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The meeting, though fleeting, had been pulsating with something that had left Tenebrae with her. It had been a week since her return home, a week since she'd infiltrated the Maroni premises, a week since her failure of retrieving the drive. A week of keeping the truth from her father. If he found out, when he found out, there'd be hell to pay...
Shaking off the distracting thoughts, Morana squared her shoulders, feeling the reassuring cool of the metal against her waistband where she'd tucked in her small Beretta and covered it with a simple yellow top. Besides the keys to her red convertible Mustang, she carried nothing, keeping her hands free and her phone in the pocket of her loose black trousers.
After the last week, she’d dyed her previously blonde hair to chestnut, trying to shake off the grim remnants of the meeting. She did that often – change her hair color. With so much in her life she couldn’t seem to control, she liked calling the shots when it came to her appearance. Her new dark locks were bound in a high ponytail and her glasses were perched on her nose. She’d even worn ballet flats in case she needed to run.
Having told her father she was going to the city to shop, she’d left before her father's goons could catch up with her. She'd done it enough times in the past to garner nothing but admonishing looks from him.
With her father, it was less about her safety and more about his control. His control of his men, of her movements, of controlling the enemy's bargaining chip. They both had stopped pretending like they didn't know the truth a long time ago. She'd stopped feeling the disappointment a long time ago. It had left her somewhere between fearless and reckless.
Coming here was smack in the middle of that territory.
Stepping onto the construction site, inside the wrought iron gates that manned the single, incomplete building from the abandoned street, Morana looked around, taking the area in. The sun hung low in the sky, ready to jump below the horizon at a moment's notice, throwing just enough light to let the building cast long, creepy shadows on the ground, the sky slowly burnishing itself from purple to a cold grey as the moon waited to come out.
Morana could feel the wind cooling against her skin, making a small shiver travel down her bare arms in the chill, goosebumps erupting across her skin like small soldiers readying themselves for battle. But it was something else that truly creeped her out.
Eagles. Dozens of them. Circling the building, again and again, calling to each other, the cacophony of their voices lost in the flap of their wings against the wind.
Dusk was setting in, and they kept circling the tall building, telling Morana one thing about the structure. It was no ordinary construction site. Somewhere on the premises was a corpse – she looked up at the birds, at their number – more than one corpse.
She should so not be here.
Tamping down the sudden attack of nerves, Morana looked down at her watch.
6 P.M. It was time.
Where the hell was Jackson?
The sudden buzzing of her phone in her pocket startled her. Exhaling to calm her racing heart, she quickly pulled it out and looked down at the number. Jackson. Putting it to her ear, she accepted the call.
"Morana?" she heard Jackson's familiar voice whisper into the phone and frowned. Why was he whisperin
g?
"Where are you?" she asked quietly, glancing around, looking for anything unusual. Anything unusual except the damn eagles, that is.
"Did you come alone?" Jackson asked.
Morana scowled, her senses on alert. "Yes. Now, will you tell me what's going on?"
She saw Jackson's head peek out from behind the building's door. He waved her forward. "Come inside quickly," she heard on the phone.
Morana's eyes wandered to the unfinished building, rising high up in the sky like a dilapidated monster surrounded by birds of death. She would have been laughing her ass off at the clichéd obviousness of the setting had this been a movie she'd been watching. The last thing she felt like doing now was laugh. This was some really creepy shit. And something was totally off.
"I'm not moving an inch till you tell me what this is about," Morana stated firmly, standing her ground outside the building, watching Jackson peek around the door again.
"Damn it, Morana!" Jackson cursed loudly for the first time, agitation evident in his tone. "She won't come in!"
Morana stilled, hearing Jackson shout to someone behind him, and the certainty of his second betrayal settled itself in her gut. The fucking asshole! He'd set a trap for her.
Without waiting for another second, she crouched down on the ground behind some rubble and pulled the gun out from her waistband. Readying it, straightening her arms, she got ready to aim and fire at the drop of a hat. Her heart thundered in her chest, her breathing laborious as adrenaline surged through her bloodstream, everything but the sound of her own breathing too quiet. Except for the eagles. They kept making their own noises, right above her head in the sky, surrounding the building that reeked of death.
She had to get back to her car.
Eyes darting to the gate, she gauged the distance between the stack of rubble and realized it was a few hundred feet away. Damn. There was no way she could run through the open space without being shot if someone was aiming for her already.
Think. She had to think.
"Morana!"
