Omega (Alpha #3) (16 page)

“I love you more than I know how to express, Kyrie.”

“You should marry me,” I said with a grin. “That will express it pretty damn well.”

“Then you’d better get some sleep,” he said, his expression going serious. “Because that’s happening tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

He nodded, then leaned down and kissed me. “Tomorrow.”

I reached up and clung to his neck, squealing in happiness. “I can’t wait to be Mrs. Kyrie Roth.”
 

“You want to take my name?” he asked, sounding pleased.

“Well…
yeah
. Of course I do. I want to be yours in every way there is.”

“I know this is a strange time to ask, probably, but…what about children? When this is all sorted, when we can relax and be somewhere permanent, would you consider having children with me?”

I had to swallow hard against a thick hot knot of emotion. He wanted kids? Roth? My Valentine, my sexy, reclusive, billionaire fiancé wanted to have children with me?
 

“When we can be somewhere safe and permanent and there’s no threat,” I said, blinking against the welling tears in my eyes, “then yes, Valentine, I will have your children.”
 

“Then I have all the more reason to settle this than ever.” He scooped me up and set me at the head of the bed with a kiss. He fetched a towel and cleaned his seed away with gentle, loving strokes, and then lay beside me, wrapping me up in his arms.

“Kyrie Abigail Roth.”

“That’s me,” I murmured sleepily, realizing I wasn’t quite as sober as I’d thought.
 

“Tomorrow you become my wife.” He sounded as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

I felt the same way, but I was too near to sleep to form words. “Mmmm-hmmm,” was all I could manage.
 

His breathing matched mine, and then we slept.

8

LIGHTNING STRIKE

Four short, sharp raps on the door jolted me awake. I glanced out the window and saw that it was probably an hour or two before dawn, the sky still black but with muted shades of gray staining the horizon where it met the rippling, glinting sea.
 

“Mr. Roth.” It was Alexei. “Your presence is required, sir. Immediately as possible, please.”
 

I was still blinking myself awake as Roth scrambled out of bed and jumped into his shorts, not bothering with underwear, shirt, or shoes.
 

“Stay here,” he commanded as he glanced briefly at me.
 

“Fuck that. I need to know what’s going on.” I was out of bed too, grabbing an ankle-length stretchy cotton sundress, not bothering with any undergarments either.
 

“I said stay, Kyrie.”

I pushed out the door past him. “I’m not a fucking dog, Valentine.”

Alexei was waiting just outside the door, dressed exactly as he had been the last time I’d seen him, but now his jaw was dark with beard growth and his eyes had circles under them, although his gaze was as alert and sharp as ever. He had his finger along the outside of the trigger guard on his weapon, I noticed, rather than just casually gripping the handle. The webbing on his body armor now held three magazines of ammunition, as well as two grenade-like objects which I assumed were flash-bangs.
 

Something significant had happened, I realized.
 

Something bad.
 

Another man dressed and equipped identically to Alexei stood at the back door of the kitchen, rifle held in both hands, his finger as well snugged across the trigger guard, rifle butt tucked against his shoulder. I glanced out at the darkness of the forest beyond the courtyard and saw a shadow move in the darkness, starlight glinting on a gun barrel. Another figure emerged, this man wearing a pair of night vision goggles on his face, which he lifted as he approached us, leaning close to Alexei and muttering in his ear. Alexei keyed his mic and spoke into it in Russian.

Looking from Roth to me, Alexei simply said, “Follow me.”
 

He jerked his head toward the dense forest, and set off toward it at a quick walk. He had his rifle tucked into his shoulder, held at the ready, moving in a crouch and sweeping the barrel from side to side. The man with the goggles brought up the rear behind Roth and me.

“What the fuck is going on, Valentine? Where are Layla and Cal?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I know as much as you do, but I’m certain that Harris has Layla and Cal under protection.”
 

There was no clear path that I could see, but nonetheless Alexei led us unerringly between the trees through near complete darkness to a long, low building. He held open a thick steel door and ushered us in. I glanced back the way we’d come and realized I’d never be able to find the house by myself; a few yards into the undergrowth and everything looked different. Wilder, less tamed. And this place was hidden well, screened by foliage. The building was surrounded by a good twenty yards of clearing—for sight lines, I figured—but until you were right at the clearing, you’d never see it.

The building was windowless, lit only by fluorescent tubes. One entire wall was taken up by a bank of monitors, each screen showing a room in the main house. Most rooms, including the beach itself, were shown from two different angles. There were even cameras positioned in the forest. Opposite the bank of monitors was a floor-to-ceiling case containing an arsenal: assault rifles like those I’d already seen, as well as a huge assortment of handguns, shotguns, sniper rifles, machetes, flash-bangs and actual grenades, body armor, night vision goggles, and even something huge and terrifying that I thought might be a grenade launcher.

Harris was sitting at a metal table, a map spread out in front of him, a red pen in one hand and a ruler in the other, marking lines and Xs on the map. He was dressed like the rest of his security force: gray BDUs, black body armor, black “A1S” ball cap, sidearm, knife, and a rifle hanging by its strap from the corner of his chair. He had extra magazines on his body armor webbing, as well.
 

Harris didn’t just have a security company; he had a small mercenary army, each man armed to the teeth, loaded for bear.
 

So what had them on high alert?

I was about to ask when the door opened, and another member of the security team entered with Cal behind him. Cal looked overwhelmed and bewildered, and not a little amazed.
 

“Holy shit, Key,” he said. “You people don’t fuck around, do you? What’s going on, you have any idea? Ivan here won’t tell me.”

“Name is Sasha, Mr. St. Claire,” Cal’s escort said, his voice thick with a Russian accent.

“No, Cal, my people do not fuck around,” I said, “and no, I don’t know what’s going on. I think we’re about to find out, though.”

Cal went over to the rack of weapons. “Fuck me running, dude! Is that an M-203?”

“Touch that and I’ll break your fingers, kid,” Harris said, not looking up. He marked one more X on his map and then swiveled on his chair. “All right, now that we’re all here—”

“Wait,” I protested. “We’re
not
all here. Where’s Layla?”
 

Harris’s expression hardened, fury darkening his face. “That’s why we’re here. I’m not going to mince words, Kyrie: Vitaly took her. Snatched her right out from under my fucking nose.”

“How the
fuck
is that possible, Harris?” Roth said, snarling. “I thought you had this place more secure than the Pentagon?”
 

“I
did
,” Harris said, his voice a little too calm. “About an hour ago they set off some kind of low-tech EMP bomb that fried our circuits. At the same time, they hit my guys on the beach as a distraction. Lucas and Thresh both took heavy fire. Lucas is down but not out, and Thresh is—well, I’m pretty sure Thresh could lose a limb and still wreck shit, so I’m not worried about him. They also went after the
Eliza,
which, along with the the beach hit, was just a distraction. While that was going on four men infiltrated Layla’s room and took her. Dane gave pursuit and took out two of them, but received a wound to the throat in the process. Not sure he’ll make it. They had a launch waiting down by the beach, and by the time we had comms up and running and could coordinate with each other, they were gone. This was a pro hit, Roth. These weren’t Vitaly’s usual half-assed gorillas with AKs. It was quick, precise, and coordinated, and done by serious professionals.”

I was having trouble processing what he was saying. “Hold on, Harris. You—you’re saying someone
kidnapped
Layla? And someone is dying? Why did the gunfire not wake us up?”

Harris lifted his assault rifle. “Suppressors. Ops like this, you can’t have machine guns going off in the middle of the night or the local government would be all over our asses.”

“People were killed?”

“Vitaly’s guys lost six men and one was injured. Lucas took a round to the thigh and will be out of commission for a few months. Thresh took two rounds, one to the shoulder blade and one to the bicep, two more direct hits on his body armor, but that’ll leave nothing but bruises. Dane took a single round to the throat. He’s alive for now, but I don’t like his chances.”

“What about—what about Layla?” My voice cracked as I said her name.

“Before he lost consciousness Dane was able to communicate that she was unhurt.” Harris’s jaw clenched, his molars grinding. “It’s both good and bad that we’re dealing with Vitaly directly now rather than his crazy-ass daughter. You did the world a favor when you took her out, Kyrie. Vitaly has a different approach than his daughter. He doesn’t do things rashly out of passion. He won’t kill her or even hurt her unless it benefits him. If he wanted her or all of us dead, he would have just hit us with an airstrike or something. If he knows where we are and chose not to wipe us off the face of the planet, he has something else in mind. So that works in our favor. He won’t kill her unless he has to, because he really wants you two—” he pointed at Roth and me with a sweep of his index finger, “but we know he
will
kill her, which works against us. We don’t know where he has her, or what his long game is, which also works against us.”
 

Cal cleared his throat. “Hold on a fucking second, people. I have so many questions I don’t even know where to start. Who took Layla, and why? And when you said Kyrie ‘took her out’, what does that mean? Who did she take out? Kyrie…
killed
someone? And—”

I left Roth’s side and put my finger to Cal’s lips, silencing him, although I had to reach up to do so. “Calvin, little brother. Do me a favor, okay? Shut the hell up.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up, Key. Layla is gone, people are dead, and now I’m hearing that
you
killed someone? How did I not know about this? You’ve got to tell me what the hell is going on!”
 

“Cal, look—”

Roth stepped forward and put himself between Cal and me. “It’s a very long story, Cal, and we don’t have time to fill you in. The short version is this: I’ve got enemies you don’t want to know about—for your own good. My enemies are Kyrie’s enemies now, which she found out to her detriment several months ago. She did what she had to in order to stay alive, the details of which are her story to tell, not mine. And because my enemies have become hers, they’ve also become yours. Which means I’ve had—or rather Harris has had—men watching you for nearly a year now. Every move you made, every date you went on, every night spent studying or fucking or partying, they’ve been there out of sight, watching and protecting. You never knew, because you didn’t need to. But now that Layla has been abducted, you’ve been forced into a more serious situation. Going forward, you will be given information on a need-to-know basis, and you’ll stay here in this bunker under guard and you’ll keep your mouth shut, because it’s for your own good. We’ll have you returned to Chicago as soon as we deem it safe to do so, which could be a matter of days, or a matter of weeks. Months even. All of your needs will be seen to. I’ve been paying for your tuition and room and board for months now, and I will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, because you are important to your sister, and thus you are important to me. But, for now, what I need from you is for you to step back and shut up. Got it?”

Cal’s mouth snapped shut and his eyes glittered. “Got it.”
 

Roth turned to Harris. “Contact Ella and tell her—”

“Already done. I’ve got a man on her as we speak, sitting in her living room, watching the exits. I’ve got visuals on Robert, your parents, and Kyrie’s mom as well, and I’ve heightened security on all of them. Shit is locked down.”

Roth crossed the room to stand in front of Harris. Roth had two inches on him, and used them to good effect, staring down at him with anger in his eyes. “Swear to me right now that this couldn’t have been prevented, Harris.”
 

Harris stared back, chin lifting. “It was a calculated strike, Mr. Roth. It was fucking surgical. The whole thing with Layla took less than three minutes from first contact to when Thresh lost visual on the Zodiac. There was nothing else we could have done, sir. I’ve got two wounded and one dead or…as good as dead.”

Roth stepped back. “What are we doing to get her back?”

“I will rip this planet open to find her,” Harris said. “I swear on my immortal soul I will find her, and I will end the life of every motherfucker involved in taking her.” The vicious look in Harris’s eyes sent shivers down my spine.
 

“Get her back, Harris,” I said. “Please get her back.”

Harris moved to stand in front of me. “I’m so sorry, Kyrie. You have my word. I got Roth back, I got you back, and I’ll get her back. I promise.”

Roth took me by the arms, turning me to face him. “I hate to have to say this, love, but I think we have to postpone—”

I cut him off. “You think I’d get married when my best friend is missing? Really? I love you more than life, Roth, but I’m not getting married without Layla. She’s my family. So get us aboard the
Eliza
and get us out of here.”