Kai was right. We didn’t know where the Hive might be. I didn’t want them to come bother this sweet old man. Especially if his granddaughter lived on The Colony. I would have to meet Angela at some point. I didn’t want to have to tell her I got her Gramps killed. “Thank you, Gramps.” On impulse, I walked around the table to bend down and give him a hug. He smiled and gave me a nice squeeze.
“You tell my Angela hello when you see her.”
“I will.”
Out of nowhere, Kai’s arm wrapped around my waist and he pulled me away from Gramps.
“What are you—” I stopped mid-sentence when I saw Carmichael standing a few feet behind Howard. He must have come up from the walking path, sneaked around the back. He had a gun in his hands and it was pointed at Kai. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Hand over the flash drive, Miss Linton.”
This was some bullshit. “You are not going to shoot me. We both know that.”
Carmichael swung his pistol back and forth like a pointer, indicating he wanted me to move closer to him—away from Kai—and toward the alligator?
Not happening. Instead of obeying his asinine command, I placed the flash drive in Kai’s outstretched hand. My mate closed his fist around the drive and raised a brow. “Your pathetic weapon will not stop me, human.”
“God damn it. Just hand it over. I’ll make a copy and you can take that one with you.”
“Are you crazy?” Was he so desperate for some pictures he was willing to die for them? “An Atlan warlord can rip you in half with his bare hands. You know that, right?”
“I’m just following orders.”
“Isn’t that always the excuse?” I’d heard Jennifer’s, a.k.a Miss Barely-Show-You My-Badge’s order to bring her the pictures. Too bad. I had studied them for hours, shocked at the scene I’d lucked into capturing. I was at the fight club that night to catch a local official’s involvement with the illegal fighting ring, not to witness an alien throwdown. Not that those damn pictures did me any good. I sent them to all my regular customers and not one of them would publish them. “There’s nothing on those pictures worth dying for, I can promise you that.”
“Apparently both the Hive and the Coalition Fleet disagree with you.” Carmichael held the pistol pointed at Kai’s head with one hand. The other he held out, his palm open. “Be smart here. We’ve got snipers circling in helos and the roads out of here are blocked. Give me the drive.”
As if he’d summoned them by magic, two helicopters appeared behind him. They were far enough away that I couldn’t see who was in them, but I knew a good sniper could hit us in the middle of the forehead from that distance without breaking a sweat.
Kai made a rumbling noise and I knew he was fighting his beast. I placed my hand on his forearm and tried to talk sense into the agent who was about to get himself killed. “Come back to my apartment with us. I’ll make a copy for you there.”
“I have a computer,” Gramps offered. He tossed a piece of beef jerky onto the grass. The alligator’s treat landed inches from Carmichael’s feet. He didn’t appear to notice.
Bahre and the other two Atlans walked out the back door and spread out on the patio, helmets in place so I couldn’t tell who was who at a glance.
They were all beast sized, fully armored and prepared for battle.
Shit. This was not going to end well.
“Fuck!” Carmichael screamed. His gun fired into the air.
Kai grabbed me and shoved me behind his back, but not before I saw the cause of Carmichael’s upset.
Howard was taking a bite out of Carmichael’s leg.
9
Kai
* * *
Using one arm to make sure Larkspur stayed safely behind me, I lifted the other and activated my helmet as the human, Carmichael, twisted and turned in a panic, trying to get the reptilian creature off his leg.
The moment my helmet systems activated, I zoomed in on the helicopters to assess the threat of Carmichael’s snipers.
Howard the alligator could devour the stupid human male and save me the trouble of killing him. He threatened my mate’s life. As far as I was concerned, he was already dead.
The snipers, however, were an entirely different level of threat, one that would not be tolerated.
