Act of Command: An Immortal Ops World Novel (PSI-Ops / Immortal Ops Book 4) (8 page)

“I would really like to kill him,” breathed Corbin, his patience with the man wearing thin.

Malik offered a sympathetic look. “Sorry that she’s on another kick again. Remember the woman who was allergic to cats and spent the date sneezing because you’re a cat shifter?”

“Sadly, that was one of the better fix ups,” offered Corbin. Every so many decades his mother tried, rather unsuccessfully, to help him cross paths with his true mate. Mostly, he ended up taking women, he had no interest in and nothing in common with, out for a fancy dinner and then he took them home, never to speak to them again. He’d get through his newest fix-up and then his mother would give him a decade or so before she pushed hard again.

Duke stepped into the training room more. “What did you just say?”

“She’s on a matchmaking kick…
again
.”

He shook his head. “No, the girl’s name. The one she’s fixing you up with. What name did you say her name was?”

“Mae Bertelot.” Corbin eyed his longtime friend, and when he saw Duke’s expression fall, a sinking feeling started in the pit of his stomach. A strange knowing settled over him and fear ebbed through him. “She’s on the list, isn’t she? She’s one of the women being held for auction.”

Duke nodded. “And if what the girls cracked is right, the Corporation is in a bidding war over her. The girls have pictures of Mae in there, being held, and it’s not pretty. She’s the one close to us—at least we think. Techs are giving us six possible holding places.”

“We grabbed that intel over three days ago,” Corbin said, the panic continuing to hold him in its ironclad grasp. The same fear he’d felt just over twenty years ago. “She’s been with them for three days?”

“Longer,” said Duke, his expression hard. “From what Laney and Mercy uncovered, they grabbed Mae two weeks back. They’re taking bids on her from all over the world. Her final sale date is nearly here. And, Corbin, in the write-up online for her, for those bidding, it boasts that she was the product of a supernatural breeding facility.”

Corbin’s blood went cold. Thoughts of Jane and her unborn child hit him hard, and he swayed. For a split second he feared he’d go down. Somehow, he stayed upright. The woman in the yellow dress flashed in his mind, and try as he might to get her out of his head, he couldn’t. Images of her and then Jane continued to assail him.

Striker grabbed Corbin’s bag from him, shaking him from his state of alarm. “Go and change. We’ll ready the SUVs. We’ll get the girl you stood up back. Then she can slap you across the face for standin’ her up to start with and then hug you for savin’ her.”

When Striker was panicked, the shit was bad. Corbin thought harder on the dates Duke had mentioned and then paled. “She was taken around the time I was supposed to be on a date with her. I could have stopped it. I could have protected her. I could have been there to prevent anything from happening to her.”

Duke held the folder out to Corbin and with a heavy heart, Corbin opened it. He froze, his entire body tensing, breath no longer coming as he stared down at photos of a woman he’d seen before. It was the woman in the yellow dress. In the picture she was still in it, though it was ripped, tattered and torn, her brown eyes wide with fright, a handprint bruise covering her right cheek and her lip swollen and bloody. There were no glasses on her now. She only wore fear.

“It’s her,” he managed, his finger running over the edge of a photo.

“Yes, Mae,” said Duke.

Mae was the woman in the yellow dress? The one whose very scent had called his lion forth? The one his dick had been hard over for weeks? The one he’d jerked off to thoughts of in a fucking parking lot and then again nightly since seeing her? The one he’d stood up?

The one you left to be taken by mad men
, he reminded himself.

He shut off, the fierce need to get to her and protect her was all consuming. His lion side pushed through, the beast wanting to seek out those who had Mae and destroy them. Vaguely, he heard shouting and felt heavier—as if his feet were weighted as he made his way in the direction of the exit. He had to get to her. She needed him.

“Bring it down a notch, asshole!” shouted Duke, his voice piercing the confusion filling Corbin.

It took Corbin a minute to realize he was being held back by several of his men. As he lifted his arms, he saw that they were partially shifted, tan fur coating them. Claws had emerged from his fingertips and he realized then that his mouth was misshaped—as was the case when he did a partial shift. Disoriented, he shook his head, gaining something close to control once more. His arms and body returned to normal. “What happened?”

“You lost your shit,” said Boomer in a deadpan voice. “Seriously, lost your shit, dude. Not like you at all, boss.”

Malik released him and nodded. “You looked at the file on the young woman and then you started to shift as you went for the door. For a moment we all feared we’d have to hunt a lion through the city. What set you off?”

Corbin glanced down at the floor and saw the file was there, its contents scattered about. His gaze locked on the pictures of Mae, her bruises, her fear, the blood, and a sinking feeling settled over him. He thought about his reaction to her scent on the campus and how he’d been unable to stop thinking about her. About how he’d wanted to go to her, sink deep in her and lose himself.

He’d never reacted like that to anyone before.

The reality of it all hung in the air. Desperate for answers, he looked to James, knowing the good doctor would be the voice of reason. James’s face fell. He looked to the pictures and back to Corbin.

“Captain, is she your mate?” asked James, drawing a round of gasps from the men.

“She can’t be,” whispered Corbin, though he wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t look away from the pictures of her, captive, horrified. His lion beat at him, wanting out, wanting to go to her. It could help track her. It had her scent. He had to take another large breath to keep hold of it. “Can she?”

Duke grunted. “Let’s get her back, Captain. Just focus on that for now. We’ll ready the SUVs and call in some favors. Get yourself ready to go. Tut, can you assist him?”

“Of course,” said Malik.

Chapter Six

Striker waited until Malik had led Corbin from the training room before bending to retrieve the files on the floor. Duke did so as well, and Striker glanced over the information there. The sight of the woman and the condition she was in twisted his stomach. He eyed Duke. “If this ends poorly and she’s his mate…”

Duke sighed. “I know. I should have guessed something was going on. He’s been acting weird for a couple of weeks now.”

Striker nodded. Corbin had been off his game on the last mission and that wasn’t like the man. Corbin was always in control. Always ready to lead and he never struggled with his shifter side—unlike most of the men. Corbin rarely needed to join the men when they shifted forms and hunted on headquarter grounds. The woods outside of the facility were stocked with game for the men to hunt whenever their beasts needed to run free and be wild as intended by nature. If they didn’t hunt on a fairly regular basis they ran the risk of shifting and eating people.

It had happened before.

All the men on Striker’s team were natural born shifters, not bitten or genetically altered, as was the case with some PSI operatives. Natural borns had their own set of issues, like needing to shift and hunt animals every so often in order to stay in control of their beasts. Corbin’s willpower had always amazed Striker. They’d been through some hairy situations in the past, but Corbin had always kept his beast in line. But not now. Not with this woman. There was little doubt in Striker’s mind as to what that meant.

The woman was Corbin’s mate and it would end very badly if anything happened to her.

“He willnae ever be the same,” said Striker, having known Corbin a long time. The man was honorable and always did the right thing. If his mate died at the hands of the enemy, he’d blame himself, and he’d never let it go. He’d forever think that by standing her up on a date, he was the reason she fell into enemy hands. Maybe he was.

“Yeah, I know,” said Duke, lifting a sheet of paper. “If it were Mercy, I’d lose control too. And there is no way I’d forgive myself.”

“We know. We’ve seen it happen. If you’ll recall, we had to chain yer sorry ass because you would nae listen to us.”

“I recall,” snapped Duke.

“You were bein’ a dick. Do nae give me that tone. What else were we to do? Kill you?”

Duke grunted in frustration. “No.”

“We chained you to protect you and others.”

“I know.”

“If this lass is hurt or dead, Corbin willnae bounce back.”

Duke’s entire body stiffened as he leafed through the papers. “We should send him to this spot. It’s the smallest of the possible locations and probably isn’t the one they’re holding such a hot commodity at. They won’t be able to secure the facility like they could with these others. We’ll all split up and take one of the bigger ones. We’ll switch to channel five to communicate, but don’t tell the captain. We can keep in contact with him via Laney here at headquarters.”

Striker took a deep breath. He didn’t have a mate that he was aware of, and he didn’t understand the pull to any one woman. He liked all women equally. Hell, he loved women. The idea of commitment set his teeth on edge, but he did know enough about shifter males to know that if they did happen across their mates, not even the fires of hell would stop them from getting to them. “He’ll never forgive us if somethin’ happens to her on our watch.”

Duke touched his shoulder. “Striker, you saw him lose his shit just seeing the pictures of her. Do you think his head is in the game? We’ll get him back in a body bag if we let him go off half-cocked like this. No. We’ll send him to the location least likely to hold her. It will keep him safe while we find the girl. We’ll get her back here and then they can figure out what, if anything, they are to each other.”

Striker didn’t like the plan one bit, but Duke was right. Corbin’s state of mind said he’d rush in and get himself killed. Striker had seen Duke, James and even Boomer behave in much the same fashion when they’d found their mates. Reluctantly, he nodded. “Aye, yer right. I do nae like it, but yer right.”

“Right about what?” asked Malik appearing in the doorway minus Corbin.

“Where is the captain?” Duke glanced past Malik.

“I tossed him into the shower. Told him he smelled and needed to cool off and clear his head or he’d be of no help to the girl,” answered Malik.

Striker eyed Duke. “He thinks we should mislead the captain and send him to the location least likely to be holdin’ the lass.”

Malik was quiet a few moments before nodded. “I think that would be best. We let him go in as he is now and it will end poorly.”

“Yeah,” said Duke. “I fucking hate the Corporation.”

Chapter Seven

Corbin floored the SUV. The roads were empty this time of night. He was a skilled driver, and with his heightened senses, he took maneuverability to entirely new levels. He didn’t need the headlights to help him see, but he used them all the same. Driving without them tended to scare other drivers.

The coordinates Duke had given him were loaded into the SUV’s navigation system. Corbin had verified them on an actual map prior to leaving headquarters, as he’d found the nav systems in the vehicles to be less than reliable in the past. He wouldn’t chance being routed in the wrong direction when Mae needed him.

She needed you two weeks ago
, he thought, his emotions running wild. He hated himself for walking away from that campus. For bailing on her. As he thought back to the night of their blind date, he remembered heading back to his vehicle and taking the chickenshit approach to dealing with standing her up. He’d left her a message.

Another thought occurred to him. In the parking lot he’d seen a black van and men who looking back now, seemed out of place. He gasped. They’d taken Mae. He knew it. Knew they were the ones responsible and knew that he’d ignored them, ignored his inner alarm system because he’d been too busy jacking off to relieve the pain in his cock.

He’d seen her abductors and he’d done nothing to stop them from taking her.

“Fuck!”

His beast was there, on edge, waiting for any opening it could seize to take control. It didn’t understand that Corbin was trying to get to Mae. It wasn’t putting paws to pavement, the wind in its hair as he ran wild and free towards her, therefore, in its mind no progress was being made.

His cell rang and he grabbed it without looking at who was calling. The moment he heard his mother’s voice, he cringed.

“Corbin, did you happen to reach Mae?” she asked, worry in her voice. “I managed to get in touch with Ellen and they said they’ve been trying to connect with Mae for days, but that she’s not responding to their messages.”

He lived the type of life that required him to keep a great number of secrets. This was one. He knew the information would be termed classified, but he didn’t care. “Mother, I need you to keep her parents calm. Can you do that?”

He didn’t want to be calm. He wanted to rip people’s throats out, but he didn’t need frantic parents getting involved. Not yet.

His mother gasped. “Something has happened to her, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And you are unable to give me details,” she pointed out, already knowing how his job worked.

He tensed as emotions slammed into him. For a brief second he felt like the child his mother often treated him as. “Mother, she’s in danger. It’s very bad. I’m going to find her and I’m going to rip apart every motherfucking piece of shit who dared to touch her.”

He sighed, waiting for his mother to comment on his language. She liked to blame his time in America for his mouth. His mother made a choked sound and he realized she was crying. “I was right, wasn’t I?”

He didn’t respond because he didn’t understand the question.

“She sent me a picture of her newest sculpture, Corbin,” she said, growing quiet for a long moment. “When I saw it, I just knew. It’s you, darling.
All
of you. It’s why I pushed for a blind date. Deep down I knew she’s yours, son. Isn’t she?”