Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [771]
“My thanks for your willingness in helping us try to track Roth,” he said in his deep, commanding voice. “I don’t expect it’s easy for you. There is still time for you to change your mind, if you’d rather not—”
“No,” Claire interrupted. She gave a mild shake of her head. “I want to do this. After all I know about him now, I need to do this.”
A grim nod was Lucan’s only reply as Gideon summoned everyone’s attention for a final run-through of the grid he’d mapped out for the females to follow. Claire listened to the instructions that would take them south of Boston and into Connecticut, beginning a sweep of the area near the New York State line, where she’d learned that Dragos had once been confronted by Dylan’s mate, Rio, but managed to escape. From there, the recon mission would cover as much ground as possible during daylight hours, hoping that somewhere along the way, Claire’s blood bond to Roth would pick up a solid trail that the Order could follow up on after dark.
“I’m giving you each a phone equipped with GPS,” Gideon was saying now, walking away from the map he’d charted on the wall to retrieve three cell phones from the table. He handed them out to Claire, Dylan, and Renata. “Keep them turned on and secured on your person at all times. We’re going to be monitoring your location and progress from here, but we want hourly check-ins, minimum. You get a beat on Roth, you phone in ASAP. Anything looks or feels off to any of you while you’re on this mission, you phone in. If you have any reason to stop the vehicle, even for a two minute bathroom run, you phone in. Understood?”
The three of them nodded their agreement, although Renata did so while rolling her eyes at Claire and Dylan. Underneath her calf-length black trench coat, the ebony-haired Breedmate wore lug-soled boots, dark denim jeans, and a black turtleneck—passable enough as street clothes, if one didn’t look too closely at the lumpiness that ringed her slender hips. A small arsenal of blades and pistols were sheathed and holstered on the leather belts that wrapped her waist.
To this impressive collection of weaponry, Nikolai added one more: a nasty-looking, long-barreled gun roughly the length of Claire’s arm. He handed it to Renata, then placed a clip of ammunition in her open palm.
“Your special titanium hollowpoints?” she murmured, then beamed up at him as if he’d given her a bouquet of prize-winning roses.
Niko grinned, twin dimples framing his broad smile. “Nothing says I love you like custom-made rounds.”
Renata kissed him and laughed, pocketing the clip and carefully slinging the gun’s strap over her shoulder. “Unnecessary, but sweet. Thanks, babe.”
“Those Rogue-smoking rounds aren’t just for killing vampires,” Lucan said. “They’ll take down a Minion just as well. Don’t hesitate to shoot if you feel the situation warrants it at any time.”
Renata nodded. “Trust me, no worries there.” She sent a look at Claire and Dylan. “Ready to hit the road, girls? Let’s rock and roll.”
Claire slipped the cell phone into the pocket of her loose jeans, then moved along with the other two women as they made their way to the automatic glass door of the tech lab. She couldn’t keep her eyes from searching the corridor outside, looking for Andreas. But he wasn’t there, and he wasn’t coming either. She didn’t know if she had driven him away or if she had already lost him before their fruitless confrontation a few hours earlier.
Not that it mattered.
He wasn’t there.
He wasn’t hers, and possibly never would be.
Claire supposed that now was as good a time as any to start getting used to that fact all over again.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five
Reichen had been prowling the compound’s corridors for the better part of the morning, trying unsuccessfully to walk off the spasms and tremors that were racking his body. He padded barefoot down one of the long, twisting spokes of white marble hallway, forced to pause every twenty paces or so when the shakes and dry heaves got too bad for him to keep moving.
His chest was clammy, the cool air