The soldiers nodded.
Good. Now he owed them, but he’d worry about that later. Right now, he had to figure out the Apollo drug and Cee Cee’s connection to it and the mines. Besides killing humans, the drug had been injected into darts and fired at witches, thus killing them. They’d learned that Seattle was just a test-drive for the drug, and soon it would be unleashed on his homeland. That simply couldn’t happen. “So no progress on Apollo tonight?”
“No.” Logan leaned back against the closed door. “It was a shitty night.”
A shitty night? Yeah, that about summed it up. But it was nothing compared to the night little Cee Cee was going to have when Daire caught up to her.
Chapter 3
Wind pierced Cee Cee’s thick clothing, digging with sharp blades right to her skin. She shivered, her gaze on the frozen landscape of Fryser Island in the Arctic Sea. The sun shone weakly down, glittering along the ice, failing to provide an ounce of warmth. The chill banished any hint of fog, leaving the arctic tundra in crisp focus.
She had taken three different private planes to arrive in the Arctic, and her eyes stung with the need to sleep. First she had a job to do, and at least the cold was keeping her awake.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am, but this is a very bad idea,” said her pilot, a local from the mainland and a barrel of a man with the thickest beard she’d ever seen. “Ms. Jones. Please come back to the plane with me, and I’ll return you to the mainland.” Concern, and an unwelcome note of duty, echoed in his tone.
She smiled. “I asked you to call me Cee Cee.” They’d spent hours together in the small plane to reach the island few people knew even existed in the Norwegian Sea. “Mr. Agard, I assure you, I have a guide meeting me any minute.”
They stood on an ice-covered wooden dock¸ facing away from the quiet sea and toward a series of abandoned buildings staring back at them. Barren and rugged, the fierce desolation of the area appealed to her on a primal level. Even the massive mountains piled so high and sharp held a beauty that stole her breath.
He cleared his throat. “We have another abandoned city called Pyramiden on Spitsbergen Island. It’s cold and desolate like this, but sometimes tourists go there, and graduate students study the environment. There are hotels not too far away, and more importantly, there are people. Please let me take you there.”
Pyramiden hadn’t been mined in years and was of little interest to her. This place? Yeah. It looked abandoned, but mines often went far into the mountains, and there were a hell of a lot of mountains behind the tiny entrance. More danger chased her than the man could imagine, but his instincts, like those of most humans, were spot-on. “I like abandoned,” she murmured.
He shook his head. “There’s nothin’ here but old buildings, cold, polar bears, rabbits, and arctic foxes.” Almost on cue, a white shaggy beast with horns loped across the landscape. “And Svalbard reindeer.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, her eyes tearing from the chill, even from behind protective contacts. Since the mine in her sight was obviously dead, she only needed to check on two other mines, because she’d already discovered the secrets of the third, and they would end tomorrow. The wind slapped her face, and she made a mental note to slather on face cream at first chance.
“You don’t understand. The polar bears are vicious and many just had cubs. If they scent you, they’ll attack.” He cast wide eyes around the desolate area and shivered.
A grating noise pinged against the mountains, rising in pitch, coming closer. Soon a figure in a thick white coat zoomed around a far building on a powerful black snowmobile. The man wore a knit cap, light-refracting glasses, and snow pants. His gloved hands rested easily on the handlebars, and even at the impressive speed, his body remained relaxed.
“Idiot isn’t wearing a helmet,” the pilot muttered.
The idiot was a witch and didn’t need a helmet. The man slowed to a stop and cut the engine, remaining in place, gaze shielded behind the glasses.
“Good. He’s bigger than you, so the polar bears will eat him first. You could run for safety while he gets eaten,” the pilot said. “One last chance, Ms. Jones. Come with me and leave this lonely place.” He quickly crossed himself.
She turned and gave him a gentle nudge toward his seaplane. “I’m stronger than I look. Thank you for your help, and please don’t give me a second thought.”
His brown eyes warmed, even as he backed away. “I hate to tell you this, little lady, but you’d be a hard one to forget.” His frown reached his eyes as he glanced toward the rider, who still hadn’t moved. “You know anything about this guy?”
“I do. We’re old friends,” she lied. Truth be told, she’d heard about him from a friend of an acquaintance of a friend. A mercenary for hire—one with excellent connections.
“Okay.” The pilot finally gave up and ambled back toward his plane. “Good luck.”
Yeah. She needed luck. She kept in place, waiting until the pilot had steered the plane out to the calm sea and taken off. Keeping her expression relaxed, she slowly strode toward the silent rider, stopping a couple of feet away. The plane flew over her head. “Vegar Bergan?” she asked.
He nodded and tipped down the glasses to reveal cold blue eyes. “Ms. . . . Jones?”
“I am today,” she returned easily. They were business acquaintances, and he didn’t get to know her real name. “I take it you received the first half of the payment?” She’d wired the five million dollars the previous night.
“Yes.” He glanced from her hair to her fur-lined boots. “You’re not a witch.”
“No.” She steeled her shoulders and pointed to the entrance to the mountain, shielded by a frozen orange metal building. “I’d like to start with this mine.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “That one’s empty, one we can’t reach, and two are very heavily guarded and difficult to get to, even with a snowmobile. I told you that before you came all the way out to the middle of nowhere.”
She tilted her head. “Yet you took my money anyway, so I want to see the mines.”
His chin lifted. “You’re not a shifter, either.”
“No.”
“Something, though. Something light.” He frowned. “Fairy?”
Had the low-browed witch just called her a fairy? Fire lit inside her, a testament to her heritage. Fairies stayed in their communes and didn’t venture out. Well, most of them. She’d only met a few in her life, and she was nowhere near that calm or gentle. “I’m not a fairy,” she muttered.
He leaned back, eyebrows drawing down. “You’re human? An enhanced female?” Without losing a beat, he threw back his head and laughed, long and hard. The sound slapped against the deserted buildings and pinged back. “You’re kidding me. Human.”
She gritted her teeth together and barely forced out words. “My heritage is irrelevant, and I hired you to do a job. So do it.”
He sobered and slowly drew out a snub-nosed pistol. “I thought this would be much more difficult, but I figured you for a witch. Considering you’re looking for planekite.”
She settled her boots in the snow and drew in a deep breath. The guy was a foot taller than she and about a hundred pounds heavier. At least. She’d have to be fast and brutal if they fought. “If I don’t see the mines and reach safety, then you don’t get the other five million.”
He smiled then, revealing oversized teeth and sharp canines. “You’re apparently worth twenty million.”
Heat flushed down her torso to slam into her stomach. “You know who I am.”
“No clue, lady.” His gaze raked from her freezing head down to her chilling toes. “Care to tell me?”
Somehow she didn’t think that would help her cause. The wind picked up again, lifting her hair and biting her ears. She glanced around at the barren area, not sensing anybody else near. “Who hired you?”
He shrugged. “Don’t know and don’t care. Received directions via the Internet, and payment via the Caymans.”