biometric tether that gave them her vitals at all times.

She moved as in a haze when her captors came again. Everything felt as if she were seeing and feeling through ten feet of water. It was all a haze, a blur.

“This one will be good for the new customer. She naturally has a hairless body. She’s the right coloring as well,” Mrs. Monster Woman told Mr. Monster Man. “And with her being a virgin, she’s perfect for him. I can see her giving him a good run for his money,” she said with a cruel laugh.

“It is said that he does love to chase them. With this one’s body you would think that she was a runner. In fact,” Mr. Monster Man said to Mrs. Monster Woman, “wasn’t she a track star? Isn’t that what we found in the online yearbook about her?”

“Yes, she won the State Championships, would have gone on to Nationals, but she had to get curious,” Mrs. Monster Woman said with a smile that reminded her of a shark’s smile, all teeth.

“Well then, maybe she will be just what he’s looking for and we will get our investment in her back,” Mr. Monster Man said to his wife with the slightest of hisses to the “s” sounds.

“I agree. If not”—the woman shrugged and smiled—“then I do believe that we will turn her over to the boys. She’s at the top of our age limit and she did, after all, cause injury to three of them. I think that it would be just punishment, darling.”

She thought about that and smiled. She couldn’t help it. Even through all the drugs she had still been able to tear one bastard’s ear off with her teeth and, she hoped, turned the other into a soprano for life and hopefully put the third one’s fucking eye out. She had fought tooth and nail when she realized that help wasn’t coming for her right away.

It had been a simple op. Get taken, be brought to the ringleader’s base of operations, and then the fucking cavalry would ride in and she would be free. That had been two months earlier. The first week she had been there she had been pumped so full of ketamine that she could barely move. The second week she had been drugged with some other cocktail of their own making, and the third week she had been left alone. She had tried her comms devices then, the listening device that had been implanted in her ear and the vocal link inserted at the base of her neck, but no one was there.

She had still held out hope though. Hope because not only did her commanding officer and unit have her biometric tag, but her father and brothers all did, too. She knew they would move hell to find her, but why hadn’t they made it there yet? What was taking so long? Wouldn’t they worry if she hadn’t checked in before now? And almost as soon as she had that thought she realized they wouldn’t if her CO had “checked in” for her, giving them the line she was on assignment. It had happened before. She would be gone for weeks at a time but never this long.

When she was pushed back down onto the grass mat that doubled as her bed, she curled in on herself and again started to rock. She watched as the Monster couple walked out of the room, touched her comms unit at her throat again, and whispered, “Extraction, please.” She never begged. Never said please. She was as tough as nails, mostly because she had to be. She was in a career that was male dominated, where females were a liability, and from a family of all Alpha over-the-fucking-top Men, but right now she didn’t care. Right now she was a girl and damn it all she needed to be saved because she sure as shit couldn’t do it herself.

The door opened again. “The preparers,” as she called them, entered the room with towels and a robe. Granted, it was one of those just-to-the-hips Geisha types, but she didn’t care. At this moment anything would be better than being naked!

“Come on, kiddo, time to get a bath and wash your hair. Let’s hope for your sake that the new client likes you,” smaller man number one told her. “Otherwise the Triplets get you and well”—he shuddered—“that wouldn’t be pretty, not since you blinded one, made another van Gogh, and the other is still trying to get his balls to drop from where you kicked him,” she was told with a tsking sound. “Maybe we should dose her again.”

“Yeah, I think that would be a good idea,” goon number two told number one. “Get the dose ready.” He looked at her and grinned. “It will make her more relaxed and hopefully the client won’t realize what a hellcat she is until he’s already broken her in. We should also make sure that the boss knows what she’s been given so that he can ensure that the buyer understands that he needs to keep the dose up.” Which was an added profit for them since the person who bought the girls would have to continue to buy the drugs to keep the girls high as kites. Petting her hair, he sighed. “I’m going to miss this one. Her hair at least. If only they would let me cut it.” Her hair, when clean, was a bright strawberry blonde, long and straight with natural copper and gold highlights in it.

Inside of her mind she was dying a bit more. Another dose? God, she didn’t know if she could survive much more. Tears fell unbidden from her eyes. She felt the pain of the needle and then again the heavy fog that surrounded her took over. She barely realized when they cleaned her, hardly recognized she was walking as they moved her from the hole she had been kept in and out onto a platform. She felt the silken robe being removed from her body. Her hair fell like a curtain around her face. One spotlight lit her from above and another from below to ensure she was completely illuminated.

Getting out of the SUV once his “muscle” signaled the all clear, Allister buttoned his expensive suit jacket, pulled the cuffs of his shirt, and looked around as if it was all an inconvenience for such an important man as himself. Rainier played his part well, too, acting a little shifty and nervous, not like the powerful cat they all knew him to be. If Allister didn’t know better he’d swear the changer was channeling a rat.

Waving off Mac, who leaned in to murmur some nonsense to him, he shot him a look. “We have enough business here to attend to. The rest can wait until things are more private.” Getting a deferential nod and warning look, he almost smirked. He did internally though and fought not to match his twin’s snicker.

Moving toward the small group waiting to greet them, he paused. “Monsieur l’Aurette, I presume?” he said to the one that appeared to be in charge of it all.

“Welcome, Mr. Fairbanks.” The man smiled wide, too much teeth, using Allister’s alias surname.

Shaking hands with the man made Allister want to immediately shower and disinfect every part of his body. Maybe burn off the top few layers of skin to ensure the slime didn’t permeate.

“Please come inside out of this terrible heat,” l’Aurette told him with a wide sweep of his arm, his guards and a woman that smiled too much moving out of their path. “We have air conditioning inside so it will be much more comfortable and civilized for us to conduct our business.”

Following him in, he saw Sully tap the face of his watch and nodded, knowing that l’Aurette saw the movement. “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but I’m on a bit of a time crunch today. Unfortunately things are not playing out as they should.” He shot a glare at Rainier, who flinched and looked like he was about ready to burst into a sweat any second. The guy seriously was in line for an Academy Award.

“Understandable, Mr. Fairbanks. Sometimes good help is just so hard to find,” l’Aurette gushed and moved forward at a quick pace. “Well, we will, this one time, toss aside convention and dismiss the small talk. Perhaps on your next visit…” He left it hanging.

“If everything is as promised, I think we could arrange a much more leisurely visit for some small talk and more relaxed browsing,” Allister allowed with a faint shrug.

“Excellent, then let’s proceed immediately to the showroom. I have just the thing, I believe, but because I know just what a connoisseur you are, I’ve also set out a few extra pieces in case I was way off with my guess.” Stepping through a door into a room, Allister removed his sunglasses and looked around at the six small daises that were arranged, all under bright spotlights, and froze, his nose picking up the scent of drugs and of his mate. Holy mother of the Gods.