bodies had yet to show the stress of those additional years.
The Breeds were screwed if knowledge of this leaked into the general public. He could hear the Blood Supremacists screaming now, demanding their incarceration, their separation from the general public.
And to add to the problem, they had a disappearance at Sanctuary. A Breed couple suspected of having Mated, the female of which Jonas had been very interested in.
As he stared at the file, a slight knock on the oak door separating his office from his assistant echoed through the dark-paneled room.
He lifted his head as the door opened and his assistant, Mia, stepped in, closing the panel behind her.
"Senator Cooley is here to see you about the National Breed Registry, Mr. Wyatt. " Her lips lifted in a little snarl, a short incisor gleaming briefly.
"Should I tell him you aren't in?"
Mia's opinion of the National Registry was well known. The Breeds had been fighting it for months. The private registry held within Jonas's office was all that was needed for now.
"You can send him in. " He laid the file on the desk as he leaned back in his chair. "And Mia, I need all the information you can pull on Mark and
Aimee. Cross-check them against other Breeds for any shared assignments or tests as well as non-Breed contact. "
"Yes sir. I'll get on that now. You also have lunch at one o'clock with Senator Tyler and his brother, and a cocktail party tonight at Drey Hampton's. Neither appointment can be canceled. "
Jonas nodded; Mia was as competent at her job as he was at his. "Send Cooley in and get Braden Arness on the phone the minute the senator leaves. I have a job for him. "
She nodded briskly before turning and stepping smartly back into her own office.
Jonas pulled the file on the Bill for Breed Registry free from the others on his desk and opened it casually. He had no intentions of agreeing to any part of it, but sometimes·ometimes it was better to play the game.
He looked up as Senator Cooley entered the room, middle-aged, his naturally narrow eyes and sharp nose gave the appearance of a rat. A thin smile stretched across the senator's face, pretending to be jovial, to be comfortable.
Jonas contained a weary sigh. Another game. Another lie. And he knew,
&nbs
p; to survive, the lies could never end.
Chapter One
Southern New Mexico,2023
Evanescence was blaring from the speakers of the fourwheel drive Range Raider, the new wave of law enforcement vehicles specially built for the rugged desert terrain. The gentle rock of the vehicle, attributed to the separate suspension on each tire, allowed it to traverse the terrain easily and was also a soothing comfort when added to the pulse-pounding music flowing through the interior.
The music was old, but it fit her mood. Dark, filled with energy and a quest for life. But beneath the beat, Megan Fields could feel threads of emotion weaving around her, pricking at her mind. Others' emotions, someone else's pain. The empathic talents she possessed were her curse; the desert was usually her salvation. Until now. Now the two had somehow managed to collide.
Desert patrol was never fun, and only on the odd occasions did it
become dangerous. She knew that. It was the perfect area for the criminal element. Easily crossed and nearly impossible for law enforcement to adequately patrol, it was the perfect habitat for the two legged variety of scavengers that preyed on innocent human beings.
Megan Fields ignored the music blaring around her as she adjusted the dark glasses that protected her eyes from the blazing sun and surveyed the land around her. Stark, with a blend of russets, golden-hued browns and darker tans with intermittent splashes of green, the land seemed empty, broken, forgotten.
Sometimes she wondered if she was the only one who could see the beauty in the land that surrounded her. The caverns hidden in shadowed buttes, the small, well-hidden areas of grassy splendor. It was a wonderland, secreted away amid the brush and bramble that first caught the eye.
And if she wasn't mistaken, she just might have company in her desert wonderland. She could feel the snaking sensations of disturbance tightening her skull, sending tension racing through her body.
She braked at the edge of a deep gully, her eyes narrowed at the tire tracks that led into it. They were fairly recent, cutting deep into the sandy soil, like a wound carelessly inflicted. A chill raced over her flesh at the sight of it, cutting through the peace that had previously filled her.
She turned her gaze to the report log scrolling across the small screen to the right of the steering wheel. There was a report of a missing hiker from Carlsbad, various APBs and stolen vehicles.
She scratched at the top of her nose thoughtfully before muting the music and flipping down the microphone that was attached to the transistor at her ear.