Mine to Possess

CHAPTER 36

Talin threw a small bag containing water and food into the plane. If all went according to plan, they would be in and out overnight. “How come you have a pilot’s license? Is that what you do for a living?” she asked the tall, blond, and stupidly good-looking pilot. The last time she’d met him had been outside of Joe’s Bar. Her gut twisted at the memory of what she’d revealed to Clay that day, the truth that sat a sullen intruder between them. “Dorian?”

Dorian scowled. “How come you’re such a smart-ass?”

She winced, realizing he hadn’t forgotten their meeting either. “Um, genetic flaw?”

To her surprise, his cool expression segued into a smile so charming, she felt sucker-punched. “You’re sort of little. I like little.”

Talin looked around. Where was Clay? He’d gone to grab something from the Tank, which was parked a short distance away. She wished he’d hurry the hell up. It looked like his “friend” was hitting on her. “I’m taken.”

“I know. I can smell Clay on you.” He pushed up the brim of his baseball cap. “And I’m an architect—flying’s a hobby.”

“Oh.” She shifted her feet, wondering if she’d ever get used to changeling sensory abilities. It was unsettling to realize his pack would know beyond a doubt that she and Clay had been intimate. But…it was also kind of nice. Because if she carried his scent, that meant he had to carry hers, too, didn’t it? “Why are you staring?” she asked when Dorian didn’t look away, his blue eyes bright in the midmorning light.

“Curiosity.” His tone betrayed the fact that, charming or not, he suffered from the same arrogant masculine streak as Clay. “Wanted to know what you had that was strong enough to bring Clay down.”

She bristled. “I don’t think he thinks he’s been brought down.”

A grunt. “I figure if I know in advance, it’ll be harder for a pretty woman to sideswipe me.”

“How about an ugly one?” she snapped, irritated by the way he was making it sound as though she’d trapped Clay.

“No such thing,” he responded, and there was an honesty beneath the charm that got to her. “I like women.”

She had a feeling women liked him right back—when he could be bothered to lay on the charm as he was doing now. That time she’d seen him hauling the teenagers out of the bar, he’d been pure, lethal predator. “If you like women,” she said, wondering why she merited the charm, “why are you so scared of committing to one?”

Those surfer-blue eyes were suddenly chrome-cold, flat, dangerous. “It’s more a case of having things to do, people to kill, before I set up house.”

“I don’t want to know.”

“No, you don’t.”

Talin froze, able to sense his deep-seated anger. She felt tension begin to knot up her spine. Male anger was not something she did well with. That level of trust—for them to not turn on her even when angry—she had only with Clay. And the depth of that trust was a revelation, one that awoke wonder in her.

Dorian’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She answered his bluntness with the same. “I don’t know you well enough to trust you.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

She could’ve left it at that, but…“Being that angry, holding it so close, it’s not good for you.” She could almost touch the vicious rage hidden beneath his handsome facade.

“I get enough of that from Sascha,” he said with a scowl. “Why don’t you stick to babying Clay?”

“How do you think he’d react?”

Dorian’s smile returned, slow and more than a little satisfied. “I think you’re the one person who could get away with it.”

She hunched her shoulders, uncomfortable. “I don’t have that much power.” Wouldn’t know what to do with it if she had. All she wanted was the chance to love Clay, to wipe away the past with the beauty of the present. Before this fucking disease ended everything. Her own ever-present anger grew a dull flame in her gut.

“You got him blind drunk. Clay doesn’t drink.”

Her head snapped up. “What?”

“He went on a bender the day you came back into his life.” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m guessing you two have a history.”

“Something like that,” she muttered, sick at the thought of what Dorian had described, but trying not to betray what the knowledge had done to her.

Somehow, he knew. Taking off his cap, he put it on her head. “Suits you.”

It was a gesture of affection, pure and simple. Her heart melted a tiny bit. “Thanks.”

“And don’t worry about Clay—he needed to cut loose.” He grinned. “Man has a right to get drunk over a woman who matters. I’d have been more worried if he hadn’t started acting crazy.”

The words were light, but she got the picture. It seemed she hadn’t been alone in putting her emotions in deep freeze. “If I wasn’t already taken,” she said, liking him for telling her what she needed to know, “I would kiss you.”

“You’re welcome to.” He tapped his cheek. “Or how about one with tongue?”

She’d just begun to frown when she felt Clay’s hand land on her hip. The growl that came from his throat vibrated into her bones. “Find your own damn woman.”

Dorian shoved a hand through his hair, an unabashed grin on his face. “I kind of like yours, smart mouth and all.”

“Clay, he said he’s an architect—is that true?” she teased, easy now that Clay was back, but also because Dorian had grown on her. She was under no illusion as to how dangerous he was—his charm was a cover for an incredible amount of anger, but it was also a part of him. When he wasn’t filled up with that deep-seated rage, she had a feeling he could charm the birds out of the trees.

“That’s what it says on the degree on his wall.”

Talin smirked, pretending amusement, though her stomach was a pit of nausea as she tried not to think about what Jon might be suffering at that very moment. “So, Boy Genius, what did you do—take an online course and get your degree in ninety days?”

“Clay, can I bite her?”

“No.” Clay scowled at her. “I’ll do it for you. We ready to go?”

“Yeah. You organized the other end?”

Clay nodded, reaching up to rub absently at his temple. “A guy I know will drop off a truck near the landing zone. It’ll look beat up but it’s been retrofitted for speed and defense.”

“What about your snake friend? Any luck tracking her down?” Talin asked.

“No, so let’s hope we don’t need her. You’re the easiest to disguise,” he said, “so you’ll drive into Cinnamon Springs, with—”

Her phone beeped. “Sorry,” she said, scrambling to pull it out of her pocket. “Probably one of Rangi’s kids.” She flipped it open. “Hello.”

Clay and Dorian were already turning to finish loading up the plane with what looked like surveillance gear.

“Talin. It’s Dev.” The Shine director’s tone was edgy.

Very aware of both men returning to her side, she slid her arm around Clay and spread her hand against the stiff line of his spine. “Dev?”

“You with the cat?”

“Yes.”

“He can probably hear this conversation then.”

She looked up. Clay and Dorian both nodded. “Yes.”

“Good,” came the surprising response. “Someone’s been trying to contact you through your Shine e-mail account.”

Her hand clenched on the phone. “And you know this because you’ve been spying on me?”

“No.” His voice turned cutting, then he sighed, as if in frustration. “Because of the kidnappings, I recently put in place a secret macro program. It scans everything going through our servers, red-flags and sends me a copy of anything that sets off certain triggers.”

Her outrage disappeared. “You were trying to catch the mole.”

“Yeah.” Ice came through the lines. “I know it’s a breach of privacy, but I don’t give a shit. Shine is meant to be a safe place and I’ll make it safe again even if I have to rip open every fuc—”

Suddenly, the phone was no longer in her hand. Startled, she found Clay had taken it. “Stop yelling at Talin,” he ordered.

Scowling, she held out her hand. He returned the phone, but only after another comment. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?” she asked him as he handed it back.

“Nothing.”

Muttering about chauvinist pigs, she put the phone to her ear. “Dev, I want to find these bastards, too. This e-mail—when did it come in?”

“Four minutes ago. I could send it to your phone but I’d rather do it through a more secure channel. Any options?”

“Wait.” Reaching into the plane, Dorian pulled out a sleek silver something from his knapsack before motioning for the phone. She handed it over and he said some technobabble on it before handing it back and flipping open the device, placing it on the floor of the plane.

She put the phone to her ear. “Did you get that?”

“Yes. Give me a second.”

She nodded at the device Dorian was messing with. “Very tiny laptop?”

He shot her a distracted grin. “You could say that. This sweet thing is our attempt at creating a Psy organizer. The versions they allow on the market are nothing compared to the goods they keep for themsel—Tell Dev I’ve got it.”

Moving around Clay to stand between the two men, she bit off her impatience as Dorian opened up a miniature e-mail screen. Clay’s hand rested on her back, but then Dorian put one of his on her shoulder as he straightened and moved to let her take the central position.

The contact startled her, but it was okay. Dorian was…Pack. Shaking her head at that odd thought, she focused on the message.

“That’s it?” she said, trembling.

“Yes.” She jerked at Dev’s response, having forgotten she still held the phone to her ear. “Any way it could be legit?” Dev asked.

She was too shaken up to answer.

“Why use ‘fight for him’? It’s an odd choice.” Clay began doing that thing with her ponytail again and maybe it was that that calmed her down enough to think.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “When we had that bust-up, I told him I’d fight for him if he fought for himself.”

“Give me that.” Dorian slipped the phone out of her lifeless fingers. “Did you trace the e-mail?” A pause. “You’re sure?”

As she waited, Talin’s earlier anger grew into an inferno, but this time, it was directed not at a disease she couldn’t name, but at this faceless stranger. “Who is this person to demand something for Jon’s life? What right do they have?”

Clay’s body grew very still. “The language—it’s Psy. A life reduced to a risk-benefit ratio.” He paused. “Judd’s contact must’ve come through, set things in motion. I owe him.”

Glancing up at him, Talin noticed he was rubbing at his temple again. She was about to reach up with her own hand when Dorian spoke.

“Fine,” he said, ending the call. “Dev got another hit—the possible mole this time—but he told me that he had someone trace the e-mail. It was easy, because whoever sent it didn’t know how to hide their tracks.”

Talin didn’t dare breathe. “Nebraska?”

“Not only that. They tracked it down all the way to Cinnamon Springs.”

Her hand crushed the back of Clay’s shirt. “Jon’s in that lab.” It was a storm inside of her, this need to reclaim what was hers to protect. But no, she had to think. Her brain wasn’t fuzzy now—in fact, it was almost dizzying how clearly she could think. Strange, given that the disease had to be escalating. “We can’t just barge in. The lab is too huge.”

Clay tugged at her ponytail, raising her face to him. “We bring in the pack and the wolves, we can do it.”

Talin had never had that much strength behind her. Her mind filled with a split-second montage of the people she had met—Nico, Tamsyn, Nate, Lucas, Sascha, Faith, and Vaughn. That kind of backup, she realized, was both a privilege and a responsibility. “No.” It was a painful decision. “We’ll lose too many people.”

“Pack is One, Tally. We bleed for one another.”

“I know.” She hugged him, strong enough now to accept the protective violence that was a part of him. “But it doesn’t matter. Twelve hours is too short a time frame to mount an organized attack. They might kill Jon before we ever got close enough.”

“Or,” Dorian said, picking up and unrolling a printout of the lab schematics taken from Judd’s data crystal, “they could have a built-in self-destruct mechanism.” He tapped several spots on the plan. “The lab is designed to collapse if you apply pressure at specific points—all those spots are internal. I’d guess they have the whole place wired. Input a specific code and boom.”

The coldness of such a plan shook Talin to the core. “They’d kill their own?”

“Without a pause,” Clay and Dorian said in concert.

People like that, she thought, wouldn’t hesitate to destroy a teenage boy if they didn’t get what they wanted. “Will they be able to track it back to us if I reply to this e-mail?” She copied the address, opened a new window.

“No,” Dorian reassured her. “I’ve set it up to encrypt all outgoing messages.” He tapped in a quick code. “This will feed an encryption worm into their system, too.”

Nodding, she typed in a single line:

Neither of the men said anything as she pushed Send.

They waited in silence. Dorian shoved a hand through his hair and began stalking up and down the makeshift runway. Clay, though he remained unmoving, was a vibrating column of rage.

She reached up to massage his temples with gentle strokes. “Maybe this person isn’t evil. He’s prepared to help Jon.”

“Why now? Why not the other children?” His arms held her firm against him, though he bent his head so she didn’t have to stand on tiptoe. “Whatever it is he wants, we’ll give it to him. DarkRiver has more than enough funds.”

“Thank you.”

He growled at her. “Thank me again for taking care of my mate and I’ll have to get mean.”

Mate.

There was that word again, that incredible, impossible word. She knew it had been nothing more than a slip of the tongue on his part, but she hugged the mistake to her heart.

A second later, something flashed in the corner of her eye and she twisted to look at the screen. Striding back to them, Dorian opened the e-mail.

“Hell,” Clay muttered.

“Yeah,” she said. “Not the mercenary demand we expected.” Reaching forward, she sent back a reply.

The response was close to instantaneous.

There was something deeply poignant in those words. Whoever this Psy was, whatever he wanted, he wasn’t evil.

“Say yes,” Clay told her. “I’ll answer the damn IOU.”

She angled her body so he couldn’t see her next message until it was too late.

“Damn it, Tally!” Clay gripped her upper arms. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“Because you’re mine to protect, too,” she snapped. She wouldn’t barter Clay’s life for Jon’s. Losing Jon would break her, but, Lord help her, she couldn’t give up Clay. Not even if it meant betraying her deepest principles. Not even if it meant killing. The realization should have nauseated her. It didn’t. Truth never did. “I’m not having you sacrifice yourself again!”

“God damn it.” He gripped her nape, spun her around to face him. Then he kissed her. Hard. “After this is over, I’m giving you a spanking.”

She felt her face go bright red, though she knew he was simply blowing off steam. “Men,” she muttered, then glanced at Dorian. He was attempting to look uninterested but she saw the grin in those bright blue eyes. “Dorian, I swear to God, if you laugh, I’m going to peel your flesh from your bones.”

He picked up her hand and kissed the underside of one wrist. “I like you, too.”

“Stop flirting with Tally.” Clay wrapped an arm around her waist. “Okay, this falls through, we still have the original plan—we go in through that supply chute. Let’s start double-checking our calculations on its probable location.”

And that was how they passed the minutes as they waited for the answer to a question that might cost a child his life and shatter something deep inside Talin. When it came, it was so unexpected, it stunned all three of them.

Detailed instructions followed.

Talin didn’t hesitate, knowing Clay would get her there in time.

The reply was immediate.

With those last three words, this unknown Psy won Talin’s loyalty.