Page 35

34

THE C?TE D’AZUR

“ T hey just disembarked,” Alisha announced.

I was half-awake, bleary-eyed, lulled by the motion of the train, but somehow not quite able to sleep on it, either. I raised my head, propped my upper body up on an arm, and rubbed my slightly itchy eye with the palm of my hand.

Black stirred next to me, his arm still around me from behind.

We hadn’t gotten any real time alone.

We hadn’t gotten any time alone, in terms of being really, really alone, and certainly not in an intimate sense.

Half the team had been working through the night, in one way or another, and in one part of the train or another, including in the first-class car about eight of us shared. We slept in shifts, climbing into bunks, shutting the curtains, and doing our best to sleep through the activity we could sense, if not often hear, right on the other side of that thin protection of cloth.

I suspected Black might’ve been more successful in his attempt to sleep than I was, given how alert and sharp his voice sounded when he lifted his head.

“Where?” he asked.

I pulled open the drapes since I was closest, and so he could speak to Alisha face-to-face.

“They got off in Nice,” she said at once, blinking and blushing when she saw we were both still under the covers. “They disembarked around two minutes ago. It’s still only Jem and the girl. I haven’t seen any sign of… well, anyone else.”

Her eyes dropped back to the tablet she held.

She had the virtual component on, so I could see the faint outline of a Barrier signature moving like water above the screen. I knew that had to come from the infiltration team, back in San Francisco, or perhaps Yarli, who was supposed to be heading our way.

“Can we track them here?” Black asked.

Alisha nodded, still blushing faintly and avoiding looking at us directly, even though we were both fully clothed.

“Thanks to Nick’s friends in the French intelligence service, I’m already tied into the camera system in Nice,” she explained. “I’m watching them right now… they’re walking inside the train station. But Nick’s friend, Jean, says we’ll probably lose them once they get on the street. This isn’t like Paris. They don’t have much surveillance here… certainly nothing like San Francisco or London. I’m hoping satellite images can fill in the gaps, but Jean said he’d talk to the local gendarmes, see about possibly releasing a drone.”

“Show me.” Black yanked the blanket off his legs and half-climbed over me in sweat shorts and a blue T-shirt.

I made a few disgruntled noises, but mostly tried to get out of his way. Only after he was completely out of bed and standing in the middle of the room, staring down at the screen between Alisha’s hands, did I sit up on my own. I set my feet on the thin carpet of the floor and shivered, even as I pulled the blankets the rest of the way off my legs.

I wore a tank top and flannel shorts, so I was immediately cold.

Exhaling, I pulled myself up off the bed until I stood there, mostly vertical. I wanted coffee. My hair still smelled like smoke from the bombing the day before, and my skin felt gritty. My mouth tasted like I’d gargled bad milk.

I desperately needed to brush my teeth.

I also desperately wanted a shower.

Black glanced at me.

“Take one,” he urged. He looked at Alisha. “We’re at least an hour out, aren’t we?”

“One hour, twelve minutes,” she affirmed.

Black looked at me again. “Go ahead, doc. You didn’t take one before you went to bed last night, so it’s your turn. I’ll fill you in when you get out.”

I didn’t have to be told twice.

B lack handed me a coffee the instant I emerged from the steam-filled bathroom, still rubbing my wet hair with a towel. I felt like a new person.

I’d already thrown on jeans, a cropped T-shirt, and socks.

I took the cappuccino Black offered me, took a few heavenly sips, and set the cup down on the small dresser built into the wall. I tied my wet hair back in a bun at the top of my head, pulled a light sweater over my head, and picked the coffee up again. I sat down on the couch which had been our bed until Black, or someone, I suppose, had folded it back into its daytime configuration as a couch.

I took another sip of the coffee, and leaned my head against the couch’s backrest with a contented sigh.

“You are a prince,” I informed him.

“And you look gaos- damned hot like that, all wet and flushed and purring.”

I raised my head, glanced around the cabin, realized we were, miraculously, alone, and quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Inappropriate,” I said loftily.

“Not even a little bit,” he scoffed.

He checked his watch, and I saw the heated look in his eyes fade slightly as his mind zeroed back in on why we were here. “Fuck,” he muttered. “We’ve got twenty-eight minutes.” He gave me an apologetic look. “You good? I should go talk to the others before we arrive.”

I shooed him off with my fingers, taking another luxurious swallow of coffee.

I knew my lounging days would be over in minutes, if not seconds.

“Go,” I said imperiously.

Once he’d clicked the cabin door shut behind him, I set down my coffee cup again and sighed as I pulled myself to my feet. I found my boots first, and pulled them on over my socks. I moved on to weapons next, then replaced my sweater with a light jacket after checking the weather app on my phone.

It would be warm here by midday, but it was still fairly cool.

Anyway, the jacket worked better than a sweater with the guns.

I was just finished checking my second gun and shoving it into my ankle holster, when Black opened the door and walked back into the cabin.

He looked me over approvingly.

“You ready?” he asked. “It looks like they’re still in Nice. No trips to the airport. No beeline for the bus stop, or a rental car. They’re on foot now, after a taxi dropped them off on the other side of the port. They’ve been on foot since they left the taxi, but there are ferries that leave from the port, so I want us over there as soon as possible.”

I was already back on my feet.

“I’m ready,” I told him.

I’d dusted off the last of the cappuccino minutes ago.

Honestly, I kind of wanted another one, but it could wait.

Black touched his earpiece. “Dog? Hey, d’you mind grabbing the doc another cappuccino while you’re there?” He paused. “Yeah. No sugar. Three shots. Thanks.”

He clicked off the transmitter, and I frowned.

“We’re still using those?” I asked, motioning at the earpiece. “You know Brick might be able to hear that. Anything you say could be picked up by him or his people, even if you changed channels. Alisha told me it was actually a weakness of the organic design, that we needed to work on a different type of encryption going forward, so she could cut off individual earpieces when they get compromised like that. It’s just that none of us have ever lost one before now, and––”

“I know, doc,” Black broke in, smiling.

He looked me over, his eyebrow quirked.

“I know,” he said.

I was surprised to find three, white SUVs waiting for us on the curb outside the station after we got off the train in Nice. All of them had darkened windows. All three of them were BMWs, and probably had bigger and faster engines than what generally came standard.

I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Of course, Black had called ahead.

Everyone felt somber to me as we piled into the cars and found a place on one of the three rows of seats. I sat shotgun with Black, who climbed into the driver’s seat of the first car before I realized the original driver had gotten out and handed him the keys.

Once Black had his seat adjusted and clicked on his seatbelt, he didn’t wait, but put the SUV in gear and took off from the curb. He pulled around to the end of the pick-up area and aimed the car smoothly for the main road outside the station.

After a left at the first driveway, he gunned it, then wove skillfully through the morning traffic.

No one in our car spoke except Alisha, who sat in the row behind me and Black, next to Cowboy, Nick, and Angel. Behind them sat Jax, Kiko, Ace, and Mika.

Alisha only broke the silence to give updates on where she could see Jem and Aura.

“They’ve just left the main road now, near the port…” she said once.

“They’ve just crossed the road,” she continued a handful of seconds later. “It looks like they’re headed for the residential road…

“Wait, no, there’s something else there, some kind of national park. They must be going there. I don’t see anyone else following, or anywhere near them…”

“What’s the park?” Nick asked, quiet.

“Grotto du…” Alisha trailed, sounding bewildered. “I can’t say the name in French. It’s… I think it’s a cave. Some kind of archeological site.” She touched clicked over something on her tablet. “A.J. looked it up. He says it’s a national park, but not open to the public because of some structural damage. There’s a visitor center that’s normally open, but that’s not open today, either. He says scientists were digging in there, but they had some kind of cave-in a few years ago, so you have to have a special permit to even get inside…”

Alisha fell silent for a few minutes.

Black only asked one question.

“Did they go inside?” he said.

“Yes,” she said, sounding doubtful. “I think so. I can’t be certain. They walked up a kind of zig-zagging walkway thingy leading up to the site, but there’s a lot of tree cover, and right after that, they just disappeared. So I can’t know for certain if they went in… the whole area after that has a roof over it, so obviously the satellite’s useless… but I think they did. They could be in the visitor center right now, or even in the cave.”

Somehow, I didn’t think they were in the visitor center.

Like Alisha, though, I had nothing to base that on. Unfortunately, we’d never gotten that drone. Alisha had to work from only limited access to a satellite feed.

“Keep looking in the area,” Black said. His voice shifted to a lower growl, almost a mutter. “And check with Manny and Yarli, in case they have a better vantage point and can confirm if Jem and Aura went inside.”

I’d heard Black talking to Manny on a burner phone as our train pulled into Nice.

I knew they’d already arrived in the coastal city ahead of us, and had been following Jem and the girl ahead of us, too, as soon as they started coordinating with our team around the satellite images. It hadn’t occurred to me until just now that they might have actually watched Jem and Aura walk from the street up to the entrance of the cave.

I knew if there was a single person among us who could pull off following Dalejem without being seen, it would be Yarli. I also knew she would be extremely cautious as she did it, and not take unnecessary chances, or do anything else to spook him.

I also heard Black warn both of them about not using their organic headsets.

Even so, anxiety wanted to crawl over me as we drew closer to the port.

Whatever was causing it, it made my chest and lungs tight, my mind difficult to control, my mouth and throat thick with saliva. I couldn’t make sense of my own reactions, or what it was I was even reacting to exactly.

Was I afraid we’d end up having to kill Jem?

Was I afraid he’d kill one of us, or kill the girl?

Or was I more afraid Brick would wait until we caught up with all of them, then kill both of them? Because as much as what I’d said to Black the night before was true, that I didn’t fully believe the vampire king was pulling the strings on all the events of the past weeks, there was no doubt Brick had an interest, and was likely to be around.

I also knew it wasn’t above the vampire king to do something like that, if he decided he had a good reason to make a statement.

Whatever it was that was making me anxious, I couldn’t shake it.

I clasped my hands in my lap, and barely saw the traffic, or the little shops or newer hotels, or the older, more stately buildings, the churches and statues, parks and flowers, or the glimpses of startling blue when we got high enough to overlook the sea.

Eventually, we made it far enough south that the ocean was everywhere on my side of the car, and we were winding down a smaller road that headed around a mountain and to a beautiful, sparkling harbor sandwiched in a small canyon between a park and hillside homes. Some of those houses were colorful and huge, like something on a postcard, but I barely saw those, either.

I sat there, heart thudding painfully in my chest, while we crawled through traffic to reach the other side of the port, and wondered what the hell was wrong with me.

“Five minutes,” Black muttered, glancing at me.

The light had changed; the white SUV moved smoothly forward with the rest.

I could see a faint worry in Black’s eyes as he looked me over. I knew he could see the anxiety on me, and probably wondered what the hell was wrong.

Or maybe he knew.

Maybe he understood it better than I did.

“It’ll be all right, doc,” Black muttered, steering around a car that had stopped in the middle of the road to make a left turn. He got us around the end of the marina, then followed the curve back south and east.

I glimpsed a sign showing an abstract image of a neanderthal skull and a bunch of words I might have been able to puzzle out with my rusty French if I’d taken a few seconds.

I didn’t bother to ask Black, who I knew spoke and read perfect French.

I did see the words “Grotte” and “Entrée Interdite!” with a skull and crossbones under it, and that was enough.

According to the sign, the site was only twenty meters ahead.

“It’ll be all right,” Black murmured under his breath. “We’ll take care of this, and we’ll go home. All of us will go home. Jem, Nick, the girl, Manny, Yarli. We’re not losing a single fucking person to this. We’re not losing a single fucking one of us…”

His voice sounded like some combination of prayer and threat by the end.

It felt like Black was warning whatever might be listening there’d be consequences if they tried to get in his way, or fucked with him on any one of those points.

I wanted to believe him.

I wanted to know, deep in my bones, he was right.

But I really didn’t.