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He picked up the receiver again and pounded out the number he knew would somehow route him to the secured line Gideon had set up at the compound. He held his breath as the call connected and started to ring. Halfway through the second tone, the line was picked up.
"Yeah."
Chase frowned, caught off guard by the deep voice that didn't carry Gideon's familiar tinge of a British accent. He started to reply, but the word came out all rusty, his throat parched and burning from the thirst he needed to ignore. He swallowed past the sawdust feeling and tried again. "Tegan ... that you?"
"Harvard" came the Gen One warrior's flat reply. It wasn't a greeting. Not even playing at friendly. "What the hell do you want?"
The attitude wasn't undeserved, but it stung nevertheless. Chase drew in a breath and let it out slowly. "Surprised to hear you on dispatch duty, Tegan," he said, hoping to break some of the ice on the other end of the line. "Gideon usually doesn't like anyone playing with his toys down there in the tech lab."
"I'll say it again, Harvard. What do you want?"
So, the ice wasn't going anywhere. He should have figured that, he supposed. After all, he was the one who walked out on the Order. Nothing said they had to take him back or, hell, even acknowledge that he existed. Chase cleared his dry throat. "I need to talk to Lucan. It's important."
Tegan grunted. "Too bad. I'm all you got right now. So, start talking or stop wasting my time."
"I found Murdock," he blurted.
"Where?"
"Doesn't matter now. He's dead." A few yards up the street, a late-night hooker stepped up onto the curb and started rambling toward Chase on spiked red stilettos. Her short winter jacket was unzipped, baring a whole lot of leg and cleavage and too much bare throat for his shaky state of mind. Chase tore his gaze away from the potential meal on heels and dropped his forehead against the cool metal of the payphone box. "Murdock gave me some information that Lucan's going to want to hear. It's not good, Tegan."
The warrior exhaled a ripe curse. "Didn't think it would be. Tell me what you know."
"Dragos is stepping up his game. He's made Minions inside local law enforcement agencies, according to Murdock. Apparently he's also got a hard-on for some local politicians. Murdock mentioned something about that new senator who just got elected."
"Christ," Tegan said. "I don't like the sound of any of this."
"Right," Chase agreed. "But that's not the worst of what I learned. Murdock told me Dragos has his sights set on taking out the Order. He said Dragos talked about using some kind of Trojan horse. I've got a bad feeling it has something to do with the Archers coming into the compound last week."
"You don't say," Tegan remarked, sounding bored now. "News flash for you, Harvard.
After you pulled your disappearing act a few nights ago, the kid coughed up a tracking device. He has no recollection of where it came from or how it got inside him. Since his abductors beat him unconscious soon after they took him, it was probably force-fed to the kid while he was out cold."
"Shit," Chase hissed. "So Murdock was right. And now Dragos knows the location of the compound."
"So it would appear," Tegan replied.
"What's the plan, then? How does Lucan want to handle the situation over there? You can't just sit back and wait for Dragos to make his move ..."
Chase realized there was a lot of silence on the other end of the line. Tegan was listening, but his lack of response seemed too deliberate to be misconstrued. "What we do about it is Order business, my man."
There was no animosity in the statement, but the warrior's point was clear enough. Order business. And Chase had no place in the discussion anymore.
"Unless you're calling because you want to come back in," Tegan continued. "If you do, fair warning: You'll probably have to put those fancy Harvard lawyering skills to work if you want to talk Lucan into it. Same with Dante - he's more pissed off at you than anyone else over here."
Eyes closed at the well-deserved rebuke, Chase hung his head and exhaled a long sigh. The last thing Dante needed was to be dealing with this bullshit when his mate was just a few weeks away from delivering their son. "How are he and Tess doing?" Chase murmured. "They settle on a name for that baby yet?"
Tegan was quiet for a long moment. "Why don't you come back to headquarters and ask them yourself?"
"Nah," Chase replied, his mouth on automatic pilot as he lifted his head and glanced out at the drug addicts and prostitutes - losers, all - who loitered around the rundown street in the armpit of Boston's low-rent district. "I'm not even in the city right now. Not sure when I'll be heading back - "
Tegan cut him off with a low curse. "Listen to me, Harvard. You're fucked up. We both know what's going on, so word of advice, don't try to bullshit me. You've got a serious problem. Maybe you're in deeper than you know how to get out, but the fact that you're talking to me right now - the fact that you're standing there, debating whether you're still sane or past the brink of caring, tells me that you've still got a chance to turn your shit around. You can come back in, but you've got to do it before it's too late to set things right."
"I don't know," Chase murmured. Part of him wanted to grab the offered olive branch with both hands and not let go. But there was another part of him that balked at the need for kinship or forgiveness. That part of him couldn't stop looking at the young, all-too-willing woman who had now parked her miniskirted ass against the red brick wall of the building next to him. She'd been watching him too, no doubt experienced enough to read the note of interest in his hooded eyes.
"Chase," Tegan said, voicing his name like a demand as the seconds ticked by without further response. "You've got a serious choice to make, my man. What do you want me to tell Lucan?"
The hooker gave him a nod and started slinking her way over. Chase felt a growl curl up the back of his throat as she drew nearer. The hunger that lurked so close to the surface of his consciousness came alive despite his best effort to tamp it down. His gums throbbed with the emergence of his fangs.
