***
The first thing he did was move to the back of the storage room, sliding aside several stacks of clothes. There behind it all was a silver hard-shelled case that he tugged free, then he carefully set the clothing back the way it had been.
He moved to the desk and sat down, keeping an ear open for the sounds of the shower. Setting the case in front of him, he keyed in the four-number code. The case popped open and he slid the laptop from it and plugged it into the wall. Next he grabbed a blue cable and hooked that up to the laptop and a matching port on the wall. Now that he had internet, he pulled up a secure program and proceeded to activate it. A box appeared after roughly a minute.
All teams report.
Then he sat back and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
This was taking too long. There should have been a response by now from someone at least. Each safe house was equipped with a laptop and the encoded program. If anyone had made it, they should have been in earshot of the laptop to hear its soft ding when someone sent a message.
Had they been the only team to make it out alive?
Jared swiftly buried that thought, refusing to accept such a possibility. Someone had to have escaped safely. He checked the time, but it was still only mid-evening. He supposed that people could have been asleep, but he didn’t buy that for a second. Something was going on.
“Jared?”
He spun at the voice, realizing with a start that at some point in his distraction Nadia had finished up in the shower.
“Clothes, right,” he said, acting as if he’d forgotten.
“Please,” she said with a thankful look.
He moved into the other room and grabbed them from where they had been hung on hangers.
“Here you go,” he said, handing them over.
Nadia took them.
“They’re so warm!” she exclaimed, holding them tightly to her, even with the wet towel wrapped around her.
“I hung them over the space heater, so they’d be warm for you when you got out of the shower,” he said, giving her a smile as he pulled the door shut so she could get dressed in private.
He returned to the laptop, but there was still no response from any of his team.
“Is everything okay?” Nadia asked as she emerged from behind him. “You looked stressed.”
He did? Jared frowned, wiping the expression from his face as he turned around.
“Yeah, everything is fine,” he reassured her, getting up from the chair.
Nadia rolled her eyes. “Do I look like I just got off the train?” she asked, crossing her arms. “Don’t bullshit me.”
He thought about telling her that it applied to her just as much as it did him, but he decided against it. Now was not the time to be petty.
“I’m trying to make contact with the others,” he explained. “But nobody is responding.”
Her expression clouded over. “Nobody else made it out?”
Jared shrugged. “I find that hard to believe. My team is very skilled. There is no way they caught all of them.”
Nadia came and sat on the edge of the desk. The black denim pants and white T-shirt were a little baggy on her, as was her preferred hoodie that she had draped over her once again.
“You’re allowed to be worried for their safety,” she said, looking into his eyes forcefully. “It’s not a bad thing to admit that. You’re their leader, I gather?”
He nodded.
“Exactly. You trained them, you’ve looked after them. They’re more than just part of the team. They’re part of your family,” she said, pushing off the desk and forcing him back down into the chair.
He didn’t fight it, and sat down heavily. The metal-framed chair squeaked and protested under the sudden weight addition.
“So it’s okay to express your concern,” she continued, moving behind him.
Jared sat upright as strong fingers dug into his tense shoulder muscles.
“You told me that I would come down from the adrenaline high, that I would need to relax. But I don’t see you doing the same,” she admonished, kneading his muscles firmly, forcing him to sit back and relax.
“Better,” she said in a softer, gentler voice, though her fingers didn’t stop moving. “If these men are anything like you, with your abilities and skills, I have no doubt that they would all have escaped. Perhaps they just weren’t able to get to the safe house?” she suggested.
Jared nodded, his eyes closing as her fingers rubbed against his skin. He inhaled deeply, and exhaled slowly before replying. “They have the skills, and the training,” he told her. “They’re the best of the best. But the Agency aren’t slouches. Their men aren’t at the same level individually, but with enough of them, they could take any one of us down.”
He scowled. “They hit us with far more men than I thought they had this morning. Obviously our estimates of their strength were incorrect. There were almost six full teams of men there, double our earlier estimates.”
“Perhaps they pulled everyone from their building downtown?” she asked. “Would that give them enough?”
He shrugged. “It’s entirely possible. Ever since they firmly established themselves in town, we’ve never been able to get an accurate count of just how many men they have in there. It could be that they’ve had more teams all along, and we’ve just never known about them, or never seen them.”
Nadia moved around him, her hands dragging across his back as she did. At one point her fingernail dug into him just a little, pulling across his skin and sending a shiver down his spine. He looked up at her and their eyes met.
The room seemed to shrink in size almost instantly, until it was no more than the size of a circle around them. He tried to breathe in, but his lungs refused to work. Their gaze became a stare, and Jared realized that she was swaying closer to him as she stood there. Her tongue flicked out, licking her lips.
He suppressed an urge to surge up from his seat and kiss her, fighting it down with all of his considerable mental strength. Fingers tense, they closed around the edge of the armrests on the chair until his knuckles went white.
The spell was broken when his grip continued to increase until it was so strong the armrests snapped.
Nadia giggled as he looked down in surprise. By the time he looked back up she had pulled away, the moment over. He flexed his arms to try and stop some of the flow of blood to his cock, hoping she didn’t notice the bulge between his legs. After several seconds of that and intense focusing on nonsexual things, he felt comfortable enough to stand up. With a helpless shake of his head he tossed the snapped-off ends of the armrests onto the desk.
“I hope you weren’t too attached to your life here in town,” he said at last, bringing up a subject he’d been avoiding so far.
“What do you mean?” she asked, her eyebrows furrowing at the sudden change of topic.
“I mean, since you were seen with me, and fled with me, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to go back to what you had,” he said delicately, knowing that breaking this news would be tough for her to hear, but that it had to be done.
Perhaps it will help put a barrier between us, so that we don’t fall victim to our hormones. If she hates me for ruining her life, perhaps it will make all this easier.
Jared didn’t actually believe that, nor did he want for it to happen, but he knew it would inevitably be easier this way. If he could do anything to make her life smoother, he would. Perhaps he could play it off like he had kidnapped her, so that she wouldn’t lose everything she had.
But even as he thought about pushing her away so that she wouldn’t end up in trouble alongside him, Jared knew it wasn’t what he actually wanted. He’d already had visions of the two of them doing various activities. Of him properly introducing her to his team, and showing her Genesis Valley, where he had lived for most of his life. Of learning more about her, and seeing her home as well. So when she began to speak, he braced himself for the outburst of anger.
But once again she surprised him.
“I know,” she said bluntly. “I doubt I truly understand, or comprehend what it means. But I’m aware that I can’t go back to anything I had.”
He shook his head. “So why, then? Why throw it all away?”
Nadia hesitated.
“It’s okay, I won’t judge you,” he assured her.
She smiled faintly. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, trust me.”
He shook his head. “No, I won’t. I’ve probably heard crazier things.”
“Okay. But I warned you,” she said, then sat back onto the couch and began to speak.
“Ever since I hit puberty, around twelve or so, I began to have very strong hunches. Gut feelings. Instincts. Whatever you want to call it. At first I thought everyone experienced this sort of thing, that it was completely normal and part of growing up, but nobody really talked about it. So I didn’t say anything. But they got stronger, and I noticed a pattern.”
“A pattern?” Jared was intrigued now. He’d never heard of such a thing.
“Yes. If I listened to my hunch, things would inevitably work out for the better for me. It wasn’t always instantly visible, but looking back I was able to see how. But if I ignored it…” she trailed off.
“Something bad would happen,” he finished.
“Exactly,” Nadia said, looking away. “So this morning, I got an urge.”
“To come to me?” he asked curiously.
She shook her head. “Not at first. At first it was simply to get out of the building. No matter what it took, to get out and never, ever go back. But as soon as I was out, and they began to follow, my mind recalled you guys. And suddenly I knew where I had to go.”
She sat back, arms crossed. “Still think I’m not crazy?”
He smiled. “I can change my shape into that of a nearly two-ton bear. It can communicate with me as a separate entity, in a very simple sense. So no,” he reassured her, “I don’t think you’re crazy. I have a friend I want to ask about your hunches, to see if he knows what it might be about, but other than that, I don’t think you’re too crazy.”
An old dragon, one who had seen everything, came to mind. If anyone would know, it would be Ferro.
“Well, this is a relief,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Most people I’ve told this to think I belong in a nuthouse.”
“I’m not most people,” he told her firmly.
“So I’ve noticed,” she said with a noticeable sultry air to her voice.
All of a sudden the tension was back in the room.