Winter Lost

Adam would have interfered then, but Ortega wasn’t flinching. If he could hold up under the barrage, it would do the whole situation a lot of good. If the SecDef learned a little respect for their witness, matters would be considerably cleaner. Adam caught Don’s eye and shook his head, telling him to stand down, too.

Adam wished they were all in a room together. It would be a lot easier to make these calls.

“And furthermore, girl,” said the SecDef—and that was when Ortega had had enough.

“My pronouns are ‘he,’ ‘him,’ and ‘his,’ ” he said in a flat voice that carried over the top of the SecDef’s. “And have been since I was asked to leave the marines. That is probably in one of the files you hopefully read before the meeting. If you had called me ‘boy,’ it would still have been offensive and demeaning.” He put up a hand to stop anything anyone might have said and continued. “If I had died with Kit—a situation that it seems you would prefer to this one—none of us would be here. I’d be dead and approximately ten unknowns would have had access to whatever they were after. Possibly without anyone knowing they’d been in and out at all. The only mystery would be why a couple of Hauptman guards ran off together, because those people were prepared to take bodies back with them, and I don’t think they expected the bodies would belong to their own men.”

Vincent Ortega took no prisoners, it seemed. Adam trusted that his face stayed blank. Only someone who had known Don as long as Adam had would have detected the amused pleasure in his old comrade’s face.

After a breathless moment, the SecDef settled back in his chair with a slight smile. “I spoke to your former commanding officer, Mr. Ortega. I am happy to see that he was right.” He rubbed his face—and suddenly looked every bit as tired as Ortega. “But it would be useful if we knew who it was—homegrown or international terrorists. Spies. Thieves. Something.”

Kidnappers, Adam added silently. There were, he knew, several potentially high-value targets who habitually worked at night in the labs. He didn’t say it because he didn’t indulge in speculation with people he didn’t know. Instead, he texted it to Don.

Don nodded once and said, “We’re running DNA tests on the blood at the scene—”

Don’s voice kicked over to background noise as anxiety struck through Adam’s mating bond. He waited—Don’s succinct outline of Hauptman Security’s investigation to date sliding past his ears—for something to happen. One minute passed. Two. Instead of texting him, she fiddled with their bond until he couldn’t sense her distress at all.

There were only two reasons Mercy would work so diligently to keep him unaware that something was bothering her. This didn’t have the feel of the ongoing issues she’d been having after the Soul Taker, that damned ancient artifact, had tried to remake her magic in its own image. Those tended to have more pain attached to them.

Bonarata had called again.

He picked up his phone and texted Ben, the pack’s computer expert. Ben would notify the rest of the people working on the Bonarata problem. It was unlikely to come to anything—they might manage to get his location for the duration of the call. But Bonarata, they had learned, was a lot more mobile than they’d previously understood. He was supposed to be located in Italy. Ben’s traces had proven that the old vampire had some way of traveling that allowed him to be in San Francisco one day and Barcelona the next without leaving a trail. That was why the Marrok—whom Adam and his pack no longer belonged to—allowed Adam access to Charles, the Marrok’s son, who was working on how Bonarata managed to get to Mercy through number, phone, and carrier changes.

In the end, Adam thought, it was going to come down to a battle one-on-one. But if they could stop the harassing phone calls, they’d force Bonarata to find another, possibly less effective means of terrifying Mercy.

Something Adam could sink his teeth into.

“—thought that the least you could do is pay attention,” thundered the SecDef.

Adam continued to watch his phone for another heartbeat. Though Ben’s “on it” had come through on the heels of the text, Adam’s wolf still wasn’t happy. SecDef’s attitude didn’t help.

Adam thought he had it under control, but when he looked up and saw his image reflected back at himself in the computer screen, his eyes were bright yellow. SecDef flinched—which wasn’t good. Scaring powerful people was not going to make anyone safer.

“I hear you,” Adam said. He paused to get the growl out of his voice. “Sorry. I had an emergency that I needed to deal with.” And then he lied. “It didn’t keep me from listening.” And followed it up with a truth. “Don has been keeping me briefed on this situation, so I am already up-to-date from our side of this—and it sounds like nothing is coming up on yours, sir. Your people are certain that no one got in?”