Corinne nodded, still breathing hard but feeling the worst of her anxiety fade away.
"Sometimes I just ... sometimes I feel like I'm still in there. Still locked in that awful place," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm so embarrassed."
"Don't be." Gabrielle's smile was sympathetic without being pitying. "You don't have to be sorry or embarrassed. Not among friends."
"Come on," Elise said. "We'll take you up to the mansion. We can have a little stroll around the grounds outside until you feel better."
As the compound's garage elevator came to a cushioned stop belowground, Hunter glanced at his wounded patrol partner in silent assessment.
Head hung low on his shoulders, matted golden-brown hair drooping over his brow, Sterling Chase leaned against the opposite wall of the car, his breath sawing through his teeth. His black fatigues were torn and blood-soaked, lacerations and swelling contusions making a battered mess of his face. His nose was surely broken, his upper lip split open and bleeding onto his chin. More than likely, his jaw had been fractured as well.
The warrior's injuries from the brawl in the city were numerous, but nothing that wouldn't heal with time and a few decent feedings.
Not that Chase seemed at all concerned about his condition.
The elevator doors whispered open and he swaggered out to the corridor ahead of Hunter, arrogance in every stride.
Lucan blocked his path just a few steps out. Put his palm in the center of Chase's chest to stop him physically when the other male appeared disinclined to pause. "Have a good time in Chinatown tonight?"
Chase grunted, his split lip tearing wider as he gave Lucan a dark smirk. "I gather Mathias Rowan has been in contact with you."
"That's right. More than I can say for either one of you," Lucan replied tersely, his furious gaze traveling briefly from Chase's battle-worn appearance to Hunter, whose fatigues were stained with their own share of spilled Enforcement Agent blood. "Rowan told me all about the shit that went down. He says he's got multiple dead and wounded and every Agent he's spoken to has put the blame for the unprovoked assault squarely on you, Chase."
He scoffed in response. "Unprovoked, my ass. Every one of the Agents in that place was looking for a reason to piss me off."
"And you couldn't wait to oblige them, that it?" At Chase's answering glower, Lucan shook his head. "What you are is reckless, my man. This shit tonight is just one more mess you've left for someone else to deal with. It's getting to be a pattern with you lately, and I don't like it. Not one f**king bit."
"You sent me out to do a job," Chase shot back darkly. "Sometimes things get messy."
Lucan's eyes narrowed, anger radiating off his body now, a palpable heat that Hunter could feel from where he stood just a few steps away with Gideon. "I'm not sure you know what your job is anymore, Chase. If you did, you wouldn't be coming back here empty-handed, reeking of spilled blood and attitude. Far as I'm concerned, you failed out there tonight. How much intel did you gather on Freyne? Are we even one f**king scintilla closer to getting a lock on Dragos or any of his possible other associates?"
"Perhaps we are," Hunter interjected.
Now Lucan swung his scowl on him. "Explain."
"An Agent named Murdock," Hunter replied. "He approached Chase and me when we arrived at the club. We had words, but he wasn't forthcoming with any useful information. Once the fight broke out, he appeared notably anxious. I saw him make a phone call to someone before he escaped amid the chaos."
"This is a lead?" Chase muttered dismissively. "Of course Murdock would run. I know this guy. He's a coward who'd rather put a knife in your back than face a fight head-on."
Hunter ignored his patrol partner's commentary as he held the keen stare of the Order's leader. "Murdock took off for the alley out back of the place. A car was already coming around to pick him up. The driver was a Gen One assassin."
"Good Christ," Gideon remarked from beside Hunter, shoving his hand through the short blond spikes of his hair.
Lucan's face hardened, while Chase had gone utterly silent where he stood, listening as intently as the others now.
"I pursued the vehicle on foot," Hunter continued. "The assassin was neutralized."
He reached around to the back waistband of his fatigues and pulled out the detonated collar he'd removed from his kill. Gideon took the ring of charred black polymer out of his hand.
"One more to add to your collection, eh? You're racking up quite a score lately. Good work."
Hunter merely blinked at the unnecessary praise.
"What about Murdock?" Lucan asked.
"Gone," Hunter replied. "He fled the scene while I was disabling the driver. By then it was a choice of either tracking him down or going back inside the club to retrieve my patrol partner."
The decision to aid his fellow warrior had given him more than a moment's pause at the time. Logic and training as one of Dragos's soldiers demanded he carry out his missions as a single entity: efficient, impersonal, and utterly independent. Murdock was a quantified target. Interrogating him would surely provide valuable intel; his capture was imperative to the success of the night's patrol. To Hunter, apprehending the escaped Agent had seemed a logical enough objective.
But the Order operated under a different tenet, one he had pledged to follow when he'd joined them, no matter how it contrasted to the world he had once known. The warriors had a code among themselves for every mission, an understanding that if a team went out together, they came back together, and no man was ever left behind.