The Unnaturals (The Unnaturals Series Book 1) Read online

  The Unnaturals

  Book One of The Unnaturals Series

  By Jessica Meigs

  The Unnaturals

  Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Meigs

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover art by Tony Mauro, Tony Mauro Illustrations

  Formatting by Kody Boye

  Editing by Felicia Sullivan

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronically, mechanically, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the proper written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

  Excerpt from Hellforged © 2016 by Jessica Meigs.

  Also by Jessica Meigs

  The Becoming Series

  The Becoming

  The Becoming: Ground Zero

  The Becoming: Revelations

  The Becoming: Under Siege

  The Becoming: Redemption

  The Becoming: Origins

  The Agency Series

  Nightfall

  Revenant *

  The Unnaturals Series

  The Unnaturals

  Hellforged *

  *coming soon

  To my dad.

  I miss you.

  “I’m a reasonable guy. But I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.”

  —Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China

  The Unnaturals: The Soundtrack

  Music is an important part of everything I write, and I’ve made no secret of this. Since I create playlists for all of my stories, I thought it would be fun to share the soundtrack listing for The Unnaturals for readers to put together and hear. So, without further ado, here is the music for The Unnaturals.

  1. “Dark Horses” by Switchfoot

  2. “Assassin” by Muse

  3. “Beautiful Thieves” by AFI

  4. “Cat Green Eyes” by The Wolfmen

  5. “Monsters” by Matchbook Romance

  6. “Trenches” by Pop Evil

  7. “Call to Arms” / “Initiation” by Crown the Empire

  8. “Your Betrayal” by Bullet for My Valentine

  9. “Smells Like a Freak Show” by Avatar

  10. “What Do You Say” by Filter

  11. “Blame” by Egypt Central

  12. “It’s Me You’re Looking For” by Blowsight

  13. “Blood” by In This Moment

  14. “Bad Reputation” by The Hit Girls

  15. “Zero Percent” by My Chemical Romance

  16. “If I Was Your Vampire” by Marilyn Manson

  Chapter One

  Riley Walker hung off a one-inch wide ledge on the side of a condominium, suspended only by her fingertips and the straining muscles in her shoulders and biceps. It wasn’t the most ideal position she’d ever been in; she preferred standing in triumph over a defeated mark—that was the sort of position that resulted in the Agency depositing nice, hefty bonuses into her offshore bank account. But she couldn’t be choosy. Especially not when her life depended on it.

  Worse than dangling off the side of a building? Dangling off the side of a building in a skirt and flip-flops, of all things. If she’d had her preference, she’d have worn what she liked to call the “uniform,” a black ensemble of snug pants and tank tops and tactical vests—not the epitome of stylish but useful when on an assignment with all of the pockets for her guns and knives and ammunition. Sadly, most drug lords would have seen right through such an outfit, and so in her move to get close to said drug lord, she’d been forced to don one more…appealing.

  Hence the skirt. And the flip-flops.

  Riley’s fingers were cramping. She flexed them, trying to dig them into the brick more firmly. Her feet swung free, her toes curled in an effort to keep her stupid shoes from falling off. That would have been just what she needed—to have her position given away by a falling shoe.

  Betrayal by Shoe was not on her list of ideal ways to bite the bullet.

  Neither was falling five stories to her death on the cracked sidewalk below.

  The crunch of gravel on the roof alerted Riley to someone above her. She sucked in a breath and relaxed her body, pressing against the building. She rested her pale cheek against the stone and closed her eyes, trying to enter her mental zone, where she wasn’t fighting the building pain in her trembling muscles. She picked her favorite memory, where she was laying on a beach somewhere far away with a big bottle of tequila in her hand, a dark-haired man stretched out on the sand beside her, his smile easy and familiar and mischievous. The dark-haired man’s sudden appearance jolted her out of her focused daydream and back into the steamy, humid air of Colombia. She opened her eyes in time to see the butt of a spent cigarette drop past her face. Her mark was right above her head, but she didn’t dare think about looking up. She tensed, expecting a bullet in the top of her skull at any moment.

  The bullet never came. Instead, her mark kicked a few rocks over the edge of the roof and began to retreat, perhaps to search for her elsewhere.

  Riley let out the breath she’d been holding and tried to decide the best way to get down from where she was hanging. She shifted against the brick, angling her head so she could see the side of the building below her. The fourth floor beneath her feet had a balcony, the railing almost flush against the side of the building. She was sure if she let go and fell at the right angle, she could make it onto the balcony. She measured the distance with her eyes. She was confident she could make it.

  Her bra chose that moment to chime out the Batman jingle.

  “Shit,” Riley hissed. She glanced down again, her stomach tensed with anxiety—she’d never been comfortable with heights—and then back up to the roof. She locked eyes with the man she’d been sent to eliminate: Emanuel Garza, full-time drug lord and part-time thorn in quite a few peoples’ sides. Seller of weapons that had been used to massacre more than one group of people, purveyor of multitudes of drugs, and vicious brute, his favorite method of dispatching enemies involved separating their heads from their bodies and leaving them on random roadsides. And he was looking down at her with a scowl of anger and disgust on his face so heated it could have melted butter, his gun aimed right at her. With a grin that would have gotten her ass kicked in any other circumstance, Riley balanced her weight on one arm long enough to present the man and his gun with one raw, scrape-knuckled finger.

  Then she let go.

  Riley missed the fourth floor balcony’s railing as she fell, and her stomach somersaulted as she plummeted past it. She didn’t have time to swear before slamming into the third floor railing. Her head banged against the rail, but she had the presence of mind to wrap her sore fingers around it and haul herself up and over. She tumbled to the balcony’s concrete floor. She tucked and rolled to absorb the impact and came up on one knee, hitched her flower-printed skirt up her right leg, and pulled free the Sig Sauer P226 pistol from the modified holster strapped around her thigh. Then, throwing caution to the wind, she ripped open the balcony door and stumbled inside the condo, her world spinning around her.

  Riley’s bra started to sing the Batman jingle again as she ran through the condo’s living room, skirting around an ugly black pleather couch and a couple of end tables. She careened off a counter that divided the kitchen from the living area on her way to the main
entrance and grimaced at the jab of pain in her gut. Just what I need, another injury, she thought as she shoved her hand up her shirt. It took her only a second to free the cell phone from her bra, and she pressed the phone to her ear.

  “This better be Adam West, because I sure as hell could use some sort of drug lord repellent spray right now,” Riley snapped. She skidded to a halt and dropped into a crouch behind the counter. She pressed her back against it and held her pistol at ready, cataloging her injuries, as a familiar voice chuckled in her ear.

  “Good to hear that you’re still alive and kicking,” the smooth voice of her handler, Brandon Hall, said.

  “Yeah, no thanks to you,” Riley quipped. She spat on the floor, trying to clear her mouth of the sickly taste of bile, and added, “Now I’ve got the damned Colombian version of the mafia on my ass because you can’t keep your finger off the redial button. There was a reason I had my phone on silent, you know. You didn’t have to turn the ringer on remotely.”

  “You were ignoring my calls.”

  “It cross your mind that I had a reason for that, too?”

  “Well, I have a reason for calling.”

  “Then get on with it already so I can get back to kicking ass, would you?” Riley leaned out from her spot to peer around the corner of the counter, checking the security of the condo’s front door. People yelled in the hallway in a language she didn’t understand. She gave it another three minutes before they located her and another minute after that before they accessed the condo. “And speak fast. I’m in a tight spot,” she ordered as an afterthought.

  As if flipping a switch labeled “personality” in his brain, Brandon’s voice shifted from teasing to serious. Riley found the ease with which he could do it disturbing. Before she could ponder it too much, though, her brain zeroed in on what he was saying.

  “Riley, we need you to come in,” he said. “Immediately.”

  Whatever was going on had to be urgent. There was no way Brandon would have used her real name over an unsecured line if it weren’t. The thought of someone listening in and gathering information about her gave her chills. She dug her heels into the metaphorical dirt and shook her head, even though Brandon couldn’t see the motion over the phone line.

  “In case you haven’t noticed,” she said, checking the door again, “I’m sort of in the middle of something.”

  “I’m aborting your current assignment,” Brandon shot back. “Now get the hell out of there and report in before I have you declared rogue.”

  Riley gritted her teeth. He wouldn’t dare. “And how do you propose I do that?” she snapped. “I’m hemmed in here.”

  The rattle of computer keys filtered through the phone. “Look to your left,” Brandon replied, the smooth smugness reappearing in his voice. “See you in twenty-four hours, Riley.” The “or else” in his voice was obvious. He hung up before she could utter a reply.

  Riley glared at the cell phone in her hand as if the man who had been on the other end could see her expression. Brandon had a habit of being infuriating, a fact that she was reminded of as she tightened her grip on the phone and shook it, like she was strangling him through the device. She stuffed the phone back into her bra before obeying his order to look left. A large vent leading to the building’s central air conditioning system was embedded in the wall.

  “How the hell does he do that?” Riley mused. She slid across the hardwood floor and reached under her skirt again, freeing the utility knife from its sheath beside her gun holster, flipping it open to the screwdriver, and quickly removing the screws until the cover fell away. She ripped the air filter out and tossed it to the kitchen floor, returned her utility knife to its holster, and ducked into the air vent.

  “I guess the only way to go is down,” Riley muttered as she pulled her sandals off and crawled into the vent. As she began the hunt for a path that angled down, sliding along on her stomach and pulling herself by her forearms, she added, in the barest of whispers, “I guess now I get to find out what a TV dinner feels like.”

  ~*~

  It was starting to rain. Scott Hunter observed the fact as he did every other change in his environment: from the front porch of his cabin in a remote area of the woods, a steaming mug of spiked coffee between his hands and his solid black German Shepherd laying at his feet. His spot in the world was in Minnesota, almost completely off the grid—almost. He never fooled himself into believing that he wasn’t being watched. The United States government didn’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars training and equipping people like him to let its substantial investment wander into the wilderness unattended. It was why he never got involved with people, why he never brought anyone to his home for any reason whatsoever, no matter how bad the urge for company got. Maybe it was why, despite the absence of other people, he never felt totally alone.

  Scott scratched his fingers through the dark stubble on his cheek and took a swallow from the ceramic coffee mug that proclaimed him the “World’s Greatest Dad.” The dark liquid burned as it slid down his throat, but it was a pleasant burn fueled by heat and whiskey. He cleared his throat and breathed in the scent of fresh rain, late evening, and damp earth before leaning to pat the large dog at his feet on her furry head.

  “You hungry, Lola?” he asked, scratching the dog behind her ears. She whistled through her nose as if answering his question, and her tail thumped against the porch’s floorboards. He grinned. “I’m thinking steaks tonight. You like dead cow, don’t you?” He patted her one more time before straightening and heading back into the cabin, leaving the front door open so Lola could come inside when she was ready.

  The cabin’s interior was dim; Scott had never been a fan of turning on lights if it wasn’t necessary. Even as a small child, he’d preferred darkness to light and had an uncanny ability to maneuver in the dark without difficulty—an ability that had served him well during his stint in the Navy SEALs and at the Agency. Now, that ability served to get him through the living room, into the kitchen, and to the refrigerator. After draining his mug and dropping it into the sink, he leaned into the fridge and took out a beer, twisting the metal cap off and flipping it like a coin into the trashcan with practiced ease. A cheap calendar with photographs of kittens on it hung on the front of the fridge. Scott stared at it for a moment and then flipped the page forward to August, where the last day of the month was circled in a red pen, the word “work” scrawled in blocky letters across the box. He dropped the page and shifted his eyes to the photograph pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet. A beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed woman stared back at him, laughing at the camera with a smile that lit up her face, her hands cupped around her pregnant belly. Scott traced the tip of a finger along the curve of her stomach and dropped his hand, forcing himself to look away from the photo and take a swig of beer. As he lowered the bottle, the sound of a thump rang out somewhere in the house. Scott froze and raised an eyebrow, glancing toward the open front door.

  “Lola?” he called. He spotted the dog through the open front door, still lying on the porch like a furry slug. His mouth drew into a tight line, and he eased his beer bottle to the counter so gently it didn’t make a sound. Then he slid the utensil drawer open and slipped his favorite Colt revolver from among the knives and spoons. The weapon was an old but still-operable historical piece from the Civil War that had caught his eye at a collectors’ show. It only held six shots. It didn’t matter how many bullets it had in it, though; unless his visitor had had the same training he had, one bullet would be all it’d take for him to eliminate the threat. If it took more than that, then Scott deserved whatever waited for him.

  There was another thump at the back of the house. It sounded like someone had set something heavy—a book, perhaps—onto a flat surface. Scott narrowed his eyes and made his way on bare feet across the kitchen and down the hall toward his office door. It was closed, which wasn’t unusual, but a light was on inside, which was; the crack at the bottom of the door glowed in the other
wise dark hallway. As he watched from a spot halfway down the hall, a shadow drifted past in the crack, and a moment later, another thud echoed out.

  Scott gritted his teeth as annoyance and anger tickled at his brain. Easing the hammer back to half-cocked, he aimed the weapon at the door and started forward, intent on kicking the door open and catching the intruder by surprise.

  He was still a few feet away when it swung open. A dark form stood silhouetted in the frame, staring down at an object in its hand. Scott tensed and adjusted his revolver’s aim to point it at the figure’s head.

  “Put the gun down,” the silhouette said, its tone bored.

  “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?” Scott demanded. He pulled the hammer back on the revolver to fully cock it; the sound was ominous in the dark hallway. Scott loved it—it was music to his ears.

  The silhouette looked up from the object in its hand. “Oh, come on, you wouldn’t shoot an old friend, would you?”

  Recognizing the voice, Scott let out an exasperated sigh and lowered his revolver, even though he was tempted to take the shot for the hell of it. He pushed the hammer forward to disengage the weapon and took a step toward the man in the doorway.

  “Do you know just how close I came to shooting you?” Scott asked, lowering the revolver to his side.

  “Why didn’t you?” the man asked.

  “Because I didn’t want to mess up the décor,” Scott replied. “You need something? Or did you just break into my house for a social visit?”

  “I wish it was a social visit,” the man said. “Then I’d consider asking you for one of the beers I know you have in your fridge, because damn, I could use a drink right now.”

  “You keeping tabs on me and my grocery list?”