Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
7
The dark-glassed midrise building was just steps from the Hudson River. It had that slick sheen of a new construction, incongruent with the surrounding older brick buildings, mostly warehouses, at the very west end of Manhattan’s West Fifties. Like slapping a shiny filtration faucet on the old sink that was Hell’s Kitchen. Meghna was both repulsed and impressed. Third Shift was bold…making their headquarters so visible when discretion was the better part of valor. But then again, wasn’t she doing more or less the same thing? Operating in the spotlight, drawing people to her, trading on her looks and her connections and her charms—both natural and supernatural?
The driver pulled the nondescript black SUV around the back of the building and down into an underground parking garage. Meghna tucked her public smartphone away into the shoulder bag she’d brought with her. Wallet, keys, other devices, other incidentals. She’d left everything else in the suite. There was a fifty-fifty chance that she wouldn’t ever be going back there, and she wasn’t sorry for it. It was a pied-à-terre, a love nest, a set piece for a play. Mirko had a mansion in Westchester and a penthouse in Midtown. She spent most nights in a loft in Tribeca, and that was where a few of her personal belongings lived full-time. That hotel suite had just been a place she stayed once in a while. A place that had brought her no joy…not until last night and this morning. When Elijah Richter had tried over and over again to get through the barriers she’d long ago erected between her body and her mind…and nearly succeeded.
She’d enjoyed going to bed with him. She’d almost forgotten that they were using each other, lying to each other, all while pleasuring each other. There was no forgetting it now as they slipped out of the parked SUV and walked across the well-lit garage. There were three other black SUVs of a similar make and model, along with various cars she presumed belonged to the operatives themselves. The driver walked ahead of them, like he didn’t want to be around for whatever she and Elijah were heading into. And indeed, when they entered a corridor with two elevators, he offered Richter a jaunty salute before pressing his finger to a biometric scanner and hopping into a car by himself.
Elijah scanned his own index finger and then made an after-you gesture when the doors to the second car opened. “We’re the only ones with access to these lifts and the garage,” he said, pronouncing the word the British way, like her Indian-born father did GAH-rahje. “There’s visitor parking ’round front.”
Meghna could drum up any number of trivial things to say in response. She was used to that. Insipid cocktail-party conversation was the same whether you were in DC or Aspen, hanging with ambassadors or rock stars. She chose to stay silent, settling against the back wall of the elevator. There were no number buttons to press. Just another biometric scanner and a touch screen. Elijah swiped this way and that until the car shot upward smoothly and soundlessly.
And then they were stepping out into the heart of Third Shift. An entity she’d only vaguely heard of. Still, she probably knew more about Richter’s agency than he did about the Vidrohi. There were secret organizations and then there were secret organizations. Hers had existed, in some form or another, for thousands of years. It would probably exist well beyond their lifetimes, into the future, if humankind didn’t manage to destroy the universe first. They had the training camp, sure, but they didn’t have a centralized hub, a headquarters. No home base. No home.
The office had a largely open floor plan. With a long, glass-walled conference room along the back that looked to be their command center. Everything was decorated in black and white and steel. The glass panels shielding the back room were lightly frosted, showing the shapes of the people inside and nothing more. The floors were carpeted with tightly woven gray fibers. Overall, it appeared to be a normal place of business, with cubicles and dividers in the center and a few offices along the sides—if you discounted the alarming amount of high-end tech. And the low hum of activity and energy that seemed to vibrate through the space. Expensive monitors were everywhere, showing everything from news feeds to stocks to CCTV from god only knew where. Visible surveillance cameras were mounted at the top of some of the floor-to-ceiling columns that marched toward the back—probably cover for the invisible ones. There were digital world clocks set high up into the same wall as the elevator, ticking away the hours in cities like New Delhi and Tokyo and Prague.
And here. Time was ticking here in New York, too. They likely had a matter of hours—if that—before Mirko realized Sasha was missing. That he hadn’t detoured to some den of iniquity en route to catching her in flagrante. Precious hours. Meghna knew better than to waste them. She’d already wasted too many. Her window for convincing Mirko that Sasha was paranoid and her loyalties were above reproach was a slim one.
That window was growing narrower even as Elijah walked her to the back of the floor, to the conference room that was already buzzing with movement and chatter. Five people were scattered around the space, bent over laptops and tablets and files or studying 3D modules they’d brought up from projectors positioned above the long, black table that dominated the center of the room.
“Jack and I’ve got offices. An actual conference room for client meetings. But we spend most of our time back here in Command. Easier. More efficient,” Elijah said before adding, “Would you like to inspect our closet space?” in his best snooty Downton Abbey accent. It was strange hearing the crisp higher pitch from his lips after the rough comfort of his real one. It almost distracted her from what he’d actually said.
When it registered, Meghna narrowed her eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to inspect something? Didn’t get your fill earlier?”
“All in good time, love. All in good time.” Elijah broke away from her side to go confer with a tall white man. Brown-haired. Generically handsome and radiating privilege in a way that spoke of frat parties and hedge funds and an Ivy League education. His shirt, collar undone and with the sleeves pushed up, was tailored. So were his gray suit pants. The matching jacket was draped over a nearby leather captain’s chair. His hands were devoid of any rings. He was clean-shaven, and he and Elijah had a matching mulish set to their jaws.
“I have to go back to Mirko,” she said, interrupting whatever Richter was telling the bespoke bachelor. “Before he realizes I was in any way involved.”
“The hell you do.” Elijah whirled back to her, his eyes blazing. “Going back now guarantees he’ll catch on.”
She bristled. She couldn’t help rolling her eyes as well, even though her media training had mostly broken her of the habit. “As opposed to the subtlety of vanishing from my suite and coming here with you? Not suspicious at all,” she spat. “He’ll just think I booked an extra-long spa vacay. No big deal!”
“Joaquin could arrange that if you’d like. They’ve done similar things for cover in the past.” Elijah gestured toward a brown-skinned operative swiping through the 3D blueprints of some sort of facility. “Joaquin Serrano. Hacker extraordinaire, all-around tech guru, and Starbucks flat-white addict.”
“That sounds like an actual compliment, Lije, and I’ll take it! I’ll take the assignment, too!” they assured, light-brown eyes dancing with obvious delight at the prospect. “I can populate your social media with photos and status updates. Make it look like you jetted off to the hot springs. Easy. Just give me a few base images to work with.” They held out their hand for her phone, wiggling their fingers impatiently.
Meghna felt compelled to unlock her device, call up her photos, and comply—even though Joaquin didn’t have any supernatural powers that she could detect. Maybe it was their dimples. Or the charmingly awkward way they scrubbed at their curly black hair. Or the T-shirt they wore that declared “Fuck the patriarchy! Read romance!” She had no intention of giving in to Elijah Richter as easily.
“As far as I can see, I have two options,” she told him. “Getting away from all of this and surrounding myself with as many paparazzi and clout-chasers as possible. Or going back into the fold. Pretending nothing happened. Playing out the charade for as long as I can. If I can get what I went in for, great. If I can get out alive, even better.”
His brows rose, and he crossed his powerful arms over his chest. “What did you go in for?”
Meghna was entranced by the flex of his forearms, but she wasn’t about to share any answers as a result. No. “Closet space,” she said tartly.
* * *
It was like watching a sexually charged tennis match—this give-and-take between Elijah and Meghna Saxena-Saunders. But Third Shift had no time for spectator sports. Grace cleared her throat and tapped her fingers on the smooth surface of the conference table to get her boss’s attention. “What’s our play? What do you need the team to do, Lije?”
She had just a handful of days off before her next shift at the Queensboro Community Hospital. They’d started noticing the wide gaps in her surgery schedule over the past year. And despite her flawless work in the OR, the board was considering not renewing her contract. She supposed that should worry her. Maybe it would when it came to that. In this moment, she was only concerned with what she needed to do for 3S. She’d long ago learned how to compartmentalize her life. Her brain. Her heart. It was what made her an excellent surgeon and a valuable operative.
Elijah would have snapped at anyone else for interrupting his verbal and ocular standoff with the woman who’d been his mark up until a few hours ago. He’d decided Grace was a cut above “the ragtag bunch of gits” that made up Third Shift. Treated her like she was Wendy among the Lost Boys. So all he did was register her questions with a sharp nod. He stalked over to the table and swiped across one of the projection consoles, bringing up a string of text and two file photos.
“Joaquin’s already harvested quite a bit from the Spider and from Nichols’s mobile phone,” he said. “The most recent, and most relevant, number belongs to a vampire going by the name of Octavio ‘Tavi’ Estrada.” Elijah gestured to one of the photos. It was a grainy surveillance picture from the VIP party of a man in profile. Dark-haired. Well dressed. “He’s on a number of watch lists. FBI, MI6, INTERPOL. He has his fingers in a lot of pies and his fangs in a lot of necks.”
Grace felt rather than saw Finn react in the seat next to her…and it sent an answering shudder through her. A shudder and a frisson of alarm. Finn Conlan was not a subtle person. He flirted wildly, spoke too frequently, and allowed his eyebrows entirely too much expressive freedom. So when he went deathly still and equally silent at the mention of Tavi Estrada, she knew it could only mean trouble.
“Estrada is an intermediary,” Elijah was saying, reading Joaquin’s report off a tablet. “He helped arrange the transport of the bioweapon Aston is so hot to sell. He knows what it is and where it’s going. He knows when the auction will take place.”
“I would have known all of that.” Meghna slapped the conference table with her palm as she exhaled in frustration. “Damn you, Richter. I was so close. Mirko took me everywhere, and the auction was next on my appearance list. And you had to go off half-cocked. Literally.”
Elijah slapped his own palm down, like they’d moved from tennis to some sort of high-stakes card game. “I don’t recall you complainin’ at the time, love.”
Grace tuned them out, canting her body toward Finn. “You know him,” she said in low tones beneath the command-center chatter. It was not a question.
He seemed to go even paler than his usual sun-loathing pallor, paper-white and waxen. His lashes fluttered like dark butterfly wings, and his chest rose and fell in the mimicry of human breaths. “Intimately,” he admitted quietly after three interminably long beats.
Finian had known a great number of people intimately. It was a source of pride. Defiant pride. His queer polyamorous fuck-you to a world that demanded conformity and spit on anyone who stepped out of line. Grace had maintained a defiant sort of pride of her own in keeping her notch off his bedpost. Keeping him wanting. Keeping him her colleague and friend. For all the good that had done. Finn had gotten her into his bed anyway…no matter that she’d put him there first. She’d fallen between the sheets so hard and so fast that she was still spinning weeks later. She suspected that Nate was keeping him at a distance for similar reasons. They’d grown too close during the showdown with Vasiliev and Joe Peluso several weeks before. So they’d redrawn the boundary lines. There was no pride or pleasure, however, in learning that this Tavi Estrada had gorged on something they’d only just tasted themselves.
Because Finn—her exasperating, infuriating, beautiful beloved—looked absolutely gutted. And Jackson and Elijah finally noticed.
“Why are you so quiet, Conlan? Out with it,” Elijah snapped, pulling his gaze from Meghna, who’d been his primary focus since they arrived.
Finn reached for Grace’s hand beneath the table. She squeezed his fingertips as he pasted on a devil-may-care smile and punctuated it with a brow quirk. “Estrada and I go way back,” he said. “All the way back to 1960. Before any of you lot were even a twinkle in your mum’s eye. He’s ruthless, efficient, almost as charming as I am. But unlike your friendly neighborhood vampire, he can’t be trusted. Because he has one interest and one interest only: whatever benefits himself. No matter who gets hurt in the process.”
Finn’s light tone ended on a dark note, and his gaze flitted to the smooth obsidian surface of the conference table before meeting Elijah’s once again. It was probably clear to everyone in the room who’d gotten hurt in the process. And a perfect opportunity for ribbing, for jabs at the comrade who was always taking potshots at the rest of them. Grace leveled each and every person with a death glare that telegraphed “Don’t you dare.” Joaquin, Jack, even Meghna, who was a veritable stranger despite being a minor celebrity…none of them escaped her warning.
Lije nodded back tightly. Message received. “He can’t be trusted…but can he be turned? Can we use him?”
“Yes,” Finn assured. But his grip on her hand betrayed his private doubts. And so much more. “As long as you know he’s as likely to shiv you in the back as he is to help you. Estrada’s an opportunist. And he’ll fuck off to parts unknown the first chance he gets. Leave you holding the bag.”
Elijah didn’t look at Grace this time. He just leaned on the table, palms braced, and kept his attention locked on the only vampire in the room. “No, he’ll leave you holding the bag—so you’d better suss out where you’re going to put it. I want you on this, Finn. You’ve history with the man. You know how he operates. I’d love to bring someone else up to speed, but we just haven’t got the time.”
Apparently “don’t you dare” only went so far. Grace wanted to say something. To intercede on Finn’s behalf. But before she could, he spoke up for himself. “Of course,” he said, flashing a wide, false smile. “I wouldn’t expect anything less. Can’t wait to stage a reunion with my old pal Tavi.”
“Then I’m running point.” Grace followed up immediately. Without even having to think about it. She just held Finn’s hand tighter, like she could will him some of her warmth. “Because I know how Finn operates, and I’d like to keep the mission running smoothly.” And whatever past he had with Tavi Estrada, they would face it together.
“For what it’s worth, Tavi’s always treated me kindly. He keeps to himself for the most part. Doesn’t join in all the ‘reindeer games’ with Mirko and his men,” Meghna added. “Out of everyone in that crew, he’s the most approachable. Because he has his own agenda. I have no idea what it is, but his loyalty isn’t to them.”
“Good,” Jackson Tate, their other boss, chimed in from the other side of the room. “File a mission plan. Gear up. You know the drill. Now to the second photo and the second most relevant phone number. That’s a genetic researcher named Gary Schoenlein. Last known whereabouts: a private research lab just outside Hartford. His phone has also pinged in some odd locations in the Atlantic Ocean that we’re still narrowing down. The communications on Nichols’s phone are brief. Cryptic. But they indicate that Aston’s bioweapon has an unpredictable element that involves mutation.”
Elijah swore audibly, repeating the word mutation with obvious frustration. “Where have we heard that before? Haven’t we got enough mad scientists mucking about with DNA? Sending their experiments out into the world?”
He was referring to Joseph Peluso, who’d been newly rechristened JP Castelli and newly recruited into Third Shift. The military had created an entire elite unit of genetically modified shifters—infusing human soldiers with supernatural DNA—and was purportedly keeping an eye on the operatives who left active duty. They hadn’t done a very good job with Peluso. Which was in part why Third Shift was knee-deep in dead Russian gangsters now. Elijah was still infuriated by the whole thing—especially their new werewolf recruit, who got under his skin even more than Finn did.
“Lije, if I were you, Dr. Schoenlein is where I would go next,” Jack told him. “We need to know exactly what this weapon does. And how to stop it. Bonus: It would get you the hell out of town while Aston’s still wondering where his guy went. Stay out of sight an extra day or two if you need to.”
Grace watched the tennis match go back into play. Elijah and Meghna Saunders volleying glares back and forth before they came to some sort of not-silent-for-long accord.
“I’ll go along,” Meghna said after a minute of this communication. “But my operation remains my own.”
It was a sentiment Grace could appreciate. Her operations were always her own, too. And so were her people.