She heard Zael call her name. It was a distant-sounding shout, muffled and fading fast.
The soft earth of the garden path beneath her feet fell away, then the world around her sped into a dizzying blur of light and motion.
CHAPTER 15
It was sometime past dawn following what felt like one of the longest nights of Darion’s life.
His father was home at last, though not out of the woods by a longshot when it came to his physical and mental states. After wrangling him inside with the help of several Order warriors, Lucan was currently sleeping off several gorilla-sized doses of Ketamine in the command center’s holding tank.
The irony wasn’t lost on Darion that the titanium-reinforced, ultraviolet-light-enhanced bars that Gideon had engineered to hold a raging Ancient, if they ever needed to, were now the only thing keeping the Order’s leader from escaping. Although, even that was up for debate if they ran low on Tess’s supply of sedatives.
Even laid low with pain through the blood bond, Gabrielle was a forced to be reckoned with herself. She had protested the plan to hold Lucan in the prisoner’s cell, but Tess, Savannah, Elise, and the other Breedmates who’d arrived in D.C. overnight with their mates had managed to convince her that it was the safest place for him to be for the time being. However, there had been no dissuading her from demanding a cot be set up for her to sleep in the chamber adjacent to Lucan’s cell.
And the hits kept coming.
Jenna remained unconscious without explanation. Her vital signs were strong, but Tess and Gideon had determined she’d slipped into some kind of coma. Brock was practically out of his mind with concern, hardly willing to leave her bedside. Darion had made Brock personally responsible for the Darkhaven boy, hoping that looking after Caleb might help the big warrior cope with the uncertainty of his mate’s condition until they could figure out what had happened to her.
The only good news to arrive in the past few hours was the report from Darion’s Minion that he had met with Ahmed Touati at his office as directed. Unbeknownst to the Opus covert operative, Gopnik had hand-delivered a nasty little surprise package which Gideon had prepared especially for the occasion.
“You’re sure this is going to work?” Darion asked, looking at Gideon across the war room conference table from him and several other Order warriors.
“I’m sure.” He winced slightly behind his glasses. “I’m about ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure.”
Darion wasn’t used to hearing even that much doubt in the tech genius’s estimates. No one else gathered around the table looked comfortable with the thought, either.
“What might go wrong?”
Gideon scrubbed a hand over his disheveled blond hair. “Probably nothing, but there are a lot of moving parts to this plan.”
“That’s situation normal for us,” Sterling Chase interjected. The Boston-based commander leaned forward, resting his elbows on the edge of the table. “I thought you said your software worm was airtight.”
“Yes, I did. And it is.”
“So, where’s the problem, Gid?” Dante pressed from his seat next to Chase.
“I had a bit of a scramble adjusting to our new delivery method.”
“Delivery method,” Kade echoed, his smile almost wolfish. “You mean, AKA Scarface, our Minion courier?”
Nikolai grunted at the reminder of Darion’s overstep. “More specifically, Gid’s talking about the nanobot technology Gopnik carried into our unsuspecting Mr. Touati’s office. Nice work on that, by the way.”
Gideon grinned. “Thanks. The technology is impressive, if I do say so myself, but it’s delicate.”
“How so?” Tegan piped in from the far end of the table.
“Well, for one thing, it requires skin-to-skin contact in order to transfer from the carrier to the host.”
“We’re covered there,” Darion said. “I gave Gopnik specific instructions that he had to find a way to put his hands on Touati. Handshake, fist bump, face punch. Whatever worked. He’s assured me he completed the task.”
Gideon nodded. “That’s step one. Now, we have to wait and hope that Touati touches his phone or computer so he can transfer the nanobots to one of the devices and deploy the worm to infiltrate his secured network. Once that happens, we can pinpoint where each of his Opus comrades are located and go after them. So far, Touati hasn’t made the transfer. My console will light up like a Christmas tree the second we’re in.”
Dante smirked. “Anyone got Touati’s private number? I’ll call and tell him his refrigerator’s running.”
A few of the warriors chuckled. Even Darion’s mouth quirked in spite of the gravity of the conversation.
Gideon cleared his throat. “And, of course, there is a further wrinkle. If this attempt ultimately fails and we’re unable to hack into Opus’s secured network from either of Touati’s devices, we’re right back where we started.”
“Then we start over.” This time it was Hunter who spoke. His golden eyes shone with flat logic and cold determination. “We keep going until our mission’s goal is met.”
