The Cardinal Bird - Book 1: Reverse Harem Series (The Cardinal Series) Read online

  Brock left, taking the remaining three bags to go feed the troops.

  Karl approached me as he perused through the bag. "Okay, we've got...wraps...kebabs? Gyros? It's something with meat and veggies in a convenient wrap. I'm not sure what exactly it is called here, but it smells delicious. Uh...we also have bite-sized--ha, Byte-Syzed, no pun intended--pieces of rye-bread? Maybe? Pick your poison."

  I took the wrap that Karl held out to me. It would be unwise to deny it, not that I wanted to in the first place. I sniffed it, taking in the scent of pork and grilled veggies held together with a rye bread wrap. I was quickly associating these scents with Estonia.

  Juices squeezed out the sides and dripped down my hand as I ate, but I was too hungry to care.

  "Good girl," Karl nodded at me, munching away on his own food.

  CJ wrapped up the conversation on the phone with Dr. Scott before he joined us. He must’ve already finished the sandwich. He snagged the bag away from Karl while he was distracted with his own wrap, probably the only way he managed to get the food away from him. Karl seemed pretty possessive of it.

  "Alright," CJ said, unwrapping some sort of bratwurst. "Sweet," he said and took a big bite, downing almost half of it in one go. "Anyway, the doctor said that if you start to experience any confusion, fever, or dizziness to let us know right away." He took another bite. "Oh," he said around his mouthful. "Also, if you get a rash or--"

  "Stop, stop, stop it," Karl groaned. "You are ruining this sandwich. Food is a sacrilegious experience that should not be messed with."

  "Sorry," CJ said, unaffected as he finished off the entire brat in just three bites. "It's sort of life or death. Doesn't that trump anything sacrosanct?"

  Karl pointed at him but then paused. "Alright, I'll give you that. I'm just going to go check on Brock..." he said getting to his feet.

  CJ squinted at him. "He just left maybe, what, 30 seconds ago."

  Karl glared at him. "Your point?"

  "You're going to go finish your sandwich in the hall."

  "Yes, okay!" Karl said as he opened the door. "I'm squeamish, so, yes, CJ. I am going to go finish my sandwich in the hall." He pointed said sandwich at me as his blue eyes locked on me. "And you, don't you dare feel guilty about it."

  CJ waited until Karl had almost shut the door before he snorted. "Yeah, it's not your fault our manly mission lead is squeamish," CJ whispered to me, his dimples pronounced in his cheeks and his brown eyes twinkling with their golden hue once more.

  Karl popped back in. "I heard that, Chris James Tate! You'll be getting extra assignments when we get back stateside."

  "B-but, you can't do that! Can he do that?" CJ asked me over the sound of Karl slamming the door shut once more.

  My eyes widened. "Um...what does he mean...assignments? Assignments like this one? Is this an assignment?"

  CJ didn't answer my question but instead looked through the bag that I was surprised Karl had willingly left behind. He pulled out a paper cone full of french fries. "Does the doctor-talk bother you while you're eating?"

  I shook my head in the negative.

  "Good," he said wiping off a fry on his napkin before popping it in his mouth. "I don't get why they put mayo on their fries over here." He said, studying the french fry curiously, before shrugging his shoulders and popping it in his mouth. "Okay, so I basically told you everything to look out for. We'll be back in the states in about 18 hours or so, and that's the only reason that Dr. Scott said it was okay to wait and treat when we get back. But, if you get worse, you need to let us know."

  His voice was surprisingly firm, and I just nodded my head.

  "No," he said, sounding a bit like his brother. "I'm being serious, Callie. You can't keep something from us because you're worried that we might tip off Ivanov. You need to let us know."

  "Sure," I said easily, hoping that I could hide my horrible lying skills by eating, so I stuffed my face with the biggest bite yet.

  CJ just watched me suspiciously for a minute but then went back to eating without saying anything, so I assumed that he believed me. That was a relief. There was no way that I would be telling anyone if I got worse. It just wasn't worth it.

  Hopefully, it wouldn't be an issue anyway.

  Chapter 11

  The food helped a lot, and afterward, Brock checked my redressed wounds to make sure CJ and Karl had done a good job. That was about all there was that he could do, much to his growling consternation. Actually, that was all he was willing to do. He could’ve cauterized them again so the bleeding would stop, but he was strongly against that. In fact, Brock cursed vehemently when I’d suggested it. He thought that it might have to be scrubbed open anyway when we got back to the US, so it would be pointless pain.

  Karl came back some moments later to let us know that CJ had the surveillance up and running so that we could hole up for the night. Karl also suggested that I needed to pick someone to stay in the room with me. My immediate thought was CJ since I'd technically known him the longest. The more time I spent around him, the more I recognized the personality that I had talked to so many times on the computer as Megabyte_1. It was easy to remember why I had reached out to him in the first place.

  Karl didn't want me to just be with CJ for some reason, so I asked for Jace to also stay in the room. Maybe it was because I felt like I knew him via his twin.

  Either way, the night passed quickly, and I didn't remember any of it. I thought that I would be up, tossing and turning, wondering if Nikolai would pop in at any moment to finish what he had intended.

  Thankfully, that didn't happen. The food must have been just what my body needed because I remembered CJ and I sitting together on one of the bottom bunks. CJ was talking to me about a computer program that he was working on. The next thing I knew, it was dark in the room, and I was being shaken awake.

  I looked around, disoriented. It hurt to move—a lot, but that was okay. The pain let me know that I was alive.

  What worried me was that I was freezing cold.

  I put that thought aside and glanced around the room. There were two bunk beds including mine, two doors, and a window. Some sort of cabinet with places for padlocks on each door was pushed haphazardly against the wall.

  It looked nothing like my sleeping area at the compound.

  Were Dell and I on a mission?

  "Callie," a dark, smoky voice said. It was most definitely not Dell's voice.

  Dell had a pronounced Yorkshire accent that I wasn't entirely sure was real or not. He was a private person out of necessity, and I wouldn't put it past him to have a fake, specific British accent to throw people off his history.

  The person that was speaking to me in this room sounded American with an almost undetectable foreign accent.

  I sat up quickly, nearly banging my head on the bunk above me. My body protested, vigorously. It felt like I had been dragged behind a goat up a rocky mountain and then trampled on by rams just to top it off.

  "Whoa," the voice said. "Calm down, Callie."

  The person knew my name and wasn't trying to hurt me. That probably meant that I was safe. I needed to focus. I took a deep breath, in and out. I started reciting different math equations in my head.

  I was able to calm down enough to take a deep breath. I smelled synthetic oranges... I kept going.

  Deep breath in and out.

  My brain hurt. It felt like fuzzy cotton had been stuffed inside it, abrading and searingly painful.

  Why was I having such a hard time remembering?

  And then...suddenly, I did remember.

  My heart clenched.

  Kaz.

  With pain like squeezing my heart through a straw, I recalled what I had forgotten. Little Kazimir was dead.

  Someone flipped the lights on, and I was at last able to take in the faces of the two men in the room, identical in almost every way.

  I smelled the air again. Scents always helped me remember things...

  Their names came back to me. Jace smelled like orange cleaner. As CJ crossed the room to crouch down next to his brother, the smell of lemon and bergamot mingled in with Jace's scent to create a pleasant, citrusy combo.

  "I'm fine," I croaked out, shocked at the sound of my voice.

  CJ frowned. "Is your throat sore?"

  I took my time answering, making sure that I remembered everything that had happened in the past two days. The list of symptoms CJ had written out for me came to mind. Mentally, I went through it before I nodded my head. A sore throat wasn't on the BOLO list of symptoms, so I felt it was relatively safe to admit it. If it had been on the list, I knew that no amount of protesting would stop these guys from taking me to a hospital.

  At my nod, Jace stood up and crossed the room to one of the duffels on the floor. He grabbed out a bottle of water, popping the seal and holding it out to me. I took it and drank greedily.

  "Might be sore from all of the coughing," Jace said.

  I was breathing hard by the time I came up for air, but my throat felt better, the water doing wonders as a soothing balm for the raw nerves. Water could heal just as much as it could hurt. My brain pounded and beat against the drum of my skull. I rubbed at it, trying to focus. "Did I stop breathing?"

  There was a short silence.

  "Uh," CJ said. "No? Why do you ask?"

  Jace must not have told him about that happening on the drive over here. That was fine by me. I took another drink. The pounding in my brain wasn't really going away, but I was getting used to it. It was more...tolerable. "Why'd you wake me then?"

  "Time to go," Jace said, going back to zip up the duffle. "Karl said Henley team scheduled take-off for first thing this morning. Got to be there in 30 minutes. Unless you feel like sight-seeing for four hours because that was apparently the next open time at the airport."

  Okay. We needed to make it there in the next 30 minutes then.

  I looked at CJ, remembering something important. "Do you still have the..."

  Before I could finish, he'd fished the thumb drive out of his pajama pants. "I slept with it on me just in case."

  The reason why he had it on him in his sleep needed no explanation. He’d been keeping it secure just in case something had happened during the night. With such dedicated and smart guys, I wondered if we really would make it out of Europe and away from Nikolai, once and for all. It seemed all too easy.

  I'd know. I'd tried before.

  I nodded in appreciation at CJ and crawled out of the bed. "I'll be ready in three minutes."

  And I was.

  I was back out into the dorm room faster than that, especially when I remembered that I didn't have a brush to detangle my hair. It was too far gone for just my fingers to get the job done, so I didn’t bother.

  The bruise between my hazel eyes was more pronounced this morning. It was a lovely combination of putrid green, sickly yellow, and bloody purple. All in all, I looked like a zombie-film extra with my injuries, hollowed cheeks, and sunken eyes.

  At least I was clean. I readjusted the borrowed basketball shorts, tying the knot tighter for moving around. I didn't have anything on underneath them, so I didn't want to take the chance of them falling down while moving about. Despite being commando underneath, someone had gotten me socks and shoes in the middle of the night. I was actually grateful that they hadn't gone shopping for unmentionables for me to wear. Embarrassing. I was doubly happy to have something on my feet that I could easily walk in.

  Blood sprayed at me, misting all over my face.

  I tripped over the carpet and would've fallen to the ground if it wasn't for Jace catching me. His hold was solid. His arms gripped me so firmly that my head kept going forward with the excess momentum until it couldn't anymore.

  Resisting the urge to rub my neck, I looked up.

  Jace's dark chocolate eyes studied my face. "I get to be your hero again, huh?"

  I swallowed and nodded, trying to be inconspicuous as I swiped at my cheeks. I looked at my hands. They came away clean. No blood. I was clean now.

  I was clean.

  I started listing codes in my head to distract myself. "I guess so," I said to Jace.

  "He's your hero?" CJ asked me.

  Jace answered smugly before I could. "Well, I did get into the tank for her."

  "Pfft, that doesn't sound so bad," CJ said. "I was there for her to reach out to in her times of need."

  Jace opened his mouth to reply but got cut off by the hall door opening.

  "If you two are done measuring each other," Brock grumped, his messy, black hair tousled up. He yawned. "Karl is ready to roll out."

  I shuffled to the door, eager to leave the room and thankful to Brock for interrupting when he did. Out in the hallway, everyone else was lined up, duffle bags slung over shoulders, and in various states of consciousness--from Aleks who was propped against the wall with his eyes closed compared to Karl who had a cup of coffee in his hand and was bouncing on the balls of his feet. Brock was silent, leaning up against the wall, but--unlike Aleks--his winter-gray eyes were open.

  Karl headed over, chuffing Aleks under the chin as he passed him. Aleks nearly fell sideways as he startled awake, his hands fisting and swiping out at the perceived threat with such force that I almost imagined I could hear the swish of the air. If Karl hadn't kept walking, he would've been taken down without a doubt. There was so much power behind Aleks' swing. But that didn't seem to shake the unflappable Karl. He was calm as a queen.

  Karl noticed the incredulous look on my face and chuckled. "For future reference, don't wake Aleks up. Unless you don't have a choice. And then...yeah, no. Still, don't wake him up. Find someone else to wake him up."

  "I volunteer as tribute!" CJ said cheerfully. I turned my still incredulous-look his way. He blushed, shuffled his feet, and looked down. "You have to know how to wake him up."

  "Yeah," Jace deadpanned. "With a long-range water gun."

  CJ grinned. "Well, he likes me."

  Karl finally reached us. "CJ, everyone likes you. It's all part of your charm. Anyway, if we have to wake him up, we'll find you since you seem to like it so much."

  CJ's face went supernova, and I stared in fascination wondering if I hadn't met my male match in the blushing department.

  "I'm awake." Aleks gruffed with his eyes still closed and head tilted back against the wall. His voice was even deeper than usual.

  "Not awake enough to be speaking in English," Brock said.

  "Malyshka understands me. That is all that matters. I can speak in my mother tongue."

  “You think she wants to understand you?” Brock said doubtfully, his arms folded.

  Aleks finally deigned to lazily open one of his arctic blue eyes at that comment. He slowly turned his gaze to Brock. Aleks seemed like a large apex cat. His gaze was cold and predatory as if he could just as soon kill you as he could ignore you but was just deciding which option would be less work.

  Jace turned to me. "Callie? Translate. Sharing is caring." Brock slapped him on the back of the head, but it didn't deter him. "C'mon Callie."

  "Uh," I said. I wasn't sure if I should translate. "Don't we have to leave?"

  Aleks smirked at me, looking much more awake now, while Jace acted like I just kicked him in the knee.