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Lucan grunted. "We'll see about that." While he absorbed the bullshit development with an air of stone-cold fortitude, inside he was seething. And the brunt of his contempt settled on the unknown face of the rebel leader who'd incited this entire fiasco.
Lucan grabbed his comm unit and hit Nathan's number. "Head into base now and await further command. This kill op is gonna go full-scale mission, with as many teams on the ground as needed to find Bowman and bring Mira home. He and his rebels need to be shut down hard, preferably in full public view. And I mean they need to be shut down permanently."
Kellan sat alone on the cool, moonlit thatch of overgrown grass that covered the stone mound of the seaside bunker. He and Mira had been back at the rebel base for several hours, after news of Jeremy Ackmeyer's death broke and the reaction in the city began to turn ugly fast. He didn't want Mira anywhere near an upset, volatile public, but Kellan was also more than a bit concerned about the prospect of an Order death squad working its way closer to him with every second.
Sooner or later, regardless of how cautious he'd been all these years, someone was going to mention the name Bowman and point a finger in the direction of the New Bedford base camp. And when that moment came, Kellan intended to meet it alone, sparing Mira and his remaining crew - his friends - from becoming collateral damage.
The fact that Cassian from La Notte insisted he'd recognized him from somewhere only increased Kellan's sense of ill ease. Ignoring the fact that the club owner had betrayed nothing of himself to Kellan's Breed talent, Kellan got the clear sense that the man was dangerous. Perhaps all the more so because he'd proven unreadable.
Kellan hadn't had a lot of time to worry about what his encounter with Cassian might mean down the road. His more pressing concerns were Mira and the handful of people who were counting on him to protect them. To lead them, even though he had never felt less equipped to navigate a safe course through what was becoming a fast-rising tide of wreckage.>Kellan was still trying to process what he'd just experienced, and he was surprised Mira didn't have something to say about Cassian's sudden lack of interest in them and their business at his establishment.
But Mira wasn't looking at the man anymore.
She stared transfixed at the Faceboard monitor across the expanse of the place. Kellan followed her gaze. All the blood seemed to drain out of his head.
The monitor was no longer displaying the boxing match. On-screen now was a JUSTIS Department news alert, barely audible over the din of the crowd and the band still playing its set onstage. But the ticker scrolling across the huge monitor told Kellan all he needed to know.
Laboratory explosion in western Massachusetts today claims life of renowned scientist Jeremy Ackmeyer . . .
Second body recovered on-site, identified as Vincent DeSalvo, ex-convict with established ties to Boston area militant and rebel organizations . . .
Global Nations Council calling for thorough investigation into what it's calling an act of conspiracy and premeditated murder . . .
"Kellan," Mira murmured, her body unmoving, seeming frozen in place, even after he took her hand in his. "Oh, my God, Kellan . . . Jeremy Ackmeyer is dead."
Chapter Seventeen
THE GRIM MOOD AT THE ORDER'S D.C. HEADQUARTERS HAD not improved in the hours since word of Jeremy Ackmeyer's death at rebel hands had made headlines all over the world. As leader of the Order and the de facto public head of the Breed nation as a whole, Lucan Thorne's mood was darkest of all those gathered.
Now, at sometime past midnight, most of the Order's elder mem-bers based in the United States were present along with their mates, the group gathered in the drawing room of the mansion, situated just a few miles from the GNC headquarters at the National Mall. It was an odd juxtaposition: half a dozen long-lived, lethal Breed warriors more accustomed to combat gear and high-powered weapons, now seated in fancy, velvet-upholstered settees and delicate neoclassical armchairs.
Lucan wasn't a particular fan of the frou-frou furnishings, but it made his Breedmate happy, so he'd been obliged to go with it. Gabrielle had insisted they preserve the architectural authenticity of the place, which included a small fortune in eighteenth-century artwork and Asian porcelains gifted to the mansion's original owner, who'd served as a U.S. ambassador in the early 1900s.
She had, however, replaced a large, seventeenth-century English tapestry of Alexander the Great with another, far older one, which she said depicted a hero she much preferred to look at instead.
Lucan paced in front of that medieval-period artifact now, feeling the hand-rendered likeness of his own face judging him from within the woven threads of the tapestry that once hung in his quarters at the Order's Boston compound. Gabrielle, Gideon and his mate, Savannah, Brock, Jenna, and several others gathered in the drawing room in prolonged silence as Lucan practically wore a track in the Oriental rug beneath his boots.
Rio and his Breedmate, Dylan, were less than an hour arrived from the Order's base in Chicago. The Spanish warrior with the scarred face and normally easygoing demeanor was coiled forward where he sat, elbows resting on his knees, topaz eyes intense.
The other recent arrivals, Tegan and Elise, had come in from the base he commanded in New York City. The tawny-haired Gen One was one of the Order's original members from the time of its founding - and within the past twenty years had become one of Lucan's closest friends. Tegan and Elise had their own issues to contend with, namely, their twenty-year-old son, Micah, who was fresh out of warrior training and already embarking with his team on a black ops mission taking them to Budapest.
Elise was openly worried about letting her only surviving child out of her sight, but Micah was his father's son, and Lucan knew as well as anyone that holding on too tight would only risk making the break that much more permanent when it came. He saw that in his own son every day, a weight that settled on him even in the midst of the more immediate problems he faced tonight.
The remaining members still due at the D.C. headquarters included Hunter and Corinne, coming in from New Orleans in a few more hours. Scheduled to arrive tomorrow night were Dante and Tess, now in charge of the Order's base in Seattle, and Kade and Alex, overseeing the command center in Lake Tahoe. In light of the night's events in Boston, Chase and Tavia were staying put there until the eve of the summit gala, when they'd be coming in to attend.
Across the elegant space now, Nikolai's muttered curse was a hiss ripe with malice as his blond head swung away from his pregnant Breedmate and his glacial blue eyes hit Lucan. "Do we have any more intel about who these rebel bastards are and where they're hiding?"
"Only what you already know from Nathan's call tonight," Lucan replied gravely. "Unfortunately, his best lead so far was the information that one of the rebels had defected from his fold, taking Ackmeyer with him for ransom bait. We all know how that turned out."
Niko grunted. "And we have nothing on Mira. Not where she is or what they want with her. Or if she's already been . . ."
That the Siberian-born, battle-hardened warrior had been unable to finish the thought told Lucan just how deeply Niko's concern went. Renata's too. The tough-as-nails female who'd become a valued, highly effective member of the Order's combat missions these past two decades was slumped close to her mate, her jet-dark hair drooped into her face but not quite masking the lines of worry there. Renata's mercilessly lethal hands trembled a bit where they rested on the pronounced bump of her late-term pregnancy.
"We don't have anything more yet, but we will," Lucan told them. "We'll get her back safe and sound, I promise you."
He considered the kill op he'd sent Nathan on, its purpose to recover Mira and the human and shut down their captors with a minimum of noise or attention. Nathan's skill and suitability for the job would never be in question, but the laboratory explosion and the killing of Jeremy Ackmeyer had blown their mission objective to pieces.
And the fallout from that disastrous event was creating newer, bigger problems of its own.
