"Let's pull it all," Chase said. "Start yanking the drives. We'll take them with us. Maybe Gideon can take something useful off them."
"Right." Rowan nodded and pivoted to carry out the order. He froze an instant later, head cocked.
Tavia heard it too - a vague disturbance in the air outside the clinic building. Nearly indiscernible, yet unmistakable to her heightened senses.
"Shit." Chase swung a grim look at Rowan and her. He kept his voice low, barely above a whisper. "We've got company on the way. We need to clear out."
"What about the servers?" Rowan asked.
Chase shook his head. "May be too late for that."
"I think I can grab a few."
"Then make it fast."
When Rowan took off in a flash of movement, Chase grabbed the pistol from its shoulder holster. With his other hand, he took Tavia's arm and hauled her up from the chair at the desk. "You need to get out of here. Now."
She looked back at the printer, still churning out paper from her clinic records. "Wait! I don't have my files. And what if there are more like me still out there somewhere? I need to know. I have to search more of these files."
"Fuck the files. Fuck the others," Chase growled, taking her with him bodily into the hallway. "The only thing I care about right now is making sure you get out of here alive."
He brought her around to the waiting room where the broken window yawned open into the chill night. Chase stopped short. Tavia did too, her lungs freezing in the center of her chest. A huge male form stood in front of them, garbed from head to toe in body-hugging black, like some kind of ninja on steroids. A knit skullcap covered the male's head and half his face, leaving only cold dark eyes visible.
He was Breed; Tavia knew it to the depths of her marrow.
And he was there to deliver death on Dragos's command.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IN THE SCANT SECONDS it took Mathias Rowan to reach the server room at the other end of the clinic, he realized he was too late.
Someone was already inside.
He crept toward the partially open door, making no sound at all as he drew his Agency pistol and peered into the dimly lit data center.
Crouched on the floor near the racks of servers was a human dressed in a security guard uniform and thick winter parka. A shoe box - size container lined in cushioned foam lay open near the man's boots. The rectangular center of the foam was hollowed out, emptied of its contents.
What the ...?
Rowan moved closer. The human had affixed a small digital keypad to the wall of servers and was entering a sequence of numbers. A fast beep-beep-beep followed an instant later, then a countdown clock appeared on the digital face of the device.
Cold comprehension washed through Rowan like a river of ice.
It was a bomb.
"Son of a bitch." Rowan was inside the server room now. He had his weapon raised, aimed at the back of the human's head. "Get up before I decorate this room with your gray matter." The man came up slowly, hands raised in surrender. Rowan wasn't surprised at all to find himself staring into the dull gaze of a Minion.
Behind Dragos's mind slave, the countdown clock on the bomb's detonator was speeding in fractions of seconds. Not even ten minutes to go.
"Shut it off," Rowan snarled. He put the gun right up in the Minion's face, already feeling the points of his fangs emerging with his anger. "Do it now, ass**le."
The Minion just stared, unblinking. Unmoving. Unfazed. "Pull the trigger now or watch this place erupt around us in less than nine minutes. It makes no difference to me, vampire. Either way, my Master's orders are fulfilled."
Rowan's lips peeled back from his fangs on a growl. He wanted nothing more than to waste this soulless bastard and wipe the smug look from his face with a whole lot of gunpowder and lead.
He wanted it so fiercely, he didn't hear the other Minion creep up behind him until it was too late to fend off the coming blow. Something hard and cold smashed across the side of his head. Stunned, he felt his legs go out from under him.
Dropped on all fours, he turned his head and saw the length of steel pipe swinging down at him again, a direct hit aimed at the center of his face.
MOTHER OF GOD, Chase thought as he stared at the massive Gen One male in front of them. "Back the way we came," he ordered Tavia. "Find Rowan. Get out of here."
But before she took the first step, even as he told her to go, he knew it was too late for any of them to run and hope to get away. Too late to open fire on the Hunter, a highly specialized weapon, born and bred in Dragos's labs for a single purpose: to kill.
The assassin saw the gun in Chase's hand and sent it flying from his grasp with the power of his mind. It hurtled into a framed watercolor on the near wall, pistol and painting crashing to the reception area floor.
Not good.
Chase glanced past the bulk of the assassin in front of him, gauging the odds of getting Tavia out through the shattered window, their only viable exit. They'd never make it. And behind them in the clinic was nothing but silence. For all he knew, Mathias could already be dead, whether from more Hunters like this one or some other threat, Chase could only guess.
He knew one thing for certain: There would be no mercy here, only unfailing execution of Dragos's orders.
The assassin's dark gaze skimmed past Chase to settle and lock on Tavia. There was pure menace in those unfeeling eyes, clear and cold, unswerving. A sniper's sights trained on its target. Chase understood the message at once. It was Tavia this Hunter had come for; Chase was merely standing in the way.
The assassin took a bold step forward, broken glass crunching under his black combat boots. "Release the female."