Omega Force 01- Storm Force (15 page)

Mori adjusted the thin
bedspread she’d wrapped around her shoulders, unable to find a position that
didn’t make her want to scream and claw her way outside her body.

For a while, she’d clutch the spread around her in an
attempt to trap enough body heat inside to warm her cold, clammy skin, all the
while keeping the rough fabric away from her back. An hour later, she’d be
sweating as if baking from the inside. She should have been famished after at
least fifteen or sixteen hours without food — not that Michael had left her with a
watch — but the thought of it sparked waves of nausea.

She’d tried
shifting twice for warmth, but hadn’t been able to call upon the power and
focus it required. Shifting wasn’t painful, but it consumed a lot of energy.
She’d shift spontaneously if threatened, as when Michael had branded her, but
needed to stay in human form to heal.

The
inability to shift, plus her erratic body temperature, flashed warning signs
that an infection could be setting in already. Who knew if the wound had been
cleaned or not? Her guess was that it hadn’t. Michael had probably carted her
to the attic in her shifted form, dumped her on the bed, and sashayed off to
enjoy an evening with his real fiancée.

Sleep would
promote healing, but pain and anger and fear had blocked sleep from reach. The
blinking red dots in each corner mocked her with the reminder that unknown sets
of eyes followed her every move.

She turned
her back to the camera nearest the bed and lowered the spread to bare her back
more fully. “Michael, if you’re listening, I need a doctor. I need antibiotics.
You’re not going to get your new generation of Dires
if I die of infection.”

The monitor
remained black, the house silent but for the gentle hum of the air-conditioning
system. The red light blinked with malevolence, like the Eye of Sauron from atop Mount Doom.

Good Lord,
if she were mentally likening her dilemma to the quest of a hobbit in
Lord of the Rings
, maybe the infection
had already spread to her brain. After all, she’d spent at least an hour last
night staring through the window at a golden eagle.

The big
raptor had strutted awkwardly from side to side, its long talons gouged into
the wood of the broad sill, its glossy reddish-brown wings sweeping across the
glass. Occasionally, it would stop and watch her with sharp, golden eyes. A few
times, it pecked on the glass with the end of its curved beak, as if trying to
break its way inside. Mostly, it looked past her. Around her.
Like it was checking out the room and she was blocking its view.

Finally,
with a squawk and a flutter of feathers, it had flown away. Mori had remained
in the chair pulled up to the window, shivering and sweating in turn. The more
time that passed, the more she thought she’d imagined the whole bird thing.
She’d thought an eagle had followed her to the ranch on the night of her
birthday, after all. Which, even then, had seemed paranoid
and stupid.

Maybe her
stressed-out brain had conjured up its own avatar for impending madness.

At last,
dawn’s gray sky ushered in shades of gold and peach to signal the beginning of
another day. The first Friday of the rest of her miserable
life. Mori shivered and wondered if a hot shower would help the chills
that had settled deep in her bones, and maybe wash away the self-pity that
created nothing but a sense of helplessness.

Knowing
Michael, there was no hot water. She shuffled across the room to the bathroom,
the edges of the plaid bedspread dragging on the wooden floor behind her like
the train of the world’s ugliest wedding dress.

She’d have
to keep the water off her back, where she thought even a touch as light as one
of her imaginary eagle’s feathers would prove unbearable. Unlike the rest of
her, that scorched patch of skin between her shoulder blades still felt as if
it were blanketed in hot coals.

The
contrast of heat and chill left her dizzy after the exertion of walking the
eight steps from bed to bathroom. She leaned over the small dressing table in
the bathroom with a hand clutched to either side of the white porcelain, waiting
for the spins to slow down and her vision to clear. She ran some water from the
faucet into her cupped palm, drank it, and continued to hang over the sink
until she knew she could keep it down.
Yay
, me.
I didn’t barf.

When her legs felt more like muscle and bone and less
like rubber, Mori turned to examine the small shower that had been installed in
the corner. Looking somewhat like a phone booth with clear glass sides, it at
least had knobs for both hot and cold water. She opened the door, but as she
reached to turn the knob, a red light in the corner over the toilet caught her
attention. Another damned camera pointed right at the shower. The idea of showering
under the invisible gaze of Michael or creepy, ear-tugging Travis made bile
rise in her throat.

She scanned the rest of the room. No other cameras were
visible, and since the toilet was underneath it, at least she could pee without
feeling eyes were on her.

Screw the shower. It would’ve been hard to keep her back
dry, anyway. Maybe she’d never shower again, then, and see how Michael liked
her after a month or two.

With a
sigh, Mori walked back into the bedroom and stopped short. Either madness had finally
taken hold or the eagle was back. She still hated Michael, which meant she was
sane, and it was daylight now. No way was this an avian figment of her
imagination.

It hopped from side to side on the broad sill, holding something
in its mouth. At first, Mori thought it was a leaf or a bit of trash the bird
might be using to build a nest — was this even nesting season for raptors? But as
she drew nearer to the window, she realized what the bird gripped in its wickedly
curved beak was a small sheet of paper. With writing on it.
And her name at the top.

Heart pounding, Mori glanced up at the four cameras, each
in turn. Only one looked as if its field of view might include the window, and
even then, it would be at an oblique angle. Her watchers could see her at the window
but not what was outside.

Her heart
sped at the thought of help arriving, then slowed just
as quickly. Who knew she was here? And what did a freaking
eagle
have to do with it?

Mori resisted the urge to rush to the window and draw the
attention of whoever was watching — maybe Michael, checking on his property
before going to work. She paced around the room a few times, moving slowly, mindful of making any sudden turns to further
irritate her back.

Finally, on
her third pass, she stopped in front of the window as if pausing to look at the
world being denied to her, praying that whoever had taken the early-morning
Mori watch would think nothing was amiss.

The eagle raised its head to help her better read the
note, then remained still as she drew closer. Neat
block letters marched across the page, three short lines of black ink on a
torn-off piece of what looked like hotel stationery.

MORI — HELP COMING.

AVOID WINDOW.

ACT NORMAL.

A laugh escaped her before she could stop it, and she
turned from the window quickly. There was nothing normal about any of this.
But…Help was coming! She couldn’t stop the hope that awoke inside her, drifting
like smoke around the hard lump of fear in her heart and rising above it to
send her brain humming. It might not be Kell; it
could be anyone. At this point, she didn’t care, as long as she got out of this
room, out of this house.

Her gut
told her it was Kell, though. He was the only one who
might figure out where she was and might care enough to do something about it.
It certainly wasn’t her parents, and none of the other Dire
males would dare defy Michael.

Her memory had etched Kell’s
face into her mind, wearing the expression she’d seen just before walking out
of the hotel room in Baytown. Begging her to trust him, to
not try to handle things alone, to let him save her. Some part of her
had known that beautiful, fearless, clueless man was going to come for her. He
knew about Michael, or at least had strong suspicions about Michael. He knew
just enough to march right into Michael’s plans. And no matter how good he was
at his job, how smart or well trained, Kell would not
be prepared to fight shape-shifters.

Or would he?
He’d asked about the jaguarundis — had used the term
shifter
. In the chaos following that
conversation, she’d forgotten that detail, and remembering both ramped up her
hope for herself and her fear for Kell.

Better she
never be rescued than allow him to fall into Michael’s hands.

Mori hadn’t
prayed in a long time. She’d been raised on a peculiar combination of mystical Dire lore and Texas Bible-thumping that never made sense to
her. But she prayed now, silently, constantly, like an endless loop of audio
streaming out pleas for help. She didn’t dare pray for rescue. Only that if Kell came for her, he not be killed or caught.

By the time
Mori made another slow walk around the room, the eagle had disappeared. The
excitement had turned her chills to heat again, so she loosened the spread
around her and returned to the bed. Curling up on her side, facing the window,
she could watch for the eagle’s return without attracting attention.

Twice, she
thought she heard noises from outside, and it took all her willpower to stay in
place. As time dragged on, the chills returned, and she pulled the bedspread
around her more tightly, moaning as it pressed on her back like the fiery hand
of an angry god. Because if he was up there, he must be
mighty pissed off.

For what seemed like hours, she lay in a twilight state
between a doze and a trance, eyes trained on the window as if Kell himself might come bursting through it in a spray of
shattering wood and glass. When something finally did appear at the window, it
took a few seconds to register.

It was a
rope, dangling from somewhere above.

She dared not move lest whoever watched her on the
cameras suspect anything, but her breath caught when a pair of boots lowered
into view, followed by long black-clad legs, a tool belt strapped around a
narrow waist, and finally, a pair of broad shoulders and a strong-jawed face
framed by long black waves of hair. A man with eyes such a
brilliant green he had to be wearing colored contact lenses.

He cupped gloved hands around his eyes and peered through
the glass, his gaze scanning the room before it finally locked on Mori. He held
a finger up to his mouth.

Quiet. She could be quiet, although it wouldn’t surprise
her if the microphones in the room could pick up her heartbeat. It thumped so
hard she could feel streaks of fiery heat reverberate across her back at every
beat.

Willing herself to remain still, Mori watched as the man
looped the lower end of the rope around his upper thighs and waist, deftly
knotting it into a makeshift seat. With both hands free and his boots planted
on the outside wall for stability, he felt around the edges of the window,
fumbled with his tool belt, and pulled out some type of wrench.

He worked silently, unbolting the steel casing that
locked the window into place. Finally, he replaced the wrench with a lever bar
and eased the top of the window outward, toward him. The sound of metal
scraping metal seemed way too loud, so Mori feigned a coughing fit to cover the
noise, ignoring the pain each movement caused.

Finally, the window came free of the frame. Mori sat up
fast, dragging the bedspread across her back with enough roughness that the
room swirled in gray. She hung her head and clutched the thin mattress on
either side of her, willing herself not to faint. Not now. Not when the fresh,
warm air had already begun filtering into the room.

“Mori?” The man’s whisper was so
soft she wasn’t sure he’d really spoken until she raised her head and found him
watching her intently. “Stay where you are for now. The house isn’t secure
yet.”

She gave a slight nod to show she understood. He grinned,
balanced the window on his thighs, and looked upward. Just as slowly as he’d
lowered himself into view, someone from above began pulling him up. Soon, all
she could see were legs, then boots, then nothing.

The hot air
spilling in from the outside smelled like freedom. A plane flew overhead. Birds
sang in the gardens below, the gurgling of the fountain like laughter in the
background. Mori closed her eyes and let the warmth seep into her. Funny how
hope lessened the pain in her back, the promise of help erasing the fatigue and
hunger.

At a loud
squawk from the window, Mori opened her eyes, no longer surprised to see the
eagle sitting in the open frame. It stared at her a moment, then swiveled its
head and leaned in a fraction, studying the cameras in the facing corners. Why
hadn’t Mori realized before? This could well be an eagle-shifter. Maybe Kell hadn’t seemed freaked out about the existence of jaguarundi-shifters because he worked with an eagle.

Or was that
too far-fetched? How would an Army guy get mixed up with a shape-shifter?

She’d
assumed the big dark-haired guy was a member of Kell’s
team, but maybe she was wrong. If there were shifters involved, she wasn’t sure
who was rescuing her — or why.    

Nik
rattled his bag of chips as he dug the last crumbs out of the bottom. The noise
grated on Kell’s last nerve. “Where’d Gadget scrounge
up this lawn-service van?”

Kell’s eyes maintained a sweeping scan of the neighborhood
a block from Michael Benedict’s house. The clock on the van’s dash read 6:58 a.m.,
and they’d been here for a half hour, hoping anyone who spotted them would
assume they were part of the
bayou lawn
service
crew. Just two green thumbs sitting in their baby-puke-green van
and waiting till it was time to clock in and prune some roses.

“He has a
cousin who owns the place and didn’t mind loaning it out, no questions asked,” Kell said. “And if you rattle that bag one more time, I’m gonna hurt you.”

He was
spared from having to apologize — again — by the buzz of his phone. He’d set the
Gator ringtone to silent mode for this operation.

“Window’s
out.” Archer’s voice was soft.

“How’s
Mori?” Yeah, Kell’s first question should have been
if the kitty had run into complications, or had seen anything else in the
security setup they needed to know about, or had a visual on Michael Benedict.
But they’d already established that Kell’s priorities
had been screwed six ways to Sunday. “You see her?”

“She’s OK.
Looks a little unsteady, but she’s following direction
and knows the house isn’t secure yet. Robin’s on standby. As soon as the lights
on the security cameras go down, she’s ready to enter. Also got the make of the front door lock for you — Schnabel.”

Good. An
easy dead bolt to bump and he had what he needed to do it.

Kell glanced at the clock. “Give Benedict until eight
o’clock to leave. We move as soon as he’s out. If he hasn’t left by then, we
move anyway. Wait for my signal.”

He ended
the call and stuffed the phone back in his pocket. Talk about a hastily
conceived mission plan. He’d had some fucked-up assignments over the years, but
none with more unknowns than this one. Human enemies at least had physical
limitations. Who knew how many shifters might be inside, what kind they were,
or what they could do?

One thing
Benedict’s people had almost assuredly done — murdered Carl Felderman.
The governor had been killed with a single rifle shot to the head, by someone
who knew what he was doing. A single-shot kill through an upper-floor hotel
window at long range was classic sharpshooter fare. At least, that’s what was
being reported on the radio. After he and Nik had
heard the gunshot and ran a quick check to make sure Felderman
couldn’t be saved, they’d hustled back to Nik’s
apartment to plan the mission.

“So?” Nik checked the clip in his weapon for at least the third
time. “How’s our target?” 

Kell knew what his friend was doing, but referring to Mori
as a target wasn’t going to make him forget that this extraction meant more to
him than duty. “Don’t sweat it, Nik. I’m not going to
fuck up the mission.”
Especially
this mission
.

“Garage door.” Nik straightened in
his seat, and Kell leaned forward and grabbed the
small binoculars from the dash. The recessed garage doors on the east side of
the house slid open slowly, revealing a black Lexus that backed out the short
drive to the side street.

Kell squinted through the binoculars’ viewfinder and
adjusted the focus until a well-groomed head of dark hair was visible in the
driver’s seat. “So long, asshole.”

“It’s
Benedict?” Nik reached behind his seat and fished out
his gear belt. They’d agreed that packs would be too bulky and tried to
anticipate anything they might need. If all else failed, they had combat knives
as well as their firearms.

“Himself. And alone.” Kell speed-dialed Gadget, who’d been working from New
Orleans to identify the estate’s security system.

Gadget
answered on the first ring. “Are we a go?”

“Yep. Tell me what we know.”

Kell heard the clicks of a keyboard as Gadget did his
magic. “OK, I was able to procure a schematic from the files of the company
that installed the system.”

Procure
was Gadget-speak for
steal
, but Kell
could live with that. He switched the phone to speaker so Nik
could hear. “What are we dealing with?”

“Two
separate units.” More clicks in the background while Gadget talked. “The first
is a standard setup that monitors open doors and windows on the first floor
only. No motion sensors. All the alarms link to the main power supply, located
inside the garage door. Cut the power, and you have thirty seconds to get
inside the house and close the door behind you before it switches to battery
backup. If a door or window is open at that point, an intruder signal goes
straight to the police.”

Kell took notes from Gadget’s descriptions and sketched the
house and location of the power cables. “What about the second system?”

“That one’s
just for the attic, and it’s new — installed about a month ago.”

That
fucking jerk had been planning Mori’s abduction since before the bombing? What
kind of hold did Benedict have over her that she’d handcuffed Kell in that hotel room and gone straight to him?

Nik cleared his throat, and Kell mentally
slapped himself back into focus. There would be time later to get answers.
“What’s the setup?”

“There’s a
central monitoring station on the first floor. The work order describes it as a
study on the west side of the house,” Gadget said. “Five monitors are installed
there, plus a sixth in the attic. The first-floor monitors get feeds from the
attic cameras, and the attic monitor gets audio and video from a computer cam
in the study. Again, one basic set of lines running into that single computer,
and no battery backup on that one. No alarms, either. Benedict must’ve been
pretty sure no one would come to save her.”

Cocky bastard. At least it made things easier for Kell’s team.

After
getting a few more details from Gadget and ending the call, Kell
handed his notes to Nik. “Sounds like a pretty basic
setup. We’ll stay linked with our headsets. Take out the main power cables. Let
me know just before you flip the switch, and I’ll use that thirty-second window
to get inside. It’ll look like a power failure. Take out whoever comes to check
the fuse box.”

He stared
at the house, thinking. “Call Archer and tell him to create a distraction on
the east side of the house as soon as you get in the garage. Maybe we can draw
the staff to that area so I can get to the study and take down the attic
security.”

“Got it.” Nik tossed the notes on
the console as Kell cranked the van and moved it to a
spot on the side street just out of view of the garage. Thank God for corner
lots.

Kell slipped his own belt into place and pulled on a pair
of thin, lightweight gloves. No fingerprints at this scene. He wedged a
wireless headset into his ear and nodded at Nik,
who’d donned his own headset before calling Archer with the plan. It would be
important to stay in voice contact from here on. He wished he’d asked Robin to
strap a headset to her leg.

They walked
to the edge of the property, and Kell slipped behind
a broad-leafed palm to wait. The security cameras on this side of the house
were trained on the driveway, so if anyone were monitoring them, they wouldn’t
see Nik’s cautious approach to the garage door. Benedict
was arrogant enough to not be watching the general monitors, though. Kell would bet his next paycheck all eyes would be on the video
feed from the attic.

Kell waited as Nik slipped a long
wire from the side pocket of his cargo pants, leapt like a monkey onto a ledge
beside the garage, and threaded the wire through the top of the wide door. The
two minutes it took him to hook the wire onto the release catch dangling from
the electronic door-opening mechanism seemed to last a week, but finally, Nik eased himself back to the ground and raised the garage
door manually.

He looked
back at Kell and nodded.

“Showtime,
Kitten,” Kell muttered. A few seconds later, a sleek
black jaguar — what he’d always called a black cougar or panther until Archer and
Adam haughtily corrected him — slinked around the side of the house, looking in
windows. Kell had seen the brothers in cat form a lot
during their training, but the size still amazed him. This “kitten” easily
packed three hundred pounds of muscle and teeth.

A face
appeared on the inside of a first-floor window, looking out at Archer. Kell grinned; he could see the guy’s mouth drop open even
from across the lawn. Shouts followed from within the house.

Archer
began his routine, racing in circles around the side lawn, rolling on his back
in the grass, and finally, stopping to swipe a tongue the size of a baby
blanket across one massive paw. One lick, two licks, three — he’d spotted three
people.

Kell nodded. Good odds for success if that was all of them.
Now it was showtime for him.

He pushed
Mori as far back in his mind as he could get her and skirted the outer edges of
the property, ducking from one landscaping feature to the next until he reached
the front corner of the house. No more cover remained.

Figuring a
man wearing dark clothes in the late-August heat would attract more attention
running than walking, Kell
said a quick prayer and broke the cover of the azalea stand. He strode up the
circular drive to the arched front door and waited,
the tools to pop the dead bolt in his right hand. “In position,” he whispered.

It seemed
like an eon passed before Nik responded: “Turning the
juice off in three…two…one…now.”

Kell had knelt in front of the door during Nik’s countdown. Now, he inserted a blank Schnabel key into
the lockset, pressing and turning while he tapped firmly on the key with the
end of a screwdriver. His muscles told him to hurry, to do it fast, but his
brain overrode his body’s panic response. He finally heard the bolt slide with
a click.

Easing the
door open, he stepped inside and closed it softly behind him. According to his
watch, he’d had four seconds to spare. Not bad for a broken-down soldier. “In,”
he told the others in a whisper.

He crouched
behind a table in a recessed section of an ornate circular foyer to get his
bearings. Above his head rose a curved staircase with a wrought-iron banister.
To his far left lay what looked like the entrance to a formal dining room. He’d
guess the door to the right of the staircase, opening to the west, was either
the study or led to the study.

“It’s just
a fucking power outage. Either that or the AC’s working so hard to cool this
place that it’s flipped a breaker. What d’you make of
that cat?”

Kell ducked lower, squinting through a profusion of leaves
from a potted plant as two men walked into the foyer from the room on the left.
One was about his height, one a bit shorter. The shorter man wore jeans and a
T-shirt. Muscle, probably. No surprise there. The tall guy wore a button-front
shirt and khakis. Maybe a regular member of the house staff.

“Don’t
know, but it’s gone now, so forget it. Go to the garage and check the breaker.”
The shorter of the men pointed the taller guy toward the dining area. Kell figured a kitchen must lead off from there, and the
garage door probably led into the kitchen. “I’ll make sure the monitors in the
study have gone to backup.”

The taller
man laughed. “Yeah right, Travis. You’re hoping the chick in the attic will be
taking a shower.”

“Fuck
yeah.”

A flash of
anger threatened to dash Kell’s shaky calm. So the
short dude with the brown hair was Travis, one of the jaguarundi-shifters
who’d turned the governor into a freak and maybe even the one who’d killed him.
He’d done his jaguarundi research. The cats weren’t
very big, but he’d learned from Robin that, in a shape-shifter, size was no
indicator of strength.

As soon as
the tall guy was out of sight and Travis had disappeared through the door to
the right, Kell eased out from behind the plant
table, wincing at the stab of fire that shot from his back all the way down his
right leg. No time to let it warm up. At least one of Benedict’s people remained
unaccounted for.

He pulled
his weapon and eased the slide back, ready to fire. A quick look inside the
door revealed no one, so Kell stepped softly into a
long rectangular living room. Despite overstuffed furniture made for lounging and
a huge fireplace, the room looked anything but lived-in. It was as cold and
sterile as the rest of Benedict’s palace.

A cold stab
of hatred shot through Kell’s veins as he passed the
fireplace and noticed a long metal rod with a “B” formed on the end. Its rustic
craftsmanship clashed with the elegance of the room and the white mantel on
which it rested. It was the branding iron, with caked-on ashes at the end that
had once been Mori’s skin.

Kell promised himself he would kill Michael Benedict or die
trying. But not this morning. His first priority was
Mori’s safety.

Voices
wafted from a doorway at the far end of the room. Male.
At least two of them. Kell
walked softly along the wall, his weapon held in front of him.

He paused
outside the open doorway. Definitely two guys talking. If there was a third, he
was silent.

“Wish that
goddamn woman would do something. She just lies there wrapped up in that bedspread
like a mummy.” A nasal voice, high in pitch.

“Yeah, but
you shoulda seen her last night.” Travis — that
voice, Kell recognized from the foyer. “Naked as anybody’s business. Nice tits and ass. You wait; watching
the bitch will be a detail we’ll fight over.”

Not happening
.

Kell stepped into the doorway, glad to see both guys had
their backs turned as they hunched over a monitor. He’d focus on Travis and
keep the other guy in his sights. “Wrong, Travis.”

Both men
whirled to stare at him, and for a moment, all three of them were frozen in
place. Then chaos erupted as Travis pulled a weapon and Kell
fired twice in quick succession.