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He turned away and tried to tune out the sounds. “I’m going to do everything I can to save her, Sam. Everything.” And he wouldn’t hesitate to use every tool at his disposal.
Every last fucking one of them.
33
Gambling Men
Just before noon the following day, Jackson pulled the rented, single-engine Sea Ray away from the Riviera Beach Marina dock. As he headed south, he did his best to stay focused on Cassidy and what they were about to do rather than the new turmoil rattling in the back of his head.
He glanced back at his uncle prepping for the next phase of the operation. Beneath the “disguise” of a ball cap and sunglasses, Garrett’s face was all business. There was no trace of the usual feral grin of anticipation, not even now, this close to the target. Jackson’s gut squeezed. Their plan was haphazard—more of one giant gamble, really. Success had never been less assured. Or more critical.
“This is one hell of a game you’ve got us caught up in over this girl,” Jackson’s father, Warren Striker, had declared this morning when they met in his study.
“It’s no game. She—”
“Of course, it’s a fucking game,” Warren exploded out, and slammed a hand on the surface of the antique desk. His face flushed dark red around a neat gray beard. “They’ve manipulated you into believing you actually have a chance of taking them all out. You are both pawns, and what’s worse, you’ve made pawns of the rest of us! If you weren’t my only surviving heir, I’d deliver you to them on a platter myself!”
Jackson had stood, hands clasped behind his back, and waited for the familiar taste of failure to fill his mouth. True, since he first encountered Nick, everything in his life had gone off a cliff. But that wasn’t the biggest disappointment his father lay at his feet. In Warren’s eyes, Jackson’s greatest failure was that he survived his first mission while Justin, his twin brother, had not.
And now this. They were all at risk—his family, the mission, everyone important to him—because of his miscalculations. Maybe it was just because he was in so deep that going back was no longer an option, but he had to believe that Nick wasn’t playing him. He had seen too much of the youngling vampire’s unguarded emotions. Nick was a pawn right along with everyone else, and if there was a game, Kambyses was the only one playing.
But none of this would ever convince his father. To the imposing, flint-eyed man seated in front of him, there were only two sides to any issue—human and vampire, life and death. He would never understand, much less tolerate, the gray in-between world that had swallowed his less favored son.
The silence stretched, and the taste of failure remained absent. Something else took root in Jackson’s chest instead. His father had trained to hunt along with Garrett, but his clandestine work had been cut short by a random car accident that left him crippled and office-bound, and, Jackson realized, incapable of understanding the realities of the hunt. It left him perpetually angry, too, with far more than his disappointment of an heir.
Jackson continued to meet Warren’s accusing glare and watched the older man’s expression shift from anger to surprise and finally suspicion. Of course. Not cowering before his father’s wrath could only be evidence of a compulsion. Jackson twisted his mouth into an ironic line. There was no winning here, there never had been, but for the first time, that was okay.
Garrett shifted beside him and propped both hands on his hips. “Be that as it may, we really don’t have a choice. They’ve been inside our heads. They know everything there is to know about Foundation business and the family. If we don’t take care of this today…”
No need to spell it out. There would be no tomorrow for any of them. Bijou’s parting promise of total annihilation still sat heavy in the back of their heads. They could not afford to trust her not to make good on that threat, regardless of what they did.
“We have the advantage today,” Jackson said. “They won’t expect the compulsion to have worn off this fast.”
That set Warren off again, raging about how that compulsion had “worn off,” in the first place, and culminating in, “Get the fuck out of my office, both of you, and get this clusterfuck cleaned up.” He heaved his bulk out of the oversize chair and leaned on his cane, grimacing in pain. “And Gerry? If anything happens to Jack, you make damn sure it happens to you, too, because I won’t want to see your useless dick in this house ever again. You hear me?”
Jackson knew better than to interpret that dire warning to his uncle as anything like concern for him. No, if Jackson died, Warren would have to do what Garrett was incapable of—start another family—and do it for the third time in his life. Assuming he stayed clear of avenging vampires and, given his temper, heart attacks.
While Jackson and Garrett cleaned up, prepped gear, and grabbed an hour of much-needed rest, Warren launched the evacuation of the house and the offices of Striker International Capital Investments, the Foundation’s public face and financing source. Jackson’s mother, Lillian, was blissfully unaware of all things supernatural, but she knew not to argue with her husband’s orders any more than his staff did. Together, they, all domestic personnel, and key management, met two SICI jets warming up at the municipal airport, departing for destinations unknown to Jackson and Garrett. If they got caught again—which Warren clearly believed they would—they wouldn’t be able to compromise anyone but themselves.
Last they heard, the jets had been wheels-up twenty minutes ago. Jackson wished Samantha were with them, but she had dug in her heels. She wanted no part of such a pessimistic plan, though she did eventually agree to stay away from her cottage tonight.
Even at a distance and in the light of an overcast day, Apokryphos was cloaked in menace. Kambyses, the most powerful target in Foundation history, would be aboard. Right there, out cold, and an easy target—if not for the armed human slaves compelled to defend him to the death.
Normally, when they expected serious daytime resistance like this, Garrett had security pros and militias around the world on speed dial to provide the muscle and firepower required. Today, everyone he called was already on assignment or too far away to act on short notice.
They were on their own. Jackson couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that it wouldn’t be the last thing to go wrong today.
A “disguise” of ridiculous Hawaiian shirts flapped over their new Kevlar vests as they impersonated hapless tourists out on a pleasure cruise. They motored up to the sprawling Palm Beach mansion fifteen minutes past noon. This first gamble was that the guards would be preoccupied with lunch—either preparing, consuming, or digesting—allowing random boaters to approach under relatively little scrutiny.
With a slow, deep breath, Jackson let the icy calm of the hunt settle over him. Drifting them past the estate, he tried to spot all the surveillance cameras blanketing the property. That would be the day’s second great gamble. According to a text message just before sunrise, Nick had hacked into the estate’s system and programmed the cameras to go down right about—he checked his watch again—now.
From the bench behind him, Garrett scanned the area through a pair of military-grade binoculars. “Well, well, well. Looks like baby vamp came through.”
“They’re down?”
“The lights on the ones I can see just went dead.” The binoculars pivoted to the yacht. “Can’t tell if anyone’s on the bridge. Let’s stay out of the direct line of sight.”
As they were about to pass the vessel’s stern, Jackson turned in sharply and threw the motor in reverse before cutting it off entirely. The Sea Ray coasted up to Apokryphos’s landing platform in silence. While Garrett took the wheel, Jackson grabbed a line, hopped aboard, and tied off on a cleat.
