Sentinel: Bravo Bear: (A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (The Agency Book 1)

by Amelia Jade

  Sentinel:

  Bravo Bear

  Book 1 of The Agency

  By Amelia Jade

  Sentinel: Bravo Bear

  Copyright @ 2016 by Amelia Jade

  First Electronic Publication: July 2016

  Amelia Jade

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.

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  Sentinel: Bravo Bear

  Chapter One

  Connor

  “Sound off.”

  That was his cue.

  “Bravo, check,” he said, his voice barely audible. He didn’t whisper. Whispers were harsh and could carry farther. Instead he spoke with the utmost control and lowest volume possible.

  To a human, they wouldn’t have heard a noise. But then again, he thought, none of them were human. His team leader’s supernatural hearing would pick up his affirmative without problem. He waited silently in his crouch, hidden amongst the shadows of the alleyway as the other members of his team sounded their ready statuses.

  Connor’s nose twitched.

  The upside of being a shifter was that he had many abilities a human did not. The downside was, he had many abilities a human did not. Such as the capability to smell each and every bit of rotting garbage wafting up from the rancid dumpster next to him.

  It annoyed him. He was a professional. Trained for years in various forms of combat, infiltration, and insurgency tactics. He was the literal supersoldier of movie lore.

  And yet a little bit of rotting chicken made his stomach heave. It seriously undermined his whole tough-guy image. Forcing the bile back into his stomach, he concentrated on the mission.

  “Acknowledged, Bravo. Delta, you’re up.”

  Connor was on his feet and moving before the team leader had finished speaking. Two quick strides down the alleyway and he reached a ladder that stopped a good ten feet from the ground. Muscular legs tensed and he leapt into the air, snagging the third rung from the bottom.

  Arms flexed and he pulled himself up in near total silence. Even his grunts were inaudible. The only sound a passerby might have noticed was the squeaking of metal under his weight. That, unfortunately, could not be helped. Despite his stealthy abilities, Connor was still a giant, and with that, came weight that made the metal creak.

  Fortunately for him, they were now more interested in quiet speed. The period of extreme stealth was over. They were moving.

  “Report.” The voice came through his ear clearly, as if the speaker were right next to him.

  Connor rolled his eyes. What did Alpha think he was, a bird?

  “Still climbing,” he replied. “It is ten floors up you know.”

  “Faster,” Alpha urged.

  I’m going. He was. Connor had reached the landing above and was now racing up the stairs, taking them four at a time as he gunned for his objective.

  A minute later he crouched quietly outside of the window on the tenth floor. “Bravo, in position,” he said.

  “Delta, door is clear.”

  His partner had it easy, taking the stairs inside.

  Ignoring his chosen lot, Connor flicked out his knife and easily slid it through the top of the two panes of glass, easing the simple locking mechanism open. Sheathing his weapon, he lifted the window open and slipped inside.

  The lights were off, but that didn’t matter. Between the moonlight and the ambient light of the city, it was practically daylight for him. The bedroom door was closed, but not completely shut. There was perhaps an inch of space.

  He crept across the intervening distance, and after taking a breath, eased it open.

  A deep rumble came from inside the room.

  Shit.

  “Friend!” he shouted, backing away as a giant bear came charging at him. “Underground!” he said, though he didn’t shout this one.

  The bear stopped, looking at him oddly.

  “I promise,” he said, spreading his hands wide, then slowly reaching up to his face, where he pulled the balaclava up, to reveal himself.

  The door to the hallway banged open.

  “Hold!” Connor shouted at Delta as his partner readied himself. “Just a case of surprise, I think. Isn’t that right?”

  The bear crouched warily, looking back and forth between the two of them. It continued to growl, though perhaps not as loudly as it had the first time.

  “I’m Bravo, this is Delta,” he said, motioning to the other man now in the apartment. “We’re Team One, from the Underground. We sent you a letter. Most of it was typed. At the bottom was the written passphrase of Thunder, with a return call sign.”

  He waited expectantly. He was fairly positive this was their man. He was in the right apartment, and his bear had the same gray streak down the right side that their objective did in human form. But that could be false.

  The bear growled once more, pawed at the ground, and then stood up. As it did, it changed. The once mostly black fur seemed to simply retract into the skin. Limbs shrank and the elongated snout of the bear was suddenly part of a fairly flat face. Paws became hands and feet, and a moment later their target stood in front of them.

  “Lightning,” he said simply.

  Connor nodded, relieved to have that over with. This was their man.

  “Okay, you got our letter then. Are you ready?”

  “One moment,” the man said, disappearing into the bedroom. He reappeared with a sack on his shoulder.

  It was the ready bag that the note from Connor’s team had said to prepare, just in case something came up.

  Unfortunately, something had come up. Most of the time their letters were ignored. Connor was happy to see that this time, it hadn’t been.

  “Notice anyone on your way up, Delta?” he asked as they waited for the man to put his shoes on before heading into the stairwell.

  “Nothing.”

  They always referred to themselves by their team name when on a mission. It made them much harder to track. That’s why they wore the masks as well. They didn’t want their enemies to know what they looked like. So far, it seemed to be working, but Connor knew that luck wasn’t going to last.

  A door clanged open somewhere below them, the noise echoing up the concrete stairwell with ease. Booted feet entered and began pounding on the stairwell.

  “Just some kids out late, right?” Delta asked sarcastically.

  “They could have come in at a different level. I
mean, they have eight options that aren’t this floor or the ground floor,” Connor replied.

  Neither of them believed it.

  “Shit, window it is,” they said practically in unison, ushering their charge back into the hallway and then into his room.

  Delta lead the way. He opened the window and kept it propped while the other two followed him, before leading the way down. Connor was in the rear. They flew down the stairs, taking full advantage of the fact that all of them were shifters. Less than thirty seconds later, he leapt the full fifteen feet from the last landing to the ground, joining the others.

  Feet pounded down the stairs above them.

  “Those are human,” Connor said as they listened for a half second.

  “Gentlemen?” their charge asked.

  Connor didn’t know his name, and didn’t want to know his name. That wasn’t part of the mission. He was their target, and the objective was to get him to safety at the train yard. That was the entire focus of his world just then.

  “Yes?” he said as they hurried him through the alley, leaping fallen garbage cans and piles of other refuse that hadn’t yet been picked up for the week.

  Connor did not envy the city’s garbage men. Now there was a shitty job.

  “Who, exactly, are we running from?”

  He contemplated not answering.

  Fuck it. Telling him the little they knew wouldn’t hurt anyone.

  “We call them the Agency. They’re out to distill our abilities into drugs that they can give anyone, and eliminate us from the genepool.”

  There was no question who the “us” was. He was referring to all shifters.

  The reply seemed to spur their charge to greater speed, much to Connor’s relief. They were still moving at what felt like a snail’s pace, but in reality they were leaving their enemies far behind. The alleyway ended up ahead. Alpha and Charlie had been waiting in their getaway vehicle out in front of the apartment building, but the instant the Agency team had entered the stairwell Connor had known they would be at the backup location. That was at the end of another alleyway just across the upcoming street.

  “Almost there!” Delta hissed.

  Figures suddenly appeared around the corners from the street.

  “Down!” Connor shouted, abandoning any pretext of stealth, if any had remained after their flight.

  He dove for the ground, yanking the shifter down with him. He didn’t expect him to have the reflexes to automatically react. Their charge wasn’t trained like he and Delta were.

  Things whizzed by overhead, striking the metal containers and brick walls with very unscary plinks.

  “I’m no expert, but those don’t sound like bullets,” the man between him and Delta said.

  “They aren’t. They’re tranquilizer darts,” Connor replied. “Now just hold tight.”

  “For what? Them to come to us? What about those ones back there?” He pointed behind them.

  “We’re not alone,” Connor explained, just as light exploded from the alleyway in front of them.

  Screams followed, echoing crazily off the walls in the dark, a cacophony of sound that assaulted his enhanced senses. It was so loud that Connor almost missed it.

  Almost. He and Delta leapt from the ground at the same moment, just as the squad that had been following them down the stairs caught up. He threw an elbow into the closest Agent’s neck, then whirled and delivered a spinning backfist into the face of another man. Bone crunched and the black-clad Agent dropped like a rock.

  It wasn’t a fair fight at all. Ten seconds later and the last of them collapsed to the ground.

  “Bravo, report.” Alpha’s voice echoed sharply down the alleyway.

  He looked around quickly. “Six Agents accounted for. No casualties.”

  “We have six too. Let’s go.”

  Connor nodded, ushering their man into the SUV that was idling at the alley entrance. They had to step carefully over the six bodies lying in various positions on the ground.

  Twelve men was a standard Agency attack team. They had thought it was ten initially, but events had proven them wrong.

  “That wasn’t even a fight,” their charge whispered as they backed out of the dark alleyway and took off into the city, trying to put as much distance between them as they could.

  “No, it wasn’t,” Connor confirmed, sitting back into his seat as he tried to calm his stomach. “Be thankful for it.”

  It had been a slaughter. He felt his gorge rise at the idea of being thankful that they had only been up against humans. He hated to be glad that they were easy to kill, but he was.

  The alternative was far less savory.

  Connor closed his eyes, the rest of their journey to the train yard and the final escape of their charge no more than a blur. The only thing that he remembered was that this time it was Alpha’s turn to play escort. That meant their leader would accompany the unnamed man all the way to Genesis Valley before he returned.

  In the meantime, Connor was in charge.

  Oh dear.

  ***

  “Connor.”

  “Yessir?” he said, slurring his words as he tried to step in time with his compatriots.

  Delta—no, Josh, he corrected—snorted haughtily at the reply. They were out in public. He needed to refer to them as their real names, even though they were still on a mission.

  Such was his life lately. Missions are missions. Connor didn’t mind; it was what he had signed up for. He hadn’t expected this to be his first assignment away from Genesis Valley, but when Valen, the owner of the company he worked for, had asked for volunteers, Connor hadn’t hesitated. He was blessed with a natural inclination toward the skills necessary for this type of work. It wouldn’t have been right of him to refuse to provide help for those who needed it.

  Besides, right now he got to feign being riotously drunk while his friends hauled him along the streets.

  “You’re an ass,” Josh replied, digging his shoulder into his friend’s side.

  Connor laughed, his hands hanging lazily around his friends’ necks while they carried him. His head lolled back and forth as passersby gave the three of them incredulous looks. He shook it off. What was wrong with being drunk by six? It wasn’t like it was still the morning!

  What they didn’t notice, however, was the way he surveyed the street and nearby buildings through eyes narrowed into slits. If they had, it would have given his act away immediately, because no one could mistake the intelligence and purpose in that stare.

  “Noww, my good man,” he replied. “That, from an upstanding gentledick like yourself, is completely expected.” He turned his head, ostensibly to stare at Justin, who was holding up his left side. “Now this man, he, he, he, he’s a goooood man,” Connor crooned.

  The pair of them shook with laughter, the movement bouncing Connor up and down slightly, forcing him to focus slightly more on the building across the street from them.

  It was a shorter building than the one from two days prior, thank goodness. Five stories of thirty-year-old gothic architecture. Swooping arches around the windows, spires on every corner of the roof, and gargoyles worked into the concrete façade of the building. The bland beige coloring did nothing to help with the slightly dilapidated feel of the building. But the windows were new, and fresh, with bright flags hung over the lobby, which also was kept clean and in good condition.

  Connor’s eyes lingered on a window on the fourth floor, second from the left. The curtains were open, but he couldn’t see inside. According to the floorplan of the building, that was the room of their next target.

  Maybe “target” isn’t the right word. The thought echoed through his head as they continued along the sidewalk. They weren’t trying to hurt anyone. In fact, they were doing just the opposite. His team’s mission was to find shifters that were at risk, and to get them to safety outside of the city. He resolved to find a better word for them to use.

  “You put on some weight or something?” Justi
n asked, adjusting his position.

  “I had pancakes for breakfast,” Connor replied happily, skipping for a step or two before tripping and using his friends to help him stay on his feet while he laughed.

  “You’re abusing this,” Josh complained, though he didn’t break stride.

  Connor didn’t reply, looking around while blinking rapidly, taking in the various shops, alleys and streets. Although they needed to survey the building, as their last extraction had proven, knowing the area around the building was just as important.

  Especially if they manage to get the drop on us. Again.

  That was becoming more of a problem lately. The Agency teams—which seemed to be endless in number—were conducting ambushes like the one the night before with increasing frequency. Connor had a few theories on that, but he hadn’t voiced them to anyone yet. No point in causing problems where there might not be any. Whatever the Agency was, they were good.

  Connor’s eyes surveyed the streets around them, looking for any potential problems, or things to be aware of. Things such as fire routes, where no parking was allowed. They were perfect places for getaway cars to pull up close to the curb. At the same time, if they had them memorized, they could see when vehicles were parked in them that shouldn’t be. The part of town they were in was very busy, riding a recent wave of popularity with the young adults of the city. Parking was hard to come by. A big SUV or truck in a no-parking zone would be a huge indicator, but only if they knew where to look.

  His eyes browsed the crowd, searching for anyone that stuck out. He was hoping they had gotten the advantage on the Agency this time, but he wasn’t sure.

  He tripped, stumbling awkwardly.

  “What the fuck?” Josh said angrily.

  But Connor wasn’t paying attention. His vision was still filled with the image of a short-haired blonde with the most stunning brown eyes he’d ever seen.

  “Connor,” Justin hissed, yanking his arm, hauling him to his feet.

  His shoulder screamed in protest, and Connor fought to regain control of his act.