CHAPTER

Three

Jenna’s hands were fisted as she shoved them deep into the pockets of the belted, white terry robe that covered her thin hospital gown. Her feet swam in the new, but extra-large, man-size slippers Alex had retrieved out of a cabinet drawer in the infirmary room where Jenna had awakened less than an hour ago. She shuffled beside her friend, walking along a lighted, marble-white corridor that snaked and twisted in a seemingly endless maze of similar walkways.

Jenna felt oddly numb, not just from the shock of hearing that her brother was dead but from the fact that the nightmare she’d awakened from had not ended with her survival. The creature that had attacked her in her cabin might have been killed, as she’d been informed, but she wasn’t free of its hold.

After what she saw in the X-ray images and on the video feed from the infirmary, she knew with a bone-deep dread that part of that fanged monster still held her in its ruthless grasp. She should be screaming in terror for that knowledge alone. Deep down, fear and grief roiled. She clamped a hard lid on her bubbling hysteria, refusing to show that kind of weakness, even to her best friend.

But there was a true calmness inside her, one that had been with her in the infirmary room—since the moment Brock had put his hands on her and promised she was safe. It was that reassurance as well as her own determination to soldier on that kept her from breaking down as she walked the labyrinth of corridors with Alex.

“We’re almost there,” Alex said as she led Jenna around another corner, toward another long stretch of gleaming hallway. “I thought you’d be more comfortable getting cleaned up and dressed in Kade’s and my quarters rather than the infirmary.”

Jenna managed a vague nod, although it was hard to imagine that she might be comfortable anywhere in this strange and unfamiliar place. She walked cautiously, her rusty cop instincts prickling as she passed unmarked room after unmarked room. There wasn’t a single exterior window in the place, nothing to indicate where the facility was located, nor what might lie beyond its walls. No way to tell even whether it was day or night outside.

Above her head, tracking the length of this corridor like the others, small black domes concealed what she guessed must be surveillance cameras. It was all very state-of-the-art, very private, and very secure.

“What is this place, some kind of government building?” she asked, voicing her suspicions out loud. “Definitely not civilian. Is it some kind of military facility?”

Alex slid her a hesitant, measuring glance. “It’s more secure than any of those things. We’re about thirty stories belowground, not far outside the city of Boston.”

“A bunker, then,” Jenna guessed, still trying to make sense of it all. “If it’s not part of the government or military, what is it?”

Alex seemed to consider her reply for a moment longer than was needed. “The compound we’re in, and the gated estate that sits above us on street level, belongs to the Order.”

“The Order,” Jenna repeated, finding that Alex’s explanation was raising more questions about the place than it answered. She’d never been anywhere like this before. It was alien in its high-tech design, a far cry from anything she’d ever seen in rural Alaska or any of the places she’d been in the Lower Forty-eight.

Adding to the strangeness, beneath her slippered feet, the polished white marble was inlaid with glossy black stone that made a running pattern of odd symbols along the floor—arcing flourishes and complex geometric shapes that somewhat resembled tribal tattoos.

Dermaglyphs.

The word leapt into her thoughts out of nowhere, an answer to a question she didn’t even know to ask. It was an unfamiliar word, as unfamiliar as everything about this place and the people who apparently lived here. And yet the certainty with which her mind supplied the term made it feel as though she must have thought or said it thousands of times.

Impossible.

“Jenna, are you all right?” Alex paused in the corridor a couple of steps ahead of where Jenna’s own feet had ceased moving. “Are you tired? We can rest for a minute, if you need to.”

“No. I’m okay.” She felt a frown creasing her forehead as she glanced up from the intricate design on the smooth floor. “I’m just … confused.”

And that was due to more than just the peculiarity of where she found herself now. Everything felt different to her, even her own body. Some part of her intellect knew that after five days unconscious in a sickbed, she probably should be exhausted from even the short distance she’d just walked.

Muscles didn’t naturally rebound from that kind of inactivity without a bit of pain and retraining. She knew that from her own personal experience, from the accident four years ago that had put her in the hospital ICU in Fairbanks. The same accident that had killed her husband and young daughter.

Jenna remembered all too well the weeks of hard rehabilitation it had taken to get her back on her feet and walking again. And yet now, after the ordeal she’d just awakened from, her limbs felt steady and nimble. Completely unaffected by the prolonged lack of use.

Her body felt oddly revived. Stronger, yet, somehow not quite her own.

“None of this makes sense to me,” she murmured, as she and Alex continued their progress down the long corridor.

“Oh, Jen.” Alex touched her shoulder with a gentle hand. “I know about the confusion you must be feeling right now. Believe me, I know. I wish none of this had happened to you. I wish there was some way to take back what you’ve gone through.”

Jenna blinked slowly, registering the depth of her friend’s regret. She had questions—so many questions—but as they walked deeper into the maze of corridors, the mingled sounds of voices carried out from a glass-walled room up ahead. She heard Brock’s deep, rolling baritone and the lighter, quickly spoken, British-tinged syllables of the man named Gideon.

As she and Alex neared the meeting room, she saw that the one called Lucan was there, too, as were Kade and two others who only fortified the large-and-lethal vibe that these guys seemed to wear as casually as their black fatigues and well-stocked weapons belts.

“This is the tech lab,” Alex explained to her. “All the computer equipment you see in there is Gideon’s domain. Kade says he’s some kind of genius when it comes to technology. Probably a genius when it comes to just about everything.”

As they paused in the passageway, Kade glanced up and gave Alex a lingering look through the glass. Electricity crackled in his silver eyes, and Jenna would have to be unconscious in her sickbed not to feel the shared heat between Alex and her man.

Jenna got her own share of looks from the others gathered in the glass-enclosed room. Lucan and Gideon both turned her way, as did two other big men who were not familiar to her. One of them a severe-looking, golden-eyed blond whose stare felt as cold and unfeeling as a blade, the other an olive-skinned man with a thick crown of chocolate-brown waves that accentuated his long-lashed topaz eyes and an unfortunate mass of scars that riddled the left side of his otherwise flawless face. There was curiosity in the men’s frank stares, maybe a bit of suspicion, too.

“That’s Hunter and Rio,” Alex said, indicating the menacing blond and the scarred brunet respectively. “They’re members of the Order, too.”

Jenna gave a vague nod of acknowledgment, feeling as conspicuous in front of these men as she had her first day on the job with the Alaska State Troopers, a fresh-from-the-academy rookie and a female besides. But here, the feeling wasn’t so much about gender discrimination or petty male insecurities. She’d known enough of that bullshit during her tenure with the Staties to realize this was something different. Something a whole lot deeper.