Midnight Rising (Midnight Breed 4)

With a speed and agility that still shocked her, he leapt into the air. Dragos returned the challenge, and with an otherworldly roar, the two powerful Breed males smashed into each other and locked into a fierce hand-to-hand combat.>"The car's sitting on Jewel Avenue in Queens, and the cell phone tracks to a location one block away from that. There's no movement coming out of either one."

As Rio cursed, he heard Nikolai's voice in the background, barely audible over the speaker. Something about Director Starkn and one of the photographs Dylan took.

"What did he just say?" Rio demanded. "Get Niko on the line. I want to know what he just said."

Gideon's voice was hesitant...and the vivid oath he swore an instant later did nothing to reassure Rio either.

"Damn it, what did he say?"

"Niko just asked me what Starkn was doing in the background of one of Dylan's pictures..."

"Which one?" Rio asked.

"The one from that charity cruise her mother was on. The one Dylan ID'd as being the runaway shelter's founder, Gordon Fasso."

"That can't be," Rio said, even while a voice inside of him was telling him the exact opposite. "Put Niko on."

"Hey, man," Nikolai said a second later. "I'm telling you. I saw Starkn with my own eyes. I'd know him anywhere. And the dude standing in the background of this picture is Enforcement Agency Regional Director Gerard fucking Starkn."

The name sank into his brain like acid as Rio weaved around a sluggish semi-trailer and floored the gas pedal through an empty stretch of pavement.

Gerard Starkn.

What the hell kind of name was that?

Gordon Fasso.

Another odd spelling.

And then there was Dragos, and his treacherous son. Couldn't forget that bastard. He was mixed up in this somehow too, Rio was certain of it.

Could Gordon Fasso and Gerard Starkn be in collusion with Dragos's son?

Oh, Holy Mother...

Gordon Fasso. Son of Dragos.

The letters began to jumble and resequence in Rio's mind. And then he saw it, as clear as the blare of red taillights that stretched up ahead of him for about a mile solid.

"Niko," he said woodenly. "Gordon Fasso is the son of Dragos. Gordon Fasso's not a name. It's a fucking anagram. Son of Dragos."

"Ah, Christ," Nikolai replied. "And if you mix up the letters of Gerard Starkn...you get another anagram: dark stranger."

"That's who's got Dylan." Rio rolled up on the parking lot of traffic and slammed his hand down on the dashboard. "Dragos's son has Dylan, Niko."

She was alive, that much he was sure of, and it was enough to keep him from losing his mind.

But his enemy had her, and Rio had no way of telling where he might have taken her.

And even without the bottleneck that was blocking all southbound lanes of the highway, he was still some long hours away from the New York state line.

He could be losing her forever...right now.

Dylan came awake in the dark backseat of a fast moving vehicle. Her head was thick, her senses dazed. She knew this foggy feeling; she'd been tranced at some point, and was now, somehow, breaking out of it. Through the heavy psychic cloak that had been dropped over her mind, Dylan felt another force reaching out to her.

Rio.

She could feel him in her veins. She could sense him in the power of their blood connection and in her heart as well. It was Rio reaching past Fasso's trance to give her strength, urging her to hang on. To stay alive.