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For an instant, something dark flickered in her subconscious—a silent alarm that seemed to come out of nowhere. She hesitated, her gaze locked onto Cho’s unblinking eyes.
He cocked his head, frowning slightly. “Ms. Darrow?”
She looked around, reminding herself that she was in a public office building, among easily a hundred other people working busily in their cubes and offices. There was no reason to feel threatened, she assured herself, as one of those many employees came out of a nearby office. The man was dressed in a dark business suit and tie, clean-cut and professional, just like Cho and the rest of the people in the department.
The man nodded in greeting as he also approached the stairwell. “Special Agent Cho,” he said with a polite smile that drifted to Je
“Good afternoon, Special Agent Green,” Cho responded, permitting the other man to walk ahead of them through the open door. “Shall we, Ms. Darrow?”
Je
And suddenly there was the other man—Green, turning back to hem her in between himself and Cho. His eyes looked eerie now, too. Up close, they were just as dull and emotionless as Cho’s had seemed in the interview room.
Adrenaline spiked in Je
She never got the chance.
Something cold and metallic came up below her ear. She knew it wasn’t a gun, even before she heard the electronic crackle of the Taser’s power snap to life.
Panic flooded her senses. She tried to jerk out of the debilitating current, but the power of the shock was too great. Fiery pain zapped into her, buzzing like a million bees in her ears. She convulsed under the assault … then her limbs dropped out from beneath her.
“Get her legs,” she heard Cho tell the other man as he hooked his hands under her armpits. “Bring her to the freight elevator. My car is parked across the street in the garage. We can take the tu
Je
Then she lost consciousness completely.
She was taking too damn long.
Brock checked his cell phone and read Je
“Shit,” he gritted tightly from the back of the Rover.
He peered out the rear window, toward the open entrance of the underground garage and the blinding glare of the winter afternoon. Je
He sent her a brief text: Check in. Where u at? Then he resumed his impatient wait, all the while keeping his eyes trained on the stream of people entering and exiting the federal building, waiting to see her emerge.
“Come on, Je
After another few minutes without a response from her or any sign of her across the street, he couldn’t stand sitting idle any longer. He’d worn full-body UV-protective clothing when he left the compound that morning, a precaution that would buy him a little bit of time if he was insane enough to leave the Rover and head across the street like he was thinking. He also had lineage on his side. If he’d been Gen One, he probably would have only about ten minutes tops before the sun began to crisp him, with or without the protective gear.
Brock, being several generations removed from the purest of the Breed bloodlines, could count on roughly half an hour of nonfatal UV exposure time, give or take a few minutes. It wasn’t a risk that any of his kind took lightly. Nor did he now, as he opened the back door of the Rover and climbed out.
But something wasn’t sitting right about Je
Even if he had to walk through daylight and an army full of human federal agents to do it.
He pulled on a pair of gloves, then yanked his light-blocking head covering low over his brow. Wraparound UV-proof glasses shaded his already searing retinas as he strode around the sea of parked vehicles, toward the blast of winter sunlight coming from the open maw of the garage entrance.
Bracing himself for the shock of so much furious daylight all around him, he set his sights on the federal building across the street and stepped out of the shelter of the parking garage.
CHAPTER
Nineteen
Consciousness returned in the form of dull pain traveling through her body. Je
She kept her eyes all but closed, lifting her lids only a fraction to avoid tipping off her captors that she’d awakened. She fully intended to fight the sons of bitches, but first she had to get her bearings. Determine where she was and how she might get out of there.
The first part was easy enough. The smell of seat leather and faintly mildewy car mats told her she was in the back of a vehicle, sprawled on her side, her spine resting against the cushioned squab of the wide backseat. Although the engine was ru
Holy shit.
Hope flared inside her, bright and strong. They’d brought her to the parking garage across the street from the federal building.
The garage where Brock was waiting for her, even now.
Had he noticed what had happened to her?
But she dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred to her. If Brock had seen she was in trouble, he’d already be there. She knew that with a certainty that rocked her. He would never let her meet with harm if he could help it. So, he couldn’t know that she was there, being held just a few yards away from the Order’s black Rover.
For now, unless she could find a way to draw his attention, she was on her own.
Lifting her eyelids another small degree, she saw that her two captors were both seated up front—Cho behind the wheel of the federal fleet Crown Victoria, Green on the passenger side, the business end of his FBI standard-issue Glock 23 pointing over the seat in line with her chest.
“Yes, Master. We have the woman in the vehicle now,” Cho said, speaking into a hands-free phone. “No, there were no complications. Of course, Master. I understand, you want her kept alive. I will contact you as soon as we have her secured in the warehouse to await your arrival this evening.”
Master? What the hell?
Dread trickled along Je