She was about to ask him what was bothering him—as quietly as she could, of course—but before she could, Hudson circled around the island and strode toward Caleb, a pissed-off, determined look on his face.
“I don’t know what the hell your problem is,” Hudson said. “But if you have something to say to me, why don’t you try it when I’m right in front of you?”
Caleb’s eyes turned blue again—and stayed that way this time. Brielle tensed.
Oh crap.
She’d been around her stupid brother enough to recognize a testosterone-laden display of masculinity when she saw it. If Caleb and Hudson got within arm’s reach of each other, all hell was going to break loose. The fact that Caleb was not only a werewolf but an omega at that only made it worse. There was a good possibility of someone dying.
Well…there was a good possibility of Hudson dying, anyway.
Before she knew what she was doing, Brielle was off the barstool and hurrying around the island to get between the two of them. She put one hand on Caleb’s chest and the other on Hudson’s, shoving to keep them apart.
“Stop it right now,” she said as firmly as she could, hoping to get through their thick male skulls.
Jake and Sawyer were already on their feet and moving in to help, but she backed them off with a warning look, figuring this whole thing was less likely to turn into a fight with her in the middle of them instead of another werewolf. Jake and Sawyer must have realized that, too, because they stopped where they were.
“Caleb,” she said quietly but firmly. “Hudson almost died helping your teammates get out of Harrington’s offices. I don’t know how Harrington is always a step ahead of us. Maybe he does have someone on the inside. Or maybe he has a supernatural working for him who can read minds. One thing I do know is that Hudson isn’t carrying a tracking device under his skin. He’s as much a part of the team as I am, and you aren’t going to claw him up just because you’re in a grouchy mood. Got it?”
She hadn’t really meant to call him grouchy, but the words stopped everyone cold, including Caleb, who stood there, mouthing the word to himself, a confused look on his face.
A moment later, the kitchen was filled with laughter as everyone started teasing Caleb for being grouchy. Forrest even went so far as to call himOscar. Brielle held her breath, hoping that wouldn’t upset his inner wolf even more, but to her relief, it seemed like the tense situation had been defused. Caleb didn’t look like he was ready to punch anyone anymore. He even chuckled a little.
The conversation slowly turned back to what had happened with both teams today—without the finger-pointing this time. Not that it helped them come up with anything useful. As far as Harrington and the debacle at the UN building, all Brielle could say for sure was that he was a supernatural whose abilities seemed to revolve around seeing random images in his head on a nearly constant basis. His daughter, Kiara, seemed to have the same talent, though the visions weren’t as chaotic or overwhelming.
The search of Harrington’s offices had been the same dismal failure. Misty had gotten inside the firewalls of the corporate servers only to discover that they’d been wiped completely clean of anything dealing with Aldaran or the facility in Surinda. Even the data she’d discovered in Moscow had disappeared.
The worst part was that, even though they knew Xavier Harrington was involved in the theft of the nukes—and that he’d almost certainly brought them to New York—they still had no idea where to turn next.
They’d gone from Incirlik to Zagreb, then Surinda to Odessa, and finally Moscow to New York, yet they were no closer to finding the stolen nuclear weapons than they’d been at the beginning. On top of that, Brielle was no closer to finding her brother, either. She didn’t want to let her mind go there, but it was getting harder and harder to believe Julian was still alive.
“We could check out Harrington’s other facilities,” Genevieve said, distracting Brielle a little with her hopeful expression. “He has at least a dozen different office complexes spread throughout New Jersey and New York. We might get lucky.”
Jake shrugged. “It won’t hurt to try, but I find it difficult to believe Harrington would have cleaned up his tracks so well at his corporate headquarters but left evidence behind in other places. He doesn’t strike me as a careless person.”
Everyone agreed with that, including Brielle.
A little while after that, the conversation turned to the one topic she noticed always seemed foremost in the STAT team’s mind—food. Not that Brielle could blame them. She could definitely go for something to eat. While Sawyer and Hudson wanted to simply order pizza, everyone else wanted to get out of the house for a while.
“I’m tired of takeout,” Harley added. “Let’s go to a restaurant for a change.”
“And then do some grocery shopping afterward,” Misty suggested. “We have no idea how long we’ll be staying at this safe house, and there isn’t much in the way of food here.”
Brielle thought Caleb would be the first one heading for the door, so she was surprised when he wandered back into the kitchen. She walked over to him.
“Aren’t you coming out with the rest of us?” she asked.
He shook his head without looking her way, eyes trained on the cabinet he’d just opened. “Nah. I don’t feel like going out. I’ll find something to eat here.”
Brielle threw a quick look at Misty, who nodded and urged a curious Forrest out the front door, saying she’d grab takeout from the restaurant.
“You should have gone with them. The food options are limited here,” Caleb said, taking a box of graham crackers and a jar of peanut butter out of the cabinet.
How did she know he’d find peanut butter? He was like a peanut-butter-sniffing bloodhound. Or peanut-butter-sniffing werewolf, she guessed.
“I’m fine with peanut butter and crackers if you are.”
She frowned when he turned his back to her, focused on opening the box of graham crackers and ignoring her completely. For some reason, the idea that he didn’t even want to look at her hurt more than it should.
