The door creaked open, and Dane strutted in, carrying a boatload of anger that dripped off him. He growled as he pinned his red eyes on me, his wolf on the verge of coming out to play.
I snagged a towel off the shelf, then wiped the sweat off my face and chest. “Who pissed in your cereal other than me?”
He ripped off his shirt and removed his phone from his gym shorts before setting them down on the bench against the wall on the far end. “My brother Cooper has been trying to reach Ross and two of my enforcers. They were scoping out the area where you think Intech might be setting up shop. They left two days ago, and we haven’t heard from them since. Vera’s heading here to pick me up.”
“Dude, our team called in last night. So far, they’ve found nothing that indicates Intech moved their operation to the area. The power grid lit up because of a new warehouse store.”
Kraft, one of our SEALs, and Crysta, Tripp’s cousin and a shifter, had been dispatched on a fact-finding mission to the Catskills.
“Do you think that fucker Roman snagged Ross?” I asked.
His claws grew. “Fuck yeah. I’m so fucking tired of this shit. I’m ready to rip heads off.”
I was more than anxious to do the same. We were striking out on all fronts. Our sister SEAL team, Viking II, had confirmed that the chip manufacturing plant was a ghost town. We speculated that they’d pulled out along with Roman’s men because we were onto them. Roman had been right when he told me we wouldn’t find anyone there anymore.
The only somewhat good news—Peter had an idea for chip extraction that wouldn’t require a drill. Bad news—it was a long shot, according to him. But he wouldn’t elaborate except to say he needed a case of the chips in order to test his idea. So Viking II was picking the place apart before they returned home. My fingers were crossed that they would find a handful at least.
Dane cracked his knuckles when his phone rang. He backtracked as his cell echoed in the room. “What is it, Cooper?” he snapped as he answered.
Cooper Gray was the youngest of the Gray brothers, and I’d been told he’d tried to help deactivate my chip prior to Peter arriving on base. He’d left before I had a chance to thank him.
Dane dragged his hand through his white hair. “What? When? How? Motherfucker!”
I tried as best as I could to sharpen my hearing but didn’t have to when Dane hit the speaker button.
“Coop, Sam is in the room with me. Repeat what you said.” Dane’s features were pinched, and his claws grew even longer.
“Our enforcers returned without Ross,” Coop said. “We tracked his scent to that diner where Dane was taken. Apparently, Ross left the hotel room to grab food but never returned. We found his smashed phone near his truck in the diner’s parking lot.”
A bone snapped in Dane’s shoulder as if he was about to shift. “It has to be that fucker, Roman. Coop, make sure no one leaves the compound. Step up security. What’s Vera’s ETA to pick me up?”
“She just left. So, three hours.”
“Call me if you find anything else out,” Dane said. After he hung up, he launched his phone at the matted wall across from us and belted out a roar that stung my ears. Maybe now my hearing would be restored to its normal vampire sharpness.
“I was looking forward to jamming my fists into your ugly mug,” I told him, “but let’s talk to Sawyer. If the diner has security cameras, we might see who took Ross.”
Before Dane could respond, Jordyn flew in like a tornado, her brown eyes popping out of her head as excitement and fear washed over her.
Maybe Kendra was awake. Ben had brought in the blond, green-eyed vampire known as Kendra two days ago. She was the same woman who’d been accused of killing Layla’s father by her uncles, Ray and Jack.
Layla had insisted on talking to Kendra if Jack ever found her, so when he did, he dragged Kendra to our meeting with him at the abandoned airport outside Chicago. But Layla never had the chance to talk to Kendra. After my father had asked Kendra to wait in the plane, she’d disappeared. However, Kendra’s involvement with Layla’s father wasn’t in question.
After Jo had read the minds of Roman’s men who we had in our custody, she’d learned that Roman had been arguing with a woman at a hotel in the old textile district. Ben and Olivia had gone to investigate, and they’d found Kendra unconscious on the floor in her hotel room with several of those drug-filled darts stuck in her chest. Doc thought she would be out for days with the amount of drugs in her system.
“Is Kendra awake?” I asked.
Jordyn was itching to talk to her as much as I was. For my part, I wanted to know how Kendra knew Roman and what her involvement with him was.
She shook her head, stumbling as she rushed across the room, looking like a raccoon thanks to that fucker Fred Emery. He’d bashed her face into a parked car and had broken her nose. “No, she’s not.” She labored for breath. “It’s Layla. It’s Layla, Sam.”
My heart skipped several beats. I heard her, but… “Come again?” I sized up the petite Aberdeen sister as though she were crazy.
Jordyn dropped her phone on the mat, her hands quaking like a drug-deprived addict. She bent over and picked it up, tapped on the screen, then practically shoved it at me. “She’s here.”
“Sam!” Layla’s siren voice blared in the room over the speakerphone.
Clutching my chest with one hand, I held the phone with the other, swinging my shocked gaze to Dane.
