Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1)

Chapter 16

Alec Graves
Rest Easy Hotel
Rio Rico, Arizona

We made it back to the car and then to the airport without any problems, but I could tell that James was angry at me. He was practically leaking power the entire helicopter ride back west, but he managed to keep himself under control with what was probably a herculean act of will. I was especially grateful for that considering that if he'd said all of the things he'd wanted to say then the pilot would have overheard and we would have had even bigger problems.

I'd had a couple of over-complicated plans that might have offered a chance for us to get back into the hotel without being seen, but in the end I discarded them all and James and I just dropped off the car and jogged back the last mile or two between the dealership and the Rest Easy.

It was foolish to take chances, especially given what James and I now knew, but I felt like I was going to explode. I wanted to do something completely reckless like publically denounce Brandon at the next big briefing, but I knew that would just result in the death of me and my friends as well as all of the independents down here. Brandon would just stage another battlefield and tell the rest of the world that he'd been attacked by a numerically superior group of cats and some losses had been unfortunate but unavoidable.

I couldn't do that, but it felt like I had to do something at least a little risky so I settled for us jogging back to the hotel rather than sneaking in as I knew we should.

Juan intercepted us at the side entryway. "Where have you guys been? I've been putting Brandon off all day. If you'd been five minutes later you'd be in some serious hot water. Brandon has called an emergency briefing. Come on."

I practically saw red, but I let Juan all but drag me through the hotel to the conference room reserved for our use. We were the last ones to arrive. Brandon was even there already, and we got a frown in response to our tardiness. Jasmin and Jess both looked at James and me with concerned expressions so I managed a smile to try and reassure them. The expression felt wrong on my face, but I knew the girls needed to calm down or we'd be giving Brandon one more reason to suspect that something was wrong.

Brandon surveyed the group one more time as though confirming that everyone he was expecting had arrived, and then cleared his throat. "I'm afraid that a complication has come up. The Brain Box has just informed me that there has been some kind of incident on the southern end of the Tucson pack's territory. Jaclyn is still not taking my calls, so it's looking like we're going to be forced to send another team down to investigate."

One of the other team leaders raised a hand and Brandon nodded for him to ask his question.

"Does this mean that we're going to reschedule the op that was supposed to go down tonight? Vincent's team has been gone all day, so we could be as much as two teams down."

Brandon shook his head. "You're correct that Vincent's guys have been gone all day. I dispatched them to the west on a critical mission this morning myself, but I got off of the phone with Vincent a few minutes ago and he's confirmed that he'll be back in plenty of time to still hit our original timetable for the deployment."

I wanted to scream out that Brandon was a liar, but he'd picked his words carefully. He probably had sent Vincent west this morning, but driving west for an hour before looping around back to the east to kill a bunch of innocents wasn't quite the same as being sent on a mission to the west. Brandon's pulse hadn't ever even hiccupped and every other person in the room would leave thinking that Brandon had just told them that Vincent's mission was to the west.

Brandon continued without missing a beat. "Given that we'll only be down by one team, I'd like to proceed with the original op. I have, however, given some thought to who best to send east and I think that since this recent incident has all the earmarks of a low-risk assignment I'd like to send Juan's team. You guys just finished a rather brutal deployment less than twenty-four hours ago and it just makes sense to give you the easier mission rather than sending you into the fire again already."