6. Rena
Rena
Alab? Why the hell would people who were killing Vampires need a lab? I was trying to follow the conversation, but it was hard because there were clearly some gaps in my knowledge of the situation. What the hell was I missing?
Beside me, Chance was gripping the back of the couch in his fist, his fingers turning white where they pressed in.
“It’s more than one warehouse,” Chance’s brother, Danny, explained. “It’s an entire business park. We could only get access to three buildings, but there were five. One of them is just storage, from what we could see. Medical supplies, tactical supplies?—”
“Food,” Rosemary added.
Danny nodded. “One of the buildings was just holding cells.” He stopped with a small shudder and swallowed hard. “From what we could tell, they keep the Vampires and their mates in adjoining cells.”
“They can reach each other through the bars,” Rosemary whispered, her voice wobbling. “Barely.”
Chance pulled me closer, his arms like iron bands around my back.
“Most of the cells had prisoners in them,” Danny said.
“The other building is full of beds. We barely got a look inside because it’s so heavily guarded, but from what we saw…
” The last word was choked, and he held up a hand while clearing his throat.
His mate wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder.
“It was really bad,” she whispered. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The other building was quiet. The people in there were zoned out, staring at nothing. But the lab…” Her voice dropped until it was barely audible. “They were screaming.”
“We’ll need more Vampires,” Daniel said. “It’s so heavily guarded that it’ll take a lot more than we have.”
“We can call the teams,” Chance said, repeating the idea he’d had earlier. “You know they’d come.”
“I’ll get in touch with Arthur when I’m done updating Dalton,” Chance’s dad, Erik, said, his voice quiet.
You could’ve heard a pin drop in that room.
Daniel and Rosemary got to their feet slowly, like every muscle was sore. “We can update Uncle Dalton. We’re headed over there next,” Rosemary said with a sad smile. “I’d like to see my family.”
“Do that,” Erik said with a sympathetic nod. “Tell him that I’m calling Arthur, and I’ll let him know what kind of support Vampire Command is willing to send.”
“It better be everything they have,” Beau muttered. “Pieces of shit.”
Before anyone could leave the room, Chance pulled away from me. He left without a word, the sounds of his footsteps loud on the hardwood until he reached the stairs.
When I looked around the room, no one seemed to have noticed that he’d left.
Charlie was as pale as a ghost across the room.
His sister and Ambrose were talking to him quietly.
The rest of them had congregated in the center, discussing something with Danny and Rosemary that I couldn’t hear.
Even Reese was there, tucked in under Beau’s arm.
Feeling seriously out of place, I quietly followed Chance.
The idea of some kind of lab that was experimenting—torturing?
—Vampires felt like it was making my brain glitch.
That kind of thing didn’t happen, did it?
We lived in a civilized society. No one could get away with that in plain sight, right?
Even if some bad guy was able to buy a business park and fill it with bad shit…
someone would notice. It was impossible to even run a red light anymore without getting caught on camera.
How could some large-scale operation like that go unnoticed?
I knocked twice before opening Chance’s door, but I only made it two steps inside before I stopped in horror.
There was nothing left of his sophisticated computer setup.
Monitors were shattered, lying all over the floor.
The desk that I’d assumed was one piece was actually three.
One of those pieces was lying upside down, and the other two were tossed haphazardly onto their sides.
Cords and random bits of gadgets were strewn across the carpet in all directions.
Chance stood in the center of it all, breathing heavily, his back to me.
The amount of destruction he’d accomplished by the time I got there should’ve been studied.
“I think you’ve voided any warranties,” I said, closing the door quietly behind me.
“Warranties are bullshit. I never buy them.”
“You want to talk about it?” I asked, staying close to the door.
“Not especially.”
“Cool,” I replied, still gaping at the disaster.
“How long have they been there?” he asked quietly without turning around. “How long have they been waiting for someone to save them?”
I didn’t think that he was looking for an answer, so I kept my mouth shut and let him speak.
“I create algorithms. I have multiple programs that can sift through data like it’s nothing.
” His hands came up and wrapped around the back of his neck, linking together, tangling in his long hair.
“But there were too many godsdamned variables. There was no way to be precise when we weren’t even sure what or who we were looking for.
I’d think I’d find something, and then it would turn out to be shit, and I’d have to start from the beginning again.
Over and over, until I thought I was going to lose my fucking mind. ”
His voice was vibrating with suppressed emotion, and my throat got tight as I watched him struggle.
“It took me too fucking long. We should’ve found that lab within days of getting the information, not weeks.”
“You’ve done what you could,” I said, moving into the room. “You did find it. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. You don’t know something until you know it.”
Chance turned to face me. “What’s been done to them while I’ve sat here in front of my computer, spinning my wheels like a fucking idiot?”
“You know where they are now,” I reminded him softly, picking my way through the mess. “You can do something now.”
“Now we have to wait,” he argued. “Talk to Vampire Command, coordinate with the rest of Dalton’s team, plan it all out.”
“But you’ll get there,” I said, reaching out to rest my hands on his sides. “You know where they are, and now you can go get them.”
“I don’t think I can stand it,” he breathed, his eyes dark. His arms dropped, and his hands found the sides of my face, cupping it in his palms. “I feel like I’m coming out of my skin.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered back. “I wish there was something I could do.”
He nodded, in thanks or in acknowledgment of my ability to fix anything—I wasn’t sure which. Then he was lowering to the floor, pulling me carefully onto his lap.
We sat in the center of the destruction, his fingers tracing mine.
I suddenly understood why the Bouchers made excuses for this asshole son of theirs.
Every story I’d heard and rude comment I’d filed under his name in my head seemed unimportant when weighed against the Vampire I’d been with since yesterday.
His snarky comments didn’t seem so bad when taken in context, and it was hard to focus on the surface information I’d been given now that I’d seen what was beneath.
An asshole wouldn’t have sat on that floor with me, completely silent, castigating himself for not working fast enough.
“When did you get interested in computers?” I asked after a while, desperate to break the silence.
“First time I heard about them,” he replied. “They were massive, the size of a room, and they didn’t do a fraction of the things they can do now.”
“That must’ve been a trip,” I said, leaning back against him.
“Yeah, it was. I’d seen a lot of progress by then, but still. I was like a kid in a candy shop. I read everything I could get my hands on.”
“And you still love them?”
“They’re a useful tool,” he replied, softly kissing my shoulder through my shirt. “Most of the time.”
“Can you think of anything you would’ve done differently?” I asked carefully. “Was there some way you could’ve moved faster or found answers before yesterday?”
Chance was quiet for a long time before answering. “No.”
“Then stop feeling sorry for yourself and go down and see how you can help move things along,” I said, turning to look at him.
I held my breath, wondering what his response would be. I’d taken a risk, but if he was anything like me—and I was beginning to suspect that we were more alike than I wanted to admit—it would snap him out of the pit he’d fallen into.
“Fuck you,” he replied, but his lips were twitching at the corners.
“Or we can hang out here and wallow,” I said, shrugging. “Up to you.”
“Or we can move this to the bedroom, and you can make me feel all better.”
I just looked at him. “Did you think that would actually work?”
“It was worth a shot.”
“I don’t think you’d know what to do with yourself if I told you yes.”
Chance’s smile grew. “Oh, I know exactly what I’d do.”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure your prowess is unmatched,” I replied flippantly. “But we don’t have time for that now.”
“I’d make time,” he countered. He lifted me off his lap and got to his feet beside me. “But you’re right. We should go back downstairs.”
“I’ll meet you down there,” I said, walking toward the bathroom.
“Rena,” Chance called, making me pause to look at him. “Thanks for sitting with me while I lost it.”
“I got here after you lost it,” I reminded him. “Plus, things got pretty awkward downstairs.”
He laughed as I walked through the bedroom to the bathroom. A second later, I heard him shut the door.
“What are you doing, Irena?” I asked myself in the mirror. “You’re letting yourself get pulled in by a pretty face and a sob story.”
I didn’t believe the words, even as I said them.
I liked Chance, which I hadn’t been prepared for.
Turning on the sink, I let the cold water run over my hands and wrists. Less than a minute after we’d separated, the heat beneath my skin had begun to rise, and I could feel sweat gathering at the base of my spine already.
“What should I do, Mama?” I asked, flexing my hands that looked just like hers.