Omega Force 01- Storm Force (14 page)

“What about
Robin?” Archer asked. “Want her following Benedict?”

Kell considered it. While a pair of eagle eyes on Michael
would be helpful, they probably needed all hands for the operation. “No, call
Robin on the way to River Oaks and tell her to stand by. I want her ready to go
inside that attic room as soon as we’re able to shut the cameras down. You will
get the window open so Robin can reach Mori. Nik and
I will take out Benedict’s staff.”

Archer got up, fished
his car keys from his pocket, and handed the hotel room keycard to Kell. “You might need this. Leave it in the room when
you’re done. I need to change into cat burglar clothes” — he waited for the eye
rolls from Kell and Nik — “and
then I’m on my way to Casa del Benedict. You going to Nik’s place soon?”

Kell and Nik exchanged glances
and tacit agreement.

“We have some time before daylight, so we need
to pay a little visit first.” Kell’s voice was grim.
“It’s time to meet the governor.”

Kell’s watch read 2:00 a.m. when he slipped out of his room and across
the hall, with Nik waiting in the open door behind
him. He scanned the hallway ceilings for security cameras, but if they were
there, it wasn’t obvious. This hotel was nice enough, but it was the type of
place businesspeople stopped overnight because it was convenient to Intercontinental.
Customer security didn’t rate as high a priority as a bar, room service, and an
airport shuttle.

Kneeling in front
of the door to Room 601, Kell ran his fingertips
along the bottom of the raised pad where customers slid their keycards. He felt
the tiny DC port in the middle of the underside. So far so
good.

From his pocket,
he took a small electronic device that looked like a jerry-rigged cell phone.
Gadget had developed it after seeing a similar thing sprung by a hacker at a
computer conference the year before, and had sent it with Archer. Two six-inch
black wires led from it, ending in a small plug designed to fit in the bottom
of keycard locks.

Plugging the
device into the lock port, Kell turned on Gadget’s
gadget and powered it up. After a few seconds, the lock released with a soft
whir. He removed the device and nodded at Nik, who
pulled out his handgun and held it pointed downward, pressed against his right
leg.

The next question
was, had the governor used the interior lock as well? Kell
turned the door handle and pushed slightly. Their luck held; the door opened
with no pesky chain or lever latch.

Standing, Kell pulled
the Beretta from its shoulder holster and paused with the door open about a
foot, listening. A canned-laugh track sounded softly from the television, but
all else was quiet.

Three steps, and he
was able to peer around the corner of the entrance foyer into the room itself. Felderman sat on the edge of the king-size bed with his
back to the door, facing the window. The curtains had been left open to reveal
a smattering of streetlights and the blinking red light of a plane descending
toward the runways that lay only a few miles to the north.

On the bed next to the governor lay a gun — a
compact Smith & Wesson, from the look of it. Kell
stepped aside so Nik could see the setup; then they
both raised their weapons.

“Governor?”

At the sound of Kell’s
voice, Felderman gasped, jumped to his feet, and
turned to face them, without so much as a glance at his gun. “Who are you?
How’d you get in here?”

While Nik kept his
pistol trained on Felderman, Kell
reached across the bed and took the governor’s handgun. He removed the ammo
clip and made sure the chamber was empty before wiping it clean of prints with
his shirt tail and tossing it back on the bed.

Then he pulled his own weapon and kept the
frozen, silent politician in his sights while Nik did
a quick search of the room for listening devices or cameras. Benedict would want
to keep tabs on his man.

“It’s clean, unless he’s wired.”

Kell nodded. “Who knows you’re here, Governor?”

Felderman swallowed hard. “Nobody.
Who are you?”

If the governor had left the hospital early to
slip away from Benedict’s grasp, Kell might get him
to talk. He hadn’t taken Travis Milkin’s call, but Milkin obviously knew where he was, which meant time was
limited. “Never mind who we are, Governor. We have
questions, and we need quick answers. Sit.”

Felderman hesitated and his gaze shot to the phone on
the desk.

Nik reached behind the desk and unplugged the
phone, then turned off the television. “The faster you talk, the faster we
leave.”

Felderman sat in one of two chairs nestled against a
small round table in front of the window. Kell sat on
the bed in the governor’s former spot, facing him. He holstered his weapon,
hoping it would help Felderman relax. Besides, Nik had his back.

“I want you to tell us about your kidnapping,
Governor.” Kell kept his voice low and even. This guy
looked as jumpy as Gator when he saw a real alligator.

Felderman’s gaunt face developed a tic that jerked the
right side of his mouth in irregular spasms. “I’ve told everything I know. It
was that Co-Op woman. Emory Chastaine. She was behind
it.”

Kell sighed, long and loud and
put-upon. “Well,
see, that’s where we have a problem. I happen to know she
wasn’t
behind it, and I’m very curious as to why you’d say she was.
Do you know Michael Benedict?”

“Of course I do,” Felderman
snapped, but however impatient his words were, his body language spoke
differently. His hands shook as they clutched at the wooden arm of his chair,
and one thin leg began moving in restless jitters. “I know all our Texas major
business owners.”

Nik walked behind Felderman
and rested his hands on the man’s shoulders. In an instant, Felderman
stilled all his nervous movements, his breath held as if waiting for Nik to choke him. What the hell had Benedict done to the
man? Kell had never liked Felderman
much as a governor and thought him just another blowhard politician, but this
man was a pathetic wreck.

Nik’s face bunched in a frown as he massaged Felderman’s shoulders in a soothing motion, trying to get a
psychic reading.

“Governor, what do
you know about the jaguarundi?” Nik
asked.

Felderman jerked away from Nik’s
touch, rose to his feet, and shuffled away until his back hit the wall. “I
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Kell motioned for Nik to
take over the questions. Whatever he’d seen, mentioning the jags clearly struck
a nerve.

Nik retreated to the other chair and motioned for Felderman to sit down. The governor sat, but his legs were
tensed to jump again.

“You were kept in a dark room,” Nik said softly. “You were bitten repeatedly by two jaguarundi shape-shifters. You need to tell us their names,
what they said to you, and what your agenda is supposed to be now. What is it
they want you to do besides implicate Emory Chastaine?”

Felderman slumped in his seat. “You know about sh-shape-shifters?”

“We do,” Kell said.
“And we’ve seen those two before, and we know who they work for. What did they
want with you?”

“You know who they work for?” Felderman’s eyes were wide, bloodshot, and frightened.
“They were the only ones I saw. One was named Travis. I don’t know the other.”

He stood up,
starting in one direction toward Nik, then swerving back toward Kell.
Panic was taking hold. “They’ll kill me if I talk. I have to get out of here.
You have to let me leave.”

“Governor, we
can’t help you unless you tell us what the endgame is.” Kell
nodded at Nik, who moved to take a position in the
narrow foyer leading to the door. Felderman didn’t
look physically capable of making a run for it, but it would be stupid to give him
the opportunity. “We know Travis and the other shifter work for Michael
Benedict. He’s running the show. What we don’t know is where you fit in or why
Emory Chastaine is involved.”

“I don’t know
about her.” Felderman paced halfway toward Nik, then turned and paced back. Back and
forth, again and again. “I was told what to say. That she was behind it.
That I had seen her.” He stopped and looked at Kell.
“But I didn’t see her. I swear, I don’t know why they
wanted me to blame it on her.”

Kell turned to keep the frantic, pacing man in his sights.
“What about Benedict?”

“Oh
God, oh God.” Benedict ran a shaky hand over his thin hair. “I never saw
him, but they talked about him. He’ll have them kill me. They bit me, and now I
can’t…”

Kell looked at Nik in question,
but he shrugged. “Now you can’t, what?”

“I can’t control
it.” Felderman gasped as if struggling for air. “It’s
going to happen, and I can’t…”

Speechless, Kell watched as the governor’s face grew rounder with what
looked like a painful shifting of bone, his pupils elongating to slits, hair
bristling from his cheeks in uneven clumps. Felderman
cried out in pain as his shoulders narrowed, and he dropped to his knees. The
hands resting on his thighs were half hand, half…black-and-gray paw.

Kell had reached up to unholster
his gun when the change started, but froze with his fingers on the snap.

“They turned you into one of them?” This time,
it was Nik’s voice that shook. “I didn’t think it was
possible.”

Neither did Kell.
When Robin and the kitties had schooled them on the ins and outs of
shape-shifters, they’d insisted that the old legends of being bitten and turned
into new shifters were false, that shifters were born and not made.

Tell that to the
governor of Texas. Tears ran freely down Felderman’s
cheeks, dividing into rivulets around the clumps of fur. “I’m not one of them.
I’m a freak. Just a freak. What they call a hybrid.
They tell me I won’t do this if I calm down. How the hell am I supposed to calm
down?” His voice had grown higher and whispery thin.

“Jesus.” Kell swallowed hard, trying to sound calm. “What is it they
want from you?”

“Everything.”
Felderman’s tone dropped to a whisper. “On every
decision, every bill, every law that needs my signature, I will follow Travis’s
orders, and Travis gets his orders from Benedict.”

Kell frowned. So Benedict would be running the state
according to his own agenda — at least as far as the governor’s power extended. “Or what? What will they do if you don’t follow orders?”

Felderman was openly sobbing now. “I have to follow the
orders of my hybrid-maker. That’s the way it works. Whatever Benedict tells
Travis and Travis tells me, I…I can’t refuse. I’ve tried, but it’s like my mind
loses its ability to control my thoughts.”

Holy fuck
. Kell
wasn’t even sure what to ask the man, and the implications were staggering.
True, Benedict didn’t control the legislature, only the governor himself. But
what was to prevent him from doing this on a larger scale? On
more lawmakers, or judges, or the fucking president, if he got ambitious or
power hungry enough?

“What happens if
Travis dies?” Nik asked. “Then are you free of the
compulsion to follow his orders?”

Felderman had calmed a little, and his fur began to recede.
“Travis said if he died, I’d die, but I don’t know whether that’s true or if it
was just a way to control me.” He got to his feet and took a step toward Nik. “I don’t care what it does to me. Will you kill him?”

Nik and Kell exchanged glances.

“We’re not in the killing business, Governor,” Kell said. They might be forced to kill the guy, but not
unless it was self-defense. He was kind of relieved to find he still had some
lines he wouldn’t cross, and he had to assume they extended to Michael Benedict.
Within reason. “What we want is evidence against
Benedict. Can you give us that?”

Felderman collapsed into the chair. He’d aged twenty years
since the bombing. “They’d never let me testify in a trial; they’d kill me
first or compel me to lie. And what if I…change in public? I don’t even know
how I’m can go back to Austin like this. It just happens.”

What a fucking
mess. Kell blew out a breath and looked at his watch.
It was 3:00 a.m., and they needed to get back to Nik’s
and plan the mission. Should they force the governor to go with them? It would
keep him out of Benedict’s hands, and it would keep the existence of
shape-shifters from being sprung on the public in a terrible way. But Kell had found another line he wasn’t willing to step over — kidnapping
an elected official, even under these circumstances.

“Governor, I don’t
know what’s going to happen.” Kell considered his
words carefully. “I can’t promise you that we can fix this. But if you want to
come with us, we’ll keep you safe and away from Benedict’s people until we
figure out what to do.”

Felderman scrubbed his palms across his face, which had
shifted back to its normal, narrow dimensions. “Who do you work for? Why should
I trust you any more than them?”

Kell shook his head. “I’m not at liberty to tell you that.
Only that we’ll keep you out of sight until we find a solution you can live
with.”

Felderman’s nod was no more than a barely perceptible tilt
of the head. “Why not? I can’t stay here forever. Word’ll get out. It always does.”

Faster than he
suspected, assuming Milkin’s call meant the jag knew Felderman was at this hotel.

“Good.” Kell stood
up. “We’ve got a room down the hall. Let us make a few arrangements, and we’ll
get you out of here within ten minutes.”

Felderman’s self-assurance was rebounding quickly. He stood
and held out his hand for Kell to shake. “Thank you,
whoever you are. Anything’s better than letting them find me.”

“We’ll be back in
a few.” Kell edged past him and followed Nik out the door. They didn’t speak until they’d crossed
the hallway and were again ensconced in Archer’s room.

“I’m betting
somebody’s already looking for him.” Nik crossed his
arms and frowned thoughtfully at the door. “Let’s take him to one of our safe hotels.”

“Agreed.”
Kell scrolled through the texts and calls that had
come in since he’d muted his phone before going into Felderman’s
room. “The colonel called again — that’s three times. And Archer is texting stuff
about Benedict’s security as he finds it. We’ve got enough to work out a—”

He halted, frozen, at the sound of breaking
glass and a loud pop from the hallway. Or from a room across
the hallway.

If it was one thing Kell
recognized, it was the sound of a rifle shot.