Administrative Control (Immortal Ops) (8 page)

All the men nodded.
 

Lukian pressed a thin smile to his face. “We’re here for you, sir. You know that, right?”

“And I thank you for that.”

Lukian sighed, running a hand over his face. He appeared tired. “I thought at my age, I’d seen everything.”

Laughing, Asher remained in place. “Lukian, no offense, but you really haven’t seen shit.”

“Are mermaids real?” asked Wilson. He put his hands up. “Hey, I figured while we’re on the subject of shit we thought was fairy tales, I’d ask. I’d like to think I’m not the only man here who, prior to being mated, had some really great erotic fantasies built up about being stranded on a deserted island with a harem of mermaids at his disposal.”

Lukian covered his eyes and grunted. “Dumbass.”

Asher smiled and nodded. “Oh yeah, they’re real.”

“Bullshit!” yelled Roi, standing and making his chair fall over once more. He blushed. “Um, no way. Really?”

“Really. Though they’re rare to find anymore. And some of them are bat-shit crazy.”

Lukian eyed the colonel. “I think you’re screwing with us.”

Asher flashed a wide smile. “I think you’re right.”

Lukian touched his friend’s arm. “Sit before you break something.”

Asher watched the men, enjoying the sense of brotherhood that came from what they did.
 

“What the hell are we doing here, exactly? Krauss behind the pier slaughters?” asked Roi, sitting without bothering to try to appear calm. “I’m sick and tired of the German prick. How can one man older than dirt evade us?”

“First,” said Asher, “you have no idea how right you are. Krauss is much older than he even appears. Trust me, gentlemen, he’s seen more days than all of you put together.”

“No,” said Lukian, shaking his head, touching a chair. “Really?”

“Really.” Asher remained standing.

A tall red-headed giant of a man entered the room. His shoulder width was enough that he filled the doorway. With as large and fit as he was, he looked like a total badass. Asher knew the man could be when called for, but was actually gentle by nature.

He smiled at the man. “Green. Good of you to join us.”

Green held a set of folders in his hands. “I gathered up what you asked for, sir.”

“Thank you,” said Asher. “Please see to it each man has one.”

Green passed out the folders and then took a seat. Asher didn’t need to see what Green had brought. He’d memorized it. Jinx and Aneta had gathered so much intel that they made a lot of agents within PSI look incompetent from their sheer lack of producing anything close to this magnitude of information.

Sex could get just about any information out of anyone.

He thought about his wife. She was currently tucked safely away in his home here in Virginia, pissed that he’d forced her away from her club but happy to be with him. They were still working out the kinks of what would become of her club without her being there to run it full time. Aneta was more than capable and Asher had a strong sense that Jinx would hand the keys over to her trusted friend.

Asher had seen to it that PSI operatives were assigned to the club to watch over it, making sure Helmuth didn’t send any more surprises.
 

Asher looked to his men as they pored through the information before them. It was overwhelming. He knew.

“What the fuck am I looking at?” asked Roi, the severity of it all sinking in.

Wilson glanced at Roi’s files as if his were somehow different from the ones before him. He covered his mouth with one hand and then pulled it away, shock evident on his face. “There is another team of I-Ops? There are others like us? Engineered supernaturals?”

Roi pointed to another page. “The Outcasts didn’t die in the fires? Where the hell are they all and what is our government doing with them?”

Asher exhaled slowly. “I’m digging for information on them. So far, Weston Carol is the only one who has surfaced enough to gather any details on.”

Green cleared his throat. “Weston was a good man. We were told he died on the operating table after complications from the genetic altering.”

“We were fucking lied to,” breathed Wilson. “A lot.”

Green touched the filed before him. “I can see keeping some details from us in the start—in case we too snapped mentally or were captured or something. But we’ve been at this a long time. We’re stable.”

“Speak for yourself,” managed Roi, finding at least some humor in a humorless situation.
 

Lukian remained strangely quiet and Asher knew why—he was pissed. He’d been led to believe the surviving Ops were the only ones remaining. So had Asher. Everything they’d been told had been a lie. It didn’t sit well with Asher either. “Why didn’t you tell me the minute you had all this cross your path?” asked Lukian in a hushed tone. The tension in his shoulders showed with abundance.

Asher knew Lukian’s reaction came from somewhere much deeper than simply being lied to. Lukian’s DNA had been used during the attempted creations of various Immortal Ops Teams. Prior to Lukian’s arrival they’d lost many good men. Men who volunteered in hopes of serving their country at an entirely new level. They’d not banked on the hand they’d been dealt, or the fact the survival rate during early testing stages was nearly zero percent.

Weston had been one of the men to receive Lukian’s DNA. The Ops had seen what could happen to an Outcast—Parker had ended up twisted and mentally unstable. None of them wanted to think Weston met that same fate.

“Because no matter what, I knew you’d take this bad. It gets worse,” said Asher.

“Meaning?” Lukian’s eyes fluttered shut momentarily.

“Preliminary reports on the Seattle bloodshed are pointing in the direction of some Outcasts,” said Asher. He didn’t want to be the bearer of the news. No one in their right mind would. This wasn’t information anyone wanted to hear, let alone a man whose DNA had been used.

Wilson lowered his head, his temper coming through. “You mean the brave men who signed on for this but ended up dead because of the fuck-ups of the scientists? They end up slaughter on a pier and we find out how many days later?”

“Hey,” injected Green. “Colonel wasn’t here for any of that. You know as well as I do that he wasn’t part of the organization when we were created. He came on after. And, they weren’t the slaughtered, Wilson. From what we’ve been able to gather, they might very well have been the ones doing the killing.”

Wilson gasped.

“I don’t know what I know anymore,” said Roi, thumbing through the files. “Missy once asked me if I was I-Ops Team One or Two. I thought she was nuts. But she was right.”

Asher nodded. “She is the reason I asked Jinx to put an ear to the ground to start with. I started digging for more information after Missy’s intel came past my desk. I didn’t find anything, but that was the problem,” Asher admitted. “I should have found something. The very fact there was nothing, no mention of the Outcasts, no anything, it made me wonder who was doing what to try to clean up everything to do with the Ops teams.”

“This has to go high and deep,” said Lukian. “And no, I don’t blame you.”

“We should call Jon back in,” said Wilson. “He was close to Weston. He’ll want to know he’s still alive.”
 

Asher put his hands on the back of the chair before him and looked at his men. Jon had finally called in, letting them all know he was fine but that he needed more personal time. Asher couldn’t have agreed more. “Jon is where he needs to be. His head isn’t in the game. He could get himself killed. None of us want that. Besides, you all need to go to the last page of the files before you. I think you’ll understand why we can’t recall Jon right now.”

Lukian flipped to the last page and gasped. “He’s alive?”

“Who?” asked Wilson, looking as well. He leapt back in his seat. “We buried him. We were
all
there.”
 

“We buried what we thought was Lance’s body,” said Asher, his tone solemn. He couldn’t let the rage inside him out. He knew as much but his anger burned deep.
 

“Our government did this?” asked Roi. “They fucking switched bodies and did what with Lance?”
 

“Not our government,” said Green. “Read more. Krauss and Molyneux were behind it. This is one thing we can’t pin on the men in charge.”

“Christ, you’re telling me Krauss has had Lance all this time?” asked Roi, his skin pale as he looked as though he were about to be sick.

“I’m telling you that information before you is all I have. I’m done keeping secrets from you,” returned Asher. “You know what I know.”

“Are we going through the proper channels to get him back?” asked Lukian, an edge to his voice.
 

“Fuck no,” answered Asher. “Not until we know who in those channels can be trusted. From this point on, we’re on the same lockdown that PSI is. We keep our friends close and we bring in people we trust fully. No one else. Got it?”
 

The men nodded. “Yes, sir,” they said.

“Now, let’s get out there and meet with contacts and informants. General Newman and I are going to pool resources and see what else we can find out. I’m tired of being on the defensive. It’s time we formulated a plan and got ahead of this all.”

His men stood and each saluted him before exiting the room. Lukian paused at the doorway. He looked over his shoulder. “If Jon finds out we kept this from him, he won’t take it well.”
 

“No, but in his current state of mind, he’ll run headfirst into danger and get himself and possibly others killed,” said Asher.
 

Lukian pursed his lips. “I know.”

THE END

About the Author, Mandy M. Roth

Mandy M. Roth 
grew up fascinated by creatures that go bump in the night. From the very beginning, she showed signs of creativity—writing, painting, telling scary stories that left her little brother afraid to come out from under his bed. Combining her creativity with her passion for the paranormal has left her banging on the keyboard into the wee hours of the night.

She’s a self-proclaimed Goonie, loves 80s music and movies and wishes leg warmers would come back into fashion. She also thinks the movie
The Breakfast Club
should be mandatory viewing for...okay, everyone. When she's not dancing around her office to the sounds of the 80s or writing books, she can be found designing book covers for New York publishers, small presses, and indie authors.

Mandy writes for The Raven Books, Samhain Publishing, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Harlequin Spice, Pocket Books and Random House/Virgin/Black Lace. Mandy also writes under the pen names Reagan Hawk, Mandy Balde, Rory Michaels and Kennedy Kovit.

To learn more about Mandy, please visit
http://www.mandyroth.com
or send an email to [email protected]
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The Raven Books’ Complimentary Material

The following material is free of charge. It will never affect the price of your book.

Act of Mercy (PSI-Ops/ Immortal Ops) by Mandy M. Roth

Book One in the PSI-Ops Series

Paranormal Security and Intelligence Operative Duke Marlow has a new mission: find, interrogate and possibly eliminate the target—Mercy Deluca. He knows looks can be deceiving, but it's hard to believe the beautifully quirky woman running around in a superhero t-shirt is a viable threat. The sexy little biomedical engineer quickly proves she is more than he bargained for and Intel has it all wrong—she’s not the enemy. Far from it. Intel also forgot to mention one vital piece of information—she’s Duke’s mate. This immortal alpha werewolf doesn’t take kindly to her being in danger.

When Mercy accepted a position within Donavon Dynamics Corporation
,
she thought it was to help cure disease and to make a difference for mankind. She had no idea what her new career path truly entailed—monsters masquerading under the guise of scientific research. Unable to stomach the atrocities she’s uncovered, she reaches out through what she hopes is the proper channels, asking for help. Mercy gets more than she bargained for when a team of paranormal hotties show up on her doorstep ready to take down the Corporation. One in particular is able to get under her skin, both aggravating and exciting her in ways she can’t explain.

Excerpt from Act of Mercy

 
With a groan, Duke emailed off his reports. “I fucking hate this thing,” he said, as he tried to get the computer to go to sleep, but it kept instantly waking up. The thing was cursed. That or it had it in for him. One or the other.

“Name one thing you do like,” Striker mused.

Duke flashed a wide smile. “Women. I like women.”

“That you do.” Striker eased up next to Duke and held out his cell phone.

Duke looked at the small screen and tipped his head. “What the fuck is that?”

Striker beamed. “Picture of me in my kilt.”

“Where are the
rest
of your clothes and why are you standing in front of a mirror? What are you holding?”

Sighing, Striker shook his head as if he was going to need to speak to a child. “I’m holdin’ my phone to take the picture and the ladies like it when I post pictures of myself shirtless on my profile page.”