Tactical Magik (Immortal Ops) (3 page)

All Jon had holding him together was his teammates. He knew that. He just wished the higher-ups did too.

“Hey, you still with us?” asked Eadan, bringing Jon’s attention to him.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Daydreaming about hot chicks?” Wilson questioned, grinning like a fool.

Jon’s lips twitched as he tried not to laugh. “And then some.”

Wilson batted his lashes in an over-the-top manner. “Describe them to us. We’re all mated and aren’t allowed to daydream about any women other than our wives.”

Eadan shook his head. “Don’t count me in that mix. I’m single.”

“For now,” warned Wilson. “You heard Green. Your sister keeps talking like it won’t be much longer before you meet your mate.”

Green laughed over their comms. “Mel is convinced it’s going to happen very soon.”

Jon just hoped when it came to his fate Melanie kept her faerie future-reading powers to herself. He looked to Eadan. “Try not to leak anything on me, okay?”
 

Eadan laughed. “I’ll do my best.”

Chapter Two

Eadan sat in one of the back rooms at Paranormal Security and Intelligence Headquarters, reading through the briefing files on the table before him. PSI was flashier than the I-Ops Headquarters, which was hardly shabby. But PSI was nearly three times the size and seemed to like everything looking sleek and modern. Since he’d been a member, they’d redone the place several times. He never asked who was paying the bills.

He probably didn’t want to know.

He’d been reluctant at first when the director of PSI had insisted he be loaned out to the Immortal Ops Team. He’d known little of them prior to being thrust among their ranks, and he had to admit his first impression of them wasn’t good.

Roi, in particular, had rubbed him the wrong way. Didn’t help that the guy was mated to Eadan’s ex-wife. His strong dislike of Roi had changed during his time with them. They’d forged a bond—they were brothers, even if not by blood. And he was happy Missy found happiness. He and Missy weren’t mates. He understood that.
 

Though Roi was still a dick. Didn’t help he was a werewolf. Tended to make his mood volatile on a good day. Eadan spent enough time around shifters to learn the differences in how they reacted, how they fought and how they calmed down. Werewolves were often the worst to bring back from the brink of rage. Although it often took the most to get them into a blood rage. That, at least, was something.

As he leafed through the files about the Asia Project, he pulled focus, concentrating on what was before him. Some of the intel regarding the project was fuzzy at best. From what Intel had been able to gather over twenty years ago, DNA splicing and manipulation techniques were done to babies in utero. Their mothers were never seen or heard from again. The children of this horrendous project had been gathered by the masterminds and placed in various orphanages around the world. Try as they might, those seeking to help the children were unable to track them. All they knew was they were out there, aging, coming into their supernatural gifts and going through only the goddess knew what.

PSI was in possession of two lists of names taken from the enemy. From what they could gather, the names on the list he was currently reading belonged to those who had been subjected to testing during the Asia Project.

He’d been given a brief glimpse of the lists when they’d first come to light, but this was the first time he’d been granted unlimited access to it all. He’d understood the lists were long, but he’d not realized that behind each name were directives. Some said to retrieve. Others said retrieve or eliminate. A rare few simply said eliminate.

“Even after everything these people have lived through, it comes to this?” he asked. He read onward and his stomach dropped. “Wait, Intel is now telling us the Asia Project never stopped? Are they certain?”

“Yes. What are your thoughts?” asked General Jack C. Newman, the director of PSI, as he entered the room. The werelion had been Eadan’s father-in-law at one point. Now he was just his boss and friend.

“My thoughts are I’m about to be sick,” he replied and he was. He knew the I-Ops weren’t exactly created by way of cute kittens and fluffy bunnies, but the shit he’d read about the Asia Project nearly cost him his lunch. The things they did to those children, those babies. Only the sickest monsters in the world could behave in such a way.

The general nodded. “I had the same reaction.”

Jack pushed the second list in Eadan’s direction and Eadan felt as if something else took hold of him, demanding he snatch the list from the director. He did. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, he just knew he had to look. He read down the list of names and stopped on the name Inara Nash. His forefinger stroked the name without him meaning to.

It suddenly felt hot in the briefing room.

Eadan grabbed the pitcher of water on the table and poured himself a glass. He gulped it down, his gaze never leaving the list with the name Inara Nash upon it. Drops of perspiration made their way down his back. Why was it so damn hot in the room all of a sudden?

Jack watched his actions carefully.

Eadan stared up at the man. “You wanted me to see that list. Why?”

“Any name in particular stick out to you?” asked Jack nonchalantly.

“No games,” Eadan said sternly. “There are lives at stake.”

“Inara Nash,” Jack said. “Next to her name, what does it say?”

Eadan referred to the list again. To the right of her name was retrieve or eliminate. The entire list had sickened him. Seeing this name in particular made his insides twist into knots, but he wasn’t sure why. He didn’t know her. Yet it bothered him more than if he had spotted his own name on there.

“Who is she?” he asked, utterly still. He clamped his teeth, his jaw tight, tension filling his body. He knew the answer to his own question. It was there, just out of his mind’s reach.

So close.

But untouchable to him just yet.

Jack held another file out for him. “This is some of the information Missy collected. What she’d hidden on a microchip until she could find the I-Ops.”

Eadan remembered what had happened. He also knew the intel nearly cost Missy her life. He took the file and opened it. Pictures fell out onto the tabletop. His chest tightened to the point of near bursting. He couldn’t draw in air as he looked at the surveillance shots of Inara.

She was stunning. Her long dark hair was silky and hung almost to her waist. Several of the pictures were in full color, and when he looked into her brilliantly green eyes, he couldn’t stop himself from touching the photograph. He knew his behavior wasn’t normal. He couldn’t stop himself. Worse yet, his cock took an interest in the woman as well. It hardened, pulling at the confines of his jeans, wanting free.

More to the point, it wanted in Inara.

The pictures showed her in various locations, mostly all outside in large cities. She also looked younger than the file claimed she was. He nearly breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that she was, in fact, legal. “She’s twenty-three?”

The general nodded. “According to the records we were able to find.”

With a frustrated grunt, Eadan moved around the shockingly small amount of paperwork on her. “Not much then, I see.”

He wanted details. Lots of them. The files before him provided little.

“No. She’s managed to stay under the radar for the last six years. At least until recently.” Jack touched the recent photos of her, and Eadan held back the urge to smack the photo from his grip. No one was to touch her. No one but him. “Hard to believe she’s one of the children from the Asia Project, isn’t it? Seems like it happened only yesterday.”

Eadan didn’t remind him that his own adoptive daughter had been part of that very project and was now someone’s wife and a soon-to-be mother of twins. “Yeah. I’m curious, how did you piece it together?”

“She was caught on a surveillance camera, and was clearly more than human. A team was sent to gather more information about her but she managed to lose them.”

That caught his attention. Losing a PSI team wasn’t easy to do. It took more than luck. It took skill and training. Training only a fellow operative could provide.

Jack eyed him warily, then glanced away quickly. “Not once, but three times.”

“Three times? How?” Eadan asked in stunned disbelief. She wasn’t an operative. And she wasn’t a Shadow Agent. Even though they operated off the grid, Eadan had been made aware of who they were because he was a special kind of handler. One who had the trust of the director.

He lifted the photograph Jack was so interested in. The woman was outside a building that had a sign on it.

West Street Shelter.

He didn’t need to be told it was a homeless shelter. The forlorn look on her beautiful face, the dark circles under her eyes, the clothes that didn’t fit her right and looking thinner than she should. She was on the streets.

The knowledge struck him in the solar plexus. He’d have doubled over if he wasn’t already seated. Instead, he used the table and gripped it tight, taking slow, measured breaths.

“Exactly,” Jack stated, sadness lacing his voice. “We pulled a partial print and were able to find information on her from six years ago. Then nothing. What we did find was interesting. It left little doubt in our minds that she’s from the Asia Project.”

“Any word on where she is now?” There was no hiding the desperation in his voice so he didn’t bother trying.

The pensive look on Jack’s face worried Eadan. “In Helmuth’s territory.”

“The dick who controls the paranormal underground in Seattle?”

Jack nodded. “The very same. And it gets worse. Helmuth has now been linked to both Krauss and Molyneux.”

It was bad enough Krauss had big-time supporters. Adding in Helmuth didn’t help matters. Seemed like the whole of the paranormal bad-guy community was gathering together and setting aside differences for an end game Eadan wasn’t sure he wanted to learn about.

“Why not send the I-Ops on this?” he asked. It was a legitimate question. They’d been following Krauss around, trying to get a handle on his next move, for months. They were the likely choice. The Asia Project was, for lack of a better word, their baby.

Jack took a seat. While immortal, Jack was very old for a shifter, so much so that he now looked to be middle-aged. It took a long time for a shifter to get to that point. Jack wore his age around the eyes, as if he’d seen too much in his long life. “Eadan, look at all the photos of her.”

Eadan skimmed through them and came to a grinding halt when he spotted one with Inara drawing. Someone had taken the picture from behind her, and when Eadan looked at the sketchpad before her on the diner table, he understood why. She’d sketched him.

“That’s me,” he whispered, holding the photo tighter to him as if it were a lifeline to the woman. His gaze went to her hand, the one holding the pencil. He wanted to be there next to her, holding her hand, kissing it.

You don’t even know her. Enough
, he chastised himself. This wasn’t like him. Eadan was level-headed and he never made a habit of blindly falling for a woman. Yet he felt himself tumbling fast for this one.

Jack moved that photo aside and pushed two others before him. These were also of Inara drawing. Though, she wasn’t in a diner in them. The pictures were different but the subject was still the same.

He looked up at Jack. “She draws me? How? We’ve never met.”

Jack sighed, appearing tired. “Eadan, from what we could piece together about the testing done on her, she’s carrying a fair amount of werewolf DNA in her. But there is so much other introduced feline shifter DNA that we don’t think she can actually shift forms.” A dramatic pause followed. “There is more.”

Eadan wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the rest, but he needed to. “Yes?”

“From the fragmented testing results we were able to recover from the original laboratories, Inara, like all the children in the project, started out with some supernatural base, be it small or large. Inara had Fae in her. Small, but there. Our scientists are guessing one of her grandparents was the product of a Fae and human pairing. Mind you, the files were damaged. The original scientists tried to burn the evidence. We were able to forensically piece back together a portion of it. Not all.”

Staring from Jack to the pictures of Inara drawing him, Eadan began to feel as if he were falling down a rabbit hole. Nothing he was looking at made sense. Not to mention his emotions were all over the place. He’d not had this much trouble with them in years. “Say it.”

Jack eased closer to him. “Eadan, you and Missy weren’t true mates. You know it, I know it, everyone does.”

Nodding, Eadan sat perfectly still, already guessing what was coming. “Yes. And while we’ll always be friends, we’re not in love with each other. She’s with Roi. I get and respect that. I want her happy and I would never try to interfere with that.”

“I know. She found her true mate,” Jack continued. “And our people, putting together all this information before us, think this young woman here might be yours. Before you protest, I called your father in on this and asked him his thoughts. You know he’s high up in the Fae world. He agrees, Eadan. He thinks Inara is your life mate.”

There had to be more to the story. Eadan eyed Jack carefully. “What aren’t you telling me?”

With a long, slow breath, Jack kept going. “Before everything hit the fan here at PSI, before the rogue problems came to light, I was contacted by an ex-PSI agent. The who isn’t important now. What
is
was that he was calling to tell me he thought he’d found your mate. He wouldn’t say why, but Eadan, regardless of how or why he left PSI, I trust him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Everything went south here. I needed your focus on PSI. Not elsewhere. It was selfish, I know, and at the time she wasn’t in danger,” he said. “Honestly, I’m still pissed that you and Missy lied to me about having a relationship. But you deserve more than my hurt feelings and anger. You deserve to be happy, and if intel is right, your mate is in grave danger.”

Something wasn’t sitting well with Eadan. “Who was the agent who contacted you?”