Bargains and Betrayals (11 page)

She snorted and took the key—and my hope at recovering the paper—away.

I spent the rest of my day seated on my bed, doing what so many patients did.

Rocking and muttering to myself I realized the person I wanted closest was the one in the most danger from Jones’s desired experiments and the nightly patrols of killer dogs.

I wouldn’t risk Pietr’s safety any longer.

Jessie

He was at the window, tapping for my attention. One heartbeat before the dogs caught his scent, a moment beyond the rush of the guards.

They might catch him. Hurt him worse than the day he failed to keep his promise, or hold him long enough to restrain him, cage him … tie him down and shoot him up like Harmony.…

Beat the wildness from his eyes …

I’d love to get my hands on a full-blood,
Jones had said.
The Rusakova alpha. Now he would be a prize specimen.

They’d make him think even his brief life was far too long.

I kept my back to the window. There was nothing Pietr could do for me right now and at least seven ways I risked him by encouraging his presence. It was better this way—me on the inside, caged, him with a hope of freedom.

Even if it meant freedom without me.

The noise of the dogs rang out, turning on the night’s breeze, my stomach twisting in echo.

Pietr slammed his fist on the glass; even his power, his anger, resulted in only a dull thud.

Like my heart made in my chest.

I stared at my useless hands, my fingers knotting.

Another insistent thud.

Why didn’t he run?

Please. Please … run…,
I begged, squeezing my eyes tight against the sound of the approaching dogs.

Down the hall from my room a door slammed. I wanted to shriek, “They’re coming!” But I didn’t react in case it gave him one more heartbeat’s worth of hesitation.…

I needed Pietr safe. And that meant far from here. From me. I hardened my heart against the glowing eyes cutting into my back.

And when I heard the approaching dogs turn and race off, following their retreating prey, I fell to the floor and cried my heart out at my betrayal.

Jessie

“Jessie,” Dad greeted me.

Fred—or Jeremy—stood, followed by his mute companion. They lumbered away from the table, giving Dad and me some privacy. We hugged, me holding on a little bit longer this time and definitely a little tighter.

Dad finally broke away, his face full of worry.

He slipped something into my hand.

A cell phone.

It buzzed, vibrating.

“Sit down,” Dad instructed. “Act normal. Alexi sent it. Looks like a piece of junk, but he said it’s exactly what’s needed in these circumstances.”

Realizing any phone Alexi provided was probably untraceable, I obeyed.

“It’s Pietr,” he explained. “He’s upset about last night.”

Thank God he was okay. Upset, I could deal with. Hurt. Dead? I fought for focus.

Dad pulled out chairs and I slipped my hands under the table, slouching for a view of the phone, and opened it. “I’m going to give you an update on my favorite sports teams and you just nod and react, okay?”

I nodded. “Sounds absolutely … purgatorial.” I typed in my message.

RU safe?

Da
. I <3 you.

I <3 U 2. Don’t come here again. *Promise*.

No response. I tried again.

*Promise* u won’t come here again.

I try 2 keep promises. Failed b4. Don’t make me promise 2 stay away. = 1 more failure.

My stomach knotted. Even though they were tiny letters on a poorly lit screen, they meant huge things to him.

U did ur best. U always do ur best 4 me.

Nothing.

Do ur best 4 u. Stay safe.

She’s dying.

His last sentence was so simple and clear it seemed he’d whispered it in my ear, stealing my breath away.

Dad raised his voice, extolling the virtues of some football team’s kicker.

Have u seen her?

Da. Last x went badly.

Srry …

God! Why couldn’t I help him with this thing? Why was I so—
helpless?

Can u get 2 her?

Nyet. Heavy guards. Derek’s inside. Watching.

“Damn it,” I snapped. Out loud.

“Now, Jessie,” Dad reprimanded in his jolly way, “just ’cause they didn’t win that game doesn’t mean we should get upset.”

U have 2 get her out.

No good unless ur out 2.

Even texting, Pietr had a gift for pointing out the obvious. They’d need my blood to make the cure.

Focus on ur mother. I focus on me. Do what u have 2 to get her out.

Nothing.

Do what u have 2. It will work.

Has 2.

I imagined the set of his jaw, the way his eyes would pinch near the bridge of his nose realizing there were no other options and so little time.

Time was running out so fast. For almost all of them. The distinct advantages of being an oborot were balanced cruelly with a huge disadvantage. They were stronger, faster, more nimble. They could hear, scent, and see better than someone like me—simply human. But the canine aspect of their DNA meant strength, agility, and superior senses as much as it meant shorter life spans.

By human standards, Pietr’s mom appeared to be middle-aged. But internally, her liver would be hardening, her heart racing even faster than its normally rapid rhythm, her arteries toughening. She’d be fighting an even harder battle to keep the wolf that always longed to claw its way out of her deep inside. If she hadn’t been dangerous before, she’d be a gun with a hair-trigger now.

Pietr and his siblings—well, not Cat, she’d sucked down the cure like it was nothing—might live even shorter lives because they were the offspring of two full-blooded oboroten. No one really knew what would happen as the generations progressed and the genetics compounded. Both powerful and poisoned by their own DNA, the oboroten were victims of their genetic code.

I love you,
I concluded.

I want to hear it.

U will. Soon.

g2g

I snapped the cell shut and nudged it against Dad’s leg, obscuring the sight of the phone with my hand.

He shook his head. “Well, I just wanted to update you on the sports world. I know how you
love
that sort of stuff.”

“Thanks, Dad. I really appreciate it.”

“I better get back to the farm,” he said, rising.

“Uh, yeah. Geez, is it hot in here?” I asked, tugging at my neckline just enough to pop the cell into my shirt, resting it in my bra.

Ha. An
ample bosom
wouldn’t have left room for such a clunky phone. Score one for the averagely endowed.

“Yeah,” Dad said. “It is a little toasty,” he agreed, swabbing at his forehead as if it were dotted with perspiration. He hugged me. “I’ve got us a lawyer. He’s going to push that I was under duress when I signed those papers. He says if court goes quickly, he’ll have you out in a little more than a week.”

My heart leaped, trying to lodge in my throat. “How much will that cost?” I asked, but he squeezed me tight.

“Freedom always comes at a cost, but no price is too high. God, Jessie, I’m sorry I put you in here.”

“You did what you thought was best,” I admitted begrudgingly.

“I had the very best of intentions,” he agreed. “I’ll get you out soon. It’ll all work out.” He pulled back from me, blinking rapidly as he looked into my own damp eyes.

I nodded sharply. “It has to.”

Jessie

Back in my room, I hugged my journal and thought things through. Dad would work from a legal angle to get me out, Pietr would work on getting his mother out, and I would try to be the best little patient I could and hope nobody knew where’d I’d been or, more importantly, what I’d seen.

It was official: We had something that passed for a plan.

But what Pietr had mentioned about Derek’s involvement, the way he was tucked safely away and watching things from a distance, worried me. I’d known Derek since I was in middle school and had crushed on him starting around then, too. He was Junction’s golden boy: fast on the football field, smart, smolderingly hot with all-American good looks. Very popular.

But I’d known all that before the Rusakovas moved in.

I’d lived in a comfortable bubble before the werewolves moved in and Pietr showed me what he really was the night of his seventeenth birthday. I accepted things I could see and prove—although I researched things that defied explanation.

I expected to find werewolves in high school just as much as I’d expected to meet the love of my life there.

So meeting Pietr blew my mind doubly.

But the world got even stranger.

If the company had Derek in their underground bunker, he could watch the werewolves coming. He’d done it using my eyes and we’d dug poisoned bullets out of Max and Pietr as a result.

Derek’s abilities made him a huge threat. He’d manipulated more than me with just a touch, implanting and fuzzing memories. And he juiced up when people got emotional—making me a prime target of his attentions since the death of my mother. He could even transfer energy from one person to another in a pinch so he was hard to take in a fight. But what the company wanted him most for was his remote viewing—his ability to see what was going on some place he wasn’t near.

He had the abilities spies dreamed of and a hunger that made him doubly dangerous.

The physical connection Derek made with me when we dated amped up his viewing power. Having me as a direct and—my stomach twisted, remembering,
touchable—
link to Pietr had been like giving Derek super-creepy 20 / 20.

I needed to get out of here, and Pietr’s mother needed to get out of
there
. Eliminating Derek might be a necessity.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Alexi

We were gathering for breakfast when Pietr leaned over the table to speak to me. He glanced back toward the hallway, making it clear he knew Amy was nowhere near enough to overhear.

“We cannot wait any longer. We need help to free her.”

I resisted the urge to reach up and choke him for thinking I was waiting. That because things appeared normal, no progress was being made. “I am examining options.”

“Not good enough,” he said. “We need help. Now.”

“And where would you suggest we get help, little brother?”

Max scraped his chair back from the table.

Pietr ignored him. “There’s only one group that has the firepower we need.”

Our eyes met and I read his intentions clearly. Desperate times. Desperate measures. “
Nyet
. Absolutely not.”

“What?” Cat had leaned in over my shoulder. “Pietr—who?”

“Think, Cat,” Max said, which I found amazingly ironic.

Her eyes widened, reading the stern expressions we all wore. “
Nyet
, Pietr. The Mafia?” She shook her head, disbelieving. “Why would
they
help us? They want—”

“They want something we have,” he said with deceptive simplicity.

“Pietr—no. You cannot,” Cat replied.

“This discussion is over. We’ll find some other way.” Max stood.

“Sit down,” Pietr commanded.

Max sat, grumbling. He glanced toward the hallway, watching for Amy as well.

“Be reasonable,” Cat urged. “They’ll want more than you—more than any of us—can give.”

“When did we determine a limit to what we’re willing to sacrifice to free Mother?” He stood and picked up his chair just to slam it back down. “Didn’t you see her? Were you not in the same room with me?” He swung around, facing each of us separately for a moment, his face filled with turmoil.

“So you would do what,” Cat whispered to her twin, “bargain away your freedom to earn their help and set Mother free?”

“
Da
,” he said.

A simple word, it was laced with all Pietr’s conviction.

“They can’t be trusted,” Max reminded him.

I stood, stepping back from the table—my appetite for breakfast gone before any food was offered. Tired of the posturing, I had trouble believing what I was about to say. “Max is right. This conversation is over. We will find another way.”

Alexi

Approaching my room, dread stabbed me in the gut. I’d closed my door, but a narrow band of light shone from around it. Inside, someone rustled through my belongings. I held my breath, careful not to give warning of my presence. My training served me well as I crept with my back to the wall and rested my shoulder against the doorjamb.

This was a part of being a displaced alpha that I hated—no longer having rights in my own home. “What are you doing?”

Pietr jumped, caught.

I fought back the smile tugging at my lips. I had surprised an alpha. Funny how that perked my failing ego.

He closed my bureau’s drawer.

“If you needed to borrow socks…”

But we both knew what had brought him here. It was not my sense of decor, nor my reading material, though a selection of my magazines was scattered boldly across the bed.

Catherine would have thrown a fit had she seen them, preaching to me about the exploitation of women, not believing that I, of course, read such magazines for the articles. The beautiful women inside merely broke the text in an appealing fashion. Pietr read less Russian than I did, so he surely suspected the magazines had another use.

My eyes rested on the mess he’d made. I cleared my throat. “Or if you needed to borrow something else…”

He followed my gaze and, seeing the magazines, blushed.

I snorted.
Virgin
was more than a powerful British company.

“I need information, Alexi.”

I could not resist, having him on the ropes. I leaned forward and held a magazine out to him. “I thought they taught the birds and the bees in school.”

His eyebrows lowered. I bit the inside of my cheeks to keep from laughing at how uncomfortable a simple magazine made him: the Rusakova alpha.

Around a catch in his voice, he said, “I need a name.”

I threw the magazine down, ruffling pages. “
Nyet
.”