Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
There was no use putting it off any longer.
It had to be done, so Steel knew he may as well just do it.
Picking up his cell phone, he dialled Eagle’s number and then waited.
Less than two seconds later, his boss picked up. “Steel.”
Something in the way Eagle said his name had him on edge. Was it possible that his boss knew what they’d done?
No.
How could he?
They did have some cameras scattered throughout the property, but he was pretty sure that Prey didn’t have access to them.
Then again, Prey was Prey, and the Oswald siblings were resourceful and determined.
Oldest sister and second oldest sibling, Raven, was a computer genius who had learned from the best of the best, and Eagle’s wife, Olivia, was also an expert on computers.
Maybe it was possible that Eagle knew they had abducted Ridge Gardner’s sister.
“We need to talk,” Steel said. This wasn't going to be pleasant, and he was prepared to be told that they needed to pack up and leave the house immediately.
Of course, he wouldn't have done this without talking to his team first, so they all knew he was calling their boss to confess and were prepared to accept any consequences Eagle decided on.
They’d made their choices, and whatever happened next was on them, not Eagle.
“I’d say we do,” Eagle agreed. Although there was a sharpness in Eagle’s voice, there was a relaxed quality, too, and while Steel was usually good at reading people he couldn’t get a read on his boss.
There was one thing he was pretty certain of, though.
“You know.” A statement, not a question, because it was the only reason he could think of that Eagle would sound the way he did.
If he was wrong, he would have told his boss anyway.
Keeping this from Eagle after everything the man had done for them had always felt wrong.
He’d just shoved away the guilt because he’d been so focused on getting one step closer to revenge on Dr. Gardner.
“I do.”
“How?”
“You really think Olivia and Raven didn't get me access to the cameras in your house?” Eagle sounded amused now. “My wonderful wife and sister set up a program that only alerts me when the facial recognition software picks up someone new. This is the first time that’s happened, since we added the Charleston Holloway family to the program while they were staying with you. Imagine my surprise when I get an alert last night and open the camera feed to see a young woman running out your front door.”
“If you know, why aren't you here already?” There was only one person outside of him and his team who knew the location of this mansion, and it was Eagle himself. When they’d been flying members of the Charleston Holloway family in and out, they had everyone wear a blindfold from the moment they stepped on the plane until the moment they got to the front door.
Why had Eagle not sent a team straight there if he knew they’d abducted someone?
“I was coming, I can assure you of that.
Even if the facial recognition software hadn't pinged the woman as Rose Gardner. I had already called Alpha Team, and had them preparing to head out, but then I saw you bring Rose back inside. You took care of her, warmed her up, set up an IV, sat with her, touched her, calmed her. I saw the way you looked at her, Steel, and I know that look.”
“What look?” His obsession with Rose was confusing. He knew he was developing feelings, but he had no idea what to do with them, how to process them, or how he was supposed to make them work in any meaningful way when Rose hated him, and rightfully so.
“Same look I had on my face as I had Olivia dragged down to one of the holding cells in Prey’s basement,” Eagle replied. “Can I assume that your enemy’s little sister has been residing in the cells you built in your basement?”
They had never told Eagle about the renovations they’d performed once they moved in, but now that he knew the man had access to the mansion’s cameras, he wasn't surprised that their boss knew.
Scrubbing a hand down his face, this conversation wasn't going at all the way he’d expected. It was both a blessing and a curse not to have to break the news that they’d gone rogue, but he wasn't sure what Eagle intended to do about it.
“She was, but the feisty little thing managed to pull the ceiling down on herself.”
Eagle’s rich laugh came down the line. “I'm impressed. Tell her she has a job at Prey if she wants one, and she can teach everyone else how she managed that.”
“We moved her up to one of the bedrooms, and despite my telling her several times to stop moving because she was causing herself more pain, she decided to try to escape.” No one’s pain had ever affected him the way his little ladybug’s did.
Rose hated him calling her his, but the thing was, he was pretty sure she already owned more of him than he realized yet.
“How long have you had her?”
“Since Christmas Eve.”
“And what are your plans with her?”
“Someone broke into her place after we sent her brother a video of …” He trailed off, not wanting to say out loud that he’d had an innocent woman tortured to the man he respected and who had helped give him and his team a purpose as well as a home.
“It’s not safe for her to leave. Her brother tortured her as well, her entire childhood.
She agreed to help us get to him, and then after that, we told her she’d be free to leave. ”
“I'm not stupid, Steel,” Eagle said, his voice losing the relaxed edge, becoming hard and focused, and he knew, despite the fact that Eagle hadn't immediately fired him, or sent a team out there to kill him, his boss was disappointed in them and angry at their choices. “You tortured the poor woman and sent a video of it to her brother. I won't say I don’t understand the whys, but that doesn’t make it okay.”
“It was supposed to be easy,” he said softly.
“Of course, it wasn't going to be easy. Rose is innocent, and you knew it despite whatever nonsense you cooked up in your heads to excuse it.”
“We no longer have consciences. Using her should have been easy for us.”
“No, Steel. This idea you all have of being monsters is just repeating what you were told. I'm not denying that Ridge Gardner messed with your ability to process emotions, that he disrupted what should be a natural process. But that doesn’t make you monsters, and it never did. Do you think that if I believed for a second you were incapable of feeling emotion, that you were a monster, that I would allow you around my wife and children?”
While he and his team had spent some time around Prey, and they always made an effort to appear as human as possible around the kids, he didn't agree with what his boss had just said.
“Luna specifically loves what she calls the whizzy flying rides you give her,” Eagle said, his tone softening again as he spoke about his five-year-old daughter.
The whizzy flying rides were nothing more than holding the child’s hands and spinning in circles, a simple thing he’d done merely to try to prove to everyone he wasn't entirely a monster, and because the bossy little girl demanded them any time he saw her. The child was every bit her father’s daughter, and he knew Eagle would burn the world to the ground for Luna, his two-year-old son Apollo, and his wife.
For any one of his siblings, their partners, and his nieces and nephews.
For any member of any one of his teams, their partners, or children.
For him and the men on his team.
Guilt hit him hard, and he was overcome with a need to make things right. “We shouldn’t have gone after Rose.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Eagle agreed.
“He told us often that we were his perfect killing machines.”
“He’s a liar. One who deserves to die. One who I already promised to help you deal with. I got you a name, you should have trusted me to find out where he was.”
“We were desperate.”
“I understand that, but I don’t want you going rogue again.”
“You're not firing us?”
Not killing us?
“Don’t be ridiculous. But I won't pretend I'm not disappointed and angry about what you did. Rose deserves better. Do I need to send in a team to extract her?”
They both knew if he did, that Delta Team could kill them all without blinking.
But they both also knew that they wouldn't. Prey was filled with good men and women who put their lives on the line every day to save innocents and make the world a safer place.
Killing any of them, especially when they would be trying to rescue an innocent woman being held captive, would truly make them the monsters they believed themselves to be.
“No. She’s safe with us even if she doesn’t believe it.”
“Then make her believe it,” Eagle said like it was that simple. “Don’t waste an opportunity for a future because you believe the lies you were told in the past.”
With that, his boss ended the call, leaving Steel sitting there, staring at his cell phone, wondering how Eagle could have more faith in his humanity than he did.
December 29th
3:42 P.M.
Sometimes boredom could be as bad as overstimulation.
As a child, Rose had experience with both.
Since she was homeschooled, she was expected to learn at double or triple the rate that children typically would in a regular school.
Her brother expected perfect grades from her and created his own program for her to study, a combination of what their parents had used with him, and his own tweaks based on his experience.
Most of her day was taken up with that schoolwork and her chores.
There was barely time for her to catch her breath, and she usually collapsed into sleep at the end of the day, not even bothered by the hard wooden bed she slept on.
Then there were the days when Ridge flew into a rage and locked her in a closet, or the basement, or the dreaded well. On those days, there was nothing to do but count down the seconds until it was over.