In the Shadows (Metahuman Files Book 3) Read online

  In The Shadows

  Hailey Turner

  IN THE SHADOWS

  Copyright © 2017 by Hailey Turner

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by Kasmit Covers.

  Professional Beta Reading by Leslie Copeland: [email protected]

  Edited by Jersey Devil Editing.

  To get your free copy of the Metahuman Files short story A Distant Devotion featuring Jamie and Kyle, sign-up for Hailey Turner's newsletter over here!

  In the Shadows is dedicated to

  Kelly

  because it’s been twenty years

  and our crazy friendship is still going strong.

  Contents

  BEFORE

  Prologue

  AFTER

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  NOW

  Chapter 18

  INDEX

  Author’s Notes

  Connect With Hailey

  Other Works By Hailey Turner

  BEFORE

  2281

  ___________________

  Prologue

  Red Sun Rising

  The sting of betrayal burned worse than the fire that made up his world.

  He pushed the rage aside, choking on the smoke filling the lab and searing his lungs. The walls were singed black, scorch marks reaching high for the ceiling. Fire danced around him, curling in strange ways as he pushed forward through the dangerous heat, searching desperately for the only person who mattered in this hell.

  All the air in his lungs was used to shout a single name. “Kilyusha!”

  He coughed hard, nearly doubling over. Everything about his body felt wrong, as if his skin was too tight and ready to tear at the seams of his joints. Gnashing his teeth, he kept moving, watching as the fire twisted out of reach with every step he took, making room for him.

  He heaved for air, eyes watering so badly he could barely see. The heat surrounding him was enough to blister his exposed skin, but when he touched his face, he felt no burns.

  When he pulled his hand away, fire sparked across his fingertips.

  The pressure inside him grew stronger, hotter, drying out his mouth, but it wasn’t enough to stop him. He wasn’t going to leave.

  Not without his brother.

  “Kilyusha!”

  The fire flickered—and moved.

  AFTER

  2285

  ___________________

  1

  Long Tongue Liar

  New Miami never went below triple digits during the day in summer.

  The coastline of Florida was a tangled mess of ocean-swallowed islands, beaches scattered around the waterlogged foundations of long-forgotten housing developments, and dangerously hidden sandbars. The rising water of the oceans generations ago had inundated the Everglades National Park with salt water, creating a small bay that bisected the tip of South Florida. New Miami was located on a thin strip of viable land clinging to the Eastern Seaboard with a stubbornness not even multiple hurricanes a year could wipe out.

  More a destination city than one to set down roots in, New Miami was known more now for its clubs and nightlife rather than its beaches. Parties that could be held indoors away from the dangerous midday heat were all the rage. The sun-kissed tan many men and women sported was the work of skin dyes or tanning pools, places offered up by hotels or specialized club-type businesses that filtered the sun’s harmful rays through small retractable biodomes over their outdoor pool areas. The stand-alone businesses charged moderate admittance prices but gouged their guests on the alcohol to help balance out the water taxes they needed to pay. Resorts didn’t have that problem.

  Agent Sean Delaney squinted through the plas-glass wall overlooking the outdoor pool area in the Azur Resort. The five-star resort offered a list of amenities catering to a wealthy clientele looking for a good time, ranging from a day at the spa to an all-night pool party hosted by a celebrity DJ. Normally, he wouldn’t be able to afford a single night in a place like this, but his current cover required a particular gloss over the streetwise persona he embodied.

  Sean pressed his hand against the floor-to-ceiling window, tapping his fingers against it. While the soundproofing built into the resort was top-notch, and he couldn’t hear the music playing below from his spot on the twenty-first level, he could still feel the faint vibrations of the bass beat. Earlier, when he passed the pool area on his way to the private elevator in the lobby that took guests up to The White Squall restaurant, the music had been impossible to ignore. He’d watched the revelry for a few minutes before moving on, but during that time Sean had heard a familiar song playing. He knew that melody by heart, half humming it under his breath as he waited for his dinner guests to arrive in the private dining room.

  Tucking his hands into his pockets, Sean studied the party below with keen brown eyes. The biodome had been retracted for a humid June night while colorful floating lights illuminated the pool area. Guests frolicked in the water when they weren’t waiting for drinks at the bar. Everyone looked like they were having a good time.

  At thirty-one, that hadn’t been his scene for a long, long time. Recruited by the CIA during his freshman year of college, Sean had left behind the lure of fame with the rock band he’d started with his brothers in favor of a life of lies. Atomic Grace had blown up the charts not long after Sean opted for a career change, and was still a hard-hitting act in the cutthroat music industry these many years later.

  Sean’s current life was merely cutthroat.

  Years spent undercover had made him adept at slipping out of one identity and into another, answering to names that were never his to keep. He lied in service of his country because he believed the information he brought back would help keep America safe in the long run. Spies put their lives on the line just as often as the country’s military personnel did, rooting out threats no one else could.

  Sean had been lucky throughout his CIA career—until he wasn’t. In 2282, he was caught in a Splice chemical bomb that decimated a summer outdoor market in Belfast, Northern Ireland. At the time, he’d been deep undercover with the Reborn Irish Republican Army to try to pinpoint their Splice supplier. Sean was the only survivor of the blast, even though the official count was zero survivors and over three hundred dead. Surviving meant being turned into a metahuman by a quirk in his DNA. It resulted in a complete derailment of his career as a CIA officer.

  By law, all metahumans in the United States of America had to register with the government. They weren’t required to fight for their country and could enjoy a relatively quiet civilian life if they wanted to. Considering the vast array of ages that survivors encompassed, a civilian life was preferred by many.

  After dedicating ten years of his life in service to his country, Sean had known he’d wanted to keep fighting. The Metahuman Defense Force was more than willing to accept his transfer into their ranks. With a background in spy work, he’d joined the MDF’s intelligence division rather than train to be part of a field team. His particular
power made communication difficult when on assignment, which meant Sean rarely, if ever, used his power while undercover. The phase field his body emanated enabled him to pass through solid objects, but it utterly killed anything electronic, including any implanted bioware. Losing comms and access to his RealIdent chip was a complication Sean never enjoyed.

  The door to the private dining room slid open with a soft hiss, cutting short his musings. The ambient sound of the main dining area of the restaurant filtered through. In the reflection on the window, Sean watched the hostess wave inside a well-dressed couple. He turned to face them, plastering a smile on his face.

  “So glad you could make it, Mr. Wolcott. Thank you for joining me for dinner,” Sean said. He let the Brooklyn accent his cover cultivated slip into his voice as he came around the table to greet his target.

  Riley Miller was an old CIA cover he’d had to resurrect in January during his time running an undercover mission with Alpha Team, the MDF’s top field team. Resorting to that identity hadn’t even been discussed in the preplanning phase, but when a couple of old acquaintances had shown up with their target in the middle of the mission, Sean was forced to switch identities on the fly.

  Sean’s cover identity had gone from former Irish mob to the current CFO of Root Source, Inc. Riley cleaned up nice in a suit even if the rough and tumble background shined through in his voice. Sean could mimic most accents and was very good at pretending to be someone he wasn’t. His skill in that area was what led the CIA to recruit him in the first place after seeing him perform on stage with his brothers.

  “Always looking out for new businesses to make mine better,” Adrian Wolcott said, flashing Sean a cocky smile as he held out his hand for a quick handshake.

  Adrian was a charismatic man in his early forties, tall, with a solid body filling out his bespoke suit. Light brown hair was slicked back with just a touch of product. His hazel eyes were more on the green-gold side than brown, and set in a tanned face that had gone through a little too much enhancement work to be called natural. Still, Adrian was good-looking by anyone’s assessment, even Sean’s. He’d always been partial to brunets over blonds, and while Adrian fit that criteria, Sean’s daydreams revolved around someone else these days.

  As a wealthy casino magnate based out of Las Vegas, Adrian was the owner of a portfolio of money-making properties on the Vegas Strip, the jewel of which was Olympus. He’d been hinting at wanting to branch out into New Miami’s club scene according to the dossier MDF analysts and profilers had created. There wasn’t anything illegal about owning a casino or a club, but Adrian’s younger brother, Declan Wolcott, who was a shareholder in one or two of them, also owned a different kind of company the MDF was intensely interested in.

  A former Army Ranger, Declan had left the service with a clean record at the age of thirty-two. He’d spent the next seven years building up a private military company off a loan from his brother that Declan eventually repaid. North Star International was one of the top three PMCs in the country that contracted with the military and federal government agencies for security services. Unlike its owner, North Star International didn’t have as clean a record.

  Neither brother would’ve been on the MDF’s radar if analysts hadn’t dug up a single holopic of Declan having dinner with Nikolaas Jansen and a few other people. The MDF had clawed the new lead out of intel derived from the January mission. Jansen, a known black-market facilitator beholden to the Presnenskaya Bratva and the Pavluhkin family, was too chilling a detail to ignore.

  The MDF didn’t know the extent of the Wolcotts and the Pavluhkins working relationship, if they even had one. Declan was a difficult man to reach without him becoming suspicious. Rather than target him directly, the MDF had chosen to go through his brother instead. From everything analysts could uncover, the brothers had a decent relationship. Exploiting their inherent trust of one another was critical to the MDF’s goals.

  Sean, using his Riley Miller cover, had spent the past month and a half making overtures to Adrian through his role as CFO of Root Source, Inc. The MDF had created the cybersecurity company as a way to infiltrate the criminal organizations working to make their own metahumans by subjecting innocent people to Splice. Owned and operated on paper by several members of Alpha Team, financially backed by the son of one of the richest men in the world, Sean’s credentials had earned him an in-face meeting that Adrian rarely granted people hoping to do business with him.

  It helped that they weren’t trying to take away business from the man, only work to secure his empire.

  Adrian gestured at the tall, ridiculously slim and gorgeous woman hanging onto his arm. “Allow me to introduce my wife, Chloe.”

  Chloe Wolcott was a good sixteen years younger than Adrian, who spent her days immersed in the fashion industry as a model according to her file. She wore her platinum-blonde hair pulled back in a sleek ballet bun to better show off her sharp, symmetrical facial features. Her sheer, floor-length, red dress was nipped in at the waist and sleeveless, with a high ruffled collar that just brushed the underside of her jaw. Beneath the sheer fabric, she wore what looked like dark red lingerie set with gold floral appliqués in just the right spots to make a claim for decency. Her high heels put her inches taller than Sean’s own lean, five-foot-nine frame.

  “A pleasure to meet such a lovely lady,” Sean replied, shaking Chloe’s proffered hand. Her fingers were laden down with diamond and ruby rings that matched the heavy-looking drop earrings dangling from her ears.

  “Charmed,” she replied, probably having heard the compliment a thousand times before.

  Adrian pulled out a chair for her while Sean took his own seat at the square table, opting to face the door and let the other two have the view of the city skyline at his back.

  “I apologize again for Ekaterina’s absence. An emergency came up in the UK, and she had to attend to it personally,” Sean said as a server poured ice water for everyone.

  As far he knew, Sergeant Ekaterina “Katie” Ovechkina, Alpha Team’s second-in-command, was enjoying some down time between missions right now back in Washington, D.C. The MDF hadn’t needed her or Alpha Team to reprise their January mission roles in the field to sell the company to new clients when they had Sean to handle that angle. Alpha Team was more focused on trying to keep one step ahead of Stanislav Pavluhkin whenever they got pulled back into his orbit for hacking jobs. Keeping up appearances like this was something Sean could handle on his own and had been since the beginning of the year.

  “Next time, I want to meet her,” Adrian said, making it a casual demand Sean could only nod at because that’s what was expected of his cover.

  “I’m sure she wouldn’t be averse to coming out to Las Vegas,” Sean replied. “In working with them, I’ve come to understand that Marines bet on everything, so your casinos would be a fun distraction.”

  “I do know how to make sure people have a good time.”

  Sean smiled politely at that comment as two servers came through the door carrying three plates. The ten-course, prix-fixe meal had been reserved a few weeks back, but Sean let Adrian pick out a bottle of wine tableside, inwardly wincing at his memory of the five-figure price tag it came with. Technically, it wasn’t his money that he was spending, but Sean came from a solidly middle-class family, and the way the wealthy spent their money without a second thought was crazy.

  Sean picked up one of his forks, eyeing the delicately plated amuse-bouche. He’d eaten a lot of things over the course of his life to keep up his covers, but raw sea urchin was a first.

  “I understand you’re looking for both a personal and professional use of Root Source, Inc. Your request shouldn’t be a problem. We’re capable of scaling up or down, according to our client’s needs,” Sean said.

  “My brother believes he’s capable of handling the security of my casinos, but I keep telling him cybersecurity is different than merely giving a man a gun,” Adrian said.

  Adrian scooped up his sea urchin
and shoved it into his mouth, chewing obnoxiously. Sean ate his single bite of the stuff and choked it down. It was briny-sweet, in a weird way, but not a flavor he wanted to repeat. He was glad there was only enough for one bite.

  “Guns are useful. A hacker, in my experience, can cause more damage than a bullet. It’s why Ekaterina created the company. It takes a hacker to fight a hacker, and our people know the tricks both white hats and black hats employ.”

  “So I’ve been led to believe. But you’re offering a high price to ensure the security of my casinos, to say nothing of my private properties.”

  “Paying shit money for a shit job gives you shit results,” Sean shot back mildly.

  Adrian barked out a laugh and pointed a finger at him. “True. Very true.”

  The door slid open, allowing the master sommelier to come inside and display the chosen bottle of wine to Adrian for his approval. Sean watched him go through the wine-tasting ritual before nodding his approval of the vintage. The master sommelier poured out three generous glasses of wine before leaving the bottle on the table and exiting the room. Three servers appeared in his wake, one to retrieve the dirty dishes and the other two to deliver the soup course.