Page 25 of Hide or Die

I let my AK-47 drop to hang from its shoulder sling and crossed to Mr. Patel. He didn’t look so good. His face was gray and pasty beneath his olive skin, and the sour smell of fresh vomit wafted from the hole in the ground next to him. In that same corner of the cell, someone had torn apart something made of wood. My money was on Jax, trying to arm himself for a fight.

I reached a hand down and hooked Mr. Patel’s upper arm, pulling him to his feet. He staggered, half-falling against me, and I took the chance to grab a whiff of the skin at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. He shivered in reaction as I set him back on his feet.

“Omega,” I confirmed. “Faint, though.”

Beckett shot me a glance. “Flynn, please don’t sniff the ambassadorial staff during a rescue mission.”

I shrugged. “How else are we supposed to know for sure, boss?”

A haunted look had drawn Mr. Patel’s pretty features into haggard lines. That bare hint of lemony perfume told me most of what I needed to know about him. If he’d been on pheromone suppressors that had worn off during his captivity, his perfume would have been at full strength. He must have been one of the ones the betas had caught and mutilated rather than use for breeding. We’d probably only been able to scent him at all because he’d been trapped in a cell with another omega in heat for days on end.

Part of me was impressed, in a distant and detached sort of way. If both he and Ambassador McCready had been hiding in plain sight all this time, they’d done a hell of a good job of it.

“Please,” Mr. Patel rasped. “Please... the others. You have to help them.”

He was pleading with me directly—not with Beckett. I wondered if he thought we were going to arrest him on the spot for being an unregistered omega. To be fair, that’s probably what most people would expect us to do. Or, at least, what they would expectBeckettto do.

“Thatiswhy we’re here, Mr. Patel,” Beckett said mildly. “To start with, I need you to tell me everything you know. The others’ survival could depend on you being completely forthright with me.”

Patel blanched further, as though he’d taken Beckett’s statement as a thinly veiled threat.

“He didn’t mean it that way,” I explained. “He just wants you to tell us what happened.”

Terrified brown eyes met mine, and that unwanted protective instinct flared. Again, I set it aside. I could see him struggling with himself, every emotion visible on his face. He must have better self-control than this in the normal course of things, I thought, or he would have been found out years ago.

Whatever the case, I saw the moment he decided; saw his last defenses fall. His chin dropped in submission as his eyes slid closed.

“Leona and I are both unregistered omegas,” he said hoarsely. “I was sterilized young, but she’s still whole. She’s been getting by on heat blockers and suppressors. They were hidden in her luggage when we were attacked. She went into heat last night. Jax and I did our best to help her, but she’ll be peaking again soon.”

“Do you know where she and Jax are being held?” Beckett asked.

Patel shook his head. “Guards tranquilized Jax and dragged both of them away a short time ago.”

“How long exactly?” Beckett asked.

Patel squeezed the bridge of his nose with shaking fingers. “I can’t be sure. Maybe half an hour?”

Beckett gave a curt nod and motioned for him to continue.

“Yesterday—before Leo’s heat came on—they gave us a script to memorize for a video.” He glanced around and pointed at a battered notebook lying next to the far wall. “Afterward, they were going to execute us.”

I retrieved the notebook and handed it to Beckett, who flipped it open and scanned the contents rapidly. His gaze sharpened.

“What’s this about ‘a weapon that will eliminate the alphomic threat once and for all’?” he demanded. “Did they say anything else about this?”

Patel shook his head. “They’ve barely talked to us. The one who brought us the speech spoke a bit of English. We think they’ve mostly been speaking Turkish. But you need to go look for the others now.Please.”

“Yes,” Beckett agreed, stuffing the small notebook into a zippered pocket in his backpack. “We do.”

“No signs of life outside,” Alex reported, still guarding the door. “Could that really have been all of them?”

We’d only counted eight enemy combatants when we’d stormed in with guns blazing. They were all lying in puddles of their own blood now.

“We’ll hope it was, but assume it’s not,” Beckett said. “Mr. Patel, there’s a storage room near the entrance of the cave complex. It will be safer for you to wait for us there than to stay here, on the off chance that there are more terrorists still at large.”

The omega’s jaw worked. “I should come with—”

“You should stay out of the line of fire and let us do our jobs,” Alex interrupted, with the barest hint of an alpha bark behind the words.

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