Page 30 of Into the Fire: After
“Three hours, maybe four,” Hilt answered.
I nodded. Okay.Okay. Another heat wouldn’t be awful. I had two of my alphas in the building. The reason they’d agreed to spare them after all made sense, at least. I cleared my throat. “I think we’d be more comfortable in here,” I said. “They should definitely get a good meal beforehand.”
Doc lifted his chin, staring down his nose at me. “Who, Ms. Maddox?”
I snapped my gaze to his. “My alphas.”
A cold chuckle made his eyes crinkle. “Ms. Maddox, your alphas will remain precisely where they are. As will you.”
Panic gripped my throat, icy cold and choking. “That’s…that’storture.”
“It’s the best way to ensure pure samples,” Doc Fuckwad replied. “Normally, we would want your initial cycle observation to occur naturally, though those attempts were thwarted.” His tone implied I’d been naughty in evading capture, like a child who’d snuck out of bed for a nighttime cookie. “Considering your advanced age and medication history, not to mention our tight timeline on other projects, it can’t be helped.”
My life had been an exercise in surrealism for months. Really since the first bounty hunter had cornered me in our apartment, my world had taken on a fuzziness at the edges. Almost dreamlike. Like, this couldn’tactuallybe myreal life,could it? Every advance and retreat on the chessboard was the same—terrifying, but with an underlying sense ofnot real.
Denial? Disassociation? Who could say?
For the first time, though, reality sharpened around me. High fucking definition.
An unassisted heat in this bright, sharp room, with this man and his psychotic team watching and prodding and recording me.
I was here. This was real. It was happening.
I leaned over the side of the bed just in time to vomit.
Twelve
Brea
Allcopswerebastards,but Detective Vikki was one I had to play nice with.
Though—dear gods—she made it hard.
To her credit, she cared. The only reason we even knew her name, let alone all the horrifying truths that now haunted us, was because she cared. And, more credit, she’d taken a leave of absence the moment Brooks had contacted her with news of Taryn’s infiltration of Phoenix Labs. She’d arrived to the Greysmoke Cabin a day later with all the equipment needed to establish a base of operations.
So, okay, Vikki cared.
But, holyhell, she talked in circles like a cop. Saying nothing. Giving no real answers.
We’d done our best to leave her be in the days since then. Let her do her thing. Her computers and scanners and hard drives ate up the kitchen counter and table. An older-model cell phone sat plugged in next to her at all times. It buzzed once an hourwith a text—from her inside source, was my best guess—which she read in under a second each time before returning to her monitors with a furrowed brow.
I hadn’t washed my hair since before Taryn’s heat. It sat twisted into the truest version of a messy bun on top of my head. It looked substantially less precious than Taryn’s versions. All three of us were looking a bit worse for wear—greasy hair, days-old loungewear, stressed and weary pheromones even from the betas.
Brooks was unnervingly stoic. He’d taken it as his personal responsibility to keep the three of us fed, watered, and halfway rested. I wasn’t sure he’d actually lain down yet himself.
By the end of the first week, still locked out of the systems Taryn had risked her life to grant access to, my patience was wearing thin. It was past noon, and Vikki hadn’t said a word to us in hours. Brooks had made her toast and eggs, freshened her coffee, and fetched a lamp from a spare bedroom when she said the kitchen was too dark.
Actually, correction. My patience wasn’t wearing thin. It was fucking threadbare. Our pack was held hostage to further the cause, and my biggest contribution was folding the laundry that Brooks had done.
“What’s the end date on this mission?” I asked, arms crossed. “Because we will not be waiting around indefinitely for your systems to go live while our mates are held captive.”
Vikki didn’t turn toward me, still focused on her screens. “I assure you,” she said, “everything is going to plan.”
“That’s not what I asked,” I said, working hard to keep my tone under control. “I want a date.”
“Brea,” Vikki sighed, finally looking over her screen toward me, “this is why civilians don’t normally participate behind the scenes. I get you’re frustrated, truly, but—”
“Frustrated?”
