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27

THE CHASE

W e left exactly when Black said we would leave.

The Rucker case had practically been forgotten, other than how it related to Jem.

Everything was about Dalejem now, and getting back Angel, Javier, and Aura.

Cowboy didn’t say a single word as we boarded the plane Black got from somewhere, probably on loan from one of his billionaire pals, or maybe someone he knew from back in his military days. Wherever he got it, it was bigger than Black’s Gulfstream, closer to a small commercial jet than the sleek, black and white animal I was used to.

The interior was also markedly different, more like a “eighties sex pad,” as Ace muttered under his breath than the quietly expensive but relatively stripped down interior Black preferred. I ended up on a fuzzy green armchair that Kiko joked I probably shouldn’t look at under a black light. I grimaced, and a few others laughed.

I knew we were all whistling in the dark, at least to a degree.

Nick came with us, because of course he did.

Cowboy, Ace, Mika, A.J., Jax, Kiko, Holo, Dog, Alisha, Reuben, and Dex came, too.

Black also brought three more seers: Rafe, which made sense, as he often got paired with Dex, also Sully and Zach, both of whom had a decent amount of military training. The sheer number of seers on the plane gave me a pretty good idea of how worried Black was about bringing Jem in without having to shoot him.

It also hit me that almost everyone on the plane was close to Jem.

That couldn’t be an accident, either. The seers Black left behind in San Francisco were the handful Jem and Nick didn’t know very well. They were seers who hadn’t fought with Jem or befriended him back on Old Earth, either.

Those of us on the plane mostly did know Jem well––even Dog, who I’d only found out today spent a lot of time with Jem when we were all in New Mexico. Dog and Jem had bonded, apparently, which was news to me, but I’d been pretty distracted while all that was going on. I obviously missed a lot about what the others had been up to during those months.

Now I felt guilty about that.

I knew maybe that was ridiculous––

“Because it is ridiculous,” Black muttered, as he buckled on his seatbelt next to me. “Anyway, Sully barely knows him. And I brought Hamish because he’s a good tracker.”

I grunted, but had to concede his words.

He’d also left Larry Farraday, his lawyer, behind to deal with Rania Gorren.

As for Yarli and Manny, they were on standby to possibly meet up with us wherever Jem landed. Until then, Yarli led the infiltrators who stayed behind in San Francisco.

Black had grumbled most of his thoughts and questions at me while we packed.

“It’s rough,” he’d said at one point, shoving a few shirts in the suitcase we shared. “And obviously last minute as fuck, but I think we’ll have all the people we need, along with enough back here to cover anything that might come up.”

He’d continued muttering in my direction as he stalked back to the dresser.

“Anyway, Rucker has a second big research facility in France,” he’d said, rifling through socks and boxer briefs. “Assuming we’re able to handle this fucking thing with Jem in a reasonable amount of time, there’s some chance we can use the opportunity to get more information on Rucker’s companies while we’re there.”

I’d snorted. I couldn’t help it.

“Ever the pragmatist,” I murmured.

I honestly wasn’t sure if I was disturbed or impressed that Black could think of something like that right then. I will say, I wasn’t surprised.

I also figured some of it was Black’s way of coping with the emotional side of this. It was easier for him to treat it like any other complication. A frustrating nuisance of a delay, but ultimately not a big deal, and definitely not something that could end as badly as we all feared.

I certainly didn’t want to believe it could end that badly.

Nick sure as fuck didn’t want to believe it.

I couldn’t imagine why Black would.

I also knew, if it came to a battle between Jem and Black, things could easily spiral out of control, especially if Nick got in the middle.

“Don’t worry about that now, doc,” he’d murmured, throwing a gun case into a duffle bag and shoving another handgun in his side holster.

We’d been nearly side-by-side as we threw clothes hastily into a small suitcase.

Black also had the duffel for weapons and other equipment.

By then, we were almost done.

It was impossible to pack much, when we had no idea how long we’d be gone.

We’d had some of the big conversations already, including whether we should just ditch the Rucker contract altogether, deal with the implants and the sight-blocking tech later, possibly after Rania Gorren and the rest of that cabal had forgotten about us.

I’d been in favor of that approach, personally.

I wanted to contact the S.F.P.D., or possibly the F.B.I., as soon as we were in the air and on our way to following Jem. Let Gorren and Morgan deal with the police crawling all up in their ass, not to mention the international press, once news broke of Lucian’s murder.

We’d still have to deal with all that, of course, but we could put it on the back-burner for now to focus on Jem. I knew Black strongly considered going that route. Even apart from Aura and the implants, we both had a lot of questions about what the hell Lucian had been up to, questions that included figuring out just how many other seers might be out there, owned and traded by other rich humans, or just out in the wild, passing as human, or even in hiding.

And then there was the girl herself.

But I couldn’t think about her yet.

Especially since there was a good chance she was already dead, or would be soon.

“She’s not dead,” Black had muttered, dropping another bag on our king-sized bed. “We’ll get her back, Miri. Alive. I’m more confident about that now than I was. The fact that Jem took her with him and didn’t just murder her outright is the most hopeful part about all of this. He wants her for something, or he would have left her corpse on the tarmac at SFO.”

I winced.

“No, he needs her,” Black amended darkly. “Someone needs her, anyway.”

“You really think Brick is behind this?” I asked again.

“I think it’s very fucking possible, wife,” Black replied.

I’d only nodded as I zipped up my bag. I could tell it felt more than just “possible” to Black. He was now acting on the assumption that it was Brick. He definitely thought the vampires were involved, and more than likely the reason for Jem’s odd behavior.

Something about that still didn’t feel quite right to me.

My eyes followed the rayon satchel he’d just brought out from the back part of our shared closet. I recognized it. It was one he kept hidden in our bedroom for security reasons, and held another gods-only-knew how many guns, and enough magazines to bring down an army. He likely had other things in there, too. Knives. Kevlar.

Grenades.

“This is Jem,” I reminded him.

Black didn’t so much as slow his movements.

“I’m having them bring tranq rifles,” he said, either hearing me or seeing my eyes on the rayon bag. “Don’t worry, doc.”

“Who’s worried?” I murmured, taking my eyes off the bag.

We’d left our penthouse together about five minutes later.

Black had carried the two weapons bags with him as he waited for me to leave in front of him with our smallish roller suitcase and two garment bags. Black hoisted the larger, rayon bag to his shoulder, and winked at me, a taut smile on his lips.

Now we were on the borrowed plane, and it was taxiing towards a runway.

In the end, Black decided not to cancel the contract.

He was still mulling about calling the cops.

“We’ll find them, first,” he muttered under his breath, adjusting his weight inside the green, fuzzy seat next to mine. “Then we’ll decide.”

I didn’t answer.

Lucian Rucker and his gang of sociopaths was the least of my worries right then.

“ T hey ditched your plane,” Dexter said to Black, plunking his weight and considerable height into a sky-blue chair across from both of ours. He rubbed a dark, calloused hand over his bald head. “It’s now parked inside a private hangar at J.F.K.”

Kiko, who’d walked up with Dex, spoke up before Black could answer.

“We also finally got them on C.C.T.V.,” she said. Kiko took the chair next to Dex, and crossed one leg easily over the other. “They just boarded a commercial flight for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, France. First class. The terminal says he paid cash, but Jax says it’s likely he just pushed them into printing him boarding passes.”

There was a pause where Kiko scrutinized Black’s expression.

“We didn’t get word until it was too late,” she added, a touch sourly. “We didn’t have anyone close enough to stop them, anyway, and you said to let them go as long as we could still track them. They’ve been airborne for probably fifteen minutes.”

She waited.

I knew why she was waiting, and what she was waiting for, and I waited with her. Black still had contacts that might be able to turn the flight around. He knew people in the military, and in Homeland Security. He had people who would bend the rules for him, even without having to push them with his light.

It would be dangerous, though.

Jem would likely just push the pilots of the commercial flight to ignore any conflicting orders they got from the ground. If the military decided to make that into a terrorist situation, they might send fighters after them. They might do it without telling Black, and whether Black wanted them to or not, and maybe before Black could stop them through other means.

If Jem couldn’t push all of those pilots effectively, the whole thing might end with the commercial plane being shot down somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.

“Let them go,” Black said.

He looked at me, gold eyes glinting in the plane’s interior lights.

It was dark outside the oval windows now, as we flew east to chase the night. That meant the shades were all open, even the ones right next to where Nick sat.

Most of the team hung over tablets and laptops, and a few of the seers were in the Barrier, liaising with Yarli and the seers we left back in San Francisco. A few, including Dog and Holo, were sitting on the velvet purple couches and talking in low voices.

No one I saw had managed to get any sleep.

“I guess we’re taking that trip to France after all, baby,” Black grunted, giving me a flat smile. He glanced at Nick with a faint scowl. “Still think your fucking sire doesn’t have anything to do with this, vampire boy?”

Nick only glowered back, silent, but I got the sense he didn’t exactly disagree.

He did aim one look at me, and it wasn’t hard to discern its meaning.

No one was hurting Dalejem while he was there.

No one, not even Black.

Not even me.

I gave him a short nod, letting him know I was one hundred percent on his side in that.

Only then did the crystal eyes shift away, until Nick stared out at the night.

A firm, gentle hand shook me awake. I’d curled up in the oversized, green, fuzzy chair, and fallen dead asleep. I had no idea when that happened, but it was difficult to pry open my eyes.

“We’re here,” Black murmured. “Wheels down in fifteen.”

I blinked up at him, and managed to nod.

He leaned down unexpectedly, and startled me by kissing me on the cheek, then even more by kissing me on the neck, pausing briefly to slide his tongue along the muscle. He kissed me again, right at a sensitive spot where my neck and shoulder met, then raised his head. He nuzzled my face with his five o’clock shadow and sighed.

I looked up at him, feeling my throat close a little when I saw the tired but faintly tense look in his eyes. A ripple of separation pain came off him, and I fought down my own.

It hit me just how long it had been since we’d been alone.

Really alone.

Black bent even closer, putting his lips to my ear.

“Way too goddamned long, doc,” he whispered.

I shivered, but fought to smile.

“I told you I wanted a house,” I reminded him.

“That’ll be a priority when we get back.” He said it fiercely, like a promise. “It’s been bumped to number one on the list, once we get back from this fucking nightmare.”

There wasn’t much to say to that, other than I agreed.

I pushed off the blanket someone––probably Black––had put over me while I slept, letting go of where I’d been clutching it to my chest. I kicked it off my legs and feet next, and stretched my arms. I felt another flush of heat and separation pain from Black as he watched my back curve into a stretch, my arms up over my head.

I did my best to ignore it, murmuring a grateful thanks when he thrust a mug filled with cappuccino into my hand.

All around us, seers and humans were doing the same thing I was. Waking up, throwing off blankets, looking around blearily. Clearly, I wasn’t the only person who’d taken the opening to crash for a few hours.

Fifteen minutes later, most of the people I saw were fully dressed and also had mugs in their hands. They put them down when the “fasten seatbelts” light went off over the door leading to the cockpit. Everyone snapped seatbelt buckles and rose to their feet, pulling luggage from overhead compartments and shouldering on jackets and coats.

I’d just taken a last gulping swallow of my own coffee when Kiko walked up to me and Black.

“We’ve got a Detective Honoré Allard and Chief Sergeant Gabriel Pastor meeting us inside the terminal,” she said, her voice all-business again. “They’ve got CCTV of Jem and the others leaving the Air France flight. The gendarmes tried to intercept and hold them, but Jem and the other persons of interest somehow…” She used air quotes, her voice cynical. “ … slipped past the officers and agents waiting at the end of the airbridge, and somehow made it through customs without being stopped, as well…”

Kiko placed her hands on her hips, looking us both over.

“You might have to talk them down, boss,” she added. “They’re wondering if this is a national security threat. Apparently they know who you are, and they think you wouldn’t be involved in this if it wasn’t a military intelligence issue.”

“I’ve met Allard,” Black acknowledged. “Nick knows him, too.”

Nick, who stood near us, aimed a brief look at Black. “It would probably be better if we didn’t remind Honoré that we’ve met. I looked pretty fucking different when I last saw him. It’ll only raise more questions.”

I flinched at the reminder, then felt foolish it hadn’t occurred to me.

When he’d last met Allard face-to-face, Nick looked like a forty-something human police detective, complete with scattered gray hairs, crow’s feet, a thickening middle. He’d also had a much darker complexion back then, and not only from surfing. Now Nick wore the ageless, shockingly pale skin of a vampire, where he could pass for twenty-five, and didn’t scar.

Even Nick’s body size had changed.

He stood at least an inch taller now. He was also leaner, but with broader shoulders and longer legs. That didn’t even get into how differently he moved, his cracked-crystal irises, his strangely exaggerated features, his shockingly perfect teeth.

Nick hadn’t called Jean or Lauren on our way over the ocean, either, two friends of his in a special unit of the French police that linked to their intelligence services. I hadn’t thought about either of them until now, but they’d helped us once before, when we’d followed Black to Paris while Charles had him in custody.

Nick not calling his friends made perfect sense, though. It was the same reason Nick steered clear of any of his old colleagues in the S.F.P.D.

Angel told me, something like six months ago, that she’d spread the rumor around their old precinct that Nick moved to New York City about a year ago.

I wondered if Nick had changed his name legally yet.

I also wondered why the hell it had never once occurred to me to ask him any of that.

He’d lost a lot after what Brick had done to him.

“I’ll talk to Allard,” Black said, dismissive.

He gave me a surreptitious look before focusing his stare on Nick.

“You go with Kiko and Jax to hunt down the CCTV footage inside the airport,” he told the vampire. “It’s doubtful Jem would have taken the time to shut it down, so maybe we can get eyes on where he went from here. Jem has to know he’s on the clock now. Whatever the fuck he wants in Paris, he has to get there before we catch up with him.”

Nick exchanged looks with Kiko, who nodded back.

“Is Aura still alive?” I asked Kiko tentatively. “Were there are still four of them when they came through the airport?”

Kiko sighed, hands on her hips. “I mean, yes… I think so. Me and Jax were very clear that we’re looking for four people, and they didn’t contradict us, not even after we described them. But doc, these cops have likely had their memories tampered with. Nick and I’ll try to confirm with CCTV footage, but right now I can’t say with absolute certainty that four got off that plane.”

I nodded and bit my lip.

I couldn’t think about Angel yet.

I could barely contemplate something happening to Javier, much less Angel.

But Aura was likely the one in the most danger.

Unless, of course, Dalejem was doing this all for Brick, in which case, all bets were off on who might be at risk. Brick likely wanted the implants, whether in Aura, or Jem, or both of them, but that didn’t necessarily mean he wanted them dead.

Whatever motives the vampire king might harbor, if Jem hadn’t killed Aura yet, there was a decent chance he didn’t intend to. That still didn’t answer the question of what Jem was doing here, in Paris, but it might buy us time.

None of which reassured me about Angel or Javi.

The staircase had been attached to the plane’s open door by then, and everyone started to file out. I followed Black closely as he made his way down the aisle. Like before, he carried the significantly heavier bags filled with guns and ammunition, while I pulled our roller bag along the carpet, filled mostly with clothes.

I’d just fit my headset around and into my left ear as we waited for the people in front of us to disembark, when a voice burst out excitedly over the channel.

“Angel and Javi are here!” a happy Mika shouted. “Angel called Lizbeth from a pay phone in the terminal… they’re waiting for us inside!”

My knees nearly buckled in relief.

Gods.

Angel was here.

Jem let her go.

She was all right.

When my brain finally cleared from that initial shock, I heard cheers and sighs of relief all around me. I saw Jax wrap his arm around Kiko’s shoulders and squeeze… right before a body started moving fast through the line, shoving people aside as it made its way to the door.

It was Cowboy, Angel’s husband.

All of us got out of his way.

“Why the fuck didn’t Lizbeth call earlier?” Black growled through the line. “Their plane landed over an hour ago––”

“She just got off the phone with Angel,” Ace said, answering for Mika. “Angel told Lizbeth that they’d been held in a kind of ‘stasis’ when Jem first left them in the terminal.”

Mika chimed in.

“Jem must’ve held onto their minds from a distance until he could get far enough away,” she explained. “Lizbeth said they sounded pretty dazed, but Angel was insistent they were both all right. The only thing they’re suffering from is exhaustion. Apparently, Jem kept them awake the entire time on both flights. Also,” the small seer added apologetically. “Their minds would’ve been fighting the mental pushes, consciously or not. It’s really taxing for humans to be manipulated like that for any amount of time, because their mind will instinctively try to free itself… and panic when it can’t, putting even more stress on them.”

I glanced at Black and he looked at me.

I was torn between relief, disbelief, and fury.

I wanted to believe Jem couldn’t have done this.

I really wanted to believe it.

The prospect of Brick being behind Jem’s behavior should’ve been even more disturbing, at least from a purely strategic and tactical perspective. I couldn’t make myself feel that way, though. It wasn’t more disturbing.

Honestly, I would be relieved to find out the vampire king had been behind all of it.