Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
Blade was so on edge it didn't take much to set him off.
The crack of a gunshot was more than enough.
He was out of the car and moving before he even processed what he was doing. Every fiber in his being screamed at him to get to Whitney.
Protect her.
If he hadn't failed already.
They’d been banking on the fact that Dr. Gardner wanted Whitney alive more than he wanted to punish her for betraying him. Was he going to punish her? Absolutely he was, but he still needed her, she was too smart, too valuable, he couldn’t do what he wanted without her.
But it was still a gamble.
There was every chance the deranged doctor was too blinded by his rage at having someone he thought he’d molded into the perfect little scientist slave that he didn't have to worry about her loyalty, suddenly turn on him.
And not just turn on him.
Whitney had told them how she’d destroyed all her notes, all her formulas, all her calculations, all of it gone. Without her, there was no way for him to get it back. That was definitely enough to push the scientist over the edge.
“Wait,” Steel ordered from behind him.
For the first time since they met and formed their team, back when they all signed up for the experimental drug program and were placed together, Blade ignored a direct order from his team leader.
No way in hell was he stopping.
Not when Whitney might have just been shot, could be dead this very second, or lying on the floor bleeding out, wondering why he wasn't there to protect her like he’d said he would be.
Failed. He’d failed the woman who had become incredibly important to him in a short space of time.
He’d promised her he would be there for her, and he hadn't been. He’d let her do this when he knew it was too risky a move, and he should have locked her up at home where she could be angry with him, hate him if she had to, but be alive and safe.
All of a sudden, Thunder had bypassed him and was in front of him, blocking his path.
That split second it took him to attempt to adjust his course, cut through the park to reach the row of shops and the produce store that Detective Hayes had said they were going into, was thwarted when Thunder and Steel boxed him in.
Keeping that much distance between them and Whitney had been a huge mistake. If they’d been closer, he would have heard whoever was waiting in that store to shoot Whitney when she walked in the door.
“You're not thinking,” Steel said in a patronizing tone that rubbed him the wrong way.
“Damn right I'm not thinking of anything other than getting to Whitney,” he growled, for the first time in his life actually considering killing one of the men he considered a brother.
“For a guy who has superhuman hearing skills, you aren't using them very well,” Voodoo said.
“What do you mean?” He’d heard the gunshot and would have heard it even without Whitney wearing the comms unit.
“Listen,” Dragon said quietly, his unusual violet eyes filled with an understanding that came from being in the same position before, terror for the woman you were falling for temporarily disrupting your connection to logic.
Forcing himself to shove the panic back a little, he focused.
And then he heard it.
“Y-you killed him,” Whitney said, her voice weak and wavery, reminding him of how she’d sounded when she first started talking to him when he had her hanging from the tree.
Since he knew that her immediate reaction to trauma was paralysis, he assumed these were the first words she’d spoken since the shooting.
Not dead.
Whitney wasn't dead.
Which meant the shot had to have killed the cop.
Given the man had turned dirty, been willing to sell out Whitney for a bag of cash, Blade didn't have it in him to summon even an ounce of empathy. The crooked cop had gotten exactly what he deserved.
“She’s okay,” he murmured the words on an exhale, barely able to believe them. He’d been so certain that the bullet had struck his girl, taken her from him, that he hadn't been able to think of any other possibility. This one made much more sense, though.
“He’s not going to kill her,” Steel said with a whole lot more confidence than Blade was currently feeling. Then again, it was easy for Steel to be confident when the woman he was in love with was safely tucked away at their home.
“Do we know who that is?” he asked, trying to cling to the control he was scrounging up. Facts would help him do that. Whitney liked facts, had shared dozens of them with him over the last few days.
“I sent a copy of his voice to Raven and Olivia. You know if anyone can identify him it’s them and their teams,” Lion assured him.
“You’ve almost caused more hassle than you're worth,” the voice in his ear spoke, and he caught Whitney’s whimper. Whoever this man was, she knew him, and she was terrified of him.
“I was just here to clear my name,” Whitney said in a small voice.
Despite how scared she obviously was, she was doing everything they could have asked of her.
She was working through her fear and maintaining her cover.
The last thing they needed was for her to let on that she was playing them while they thought they were the ones playing her.
“What name?” the man mocked, and he could hear footsteps crossing a concrete floor, that combined with another whimper from Whitney, and Blade knew the man was moving closer to her. “Whitney Daley doesn’t exist. Gone, poof, like a puff of smoke.”
“They erased her again,” Thunder said, stating the obvious, and Blade threw his friend a quick glare.
“Why can't you just leave me alone?” Whitney asked, and there was a pleading quality to her voice he knew wasn't all acting. All she wanted was to be free to be her own person, make her own choices, live her own life.
“You know why,” the man replied.
“But he never listens to me anyway. He fiddles with every variation of the drug I create. The reason they keep dying is because of Dr. Gardner. If he wants to do it himself, then let him,” Whitney begged.
“Don’t think you really want to be making that argument, baby genius,” the man taunted. “Because if he does it all himself and doesn’t need you anymore, then that makes you expendable, doesn’t it? And if you're expendable, I could just put a bullet through your head right now and be done with it.”
The threat—empty though he was sure it was—was all it took to snap the control he’d been clinging to, and Blade was off again.
Muttered curses sounded from behind him, but he heard feet pounding the path he had taken.
As he ran, he kept listening, not letting fear make him completely useless, but as he approached the street where the produce store the cop had taken her to was located, he almost tripped over his feet when the comms unit suddenly went quiet.
What the hell?
There were too many competing sounds from the others, the vehicles on the street, the people in the park, those in the stores, and wandering down the sidewalk, for him to be able to zero in on Whitney and the man with her. At least quickly enough to figure out what was going on.
“Did everyone else lose them?” he demanded, not slowing his pace as he dodged around two women and several toddlers.
Thankfully, they’d dressed to look like they blended in at the park, wearing sweatpants, hoodies, and sneakers.
Not only did they look like they were all just out for a run, but the hoodies provided some cover for their faces.
“Yeah, they’re gone,” Voodoo replied.
“Probably jammed the signal,” Steel added.
“Right up ahead,” Lion said, pointing at the store about midway down the street.
“Wouldn't have gone in the front door,” Thunder said, “and there’s an alley beside it, I say that’s where we go.”
Moving as a solid unit, they darted across the street between cars, not bothering to use the crossing and wait for the lights, and headed for the alley. There was a door toward the far end of it, and when Blade tried the lock on it, it swung open.
Not even two steps inside the back room of the store was the body. Deacon Hayes, dirty cop, lying dead in a pool of his own blood. A single bullet to the forehead was the obvious cause of death.
Besides that, the room was empty.
No Whitney. No shooter. Nothing.
Not even the sound of her voice in the comms unit.
“I can't get a read on the tracking devices,” Lion announced, and it took Blade everything he had not to break down right then and there.
Whitney was gone, and he had no way to get her back.
January 15th
7:12 P.M.
A fiery ball of nausea burning up her esophagus ripped Whitney from unconsciousness.
Managing to turn her head before a rush of vomit came spewing out, she groaned as she sank back down as soon as she was done throwing up.
She felt like she’d been run over by a truck.
Since she knew she hadn't, she had to attribute the feeling to the drugs that Terry Richards had given her. The last part of what happened in the back room of the produce store was a little bit hazy, but she remembered the cop being shot, remembered trying her best to get away from the highly trained head of Dr. Gardner’s security.
It didn’t make a difference, though.
One single self-defense lesson that had ended before it even really got started when she’d kissed Blade wasn't enough to equip her to put anything into practice in a real-life experience. Especially when she was scared out of her mind.
Stupid survival instincts picking freeze instead of fight or even flight.
Not that she would have been able to flee from this situation, and realistically speaking, even if she wasn't fighting against her body’s natural inclination to freeze in trauma situations, there was no way she was winning against a man like Terry Richards in a fight.
While nowhere near as big as Blake and the other members of Delta Team, he was way bigger than she was, and he actually knew how to fight and wasn't trying to convince his body not to freeze up on him the same way she had to.