Damn it all to bloody hell.
Before his fury had a chance to explode out of him in a roar that would bring his mate, Gabrielle, flying into the room in alarm, Lucan vaulted out of his seat.
He began an agitated pace behind the conference table where Gideon and two of the Order’s district commanders had assembled with Lucan to review current missions and organize further operations. Tegan, chief of the New York City operation, and Hunter, who oversaw the Order’s presence in New Orleans, had remained in D.C. with their mates since the Global Nations Council summit last week.
A peace summit that had nearly resulted in catastrophe.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that this was not what I wanted to hear right now,” Lucan said, glancing at Chase’s grim expression on the screen. “We had slim prospects to begin with—just two potential sources of intel on this operation—and now we’re down one before we even get out of the gate. As for the other, the way things are going in Ireland with Mathias Rowan and his team, we may end up holding nothing but our dicks before this whole thing is over.”
“It could be worse,” Gideon said without looking up from the array of 3D touch-screen monitors laid out before him and illuminated with countless servers’ worth of data, which he swept through and resequenced like a deranged symphony composer. “A few nights ago at the summit, if we hadn’t stopped Reginald Crowe and Opus Nostrum’s Morningstar bomb, today we’d be engulfed in certain world war between the humans and the Breed.”
Lucan grunted. “Don’t think that’s off the table yet. If what Crowe promised—that Opus Nostrum and their plans are nothing compared to what the Atlanteans mean to do—then we stand on the brink of war every second of every day that we let Crowe’s kind elude us.”
On the video screen, Chase’s face remained sober. Lucan knew the serious warrior long enough to realize that failure didn’t sit well with him either. “Nothing to report out of Dublin yet, I take it?”
Lucan shook his head. “Rowan’s got a full squad on the ground in that city and outlying areas, searching for anything they can find on Crowe’s purported mistress. Without a name or physical description, they’re getting nowhere fast.” Lucan blew out a low curse. “It doesn’t help that Rowan’s had his hands full with JUSTIS in London recently as well.”
“How so?” Chase asked.
“They’ve been dealing with a rash of unsolved murders in that city recently. Human and Breed victims, a few of them high profile. Joint Urban Security finally got so desperate to make the killings stop, they extended an olive branch to the Order in exchange for an unofficial assist on the investigation.”
Tegan grunted. “ ‘Unofficial assist’ meaning handle it for them quietly and by any means necessary, so long as they don’t have to get their hands dirty.”
“It’s the old Enforcement Agency all over again,” Gideon said, his hands flying from one large display to another. “Except now it’s got a shiny new, politically correct name. Same old shit, but someone else is doing the shoveling.”
A onetime career Enforcement Agent himself, Chase arched a golden brow. “And there’s twice as much of it, now that the bureaucracy has been extended into both Breed and human law enforcement combined under the JUSTIS banner.”
“Their inefficacy is our advantage right now,” Hunter said, his deep voice unnervingly level, his input logical as always. “If local law enforcement decides to wash their hands of Cass’s slaying too, then the Order can investigate unimpeded by JUSTIS red tape.”
“We’d better hope for that,” Lucan said. “Hell, we’d better do more than hope. We need to run this thing down with every resource at our disposal. If Nathan and his team are right about this killing—this immortal-style execution in the middle of a city street—then we need answers, and we need them yesterday.”
“Understood and agreed,” Chase replied. He hesitated for a moment, then pointedly cleared his throat. “There was a witness … not on scene at the time of the killing, but someone who saw Cass—spoke to him—within hours of his murder.”
Lucan frowned. “You didn’t mention that a witness had been identified in the team’s reports.”
Another pause, and Chase’s mouth flattened. “Because she wasn’t included in any of the field reports that Nathan or his team filed. Rafe came to me a short while ago and personally informed me about the female. She’s a Breedmate from one of the Back Bay Darkhavens. Actually, she’s Carys’s best friend and roommate as well.”
Hunter cocked his head, eyes narrowed on Chase. “You’re saying Nathan overlooked a key detail of his investigation? He doesn’t make mistakes. That’s impossible.”
“No,” the Boston commander said carefully. “I’m saying Nathan deliberately omitted a key detail of his investigation when he sent in his report this morning.”
Lucan practically snarled his response. “Why the hell would he do something that stupid?”
Chase’s look said it all.
“Ah, Christ.” Lucan ran a hand over his jaw and barked out a humorless laugh. “He’s fucking her?”
“Nathan didn’t report back to base from patrol until just before sunrise,” Chase explained. “I don’t suppose he was out taking a long stroll.”
Lucan shot a hard look at Hunter. “You and Corinne don’t know anything about this?”
The former assassin who’d taken Nathan’s mother as his mate some twenty years ago gave a shake of his head, looking every bit as displeased as Lucan was. “Nathan is our son, but he came to us as a man, even at his young age. He keeps his private life private. That wall has been in place for a very long time. That said, Nathan would never allow his physical urges to overrule his duty. Or his training.”
“I suspect this could be something more than just a physical urge,” Chase interjected. “He’s distracted. Maybe even a bit obsessed. He thinks he’s keeping a lid on it, but the only one he’s fooling is himself.” Tegan chuckled darkly. “He’s hardly the first of us to fit that description.”
“No, he’s not,” Chase agreed. “But if he doesn’t watch his step, he’s going to leave me no choice but to pull him off the mission.”
“Chase is right,” Lucan said. “This shit is too critical. We need every team working as a unit—no exceptions. If Nathan can’t get on board with that, then we regroup and keep moving without him.” Lucan glanced back at Chase on the video screen. “What else do we know about this witness?”