Bengal's Heart

◆ CHAPTER 18 ◆

Because Watts was part of the Dozen, Cassa. He was part of it, and he’s the one the killer wants.

Dog’s statement ran through Cassa’s mind through most of the night. Pacing the floor at the inn, she fought to understand why a rogue Breed would think she should pay for what Douglas had done so long ago.

He had been part of the Deadly Dozen. She pulled up the old, faded picture on her laptop and concentrated on the faces of the twelve men in poor focus. One face in particular had always caused her to pause, though she had never been certain why.

Now she knew why.

Douglas.

She squinted her eyes and stared closely at the face. It could easily be Douglas when he was younger. The same blunt, squarish features. The same narrow, almost cruel lips. He was much younger. At least ten to fifteen years younger than he had been when Cassa was married to him. He’d been several years older than her.

The murders during the Valentine’s night massacre had taken place eleven years before the revelation of the Breeds. About twenty-two years, Cassa surmised. Valentine’s night, no more than a few weeks from now, would be the twenty-second anniversary of that massacre.

“God, Douglas, what did you do?” she whispered as she closed out the picture before logging into the Bureau of Breed Affairs History section.

There were no stories on that night, nothing to shed any light on what had happened. The truth of that event would have to come from a local source. And she needed something more than the sheriff had given them.

Danna Lacey had been a part of the Breed freedom movement in Glen Ferris. She had been part of the group that had fought beside the Breeds and attempted to provide some measure of security to those who escaped there.

She hadn’t been a part of the leadership though. She would have been too young. No, whoever had led those Breeds with Patrick Wallace would have to be much older now. Such as Walt.

In this little town there were so many secrets where the Breeds were concerned. The citizens that had been a part of the movement had kept close vigilance on the Breeds, and the Breeds themselves had made certain they stayed hid in those days.

Even now, they stayed in the background.

Tapping her finger against the laptop for a second, Cassa pondered the best way to get the information she needed.

She would love to track Dog down for more questioning, but she had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen. Cabal was keeping a close eye on her, and meeting with another Breed would be just about impossible to accomplish.

Maybe.

She pulled her sat phone from the pocket of her jeans, flipped it open and keyed in a number.

“Mordecai.” The Coyote Breed presently affiliated with the Feline Breed compound, Sanctuary, answered on the first ring.

“I’m calling in a favor,” she stated.

Silence filled the line. She could almost feel the intractable Breed mulling over possibilities and wondering which favor she would call.

“You have a surplus,” he finally sighed. “Will it get me killed?”

She almost grinned at that. She couldn’t imagine Mordecai contemplating death, let alone worrying if it would affect him.

“I guess anything is possible,” she mused. “You backing out?”

He grunted at that. “Life’s too long sometimes anyway. Who do you want me to kill?”

“No one this week,” she promised.

Actually, she had never wanted him to kill anyone, he just always seemed so enthusiastic to do so.

“Too bad,” he muttered. “Go ahead.”

“I’m in Glen Ferris investigating the Valentine’s night massacre that occurred around twenty-two years ago. A dozen or so Breeds were murdered, along with mates. Do you know anything about that?”

Sometimes Breeds knew things. Information was carried between them, held close to their chests, but there if the right question was asked at the right time.

“Bits and pieces,” he answered. “Nothing that could help you, I’d imagine. A dozen or so as you said, some were mated, there was a rumor that there were unborn children murdered.”

“Dog is here. He knows something.”

Mordecai cursed. “Stay the fuck away from Dog, Cassa. He’s bad news.”

“Which side is he on?”

“His own side,” Mordecai grunted. “That’s where Dog has always been and where he will always be. If he’s in Glen Ferris fuckin’ in Cabal’s and Jonas’s business, then clear out.”

“I need to talk to him, Mordecai.”

And Mordecai owed her. She was the one who had tracked down the location of several Breeds that were taken from the labs where he was held, just before the rescues. She had found his natural brother and told no one but Mordecai of his location.

There were other favors the Coyote owed her for. Information she had given him when needed. Papers she had provided him that were illegal. A few small exchanges among friends.

“Bad news,” Mordecai muttered. “You are in the mood to get me killed this week.”

“You can arrange it,” she told him. “Contact him. He knows I’m here; he tried to talk to me once, but Cabal interrupted us.”

“And he’ll keep interrupting.”

“Not if Dog has my sat phone number. Not if someone gives it to him. I’ll take care of the rest.”

She had two of the pills left that she hadn’t given to Jonas. Just in case she needed them. She would use them if she had to. If Cabal forced her into it.

“Hell,” Mordecai cursed. “Contacting him directly isn’t exactly easy, sweetheart.”

“I have confidence in you.” Cassa moved back to the window and gazed across the river.

She almost smiled at the sight of the small fire on the opposite bank. A fisherman, no doubt, though it was damned cold to be fishing.

She frowned as the blaze flickered in shades of red and gold. It was close to the falls, where the water ran swifter, faster. An odd place, and an odd night, to be fishing the treacherous waters.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Mordecai finally sighed. “If he’s going to call, you’ll hear from him soon though. Dog’s not predictable. And you be damned careful.”

“As always, my friend,” she assured him. “When dealing with Breeds, one learns to be real damned careful.”

She almost laughed at his little grunt of acknowledgment. Flipping the phone closed, she slid it back into her jeans pocket and continued to watch the blaze in the distance for long seconds, as she tried to pinpoint why it bothered her.

She was drawn out of her reverie by the muted alarm on her laptop. The email alarm was set for one email address specifically.

That of a killer.

the killing himself, Jonas had attempted to intercept the email he had known she would receive. It hadn’t worked. The email had been delivered, and the program attached to it didn’t allow for remote corruption or deletion.

The rogue wanted her to know about this. He wanted her involved in this. She was a pawn in a very dangerous game, and he was growing sick of it.

“She’s been informed,” Jonas said quietly as Cabal glanced over at the director. “Confirmation just arrived. The email has been read, pictures downloaded. The remote tracker we have on her laptop is working at least.”

“Traced?” Cabal asked, though he knew better.

Jonas shook his head. There was no mockery, no sarcasm this time. This was the second email they’d tried to trace through Cassa’s connection, to no avail.

The director’s expression was somber, brooding and filled with icy fury. Jonas was at his most dangerous in this mood.

“No trace,” he bit out in clipped tones. “The program we installed isn’t going through. The email itself is embedded with a program that doesn’t allow for it. Dane hasn’t been able to crack it yet.”

Dane Vanderale, Jonas’s nemesis and half brother, as well as the heir to the powerful African Vanderale empire, was a natural born Breed and a thorn in all their sides. But he was the best they had at cracking codes and tracing information.

“He’ll crack it.” Cabal shrugged.

Cabal turned his gaze back to the bank then and the body Rule and Lawe had pulled from the water. The fishing line around the victim’s neck had cut into the skin, leaving a slender wound. Tape covered his mouth. Pale eyes bulged in horror; pale features were creased into lines of pain, suffering.

Someone, something, had made this man suffer.

“Cash Winslow,” Rule stated as he crouched next to the body before staring up at Jonas. “We’ve been watching him. Ex-CIA. He worked for Brandenmore as a security specialist.”

Jonas moved closer to the river-soaked body and hitched up the legs of his slacks so he could get down on his haunches and look at the features revealed by the slender illumination of Lawe’s flashlight.

“He was working on a special assignment from what we were able to find out,” Jonas mused quietly. “We were trying to track him, trying to figure out what the hell Brandenmore was up to, when he flipped off our radar last week.”

Cabal’s brows lifted. It was rare that anyone flipped off Jonas’s radar.

“No rumors as to the assignment?” Cabal asked.

Jonas stared back at him. “He was searching for someone, that’s all we knew. Someone Brandenmore was certain could help him with this case we have against him and Engalls.”

The attempted murder and illegal research against Breeds. Phillip Brandenmore and his brother-in-law Horace Engalls were coming closer to the day of reckoning and possible Breed Law sanctions for their actions over the past year. How the hell they thought anyone could help them was beyond Cabal.

“Any idea who?” he asked.

Jonas shook his head. “All we knew was that he supposedly had information against the Breeds that Brandenmore wanted to use as a bargaining tool. We were trying to find him when our killer sent the message that he’d beaten us to him.”

Cabal breathed out deeply before wiping his hand wearily over his lower jaw. Hell, this was becoming more of a mystery by the day.

“He was meeting Brandenmore or Engalls here?” Lawe questioned the director quietly as he motioned to several enforcers to collect the body.

“Not here he wasn’t.” Jonas straightened before staring around the wooded area with a frown. “There wasn’t a chance of them escaping the men the Bureau has watching them and they know it. They wouldn’t have risked it.”

“Then who was he meeting?” Cabal asked.

“Our killer.” Jonas’s voice was cold, hard steel, a clear indication that the rogue they were searching for was beginning to try the director’s patience. “Unfortunately for him, or for us, our rogue chose the wrong mark this time. I had plans for Winslow. I’d have preferred to mete out my own justice rather than clean up after another’s.”

Cash Winslow had information. Information Jonas was hoping to use against Brandenmore. Information Jonas would have paid for by granting Winslow his own freedom from prosecution once they had him brought in for questioning.

According to their investigation, over the past several years Cash had been involved in the kidnapping of several Breeds that the pharmaceutical owners had used for their research. According to their sources, it was also possible that Winslow knew the location of an infant that had been taken from a mate’s body just before her death.

That child was one of the few naturally conceived children that were the hope for the Breeds’ future. A child that would be used for research, nothing more, if it wasn’t found. Finding that child drove Jonas, Cabal knew that, just as it had driven the rest of them for the past year. The thought of a babe, created naturally by the hand of God rather than the hand of man, suffering the horrors they had suffered, gave them all nightmares.

“They’ll take care of the babe for the first few years,” Lawe mused soberly. “They’re too delicate after birth. They won’t risk its death.”

“Yet,” Rule growled. “Winslow knew where the fuckers stashed that child. As far as we know, he’s the only one besides Brandenmore and Engalls who knew.”

And they sure as hell weren’t talking.

Cabal turned away from the director as well as the two enforcers that were now a part of his own team to listen to the reports coming over the link.

“There’s nothing on-site.” He turned back to Jonas. “No sign of anyone. No tracks, no scents, no vehicle tracks.”

“Fucking ghost,” Jonas cursed.

“Or so he’d have us think.” Cabal shrugged as his gaze moved back to Winslow’s lifeless body. “Seven down. Four to go and one to die again,” he stated, repeating the message that had come through Jonas’s personal sat phone several hours earlier.

Jonas stared back at him silently, and understanding the look wasn’t a problem for Cabal.

“We know the last one,” Jonas stated. “Help me with the other four, Cabal. Tell me you have names by now. Something.”

“Ivan Vilanov, former Russian intelligence officer, a double agent for the CIA. He was one of Winslow’s assets at one time. I identified him from the picture last night with some help from a few new buddies I found at a bar near Gauley Bridge. He was a regular here more than twenty years ago, during his assignment to the Russian Embassy in D.C. Hunting weekends with Brandenmore and Engalls both here in the States as well as in Europe.”

Jonas rubbed at the bridge of his nose in disgust. “He’s missing. Son of a bitch. A report came through Homeland Security less than twenty-four hours ago. He slipped away within hours of being picked up for questioning in the case we have against Brandenmore and Engalls.”

Cabal grimaced at the information. “I have some other names, but I’m running them. Banks’s body hasn’t turned up yet. Walt Jameson thinks he’s still alive. I think its possible. Whoever this Breed is, he would have left the body to be found within twenty-four hours of his death, just as he has the others.”

“Does Walt have any idea who this could be?” Jonas bit out furiously.

Cabal shook his head. “It’s obviously connected to the massacre that took place in the valley we found Alonzo’s body in. The Breeds that were part of that group that night were all killed though, according to all the information we’ve been able to come up with. Walt gave me the names, I ran them. There’s no one unaccounted for.”

Each Breed on that list had either arrived back at the labs dead, head intact, or just the head had been returned and payment collected.

“Any way someone fucked up?” Jonas asked.

Cabal rejected the suggestion. “If they fucked up, then I haven’t found proof of it. There was DNA proof of each kill. That’s damned hard to fake.”

“Someone fucked up somewhere,” Jonas assured him. “Forward that list of names to my sat. I’ll go through them myself. I want to know every man and woman in that group, Breed or human, and their connection to everyone in this fucking town. And I want it yesterday.”

“It was forwarded just before I left the inn to meet with you here,” Cabal informed him. “Good luck with it.”

Jonas was silent once again, his expression brooding, uncomfortably cold as Cabal watched him.

“We know who the last one is,” he finally said. “The one that gets to die again.” He narrowed his eyes on Cabal. “Tell her.”

“No.” Cabal realized the instant refusal was more instinct than intellect.

“If you don’t, the killer’s going to,” Jonas told him. “What then?”

“He can’t prove a damned thing,” Cabal growled. “There’s no way to get proof and no way to get to him. Forget it, Jonas. It’s not happening.”

Jonas shook his head. “The best laid plans,” he sighed. “This isn’t going to end up well, Cabal. You’re fucking up.”

“Then it’s my fuckup.”

Douglas Watts was dead to the world, and as far as Cabal was concerned, he was going to stay dead.

“How did our rogue Breed know Watts was still alive?” Lawe asked, the question barely a breath of sound. “That information was contained to just a few Breeds.”

Jonas shook his head. “I suspect it was information Winslow was sent to find proof of. We know his last assignment took him overseas. We lost him for a while there. Weeks later the first killings began. It’s tied in.” He turned back to Cabal. “You know it’s tied in. And you know where it’s leading.”

He’d known all along where it was leading, but that didn’t mean he had to like it, and it damned sure didn’t mean he had to handle it however Jonas dictated.

Cassa was his mate, plain and simple. Period. Nothing was going to change that, and there was no reason that he could think of to muddy the waters of the mating with the knowledge that the man she had believed she was married to was still alive.

Watts had lied to her, cheated on her. He had betrayed her trust in the most elemental fashion from the beginning. The wedding had been no more than a farce, because Watts didn’t believe in contracts or promises. The preacher that had married them had been no more than an actor hired to act the part. The papers signed, the marriage license—the whole deal was no more than a collection of props.

Watts liked drama. He liked ceremony. He had enjoyed fooling everyone so effectively. It had been his own private little joke, and now the joke was on Watts. The woman he had thought he would hold through lies now belonged to one of the creatures he had so despised. One he had thought he could destroy.

“Drop it, Jonas,” Cabal warned him as he watched the eerie silver of the other man’s gaze shift thoughtfully.

Jonas was studying the situation, considering it, coming up with the most effective way to ensure that Cabal moved to the correct spot on the mental chessboard he was certain Jonas often used.

Jonas shook his head. “Hell of a way to start a life together,” he stated. “You can’t hide something like this forever. It always ends up biting you on the ass, my friend.”

“It’s my ass at risk.” Cabal shrugged.

Jonas’s lips had parted to say more when a warning hiss echoed across the communications link.

Cabal felt the premonition in his gut, knew exactly who the enforcers were stalking before the name ever came across the line. He was only surprised that it had taken her this long to get here. She must have been damned careful attempting to slip past the perimeter patrol.

“Reporter.” Mordecai spoke quietly through the link. “Bengal’s mate.”

Damn. He didn’t want her here; she had no business here. It would only entrench her deeper in the danger he could already feel swirling around her.

Cabal clenched his teeth furiously before sprinting away from Jonas and heading for the tree line. He could smell her now. There was no breeze rippling through the trees, which had given her the advantage in slipping through the forest toward the murder scene.

She was clearing the edge of the forest at a fast clip as he moved toward her. Dressed in black, her long hair pushed beneath a cap, her expression furious, she found him instantly with her stormy gaze, even as the enforcers securing the area converged on either side of her.

“This isn’t going to work,” she snapped immediately as she pushed past enforcers reluctant to force her back as long as her mate was in the vicinity.

And there was no missing the fact that she was his. The mating scent, as well as his scent, wrapped around her, infused her. It was more effective than a brand, that scent. It held the other males back, had them watching her as well as Cabal warily.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled, his fingers wrapping around her upper arm as he drew her to him, then turned her to head back down the bank in the direction they had parked the Raiders.

She jerked at the hold he had on her as the scent of her anger slapped his senses. She was pissed, and he could feel his senses reacting to that aggression and the mating heat that surged between them.

She was endangering herself, placing herself in the line of fire, and for the first time in his life Cabal felt true fear that he could lose his mate.

“What the hell do you think I’m doing here?” she retorted as she began digging her heels into the sand and resisting his hold. “Let’s see, exactly why am I here? What brought me here? Could it have been those nasty little pictures a killer is sending me? Could it be that you have a rogue killer on the loose who’s threatening to send those pictures to a list of reporters who couldn’t give a damn if the Breeds survive this particular story?”

Cabal came to a hard stop. “What did you say?”

A mocking smile curled her lips. “Let me guess, you didn’t get that little message? Let me ask you this one, did you get the audio file of his death?”

Somehow, she knew he hadn’t. Cabal knew he hadn’t, just as he knew that Jonas hadn’t received it.

“You brought it with you?”

There could be clues in an audio file. Clues they could use to find the killer. Not that he expected that this particular killer had left much in the way of clues. He had been too smart so far.

“Did I say I brought it with me?” Her eyes narrowed on him. “Don’t play games with me. I want to know what you’ve found here, and I want to know who the hell the killer is talking about when he says that the last one to die is one who was dead and will die again. What the hell kind of game is being played here, Cabal?”