Omega Force 01- Storm Force (26 page)

It was technically daytime
when Kell stirred, although most of the light in the
cabin still came from the fluorescent lanterns they’d left on while they slept.
He’d been dreaming of his mom. She’d been ironing one of his uniforms, crying
because he was leaving again. He’d reached to comfort her but instead had
clamped his hand onto the hot iron.

Only,
when he awoke, the burning didn’t stop.

Mori
nestled in the crook of his left arm. Kell lifted his
head and tried to look over her to see his hand without waking her. But those
brown eyes popped open before he’d gotten a glimpse of even one mangled finger.

She
sat up so he could pull his arm back, then they both studied the hand. It
looked even worse than last night. The swollen, purple fingers had taken on an
angry reddish hue, and they felt as if they were covered in hot coals.

“I
don’t like this,” Mori said, turning the hand over to study his palm. “You bring
those antibiotics with you?”

“In the duffel.” He hadn’t thought to take one since early
yesterday, before the disastrous meeting in Galveston.

Mori
went to retrieve the pills and a bottle of water. He watched the way her hips
swayed as she walked, even in rumpled khaki shorts. Her total comfort with her
body and her sensuality was a serious turn-on, and he was glad to note that his
pain level hadn’t entirely slaughtered his libido.

She
smiled. “Get your mind out of the gutter, Kellison — at
least until you’ve taken these.” She piled up the pillows so he could lean
against them and handed him the antibiotics, a glass of water, the huge
ibuprofen bottle, and a protein bar. “May I present you with our finest room service
gourmet breakfast? It’s guaranteed to keep all those pills from eating a hole
in your stomach.”

Yeah,
it was the same gourmet breakfast he ate most mornings.

“What about you?” Kell asked.

She
held up another protein bar as she crawled back onto the bed, sitting next to
him. “I’m good.”

“Yes,
you are.” He leaned into her for a kiss — soft, warm, and sweet. He ignored the
tightening in his balls; they could be ready for action all they wanted, but
his back and hand had other ideas. He kissed her again, with deep regret.

They
ate in silence, the wind moaning and crying like a living thing, which in a way
it was. The storm had a life span and a force that had to play itself out. So
far, the little cabin hadn’t moved. The cypress pilings it had been built on
went deep and had been repeatedly reinforced over the years.

But if he felt the floor so much
as vibrate beneath them, it would be time to put on
the orange life jackets lying on the floor inside the door.

“You
think this is the worst of it?” Mori settled next to him, her right shoulder touching
his left. He rested his mangled hand on her thigh, palm side up. Maybe the heat
from her body would ease some of the pain — or at least he told himself so.

“Probably not.”

If the storm had taken a
last-minute curve to the north and weakened offshore, which had been his
prediction (and he trusted his own forecasts more than the so-called
professionals), the maelstrom raging outside was probably Geneva’s leading
half.

“We
should have a lull when the eye goes over, then the second half will be the
worst of it.” Just to be safe, he reminded her where the life jackets were. “If
we end up going in the water, best thing to do out here is find a cypress knee
and hold on — those things are indestructible. Find a tall one, because the
water levels will go way up.”

Kell could tell from Mori’s expression that she had more on
her mind than hurricane survival. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her
bent knees, her gaze distant, her jaw tight.

The
wide neck of her T-shirt had slid down in the back, and the edge of the “B”
between her shoulder blades stood out, a shiny, pink new scar that looked as if
it had been applied to her smooth skin with a single brushstroke. Another day
and it would be healed, while Kell kept adding injury
upon injury: jaguarundi scratches, broken fingers,
wolf bites, and the ever-present back pain that two encounters with unfriendly
shifters had worsened.

“I
have to go after Michael.”

He barely heard Mori’s soft,
determined words over the wind and rain beating on the south side of the cabin.

“We
both do. This isn’t your fight to do alone.” It never had been, really. Not
after Benedict had ordered that first bomb to be planted.

Mori
twisted to look at him. “I’m the only one who can fight him, Kell. I know you don’t like to hear that, but—”

He
held up a hand. “Wait. You’re wrong.” Well, she was right; he didn’t like to
hear it, but he realized it was true. “I agree. You’re the only one with the
physical strength to take him on.”

Mori
raised an eyebrow. “Who are you and what did you do with Jack Kellison?”

Yeah,
he probably deserved that. “I’ve had to re-evaluate some of my former
statements in light of recent events.”

The
eyebrow rose farther.

Kell chuckled. “OK, after Michael beat the crap out of me
without breaking a sweat and you pretty much tore his face off, I’m eating my
words. Happy?”

“Yep.” She leaned back again. “So you agree that, as soon as
the storm blows through, I’m going back to Houston to end this, one way or
another.”

“Absolutely not. I said
we
will be going after Benedict, and I meant it. You have the physical strength,
but I have the experience planning operations. What were you going to do — knock
on his front door and bite him?”

She
looked sheepish. “Well, I hadn’t gotten that far, but I hope I’d be a little
more subtle than that. Although…” She paused, wrinkling her brow and tilting
her head in a way that sent too much blood rushing south again, forcing him to
have another conversation with his balls. He jammed his left pinkie against his
thigh, which took care of the problem. Hard to focus on sex when it felt like a
gator was gnawing its way up his arm from fingertip to elbow.

“But what?”

Mori
glanced at him with a frown. “Your voice sounds funny. What’s wrong?”
Nothing.
He’d just put himself in agonizing pain to teach his cock a lesson. Probably not his sharpest move. “I’m fine. What were you
saying?”

“I
hate to admit it, too, but I think you’re right. It’s going to take both of
us.” She frowned at his left hand, which he was holding aloft in the hope that
all the blood would drain to his elbow and lead to numbness.

“I mean, what you guys did in
getting me out of Michael’s house was amazing — all the planning and
coordination that went into it.” Mori shook her head. “If we put your strategic
skills and my physical strength together, I really think we can beat him. For
the first time, I believe it.”

Her
excitement was contagious, and he couldn’t help but smile. Sure, he’d like to
be the big bad Ranger and go charging in to neutralize the enemy and save the
damsel in distress. But that wasn’t even in the same zip code as reality.

“But
I do need to be able to back you up, which means I need to know Benedict’s
weaknesses. If we can’t figure a way out of this peacefully…” He trailed off,
remembering his vow last night to see Benedict dead.

“You
and I both know that won’t happen.” Mori’s voice was hard and determined. “I’ve
pretended he was a reasonable man for long enough, and look where that got us.
So let’s not even waste time saying we’re going in there to negotiate with him.
Do you honestly think there’s any way to end this other than killing him?”

Kell thumped his head against the rough wood of the
headboard he’d never quite gotten around to finishing and polishing. It went
against everything he believed in to go into a mission like this, with not even
an option for a peaceful resolution, but he’d already tried going that route,
hadn’t he?

“No,
I came to the same conclusion last night.” Besides, even if they went in trying
to talk to Benedict, the man had already proven he’d gravitate toward violence
in the end. “And we need to hit him as soon as we can get back to Houston,
before he can make the next move himself.”

Mori
walked to the desk and picked up his cell phone, punching the power button and
shaking her head. “No service. I wish we knew what was going on in Houston, but
Robin probably can’t get back to watching him until the storm passes. Her arm’s
probably healed, but with the winds this high, no way she could fly.”

She set the phone back down and
started pacing at the foot of the bed. Even with a case of bedhead from
sleeping with wet hair, she was distracting enough for Kell
to raise his left hand in front of his face as a reminder to stay focused.

A loud thump from the front of
the house stopped her, and they both looked at the door.

“Probably a tree branch,” Kell said. Loose and dead tree limbs became projectiles
during hurricanes. “Or Trey’s boat bumping the dock.
With this wind, the water has to be rough. The storm got bad earlier than I
expected. I’ve waited too late to move it.”

No further sounds followed other
than wind and rain, so Mori resumed pacing.

“Dire Wolves are hard to kill but
not impossible.” She crossed her arms as she walked. “A close-range shot
directly to the heart would usually do it, but to be sure, the heart needs to
be cut out.”

Kell nodded.
Gruesome, but effective
. He couldn’t
imagine what kind of Dire laws she was breaking by
telling a human how to kill one of them, especially their alpha. “What about a
head shot?”

“Only if it’s within close enough
range to take off the whole top of the head. Otherwise, you just end up with a
brain-damaged Dire, and Michael’s already crazy enough. Beheading would work,
too.” Mori scrubbed her fingers through her hair. “I can’t believe I’m even
saying this.”

Another loud thump came from out
front, but this one definitely sounded like Trey’s boat hitting the dock. Kell had a feeling he was going to owe his cousin some
serious boat repairs.

He opened his mouth to comfort
Mori, to tell her they were just talking theoretically. But what could he say,
really? This was information he needed, and she knew it. “What about silver
bullets?”

She stopped pacing and smiled at
him. “No, that’s werewolves.”

He started to ask if werewolves
were real, too, but decided he didn’t want to know the answer. There were
limits to how much weirdness a man could accept in any given year — or
lifetime.

“Most shifters do have something
they react violently to, though,” Mori said, coming back to sit on the bed.
“Ours is mercury, which is why, back in my grandparents’ day, Dires couldn’t get their cavities filled. There were lots
of toothless old wolves. These days, we can’t eat wild-caught fish or seafood, especially
tuna.”

Not
that helpful.
“Great, you can hold Benedict down while I pour cans of tuna down his throat.”

Kell didn’t know what kind of
connections the colonel had, but he could probably get his hands on mercury
without too much trouble. Except, then Kell would
have to tell him what he planned to do with it. The colonel probably wasn’t
ready to sanction murder, because however much he and Mori wanted to think of
their plans in terms of the greater good, what they
were plotting was plain old homicide.

Which is why he
didn’t want Nik and Robin and Archer in on it. It was one thing to flush his own career, but another to let them flush theirs out of
loyalty to him. And they’d do it, every one of them.

“Tomorrow, then, or maybe even
tonight, we can—”

Mori hesitated at another noise
from outside. It was more of a crash than a thud, although Kell
couldn’t think of anything he’d left on the porch that would make such a sound.

“I’m going to see if I can tell
what’s going on with Trey’s boat.” Kell got up and
walked to the door, gritting his teeth as pain shot through his right hip and
the back of his leg. As long as he was lying relatively still, he’d been able
to ignore it.

Mori sat on the edge of the bed.
“If you decide to go out on the dock, let me tie a line around you so you don’t
get blown into the bayou without a way for me to pull you back.”

Kell looked over his shoulder at her
and laughed. “I wouldn’t have thought of it, but it’s a good idea. You can reel
me in like a fish if I go flying off the dock.”

He opened the front door, taking
an instinctive step back as the slashing rain hit his face and chest. At least
the combat pants were water-repellent.

“Can you see anything?” Mori
walked up behind him and peered over his shoulder. “The boat looks OK.”

It did, but the water level had
gone up at least a foot. If it rose too far before the storm’s eye passed over,
they’d have water in the house by the time the second swell of the storm moved
inland.

There was no point in worrying
about that yet, but they’d need to get perishables off the floor.

“Might as well wait an—”

Kell froze as he turned back, seeing
the outside of the door for the first time.

“What’s wrong?” Mori walked
around him and gasped.

The bar of soap they’d dropped on the dock last night had been skewered to the door with a long, serrated knife. Kell grabbed the handle with his right hand and worked the
knife out of the wood.

“It’s him.” Mori pulled Kell back into the room and slammed the door, looking around frantically. “How could he be here?” Kell didn’t know how, but that bar of soap told him one thing. Benedict had been watching them last night. He’d either followed them or else made a lucky guess as
to where they were headed and found a boat more easily than Kell had.

“Where do you think he is now?” Mori’s face had turned the color of milk.

Kell didn’t have time to answer. He didn’t have time to theorize that maybe Benedict had left his calling card and was waiting until the storm passed to make his next move. He didn’t have to time to think how enraged Benedict would be if he’d seen them on the dock last
night.