At roughly the same time that Renata saw Jenna leap the fence and disappear off the grounds, an unmarked white delivery van drove by on the street adjacent to the property. Gideon had only been able to get a partial reading on the van's Massachusetts commercial plates before it rounded a corner and disappeared out of range. In the time since, he'd hacked into the Boston DMV and had been running plate number combinations, trying to narrow down whom the van was registered to and where it might be found.
Brock was sure that if they located that van, Jenna couldn't be far behind.
"Whether we've got solid leads or not, as soon as the sun sets in the next hour and a half, we're gonna need patrols scouring the city," Lucan said. "We cannot afford to lose this woman before we understand what she might mean to our operations."
"And I can't afford to let anything happen to my dearest friend," Alex said, pointing out the emotional wrinkle in the whole situation with Jenna.
"She's upset and hurting. What if something bad happens to her out there?
She's a good person. She doesn't deserve any of this."
"We'll find her," Brock said firmly. "I promise you, we will."
Kade met his gaze and gave a solemn nod. After the stunning circumstances of Jenna's escape from the compound, finding the human woman with the bit of alien material inside her body was a mission none of the warriors would shirk. Jenna Darrow had to be retrieved, no matter what it took.
"Hang on, hang on," Gideon murmured. "This could prove interesting.
I just got a couple of new hits on the latest sequence. One of them is registered to an auto garage in Quincy."
"The other one?" Brock asked, leaning in to get a closer look.
"Meat-packing plant in Southie," Gideon said. "Outfit called Butcher's Best. Says they specialize in personal cuts and catering."
"No shit," Renata said, her chin-length dark hair swinging as she pivoted her head to look at the others gathered in the lab. "The banking exec who lives a couple of miles up the road is hosting his Christmas house party next weekend. Makes sense that a catering van might be up this way."
"Yeah, it does," Lucan agreed. "Gideon, let's get an address for this place."
"Coming right up." He hit a few keys and both the street listing and a satellite map appeared on-screen. "There it is, down in the underbelly of Southie."
Brock's eyes fixed on the location, burning as hot as laser beams. He pivoted around and stalked out of the tech lab, determination in every hard clip of his boot heels on the marble floor.
Behind him, Kade dashed out of the lab into the corridor. "What the f**k, man? The sun won't be setting for a good while. Where are you going?"
Brock kept walking. "I'm gonna bring her back."
Chapter Five
The sun was just beginning to dip below the tip of the Boston skyline as Brock swung one of the Order's SUVs onto a side street in Southie. Under his black leather duster, he was geared up in UV-protective black fatigues, gloves, and wraparound shades. At a decade or so past a century and several bloodlines removed from first-generation Breeds like Lucan, Brock's skin could withstand the sun's rays for a short period of time, but there wasn't a member of his kind alive who didn't treat the daylight with a healthy dose of respect.
He had no intention of frying his own bacon, but the thought of sitting at the compound waiting on twilight while an innocent woman was wandering the city, alone and upset, had been too much for him to stand. His decision was made all the more sound when he spotted the nondescript white delivery van sitting outside the address Gideon had traced. Even before Brock got out of the Rover, the odor of fresh-spilled human blood reached his nose.
"Fuck," he muttered under his breath, stalking through the frozen slush and street grime toward the vehicle.
He peeked inside the passenger window and his gaze snagged on a spent bullet casing on the floor between the seats. The coppery smell of hemoglobin was stronger here, nearly overpowering.
Being Breed, he couldn't control his body's reaction to the presence of fresh blood. Saliva surged into his mouth, his canine teeth ripping farther out of his gums until the fangs pressed into the flesh of his tongue.
Instinctively, he dragged the scent into his nostrils, trying to determine if the blood was Jenna's. But she wasn't a Breedmate; her blood scent did not carry its own unique stamp as did Alex's or that of the other females at the compound.
A Breed male could track the scent of a Breedmate for miles, no matter how faint. Jenna could be bleeding sight unseen right under Brock's nose, and there would be no way for him to tell if it was her or any other Homo sapiens.
"Damn it," he growled, swinging his head in the direction of the meat-packaging plant nearby. The fact that someone had recently bled inside the delivery van was all the proof he needed that Jenna was likely in danger.
His rage simmered toward boiling in anticipation of what he would find inside the squat red-brick building. From the street as he approached the place, he could hear men's voices and the hum of a ventilation system compressor droning on the roof.
Brock crept around to a side door and peered inside its small wire-reinforced window. Nothing but packing crates and boxes of wrapping material. He grasped the metal knob and twisted it off in his fist. Tossing it into a pile of filthy snow by the stoop, he slipped inside the building.
His combat boots were silent on the concrete floor as he moved through the storage and cleanup area, toward the center of the small plant.
The rumble of conversation grew louder as he progressed, at least four distinct voices, all of them male, all of them edged with the coarse syllables of an Eastern European language.