Broken Moon (3 page)

“Oh come on, Dad, you’re being absolutely ridiculous!”
Jocelyne Fitsimmons complained, as she stepped out from the safety of her
office building into the pouring rain. Juggling her umbrella in one hand and
her cell phone in the other, she hurried down the street to the bus stop so she
could catch a ride back to her little apartment in the village. “I’m not
waiting around for one of your guys to come and pick me up. I’ve got way too
much work to do, and I left my laptop at home.”

            “Sweetheart,
you don’t understand,” her father, General Fitsimmons, was clearly trying for a
pleading tone, but it came out more as a bark – which made her want to
smile and simultaneously roll her eyes at the same time. Her father was always
trying to order her around like one of his soldiers. “The situation is very
tense right now, and I don’t want to risk your safety.”

            “Tense
how? Oh, dammit!” She cursed under her breath as the bus sailed by her, and
broke into a run to try to catch the darn thing. Unfortunately, a twenty-eight
thousand pound vehicle on eight wheels moved a lot faster than Jocelyne did on
a pair of six-inch pumps, and since it was pouring rain out, the driver didn’t
even see her trying to flag her down. It left her in its proverbial dust,
splashing puddles onto her nylon-clad legs, which were woefully exposed to the
elements in her pencil skirt.

            Good
thing she had the umbrella, or her blonde hair would be a mass of limp noodles
stuck to the sides of her head.

            “Sweetheart?”
her father said anxiously. “Are you alright?”

            “Yeah,”
she grumbled. “I just missed the bus, that’s all.”

            Her
father let out a sight that was frustrated and relieved all at once. “Why don’t
you just let Gerald pick you up,” he said. “He can have the car brought around
to you in fifteen minutes. And maybe tomorrow, after you’re done with work, you
and I can have dinner.”

            “Really?”
Homework forgotten, Jocelyne smiled at the thought of having dinner with her
father. He was always so busy with work, and it was rare for her to see him,
even though there was absolutely no doubt that he loved her, and they’d always
had a close relationship. “You sure?”

            “Yes,
as long as you promise to go back inside and wait for Gerald.”

            “Deal.”

            “That’s
my girl. I’ll send him around now. Love you.”

            “Love
you too.”

            It
occurred to her as she hung up the phone that she never really got an answer as
to what this ‘tense situation’ was that was apparently so dangerous her father
didn’t want her making the trek alone unaccompanied. Her thumb hovered over the
call button on her phone as she wondered whether or not she should call him
back and ask him, but then she shrugged and pocketed her phone. She would just
ask him tomorrow when she saw him for dinner.

            She
was halfway back to the office when a black van pulled up sharply to the curve,
sending a wave of water careening over the sidewalk and splashing all over her
shoes. “Hey!” Jocelyne snapped, stopping as the side door to the van flew open.
She stepped closer, intending to give the assholes inside a piece of her mind.
“Watch where you’re – ”

            The
man who sprang out of the vehicle quickly whipped some kind of sack over her
face, then grabbed her around the waist and tossed her into the van. Fear
rocketed through Jocelyne, sending a cold rush of adrenaline through her veins,
as she kicked and screamed and shouted, but the door slammed closed behind
them, cutting off her screams from the outside world, and as pain from a needle
jab bloomed at the side of her neck, she knew she was in a world of trouble.

            The
last thought she had before she went limp was of whether or not she was going
to find out what the ‘tense situation’ was from her father tomorrow… or if she
was finding out right here, right now, at the hands of these wickedly rough men.

* * *

            Harley
was quietly chipping away at the silver coating on the cell bars, angling his
back so the cameras couldn’t pick up on his activities, when the door at the
end of the hallway swung open. Cursing silently, he quickly swept up the pile
of silver shavings on the floor, ignoring the way they burned his hand, then
dove for his cot, burying the scalpel beneath the mattress as he had done for
the past few days.

            “Where
we putting her?” one of the guards asked as their boots clomped down the hall,
and Harley’s heart rate picked up, a combination of fear and hope spiking his
blood pressure. “In this cell here?”

            “No,
in number twelve. Across from the beast.”

            Harley
slit his eyes so he could watch while pretending to be asleep as the guards
came up to the cell in question. There were three of them here rather than the
usual six – the one who always held the keys, and then two more, one of
which who had a woman slung over his shoulder. Harley couldn’t see much of her
other than the fact that she wore a pencil skirt and heels – her long,
hair hung down across the guard’s back, obscuring her face.

            But
her scent told him all he needed to know, and it shocked the shit out of him.

            She
was human.

            “What
the hell does the boss lady want with this one?” One of the guards asked. His
eyes slanted toward Harley, as though to check that he was still sleeping, and
then back to the woman, and Harley didn’t miss the gleam off lust in the
guard’s beady eyes. “She don’t seem like no beast to me.”

            “She
isn’t,” the one with the keys snapped in response, as he drew the cell door
open. “Just the daughter of some big wig in the army, I hear. The boss is
probably planning on ransoming her or something.”

            “Then
why isn’t she with the other hu- ”

           
“Shut
your mouth.”
The guard with the keys slammed his co-worker up against the
wall in a move so fast, Harley had to wonder if they guy didn’t have a drop of
superhuman blood himself. “You don’t know who might be listening.” He looked
pointedly at Harley, and then back at his buddy.

            “Okay.
Yeah, sure, you’re right,” the guard sputtered. “I’m sorry.”

            “You
should be. Dumbass.” The other guard gave him one last shove, then released
him, shaking his head in disgust. He then rounded on the other guard. “What the
hell are you waiting for? Toss her back in there!”

            The
man immediately complied, though rather than tossing the woman on the concrete
floor, as had been done countless times with Harley, he placed her on the cot,
then backed out of the room.

            “You
sure we can’t stick around for a little while?” Guard number three asked, an
undercurrent of dark excitement in his voice. Harley wanted to reach through
the bars and rip the sick fucker’s throat out, but he stayed silent, hoping they
would just leave her be.

            “Absolutely
sure,” Guard number one said firmly. “Boss lady said we need to be on patrol
tonight, in case General Fitsimmons tracked us here in pursuit of his daughter.
Highly unlikely, since he doesn’t actually know she’s missing,” he muttered,
and then in a louder voice continued, “But still. Orders are orders, and we
stand for Justice, so we must follow them.”

            “For
justice!” The other two guards immediately stood up straight and clapped their
fists over their hearts. It wasn’t the first time Harley had seen this happen,
and it made him wish he’d tossed protocol out the window for once and actually
looked into the file that informant had given him. He had no doubt it had
contained all kinds of information about Justice – this so-called
righteous paramilitary group that the ice bitch led, from what he’d been able
to gather from snippets of overheard conversation – and considering that
he was in the hands of the enemy right now, he needed all the Intel he could
get.

            And
the fact that Justice had decided to capture General Fitsimmons’ daughter was
very,
very
interesting.

            Harley
waited for awhile after the guards had left before he stood up and went back to
chipping away at the silver-coated bars again. As he did, he regarded the young
woman who lay unconscious on the cot in the cell from across him, marveling at
the fact that though he’d never seen the beauty before, he knew her name, and
almost everything about her.

            She
was, after all, General Lee Fitsimmons’s daughter. Or, as Harley and the other
shifters knew him, Commander Lee Fitsimmons of the Order of Protection.

           
Jocelyne
Fitsimmons looked much like her father
, Harley mused. Same brown hair,
though his was buzzed short and hers flowed nearly to her waistline. Same Roman
nose, though it looked stern and imposing on her father, as opposed to dainty
and feminine as it did on her. Her jaw even had the same little cleft in it.
But the cupid’s bow of her mouth was likely from her mother, Emma Fitsimmons,
who had died in childbirth many years ago.

            There
were often complications that occurred when giving birth to a half-shifter
daughter, as Emma had unfortunately discovered, when she’d bled out in the
delivery room. Thankfully, Jocelyne had grown up to be more human than anything
else – a little stronger, a little faster, and reportedly she was a
little sensitive to silver – but she did not change, not like some other
half-shifters were able to do.

            In
this particular instance, it was hard to tell whether or not that was a
blessing or a curse for her.

            A
soft moan escaped Jocelyne’s lips, a breathy, feminine sound that made Harley’s
heart beat a little faster. He watched as her eyes flickered open –
neither the green of her father nor the blue of her mother, but a startling
lavender – and wandered dazedly around the small chamber as she tried to
make sense of what was going on.      

            “Where
am I?” she asked in a shaky voice as she sat up. Harley had to give her props
for not upchucking like he had on his first day, though admittedly she probably
hadn’t been injected with silver-laced barbiturates the way he had.

            Harley
held his breath, waiting for Amelia’s velvet voice to taunt Jocelyne through
the speakers. When none came, he relaxed a little, knowing that though someone
was probably watching them, the ice bitch wasn’t gazing down at them from the
safety of a television monitor somewhere in the building.

            “You’re
in hell,” he answered, and she screamed.

            “Oh
my God!” Her hand flew to her chest as she caught sight of him staring at her
through the bars of his cells. “I… I didn’t even see you there.”

            Harley
gave her a sardonic smile. “No worries. I’ve been alone down here for so long
I’ve half convinced myself I’m invisible.”

            “Oh.”
Biting her lower lip, she rose to her feet and peered out through the bars,
trying to get as best of a glimpse as she could of her surroundings outside the
cell. “So… you’re saying we’re the only two here?”

            “Yep.
Just you and me, sweetheart.”

            Her
lavender eyes narrowed as she regarded him. “You’re military, aren’t you?”

            Harley’s
shoulders straightened a little, and he felt a flicker of admiration in his
chest. “How can you tell?”

            Jocelyne
shrugged. “My father’s a General, and I’ve been around military men all my
life. So which branch are you? Army, Navy, Air Force?” She tilted her head to
the side as she regarded him. “No… you strike me as something of a jack of all
trades. Marines, then?”

            Harley
shook his head, amazed. “Shouldn’t you be screaming and crying and asking me
what the hell is going on here?”

            Jocelyne
lifted her chin. “My father would be disappointed if I lost my head like that.”
Tears briefly shimmered in her eyes, and Harley’s esteem for her rose as she
blinked them away. “Who are you?” She paused. “My father told me just before I
was kidnapped that something had happened, and I have a feeling you’ve a lot to
do with it.”

           
Smart
girl.
“I’m not a Marine,” he told her. “I’m one of your father’s men.”

            Jocelyne
regarded him steadily. “You’re a shifter, aren’t you?”

            Harley
was taken aback? “How do you know that?”
Could she smell it on him?
Sometimes half-shifters possessed heightened senses as well. Evolution had a
very
mixed bag to choose from when it came to half-breeds, so it was hard to
know what kind of abilities one possessed.

            Jocelyne
laughed. “Give me a break. I’m half-shifter and was raised by a shifter father,
so it shouldn’t be that hard for me to spot one myself. But even if I couldn’t
tell,” she added, sobering now, “I always suspected that he likely worked with
a group of shifters. I can’t imagine that he’s been in the military for thirty
years and hasn’t had his… talents, put to better use.” She scowled. “So, what
kind of shifter are you?”