“You’re thinking about Chris.”
Missy teared up. “Yeah. I always do. I had my chance but lost it. He wouldn’t have moved to New York if I hadn’t been so set on finishing college before I married. What did I do with my degree? Nada. He and his wife just had their fourth baby.”
“How do you know?”
“I looked him up on the internet. You should see the nice family photos. They look really happy. That could have been me with my arm around him. I have a dog and a kitten instead.”
“You have me too.”
Missy grinned. “I know, but regardless of what your dickhead boss thinks, I’m not doing you.” Her humor fled. “My sex life only involves a vibrator. I know battery-operated-boyfriends don’t leave their clothes on the floor or fart in their sleep but I’d take all the flaws that come with a real person any day of the week over being so lonely. You can’t solve that for me.”
“I understand.”
“I know you do. So go after this guy, Kat. Get messy and be scared of having your heart broken. At least try. I would.”
“I can’t exactly storm the gates of Homeland and I won’t be allowed back in. He made that clear.”
“Call and bug him. Don’t let him sweep you under the rug. Give him hell.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You do that.” Missy left, going down the hallway into her office.
Kat closed her eyes and sighed. “Damn.” She missed Darkness but her pride would take a hit if she tried to call him.
Chapter Fourteen
Justice peered at Darkness over his desk as he hung up the phone. He lifted the paper he’d written on and passed it over. “That is a list of every name Jessie’s father could get. He called in lots of favors. He’ll text the address if you can identify her by name. He wasn’t able to get ages or descriptions but he could pull one or two files without raising red flags. That’s everyone Mason could issue orders to.”
Darkness accepted the list and read each name. One made him pause. The other names didn’t come close. He reread the ninth name again. “This has to be her. Katrina Perkins.”
“Are you sure?”
Darkness looked up. “She said everyone really called her Kat. With a K. Katrina could be shortened to Kat. She used the name Kathryn Decker to enter Homeland. Don’t they attempt to keep the first names close to their real ones when they go undercover? That’s what Tim told me. They use similar names because it draws their attention easier when it’s spoken.”
“Agreed.” Justice picked up his cell phone and tapped the screen. “It should take a few minutes.”
“I want to send four teams out to retrieve her.”
Justice set down the phone. “Why do you want this female brought in? You’re the one who argued we should release her in the first place.”
“All the information we received on Robert Mason alarms me. He’s been transferred seven times in four years. He kept requesting this post. I believe it was for a reason. You read the file. He hasn’t asked to be reassigned elsewhere. It’s possible he’s been working with Boris. They would have been able to have face-to-face contact to avoid leaving any traces of their meetings.”
“There are no bank records to show any connection between Mason and the payments we made to the false account Boris set up. Mason seems clean.”
“There wouldn’t be. Mason is a smart male who catches the mistakes of others for a living. He sent agents after True’s mate and then he sent in Kat.”
“We still aren’t sure why.”
“I know.” Darkness closed his mouth.
“You assume he wanted information on Jerry Boris. I agree. They are linked by marriage.”
“He has to know we’re digging into his background by now. I don’t want him to go after Kat in an attempt to silence her. Boris set up Jeanie. Mason could do the same with Kat. These seem to be males who don’t mind hiding behind females and allowing them to take the fall for their crimes.”
“You want to toss her into interrogation?”
That wasn’t the plan but Darkness just lifted an eyebrow. “She might have answers we need.”
“I understand. We’ll wait for her file to make certain she’s the right female. The last thing we need is to bring in the wrong one.”
“Let’s order the teams to prepare.”
“Two should do it.”
“I want four.”
Justice frowned. “You think this female is that dangerous?”
“I believe Mason is. He has agents at his disposal. He could order her arrested or sent on assignment somewhere. He could also hire someone to take her out.”
“It’s possible if he really is working with Jerry Boris. I really dislike that male. You weren’t able to confirm their association beyond the family tie while you were in Medical?”
“He showed signs of high stress. I didn’t want to kill him. You asked me to try to keep him alive.”
“I read the updated medical report. You broke two of his fingers and inflicted cuts.”
“Just a few.”
Justice leaned back and sighed deeply. “You should have had the doctor present if you wanted to question him further.”
“It’s done.” Darkness wasn’t about to apologize.
Justice regarded him with an unblinking stare. Darkness didn’t blink either.
“Fury feels guilt. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”
“The male has no reason to. Why are you bringing this up?”
“He took you to Boris. I have a feeling you used that guilt to get him to agree. I have a problem with that.”
Darkness stood. “I don’t use emotions to force males to do anything. I laid out why I wanted to speak to Boris and he agreed.”
Justice stood. “Fury has a blind spot where you are concerned. We’re both aware of it, even if he isn’t. Family is very important, especially when shared blood is involved. It’s rare. Don’t use him again.”
Darkness clenched his teeth.
“Answer the questions he has, Darkness. You owe him that much.”
“I plan to.”
Justice sat. “Good. Go do that now while we wait for this file to arrive. I’ll contact you as soon as it comes and have Tim put together four teams.”
“I don’t want Tim there.”
“Trey can take lead then.”
“I’ll lead them.”
Justice seemed unable to hide his surprise. “You don’t like to leave the NSO.”
“I’ll make an exception. I demand to be put in charge of retrieving Kat.”
A calculated look entered the other male’s expression. “I see. Fine. I have calls to make.”
Darkness strode out of Justice’s office but didn’t leave the building. He sought out Fury. The male was on the phone when he opened the door but he waved Darkness to a seat. He hung up a minute later.
“What did Justice say?”
“I’m surprised he didn’t call you as soon as I left him.”
“We’ve already spoken. Did you find out the female’s real name?”
“I believe so. Justice is having the Senator pull her file to make certain. He agreed I could have four teams to go pick her up. We’re just waiting for confirmation of the name and face matchup.”
“I’m glad. She’ll be safer here at Homeland.”
Darkness hesitated. Memories flashed through his mind—bad ones. “Her name was Galina. She was an attractive female in her early thirties.”
Fury frowned. “That is Kat’s real name?”
“No.” Darkness blew out a breath. “She was the female hired to come into the camp where my brothers…” He paused. “Our brothers were taken after they transported us away from Mercile Industries.”
Fury swallowed, the muscles in his throat working. “Go on.”
“She was a tall, blonde female with pretty light-green eyes. I don’t know if that was her real name but she was so frightened I could smell her fear. They brought her to where I
was being held in handcuffs. The guards removed them and one of them pulled his sidearm, pointing it at her head. He said for her to do her job or he’d shoot her. They left her there with me. I didn’t know what to think.”
“She was a prisoner?”
“I believed so. She fell to her knees and began to beg me not to kill her. I wasn’t in chains. We all had explosive collars around our necks. They threw one outside the camp when we first arrived to show us what would happen if we breached the perimeter. It exploded as it sailed past the marked line. They used a second collar around the neck of a dog to show us that they could be detonated at will when the man in charge pushed a button. The dog was small and there wasn’t much left of it. No chains were required. We knew escape would be impossible. They were coded every six hours and without a password they auto-detonated so taking out our captors wasn’t a possibility. The male in charge of the code wasn’t in our camp but video monitored the entire site.”
Fury grimly regarded him. “Is this too difficult for you to discuss? I really would like to hear it but I don’t want you to suffer.”
Darkness shook his head. “The female was hired to have sex with me. I didn’t want to touch her but she started to cry, informing me they’d kill her and her family if she didn’t do her job. Rejection meant death. She swore she had two small children being held and that in her younger years she’d shared sex in exchange for money with humans. It’s why she was kidnapped and taken to the camp.”
Fury nodded but didn’t comment.
“It made me less inclined to touch her, knowing it was forced, but I felt pity for her. She begged and removed her clothes, telling me about her young. They were babies, according to her. Both were toddlers. I didn’t attack her. I just stood there when she started touching me. I hadn’t had a female in nearly a year. She unfastened my pants and I responded to her touch. It was the first time a female had put her mouth on my dick.”
Fury shifted in his chair. “Understood. That’s something I couldn’t ignore.”
It didn’t make Darkness feel any less guilty. “I didn’t resist when she was brought to me every few days. They’d already taught me how to inflict pain. She was there to teach me how to seduce females into giving up information. That and, according to her, to help keep my aggression levels lower since I was the most dominant of the males. Our brothers took orders from me.”
Fury opened his mouth as if he wanted to ask a question but reconsidered and closed it.
“They did look like us. We were very similar but I was the tallest and most aggressive. They forced us to train together and fight. My reflexes were faster and I picked up the fighting skills easiest. None of the humans would dare spar with me. They were afraid I’d kill them.”
“Was she sharing sex with our brothers too?”
“They brought in other females, never the same ones twice for them and with less frequency. Galina was assigned solely to me. I believe they wanted me to form a bond.” He paused. “It worked.”
“It would be natural.”
Darkness wished it were that easy. “We began to plot how to rescue her young and get my brothers freed from the camp. They took her to the secondary camp where the male in charge of monitoring us was kept. She told me about the tent and the many viewing screens she’d seen. The guards were lax with her since she was a female. I began to teach her how to fight. There were no cameras inside the tent where I was kept. I was as desperate to save her young as she seemed to be. It was her plan, her insistence we could do it.”
Fury leaned forward. “It went bad.”
“Worse.” Darkness broke eye contact and looked down at his hands, resting on his lap. Pain tightened his chest but he held still, enduring the male’s curious stare. “The humans in charge were forcing us to kill other humans. They weren’t American soldiers but threats to them. It was taking a toll on us all. We’d been reassigned numbers, one through four. I was number one. At Mercile we dreamed of killing our captors and the ones harming us but it was different out there. These were strangers. We didn’t know what their crimes were or why we were being forced to kill them. We were given an order, a timed mission, and the collars would blow if we didn’t return to the camp. They would send humans with us who could activate the bomb collars to make certain we didn’t deviate from the mission.”
Fury’s hands on the desk fisted and he lowered them out of sight. “That must have been hellish.”
“It was. It was breaking us apart inside. Four was more sensitive than the others. He hesitated during the killing. We tried to cover for him and hold him together. He grew mentally unstable but we were able to hide it from the humans. Two had anger issues. He enjoyed the killing a little too much. He saw all humans as the enemy. We tried to conceal his flaw. Three was like you, Fury.” He smiled, a fond memory surfacing. “You remind me of him.”
“How?”
“He was very reasonable but he was one to watch closely when he was angry. He’d think about it before he acted.” Darkness chuckled. “He stood up to me and did it in a way I admired. Very clever and always had my back. We were the closest. We would talk often and assess the other two, working as a team to protect their flaws. He could make me laugh. He had a keen sense of humor.” Darkness rose and walked over to the mini fridge. “May I?”
“Help yourself.”
He removed a soda and opened it, taking a drink. He couldn’t sit any longer and paced instead, avoiding Fury’s gaze. Darkness didn’t know how to tell the rest of it. The male’s chair creaked and Fury moved in front of him.
“Just talk to me. I want to hear it all.”
Darkness set the drink down. “I don’t think you’ll want a bond with me after you do.”
“Try me.”
“I trusted Galina. I opened up to her and talked to her. She said she loved me and I felt highly bonded to her. I shared my fears. We were waiting for a human named Darwin Havings to leave her campsite. He had a lot of guards with him and the security would lighten when he was gone. It would give her a real chance at reaching the male monitoring our camp, force him to give her the pass code to unlock our collars, and then we could take out everyone at our camp to reach hers. She’d given me detailed directions on how to reach her. It was only a few miles away. We planned to steal their vehicles from her location. She said she could drive and she had friends who could hide us. We’d work out the rest later.”
Fury kept close, watching him.
“Havings was set to leave in four days. That was the time we planned to make our escape. She was able to get an exact time, stating she’d overheard some of his personal guards making the arrangements. All of us were excited. We had no idea what awaited us in the out world but we were ready to find out. It had to be better than being returned to Mercile or staying there, forced to kill for them. She left my bed to return to her camp and orders came to us that we were going out that night to attack another group of humans. No one was to be left alive.”
“It went bad,” Fury guessed.
“There were no males there.” Darkness clenched his teeth and took a calming breath. “It was all females and their young.”
Fury wavered a little on his feet. “It was kill or die.”
“Those females and children screamed when we entered their camp, cowering and crying. We terrified them. They weren’t armed and the few weapons they had in camp, they didn’t even go for or attempt to defend themselves. They were too frightened and shocked by the sight of us. It would have been a slaughter. We refused and left. The humans on scene ordered us to turn around and go back. We ignored them.”
Fury didn’t hide his look of relief and Darkness didn’t blame him for feeling that emotion. Dread showed on Fury’s features next. “They killed our brothers as punishment.”
Darkness could have just nodded. That was the easy way out. It would leave the male peace of mind to know they’d died for a good reason. “I wish it were that simple.” He took a deep breath. “Sit down.” He took his
own advice and returned to the seat on the other side of the desk.
Fury sat. “Tell me the rest.”
“We were returned to the camp and the human in charge was furious. He was someone I would have gladly killed with my bare hands. He ordered us to go back but we refused. We stood there in the formation they’d taught us, five feet from each other in a line. That human ordered the one with the device controlling our collars to step forward and he took possession of it. He said he’d set off the collars if we didn’t kill. We stood there. Four died instantly.”
Fury paled but nodded. He said nothing.
“Three knew it was coming. He didn’t attempt to run. There was nowhere to go. We couldn’t attack with success and twelve guards had their weapons ready to open fire if we moved. He died next.”
“You can stop. This is too hard on you. I get it.”
A lump of emotion nearly choked Darkness. “You don’t. Two didn’t die that way. I killed him.”
Fury paled more. “Why?”
“Two roared out from his rage and told the human he’d return to that camp and tear them apart. He needed a target for his anger. I could see it in his eyes. Watching our brothers die stole what sanity he had left. He was no longer the male I knew. The human in charge laughed, saying he knew we had a breaking point. He ordered us to return to the camp to kill those females and young. I could see Two wanted to shed blood. I reacted as soon as the human in charge turned his back to speak to the ones under his command, congratulating them on their success. I lunged at Two and broke his neck.”
Fury closed his eyes and Darkness looked away. He couldn’t blame the male for not being able to stand looking at him anymore. He lowered his head and stared at his hands—the same ones that had killed his brother.
“Darkness, look at me.”