He stepped out as D'Arn disappeared around the corner. He had a very short window of opportunity - too bad he wouldn't be able to choke the life out of her as he'd planned. He palmed the pressure injector full of one hundred percent Rush and reached for the doorknob. It turned without resistance.
One more second and it would be good-bye, Brenna Shane Kincaid.
Chapter 44
Judd was running full-tilt to the nursery, Hawke at his side, when his phone began to beep in an intense, irregular pattern.
It was linked to the alarm on Brenna's door.
Screeching to a stop, he used every trick he had to focus despite the number of bodies moving past him. One second. Two. Too damn slow. There. He teleported out. Brenna's door was closed. He pulled it off using Tk and sent the wide piece of plascrete smashing into the corridor, nearly mowing down another SnowDancer soldier.
Brenna was on the floor, bleeding from cuts on her lip and cheek. He went to pick up her attacker and throw him into the wall, but she shook her head slightly. He froze. The man whirled to face Judd, but he never got the chance to speak. Brenna swept out a leg and smashed him to the ground before jumping on his back and swiping her claws down hard enough to reveal flashes of bone.
The killer screamed.
Judd put him in a telekinetic choke hold. "You don't have the right to scream."
Brenna looked up as the man gurgled, desperate to breathe. "You were right - he was there." A feral snarl as she held him down. "He was the reason I got into that van. He offered me a ride." Gripping her attacker's hair, she jerked back his head. "Let the bastard speak."
Judd released his hold, aware of others arriving at the scene. "I can tear his mind open, download everything he knows. Of course, he'll be a drooling mess by the end."
Brenna's captive coughed and tried to speak. "No. I'll talk."
Brenna jerked his hair harder. "So talk, Dieter."
There was no mercy in her and Judd approved. This man had used his position to prey on those who trusted him. Judd remembered him squatting beside Timothy's dead body, pretending to help, telling them how perfect the room was if you wanted to surreptitiously dispose of a body, how the killer had to be someone smart.
"I met him a few months before you got taken," he coughed out, "Santano Enrique."
Someone hissed in the doorway, sounding more cat than wolf.
Brenna dug her claws into his shoulder, scraping bone. Dieter's scream was high and shrill, rising above the shriek of the emergency alarm, but she kept him conscious. "Did you give me up to him?"
"Yes." Dieter coughed up blood and Judd realized he was crushing the man's internal organs. He forced himself to pull back. This was Brenna's fight.
"Why?" Betrayal laced her voice. "You were my brothers' friend. You were Pack."
"It was a straight business deal. He gave me Rush at a real low price. Made me rich." Dieter didn't try for Brenna's sympathy, as if he knew he'd get none. "All he wanted was a favor now and then."
"Like picking me up on the way to class," Brenna whispered, tone raw. "Like telling me I was needed at the den. Did he come back from the grave and ask you to shoot Andrew, too?" Her next move was so fast, Judd almost missed it. She smashed Dieter's face to the floor, hard enough to cause unconsciousness but not death. The alarm cut off at that same instant.
Getting up, she wiped the blood off her mouth with the back of her hand. "Elias, Sing-Liu," she said to the two soldiers who'd stopped in the doorway, "take him to the lockup."
Judd blocked the doorway. "I'll take him."
Brenna growled. "You'll kill him. We need to know what he fed Enrique."
"I can get that." Judd could almost taste the man's death on his lips.
"His execution belongs to Tim's family." She stepped around the body to face him. "Tim died. I didn't."
Blood for life. Life for life. Changeling justice.
But Judd wasn't changeling. Dieter's heart pulsed in his psychic hold. Just one - Brenna gripped the front of his shirt. "Stop."
He stared at her. "No." His mind recognized killing, was drawn to the taste of it.
She kissed him, bit down hard on his lower lip. Dissonance crashed into him, combining with the sensory pleasure, the iron-rich taste of blood, and the hunger for violence. It scrambled his pathways for an instant. That instant was enough. When she drew back, he was still homicidal, but he could think past it. "You're right. We need to know what he knows. I'll take him."