Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [627]
Gideon nodded. “He’s on hold back in the tech lab. I thought you’d want to talk to him personally.”
“Damn straight I do.”
The gunfire at the range came to an abrupt stop as one of the other warriors, the Order’s only other Gen One member, Tegan, jogged back and delivered the news of Niko’s contact to the five males shooting at targets. The warriors at the range—Dante and Rio, longtime members; Chase, who’d left the Enforcement Agency to join the Order last summer; and the two newest recruits, Kade and Brock, both brought in by Niko—put down their weapons and strode forward behind Tegan, all of them a knot of muscle and grim purpose.
Rio, one of the warriors who was tightest with Nikolai, was the first to speak. His scarred face was taut with concern. “What happened to him up there?”
“He’s only given me the Reader’s Digest version so far,” Gideon said. “But it’s all sorts of fucked up, starting with Sergei Yakut’s murder two nights ago.”
“Holy hell,” Brock muttered, raking his dark fingers over his skull-trimmed black hair. “This Gen One assassination shit is getting way out of hand.”
“Well,” Gideon added, “that’s not exactly the worst of it. Niko was arrested for the killing and taken into Enforcement Agency custody.”
“Ah, shit,” Kade replied, his pale silver eyes narrowing. “You don’t suppose he—”
“No way,” Dante said without a second’s hesitation. “I doubt he shed a tear for blood-clubbing scum like Yakut, but there’s no way Nikolai had a hand in his death.”
Gideon shook his head. “Nope. And it wasn’t the work of an assassin, either. Niko says Yakut’s own son brought in a Rogue to kill his father. Unfortunately for Nikolai, Yakut’s son has some kind of alliance with the Enforcement Agency. They hauled Niko in and threw him into a containment facility.”
“What the fuck?” This time it was Sterling Chase who spoke up. Being a former Agent himself, he was as aware as any of the warriors in the room how unpleasant a visit to one of those Agency-managed Rogue holding tanks could be. “Since he’s conscious enough to phone in, I assume he’s not still being held there.”
“He escaped somehow,” Gideon said, “but I don’t have all the details yet. I can tell you that there’s a female involved, a Breedmate who was a member of Yakut’s household. She’s with Niko now.”
Lucan didn’t comment on that troublesome newsflash, although his dark expression probably spoke plainly enough for him. “Where are they?”
“In the city somewhere,” Gideon replied. “Niko wasn’t sure of the exact location, but he says they’re secure for now. Are you ready for the real kicker?”
Lucan arched a brow. “For fuck’s sake. There’s more?”
“Afraid so. The guy who tossed Niko’s ass in the containment facility and personally oversaw his torture? Apparently during one of his chattier moments, the son of a bitch admitted a connection to Dragos.”
CHAPTER
Twenty
Nikolai was in the middle of a cell phone conversation when Renata carne out of the bathroom from her long, much-needed soak. She’d evidently fallen asleep in the tub at some point because the last thing she remembered was hearing Jack’s voice in the garage apartment after Nikolai had gone out to meet him, and there was no sign of him now. She stepped into the room, her hair damp at the ends and clinging to her neck, her body wrapped in the towel Nikolai had set out for her.
She was groggy and achy, still overly warm, but the cool-water bath had been just what she’d needed. Nikolai’s kiss hadn’t been half bad either.
Speaking in low, confidential tones, he glanced over at her from where he sat straddling a folding chair near the card table in the center of the room, his pale blue eyes doing a quick but thorough head-to-toe scan of her body. There was an unmistakable heat in that brief gaze, but he was all business on the phone with what she could only assume was the Order back in Boston. Renata listened as he provided an efficient run-through of the circumstances of Yakut’s murder, Lex and Fabien’s apparent alliance, Mira