Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Several quiet hours later, the cottage door swung open and a figure stepped out. Caterina focused the binoculars on Athena Wells. Dressed in a stained lab coat and brown cords, she walked barefoot into the yard, leaving the door open behind her. She headed toward the main house, then stopped abruptly. She swiveled.

And looked directly into Caterina’s binoculars.

Athena touched a finger to her lips. Shhhh .

“Christ,” Caterina breathed. Her skin prickled. “She knows we’re here.”

“Impossible,” Beck said. “She’s a basket case. She doesn’t know shit.”

Caterina had the distinct feeling that they were the ones who didn’t know shit.

Athena Wells looked away, then skipped the rest of the way to the main house. Opening the front door, she slipped inside. It closed behind her. A moment later, Caterina’s handheld scanner beeped an all-clear on the alarm system.

It was down. Off or disabled.

Caterina watched the house for another half hour, feeling the tightrope stretch taut beneath her feet. “I’m going in.”

“Roger that,” Beck replied, finally in work mode. He touched the com bud tucked into his ear. “I’ll signal you if the son returns.”

Caterina packed up her binoculars and other gear, and started down the hillside, gun in hand.

WELLS SAT DOWN BEHIND his desk, resting the shotgun against it. A slide show of family pictures flashed across his computer monitor: Gloria in the surf on the beach at Lincoln City, the twins as towheaded toddlers, Gloria laughing. The deep ache in his chest eased for the first time in months.

Soon Gloria would be laughing again. In a matter of hours, Alex would ensure that S listened to the message on the iPod. Then S, beautiful and deadly, would spin into action and his assigned target, SAC Alberto Rodriguez, would die. Hopefully in great agony. And looking into S’s pale, merciless face, Rodriguez would know who had sent him and why.

Once Alex brought S home, Dante Prejean would disappear forever. Wells would direct S to heal Gloria, to steal his beautiful Persephone from Hades’s heated grasp once more, and restore to Wells his laughing bride.

A dark excitement uncoiled within Wells. He tapped his keyboard and the slide show disappeared. Scrolling through his files, he clicked on the one marked S and opened it. He relaxed into his chair as images filled the monitor.

Locked inside a rabbit hutch, the toddler, black hair curling at the nape of his pale neck, watches as his few toys are tossed into a debris fire one by one. Following Wells’s instructions, the boozed-up foster parents tell the child that it’s his fault his toys are being burned .

“You was a bad boy, you. Bad, bad, evil boy. All your fault, you.”

A small plastic guitar melts in the flames. A ball joins it. But when the last toy, a ragged, chewed-up turtle plushie, is dangled above the blaze, the toddler tears his way free of the cage. Firelight glints on his tiny fangs as he snatches the turtle from his foster mother’s hand .

“Shit and hellfire!” The foster father cries, then recovering from his shock, he grabs the toddler. The toddler’s hand and the turtle clutched in the little fingers are shoved into the flames .

Let someone try that now, Wells mused. He scrolled forward through the file seeking other choice bits, other fond memories, then paused. Had he heard the front door open? An alarm beep-beep-beeped in a rapid cycle and Wells’s heart slammed into his throat. His pulse drummed so fast his vision grayed. He lowered his head, gasping for air, thinking, Lovely. All your preparations and you get caught gasping for air like a land-drowning goldfish .

As he reached a shaking hand for the shotgun, the frantic beeping stopped. Locking his fingers around the gun, Wells grabbed it and strained to listen past his thundering pulse. After a moment, he became aware of a soft sound, like the whisper of the wind through the trees.

He exhaled in relief. Only Athena. He drew a still trembling hand across his sweat-damp brow. The whispers preceded his daughter down the hall, the words she was repeating over and over, becoming clear.

“Threeintoonethreeintoonethreeintoonethreeintoonethreeintoonethreeinto one…”

But then a chilling question occurred to him—how had Athena silenced the alarm? Not even Alexander knew that he’d changed the codes, not yet.

Still whispering, Athena walked into his office, her dirty, bare feet tracking mud across the pale carpet. She shuffled past his desk, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her spattered and stained lab coat.

“Athena,” Wells said, tucking the shotgun under his arm and reaching for the psi blocker in his pants pocket. The whispers stopped. “What are you doing here?” He swiveled around in his chair.

Athena stood in front of his collection of Hellenic spears, shields, and breastplates. She plucked a spear free and spun around on the balls of her feet. Her Aegean eyes gleamed, a sunlit tide. Smiling, she yanked from her pocket the Taser he’d hidden.

The prongs pierced his chest. Electricity jolted through his body. Pain wiped all thought from his mind. His body twitched and convulsed and flopped onto the floor.

Through a haze of thrumming, heated pain, he heard his daughter’s voice.

“I’m breaking a promise, Daddy,” she said.

Seattle, WA

March 23

SUDDEN SCRATCHING AT THE window in the front room along with an inquisitive chirp from Eerie caught Heather’s attention. She looked up from her laptop. “You hunting moths, kitty boy?” Another thought flared in her mind: Nighttime. Dante. First thing tomorrow evening .

She pushed back from the table and rose to her feet, reaching for her purse and the .38 tucked inside in case it wasn’t Dante crawling in through her fricking window again.

The window slid open, pale hands grasping the edge, then Heather saw a black-clad leg edged from ankle to hip with vinyl straps and buckles swing over the window sill, and into the room, quickly followed by the rest of Dante. A hood hid his face, but not the lambent gleam of his eyes.

“Hey,” he said as he straightened, pushing his hood back. A smile tilted his lips.

The sight of him caught at her heart. As always. Heather’s muscles unknotted. “I could’ve shot you, you know. Why the hell don’t you use the front door?”

Dante shrugged. Turning, his leather jacket creaking, he slid the window shut. He fingered the broken hasp. “I bought stuff to fix this.”

“Do you even know how to use a screwdriver?”

Dante snorted. “How hard can it be? Slide A into B, twist. Could be fun.”

“Sounds sexy, but where’s the kiss?”

Dante puckered his lips and blew her a kiss. “Good enough?”

Heather glanced over her shoulder. “You missed, Cupid. But Eerie’s purring.”

Dante laughed. He nodded at the computer. “You find anything out? Like where to find… him ?”

Heather shook her head. “Not yet. All of his Bureau records have levels of security like I’ve never seen. The last known address was in Maryland and it’s five years old. I’ve tracked him to the West Coast, then he vanishes. I’m still looking, though. But I’ve made a few other interesting discoveries.”

“Yeah?”