INVISIBLE POWER BOOK TWO: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) (17 page)

CHAPTER 40

Walking into the
Hotel Le Meurice with Bran at my side was a whole different experience than when I’d entered with Jaylene and Mandy flanking me. I looked almost the same, though Bran had brought me a change of clothes, including shoes. Leave it to a dress designer to get the sizes right. They were clean and not frou-frou but I still felt like something the cat drug in, but Bran is eye-candy and has that I-own-the-world walk down. There were so many women, and a few men, who were giving Bran the come-hither look I wanted to jump up and down and wave my arms just to see if they noticed me at all. Have I mentioned that restraint is
not
my middle name?

By the time we reached Ling Mai’s suite we were more in my territory, not his, and I realized I liked returning to the IR team fold. Not that I’d admit that aloud, and there was still snarky Mandy, but even in the best of families there’s always some friction.

I had called Ling Mai earlier, to let her know we were coming and to make sure bringing Bran to her was okay on her end. She knew who he was, based on our last mission, but the two had never formally met. He’d also met Vaughn and Jaylene, but didn’t really have a chance to have more than a passing acquaintance with them, if you didn’t count the period where he’d just killed a Were, his first one, in front of them, as close bonding.

So when we entered Ling Mai’s suite, which still looked spacious in spite of the whole team being there, and did the intros, Bran was the one giving me the what-are-we-doing-here look. That one you get when you’re out of your comfort zone.

Which surprised me because I thought Bran could feel at home anywhere. Showed you how little I knew of the man.

I was the one who cleared my throat and gave a quick overview of what had happened over the last twenty-four hours. I stood closest to the door at one end of the long rectangular living room area. Ling Mai was in a chair in front of the fireplace on the west wall, Vaughn, Kelly and Jaylene on the couch which was long enough to hold several more. Mandy and Bran had both taken chairs grouped around a coffee table, Bran facing me and Mandy giving me her back, which did not surprise me in the least.

“And you’re sure the shifter was your brother?” Stone pressed, a frown line drawing his brows into a deep vee. He was leaning on the couch arm nearest Vaughn. They made a formidable team and a killer couple.

Shifting my focus back to Stone’s question I answered. “Yes. No doubts it was Van.”

He glanced at Ling Mai, who’d remained quiet so far. Now she raised her head and spoke to the group. “Word has already spread through the media about a violent dog attack.”

“Which wasn’t a dog,” I clarified in case anyone missed my whole explanation. “And what we’re concerned about,” I glanced at Bran to make sure I wasn’t hanging myself out on this branch all alone. “is that another attack will happen, with the loss of more lives, including Van’s, if we don’t find a way to stop it.”

“Let me get this straight.” Vaughn leaned forward, her hands pressed together in her lap, which meant she was still unsure about believing me. “You’re saying the Weres have set up this whole scenario to discredit shifters?”

I nodded. “Yup, showing how unpredictable and dangerous shifters can be to humans that they are willing to attack in broad day light, revealing themselves to the human world, as well as thumbing their noses . . .”

“At the Council’s authority.”

“How so?” Vaughn glanced up at Stone.

“By letting shifters sit on the Council and not Weres, this action, if not an isolated event will show that the Council are cowed by the shifters and that shifters are allowed to freely act with impunity,” Stone finished as if piecing a puzzle together.

“Thus if S\shifters can be discredited by Van’s very public actions, fueled by the designer drug, the shifters stand to lose their position on the Council. They won’t have any choice except to remove them and replace the seat with a Were representative.” I looked around to make sure everyone was with me.

“I don’t get how Cheverill’s death ties into what’s happening with Van?” Jaylene asked. She too looked skeptical, not that I blamed her. This was a plan within a plan by someone very devious. And deadly.

“Cheverill’s death leaves an opening on the Council governing board.”

“But doesn’t that position have to be filled by someone of the same species?” Kelly asked, chewing her lower lip. “So was Cheverill a shifter?”

“No.” Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. “I know there is a shifter on the board but from what Jaylene said in the kitchen the other night Cheverill was a druid.”

“Not just a druid, but the big kahuna of druids being an arch one,” Jaylene said to Kelly.

That made me realize something else as I speared a quick glance at Jaylene. “How did you know who he was or what he was? The identities of the Council members is not common knowledge.”

“I told her,” Ling Mai said, her voice calm and neutral.

I wondered how the director learned that information and Ling Mai answered as if I’d spoken aloud. “It’s part of my job, Alex, to know who currently sits on the Council and who is in line to take the next opening.” She sliced a quick glance at Bran but I had no idea why. He kept his expression very blank as she continued, “Jaylene and Mandy were on an additional mission the night Monsieur Cheverill died, which is why they were privy to who he was and what he was.”

That made sense even if it stung a little. I thought a team was supposed to work as a team. Obviously, not all the time or only when it worked for Ling Mai. Talk about another mind that worked at Machiavellian levels.

I brushed the thought away to focus on why I brought Bran here. “Through a spell I cast I tracked the man who was present at Cheverill’s death as also being present with Van in the park. He’s the one link we have between the death of the Council member, Van’s erratic behavior and Vaverek.”

I noticed Stone crossing his arms, Vaughn wiggling just a smidge and Mandy’s tightening of her back; all classic signs of not being one hundred percent behind my conclusions.

“I know it’s not hard and fast evidence,” I said, loosening my own shoulders that felt like ready to splinter. “But I’m sure I’m on the right track.”

“This coming from a witch who’s been known to screw up most of her spells,” Mandy pointed out.

I shrugged, focusing on Ling Mai. If I could get her on board with what I thought we should do next, everyone else would come along. “Look we already know Vaverek and the Seekers are tied together.”

“But not how,” Mandy murmured, turning her head to stare at me. “Or even who the Seekers are.”

I ignored her and continued, figuring if we had all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed we wouldn’t need to be here.

“Vaverek is linked to a variation of this designer drug.” Before Mandy could speak I glared at her, which shut her right down. “And Vaverek is involved in Van’s disappearance.”

“We’re with you,” Vaughn nodded. “So far.”

“But we’re not one step closer to finding or apprehending him.” Even nay-sayer Mandy couldn’t disagree with that. I glanced over at Bran who was watching Ling Mai intently. But why?

“The point you wish to make Miss Noziak?” Ling Mai said.

Which wasn’t a good sign. When she used my formal name it usually meant I was in trouble. But I hadn’t done anything recently. Not that I knew about. “I think we should focus our attention on this other man, the one I think of as the doctor. Find him and we use him to lead us to Vaverek.”

Yes, it was a long shot but the only shot we had. Unless Bran had something up his sleeve.

Ling Mai let her gaze sweep to Bran. “And you concur?”

Bran nodded, but didn’t say anythi
ng. Not a rousing endorsement, but it wouldn’t be the first time I was taking a risk based on my gut instincts. “It’s not as if continuing to do what we’re doing, which is just looking for Vaverek directly, should start paying off when it hasn’t yet.”

“Are you not ignoring another issue, Miss Noziak?”

What was she talking about? I glanced at my teammates and only Kelly gave me a wobbly smile back. Mandy and Jaylene both avoided looking at me and Vaughn offered a small shake of her head. “What issue?”

“There are rumors circling through the Council members that you yourself may be involved with
Monsieur
Cheverill’s death.”

“Get real!” Okay, it may not have been the smartest thing I could have said but surely these people didn’t think I had anything to do with it. Did they? “I was there, but only after he collapsed. Why should I kill a man I didn’t even know?”

“Are you sure you did not know him?” Ling Mai asked, looking at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re certain that you are not using this hunt for an unknown man, this doctor, as a means to deflect attention from your involvement in the Council member’s death?”

As if all the air in the room had been sucked out I felt suddenly light-headed and put a hand out to touch the back of Mandy’s chair to stabilize me. Surely the director didn’t believe what she was saying?

A quick look around though let me know that while I’d been absent the team had been discussing me behind my back.

“She’s not saying you’re a killer,” Kelly offered, playing peacekeeper from her perch on the couch.

“I think that’s exactly what she’s saying,” I shot back, not attacking Kelly as much as fighting in the dark. I hadn’t seen this coming. Maybe I should have, with the way Mandy and Jaylene had come into the kitchen last night. The fact no one had called me back after I tried to reach them earlier in the day. So much for making sure I played well with the team.

“What she’s saying is the Council has concerns.” Stone jumped into the silence, earning a quick glare from Ling Mai and just as quick a smile from Vaughn.

“So I’m tried and hanged based on rumors from a Council of strangers to me?”

Ling Mai cocked her head. “There lies the problem, Miss Noziak.”

I shook my head, lost all over again. “You mean I have a bigger problem than being called a killer by a group of people I’ve never met, that work behind closed doors and love to throw their weight around, making decrees that screw up others’ lives just because they can do it?”

Okay, I was getting mad, but anger was better than being gobsmacked and gutted. How dare the Council smear my name
? Again. Unless I made a convenient scapegoat, already having a murder rap and conveniently being in the right country, at the right party, at the right time.

“You don’t know do you?” Stone asked, nabbing my one hundred percent attention for his question and the soft tone it was said in. Stone didn’t do soft, it didn’t go with his whole killer, bad-ass personality.

“Know what?” I glanced around, this time seeing averted gazes and uncomfortable silence. It was Bran who I ended up staring at, as if he was at the heart of whatever was going on. “What’s happening?” I insisted. “What should I know about the Council that I don’t?”

Bran canted his head toward Ling Mai who answered, her voice as arid and lethal as dry ice against skin. ”You are telling us that you do not know your father is on the Council?”

CHAPTER 41

When I was a child I once went to the park with three of my brothers. Not Van, but Jake, Luke and Simon. There was a swing that looked like it could reach the sky and made me quake in my shoes just thinking about getting on it. Of course having shifter brothers they could scent my fear so ragged and dared me until I marched up to that old, silly swing and with a boost from Jake, plopped down on that rubber belt that was the seat.

I felt like I’d conquered the world. Until Jake started pushing me forward. Higher and higher, my hands sweaty on the chain, my butt slipping and sliding with each rocket thrust into that summer sky, my heart in my throat
. But I didn’t say anything. If I screamed I knew he’d push harder; shifter brothers were like that. I just closed my eyes and felt the sky rush down to me, the earth recede with each jerky shove.

And then it happened. I clutched too tight, or slid too far, I don’t know what I’d done but I knew it was my fault when suddenly the rubber tethering me to earth twisted and I was upside down, my feet above my head, gripping on for dear life.

I didn’t make a sound though I could hear my brothers’ shouts buzzing in my awareness. The sky and ground flip flopped and I knew, down to the marrow of my bones, that if I remained frozen I could survive. It was my only option.

I felt exactly like that now. My world had tilted and if I just stayed still, so still even my breaths didn’t register, soon my world would right again, even as I knew it never would.

You are telling us that you do not know your father is on the Council?

My father couldn’t be on the Council. How’d I know that? Because if he was he’d have been present when the Council suppressed information that would have kept me out of prison. My dad would not have done that. He would not have let me face life behind metal bars.

Would he?

He’d lied to me. He’d said he’d always stand by me even as he knew what keeping quiet meant. He said good-bye to me at the prison gates, knowing he helped send me there.

It was Kelly who popped up at my side, her hands on my arms, guiding me to a seat. She made small soothing sounds, the way you would to a terror-struck child. Or a rabid dog.

“I’d say that was a you-didn’t-know answer,” Stone said, a little louder than he needed to, or maybe I was being hyper aware of noise, of motion, of everything right then.

If my dad had let me be sent to prison for life then my world as I’d known it was based on a lie. I’d always believed he had my back, no matter what. He was the one who’d stayed and raised me when my mom high-tailed it away to greener pastures. The one who tried to find me a witch mentor to help me handle my magic talents. The one who had been by my side the whole terrible trial and sentencing, when people thought I’d killed a man in about as brutal and violent way as possible, instead of stopping a rogue Were who was trying to kill my brother.

That was the
pièce de résistance
that had me sentenced for life. The crime scene photos that showed a man practically torn limb from limb. I was judged as a vicious, cold, and calculating murderess taking the life of an innocent human. When the truth was I’d sucked the Were’s own powers from him and turned them on him, just as I’d done in the street fight yesterday. I did to him what he’d been planning on doing to my brother.

And my dad knew that.

But the Council refused to let humans know that piece of information, as that would have revealed too much about preternaturals to the clueless human population.

My father let that happen.

I let that happen.

I wanted to scream, to punch someone, something
. Stupid, clueless me and I thought I was doing the right thing. The best thing for the sake of the greater good. Talk about an idiot throwing herself on the sword for beings who didn’t care at all about me. Including my father. Especially my father.

“Alex.” It was Bran kneeling before me, so close all I could see was him
. Dark hair ruffled, Celtic blue eyes very serious, the slashes of his cheekbones prominent as if he was clenching his jaw really tight. He grabbed my hands between his, rubbing them, which alerted me to the fact they were cold. Arctic ice cold. I was chilled all over, suddenly shaking. “Someone get me a brandy or bourbon,” he snarled.

I heard movement in the background as I focused on Bran, using him to anchor me in place so I didn’t spiral away and then a hand appeared before me with a glass. Jaylene’s hand.

He took the crystal and nudged the rim against my lips. “Drink this. Now.”

How like Bran. Do this. Do that. Warlock arrogance. But right then he was right. I couldn’t think for myself. In a minute maybe, but not right then.

I took a sip, felt the sear to my toes then shook my head. I didn’t want anything to make me more numb, I was so numb as it was I might never surface.

Numbness was better than the hurt hiding just beneath it. Not deep beneath but like a sliver wedged just deep enough into your finger that every time you brushed against it your whole body flinched.

Bran pulled me to my feet. I wasn’t a rag doll but he seemed to have his own agenda. So like him. And he was angry, so angry I could feel the heat roil off of him. He looked at Ling Mai who was hidden behind him somewhere. “This is how you treat your agents?”

No one answered. Not that I blamed them. With the tone of his voice if he’d been a shifter or Were he’d already be changing into an angry beast.

“Alex is coming with me,” he announced.

“And you’re going where?” It was Stone who answered that challenge, stepping forward, his chin high, his stance aggressive. Alpha to Alpha
. Great, just what I needed, more potential bloodshed. If they tore each other from limb to limb maybe I’d get two life sentences. Or the death penalty. The way the day was unfurling I’d put my money on the latter.

Before I could speak Bran did. “We’re looking for the doctor. When we find him we’ll let you know.”

“And if you don’t find him?” Ling Mai’s voice washed over me.

“We will,” he said, and even I believed him. I who knew that wasn’t his real agenda.

“And what about Alex?” Stone was pushing. I’d like to think it was for my sake, that whole team thing that everyone else seemed to conveniently forget when it was not working for them. But then he added, “The Council isn’t going to be too happy when they find out she was here but left.“

Of course. When would I learn? No one cared if I lived or died, went to prison or remained free, was a part of the team or not, as long as I didn’t rock their boats. I wasn’t having a pity party as much as a buck-up-baby and get with the program. Maybe if I could tap into the rage bubbling inside me I could speak and move and act mostly human instead of the walking who kept trusting the wrong people; starting with my mother, my father and right up to here.

“Screw the Council,” Bran bit back. The minute I got my stuffing back I’d thank him for that, even if I should be able to stand up for myself. Any time now.

“I’m afraid that is not possible,” Ling Mai, ever the voice of calm reason cut in. “Miss Noziak is a member of this Agency and her actions, or disappearance, reflect upon the whole team.”

“Then you can tell the Council I’ll have her in front of them by ten tomorrow.”

And here I thought he’d been working on my behalf. Silly witch, how many lessons did I need to get that message through my head? I was on my own. If my mother abandoned me and my father did basically the same thing behind the closed doors of Council business, why should I expect Ling Mai or Bran to watch my back?

I said nothing. No words, no protests, no scathing comments could ease past the chunk of anger choking me.

Stone kept pushing. “We trust you to appear before the Council tomorrow because?”

“Because that’s when I’m supposed to report to them myself.”

Oh, yeah, I’d actually forgot about that for a few minutes.

Bran pulled me toward the door, one hand wrapped about my arm which kept me upright. “You know how to contact me. How to get ahold of Alex if you need her, but it’d better be because you’ve found Vaverek, or a way to clear Alex’s name.”

I shook myself loose of Bran’s hold as he opened the suite’s door and turned to look at my fellow team members. Kelly was quivering, half visible, half invisible, a sure sign of stress. Jaylene kept her body still, her expression the same as she glanced from me to Ling Mai and back. Mandy’s gaze was averted, not that I expected much from her. Stone was holding back Vaughn, which helped give some oomph to my spine. And Ling Mai looked as if everything was business as usual, and she hadn’t just blown my world apart.

To think when I’d entered this room I was glad to see my teammates, the women I was coming to think of as friends.

I wouldn’t make that mistake again.