Fated To The Soldier Fox (Special Ops Shifters: Dallas Force Book 3)

by Meg Ripley

  Jack’s stomach stuck to his spine. So Ben could tell he was a shifter. He must have sensed something about Erica, the same way Jack had, and decided she was one of them as well. It’d been disturbing enough to tell Erica who he was, but now this stranger also knew. This was all part of the game, though. Jack nodded.

  “You don’t need any acreage at all, my friends.” Ben held up his hand to stave off their worries, and Jack noticed a bit of his accent had come back. “I have a lot of land. I started out with just a few acres, but over the years, I’ve been able to buy up the surrounding plots as people have sold them off and relocated to the city. My friends have moved there with me, and we live in peace and harmony away from the prying eyes of the government and society who might judge us for our simple ways. They’re the same kind of people you are: in touch with their true nature.”

  Erica reached over to pat Jack’s arm. “Isn’t that great?”

  “Let’s finish this paperwork, and then I’ll take you out there. If you like it, maybe you can find a new home with us.” There was that kind smile again.

  This man was a charmer. Jack could sense the shifter inside him, but it was incredibly subtle. If he hadn’t been looking for it, he might not even have noticed. Ben put out the side of him that he wanted everyone to see, and if there was anything beyond that, then he hid it carefully.

  “There’s nothing we’d like better,” Jack affirmed. “We could learn a lot from you.”

  Ben’s head bobbed. “I’m sure you could.”

  6

  “That was almost too easy,” Erica said when they were in her new car heading down the road behind Ben’s vehicle. “It really makes me wonder.”

  “You figured it’d be harder?” Jack questioned.

  “Well, yeah! I mean, this isn’t my first rodeo. It usually takes a lot more time to get involved in someone’s personal life. I don’t like the fact that he’s bringing us right back to his place. It makes me incredibly suspicious. What if he’s decided we know too much and he’s just going to get rid of us? I mean, when we went over all the other information the DHS has gathered, some of it pointed to the possibility of the recruits being killed off.”

  Jack adjusted his hands on the wheel and bit his lower lip, his jaw flexing. “Well, I have my own theory about that.”

  “Which is?” Erica glanced out the window. The land that held Ben’s compound butted up to the national forest, but in a rural area like this, it didn’t take long to get away from civilization. They didn’t have long.

  He hesitated for a moment, as if deciding exactly what he wanted to say. “I believe our new friend is a shifter. It could be that he’s recruiting other shifters, and in that case, people might be coming and going from the property in other forms.”

  Erica closed her eyes and ran her hand across her forehead. “That’s not good. I could hardly stand being around you at first. How the hell am I going to manage being with an entire compound of people with so much spirit energy? Christ.” When she’d been informed about this mission, Erica had been convinced that it was simple; cut and dried, same old stuff she’d always been doing. Instead, her entire world was changing. The things she’d already learned before she’d even gotten to the meat of the operation were staggering, and she could only hope she could deal with them.

  It would be a lot easier if she didn’t have to fight with herself about Jack. She was a professional, and she’d long ago made a pact with herself not to get involved with anyone she worked with. It was just too messy, and simply being a woman made it difficult enough to climb the corporate ladder without a relationship cluttering it up. Erica could control herself, and just because a guy was good looking didn’t mean she had to do anything about it.

  But Jack was different in every sense of the word. Not only could she justify her feelings toward him by reminding herself that he was only a consultant for the Department, he was attractive on a different level. Sure, she’d met some handsome guys, ones with broad shoulders, muscular bodies, and relaxed grins that were both boyish and sexy. Jack had all that, but the rest of it went deeper. If she didn’t know he was a shifter, she would’ve just said there was something about him. And maybe it was the fact that there was a whole other person inside him. Erica couldn’t be sure, but she felt the ripples of energy between them. She could practically see them, like shimmering northern lights that pulled them together.

  Unfortunately, there was no more time to talk about it. Ben’s car had turned up a long driveway, and it now stopped just before a large gate. A man leaned near one of the gate posts. His stance was casual, but his eyes were watchful. Ben got out of the driver’s seat and came back to Jack’s window. “My friends, as you know, we strive to get away from the rigors of the world. I ask that you each give me your cell phones. This is my way of protecting you from such unhealthy things.”

  “Of course.” Without question, they each handed their devices over. They’d known this would be part of the process.

  Ben grinned, seemingly pleased with their cooperation. “Perfect. Follow me inside, and you can park over to the left.”

  The parking lot was the same as what they’d spotted on the satellite imagery, and the other vehicles already neatly lined up left no question as to where they were supposed to go. “You ready?” Jack murmured as he turned off the car.

  Erica heard the gate slam shut behind them, echoing in her blood. “I don’t think there’s any turning back, even if I’m not.” The one comfort she could take was in knowing that Jack was there with her. She wasn’t alone. She might not have trusted him at first, but she definitely trusted him now.

  Ben spread his arms as he welcomed them from the edge of the parking area. “I welcome you to our little corner of the world, where we can live happily and freely. Let me show you around.”

  Erica had prided herself on being a strong, independent woman who didn’t need a man to lean on. She’d charged into plenty of dangerous situations, and she relied on her skills, experience, and innate talents to keep her safe. For some reason, though, she found herself wanting to wrap her hands around Jack’s tight waist and lean her head against the hard planes of his chest. She could even imagine his fingers coming down to graze the small of her back in return.

  She blushed and shook her head, grateful that Jack wasn’t the one with psychic powers so he couldn’t read her thoughts.

  * * *

  Erica sat on the edge of the twin bed and looked around the small room. It had anything a person could need, if not necessarily what they wanted. As Ben and his website had promised, the electronics had been kept to the barest minimum. Even the clock was analog, and she hadn’t spotted a single television or laptop since they’d arrived. Any electricity they did have was provided by the massive solar panels on top of the building.

  It was getting late, and everything was quiet. Not just the noise in the building, but inside her head. The silence made her realize just how far she’d come in getting used to Jack and his extra presence. Being there in that room was like stepping out of a crowded elevator and finding herself in the middle of a remote forest. It was a nice break, but she wasn’t comfortable enough to enjoy it.

  She knew it was against Ben’s rules. She knew she was taking a major risk by attempting to go against the grain on the first night. Still, she launched herself from the side of the bed and went to the door. Her hand rested on the knob for a long moment, almost afraid to turn it. Ben had said nothing about locking their new friends in, but he did say they were supposed to remain in their rooms until everyone arose at six in the morning. She cringed as she slowly twisted the brass handle, her eyebrows lifting when the door released with a small click.

  The hallway was wide but plain, giving plenty of room to move around furniture or large crowds. The sealed concrete floor shone faintly in the interspersed wall lamps. Erica watched the pools of light and willed her heart to be quiet for a moment so that she might listen. No one was coming.

  Erica was careful
to twist the knob as she shut the door behind her, not wanting even the faintest click of the latch to give away her position. She flicked her tongue across the roof of her mouth, thinking. Each of the rooms was labeled with a number, and Ben had explained that men and women were all separated unless they were a married couple, but he hadn’t told them if there was any kind of system that indicated who might be in what room. She turned to look at her own door, looking for her name or even some sort of mark that might indicate she was a newcomer or a female or something. It was all plain and clean.

  In working with Winston and Mr. Worth, they’d decided against any forms of communication with each other or to the outside world. It wasn’t worth the risk of Ben or his minions finding a wire on them. The only thing they’d smuggled in was a small, specialized transmitter from Hudson’s communications company that couldn’t be detected until one of them pulled a tab out of the back to activate it. This was to be used only in the most extreme emergency when requesting an extraction. While Erica had completely agreed with this idea in the first place, she cursed it now. She needed to find Jack, but she couldn’t possibly break into every room until she found him. The longer she stood in the hall, the more she risked being discovered.

  There’s always a backup plan, she reminded herself as she closed her eyes. She reached out and placed her fingertips on the wall to steady her body as she opened her mind. There was only so much she could do to cut off other presences that invaded her head, but she now opened up every facet of her psychic powers in order to listen.

  The thoughts of those peacefully slumbering the night away came to her like gentle curls of smoke on a breeze, carrying with them only the wisps of their dreams. Erica brushed these aside. She highly doubted Jack was any less awake than she was, and none of these hazy presences felt the same way Jack did. Erica reached out further, searching, testing her powers in ways she hadn’t for a long time. She was always trying to get everyone out of her mind, and now she was trying to pull them in.

  There he is. She’d only known Jack for a few days, but there was no mistaking his signature. He was strong and restless, his spirit so much bigger than his body. Erica moved more quickly down the hallway, turning a corner and trotting silently down the next hall. Her heartbeat picked up once again as she drew nearer. She needed her eyes only to make sure she didn’t bump into a wall because her mind was leading her straight to Jack.

  She paused for a moment outside his door. Was this a mistake? What would Jack think of her for coming to him in the middle of the night like this? She instantly chastised herself once again. The two of them were coworkers, partners. If she couldn’t come to him, then what was the point of any of this? Just because it was late and she hadn’t been able to completely set aside her desire for him in favor of doing the job they’d set out to accomplish didn’t mean this was wrong. A knock would be too loud. She tentatively reached out a finger and scratched at the door.

  It whipped open, the air from the movement pulling her loose hair along with it. Jack stood in the doorway, bare to the waist. He’d already been impressive to look at, but seeing the way his tight abs tapered into a V under the edge of his pants made her core ache with need. His chestnut eyes flashed in the dim light as they flitted from her face to take in the rest of the hallway. Seeing she was alone, his strong hand gripped her arm and yanked her into the room, closing the door silently behind her. “What the hell are you doing? You could get us both killed.”

  “I know that,” she said impatiently. “I’m perfectly aware of the rules Ben set forth. Like I said, this isn’t my first time doing this. But I can’t sleep, and we need to talk. I’m worried he’ll keep us separated and we won’t get a chance to put our heads together and fully analyze this place. Besides, I can’t stop thinking about what you said on the way over here.” There were plenty of other things she couldn’t stop thinking about, too, like how the warm skin covering his brawny arms would feel under her fingertips as she glanced at the intricate tattoo on his bicep.

  “About Ben being a shifter?” Jack pulled a shirt over his head, something Erica was grateful for. She didn’t need the distraction of his impeccably chiseled muscles.

  “Yes. Well, but it goes back further than that. You mind if I sit?” The room was small, just as small as her own, and yet Jack’s presence filled it completely. It was a different sensation than what she’d felt with him in the car on their way up from Kentucky. It was her awareness of him more than anything.

  “Sure.” He gestured her toward the bed while he occupied the firm chair near the wall, his feet spread wide on the hard floor and his elbows braced against his thighs.

  Erica pulled in a deep breath. She hadn’t wanted to go into all these details. Life, she’d learned a long time ago, was simpler when the hard stuff stayed buried. No one needed to know her secret or how difficult it was to deal with it. Even though Jack knew of her power now, there was so much more to it than that. “First, I need to apologize to you. I didn’t trust you from the instant I met you.”

  He flicked an eyebrow. “So I noticed.”

  “You can’t really blame me,” she said with a glare. “I can feel people inside my head. It’s like I can tap into their mental energies. In fact, I could sense both sides of you. I just thought it meant you were some sort of double agent. Up until earlier today, I had no idea shifters existed in anything outside of teen movies. Sorry.” She realized after she said it just how much she’d cheapened his very existence.

  Jack didn’t seem affected. “There are a lot of us, actually. You’ve met others, I’m sure, but it’s not my place to tell. We keep it to ourselves, for obvious reasons.”

  Erica nodded and licked her lips. “Can you tell me a little more about how it works? I mean, is it the kind of thing where you can turn into whatever you want?” It’d been a little difficult to imagine that anyone like him existed at all, and she felt so rude in asking, but she was desperate to understand.

  “No, nothing like that. Each of us has an animal side, and it’s only one animal. Some people are wolves, others are bears, and a few are dragons if you can believe that. I’m a fox.”

  “Oh.” She stifled a smile. He was a fox for damn sure, but she wasn’t about to say it out loud. On the more serious side, she could even see it in him now. Not just in the auburn tones of his hair, but in the intensity of those light brown eyes. “Do you have control over it? Shifting, I mean.”

  “Most of the time, I’m absolutely in control. There are certain circumstances, like in the presence of the full moon or… strong emotions, that make it a little harder to remain human.” He cleared his throat and glanced away. “But I’ve met plenty of shifters who hadn’t let their other forms out in months if they didn’t want to.” He folded his fingers together and looked her in the eye. “No offense, Erica, but I thought you wanted to talk about the mission.”

  “I do. I mean, this is about the mission.” She made a sound, disgusted with herself. Erica could be perfectly articulate during a business meeting, but there was something about Jack that made him impossible to talk to without sounding like an idiot. “It was difficult to be around you before I understood why you had so much extra energy surrounding you. Once I did, it helped me sort things out in my mind and block some of it out. My concern now is you said Ben is a shifter, and that maybe his recruits are, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I don’t sense that same energy within them. Not in Ben, and not in the people he’d introduced us to here while he was giving us the tour. They were all so bland, if you will, that it’s like they hardly have any mental energy at all. It’s disturbing.” Jack had really gotten her mind working when he’d mentioned that Ben and the others might be shifters, and Erica had been searching for similar cerebral patterns in everyone as Ben had shown them the gardens, the solar array, and the massive pole barn that had been converted to living quarters. There had been a man hoeing a row of corn who smiled pleasantly and touched the brim of his hat, a wom
an in the kitchens who beamed at them over a pot of stew, and several others gathered in a common area who enthusiastically hugged them and shook their hands while welcoming them to the fold. None of them, however, had given her anything to latch onto other than mild pleasant sensations.

  “I see. That’s interesting. You see, shifters can sense the animal inside others. We can’t always tell what kind, and I don’t think it blows us away like it did to you at first. But if I hadn’t already known to look for it with Ben, I might not have noticed. It was very faint, barely even there at all.” His gaze wandered up to the corner of the room as he thought.

  “Wait, how did you know to look for it?” Erica was exhausted, physically and mentally, but that tiny phrase was an important one.

  Jack cursed under his breath as his eyes flicked to her and then away again. “Like I said, there are other shifters you’ve met, but it’s not my place to say. I shouldn’t be telling you this either, but I actually work with a group of shifters who are all Special Ops vets. Coming in as a consultant for the DHS was just my way of paying back a favor for Winston.”

  “I see.” She’d hoped for answers, but it only spurred on more questions. Just how many people like Jack was she surrounded by? Had it been Winston? Mr. Worth? Why hadn’t she noticed it in them? This team he spoke of was certainly something she wanted to know more about, but first, she needed to understand just who and what he was. “Are some people just better at hiding it? I mean, in your experience, when it comes to sensing them?”

  “It’s not always that they’re trying to hide it,” Jack explained. “It might just be that the more feral side of themselves isn’t as active at the moment. Honestly, I thought maybe you were one of us at first.”

  “Me?” she squeaked. Erica had always been getting into other people’s minds, whether she wanted to or not. She’d never imagined it being the other way around. Somehow, the idea of Jack looking inside her like that wasn’t as disturbing as she would’ve thought.