"I've got her location on camera now," he told Renata. "She's on the east side of the property, heading southeast on foot. If you take the south service door, you should be able to head her off before she reaches the perimeter fence."
"The perimeter fence," Brock murmured. "Jesus Christ, that thing is juiced with more than fourteen thousand volts of electricity."
Gideon kept talking, advising Renata of Jenna's progress and position.
"Cut the power," Brock said. "You have to cut the power to the fence."
Gideon swiveled a dubious look on him. "And let her waltz right off the property? No can do, my man."
Brock knew the warrior was right. He knew the smartest, best thing to do for the Order was to ensure that the human woman stayed contained within the compound. But the thought of Jenna coming into contact with a potentially lethal dose of electricity was too much. It was, in a word, unacceptable.
He glanced at the security camera feed and saw Jenna, clad in a white sweater and jeans, her loose brown hair flying behind her as she raced across the snowy yard at a blind clip toward the edge of the property. Straight for the ten-foot-tall fence that hemmed the estate in from all sides.
"Gideon," he growled, as Jenna's fleeing form grew smaller on the monitor. "Cut the goddamn power."
Brock didn't wait for the other warrior to comply. He stalked over and slammed his hand down on the control panel. Lights blinked on, and a persistent beeping kicked up in warning of the disabled power grid.
A long silence filled the room.
"I see her." Renata's voice came over the speaker in the lab. "I'm right behind her."
They watched on-screen as Nikolai's mate sped on foot in the direction of Jenna's trail in the snow. Moments ticked by as they waited for further word.
Finally, Renata spoke, but the curse she hissed into her mouthpiece wasn't what anyone in the room had hoped to hear. "God damn it. No ..."
Brock's veins went cold with dread. "What's happened?"
"Talk to me," Gideon said. "What's going on, Renata?"
"Too late," she replied, her voice oddly wooden. "I was too late--she got away. She's gone."
Gideon leaned in, cocking his head toward Brock. "She climbed the bloody fence, didn't she?"
"Climbed it?" Renata's answering laugh was more of a sharp exhalation. "No, she didn't climb it. She ... ah, shit. Believe it or not, I just watched her jump over it."
Chapter Four
The road hummed beneath Jenna's jeans-clad backside and the soles of her snow-sodden shoes, the smell of smoked meat and male sweat wafting at her from all directions inside the unlit confines of the delivery van. She sat on the floor among stacked crates and cardboard cartons, jostling with every bump. Her stomach roiled, though whether from the adrenaline that was pouring through her or the cloying mix of processed meat and body odor that hammered her nostrils, she couldn't be sure.
How she'd managed to get off the compound's property was a blur.
Her head was still swimming with the disturbing revelations of the past few hours, and her senses had been on overdrive from the moment she made the decision to attempt escape. Even now, sights and sounds and motion--every bit of sensory input--seemed to be flying at her in a chaotic blur.
Up in front of the van, the driver and his passenger chattered animatedly in a thick, Slavic-sounding foreign language. They had known enough English to agree to take her into the city when she'd flagged them down on the street outside the estate grounds, and at the moment that had been good enough for her. Except now that they had gone a few miles, she couldn't help but notice they had stopped smiling at her and trying to talk to her in broken English.
Now the driver cast furtive glances at her in the rearview mirror, and she didn't like the sound of the low-voiced, chuckling exchanges the two men shared as she bounced around in back of the darkened van.
"How far to downtown?" she asked, holding on to a crate of hard salami as the van took a left through a caution light. Her stomach pitched with the motion, her ears ringing, head pounding. She squinted through the windshield at the front of the vehicle as it headed toward the late-afternoon glow of the city in the distance. "The bus station, yes? That's where you said you'd take me. How far is it?"
For a second, she wondered if either of them could hear her over the loud rumble of the van's engine as the driver gave it more gas. The sound seemed deafening to her. But then the passenger pivoted around and said something to her in his own language.
Something that seemed to amuse his lead-footed friend behind the wheel.
A knot of dread formed in Jenna's gut. "You know what? I've changed my mind. No bus station. Take me to the police. Po-lice," she said, dragging out the word so there could be no misunderstanding. She gestured to herself as the driver flicked a scowling glance at her in the mirror. "I'm a cop. I am police."
She spoke with the no-bullshit edge that came to her like second nature, even all these years since she'd been in uniform. But if the pair of jokers up front picked up on her tone or what she was telling them, they didn't seem moved to believe her.
"Police?" The driver chuckled as he looked over at his companion.
" Nassi, nuk duken si ajo e policise per ju? "
"No," the one apparently named Nassi replied, shaking his head, thin lips pulling back from crooked teeth. His thick-browed gaze traveled in a slow crawl over Jenna's body. " Per mua, ajo duket si nje cope e shijshme e gomarit. "
She looks like a tasty piece of ass to me.
Jenna thought the dark leer that Nassi sent her must have been enough to tell her what he'd said, but the words seemed so clear to her. Impossibly clear. She stared at the two men as they began a private conversation in their native tongue. She watched their lips, studied the sounds that should have been entirely foreign to her--words that she couldn't possibly understand yet, somehow, did.