The Enemy Within (Daughters of the People Series Book 3) (19 page)

She turned her
gaze back to his, solemn brown eyes wide in her face. “May I ask you a personal
question?”

Uh oh. Here it
comes
.
“Sure.”

“Are you really
going to marry her?”

“Yes.” He met
her gaze evenly and couldn’t miss the slight furrow in her brow. “I’ve loved
her for a long time, since I was a kid really.”

“I see.” She
stood and stared down at him, a flurry of emotion running through her
expression, changing it in tiny increments. “We should toast to a long and
happy marriage. Would you share a soda with me?”

What harm could
there be? Besides, he’d noticed her flinch. Indigo had been right. Laura
did
have a crush on him. Least he could do was let her know they would always be
friends. “I’d like that.”

She gave him
that almost smile again and walked toward the refrigerator to pull out a coke.
He took the time to observe her while she divided the soft drink between two
glasses, to really see her, from the severe bun she kept her dark blonde hair
in to the straight set of her shoulders to the curve of her ass. Which was
nice, he admitted, but looking at it made him feel like a perv. She was a
co-worker and she trusted him and, hell, half the time she felt like his kid
sister. Nothing for Indigo to be jealous over. He’d be sure to tell her that
asap.

Laura’s hand
appeared in front of him holding a half-full glass. When he’d taken it, she
held hers out and said, “To the people we love.”

“I’ll drink to
that.” He tapped his glass against hers and took a sip, grimacing at the
saccharine taste. There was a reason he stuck to coffee. “And I’d like to offer
a toast, too. To family and friends.”

“Of course,” she
said.

They tapped
glasses again and sipped, and then she made a toast and they drank some more,
and he thought of another one, and by the time they’d run out of things to
toast, his glass was empty and he was pleasantly loose. That was what
friendship was. Sharing a coke after work and celebrating life’s moments.

“Well, I suppose
I need to sign those papers, get back to Indigo before she gets worried.” He
tried to stand and his legs wobbled. “Whoa.” He grabbed the edge of the table
and laughed at his own clumsiness. “Guess I had a little too much coke, huh?”

Her features remained
neutral, calm. The first inkling that something might not be right pinched at
him.

He pushed up off
the table, trying to stand again, and his head spun, taking him down with it until
he collapsed bonelessly to the floor. The edges of his vision blurred and
shrank, and the room slowly disappeared. Laura’s face appeared in the pinpoint
of light left, looking down at him so dispassionately, his mind flinched from
it, doing what his numb body couldn’t.

“You picked the
wrong woman, Bobby,” she said.

As the blackness
took him, he thought,
Indigo’s gonna kill me for this
.

Streetlights
flickered by outside the car as Indigo, Dani, and Dave sped toward BDH. Dave
drove Dani’s Jeep, his hands competent and firm on the wheel. Dani had taken
the front seat and Indigo the rear, but their hands clenched together in the
gap between the front seats, holding tight to comfort one another, staving off
the worry until they knew more.

Dani had called
Rebecca as soon as they’d hit the highway and even from several feet away,
Indigo had felt the icy anger seeping through the phone when the Blade learned
her only son had been kidnapped.

They arrived at
the office fifteen minutes sooner than Indigo would’ve reached it on her own,
even in the relatively light evening traffic. She used her keycard to enter the
building at the front, and was grateful the security guards manning the lobby
passed them through without question.

When they
stepped out of the elevator, the entire floor was flooded with light. A man she
didn’t know, one of the people who worked for BDH, sat at the reception desk
and pointed them to Zena’s office. They rushed back and found her office crowded
with people around the mass of technology the young woman had assembled.

Indigo had never
been inside Zena’s work area, and now she gawked at the row of monitors along
one wall, the tables laden with keyboards and other equipment she barely
recognized, all organized precisely under the strict hands of the tech expert.

Hiro stepped
forward and pulled Indigo through to where Zena sat in a chair, rapidly tapping
at a keyboard while images flashed across one of the monitors. The others
showed stationary points around the building. Security feeds, maybe. One screen
in particular caught Indigo’s eye. She leaned forward, studying it, and
recognized the break room. Laura sat at one of the tables, an ice pack pressed
to her cheek, and was surrounded by a small cadre of BDH personnel.

Indigo focused
on Zena and the rapid clack of her fingers on the keyboard. She faintly heard
Dani introduce Dave to Hiro, Drew, and Margaret, but she ignored it to press a gentle
hand to Zena’s shoulder. “Have you found anything?” she said softly.

Zena nodded,
shaking the multitude of thin, ebony braids hanging loose around her shoulders.
“Got the whole thing, from the time Bobby entered the building to the time he
left it. I’m looking for possible exits, maybe a direction we can follow so I
can pick up feed from other security cameras in the area.” Her soft Southern
twang shifted to a pointed one as she raised her voice loud enough to be heard
beyond Indigo. “Of course, I would
never
tap into those feeds without
getting permission first ‘cause that would be
illegal
.”

Hiro snorted.
“Cut the crap, Zena.”

She ignored him
and lowered her voice. “Hold on. I’m gonna skip straight to the good stuff.
Here, look at this.”

Zena pointed to
one of the monitors where an image of Bobby and Laura, seated at a table in the
break room, popped onto the screen and then moved forward.

“Sound?” Indigo
said.

“Nope, not in there.
Sorry.”

They were
talking, a short conversation. Laura stood and walked to the fridge, pulled out
a soft drink, and divided it between two glasses. She appeared to hesitate for
a moment, and then turned and brought the drinks back, giving one to Bobby.
Over the next few minutes of footage, they talked and drank as if they were
toasting something. Then Bobby put down his glass, tried to stand, and slid to
the floor, landing with an inaudible thump. Laura crossed to him, checked his
pulse, then pulled out her phone.

A slow burn ate
its way outward from Indigo’s heart. She’d told Bobby to be careful with Laura.
She’d
told
him. Sweet Goddess, when would he learn to listen to her?

“Ok, that was
one thing, but here’s where it gets interesting.”

Zena typed
commands and the feed skipped ahead. Another person entered the room and
Indigo’s heart froze in her chest.
India
. Her sister stalked over to
Laura, barely sparing a glance for Bobby lying passed out on the floor. The two
women talked, seemed to argue even. India pulled out the knife she kept
strapped to her thigh and raised it to strike a cowering Laura. At the last
minute, she pulled her blow and landed a pop to the mortal’s cheek hard enough
to send her sprawling. India dug a sheet of paper out of her pocket and pinned
it to the table with the point of her knife before hauling Bobby up into a
fireman’s carry. On her way out the door, she turned and grinned smugly into
the security camera.

Indigo sagged
backward and bumped into Hiro. He draped an arm around her shoulders and rubbed
his hand up and down her arm.

“I’m sorry,” he
said, so low Indigo could barely hear him.

“For what?”

“I should’ve
known she was up to something.”

She huffed out a
surprised breath. “How could you possibly have known that?”

“Long story,” he
said, and moved away.

Indigo stared at
the image of India with Bobby over her shoulder, fixing her gaze there as
Margaret took the spot Hiro had vacated.

“Mom’s gonna
have a shit fit over this.”

That was putting
it mildly. “Don’t worry. She’ll find a way to blame me for it.”

Margaret shifted
her balance, crossed her arms over her chest. “Doubt that.”

Right. India had
kidnapped Bobby. Not a big leap to go from there to blaming Indigo. “What was
on the paper?”

“And I quote,
‘The Son of the Blade for the Oracle,’ end quote. Woman’s got balls.”

“True.”
Metaphorically, anyway, though Indigo tended to agree with Betty White’s
thinking on that score.

“Hiro and Drew
have already organized crews to do a search and retrieval.” Margaret tapped a
finger against one bicep. “That information you have might come in handy now.”

Indigo whipped
her head around to stare at the other Daughter. “It would expose you.”

Margaret lifted
one shoulder, dropped it. “Pass it off as your own. If nobody believes you, so
what? It’s not like they’re gonna argue, not when Bobby’s out there in the hands
of…someone who’ll probably harm him.”

Indigo let the
slip pass, filling in the gap in her mind.
The Eternal Order
. So her
sister really was searching for a way to stop the Prophecy from happening. Why
hadn’t she taken that threat more seriously, especially knowing India’s
single-minded focus?

Indigo pressed a
cool hand to her eyes, trying to find her own focus. If she could just think
around the panic and worry.

“The more
information they have, the easier he’ll be to find,” Margaret said.

Indigo rubbed a
finger across her forehead, realized she’d picked up the habit from Bobby. A
swell of sorrow rose within her, pushing its way upward until it hit her like a
wave and threatened to drown her under its heavy weight.

“And the quicker
he’s found the less likely Mom is to get involved.” Margaret leaned in and said
in a low voice, “Do you really want her charging in here?”

“You’re trying
to blackmail me,” Indigo said around the knot in her throat. How could she
stand Rebecca peering over her shoulder while they hustled to find Bobby? “It’s
working.”

Margaret winked.
“Knew it would.”

“She won’t stay
away, not for long, no matter what we’re doing.”

“No, but you
won’t need long. We know what India wants. All we have to do is wait for her to
give us a location.”

A quiet fear cut
through the sorrow. India could do a lot of damage between now and then
depending on how pissed off she was and whether or not she felt the need to
prove something. There was a lot here for her to prove. Her superiority over
their mother, who had submitted to a man and become mortal. Her diligence in
chasing after a goal that would keep her from ever having to submit herself.
Her worth as a Daughter and her cunning as a warrior, and the eternal struggle
between one sibling and another over who got to play with the best toys.

Bobby was a
valuable toy. India would want to play, and that was what worried Indigo the
most.

* * *

India flexed the
knots securing Bobby to a sturdy, wooden chair, testing their strength. She’d
searched him before bringing him to one of the empty houses the Order used and
dropped the contents of his pockets into a trash bin outside BDH where they would
be easily found. He needed to be weaponless in the off chance of an escape,
though one wasn’t likely. Too many eyes surrounded this house. The recent
housing bubble had left them plenty of places like this, foreclosed homes held
by banks that didn’t watch them too carefully. This one was less than half an
hour from BDH Security, nestled among several other houses also taken over by
the Order, and was fully furnished to boot. Some of the Order’s members even
slept here.

India firmed her
lips against a soft smile. She’d found a more comfortable bed not too long
back. It had come with its own accessory, a sexy man with a nubile body and an
endless imagination, plus as many monster movies as she could stomach, which
was a lot.

Happy times.

Someone had
cleared a space in the living room where they’d situated Bobby, away from the
doors and windows, in part to keep him from being seen from the outside, and in
part to give the Order room to maneuver in and out of the house without him
knowing who, exactly, they were.

Olivia the Good stepped
into the room carrying a glass and a pitcher, each full of water. Her bright
copper hair was pulled into a braid that fell down her back over the leather
vest she wore, a precaution every member of the Order had taken in case this
whole thing blew up in their faces and ended in a ruckus. Like all of them,
Olivia was a trained fighter, though she was one of the younger members, having
just reached her fifth decade. Her value lay chiefly in her strategic placement
within the inner circle of the Council of Seven, where she acted as an aide to
one of the Seven.

“When will he
wake up?”

India pushed
herself into a stand and checked the clock on the mantle. “Probably not long.”

“Do you think
he’s ok?” Olivia set the water down beside Bobby’s chair before grasping his
hair and gently easing his head back. She checked his pulse, pulled up one of
his eyelids. “What did that girl give him?”

“No idea,” India
said with a shrug. “Don’t care, either. He’s here, right where we need him to
be. That’s what’s important.”

“Not if he dies
from an overdose.”

India snorted.
“He’s a Son.”

“Yes, exactly.”
Olivia let Bobby’s head drop and stepped back. “He might be more resilient than
other mortals, but if something happens to him, it will bring the fury of the
Blade down upon us all.”

“Rebecca Upton,”
India said evenly through gritted teeth, “will do anything we ask to get her
son back. She’s the only one who can give us the Oracle. That’s why we took
him.”

“Ok, ok.” Olivia
shook her head. “I know the plan as well as you.”

“Then why are
you questioning it?”

“Because it
doesn’t feel right to take a Son.”

India stifled a
curse at Olivia’s naïveté. The preference Sons were accorded was one of the reasons
the Eternal Order existed in the first place. No Daughter liked to be supplanted
in her mother’s heart by a mere mortal male.

Bobby grunted
softly. His muscles tensed. India motioned for Olivia to move back, out of his
line of sight.

She reached
forward and slapped his cheek lightly, hard enough to help him wake up, not
hard enough to leave a bruise. India had no qualms about using Bobby as a
hostage, but she didn’t want to rile his mother any more than was necessary by
sending back a damaged Son.

He jerked away
from her hand and shook his head, then winced. “Holy shit. What was in that
coke?”

“No idea,” India
said.

He managed to open
one eye enough to give her a
go to hell
look. “Couldn’t you have given
her something that didn’t leave a headache the size of Wisconsin?”

“We’ll get you
something for that.” India jerked her chin at Olivia, who scampered out of the
room to look for aspirin. “Want some water?”

He laughed
weakly. “You put something in that, too?”

“Of course not,”
she snapped, then inhaled sharply through her nose. Hiro kept warning her about
her temper. It shamed her to admit she was working on handling it better
because of him.

Changing to
please a man. If anyone else knew, she’d be laughed out of the Order.

“Why did you
take me?” He grimaced, shifted in the chair testing the limits of the rope. “Is
it because of Indigo?”

“What does she
have to do with anything?”

Bobby spared her
a glance. “We’re engaged.”

Something ugly
pushed its way up from deep inside her, shooting through her muscles until her
lungs ached and her heart raced and her muscles trembled with it. “No,” she
said on a low growl.