Mark of the Wolf; Hell's Breed (21 page)

Clearly the bastard would lie to her
no matter what she asked, but she had what she needed. Her family
was safe. She didn’t know when or if she’d be able to see them
again, but at least she could comfort herself with the thought that
they were alive and well.

It was just as clear that she’d been
left hanging as bait—just as Damien had suggested—either in the
hope of luring her father in or the men who were after her father’s
plans. At this point it was hard to say whether they had her father
or not.

“
When can I see my
father?” she asked abruptly on that thought.

She could see a faint jolt of surprise
run through him. She’d caught him off guard.

“
I’m afraid I can’t answer
that either. Again, national security.”

They didn’t have her father. She was
pretty sure that was what that jolt was about. Maybe they’d thought
she had some idea where he was? Maybe they’d left her hanging
because they thought she would lead them to her father?

Which just went to show they weren’t
terribly bright! Her father hadn’t tried to contact her since she
was six years old! Why the hell would he bother now? And that was
supposing the old bastard even remembered he had
children!

“
Now, if that’s all I’d
like to get a statement from you about your ordeal and ask you a
few questions?”

Laurie smiled at him. And she planned
to be just as truthful and forthcoming as he had been!

“
What can you tell me
about this man, Kane .. uh Kane Moreland? Because I have to tell
you his credentials aren’t adding up. It looks like he may be
someone the military has been looking for for a while.”

Unfortunately for his wish list, it
was at just that moment that the lights went out.

* * * *

The security at the federal building
where they took Laurie was no tighter that Lucien could see than
the kidnappers had had at the factory with the exception of the
electronic surveillance. And, unfortunately for the Feds, that just
wasn’t going to be good enough. One of the nifty things about the
dark angels was their mastery of electricity.

It took them a little while to find
the right access to the building’s electrical supply since it was
run underground for security purposes, but once they had they were
able to join forces as they had in the warehouse and send a high
enough electrical surge through the wiring to create havoc with the
electronics. The lights went out. Fully half of the surveillance
equipment went off line because the backup was only sufficient to
power emergency lighting and electronic locks. The emergency lights
were back on in the corridors within fifteen seconds, but that was
enough time for the men to take out the guards at the rear of the
building and get inside.

Once inside, they tracked Laurie’s
scent through the building to the elevator.

He’d more than half expected it and
Lucien was still pissed off at the delay. They were going to have
to stop at every frigging floor to check! Abandoning the elevator
since it seemed the best way to get caught before they could track
Laurie down, they found the stairs and took them up. They had to
break the lock on every frigging level to check the corridor.
Finally, when they got to the halfway point, the fifth floor, they
hit pay dirt. Laurie’s scent was still strong enough on the fifth
floor that they knew she had to be there—somewhere. The trick was
to find her and get out without getting her killed.

They knew security had probably found
the bodies of the guards in that length of time and would have
mounted a floor by floor search. Time wasn’t on their
side.

They’d found the door/room they were
looking for when the bell on the elevator announced the arrival of
the cubicle. The doors began to open slowly to reveal a wall of
heavily armed guards.

“
What the fuck? Dogs?” one
of the guards exclaimed. “How the hell did a pack of dogs get in
here?”

Lucien and Damien glanced at each
other. Mentally, Lucien shrugged and adopted the demeanor of a
submissive, bowing his head and curling his tail under. Damien and
Basil followed suit, sidling toward the men with the attitude of
surrender generally adopted by Betas when confronted by the
Alpha.

The men lowered their weapons. One of
the men whistled.

Lucien waited until he was close
enough to touch and then abruptly shifted into man-beast form.
Several of the guards managed to scream, but Lucien, Damien, and
Basil managed to take them before the guards could fill them full
of holes. They bounded away when they’d backed the men onto the
elevator and punched the button to send the cubicle on its way,
arriving back at the target door just as a man opened it to look
out.

A look of horror crossed his features
but he wasn’t too shocked to act. He was just too slow. Before he
could slam and lock the door again, Lucien slammed into him,
carrying him inside.

Startled, Laurie screamed and then
scrambled over the desk. “Thank god! I was beginning to think you
guys had gotten lost!”

Chapter Fifteen

The rescue was pretty traumatizing.
There were armed Federal agents crawling all over the building,
which meant they had to make a window into a door and go outside to
get away. Piggy-backing a wolf-man down the sheer side of a
building wasn’t something Laurie ever wanted to try again! At the
time, though, it seemed preferable to trying to fight their way
past an army bent on putting as many holes in them as they
could.

Fortunately, gravity helped. It didn’t
take long at all for Lucien to drop from floor to floor and reach
the ground. It made for some scary drops and jolts, but he managed
to catch each ledge so it wasn’t nearly as bad as a straight drop.
And she had her face buried against his back so she couldn’t
actually see anything even though her stomach told her each time
Lucien let go to drop to the next ledge.

The cars in the parking lot were their
only cover once they left the building, but they almost managed to
reach them before the Feds spotted them and they did manage to put
some metal between them and the bullets. They made it into the
woods on the other side without collecting Federal ammo
either.

That was when things got a little
hairier. The guys wanted the angels to take her out of harm’s way.
She not only didn’t like the idea of leaving the guys, she also
didn’t like to fly—especially without a plane.

They finally convinced her that
everyone would be far better off without her in the way, though,
and she went with Raphael.

They didn’t put it like that,
naturally enough. They made it sound like it was just anxiety for
her safety that made them determined to fly her out of harm’s way,
but she knew it was because she was slowing them down.

She was ready to light somewhere as
soon as she thought they’d managed to sneak past the Feds, but
Raphael couldn’t be convinced. He kept right on going even though,
after a short while, she could tell it was a hell of a strain on
him to remain airborne carrying her. She’d never been more glad of
anything in her life than she was when she realized he was
descending.

In the predawn hours, they landed in
the yard of what looked like the cabin she’d stayed in with the
guys, but she discovered that was deceptive once they were inside.
It was similar but definitely not the same.

A scantily dressed woman, heavy eyed
with sleep or fatigue or both, greeted them as they entered.
“Raphael?”

“
This is
mon ami
, Lucien and his
pack’s,
amour
,”
he said by way of introducing her. “Laurie, this is our woman,
Amy.”

Laurie thought if she hadn’t been
close to dropping dead from fatigue herself the introduction would
have stunned her stupid. As it was, all she could manage was a
vague smile and the appropriate polite response.

They led her to a room and told her to
rest and she was more than happy to oblige. She crashed and slept.
She was pretty sure when she finally woke up that she’d slept
around the clock. It was early morning when she woke again and she
didn’t think she would have felt as she did if she’d only slept a
matter of minutes.

Lucien, Damien, Kane, and Basil
confirmed it when she left the bedroom. They’d been seated at a
table eating but got up immediately when she left the room. They
looked both pleased and relieved. “You ok? Feeling better?
Hungry?”

“
Kane!” she exclaimed,
rushing to throw her arms around his waist and hug him. “How did
…?”

She looked around at the guys
questioningly when she pulled away.

She saw that they were all glaring at
Kane. She moved away from him and Lucien pulled a chair out for her
at the table where they were seated. “You need something on your
stomach. You haven’t eaten in a while.”

Laurie blinked at him in surprise, but
her stomach, as if in response, growled. “I don’t usually eat in
the morning, but I could use some coffee.”

Lucien brought her some coffee and a
plate. Instead of arguing, she added cream and sugar to her coffee
and picked up her fork. “How did you get away?” she asked
Kane.

He grimaced. “Not without help. The
guys came and broke me out when they’d gotten you out.”

She sent a startled, vaguely
disapproving, look at the guys. “You went to break him out when you
sent me away?”

Lucien shrugged. “There wouldn’t have
been any point in going after him if we hadn’t gone right then. The
Feds were after us. They had him and they knew he was connected to
us. We might never have found him if we hadn’t gotten to him before
they could make him disappear.”

“
Oh,” Laurie responded in
dismay. “Well thank god he didn’t have to depend on me!” She
frowned, thinking. “You really ought to have gone after him first,
you know. I don’t think I was actually in any danger.” She thought
about it.

“
Well, maybe not. I didn’t
trust that bastard that was questioning me, I can tell you. He
tried to give me the impression that he was investigating my
kidnapping, but he wasn’t very convincing. He wouldn’t answer any
of my questions. He wouldn’t get me a lawyer and he seemed way more
interested in Kane than he was the actual kidnappers.”

Lucien frowned. “Well they didn’t
actually see the kidnappers.”

“
Hmph! He all but admitted
that that man that was killed was working for them. I asked about
my brother and sister and their families and he said they were in
witness protection and had been relocated—a year and a half
ago!
Months
before the murder and I don’t believe for a second that my
brother and sister wouldn’t have told them about me if the Feds had
approached them and told them they were in danger because of
something our father was doing.

“
It
might
have been believable that they
didn’t know about the connection if not for that. I don’t think I
would have believed them anyway, because if they’d tried to track
down relatives of my father they would have had to run across my
birth certificate and would’ve known about me without having to
learn from my family.”

She was actually surprised that none
of the guys commented on her assessment, but then she was pretty
sure they’d already figured out what the Feds were up to before
they’d arrived, very conveniently, to clean up.

They couldn’t have known she would be
there and that it was a federal matter unless they’d been watching
her and then looking for her after the kidnappers took her. Lucien
and his group certainly hadn’t called them in. Even if the cops had
been called on a burglary and/or shooting because of all the noise,
they wouldn’t have known to call in the Feds.

It finally occurred to her when they
got up to do clean up that she hadn’t seen any of the angels and
she vaguely remembered there’d been a woman at the cabin, too, when
she’d first arrived.

“
What happened to the
angels?”

“
They took their woman to
another safe house—figured this one was going to be pretty crowded
once we got back with Kane,” Damien responded.

The comment reminded her that Raphael
had introduced her to the woman as ‘their’ woman, Lucien and his
pack’s.

She was dying to find out if he’d said
that because that was what Lucien had claimed, but she couldn’t
quite get up the nerve. “I don’t suppose you managed to find out
anything else about my father since nobody volunteered anything?”
she said questioningly.

Lucien looked disgusted. “Not a thing.
Sorry baby. We tried. I’m pretty convinced they didn’t have him at
either location. Not that we’ve got his scent, but we have yours
and its part his since you two share the same DNA. And Raphael
claimed to have gotten a good enough look at him to recognize him
again if he saw him.”

Laurie gaped at him, feeling her face
heat with discomfort. “What do you mean, scent?”

Lucien frowned, glancing at the
others, clearly puzzled by her reaction. “Uh … Baby, you know we
aren’t ….”