Shadows Strike

by Dianne Duvall

She shrugged. “Exactly what I told you. I read the minds of men they’re interrogating and let them know if the guys being questioned are bullshitting them. If I see anything important in their minds that can’t be passed off as something I gleaned from reading their expressions, I tell my dad later when we’re alone.”

  Lisette frowned. “Have these suspects been legally detained?”

  “Of course,” Heather assured her. “Some are innocent, and I help clear them. Others pose a serious threat to national security.”

  “Are members of the military present in this building?” Zach asked.

  “Yes. The guards are definitely military, as are most of the other men and women I encounter there. Anyway, my point is, you won’t be able to accompany me inside. There’s no way you’d get past security. You also won’t be allowed to accompany me in the car. And I doubt the soldiers in the front seat would react well to your following us on the drive there.”

  Ethan sighed. “They won’t know he’s following you. Zach can shape-shift.”

  Heather’s mind went blank with surprise. She looked from Ethan to Zach. “What?”

  “I can shape-shift,” Zach told her as casually as he might admit he could play the piano. “I’ll shift into the form of a bird and follow the car to whatever installation you’re taken to.”

  Heather just stared at him. “Seriously?” It sounded so . . . B-movie.

  Zach released a beleaguered sigh. In the next instant, his form melted into that of a huge lion as empty clothing fell to the floor.

  “Holy shit!” Heather scrambled backward off the bed, keeping a death grip on the sheet.

  Ethan threw up a hand. “It’s okay, Heather. It’s okay.”

  Lisette buried the fingers of one hand in the lion’s thick, dark mane.

  His paws planted on the clothing Zach had been wearing, the lion turned his big-ass head and rubbed it against Lisette’s chest.

  Heather pointed a shaking finger at the beast. “He just . . . I mean, he just . . . He was . . .”

  The lion shifted back into Zach.

  Heather got a brief glimpse of the elder’s naked body before the clothes at his feet covered him as though he had never removed them. Her eyes bugged. “Y-you . . . you . . . you . . . and then . . . huge lion . . .”

  Zach raised his eyebrows, lips twitching.

  “Seriously?” she blurted in a near shout. “You can do that?”

  The immortals all laughed.

  Heather looked at Ethan, who shrugged.

  “I told you there were a lot more exciting gifts out there than mine.”

  Heather returned her attention to the elder. “You weren’t kidding.”

  Zach arched a brow at Ethan. “So we’re a go?”

  “Not until I talk to Seth.”

  Zach grumbled something Heather couldn’t hear.

  Ethan must have, though, because he arched a brow and gave Zach the finger.

  Leaning back against the wall, Zach closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the ceiling. “Seth?” A pause. “No, Ethan just has a question for you.”

  The Immortal Guardians’ leader appeared out of nowhere, a baby held against his chest. “What’s up?”

  Heather blinked. Seth was a daddy?

  The large male swayed from side to side, adding a slight bounce while he patted the baby’s back with one large hand. Seth’s eyes met Heather’s. “She isn’t mine. I’m just watching her so her parents can get some rest.”

  Heather titled her head to one side so she could get a better look at the little one. She was a beauty. With solemn green eyes and flaming orange curls. Pale skin. Cute little rolls of fat.

  Lisette reached up to brush a hand over the baby’s hair. “She’s not sleeping well today?” Smiling, she whispered a greeting to the baby.

  The baby reached out and grabbed Lisette’s finger for a moment, then tucked her hand back against Seth’s chest once more.

  Seth shook his head. “She’s having nightmares again.”

  Babies had nightmares?

  Heather hadn’t been around little ones since she was a teenager, but didn’t remember any of the babies she had babysat having nightmares. “How old is she?”

  “Almost a year,” Seth answered. He glanced at Zach, then Ethan. “So, what’s going on?”

  Ethan filled him in.

  Seth nodded. “I agree with Zach.”

  Ethan swore.

  “I don’t like it either,” Seth said, “but Zach will protect Heather and keep her safe.”

  Lisette crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re all forgetting something.”

  The men looked at her in question.

  “None of you have asked Heather what she wants to do. Her life is the one that will be in jeopardy. And she is the one who will have to lie to her father and pretend nothing is amiss.”

  All eyes focused on Heather.

  Her heart fluttered with sudden nerves.

  Ethan circled the bed to stand in front of her. “I’m sorry, Heather. Lisette’s right. This should be your decision, not ours. I didn’t mean to try to make it for you. I’m just worried.”

  “I know. Honestly, I don’t see that I have much choice. If this Gershom asshole wants me for my connections, then I should keep working as usual to give you guys time to find him. If you’re all wrong and nothing else happens . . .” She shrugged. “I’ll have to go back to my regular life, or at least the day job part of it, eventually anyway.”

  “It’s settled, then,” Seth pronounced. “Thank you, Heather, for working with us. Zach will protect you as promised.”

  “I still don’t think he’ll be able to accompany me inside the building,” she warned.

  “He won’t have to,” Seth said. “He’ll be able to hear everything that happens from outside. And if something goes wrong, their security—no matter how tight—won’t be able to keep him from reaching you.”

  “Oh. Okay.” That was a little scary. One man being able to defeat a building full of soldiers armed with automatic and other deadly weapons?

  Seth hadn’t been exaggerating when he had said he, Zach, and the Others wielded enough power to alter the world.

  Hell, if they chose to do so, they could conquer it.

  Chapter Eleven

  As Heather followed her escort into the parking garage’s elevator, she wondered if Zach was somewhere overhead, circling the building in whatever bird form he had chosen.

  The soldiers who had picked her up in the car remained silent as the elevator carried them upward. When the doors slid open once more, a man in a business suit waited for them.

  “Heather Lane?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Follow me, please.”

  Onward they strode, the suit in front, the soldiers in back, down a series of nondescript hallways. A white ceiling. White walls. A white floor marred by occasional dents and dings and smudges.

  Boots clomped behind her in a rhythm that made her wonder if soldiers always inadvertently synced up their steps when they walked side by side.

  Heather’s sneakers, on the other hand, made no sound. When Zach had teleported her home, she had taken a quick shower and changed into jeans, a T-shirt, and a blazer. She would have been happy to leave off the blazer, but had encountered enough good old boys among the higher-ups in the military and law enforcement agencies to know that they tended to be less assholish toward her when she added that little bit of professional accoutrement.

  At last, the suit stopped before the first of two doors in a short corridor. Both doors bore keycode entries. Armed soldiers manned each.

  The man typed in several numbers, angling his body to hide his hand as if he thought Heather might try to see the code and what . . . spring the prisoner?

  News flash, she thought, I don’t need to watch you type it in. I can pluck every keycode and password you know from your thoughts.

  When a click sounded, he pushed the door open and held it for her.

  Heather�
�s father and another man in a suit waited within. Beside them, a soldier sat at a table loaded down with electronic equipment used to record audio and video and to monitor the vitals of the suspect being questioned.

  Heather stepped inside.

  Her father nodded to the suit, who stepped back into the hallway and closed the door.

  General Lane opened his arms and drew her into a hug. “Hi, baby. Thanks for coming in on such short notice.”

  “Sure.” She gave him a squeeze and stepped back. “Mac,” she greeted the man who stood beside him.

  Mac nodded. “Good to see you again, Heather.”

  Mac was a bit of a mystery. She could never decide who he was or what role he played in the greater scheme of things. Was he military? Ex-military? General counsel? Military Intelligence? From another branch of the government? FBI or CIA? Maybe NSA?

  She had tried to peek into his thoughts once and caught him picturing her naked. He was more than a little attracted to her and always seemed to focus on that when in her presence, so she had given up and stopped looking for anything else.

  He seemed like a straight-up guy, though. She liked him far more than she did some of the other men who had been present while she worked. Most viewed her abilities with skepticism and a run-along-and-play-little-girl-while-the-men -take-care-of-business attitude. They wouldn’t have even let her in the building if her father hadn’t been the one to summon her.

  Neither General Lane nor Mac bothered to introduce her to the soldier who sat at the table, deciphering the data the equipment sent.

  “So,” she said, “how can I help you?”

  Mac spoke before her father could. “I’ve been told to remind you that everything you see and hear today is classified.”

  “Of course.”

  General Lane nodded to the large window that she knew was instead a two-way mirror. “We have a situation.”

  Beyond the glass lay yet another stark white room. Small. Boasting only a table and two chairs: one on the opposite side of the table, facing the mirror, and one with its back to the mirror.

  A soldier sat in the chair facing them. Perhaps in his midtwenties, the guy looked strung out, with hollow cheeks, and dark circles beneath his eyes. One of his knees bobbed up and down under the table in a rapid rhythm. And he couldn’t seem to sit still. Leaning forward one moment. Leaning back the next. Then leaning forward again. Shifting as though the monitors attached to his chest chafed. Dragging a hand over his closely cropped hair. Then drumming an anxious beat on the table with his fingers.

  If she had seen him on the street, Heather would’ve thought the man a drug addict in need of a fix. “What can you tell me?” she asked.

  Her father moved to stand beside her, his arm brushing her shoulder. “A small military base was attacked and destroyed two weeks ago. One of ours.”

  Shock rippled through her, accompanied by a twinge of unease. “What?” She had seen nothing about it on the news.

  “It was a classified installation,” he said.

  Which explained the no-news thing. “Here in the States?”

  “No. But the location is need-to-know only.”

  “Okay.”

  “Every soldier who manned the base was killed.” Her father pointed to the strung-out man in the next room. “Every soldier except for him. He’s the sole survivor.”

  “Who did it?” Heather asked, stunned.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. The surveillance equipment on site was either destroyed or tampered with, because the images of the onslaught are all too blurry or distorted for us to identify the attackers.”

  “No one has claimed responsibility?” It had to have been terrorists, right? Terrorists were always eager to claim or tag their work online.

  “No one,” Mac answered. “No tapes have been released. We’ve heard no chatter relating to it, or anything close to it, at all.”

  Heather nodded to the suspect. “How did he survive when on one else did?”

  “That’s what we want to know. That and whether or not he might have been involved in planning the attack. It seems unlikely that he would’ve been the only survivor if he wasn’t.”

  “Was he injured? Or did he walk away unharmed?” If he walked away unharmed, she could see why they were suspicious.

  “He suffered some deep cuts on his arms and torso,” her father said, “and almost bled out before we found him.”

  Any bandages the soldier sported lay hidden beneath his uniform. “Has he given you anything at all?”

  Her father and Mac shared a glance.

  “Only babbling nonsense,” Mac murmured.

  Her father sighed. “According to the psych eval that was ordered after listening to his account, whatever happened during the attack caused him to have a mental breakdown.”

  “But there are those who disagree and think he’s bullshitting us,” Mac inserted. “Faking it to cover his own ass.”

  She arched her brows. “You think he’s bullshitting?”

  “Yes.”

  She studied her father. “And you?”

  “I want you to tell us if he’s bullshitting. A lot is at stake either way.”

  She examined the soldier once more and noticed a gold chain around his neck. “He’s religious?” she asked, her eyes on the cross that peeked from beneath his rumpled shirt collar.

  “Not until now.”

  Mac snorted. “Apparently his mental breakdown made him find God.”

  “Will you be interrogating him while I observe?” she asked Mac.

  General Lane shook his head. “I want you to sit down and talk with him, see if you can get him to tell you what happened. He stopped cooperating with us when we refused to believe him.”

  “You want me to talk to him? Alone?” Usually she just observed, sometimes in the room with them, sometimes from behind the mirror. “Is it safe?” The last thing she needed was for the soldier to attack her and have Zach come charging through the facility to rescue her.

  “I wouldn’t ask you to do it if it weren’t,” her father assured her.

  “Okay then.” Heather stepped out into the hallway.

  The dour suit waited for her in front of the next door. As soon as he saw her, he turned his back, typed in a code, and opened it for her.

  Heather stepped past him into the interrogation room.

  The soldier looked up. One hand went to the cross on his chain.

  The door closed behind her.

  “Hi,” Heather greeted him and, bolstering her nerves, offered her hand. “I’m Heather.”

  He hesitated a moment before taking it and giving it a shake. A wince rippled across his features as he lowered his arm again. “Nick.”

  “I’d say it’s nice to meet you, Nick, but under the circumstances . . .” Circling the table, she seated herself in the chair opposite his.

  “Are you a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “You here to shrink me?”

  “No. I’m just here to talk.”

  “Sounds like a shrink to me.”

  She forced a smile and, wanting to ensure he really wasn’t a danger to her, began to comb through his thoughts.

  Wow. They were all over the place. Totally chaotic and teeming with fear. Fear that the others were right, that he had lost his mind and killed his friends.

  “You’re prettier than the other shrink,” he spoke into the awkward silence.

  “I’m not a shrink.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I’m just a consultant the military occasionally calls in to chat with . . .”

  “Victims?” he asked, his expression giving nothing away. “Suspects?”

  “Either or,” she replied.

  He quieted. “You remind me a little of Cindy.”

  As soon as the words left his mouth, the image of a young, pregnant woman flashed in his mind. A snapshot moment in which she smiled for the camera and exposed her big belly.

  The maelstrom of h
is thoughts quieted. Then Heather saw darkness and a man’s head hitting the ground beside a fallen body.

  She forced her lips to hold what she hoped was a kind smile. “Who is Cindy?”

  The soldier looked down at the table. “Does she even know Wes is dead?” he asked. His red-rimmed eyes shimmered with tears when he raised them. “They won’t tell me. Does she know? Is she okay? Is the baby okay?”

  “I don’t know,” Heather admitted. “I can try to find out, if you want me to.”

  He nodded. “Thank you. I’d appreciate that.” He blinked back the tears.

  “Can you tell me what happened, Nick?”

  His lips turned down as his face tightened with a grimace of frustration. “I’ve already told them a million times. They don’t believe me. You won’t believe me.”

  “You won’t know that until you give me a try.”

  He studied her a long minute, his eyes desperate and hopeless and heartbreaking.

  Heather steeled herself against the sympathy that rose within her and kept trying to sift through his tumultuous thoughts.

  “It was dark,” he began. “Late. Wes and I were manning the southwest guard tower. Nothing but jungle outside the gates. Just enough moonlight to let you see the tops of the trees.”

  She saw the scene come to life in his mind as he spoke. “Go on.”

  “You ever seen that TV show Lost?”

  “Yes. The first couple of seasons anyway.”

  “Remember, in the first season, when the trees would start to jerk and sway as a monster or some shit stomped through the jungle? As if whatever was moving around out there was so big that just bumping up against the trees nearly toppled them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s what happened. We saw the trees in the distance start to jerk and sway as if something plowed through the jungle toward us. I didn’t know what it was. It wasn’t vehicles. There weren’t any engine sounds, and the only way a truck would shake a tree like that was if it slammed into it.” He paused. “We didn’t hear any crashes.”

  Snarls and growls and guttural noises rose on the night in his memory.

  Heather’s heart began to pound.

  “It kept getting closer, so I told ’em to hit the lights. A warning was called over the speakers. Whoever or whatever was coming ignored it, so we lit ’em up. Fired everything we had into the trees. I thought for sure that would stop ’em.”