In the Blood (Metahuman Files Book 4) Read online

  For a split second, Jamie’s expression softened, blue eyes brightening in his face. “I know. I love you, too.”

  The words were as good as a promise, one Kyle knew neither of them would ever break.

  6

  Sleeping With Ghosts

  Alexei ducked around an agent who refused to look up from her tablet. The Administration levels seemed busier than usual today. A few seconds later he palmed open the door to his favorite office on Monday morning, leaned inside, and winced. “Not look happy.”

  Sean didn’t look up from the report he was reading, the grim expression on his face not clearing. “Because I’m not.”

  Alexei stepped inside and pulled out the guest chair so he could sit down. The holoscreens created a wall of brightness between them that Alexei reached out to move aside so he could better see Sean.

  “New mission?” Alexei asked, trying not to sound disappointed. Sean had just returned from a month away and Alexei was hoping for at least a few more weeks before either of them were deployed for a long period of time again.

  “Not yet, but it probably will become one.”

  Sean grabbed a holoscreen and flung it at Alexei. It skimmed across the embedded computer screen and snapped to a halt in front of where Alexei sat. He leaned forward and read through the first few paragraphs of the report before his eyes widened.

  He made a startled noise in the back of his throat. “This not good.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  Alexei scooted his chair closer to the desk, reading rapidly. The more he read, the more a heavy knot settled in his gut.

  What the MDF analysts and profilers had dug up by following leads culled from Saunders & Associates, paired with the June raid and the new information from the latest mission in Mexico, revealed a dangerous partnership. Chatter had confirmed by the thinnest of ties that Declan and his mercenary group were working with Cillian on planning and executing large-scale Splice bombing attacks for the highest-bidding terrorist group. They were being vouched for by the Sons of Adam, which broadened their reach immensely.

  The investigation into Valerie Hayes and her biotech lab was steadily moving forward behind the scenes, even if Declan had moved on. Whether or not he mourned his dead wife, Alexei didn’t know. Either way, if the intel was solid, Declan’s path of revenge was deadly for everyone—but especially for Jamie.

  Alexei had been present in the biotech lab when Jamie shot and killed Valerie while Declan looked on over an uplink. Declan would know that Apollo from Alpha Team murdered his wife, and if Declan was in contact with Stanislav through Niko, then he could know that Apollo was Jamie. To say nothing of a possible leak coming from the CIA. None of them could escape the possibility that Stanislav had seen their true identities in the future.

  We shouldn’t have agreed to their request in Paris, Alexei thought to himself.

  The team had three days left to deliver the information the Pavluhkins wanted and the MDF was scrambling to make it happen. Jamie and Kyle were in New York City for an Empyrean brand party tonight to retrieve the right targets for the trade—wealthy contacts for criminal ones. No one else on the team was going, mostly because of the media presence that would be there, and the MDF was still working to mitigate the Secret Service problem.

  “Director know?” Alexei asked.

  “The report was sent to him this morning. His aide indicated they might need me for a briefing later after the initial meetings with my division head.” Sean finally dragged his attention away from the intel and focused on Alexei. “It’ll probably end up in Alpha Team’s hands at some point.”

  “Not know where they target,” Alexei pointed out. “Could be anywhere.”

  “Chatter indicates it may be a domestic attack. We’ve got an election coming up next year and Jamie is kind of a focal point in all this. That’s a prime opportunity right there.”

  “Think they target his family?”

  Sean rubbed a hand over his face, shoulders tight with a tension Alexei wished he could ease. “I don’t know. They could—”

  He broke off as a sharp alarm cut through the office, a red warning line streaming across the top of every holoscreen. Sean immediately leaned forward, brown eyes going wide.

  “What the hell?” he exclaimed.

  Everything shifted in the displays, screens minimizing until only one large holoscreen remained. It bisected into two separate camera feeds, each one streaming a familiar-looking apartment—as well as the group of masked men entering the premises.

  “Senya,” Alexei ground out as he rose to his feet, eyes locked on the holoscreen.

  Two of the masked men moved farther into Sean’s apartment while the third paused just inside the door, looking right into the embedded security camera in the wall. Alexei didn’t realize he was holding his breath until the man pulled off his balaclava. The face that filled the screen was familiar from too many hours poring over dossiers and reports, even if Alexei had never met him in person.

  Cillian Halloran was in his late thirties but looked older than that, face pockmarked with chemical scars he’d never bothered to fix. Thick black hair was cut short to tame his curls, making his ears stand out more than usual. Heavy brows curved over hooded blue eyes, and a tiny scar cut through his left eyebrow. Cillian smiled into the camera, teeth a crooked mess in his mouth, and slid his thumb across his throat in a cutting motion.

  Then the feed cut out.

  Sean slammed his hand down on the comms uplink. “Agent Flores, I need a team sent to my apartment now. There’s been a security breach. Put the security details on my family and the Dvorkins on notice for a possible attack.”

  Alexei was already halfway to the door when he felt Sean’s hand on his arm, pulling him to a stop. He turned around, jaw tight with a fury he could practically taste, seeing his own rage mirrored in Sean’s gaze, along with a fear Alexei wished he could wipe away.

  “Where are you going?” Sean asked.

  “Where you think?” Alexei retorted.

  Sean went back to his desk and pulled a Beretta M90 tactical pistol and holster from a drawer. He clipped it on his belt as he hurried past Alexei to be the first out of the office. “You’re not leaving without me.”

  “Da.”

  They didn’t stop by the ready rooms to gear up in their combat uniforms since this wasn’t a mission so much as an emergency. Sean’s apartment was unlisted for security purposes; Cillian shouldn’t have been able to locate it.

  Alexei had a feeling they weren’t being unpredictable enough to outsmart Stanislav, and that realization left a sour taste in his mouth as they exited the base in record time.

  “How you think Cillian find out?” Alexei asked as they drove past the security checkpoint at top speed, followed by an SUV carrying an armed team of MDF field agents. Half of Alpha Team was taking advantage of some downtime, and they couldn’t wait for everyone to regroup.

  Sean angrily shook his head, raking a hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes. “Bennett, most likely.”

  The CIA deputy director was becoming a problem Alexei wished they could send Kyle to take care of. One bullet was all he would need to give everyone some peace of mind. Rationally, Alexei knew that would only cause more problems in the long run, but he’d feel a lot safer with that traitor taken care of in the only way that mattered in their line of work.

  “Not good,” Alexei grunted.

  “I know.”

  Alexei swallowed the angry retort sitting on the tip of his tongue. Sean’s usual calm demeanor had disappeared in the wake of the latest clusterfuck to hit them since starting this mission in January. Eleven months of subterfuge and lies had gotten them nowhere except increasingly backed into a corner with no way out.

  Alexei tried not to think about his parents and sisters, knowing that if he let himself get distracted, his focus would break completely. He needed to be clearheaded for the mess they were heading into, even if all he felt was a burning rage at th
e way the current situation had devolved into such a fucking mess.

  Whoever they had on overwatch back on base had hacked the traffic grid to grant them perpetual green lights. Alexei rarely took his foot off the gas pedal as they closed the distance between them and Sean’s apartment building.

  When they arrived, nothing was amiss outside, but that didn’t mean anything. Alexei parked in the red zone out front, ignoring the warning of a fine from the D.C. Department of Public Works that flashed over the car’s control screen embedded in the dash. Sean scrambled out of the car before Alexei could even turn off the engine, gun already in hand.

  Alexei swore and threw himself out of the car, racing after Sean. Alexei barked out an order over the general comms to the agents who’d followed them into the megacity. “Secure perimeter.”

  Voices murmured in his ears—not his team’s, but familiar nonetheless. Alexei tuned out the chatter and followed Sean inside. Both of them ignored the concerned-looking security guard on duty in favor of getting into the first accessible elevator. On the ride up, Alexei felt Sean’s hand slide against his, fingers tangling together. He glanced over at Sean and raised an eyebrow in a silent question.

  “I’m phasing us. Cillian is a known bombmaker,” Sean said.

  “Should evacuate building,” Alexei replied.

  Sean narrowed his eyes, gaze distant and sharp. “Good idea.”

  On a Monday, in the middle of the day, there shouldn’t have been that many people in the residential apartment building, but one could never be too careful. They paused in the hallway only long enough for Sean to access the fire alarm trigger near the elevators and trigger it.

  The piercing wail of the warning siren whooped through the air, making Alexei’s ears hurt. He was careful not to look at the flashing strobe lights as Sean stalked his way down the hallway to the apartment Alexei was beginning to consider home.

  And it had been violated in the worst way possible.

  Alexei knew how much being safe meant to people in their line of work. It was one thing to put their lives on the line for the greater good so long as they could come back home, crawl into bed, and leave the terror of war on the battlefield, but it was never that easy. The nightmares were terrible company and the constant need to look over one’s shoulder never truly went away.

  Safety could be found in people, and in a place to call home in a city somewhere. Alexei thought he’d found it here, in this apartment, with Sean over the last few months. Lazy mornings lying in bed when allowed, and cooking meals together in the tiny kitchen, practically elbowing each other out of the way for room at the stove, the sounds of Sean playing his guitar if Alexei asked nice enough with hands and mouth. All of that—everything they’d started to build together inside these walls—had been destroyed.

  The sliding door was forced open and left half-hanging off its tracks. Sean phased them through the damaged entrance and into the messy apartment, the sound of the fire alarm echoing in there as well. The strobe light flashed glaring red illumination across the shattered pieces of furniture and broken holopics littering the front room.

  The television had been ripped off the wall, the couch upended, and the small kitchen table where they took their meals broken into pieces. All the cupboards in the kitchen were open, dishes and glasses tossed to the floor where they’d shattered upon impact. The posters for Atomic Grace, the rock band Sean’s brothers were in, remained on the wall, but were now covered in stark black graffiti, the warning spray-painted in large, unforgiving letters.

  Reciprocity.

  The give and take of business between gangs; an informal criminal code that spanned countries and oceans. Alexei knew enough of how the bratvas back in Russia and the Ukraine had worked, what reciprocity meant to them when dealt out like this. He doubted it was all that different for the Reborn IRA or even the Irish-American street gang Sean’s cover had initially been built out of.

  Betrayal was never something criminals just lay down and accepted. Revenge was the only acceptable option to save face.

  This was Cillian saying I know who you are. I know where you live.

  “Fuck,” Sean whispered quietly, voice strangled as he stared bleakly at the ruins of his apartment. “Fuck.”

  “Senya—”

  Sean angrily shook his head, cutting Alexei off as he turned toward the bedroom. Alexei could do nothing but follow, Sean’s hand like a lifeline in his, refusing to let go. Sean rocked to a halt in the doorway, staring silently at the ripped-up ruins of their bed, the turned over desk, and cut-up clothing.

  Alexei’s gaze caught on a loose guitar string and he couldn’t quite stop the hurt sound from crawling up his throat as he gazed at the broken pieces of Sean’s acoustic guitar. Someone—Cillian—had used it as a hammer, slamming it against the knocked-over dresser until the neck broke from the body, the snapped strings peeling away from the fret in ruined coils. The pieces lay scattered like bits of trash when it was so much more than that.

  Alexei knew Sean had owned that guitar since he was a teenager, had played it the few times he’d been on stage with his brothers’ band before he turned away from a life in the spotlight for one in the shadows. Of everything Cillian could have destroyed in the apartment, that hurt the most. Alexei knew how much sentimental value was tied up in that musical instrument, and Sean would never get it back.

  “Uzhas kakoi,” Alexei said quietly. Because it was a tragedy in a way that cut close—losing that sense of safety that was almost impossible to replace.

  Sean didn’t seem to hear him, staring blankly at the broken pieces of the guitar. Alexei gently tugged on Sean’s hand. When he didn’t move, Alexei went to him, stepping in front to block his view of the mess that was their home and the life they’d been quietly building together. Sean’s head jerked up, brown eyes wide and too bright in his pale face. Alexei lifted a hand and gently cupped his cheek, the degree that Sean had phased them to equal in both their bodies, so touching each other was possible.

  “Need to go,” Alexei said. “Need to call families, make sure—”

  The chime of an uplink ringing through the apartment, at odds with the fire alarm still going off, made them both tense up. Sean backed up into the living room, pulling Alexei along with him. They both eyed the small screen embedded in the wall that had escaped the damage Cillian and his people had inflicted on the rest of the apartment.

  The caller was unknown, but Alexei had a sinking feeling he knew who would be on the other side of the uplink. Sean solidified his hand long enough to accept the call and run a trace on it at the same time, linking it to headquarters.

  Cillian’s face popped up on the screen, the tight focus of the feed and nondescript wall behind him making it impossible to place his location. Alexei knew it had to be close, and he hoped someone back on base would be able to figure out where.

  “What about yous, Sean?” Cillian asked. His Irish accent was street-roughened and thick, something he’d never bothered to clean up. No matter how high Cillian’s rank rose during his time in the Reborn IRA before he split off to run his own terrorist group, one could always hear the accent of his childhood in his voice.

  “Cillian,” Sean got out in a voice that sounded nothing like his usual self. Alexei tightened his grip on Sean’s hand, not looking away from the uplink.

  “Did ye like th’ welcome-home present we left ye?”

  Sean said nothing. The look in Cillian’s eyes was cruel, almost proud, and Alexei wanted so badly to put his fist through the other man’s face.

  “Ye always were a chatty fuckin’ bastard. Got nothin' ta say ta me now?”

  “Not to you, but I’ll talk to Declan,” Sean snapped.

  Cillian’s smile pulled at the scars on his face. “Ye’ll do more’n talk when I finish wi’ ye.”

  The roar of a bomb detonating right behind them deafened Alexei even as he instinctively dove for cover, taking Sean with him in a dive for the front door. Fire burst outward and filled the ap
artment in a blink of an eye as the concussive blast Alexei couldn’t feel sent debris flying through the air and through their phased bodies.

  The ceiling and floor cracked and buckled as the windows exploded, sending plas-glass raining down on unsuspecting people below. Alexei held his breath while Sean held onto him, keeping them safe in the midst of an explosion that utterly gutted the apartment Sean had lived in for years.

  Alexei craned his head around to stare at the fire and smoke filling the apartment. Lifting his free hand, he spread his fingers through the fire burning everywhere and reached for every last spark of it with his pyrokinesis. The fire froze in mid-burn before it retreated from the shattered space around them under Alexei’s control.

  Alexei forced the fire to obey his will as he crushed it down to nothing but a handful of sparks that sputtered and died beneath the black smoke pouring out of the gaping hole in the side of the building. The ringing in his ears hadn’t stopped. They’d been too close to the detonation without hearing protection, which meant he was half-deaf at the moment. But even through the thick, cottony feeling between his ears and the rest of the world, Alexei could still hear Katie’s mental voice shouting through his mind, reaching across the megacity to link them.

  Inferno, what happened? Katie demanded. The security feed went out on our end.

  Alexei glanced at Sean, who was staring blankly out the hole in the side of the building, face drained of color. He couldn’t hear Sean through the mental link and he wondered how much of that was due to shock. Alexei closed his eyes and tried to breathe through the smoke drifting through the ruins of the apartment and their phased bodies. It made his lungs tighten, and he knew they needed to get the hell out of there before the authorities arrived.

  They bombed the apartment. We’re compromised, he told her.

  Which was the understatement of the fucking year, and if Kyle were here with them, his brother would laugh his goddamn head off, because they both had a gallows sense of humor, even during times like this.