Predatory
25: Paranoia

RIKA POV

“Sasha, seriously, that was incredible. Did you have all that back story made up beforehand, or did you improvise it on the spot?” Zoe gushes as we load ourselves, our feline comrade, and our necessary supplies into the SUV.

“I was developing it on the drive back from Sherwood forest,” Sasha mutters. “Please, leave it. I don’t want to be congratulated for being a terrible person.”

“No one is congratulating you for being a terrible person,” I huff. “I’m congratulating you for being damn good at your job and for helping me make sure that wire-tap virus works the way I intended it to.”

“And does it ever!” Zoe chirps, hopping into the driver’s seat. I won’t set up my whole kit again until we get into our plane, but I have a souped-up tablet on my lap to keep an eye on the lycans and one earbud in. “I’m always just amazed by what you come up with, Rika! We could hear their whole conversation clear as a bell, even with the feeds from your surveillance equipment turned off.”

“Worked it in with the pictures from this afternoon. None of them will suspect a thing, since I was able to keep the file size down. Should blend right in with the pictures, and I sent at least one that each of them should enjoy. I guess now we get to figure out how well my little virus works over distance. You should text him once we get in the air, Sasha, to see how that aspect works.”

Sasha groans quietly in reply. I glance into the rearview mirror to see her curled into a miserable ball in the backseat, staring into middle space with dead eyes.

“Hey, lovely. You have nothing to be ashamed of,” Zoe assures her gently. “You were just following orders, doing your job.”

“So were most of the Nazis,” Sasha deadpans.

“This isn’t exactly a grand time to be growing a conscience, Sasha. You’re an assassin, for fuck’s sake. You mowed down more than thirty vampires the other night—”

“That was different. They deserved to die, for the way they were torturing those girls, and for the other lives they ruined with their selfishness.” She shakes her head. Are those tears in her eyes? “You both said as much earlier, on the phone with Anselm. These guys don’t deserve all the lies and the surveillance, and at some point I’m going to have to either tell Drake the truth or just ghost him, and either way, he’s….”

“He’ll probably be pretty torn up about it,” Zoe grants. “But he’ll get over it. There’s no way you can possibly be ‘the one’ for him, is there? With the species difference and all?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Wait. You think—” I start, then cut myself off. The idea is too ridiculous to voice it aloud.

“I don’t know. I’m no lycan expert. But no target has ever been into me like this before.” She looks like she wants to say more, but no more words are forthcoming. She looks like she’s about to cry, or vomit. Maybe both.

“Well, at this rate you probably won’t have to kill him, at least,” Zoe offers, ever the optimist among us. “Would talking about this new job help at all?”

“Might as well give it a shot.”

“Right. Rika, tell us what we’ve got to work with.”

“Well, you know we’re headed to Montana. Sweet of you to minimize the lying where you can, Sasha,” I begin, flashing her a smile in the rearview mirror. She flinches and turns away, and I stifle a sigh. Best get on with it then. “But our target is a dragon this time. Got himself a pretty sweet setup, with a cave in the Rockies that’s practically inaccessible to humans, plenty of food, the works, but according to our scouts, lately local farmers have been complaining of missing livestock and attempted arson on their lands.”

“So. He got too comfortable and now he’s gotten cocky,” Zoe surmises.

“That’s absolutely what’s going down. Apparently one of the non-combatant operatives in the area paid him a visit to ask him to tone it down and barely escaped with their life. He seems to think WASP doesn’t have the power to control him.”

“My favorite,” Sasha mutters darkly. Fire has replaced the water in her eyes.

“You think you’re up to fight a dragon one-on-one?” Zoe asks, concern threatening to supplant optimism in her tones.

“I have a lot of frustration to take out on someone. And since our dear Commander is too much of a coward to come handle his dirty work himself, I guess this dragon will have to do. Do we have a name for him, Rika?”

“Svartheron, it says here,” I tell her. “And I’ll start looking into our dear Commander’s communications regarding the pack our other targets come from. You raised a good point earlier, asking what he thinks he knows that we don’t and why he’s so invested in that mission.”

“Thank you. Before you do that, details on Svartheron?”

“You’ve heard most of what I’ve got. I think the only thing I haven’t already mentioned is that he’s only a couple hundred years old.”

“Young, for a dragon.”

“Hence the cockiness,” Zoe interjects. “We can’t actually kill him though, can we? Since dragons are a protected species?”

“That’s probably part of the cockiness, too. He knows that. But we’re certainly capable of killing him, and that’s the lesson he needs to learn during our time in his territory.”

Sasha’s eyes are practically glittering with anticipation and determination, and the look on her face would be downright terrifying if I wasn’t her teammate. I wonder what Drake would think of her, if he could see her now. Can she scare him out of liking her, or would he replace this somehow arousing? I don’t know Drake well enough to be sure, and right now I have more important things to worry about, like snooping into Commander Anselm’s interactions with the lycans’ pack.

Of course, his electronic communications are encrypted, but not to a level I can’t unravel. I wrote the encryption program all the WASP brass use. What was their pack name again? …Linto-Gizos. That’s right. Roughly translated as “Moon Singer,” according to my sources. It’s easy enough to replace more about the Linto-Gizos pack in WASP’s archives. There’s one Eric Sadoques listed as one of the pack Elders. He must be related to Drake somehow…ah, yes, his father. Next step: any direct communications between Eric Sadoques and Commander Anselm?

Answer: Yes, several. Requests for greater autonomy for the Linto-Gizos pack, mostly, which Anselm has denied, citing an incident with one Stephen Sadoques and ‘that once-human girl’ six years ago as evidence that the whole pack must be watched carefully. What the heck is that about? I pull up the case file. Different WASP operatives handled that one; Sasha, Zoe, and I had just been put on a team together at that point. Apparently Stephen Sadoques—Eric’s brother, from these records—didn’t follow the appropriate procedure for turning his human mate, once he found her, and…they were both executed for it.

That seems pretty extreme. It wouldn’t be surprising at all for anyone who witnessed that intervention to have anti-WASP sentiments. And Eric Sadoques certainly seems mistrustful of WASP, from these communications, although he has a healthy respect for the organization’s power. Anselm’s had a lot of Eric’s communications with others pulled into a separate file. Why? Reading them, it seems that Eric is extremely afraid that WASP will replace an excuse to come after someone in his family or his pack again. That should be good, though, right? He’s an Elder, one of the lycans in charge of that pack. He has the power to make sure it doesn’t happen again. What is Anselm’s thought process here?

A little more digging yields an answer, from messages between Commander Anselm and his personal assistant.

“There’s no reason for Eric to be so fucking paranoid unless he has something to hide,” Anselm wrote in one email. “Our scouts should look into everyone connected to the Linto-Gizos pack VERY carefully. At the first sign of anything unseemly, we strike. That ought to nip in the bud whatever insurrection he’s plotting, no doubt as revenge for his idiot brother.”

Well. That explains everything, then. It looks like Elder Eric isn’t the only one who’s paranoid in this situation. But should I tell Sasha what I’ve learned? It will only make Drake more sympathetic in her eyes, not less, and I don’t think that’s something we can afford to risk right now. I already sincerely doubt she’ll be willing to kill him, if it comes down to that. At the same time, though, it wouldn’t be right to keep relevant intel from a teammate in the middle of a mission.

“Hey, Sasha. I think I’ve figured out what you wanted to know, about Anselm’s motives,” I say quietly, half-hoping she won’t hear me, although there’s no chance of that, with her feline senses.

“And? Talk to me,” Sasha replies, suddenly completely alert.

“I…think it’d be easier to send you an email. Both of you.”

“Don’t. You’re not the only one in WASP who can spy on those things,” Zoe argues. “Just say it. Quietly.”

I hate that she’s right.

“Well. Drake’s father is one of their pack Elders, and Drake’s uncle—his father’s brother—was executed by WASP about six years ago due to a breach of protocol related to a human mate. Since then, Drake’s father has been pretty leery of WASP, and Anselm is convinced that it’s because their pack must have something more to hide.”

“Of fucking course he is. Not like seeing your brother get murdered would be likely to induce PTSD or paranoia or anything like that,” Sasha spits bitterly. She would know. First-hand. Why the fuck did Anselm choose us for this mission, knowing all that he knows?

“So he’s having the pack pretty closely surveilled. Any sign of trouble from any member and he means to bring down the hammer.”

“And the scouts’ reports on these three are sufficient condemnation, in his mind,” Zoe sighs. I can feel Sasha vibrating with rage in the back seat.

“I think so, yes. I’m going to keep…compiling evidence. I’ll let you know if anything else of interest turns up.”

“Please do,” Sasha hisses.

“You don’t need more reasons to hate him,” Zoe cautions.

“He’s the one who needs that warning, not me.”

I almost feel bad for this dragon we’re going to visit. I don’t envy anyone who gets to face Sasha when she’s livid like this. With this information in Sasha’s hands, Zoe’s fears that she’ll be outmatched are severely misplaced.

It could be, if she stays this angry, that even Anselm couldn’t prevail against her.