Wolf Under Fire, page 21
Picking up her fork, she pushed a few more bites of egg into her mouth, chewing mechanically. A few forkfuls and another bite of toast later, she finally gave up, scraped what was left on her plate into the trash and poured more coffee into her mug. After adding cream and sugar, she walked into the living room to sit down on the couch. Taking a sip, she tucked her legs under her, then wrapped her long cardigan around her and allowed herself to enjoy the early morning quiet as the sun streamed through the big bay window, warming the whole room.
Directly across from the couch, the videoconference monitor was still hooked up and ready to go, currently in standby mode until it was needed again. Even though it was barely after three o’clock in the morning back in DC, McKay wanted the channel left open, so they wouldn’t have to wait to establish an Internet connection if anything critical came up.
Fortunately, it hadn’t.
Yesterday and last night had been crazy to say the least. The support team had barely gotten her, Jake, Harley, and Caleb out of the alley before the cops had arrived. In fact, if it wasn’t for the EMS-style vehicles they’d used to pick them up, they probably wouldn’t have made it out of there at all. That was one of the things she loved about STAT—they had a plan for everything.
After dropping them off at the house, the support team had immediately headed back out to pick up Forrest and Misty from the crap storm at the hotel. That hadn’t been as complicated as Jes thought it might be, mostly because the Lanesborough had been an absolute madhouse, with every law enforcement agency in London showing up and attempting to take control of the situation, including MI5.
Misty had made it through the melee at the Lanesborough Hotel with little more than a few scrapes and bruises. Forrest, on the other hand, had come back looking half-dead. In fact, when Jes had first seen him covered in blood from head to toe, his hotel maintenance shirt shredded by claws, she was sure there was no way he’d make it. And yeah, Misty had been freaking out. Jes didn’t blame her.
Luckily, very little of the blood had been his. Apparently, he’d tangled with two of the creatures down in the basement after they’d cut the hotel power. While Jes really didn’t want to think too much about what it would be like to fight those things in a pitch-black room with no windows, it squicked her out even more to imagine being trapped under one of them after gutting them and having gallons of their blood gushing all over her.
Okay, gallons might be an exaggeration. But if how much blood had been on Forrest’s clothes was any indication, those creatures had a lot more of it than regular humans. It was thicker and darker in color, too.
Jes heard footsteps on the stairs and turned her head to see Jake standing in the doorway. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair stuck up in a few places, like he’d just run his fingers through it. He looked as exhausted as she felt. Actually, he looked worse than she felt. Her heart ached a little at the sight of him. He might be a werewolf, but he’d still gotten shot a hell of a lot of times yesterday. It had taken Jes more than an hour to tend to his wounds when they got back to the B&B. Getting the bullets out hadn’t been fun, but thankfully, there hadn’t been any debris in the openings, so they’d healed over quickly.
Of course, Jake had been far more concerned with the few scrapes she’d gotten during her wrestling match at the house in St Albans, personally tending to every boo-boo she had on her body. Truthfully, she hadn’t minded the attention. While all that TLC hadn’t led to sex—mostly because they’d had to spend endless hours briefing McKay on what was going on—simply having Jake’s hands on her was an amazing experience. It was hard to put into words, but in some ways, the care he’d taken last night was as intimate as when they’d made love.
“Any coffee left?” he asked hopefully.
Jes nodded, wincing as he walked slowly into the kitchen. She had no doubt the gunshot wound through his calf was bothering him more than he’d let on last night. Then again, he was a guy as well as an alpha werewolf, so he was clearly trying to hide it from her. Still, the urge to jump up and run into the kitchen to see if he was okay was difficult to ignore. But she resisted the impulse. He wouldn’t appreciate her hovering over him.
So instead, she sat on the couch sipping her coffee and listening to Jake moving around the kitchen, wondering if they might be able to grab a few precious moments alone together before the craziness started all over again and they’d be on the move to try to track down Darby.
Jake returned to the living room a few minutes later, a gigantic mug of coffee in one hand and a package of chocolate chip cookies in the other. He sat down beside her, so close that his thigh rested against hers, and little tingles raced up her leg.
Damn, she had it crazy bad for him.
Or she was losing her marbles.
One or the other.
He held out the package, offering her a cookie. “Anything else from McKay?”
Jes took a cookie, dunked it in her coffee, then nibbled on it. Although smaller than the chocolate chip cookies she was used to in the States, the British version was still sweet, crunchy, and had loads of chips. “Not yet.”
Jake nodded and sipped his coffee, his brow furrowing.
While Jake hadn’t said it in so many words, Jes knew he blamed himself for every life that had been lost yesterday, both at the hotel and on Darby’s yacht, even though there wasn’t anything they could have done differently to change any of it.
The upper level desk jockeys back at STAT headquarters hadn’t helped the situation any. Their 20/20 hindsight allowed them to nitpick every single decision she, Jake, and the rest of the team had made. While they’d saved a lot of people, including the kids who’d been kidnapped, and recovered the bodies of a type of supernatural that no one had ever seen before, at the end of the day, that didn’t seem to be enough. They couldn’t understand why Darby had killed those three men he’d abducted and weren’t above implying she, Jake, and their teammates had gotten them killed because they’d screwed up. McKay, the only supervisor with any field time in this century, was the only one to stand up for them.
That said, McKay wasn’t thrilled with what had happened yesterday. The UK press was all over the supposed terrorist attack on the hotel, as well as the high-speed chase through the city. Since the incident was not only high-profile but also involved the Bilderberg Society, their boss had been forced to contact British intelligence and give them a heads-up. The press hadn’t revealed the identity of the three men Darby had murdered yet, but they would soon.
Biting into a cookie, Jake leaned forward and flipped open the magenta file folder on the coffee table to once again pore over everything they knew about the three men Darby had killed. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much. Like all members of the Bilderberg Society, the men had been intensely private about their personal lives and had the money to keep it that way.
“Ryo Arsenault,” Jake murmured, reading the bio of the olive-skinned man Darby had shot last. “A billionaire from South America, he made his money in the space industry and was currently involved with the space center in French Guiana.”
Jes frowned as Jake stared at the man’s photo, reviewing notes about Arsenault’s family and business dealings. He’d already read everything in there last night—more than once. Reading it again would only make him feel even more responsible for what had happened to the men, but Jes knew Jake didn’t want to hear that, so she didn’t say anything.
“Lais Khan from the Arab Emirates,” Jake continued, turning to the photo of a dark-skinned man with black hair and a full beard. “He owned a number of chemical manufacturing facilities throughout the Middle East, Africa, and India.”
Jake flipped the page, but before he could say anything, Jes interrupted him, repeated the man’s bio from memory.
“Laurent Marconi, born and raised outside of Paris. He was a philanthropist and major shareholder in Airbus Defense and Space, Europe’s leading defense company.”
Jake nodded but kept reading the file in front of him anyway.
Jes reached out and flipped the folder closed. “You’ve read those files a hundred times already and you can read them a hundred more,” she said gently. “But it isn’t going to tell you why Darby kidnapped those men or why he murdered them. All we know is that he did and that we’re going to hunt him down and make him pay for it.”
“Damn straight we will,” Caleb said gruffly as he walked into the living room, a mug of coffee in one hand and a jar of peanut butter in the other.
Misty, Forrest, and Harley trailed slowly behind Caleb like a pack of overworked and undercaffeinated zombies, each with their own cup of coffee.
Jes sat back on the couch with a sigh. She’d been hoping to have a little time to talk to Jake privately, but it would have to wait.
“You forgot to put cream and sugar in your coffee,” Misty said, glancing at Forrest over the rim of her mug as he sat down on the arm of the wingback chair she’d curled up in.
He looked down at his mug with a frown, then shrugged. “I need caffeine too much to worry about what it tastes like. I’ll add cream and sugar later—after I wake up.”
Caleb snorted in obvious amusement at that as he sat on the floor beside the coffee table. Taking the lid off the jar of peanut butter, he took out a generous spoonful and shoved it in his mouth. Jes didn’t realize she was staring as he shoved the freshly licked spoon into the container again until he paused with the next serving of peanut butter halfway to his mouth and stared back.
“What?” he demanded.
Jes shook her head. She didn’t know why she thought she could expect any better from him. “What if someone else wanted to eat some of that?”
Caleb considered the question as he ate what was on the spoon, then went back for another helping of peanut-buttery goodness. Okay, double-dipping was bad enough, but this was taking it to extremes.
“I was going to put it back when I was done,” he pointed out.
The expression on his face made Jes think he clearly didn’t see what the big deal was, and she didn’t feel like explaining it to him.
“Speaking of disgusting,” Jake said. “Did you decide to skip that shower we all talked about, Forrest? Because you still reek.”
Forrest dropped his head back with an audible sigh.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Misty said. “He still smells like those creatures? How is that possible? He took two showers last night and another one this morning.”
This was one of those times Jes was glad she didn’t have a werewolf’s nose. Apparently, after getting doused with the blood from those creatures, Forrest had absorbed their scent. According to Jake and Harley, it was really bad.
“Even I can smell it,” Caleb said around a mouthful of peanut butter.
“Those things have blood like motor oil,” Forrest said morosely. “No matter how much I scrub, it still feels like there’s a film of grease on my skin.”
“Have you tried using dish soap?” Harley suggested from the other wingback chair. “You know, like they do with birds who get stuck in oil spills?”
Forrest gave Misty a questioning look. “What do you think?”
“It’s worth a try,” she replied, then, as if on impulse, grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “I don’t care what you smell like. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Amen to that, Jes thought.
“Do you think the creatures’ bodies are back in DC yet?” Caleb asked, taking a break from shoving peanut butter in his face to swig his coffee.
Jes glanced at her watch, calculating how long it would have taken a military cargo plane to get back to the states. “Definitely. Although I have no idea who they’re going to get to do the autopsies. I’m pretty sure STAT doesn’t have a lot of experts on supernatural anatomy on call.”
“Actually, McKay might,” Jake said. “There’s a woman named Davina DeMirci who runs a nightclub out in Los Angeles that caters to supernaturals. She’s not a medical examiner, but if anyone can tell us what these things are, it would be her.”
Before Jes could ask how the woman knew so much about supernatural creatures, Misty’s cell phone rang. Picking it up from where it rested on her lap, she glanced at the screen.
“It’s McKay,” she said, thumbing the button and answering it. After a quick conversation, she hung up and grabbed the TV remote from the coffee table, handing it to Forrest. “There’s something on BBC he wants us to see. He didn’t say what, but whatever it is, it’s serious.”
While Forrest flipped through the channels looking for the right one, Misty quickly got McKay on Skype. Behind his glasses, his eyes were red and tired looking, and his usual neatly tied tie was loose, the top two buttons of his dress shirt undone. Crap, their boss looked wiped out. That was saying a lot since McKay operated on little to no sleep on a regular basis.
“Do you have BBC on yet?” he asked without preamble.
Jes wanted to ask what was so important on TV but forced herself to wait patiently while Forrest figured out which channel was BBC. When he finally did, Jes gaped at what she saw. Around the room, everyone else looked equally stunned.
Standing behind a big podium with large projector screens to either side of them, were the three men Darby had murdered, only they looked a lot less dead than they had yesterday.
“What the hell?” Caleb murmured softly, eyes locked on the TV.
Jes stared as Ryo Arsenault, the South American billionaire, stepped up to the cluster of microphones on the podium. The crowd of eager journalists in front of the men immediately began to quiet down, the cacophony of noise diminishing until there was nothing left but the occasional rapid-fire clicking of cameras.
“For those who do not know me, my name is Ryo Arsenault, and this is Lais Khan and Laurent Marconi,” the man said in a rich, deep voice. “As I’m sure most of you are aware, yesterday afternoon, the Lanesborough Hotel was attacked by a group of unidentified terrorists. Many people were injured in the attack, and unfortunately, some were killed. What has not been released to the public is that the three of us were kidnapped. If we had not escaped our captors earlier this morning, we would all almost certainly be dead by now.”
Cameras clicked away even louder, and reporters shoved their handheld recorders a little bit closer. Jes could almost feel the anticipation building in the room. This guy had the group of reporters eating out of his hands.
“The target of yesterday’s attack at the Lanesborough was a special meeting of the Bilderberg Society, an organization that these other men and I are proud to be associated with. While there were several topics on our agenda yesterday, there was only one project that would provoke these anarchists to such extreme action: the ACE program.”
As he spoke, the projector screens to either side lit up. The one on the left depicted a long-range view of a huge rocket standing on a launch platform, while the one on the right displayed what appeared to be some kind of satellite.
“Our planet is running out of fresh water in those parts of the world least able to manage it—the Middle East, India, North Africa, and Central Asia.” Arsenault motioned toward the image to the right of the screen. “This is the Aquifer Climate Experiment satellite. The ACE was developed by the Bilderberg Society in conjunction with NASA and the University of California, Irvine. When placed into a low earth orbit and connected with others like it, ACE will allow us to locate new water sources at depths never before possible. This technology will help us save billions of people around the globe.”
As if they had practiced the speech a dozen times, Arsenault immediately moved away from the microphones to be replaced by Lais Khan. “The three of us attended the meeting at the Lanesborough to finalize plans for the launch of the first ACE satellite at the end of the month. That is the reason we were the ones kidnapped and selected to be executed by people who care little whether people in these parts of the world live or die—people who thrive on misery and death.”
“But we will not be deterred from our efforts,” Laurent Marconi stepped forward to say. “If anything, this attack has convinced us that we are moving too slowly. That is why we’re going to accelerate our plans and accomplish something never attempted before—the launch and delivery of three satellites into orbit all at the same time.”
The screen on the right changed, showing a lush green landscape with multiple large buildings positioned at well-spaced distances from each other.
“This is the Guiana Space Centre outside of Kourou in French Guiana, South America,” Arsenault said. “Three ACE satellites are on their way there as we speak, where they will be mounted onto three Ariane 5 rockets and prepared for immediate launch in three days.”
The press seemed to realize how huge this whole thing was and eagerly asked their questions all at once.
“Why are you rushing the launch?”
“Is it possible to do something like this so quickly?”
“Why launch three satellites at once?”
“Do you expect another attack?”
But rather than answer any of their questions, Arsenault continued. “The space center will be supported with the most extensive security forces available. Nothing and no one will be allowed to stop these launches. We will not be swayed from our course. Not by threats. Not by actions.”
And with that, the news conference ended as all three men walked off the stage. Right before the men disappeared through a side door, a familiar face was briefly visible standing in the shadows waiting for them.
“Did you see that? There, just inside that door.” Jes pointed at the man just before he disappeared. “What the hell is Arran Darby doing there?”
