Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [950]
But there was a true calmness inside her, one that had been with her in the infirmary room—since the moment Brock had put his hands on her and promised she was safe. It was that reassurance as well as her own determination to soldier on that kept her from breaking down as she walked the labyrinth of corridors with Alex.
“We’re almost there,” Alex said as she led Jenna around another corner, toward another long stretch of gleaming hallway. “I thought you’d be more comfortable getting cleaned up and dressed in Kade’s and my quarters rather than the infirmary.”
Jenna managed a vague nod, although it was hard to imagine that she might be comfortable anywhere in this strange and unfamiliar place. She walked cautiously, her rusty cop instincts prickling as she passed unmarked room after unmarked room. There wasn’t a single exterior window in the place, nothing to indicate where the facility was located, nor what might lie beyond its walls. No way to tell even whether it was day or night outside.
Above her head, tracking the length of this corridor like the others, small black domes concealed what she guessed must be surveillance cameras. It was all very state-of-the-art, very private, and very secure.
“What is this place, some kind of government building?” she asked, voicing her suspicions out loud. “Definitely not civilian. Is it some kind of military facility?”
Alex slid her a hesitant, measuring glance. “It’s more secure than any of those things. We’re about thirty stories belowground, not far outside the city of Boston.”
“A bunker, then,” Jenna guessed, still trying to make sense of it all. “If it’s not part of the government or military, what is it?”
Alex seemed to consider her reply for a moment longer than was needed. “The compound we’re in, and the gated estate that sits above us on street level, belongs to the Order.”
“The Order,” Jenna repeated, finding that Alex’s explanation was raising more questions about the place than it answered. She’d never been anywhere like this before. It was alien in its high-tech design, a far cry from anything she’d ever seen in rural Alaska or any of the places she’d been in the Lower Forty-eight.
Adding to the strangeness, beneath her slippered feet, the polished white marble was inlaid with glossy black stone that made a running pattern of odd symbols along the floor—arcing flourishes and complex geometric shapes that somewhat resembled tribal tattoos.
Dermaglyphs.
The word leapt into her thoughts out of nowhere, an answer to a question she didn’t even know to ask. It was an unfamiliar word, as unfamiliar as everything about this place and the people who apparently lived here. And yet the certainty with which her mind supplied the term made it feel as though she must have thought or said it thousands of times.
Impossible.
“Jenna, are you all right?” Alex paused in the corridor a couple of steps ahead of where Jenna’s own feet had ceased moving. “Are you tired? We can rest for a minute, if you need to.”
“No. I’m okay.” She felt a frown creasing her forehead as she glanced up from the intricate design on the smooth floor. “I’m just … confused.”
And that was due to more than just the peculiarity of where she found herself now. Everything felt different to her, even her own body. Some part of her intellect knew that after five days unconscious in a sickbed, she probably should be exhausted from even the short distance she’d just walked.
Muscles didn’t naturally rebound from that kind of inactivity without a bit of pain and retraining. She knew that from her own personal experience, from the accident four years ago that had put her in the hospital ICU in Fairbanks. The same accident that had killed her husband and young daughter.
Jenna remembered all too well the weeks of hard rehabilitation it had taken to get her back on her feet and walking again. And yet now, after the ordeal she’d just awakened from, her