A Shadow's Embrace Read online

  Wow. She touched her mouth. She could almost feel his tongue, his teeth grazing her lips.

  Dagan stilled and closed his eyes. “Jesus, Devyn. I’m losing that thread.”

  So was she. Swallowing back the confession, she settled on the bed and picked up the bag. Okay, she could do this. Small talk. Drag the conversation to safer terrain. She’d seen Mia do it countless times when campfires got heated. She could do this.

  “Well, might as well get to work while I dine. Happen to have a laptop on you?”

  She already knew the answer. Eyeing the go-bag, which was standard protocol for Indigo Order, she regarded him through half-hooded eyes as she opened her chips.

  “It won’t do you any good. There’s no Internet in this area. I made sure of it since I figured you’d be stubborn and insist on using your abilities.” He leaned in his chair. “You can power up tomorrow if we’re still clear. Tonight you rest. You burned out today.”

  Fine. Now wasn’t the time to admit she didn’t need the Internet to establish contact. That’d just chap his ass. His very fine, very firm ass. She munched on a chip and twisted her soda open. Nothing tasted worse than hot diet soda, but she couldn’t be picky.

  “You eat already?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her stomach rumbled when she took a bite of tuna. “So what exactly are your powers?”

  “I’m a manipulator, but I detest the title.”

  “So you can force your way into someone’s mind, root around in their darkest thoughts, and bend them to your will.” She bit a chip and looked at him. “You must be fun at parties.”

  He shrugged. “You worm your way into anything with a power cord or an electrical panel. Your power is as invasive as mine. It’s semantics, really.”

  “Semantics.”

  “Yeah.” He stood. “We all have an ability we resent. How can we not loathe its existence when it makes us freaks?”

  “No, Dagan,” she whispered. “You are everything strong and true. You are our sword, our freedom, our justice. What you are not—can never be—is a freak. Because if a Shadow Elite like you, the best of our kind, is a freak, then what the hell does that make the rest of us?”

  His lips thinned. Tingles coursed along her cheek where his thumb had touched her.

  “Get some rest, Devyn. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  Chapter Four

  They were on the outskirts of Normal, hardly away from the Internet like Dagan had stated. She should’ve caught on to the mention of Normal and Tricks yesterday. The decent-sized city was the epicenter of a bustling freeway hive. That, combined with the added foot traffic of Illinois State University, offered the anonymity Devyn and Dagan needed.

  Devyn looked over at Dagan, who slept like the dead. Tricks had run by with a couple of her crew two hours ago, dropping off coffee, bags of breakfast sandwiches with hash browns, and enough bathroom paraphernalia to cleanse half of Chicago.

  They’d chatted softly in the corner, catching up on how the woman had been handling the outside since they’d last seen one another. Tricks had grown up with Devyn in the facility and opted to put stakes down in a smaller city, which was understandable given her unusual power.

  Devyn eyed the man who’d slept like the dead through it all. Waking up curled into someone was a new experience—one she hadn’t anticipated.

  They’d never considered not sharing the bed. Hell, it was king-sized. Since personal space wasn’t an option in the lab they’d been raised in, Devyn and her group often slept two or three to a twin-sized cot back then. After they’d gotten a bit older, they’d learned to sleep in shifts since they no longer fit comfortably on the small surface. They’d never been as big as Dagan. Even given his mammoth shoulders and huge-ass body, they had plenty of room not to get in each other’s personal space.

  Too bad she forgot to give herself the memo. Somewhere in the middle of the night, she’d encroached into his turf and cocooned her body alongside his. She’d never been a cuddler.

  Cuddlers were malleable pushovers her kind could spot from ten miles away. She couldn’t get that rep on the street and be respected. If word got out she was this comfortable letting Dagan take the reins, she’d hear about it for an eternity.

  But she’d liked letting him care for her, handle things until she recharged. Warmth settled in her gut and drifted into her soul when she thought about last night. He wanted her, but she didn’t have time to think about that.

  Rider was missing. Her team was in danger. More than seventy texts had come through in the past few hours. Street lookouts reported Conver’s continued presence in Chicago. Some of the minions had fanned out, hitting neighboring suburbs. No one had seen Rider. The ghost-like disappearance had the entire underground worried.

  Devyn now had enough time to infiltrate the dark net and retrace the path she’d taken the other day. The data she’d stumbled across had to be why Conver now chased her down like a rabid dog. Once she sank into the marrow of the network, she’d be more susceptible to outside forces. It was one of the reasons she’d sworn to her team she’d never go under without one of them present.

  She should’ve trusted her team. Running out of town and going in without them hadn’t been the right call. Damn. Guilt chewed away her insides. And here she was about to do it again. She swallowed, forcing the bile rising in her throat down.

  This was for them. She had to find the hornet’s nest she’d stirred. The SEO couldn’t fix her fuckup until she figured out what she’d done. After this shit storm settled, Devyn was done breaking the rules. She owed her team huge for always having her back.

  But they were absent because of her. Rider was still in the wind. She’d led Conver to their backdoor. She should’ve gone somewhere else, maybe even surrendered. She had to find Rider.

  “Guilt is a bitch of a mistress.” Dagan’s husky voice threaded through her dark thoughts and heated her skin.

  Grinding her teeth in frustration, both sexual and otherwise, she glared over at him. “Stop reading my mind.”

  “You have the most open, expressive mind I’ve run across. I could spend an eternity tasting and absorbing those succulent tidbits you cast out for the world to glean without any hesitation.”

  The confession made her shift in her seat. Weird. Mia never mentioned how readable she was. Rider had, but he was freakishly good, so she figured it was just him. Apparently it wasn’t.

  Then again, on the freakishly good scale, Devyn doubted anyone could top Dagan. “Food’s on the table. I’m going inside for a while. Don’t worry if I’m unresponsive. It’s normal.”

  “Inside? Inside what?” He rose from the bed, his gorgeous washboard abs fully exposed thanks to the lack of shirt and the loose shorts he’d commandeered from Rider’s go-bag. The waistband drooped dangerously low, well past the naval to expose the sexy V carved into his ripped muscles. She could spend hours licking and nibbling the trail exposed by his lack of apparel. She shrank into the filthy pleather chair as her nipples hardened and moisture pooled between her legs. He projected raw, untapped ferocity she couldn’t help but wonder if he used in bed.

  “Inside?” he repeated as he approached, her forward gaze now in a direct line of sight for the sexy V she needed to avoid, lest she jump her Shadow protector.

  “I need to retrace the path I took the other day when I think I tripped Conver’s radar. I dredged a lot of shit, but there’s bound to be something specific he didn’t want anyone seeing.”

  “You can do that from here?”

  “It’d be better at The Hive. That’s the hub Cadence and I use back at….” She severed the thought as the heat of the explosion scraped her soul. “It’d be easier with proper equipment, and an audiopath like Cadence to help, but I’ll manage. We figure out what I saw, we can cut him off at the knees.”

  Dagan settled in the rickety chair at the small wooden two-seater table and foraged through the fast food bag like a rabid squirrel looking for a stash of nuts. He grunted
his appreciation as he pulled out a couple of breakfast sandwiches and hash browns.

  “You bought a lot.”

  “Tricks must’ve figured Shadow Elites burn through nourishment fast. Dare and Rider do.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Only when I power up.”

  “You burned out yesterday. Were you on while running from Conver?”

  “For a while–traffic cams, surveillance systems, anything that gave me eyes on his guys.” Then they’d sprung up like a den of quickly mutating roaches. “Fortunately you and your team intervened.”

  She didn’t bother mentioning the week before, when she’d gone dark and rogue, fleeing Chicago to have better focus to delve into the files she now wanted to access again. Leaving the safe haven of Indigo Order’s underground compound seemed foolish in retrospect, but Devyn knew she wouldn’t go deep enough with her team at her back. They wouldn’t have let her. Besides, she hadn’t been ready to share her latest chapter in the Destroy Everything Conver endeavor.

  Dagan nodded. “Anything I need to know before you ‘go inside’?”

  The insightfulness and concern surprised her. It’d taken her team a while to fully grasp how her abilities distorted her surroundings. For her, the web she chased was a pulsating, humming reality. When she tapped its darkest, grungiest layers, she could suckle on the bits and bytes of knowledge for days without sensing time passing.

  “I lose awareness of my surroundings easily, become unresponsive.”

  His jaw twitched, and his lips thinned. “I don’t like this. I’ll call Kaeden. We’ll get a safe house and some support if this goes south. Tricks had mentioned him wanting one established in the area for the time being.”

  “What support? Cadence is a no-go. I don’t want him getting eyes on her or any of my team.”

  “I was thinking of our guy Ace. He’s not like you, but he’s savvy. He could help analyze stuff.”

  “Agreed. Let me do this, and then we’ll work that angle.”

  “I don’t like it, but we need eyes on the cause before we can handle it.” He bit into the breakfast sandwich and chewed a few times. She tracked the swallow down his throat with her gaze then studied his chest. She recognized the shirt he’d donned while she’d zoned out a moment ago.

  Rider’s.

  Funny, she didn’t remember him filling it out quite like that—lots of bulges and barely concealed ridges of abdominals. The same abdominals she’d worked, not so stealthily, at memorizing just moments ago as he’d prowled from the bed—their bed. The one she’d woken up in, curled into him like a kitten.

  She should’ve stretched, turned around, and….

  Focus.

  She took a couple of deep breaths and shut down the protective barrier she maintained between herself and her abilities. It’d taken her over a decade to perfect the thin, but resilient and dynamic barricade that enabled her to lead a somewhat normal existence when she wanted. Living without it had been hell. Constant bombardment from every technological ping had only compounded as advances were made. Now, with the existence of metadata, Devyn would be like a diabetic in a sugar factory if she didn’t wall in her powers.

  The distance from a decent data network didn’t bother Devyn—she was the network. Bypassing the useless Internet typically accessed by normal people, she entered the dark net, an area of the web unsearchable and unreachable unless you knew how and where you were going. That wasn’t her destination. Those databases and users were questionable at times, some downright disgusting.

  Buried within the deepest corner of the dark net was the hotbed of information she’d spent the past couple of years exploring, infiltrating, and using to destroy Conver and his crew. It’d taken her a few months to discover the data network she wanted—one where lower level minions within Conver’s crew communicated in an intricate code. Last week she’d finally found the mother lode. ARES' data sites.

  Conver’s legendary pride and gloating over his supremacy made this discovery a goldmine. There were recordings of past facilities and current ones. Documents, recorded conversations, and directives. She’d just discovered this new sector of the network last week. It had been why she left Chicago to find some focus.

  But this couldn’t be what made Conver nervous. No. This was his trophy wall and his CYA all rolled into one convenient data portal, backing up conversations with senators and governors. Admirals in the military. It was a treasure trove of who’s who in the twisted ARES world, but very little of this was unknown by the SEO. Most of the files were from the timespan that they’d all been in captivity, forced to do the general’s bidding.

  That meant there was something specific Conver didn’t want the SEO to know. All she had to do was figure out what.

  * * * * *

  Something was wrong. Dagan dragged his chair closer to Devyn. Her skin was clammy beneath his touch, her face pale, and her eyes glazed over. His gut twisted when he checked his watch. One hour, twelve minutes.

  Without remorse, he grabbed her cell phone and thumbed through the numbers. Anyone in her network could probably ease his mind, but he’d met Dare. He might have issues with the son of a bitch being too close to her, but that made him the perfect one to set him straight.

  “It’s about time you called in. I’ve a good mind to take you over my knee for this bullshit.”

  “Touch her and you die,” Dagan growled into the phone.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Read me in on this thing she does. She went in over an hour ago, whatever the hell that means. I’ve gotta say, man, I’m not feeling the love for her ability.”

  “Wait. She went in?” Shouts rose from a distance. He heard voices in the background.

  A soft feminine voice whispered into the phone. “Hello?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Mia. Erm, can you tell me what you said to piss him off? I haven’t seen him like this since before we got out. Not even Doctor Lang got him this worked up.” She paused briefly. Her voice lowered, filled with shock. “He threw a chair, and it blew Cadence’s backup computer to hell. She’s not happy.”

  That explained the civil war playing out in the background. “This is Dagan. I’m with Devyn. I need intel on her ability. She went in a little over an hour ago, and I don’t like how pale she’s gotten.”

  “Oh. This isn’t good.” A rustling sounded through the phone. A couple moments of silence descended. “Sorry, I had to get to another room so he couldn’t hear me. I don’t want to make it worse. Devyn isn’t supposed to ever go in without one of us around. It’s too dangerous.”

  “How so?” Dagan checked her pulse.

  “Time ceases to exist for her when she’s in, and she forgets to monitor her health. She gets so absorbed in the web woven around her she doesn’t listen to her body and pull out. She takes risks.” Mia sighed. “Rider’s always with her. Always. He’s a telepath, like you.

  “We work it as a team. See, I’m an empath so I can monitor her emotions and stuff. Cadence is an audiopath so she can tunnel through the networks and pick up on any auditory bits that may be viable. It clues us in to unforeseeable risks sometimes. If we get wind of trouble, Rider gets involved.”

  “I see.”

  “Sounds like maybe you’re a bit upset with her. Now you get why Rider lost his shit when we found out why she’d gone AWOL last week.”

  Was this woman really psychoanalyzing him by telephone? Jesus. Was he that fucking obnoxious with his team?

  Fuck. Probably so.

  “She went AWOL for a week? Right before Conver entered the mix?”

  “Yes. Devyn is great at what she does. I know you’re concerned about her, and probably upset with her for taking the risks she does, but the best way to handle her is to give her space and show her you trust her.”

  Shit, that was annoying. Okay, he owed his crew massive props for not whacking him in the nuts if he sounded like this.

  “I’m not seeing how that’s your problem. I appr
eciate the intel, but I take my issues to the person I’ve got them with, and I definitely don’t ask for guidance on dealing with someone from a stranger.”

  “She’s our family. You hurt her, you answer to all of us.”

  “Fair enough.” He clicked the conversation to an end before she could pry any more than she already had.

  Unease pricked along his nerves as he leaned forward and settled his hands over Devyn’s. The coolness contrasted with the warmth he’d noted in her gaze earlier. Keeping her safe was his mission.

  Ever since he’d seen her standing her ground against Conver’s soldiers, he’d been hooked. Her passion and care for everyone around her, from the street people who relied on her to the team she considered family, brightened the dark within him. People like her were the reason the SEO existed.

  He punched a few buttons on his cell phone.

  “Yeah.”

  “Kaeden, we may need the team. Devyn’s retracing her path from the other day. I’m going in after her to see if I can drag her out. We’ll need Ace to help run the data.”

  “Copy that. We’re setting up a safe house a couple of miles from your locale. Ace spoke with Cadence late last night, got specs on what their setup was like. We’ll have it up and running in a couple of hours.”

  “Good to hear. Text the location when you can. Being under radar without backup gives me hives.”

  “I hear you. Conver hasn’t been this rabid about something for a long time. Whatever she found, I want to see it for myself. Stay focused.”

  Kaeden disconnected in true Kaeden fashion—abruptly, without ceremony. He was a fearless leader Dagan had followed into hell repeatedly. There wasn’t an operative in the SEO who wouldn’t die for him.

  Setting all thoughts aside, Dagan delved into Devyn’s mind. Upon first inspection he couldn’t sense her. Her mind was a blank slate, pockets of organized, secured memories and knowledge carefully tucked away from prying eyes—almost as if she’d expected him to come after her and was showing him in true rebellious Devyn style she wasn’t an open book after all.