informed,” Jonas said quietly as Cabal glanced over at the director. “Confirmation just arrived. The email has been read, pictures downloaded. The remote tracker we have on her laptop is working at least.”
“Traced?” Cabal asked, though he knew better.
Jonas shook his head. There was no mockery, no sarcasm this time. This was the second email they’d tried to trace through Cassa’s connection, to no avail.
The director’s expression was somber, brooding and filled with icy fury. Jonas was at his most dangerous in this mood.
“No trace,” he bit out in clipped tones. “The program we installed isn’t going through. The email itself is embedded with a program that doesn’t allow for it. Dane hasn’t been able to crack it yet.”
Dane Vanderale, Jonas’s nemesis and half brother, as well as the heir to the powerful African Vanderale empire, was a natural born Breed and a thorn in all their sides. But he was the best they had at cracking codes and tracing information.
“He’ll crack it.” Cabal shrugged.
Cabal turned his gaze back to the bank then and the body Rule and Lawe had pulled from the water. The fishing line around the victim’s neck had cut into the skin, leaving a slender wound. Tape covered his mouth. Pale eyes bulged in horror; pale features were creased into lines of pain, suffering.
Someone, something, had made this man suffer.
“Cash Winslow,” Rule stated as he crouched next to the body before staring up at Jonas. “We’ve been watching him. Ex-CIA. He worked for Brandenmore as a security specialist.”
Jonas moved closer to the river-soaked body and hitched up the legs of his slacks so he could get down on his haunches and look at the features revealed by the slender illumination of Lawe’s flashlight.
“He was working on a special assignment from what we were able to find out,” Jonas mused quietly. “We were trying to track him, trying to figure out what the hell Brandenmore was up to, when he flipped off our radar last week.”
Cabal’s brows lifted. It was rare that anyone flipped off Jonas’s radar.
“No rumors as to the assignment?” Cabal asked.
Jonas stared back at him. “He was searching for someone, that’s all we knew. Someone Brandenmore was certain could help him with this case we have against him and Engalls.”
The attempted murder and illegal research against Breeds. Phillip Brandenmore and his brother-in-law Horace Engalls were coming closer to the day of reckoning and possible Breed Law sanctions for their actions over the past year. How the hell they thought anyone could help them was beyond Cabal.
“Any idea who?” he asked.
Jonas shook his head. “All we knew was that he supposedly had information against the Breeds that Brandenmore wanted to use as a bargaining tool. We were trying to find him when our killer sent the message that he’d beaten us to him.”
Cabal breathed out deeply before wiping his hand wearily over his lower jaw. Hell, this was becoming more of a mystery by the day.
“He was meeting Brandenmore or Engalls here?” Lawe questioned the director quietly as he motioned to several enforcers to collect the body.
“Not here he wasn’t.” Jonas straightened before staring around the wooded area with a frown. “There wasn’t a chance of them escaping the men the Bureau has watching them and they know it. They wouldn’t have risked it.”
“Then who was he meeting?” Cabal asked.
“Our killer.” Jonas’s voice was cold, hard steel, a clear indication that the rogue they were searching for was beginning to try the director’s patience. “Unfortunately for him, or for us, our rogue chose the wrong mark this time. I had plans for Winslow. I’d have preferred to mete out my own justice rather than clean up after another’s.”
Cash Winslow had information. Information Jonas was hoping to use against Brandenmore. Information Jonas would have paid for by granting Winslow his own freedom from prosecution once they had him brought in for questioning.
According to their investigation, over the past several years Cash had been involved in the kidnapping of several Breeds that the pharmaceutical owners had used for their research. According to their sources, it was also possible that Winslow knew the location of an infant that had been taken from a mate’s body just before her death.
That child was one of the few naturally conceived children that were the hope for the Breeds’ future. A child that would be used for research, nothing more, if it wasn’t found. Finding that child drove Jonas, Cabal knew that, just as it had driven the rest of them for the past year. The thought of a babe, created naturally by the hand of God rather than the hand of man, suffering the horrors they had suffered, gave them all nightmares.
“They’ll take care of the babe for the first few years,” Lawe mused soberly. “They’re too delicate after birth. They won’t risk its death.”
“Yet,” Rule growled. “Winslow knew where the fuckers stashed that child. As far as we know, he’s the only one besides Brandenmore and Engalls who knew.”
And they sure as hell weren’t talking.
Cabal turned away from the director as well as the two enforcers that were now a part of his own team to listen to the reports coming over the link.
“There’s nothing on-site.” He turned back to Jonas. “No sign of anyone. No tracks, no scents, no vehicle tracks.”
“Fucking ghost,” Jonas cursed.
“Or so he’d have us think.” Cabal shrugged as his gaze moved back to Winslow’s lifeless body. “Seven down. Four to go and one to die again,” he stated, repeating the message that had come through Jonas’s personal sat phone several hours earlier.
Jonas stared back at him silently, and understanding the look wasn’t a problem for Cabal.
“We know the last one,” Jonas stated. “Help me with the other four, Cabal. Tell me you have names by now. Something.”
“Ivan Vilanov, former Russian intelligence officer, a double agent for the CIA. He was one of Winslow’s assets at one time. I identified him from the picture last night with some help from a few new buddies I found at a bar near Gauley Bridge. He was a regular here more than twenty years ago, during his assignment to the Russian Embassy in D.C. Hunting weekends with Brandenmore and Engalls both here in the States as well as in Europe.”
Jonas rubbed at the bridge of his nose in disgust. “He’s missing. Son of a bitch. A report came through Homeland Security less than twenty-four hours ago. He slipped away within hours of being picked up for questioning in the case we have against Brandenmore and Engalls.”
Cabal grimaced at the information. “I have some other names, but I’m running them. Banks’s body hasn’t turned up yet. Walt Jameson thinks he’s still alive. I think its possible. Whoever this Breed is, he would have left the body to be found within twenty-four hours of his death, just as he has the others.”
“Does Walt have any idea who this could be?” Jonas bit out furiously.
Cabal shook his head. “It’s obviously connected to the massacre that took place in the valley we found Alonzo’s body in. The Breeds that were part of that group that night were all killed though, according to all the information we’ve been able to come up with. Walt gave me the names, I ran them. There’s no one unaccounted for.”
Each Breed on that list had either arrived back at the labs dead, head intact, or just the head had been returned and payment collected.
“Any way someone fucked up?” Jonas asked.
Cabal rejected the suggestion. “If they fucked up, then I haven’t found proof of it. There was DNA proof of each kill. That’s damned hard to fake.”
“Someone fucked up somewhere,” Jonas assured him. “Forward that list of names to my sat. I’ll go through them myself. I want to know every man and woman in that group, Breed or human, and their connection to everyone in this fucking town. And I want it yesterday.”
“It was forwarded just before I left the inn to meet with you here,” Cabal informed him. “Good luck with it.”
Jonas was silent once again, his expression brooding, uncomfortably cold as Cabal watched him.
“We know who the last one is,” he finally said. “The one that gets to die again.” He narrowed his eyes on Cabal. “Tell her.”
“No.” Cabal realized the instant refusal was more instinct than intellect.
“If you don’t, the killer’s going to,” Jonas told him. “What then?”
“He can’t prove a damned thing,” Cabal growled. “There’s no way to get proof and no way to get to him. Forget it, Jonas. It’s not happening.”
Jonas shook his head. “The best laid plans,” he sighed. “This isn’t going to end up well, Cabal. You’re fucking up.”
“Then it’s my fuckup.”
Douglas Watts was dead to the world, and as far as Cabal was concerned, he was going to stay dead.
“How did our rogue Breed know Watts was still alive?” Lawe asked, the question barely a breath of sound. “That information was contained to just a few Breeds.”
Jonas shook his head. “I suspect it was information Winslow was sent to find proof of. We know his last assignment took him overseas. We lost him for a while there. Weeks later the first killings began. It’s tied in.” He turned back to Cabal. “You know it’s tied in. And you know where it’s leading.”
He’d known all along where it was leading, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, and it damned sure didn’t mean he had to handle it however Jonas dictated.
Cassa was his mate, plain and simple. Period. Nothing was going to change that, and there was no reason that he could think of to muddy the waters of the mating with the knowledge that the man she had believed she was married to was still alive.
Watts had lied to her, cheated on her. He had betrayed her trust in the most elemental fashion from the beginning. The wedding had been no more than a farce, because Watts didn’t believe in contracts or promises. The preacher that had married them had been no more than an actor hired to act the part. The papers signed, the marriage license—the whole deal was no more than a collection of props.
Watts liked drama. He liked ceremony. He had enjoyed fooling everyone so effectively. It had been his own private little joke, and now the joke was on Watts. The woman he had thought he would hold through lies now belonged to one of the creatures he had so despised. One he had thought he could destroy.
“Drop it, Jonas,” Cabal warned him as he watched the eerie silver of the other man’s gaze shift thoughtfully.
Jonas was studying the situation, considering it, coming up with the most effective way to ensure that Cabal moved to the correct spot on the mental chessboard he was certain Jonas often used.
Jonas shook his head. “Hell of a way to start a life together,” he stated. “You can’t hide something like this forever. It always ends up biting you on the ass, my friend.”
“It’s my ass at risk.” Cabal shrugged.
Jonas’s lips had parted to say more when a warning hiss echoed across the communications link.
Cabal felt the premonition in his gut, knew exactly who the enforcers were stalking before the name ever came across the line. He was only surprised that it had taken her this long to get here. She must have been damned careful attempting to slip past the perimeter patrol.
“Reporter.” Mordecai spoke quietly through the link. “Bengal’s mate.”
Damn. He didn’t want her here; she had no business here. It would only entrench her deeper in the danger he could already feel swirling around her.
Cabal clenched his teeth furiously before sprinting away from Jonas and heading for the tree line. He could smell her now. There was no breeze rippling through the trees, which had given her the advantage in slipping through the forest toward the murder scene.
She was clearing the edge of the forest at a fast clip as he moved toward her. Dressed in black, her long hair pushed beneath a cap, her expression furious, she found him instantly with her stormy gaze, even as the enforcers securing the area converged on either side of her.
“This isn’t going to work,” she snapped immediately as she pushed past enforcers reluctant to force her back as long as her mate was in the vicinity.
And there was no missing the fact that she was his. The mating scent, as well as his scent, wrapped around her, infused her. It was more effective than a brand, that scent. It held the other males back, had them watching her as well as Cabal warily.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled, his fingers wrapping around her upper arm as he drew her to him, then turned her to head back down the bank in the direction they had parked the Raiders.
She jerked at the hold he had on her as the scent of her anger slapped his senses. She was pissed, and he could feel his senses reacting to that aggression and the mating heat that surged between them.
She was endangering herself, placing herself in the line of fire, and for the first time in his life Cabal felt true fear that he could lose his mate.
“What the hell do you think I’m doing here?” she retorted as she began digging her heels into the sand and resisting his hold. “Let’s see, exactly why am I here? What brought me here? Could it have been those nasty little pictures a killer is sending me? Could it be that you have a rogue killer on the loose who’s threatening to send those pictures to a list of reporters who couldn’t give a damn if the Breeds survive this particular story?”
Cabal came to a hard stop. “What did you say?”
A mocking smile curled her lips. “Let me guess, you didn’t get that little message? Let me ask you this one, did you get the audio file of his death?”
Somehow, she knew he hadn’t. Cabal knew he hadn’t, just as he knew that Jonas hadn’t received it.
“You brought it with you?”
There could be clues in an audio file. Clues they could use to find the killer. Not that he expected that this particular killer had left much in the way of clues. He had been too smart so far.
“Did I say I brought it with me?” Her eyes narrowed on him. “Don’t play games with me. I want to know what you’ve found here, and I want to know who the hell the killer is talking about when he says that the last one to die is one who was dead and will die again. What the hell kind of game is being played here, Cabal?”
◆ CHAPTER 19 ◆
Anger was a horrible emotion. It stayed, lingered, brewed and built inside until Cassa felt as though she were going to explode.
Two days after the discovery of Cash Winslow’s death, she watched the news report of the supposedly fiery car crash he had been involved in while driving from D.C.
His vehicle had hit ice—plausible, there was a light snow in the mountains—and plunged through the guardrail to explode at the bottom of a treacherous mountain cliff.
Dozens were mourning the loss of the security advisor, the reporter related. The ex-government agent was suspected to have been drinking and driving.
“Could you have used anything more clichéd?” she muttered as Cabal paced the room behind her, his narrowed gaze drifting to the reporter before turning back to her.
“It’s clichéd because it works,” he growled.
She shrugged nonchalantly as she continued to watch the news report, her gaze keeping track of the time at the corner of the television screen.
Two days. She’d slept in her own bed during those two days, alone. He’d taken her, but if any dared to call it making love, then she would have become violent. Not that that made it much different from the first time, or the times after it. She was merely noticing that there was definitely more and more Cabal was holding back.
Was it tenderness? He was always gentle with her, always careful . . . Perhaps that was it. He was too careful. Too conscious of each touch, while keeping her helpless in a sensual maelstrom that didn’t allow much of a chance for her to assert her own sexuality.
Mating heat and a mission that Cabal was refusing to allow her to be a part of weren’t going hand in hand here. And she was tired of bitchi
ng over it. She hated to whine, and begging wasn’t her style.
“I have a meeting to go to.” The deep rasp of his voice sent a thrill of response down her spine.
Of course he had a meeting to go to. Jonas was waiting for him two floors above, along with whatever evidence they had taken from her computer and the latest crime scene.
“Figures.” She gave another shrug and kept her attention on the television, carefully controlling her response to him as well as her own plans.
“I’ll be a while.” There was an edge of impatience to his voice now.
“Take your time.” She waved him away, allowing just enough of her own anger to show to allay any suspicions that she might be hiding something or have a meeting of her own planned.
Text messaging was a wonderful, wonderful invention. And Dog was so sneakily efficient that he even avoided messaging while Cabal was in the room with her. That was damned scary. It made her wonder if he had an eye in her room, or an ear, that Cabal might have overlooked.
She glanced over at her mate to catch him watching her silently. On second thought, she doubted he’d missed anything, especially not an electronic bug in either of their rooms.
“Look, Cassa, I know you don’t understand my need to protect you . . .”
“Don’t start.” She held her hand up in a halting motion. “I’m not fighting you any further.”
His lips thinned in irritation. For the past two days she had refused to discuss his stubborn insistence that she wasn’t a part of this investigation. She wasn’t arguing anymore.
“We’re going to have to discuss it.” The words came from between gritted teeth. Poor little Bengal, at the rate he was going he wasn’t going to have any molars left by the time he left Glen Ferris.
By the time she left him.
“You mean I’m going to have to agree with you and turn my independence over to you sooner or later,” she retorted sweetly. “Nope, sorry, my pretty striped tiger, it’s not gonna happen.”
A frown jumped between his brows at her mocking pet name for him. He hated any references to those sexy-as-hell stripes. Too bad, because she rather liked them herself.
“That wasn’t what I meant.” There went another layer of those molars.
“Don’t you have a meeting to go to?” She turned the television up louder as she settled more comfortably in her chair and directed her attention to the weather for Glen Ferris for the next week. Looked like it was going to be colder than normal. Big surprise there.
Behind her, Cabal blew out a hard breath. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Maybe we could go downstairs for dinner when I get back.”
She shrugged. She had no desire to eat with him, not when she was getting ready to share burgers with a Coyote who had information.
Damn Cabal. Did he think the thought of a meal with him was going to make up for what he was trying to take away from her?
“Cassa.” He was in front of her before she could move away, bending until he could stare into her eyes, his knees bracketing her legs as the backs of his fingers brushed against her cheek.
The curiously gentle caress had unbidden tears threatening to moisten her eyes. And that, after she had promised herself she wasn’t going to cry.
She stared back at him coolly. He might be able to smell the turmoil brewing inside her, but that didn’t mean she was going to allow him to see it. And it sure as hell didn’t mean she was going to beg.
“What?” Her voice was husky, a measure of the emotion slipping free to roughen the tone as the very nearness of him affected her senses.
“I’m not trying to steal your independence.”
Oh yeah, she believed that one. She could see the proof of his statement. Yeah, boy. Sitting right here as big as life and as ignorant as a rock was Cassa Hawkins. Slammed right out of an investigation that involved her more than it likely did any Breed that Jonas Wyatt had brought in to investigate it.
None of those Breeds had been married to the man the killer wanted. A man who was dead.
She stared back at him silently. Refusing once again to argue her own points or the dishonesty of his statement.
His hand cupped her cheek. She expected him to kiss her, to pull her to him, to infuse her senses with the taste of the mating hormone that she knew would fill the kiss. Instead, he leaned forward, his head lowered, and his lips pressed against the sensitive flesh at the bend of her neck and shoulder.
The kiss was poignantly tender and filled with all the warmth, the need, that she had wanted to feel when his body covered hers at night. It held everything he had refused to give her at any other time.
“I just want you safe,” he whispered, his forehead pressing against her shoulder then. “Just that, Cassa.”
She shook her head as she stared across the room miserably. “You can’t lock me up. And that’s what you’re doing, Cabal. You’re doing the one thing you would kill to keep anyone from ever doing to you again.”
He tensed, then slowly pulled back from her. The amber in his eyes glittered with anger. She’d pricked his arrogance, his male assurance that he knew what was best for her. She didn’t need him making such decisions for her, and she didn’t need his so-called protection.
“You don’t know nearly as much as you think you do,” he assured her, his voice harsh as he rose to his feet, towering over her. “This isn’t a case of wanting your goddamned independence, Cassa.”
“Then it’s a case of you wanting everything your own damned way, Cabal,” she burst out with, pushing to her feet and pacing across the room. “Look, just go to your damned meeting. I have work here to do, and I sure as hell don’t need your help.”
She stalked to her laptop, stared at the screen and tried to fight back the fear she couldn’t keep from building inside her. The fear that somehow the past was darker, harsher than she had ever believed.
The information she had found in the past two days on Douglas, information she hadn’t had before, hadn’t bothered to find, was beginning to give her panic attacks. Reports on the Deadly Dozen, from Breeds who had survived being captured by them, were violent, vicious. Among those reports were those of a single male and the horrifying acts he had practiced on the female Breeds that were captured.
Not just the acts, but also his pleasure, the joy he’d found in practicing them.
“You don’t need anything from anyone, do you?” he growled, coming behind her, his large body bracketing hers, shocking her with the sudden heat that poured through her.
Mating heat and anger didn’t mix. She could feel the blood pounding through her system just that fast. She could feel the heat of his flesh beneath his clothes, the warmth of his palm as it settled on her stomach.
“This won’t fix anything.” She tried to keep her voice strong, sure, but there was too much awareness, too much need for him.
She sucked in her breath as his fingers found the button and zipper for her jeans. They released, too damned slowly.
Cassa closed her eyes, drew in a hard, deep breath and fought the wave of dizzying need that assailed her.
It was always like this. Her nails dug into the top of the small desk as his hand slid into her jeans and found the wet heat between her thighs.
“You want me,” he accused her roughly. “How can it not fix at least this?”
Yes, she wanted him.