Seriously, it was the creepiest thing Jake had ever seen, made even worse by the fact that all three of these things had looked like completely normal humans a few minutes ago. Humans that could have walked down any street in the world without attracting attention.
The sounds of rapidly approaching sirens shook Jake out of his musings. He lifted his head and listened closely. The cops were getting closer. They’d deployed a helicopter, too, if the droning sound of a propeller was any indication.
“We need to get these bodies, and ourselves, out of here,” he announced. “We can’t get caught up in trying to explain all of this, and we have to get these things back to McKay to be examined. We need to figure out what the hell we’re dealing with and what they’re up to. We keep coming out on the short end of this deal because we don’t understand the script these things are following. That changes now.”
Jake turned his attention back to the three creatures on the ground, taking in their disturbing faces again as Jes called in the support team, telling them they needed an immediate extraction and a priority airlift back to the States for three supernatural bodies.
Chapter 15
Jes stared at the remains of fluffy scrambled eggs and buttered toast on her plate. She should eat the rest, but she was simply too damn tired to do it. She’d gotten an hour’s worth of quality sleep last night and the lack of rest was taking its toll. If it wasn’t for the gallon of coffee she’d consumed already, she wouldn’t even be capable of functioning as a human being right now.
Picking up her fork, she pushed a few more bites of egg into her mouth, chewing mechanically. A few forkfuls and another bite of toast later, she finally gave up, scraped what was left on her plate into the trash and poured more coffee into her mug. After adding cream and sugar, she walked into the living room to sit down on the couch. Taking a sip, she tucked her legs under her, then wrapped her long cardigan around her and allowed herself to enjoy the early morning quiet as the sun streamed through the big bay window, warming the whole room.
Directly across from the couch, the videoconference monitor was still hooked up and ready to go, currently in standby mode until it was needed again. Even though it was barely after three o’clock in the morning back in DC, McKay wanted the channel left open, so they wouldn’t have to wait to establish an Internet connection if anything critical came up.
Fortunately, it hadn’t.
Yesterday and last night had been crazy to say the least. The support team had barely gotten her, Jake, Harley, and Caleb out of the alley before the cops had arrived. In fact, if it wasn’t for the EMS-style vehicles they’d used to pick them up, they probably wouldn’t have made it out of there at all. That was one of the things she loved about STAT—they had a plan for everything.
After dropping them off at the house, the support team had immediately headed back out to pick up Forrest and Misty from the crap storm at the hotel. That hadn’t been as complicated as Jes thought it might be, mostly because the Lanesborough had been an absolute madhouse, with every law enforcement agency in London showing up and attempting to take control of the situation, including MI5.
Misty had made it through the melee at the Lanesborough Hotel with little more than a few scrapes and bruises. Forrest, on the other hand, had come back looking half-dead. In fact, when Jes had first seen him covered in blood from head to toe, his hotel maintenance shirt shredded by claws, she was sure there was no way he’d make it. And yeah, Misty had been freaking out. Jes didn’t blame her.
Luckily, very little of the blood had been his. Apparently, he’d tangled with two of the creatures down in the basement after they’d cut the hotel power. While Jes really didn’t want to think too much about what it would be like to fight those things in a pitch-black room with no windows, it squicked her out even more to imagine being trapped under one of them after gutting them and having gallons of their blood gushing all over her.
Okay, gallons might be an exaggeration. But if how much blood had been on Forrest’s clothes was any indication, those creatures had a lot more of it than regular humans. It was thicker and darker in color, too.
Jes heard footsteps on the stairs and turned her head to see Jake standing in the doorway. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his hair stuck up in a few places, like he’d just run his fingers through it. He looked as exhausted as she felt. Actually, he looked worse than she felt. Her heart ached a little at the sight of him. He might be a werewolf, but he’d still gotten shot a hell of a lot of times yesterday. It had taken Jes more than an hour to tend to his wounds when they got back to the B&B. Getting the bullets out hadn’t been fun, but thankfully, there hadn’t been any debris in the openings, so they’d healed over quickly.
Of course, Jake had been far more concerned with the few scrapes she’d gotten during her wrestling match at the house in St Albans, personally tending to every boo-boo she had on her body. Truthfully, she hadn’t minded the attention. While all that TLC hadn’t led to sex—mostly because they’d had to spend endless hours briefing McKay on what was going on—simply having Jake’s hands on her was an amazing experience. It was hard to put into words, but in some ways, the care he’d taken last night was as intimate as when they’d made love.
“Any coffee left?” he asked hopefully.
Jes nodded, wincing as he walked slowly into the kitchen. She had no doubt the gunshot wound through his calf was bothering him more than he’d let on last night. Then again, he was a guy as well as an alpha werewolf, so he was clearly trying to hide it from her. Still, the urge to jump up and run into the kitchen to see if he was okay was difficult to ignore. But she resisted the impulse. He wouldn’t appreciate her hovering over him.
So instead, she sat on the couch sipping her coffee and listening to Jake moving around the kitchen, wondering if they might be able to grab a few precious moments alone together before the craziness started all over again and they’d be on the move to try to track down Darby.
Jake returned to the living room a few minutes later, a gigantic mug of coffee in one hand and a package of chocolate chip cookies in the other. He sat down beside her, so close that his thigh rested against hers, and little tingles raced up her leg.
Damn, she had it crazy bad for him.
Or she was losing her marbles.
One or the other.
He held out the package, offering her a cookie. “Anything else from McKay?”
Jes took a cookie, dunked it in her coffee, then nibbled on it. Although smaller than the chocolate chip cookies she was used to in the States, the British version was still sweet, crunchy, and had loads of chips. “Not yet.”
Jake nodded and sipped his coffee, his brow furrowing.
While Jake hadn’t said it in so many words, Jes knew he blamed himself for every life that had been lost yesterday, both at the hotel and on Darby’s yacht, even though there wasn’t anything they could have done differently to change any of it.
The upper level desk jockeys back at STAT headquarters hadn’t helped the situation any. Their 20/20 hindsight allowed them to nitpick every single decision she, Jake, and the rest of the team had made. While they’d saved a lot of people, including the kids who’d been kidnapped, and recovered the bodies of a type of supernatural that no one had ever seen before, at the end of the day, that didn’t seem to be enough. They couldn’t understand why Darby had killed those three men he’d abducted and weren’t above implying she, Jake, and their teammates had gotten them killed because they’d screwed up. McKay, the only supervisor with any field time in this century, was the only one to stand up for them.
That said, McKay wasn’t thrilled with what had happened yesterday. The UK press was all over the supposed terrorist attack on the hotel, as well as the high-speed chase through the city. Since the incident was not only high-profile but also involved the Bilderberg Society, their boss had been forced to contact British intelligence and give them a heads-up. The press hadn’t revealed the identity of the three men Darby had murdered yet, but they would soon.
Biting into a cookie, Jake leaned forward and flipped open the magenta file folder on the coffee table to once again pore over everything they knew about the three men Darby had killed. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much. Like all members of the Bilderberg Society, the men had been intensely private about their personal lives and had the money to keep it that way.
