Kellan belonged to her in every way now, and if fate wanted to take him from her, Mira intended to give that cruel bitch one hell of a fight.
Chapter Twenty-One
EMPTY.
No sign of Mira or Bowman or anyone else at the old military fort at the far end of New Bedford. The bunker and its collection of underground batteries, which crouched on an outcrop of overgrown, untended parkland banked on three sides by the Atlantic, appeared to have been vacated very recently. They'd missed the rebel bastards.
It was not the kind of report Nathan wanted to have to give Lucan. Hell, it was bad enough reporting it to Nikolai a few moments ago. He hadn't taken it well, erupting in murderous, black fury. Mira's father, in Boston with a small squad of his Order brethren, had been determined that Mira would be going home safe with them before dawn. Now that prospect was looking less and less feasible.
Nathan's team, along with Mira's three teammates, had just completed a full sweep of the purported rebel base and turned up nothing. Just abandoned furniture, tables and chairs, cots and beds, all still in place as it ostensibly had been when the base's occupants used it last. But Mira had been there; Nathan could almost feel her presence in his bones.
"Damn it!" The curse exploded out of him, a reaction too strong to contain. He didn't miss the turn of heads in his direction. The grave looks of his team and Mira's met him through the darkness as the warriors regrouped on the thick, weed-choked grass outside the bunker. Niko and his squad were heading there now too, to see the place for themselves and to strategize the rest of the night's patrol with Nathan and the other men.>He wasn't a virgin - not even close. But the impersonal encounters he preferred to seek out never involved touching or embracing or kissing.
In that moment, Jordana Gates couldn't have shocked him more if she'd pulled his 9-mm out of its holster on his hip and shot him point blank in the chest.
So much so, he wasn't even aware they were no longer alone in the room, until he heard the low sound of a male clearing his throat somewhere nearby.
Abruptly, Nathan disengaged from Jordana's hold on him and put a healthy distance between them. Her oceanic blue eyes were wide, pupils enlarged, deepening the Caribbean azure of her gaze before the kiss to a stormy turquoise now. She brought her hand up to her mouth and backed off quickly, moving to the safety of her friend's side in the living room adjacent to the vestibule.
Beautiful, cultured Carys Chase stood there beside swarthy, dangerous Rune, her fingers linked through his. "Are you all right, Jordana?" she whispered. Then, to Nathan, with no gentleness in her voice at all: "Why did you come here? Why the hell did you just assault Jordana? Tell me what's going on!"
The other Breedmate shook her pale blond head, mute. Even Nathan had trouble summoning his voice for a second. He leveled a cold look on Rune. "That's what I've come here to find out: What the hell is going on?"
Rune held his stare, his dark eyes unflinching. "Just visiting friends on a rare night off from the job. I assume there's no law against that."
"Make no mistake, you and I will talk later about what you think you're doing with this female," Nathan replied. He slanted a hard look at Carys, adding "We'll talk too." To which her chin went up a notch, impertinent, unrepentant. "Right now, I'm here to talk about the friend you met last night at the club," he said to Rune.
The Breed fighter got a strange look on his face, but it lasted only a fraction of a second before he shuttered it with a mask of indifference. "Don't have any idea what you mean."
"That's not what Cassian just told me a few minutes ago when I was there," Nathan countered. "He said you had a visit from a rebel piece of shit called Bowman."
Now Rune chuckled, and from what Nathan could tell, his denial was genuine. "You've been misinformed, my man. I'm not gonna try to guess what game Cass is playing with you, but I don't hang with rebels. And I don't know anyone by that name."
"Really? Cassian told me Bowman was at La Notte last night with Mira." Rune's expression seemed to turn a bit stonier now. "Cassian says you spoke with them for a while in your dressing room."
"That's a lie," Carys interjected, her caramel-brown hair swinging as she gave a vehement shake of her head. "Rune didn't have anyone in his dressing room last night . . . except for me."
Nathan's curse drifted from between his flatly pressed lips. His dismay over that news flash was only slightly less than what it would be for Carys's parents or her twin brother. "Obviously, someone's lying to me right now," Nathan said. "And I'll warn you all just once that I do not have time for bullshit."
Rune stared at him, assessing. Almost suspicious. "Sounds like the Order's got some trouble on their hands."
"Did you or did you not see Bowman with Mira last night?" he asked the fighter. "If you know anything about what he's doing with her, I need to know. Her life could depend on it."
Carys clutched Rune's hand a bit tighter, Nathan noticed. But Rune gave nothing away in his face. "Sorry I can't help."
"Sorry." Nathan snarled the word. "I can make you sorry."
Maybe that's what the bastard needed. Nathan took a pace forward, and couldn't help noticing that Rune stayed put. Didn't matter, because in that next second, both women stepped in to put themselves between the two Breed males.
"Stop this right now," Carys cried. She spun toward Rune. "Both of you, stop this!"
Nathan couldn't take his eyes off Jordana but saw in his peripheral vision when Rune gently stroked Carys's cheek.
Nathan hated that he'd likely end up hurting her tender heart in the next few minutes, when he and her apparent more-than-unlikely boyfriend took their unfriendly discussion into a physical one.
As he considered doing just that, his comm unit buzzed in his pants pocket. He took it out, saw the caller was Eli, one of his teammates in Boston. Before Nathan could even ask for an update, Eli blurted out the news Nathan had been ready to kill tonight to have.
"We got a bead on Bowman."