The Alphas Game - Complete Set (5 page)

Chapter7

It’s hard to tell a lot about your surroundings when it’s dark, but you would be surprised at how much I was able to determine from the hours I’ve spent in this dark hole they keep me trapped in. My eyes have adjusted, giving me just a touch of vision, the ability to see the outlines of the items close to me. I appeared to be held in a five by five room, with the bare minimum of furniture, just enough to make it look like I wasn’t being held by complete barbarians. There was a small bed, metal framed and bolted to the floor with a small pad that was bolted to the bed in the corners. I had no doubt that I could break it if I wanted to, but I had no idea what I would use it for yet. There was also one of those metal toilets, the kind that they use in prison cells. I was glad that I couldn’t see the toilet because there was an awful smell that emanated from the facility that they had let me use. I have a feeling that if I had seen it I would not be willing to hover my body above it in order to relieve myself. I noticed that they had left me some toilet paper, but there was no place to wash my hands. All in all, my surroundings were just above disgusting, but I was sure that prisoners in other places did not get the same luxuries that I was getting here. I had a blanket and a bed to lie in, I didn’t have to piss in a bucket, but it still wasn’t somewhere that I wanted to be. I had to have been here for hours, but it was almost impossible to tell the time. I might have only been awake for minutes, but it might have been days.

Rosie wasn’t pleased, that was the understatement of it. She was trapped somewhere chained to a bar with the bare minimum she needed to still feel like a human. “Damn it, where am I?” There was no one around to answer, silence surrounded her. The only noises that happened occurred when she made some sort of action. “I would love it if I knew where I was.” She was destined to wonder for a while, however, but she already knew that.

She was searching around, looking for some crazy plan in order to escape. Everything seemed to be in vain, but she did a thorough search anyway. Her hand slipped under the pad, but there didn’t seem to be anything there. It was almost impossible to search it well because her hands were still cuffed together. Rosie felt the first pangs of fear cross her mind. “Pull yourself together.” She demanded it as she went over to the icy cold metal toilet.

“Hello?” She hollered as a question, hoping that someone would be able to hear her. She knew that there was no chance of any help arriving but if she could speak to one of her captors she might be able to pick up some clues. “Is there anyone there?”

It was starting to feel desperate. This wasn’t normal, she knew that. They had a semblance of kindness, but most people that had been kidnapped weren’t treated that kindly. She plopped down onto the bed and felt a rough flannel blanket under her. She vaguely wondered what color it was, but knew that it didn’t really matter, what mattered was escaping. Now the only problem was figuring out how to get out of there. She wasn’t near any walls, so it was impossible to know if there were any windows around her. She was vaguely reminded of those stories, she was pretty sure that it was by Poe, the story talked about being trapped in a prison with walls. She didn’t know if she was surrounded by pits or not, but it really didn’t matter, there wasn’t anything coming down on her head. Not yet anyway. She squinted, trying to judge how large the room was, but it was almost impossible to tell. “How am I going to get out of here?” She was whispering the question to herself when she heard a door open somewhere in the darkness. It was a slow creaking noise, as if the person opening the door was being careful not to alert anyone outside that they were coming down to see the prisoner.

She was able to pinpoint the sound as it slammed closed. It was past the toilet, out of her tiny domain. It was hard to tell the distance in the echoing chamber, but if she was to  venture a guess it would probably be about five feet on the other side of the facility that she had been provided with. “Who’s there?” She asked, her voice trying its best not to shake in fear.

The voice was low and masculine. There was a hint of a growl behind it. It might have been considered sensual had it been in any other situation. Something about being kept as a prisoner turned off all thought of finding this man sexy any more. She immediately recognized Kevin’s voice, however, and that disturbed her greatly. “I don’t think that you are in any position to ask me questions.” The pride in his voice was slightly disorientating. It wasn’t normal for her to be intimidated and she was eager to not show anything resembling fear to the man that she had gotten so close to.

“Let me go.” She was demanding and confident, or at least she sounded that way. There was something very strange going on in this room. “Let me go.” She refused to make any offers or try to start any negotiations. She wasn’t going to give in to Kevin and his sadistic game.

“I don’t think that you’re going to continue to make demands.” The cool arrogance of the voice disturbed the woman. She hadn’t ever heard Kevin’s voice take that tone before and she couldn’t help but shudder a little.

Even though she had a lapse of mental purpose, she quickly recovered. “I’ll make whatever demands I want. You can’t keep me like this.”

“I seem to be keeping you just fine here.” She could hear him sit down on a chair that was out of her reach. The chair creaked as he leaned back in it and the shuffle of his clothes let her know that he was pulling one leg up onto his lap. It was a position very similar to the ones that counselors and psychiatrists would take; she was too familiar with the noises that he was making. “I’m going to ask you questions.”

“I’m not going to answer them.”

“You don’t have to. I’ve got a mind reader not far from here and what I want to know will cross your mind. This will give me the answers.”

Rosie scoffed. “Why would you tell me that? Isn’t that giving something away? It’s ridiculous, unless you’re bluffing.”

“I want you to know that you aren’t going to be able to stop my questions from being answered.” The slightly kind demeanor of Kevin’s voice wasn’t pleasant; in fact it might have been the most frightening thing about this entire situation. She fought the fear that kept threatening to overwhelm her, fighting to stay strong in a seemingly hopeless situation.

“I don’t know enough to help you. I can’t get you into that prison. Anyway, why didn’t you just control me and make me answer you. That’s what your boss did to Grey, isn’t it.”

“You know the answer to that already, don’t you? We really don’t need to have this conversation.”

The polite threats were starting to get on her nerves. She knew that they couldn’t control her; her special abilities stopped that from happening. She had been hoping that they would be stupid enough to try so that she could get some control. That was the thing about psychic abilities; they often meant that you had to develop the strength of will to be able to resist these kinds of abilities. “Stop playing games with me. What do you want?”

“I want to know how to stop the FBI from chasing me. I’ve already given them back Grey. If they just let me take what I want I’ll be out of their hair forever.”

“What do you want them to give you?”

“I think that you’ve already figured that out.”

“You want someone out of prison, but I don’t know who it is.”

“That’s not important.” Kevin’s voice was still calm and confident and dangerously deadly.

“I would say that it’s pretty vital to what you’re asking me. Why is this person so important to you?”

The voice didn’t respond immediately, but when the werelion finished thinking, he spoke again. “They just are. It doesn’t matter to you.”

“This has to be personal. I might be able to help you out, but you’ll have to give me some more details.” Rosie was hoping to find some things out about whoever was holding her. She knew that she needed to have details for when the FBI came looking for her. She knew that Hope was probably already panicking and calling out all people to search for her.

“I’m not going to tell you that. It’s not any of your business.”

Rosie had something; from the way that he had said that  it was indeed very personal. “Who is it; your lover, a family member perhaps?” She just had to figure out what to do with the information.

“You aren’t going to bait me.” The aggravated voice grew calmer as he spoke. He had wised up to her game, and wasn’t going to give up any answers.

Rosie knew that she had to change the subject. “I don’t think that you can be doing this on your own. You have to be working with someone else.”

“I work for someone else.” It didn’t sound very true. This person was way too arrogant to work for another person. From the voice it was easy to see that Kevin, or whoever had her prisoner, wasn’t going to work for anyone else for longer than it took to serve the  purpose.

“I don’t believe that. I think that you’re the one in charge.” She didn’t know why she thought that, but she did. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have the confidence to do the things you’ve been doing.” She was starting to get suspicious. Either Kevin was a great actor or this person wasn’t him. She just didn’t think that the man was a good enough actor to be able to pull this off, especially with her using her abilities around him so often. She would have gotten some clue.

“Believe what you want, it’s not important. How much do you know about me?” He didn’t seem too concerned about this. “Remember that I am having someone read your thoughts, I know when you lie to me.

“Enough to know what kind of things that you do, I know that you’re a shape-shifter.” She was taking a gamble, but really didn’t see any other way to solve this. She wasn’t completely positive that she was making truthful accusations, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to hurt her if she was wrong, but if she was right it might help their case.

She could hear the other person lean forward in the chair, uncrossing his legs and moving close enough that she could see the outline of his muscular form. The body shape was the same as Kevin’s, and she knew because of how intimately close they had been, but the way he moved just didn’t seem right. The figure didn’t move like a powerful man, but rather more like a woman would. Rosie squinted and tried to see a little more, but couldn’t. She waited for her captor to respond to her accusation, but it seemed like it was taking this person forever to figure out what was going to be said. Instead of responding, the captor just left, drowning her in the darkness once again.

The woman couldn’t help but sigh. The fact that she couldn’t do anything to rescue herself at this time upset her. She wasn’t a person who could easily just sit there and do nothing but wait to be saved. She was trapped and it was almost impossible to do something about it. Everything seemed to be going wrong with the day that she was having. This was nothing short of being the worst day she had been trapped in since the death of her family. “No one died.” The words seemed hollow however, because she really didn’t know if anyone was still alive.

She started to pace through the room, frustrated and afraid, even if she would never admit the insecurity that was flowing through her body.  She found clothes sitting by the toilet, but had no idea how she was going to dress herself with her hands bound. She wondered if it was an honest mistake, or if her captor had just placed them there to taunt her. “Did you just put these here?” There was no one to answer her questions, but she still asked them. “No, I would have heard you move closer, but I swear that I searched there before.”

She wanted to do something, take action to fight her circumstances, but she couldn’t figure out what to do. Straining against her bonds wouldn’t get her anywhere; she would just be injured when she got the opportunity to escape. Still she checked the strength of the cuffs and chain, hoping to find an imperfection that she hadn’t found the first five hundred times that she had checked. There was nothing, once again there were no flaws that she could exploit. “Damn it. Make a mistake.” She moved to the clothing, checking for anything that she could use as a tool.

Chapter8

I would be lying if I was to say that I wasn’t trying to make them hurry up and find me. That’s not exactly in my ability, but it didn’t stop me from sitting in my dark room trying to concentrate on Hope. Now, we all know that I’m not that type of psychic, but after I found my abilities blocked, unable to use them on anything in the room,  I didn’t see much other choice. I had developed great faith in my abilities over the years, but that didn’t mean that I could send telepathic messages to others. The facts didn’t stop me from trying. I had to do something. I had to do something to stop this, to save myself or I wouldn’t ever be able to forgive myself. I would have given anything for a hero to break into the room and liberate me from my imprisonment, but it didn’t look like it was happening. What I didn’t know was that Hope, Grey, and the real Kevin had been given a great clue as to my location. One can only hope that they’re coming to the right place. They’re pretty sure that I’m being held underneath the Chinese restaurant that had been so vital to our earlier investigation, but I can’t tell, not at this time. There’s no way to know, not from my surroundings, but I would think that if I was being held under a busy restaurant I would be able to hear the buzz and feel the heat from the ovens and stoves. All I felt was the cool darkness of a dank cave.

“It feels like we’re right back where we started.” Kevin’s voice was frustrated and it wasn’t just the fact that Rosie was missing, but the fact that this was the second or third time that they had been by this place and it seemed to be a centerpiece to so many parts of this mystery. He wondered what was there, but didn’t have a clue. There had to be something that would make this place so important.

“We need to watch it, see if we can find anyone coming out. We might need to send some people in to check it out.” Grey was coming up with a plan, he knew that the other two were too close to the woman to think clearly at this point.

“I agree. Who can we send in?” Hope was wringing her hands, but was pleased that someone was coming up with a plan. Her eyes were red and puffy from having spent too many hours in tears. It had been a trying time to say the least.

“We can borrow some other guys from the department.” Kevin was starting to feel a little hopeful as well. “We’ve got some guys that are pretty good at undercover work.” He placed his hands on the woman’s arm, hoping that it would give her some comfort.

They made the arrangements, getting members of the department to stay for their lunch break as long as the guys paid for it. Everyone kept a set of street clothes for emergency undercover assignments and it didn’t take long for two burly construction workers to be ready to get Chinese for lunch. “Rosie would have loved to see this.” Hope commented when she noticed the powerful arms in a working man’s shirt.

Kevin couldn’t help but glare at the men as they walked out of the building to climb into the truck that the office kept. It had the name of some construction company on the side and came complete with the tool box, some lumber and a ladder in the back. It looked just about as authentic as it could be, considering the two men that they had chosen were experts in undercover work. They would be able to pull it off as well as anyone in the office. Hope crossed her fingers as they drove off into the Tampa Bay summer sun. “I hope they find her. This isn’t right.”

“I didn’t take her.” Kevin was noticing the dirty looks that Hope continuously shot his way. She didn’t fully believe him but he was pretty sure that she was putting the blame game aside long enough to focus on finding her missing employer.

It was an impossibly long couple of hours before the undercover men came back. All three anxious members of the team paced uncomfortably the entire time that they were gone. They felt weak and helpless and it was not a good place to be.

They had nothing to specific too report, but the shifter member of the pair had noted that her scent was in a certain part of the dining room. That was all that Hope needed to hear. She was ready to go, ready to storm the building. That was all that she needed to go running off to the detective’s rescue. Kevin had to stop her, standing in the way. “We need to find out more.” He was insistent, but it was obvious that he was ready to go riding off to save the day as well.

“What are you talking about?” Hope stood up to him, and for the first time he realized how small she was compared to everyone else in his life. The woman couldn’t have been more than five foot tall but she carried herself with an air that made her seem taller than she actually was. Her confidence must have added six inches to her height. It wasn’t until that moment; the moment that she stood before him, close,  with her face at the same level as his chest that he realized that this powerhouse of a woman was actually quite tiny, short and slim with an almost miniaturized figure that could knock men out. He wanted to laugh, but managed to stop himself,  realizing that this wasn’t the time. A part of him wondered if all fairies were that small, but he could look into that later.

She knew what she wanted to do, but had no idea what the proper course of action was, so instead she was ready to go in with guns blazing and rescue the woman that she had been working with for so many years. “You have to slow down. If we just rush in without knowing anything we could get her killed and nobody wants that.”

“What if they’ve already killed her?”

Grey stepped in. “It’s already been proven that they don’t kill people. They prefer to capture people and use them as long as possible.” He placed his hand on Hope’s shoulder, knowing that it might not make her understand, but that it might slow her down a bit. He really didn’t believe that she would just be captured, but he wanted to make the woman feel a little better.

“I don’t believe this. You should want to save her. After all this is all your fault.” Her anger was still directed at Kevin, rage filling her vivid blue eyes. “You should be ready to burst in there shooting instead of waiting. Maybe you are working for them. Maybe she did call you and this is all your fault.” She jammed her finger into his chest, fully ready to fight with the powerful shifter.

The wolf stepped between the lion and the fairy. “Whoa, whoa, calm down, both of you.” He turned to Hope. “We’ve checked her phone records. There’s no evidence of her calling Kevin.”

“That doesn’t mean she didn’t use one of the burner phones she keeps around. I know he did it.” She pointed and gestured, her hands tracing angry patterns in the air.

Kevin stood up, feeling a great need to defend himself. His body was impressive to say the least. “Look, I didn’t do it. I wouldn’t hurt her.” He needed to stand up to the woman’s accusations, but couldn’t find the right words to make her believe him.

“You two, just stop it!” Grey noticed the deputy director heading in their direction and knew that if he had to step in and break up the fight it wasn’t going to end well. “You two are both adults, calm down so we can actually find her.”

Hope backed down, but her mouth was still turned down and you could see the anger and frustration steaming off of her like a pot of boiling oil about to be thrown down on all of their heads. For some reason the wolf knew that he would have to do something about this. He would have to fix this before it got out of hand. They needed a plan and the pair of battling people that he was supposed to be working with weren’t going to help any time soon. They were too busy being defensive and placing blame.

The bad thing was that Grey was absolutely sure that his partner didn’t do it. He knew that Kevin would not have any part in her disappearance, at least not willingly. He knew the power of these people’s control so he wondered if he should ask the questions. Deciding against it, it would only cause more friction, he picked up a pad and started to brainstorm on a plan.

The other two people in the office just glared at each other, trying not to say anything that would start a fight and undo any of their clues. “I might have an idea.” Grey said, carefully measuring his words. “It’s a gamble though, so we’ll have to be careful.”

“What do you want to do?” Hope flung herself across the room, practically running to hear the plan. Her eyes widened with a certain hopeful desperation that this would all be true.

“I’m thinking that we should show our face around the restaurant. It might freak them out enough to make them move her.”

Kevin piped in. “And then we could follow them.”

“That’s a good idea.” Hope added to the conversation.

Grey didn’t look hopeful. “It might not be a good idea, but it’s the only one I have right now.”

“They might decide to kill her instead.” Kevin’s voice grew subtly dangerous.

“Do you think that it’s a good idea?” Hope looked insecure once again. Her hands came together and started to wring against each other. She tugged on her fingers, trying to come up with some way to improve the plan, some way to guarantee her boss’s survival.

“I don’t know of anything else.” Grey hung his head.

“We have to do something soon or we may be too late.” Kevin added. “I think that we do what you’ve suggested.”

“Let’s do this.” Hope volunteered, picking up her purse.

“You should stay here.” Both men spoke simultaneously. Hope argued, but not for long. She knew that she wasn’t built for field work and her need to join them was only based on her need to do something, that didn’t mean that there was anything she should do.

Grey made a suggestion that he thought might help. “Why don’t you go to her place and make sure that she has everything that she needs. Make sure she will be able to stay someplace secure for a while.” He pulled some money out of his wallet. It was a hundred dollar bill. “Why don’t you get her some gift cards for her favorite take-out  places? Make sure that every place delivers. So she won’t have to go anywhere.”

“I’ll move some of my stuff over there so that I can keep an eye on her.” She left happily, eager to be able to help with anything that she could. She was ready to prepare a happy homecoming for the missing woman.

The partners drove out to the Chinese restaurant, but as they got closer Kevin started to feel more and more nervous. There was something strange about the place. Something felt different. The feeling peaked as they pulled into the parking lot. “Something is wrong.” Kevin noted, but his voice was so low that it was barely understandable. “Something is terribly wrong.”

“What do you think is going on?” Grey asked his partner as he squinted toward the building.

“I don’t know, but something just feels a little off.” As they climbed out of the vehicle the sense got stronger, he didn’t know how but the hair on his arms and the back of his neck started to stand up on end. He walked around to the driver’s side where his partner was standing. “Let’s get a good look at the entire building. Sometimes looking at it from far away may give us an idea of how they could hide her in a busy restaurant.”

Grey nodded, he still didn’t believe him, but he was willing to trust his partner’s instinct. He suspected that the lion had been controlled temporarily and had been conditioned to stay away from the place that the woman was being held. To the wolf this seemed to be a good sign. “Let me know if you see anything odd.”

The pair had backed up several feet when the shattering noise broke through the air. They heard and smelled  it before they saw the affects of what was happening on the building in front of them. The burning scent filled the air with flaming dust as the building lifted up just a little. It seemed to just hop on its foundation, just by a foot or so and then land hard on the ground with a loud boom. The shattering of the windows happened a split second later, at the same time that the groaning walls bowed out with the pressure. The men both ducked, knowing that flying shrapnel was about to pound into every surrounding structure, vehicle and person.

The final parts of the explosion happened with the same lightening speed of the first part. It must have been over in a matter of seconds, but by the end of it the car that the men were hiding behind was pretty much destroyed, large pieces of metal sticking out of the side of the car. Kevin peeked above the vehicle and noticed, for the first time, how many cars were sitting in the parking lot. There were so many there that the building must have been packed, and he couldn’t see any way that any of them had been destroyed.

Back up arrived immediately. The teams that were watching for Rosie to be moved immediately came to assist. Bomb squad arrived and they started to clear the area, checking for further bombs while the two shocked agents were checked over by paramedics. “Do you think she was in there?” Grey asked his partner.

“If she was, she’s dead now.” Kevin’s voice lacked affect, his words were flat and it was easy to see that he wasn’t going to take this easily.