Jace

by Alisa Woods

  Jace held up a hand and waved away her concern—she was half witch, and he generally despised the species, but he knew she was different. And she had saved Jaxson from his own dark secret, one Jace hadn’t even seen. “It’s obvious you make Jaxson happy. Not much I can object to with that. And the mating bond between the two of you makes the pack stronger. It’s all good, just took me by surprise is all. Besides, having a few allies in a certain powerful downtown Seattle coven might help us unravel this thing.” It hadn’t occurred to him before, but maybe Olivia’s family—the Damon coven—would be able to help them track down Noah. Or at least see if he truly was missing.

  “Not sure the coven really wants to be involved in pack business.” Olivia grimaced. “But I’ll do anything I can to help.”

  Jace gave her a sharp nod. He’d take help from the witches, if offered, but he certainly wasn’t going to go begging… and he really only trusted Olivia to have shifters’ best interests at heart.

  Pounding footsteps down the stairs made him think Jaxson had managed to rouse Jared from his typical crashed-out state. The oldest River brother had his own nightmarish past, but he was better at working it out than Jace. And Jared wasn’t a danger to anyone. He could shift and let his wolf form run out all of his horror at the things that had happened and the things he had done. Jace didn’t have that luxury, not when there were people around who could be hurt by it. Which meant Jared paid his penance by hitting the mountains or the shooting range for endless hours, exhausting himself, and when he hit the sack, he hit it hard. Crashing like the dead man Jace suspected his brother longed to be.

  Both his brothers lumbered into the kitchen with Daniel close behind.

  “I figured if everyone was getting up…” Daniel shrugged.

  Jace just nodded. Piper’s brother should be part of this conversation, anyway. Piper too, but Jace wasn’t quite ready to deal with her brand of Wilding insanity just yet. Better to have a plan first.

  Jaxson hooked a thumb toward Jared. “Tell Jace what you were telling me.”

  Their oldest brother was the largest among them, although none of the River brothers was exactly small. The shifter gene, plus their military training and staying in shape for their business, meant they were all pretty well bulked up. Jaxson was an ex-SEAL and Jace was a former Army medic, but Jared was all Marine. And it showed.

  He ran a hand through his hair, which was mussed. His sleep must have been restless at some point, even if he slept like the dead. “I’ve been trying to access some of the local military information systems. Nothing classified, just poking around to see if anyone has heard of this Agent Smith. And I’ve uploaded a sketch to our office facial recognition software—it’s scanning some of the law enforcement and city-wide camera databases to see if we can track down who this guy really is. It’s only been a day since we kicked his ass, but he could have flown that little two-seater airplane anywhere. I kind of doubt we’ll get lucky and find him in Seattle.”

  Daniel spoke up. “If he’s got another base of operations nearby, he might stick around.”

  It was a decent possibility.

  “Somehow, I doubt he’s gone far,” Jace said. “But wherever he is, he’s got to be deep undercover. Even if he’s not showing his face now, he’s got to have some history. Maybe cruising up to an ATM to pull out cash for that cheap government suit he was wearing.”

  Jared snorted. “Yeah, maybe. I’m tapped into all the databases back at Riverwise. Hasn’t pinged anything yet. I’ve got an alert set up on my phone.”

  Jace gave him a nod, impressed. Jared was actually bringing his A-game to this, rather than heading off to the forest, per usual, to get lost in the woods—literally and figuratively.

  Jaxson gestured to Daniel. “You’re Army, right? Where are you stationed while you’re stateside?”

  Jace grimaced. They’d already had this fight, last night, with Piper.

  Daniel’s face pinched in, but he kept it cool. “The Joint Base at Lewis-McChord. My father is a Lieutenant Colonel there.” He threw a pained look to Jace. “But Piper is right—he’s really not the best one to go to for help. Not unless you’ve already got solid intel.”

  Jaxson and Jared looked at him, expectantly. “Which we do not,” Jace reminded them. He turned to Daniel. “I think we need to bring Piper into this. She might have more intel to share than she was willing to give up last night under, er, less than desirable circumstances. Why don’t you go fetch her? She’s in the last bedroom on the left, end of the hall, upstairs.”

  Daniel looked like Jace had just asked him to dip his fingers into the latrine. But he turned and jogged off toward the stairs.

  Jace waited until he was out of earshot. “Daniel and Piper… have issues,” he explained to Jace, Jared, and Olivia. “Last night they had a hell of a fight. Some kind of thing with the dad, the Colonel at the Joint Base. Piper wanted Daniel to use his clearance to get into their systems and poke around, looking for Noah. Daniel was having none of that. But it might not be a bad idea.”

  “I don’t know,” Jared said, a skeptical look on his face. “We don’t know how far this thing reaches.”

  “True.” Jace crossed his arms tight over his chest. “Maybe Daniel can look around but keep it quiet. Meanwhile, we’ll do our research on the outside. If Noah’s truly disappeared, it has to be connected to this Agent Smith. If we can get a clue as to where he’s hiding, that has to help. And if Daniel’s careful, he won’t violate any classified material protocols and shouldn’t raise too many alarm bells.” Jace glanced at Olivia. “And maybe we can get a little magical help from our favorite witchy office assistant.”

  Olivia grinned. “Aunt Gwen’s dying to help me learn some spells. I think a seeking spell might be first on the list.”

  Jared seemed dubious about that, too, but Jaxson had a small smirk on his face.

  “Either way,” Jace said, “we need to get on this. If we work together, cover multiple fronts at once, we should make the fastest progress. We already know Agent Smith was experimenting on the prisoners he had before. If he’s taking military shifters now—” The sound of bare feet pounding down the stairs cut him off.

  Daniel came flying back into the kitchen. “Piper is gone.” He rushed the words all out at once.

  Fuck. Jace hung his head down, shaking it slightly. “Man, I should’ve known. No way was she settled last night. Dammit.” Just like a Wilding to run off half-cocked, doing God-knew-what. Probably the craziest thing possible. From what little he knew of Piper, it was probably the most dangerous thing possible. Somehow that roused his wolf up from the depths almost as much as her curvy little behind in the moonlight. He growled back at his wolf, shoving him down again, then whipped his head up to look at Daniel. “I don’t suppose you have any idea where she’s run off to?”

  His scowled, the muscles in his jaw working overtime. “I know exactly where she’s gone.”

  Chapter Four

  Getting onto the Joint Base wouldn’t be that difficult, now that Piper had swiped her brother’s identification and base pass. She’d used his ID to create a slightly-modified duplicate, putting some of her counterintelligence skills to good use, but the security just wasn’t that tight at the Joint Base to begin with. At least, not at the front gate, where she sat in a line of cars idling in the early morning wait to get waved through.

  The sun was just starting to rise over the mountains in the east. The small guard shack sat under a long corrugated metal roof stretching over the three lanes that marked the entrance. She’d retrieved her car—the one she used when she was in Seattle—to drive to the base rather than take a cab, like she’s used to return from the River brothers’ safehouse in the mountains, a good hour away. She imagined Jace was looking for her about now, and she couldn’t help wondering what his reaction would be when he discovered she took off. Royally pissed, probably. Her wolf had been whining ever since she left, but she doubted Jace’s first reaction would be regret that they hadn’t rav
ished each other before she disappeared. Piper rolled her eyes at her wolf’s pathetic whimper about that.

  The Joint Base was south of Tacoma, a sprawling enterprise of on-base housing, training grounds, workout facilities, and all manner of Army and Air Force operations. The building she was most interested in was near the center of the several mile wide complex—the command center. She hoped Daniel’s key card would gain her access to the red-bricked and stoic-looking building… as well as a secure terminal to search for clues as to Noah’s location.

  Of course, hacking into the Army’s database was highly illegal, but she was doing it for a good cause—and it was something the Army itself should be doing for her brother, if they cared at all about their shifter soldiers. He was just another grunt to them, but he was everything to her. And she worried that his shifter abilities had maybe caught too much interest from them. As she well knew, the Army put their soldiers to maximum use, deploying all their assets. Her secret hope was that they’d simply recruited him into some dark program where he was using his shifter abilities to fight the bad guys. She’d even be proud of that.

  But she knew her little brother—he would have bragged about that to her. Endlessly.

  Piper edged forward in the car line, sandwiched between two rows of pointed orange cones half the size of her vehicle. The guards quickly waved through the people ahead of her, but when she reached the front, the middle-aged one in charge asked for her ID with a short wave of his fingers. She gave it over with a bright smile that she hoped would convince him she had the IQ of a fluffy bunny and posed just as much of a security risk… and couldn’t possibly be civilian counterintelligence trying to hack their secure databases. This wasn’t her first time convincing people she was something she wasn’t, but she couldn’t go too far with the dumb girl act. The Joint Base got a lot of civilian traffic, spouses and significant others of soldiers traveling on and off base, but her ID said she had top-level security and thus access to the more secure buildings on the grounds.

  The guard took too long to scrutinize her ID. “State your name,” he said without looking up. His gruff voice sounded like he’d already been up half the night.

  “Daniela Wuldinger. On reassignment from the Senator’s office. Temporary.”

  The guard lifted one eyebrow, still examining her ID. For far too long.

  A nervous sweat broke out between her shoulder blades, but she kept the smile at full force.

  Then he gave her a short nod. “Just a moment, please.”

  His hard-soled shoes scuffed the pavement of the street, then the concrete of the guard shack floor as he stepped inside to consult with his computer and a fellow guardsman. They were both wearing the desert camouflage that was standard for active-duty personnel on base, as well as a bright yellow reflective vest, presumably for the traffic.

  Piper waited, forcing the smile to remain on her face… as if she had no concerns whatsoever that her completely falsified identification would be discovered. She truly was connected to the Senator’s office, as a consultant to the defense subcommittee—but her altered ID was a hodge-podge of hers and Daniel’s real clearances mixed with a falsified name. She’d conjured worse IDs in much more hostile territories in her operations around the world, but security in the US was actually competent most of the time. Which made it a higher bar she had to hurdle. And this false ID was a slap-dash effort at 4 am in her apartment, not going through her normal chain of command… not least because it would never have been approved.

  There was far too much discussion going on in the shack.

  When the original guard finally returned to her car, he said, “Welcome to Lewis-McChord, Ms. Wuldinger.” He handed her ID back to her.

  She did an impressive job of not letting the sigh of relief show.

  He leaned in with one hand on top of her car, gave her an appreciative look, and smirked. “You might want to stop by the Soldiers Field House during your stay, Ms. Wuldinger. We’re having a Combatives Tournament today. I’m afraid civilians can’t compete, but Senator Krepky might want a personal report on the fine fighting form of our active-duty personnel.”

  She returned his flirtatious grin. “A bunch of sweaty grunts, muscled up and testing their hand-to-hand combat skills? Wouldn’t miss that for the world. Thank you, Corporal.” She mock-saluted him.

  He just stepped back, grinned, and waved her through.

  Piper had only been on base at Lewis-McChord once before, but the directions around the sprawling military city were fairly straightforward, and she’d mapped out her route anyway. She sailed right past the red-bricked, colonial-style Headquarters with the large brass cannon on the front lawn and headed for the command center, which had the high-security access she needed. It was just a short drive along the nearly-empty early-morning streets, near the center of the base.

  Unlike the traditional architecture of Headquarters, the command center was a modern architectural beauty. The designers had mixed traditional red brick with native white granite and thousands of square feet of glass. The 66th Theater Aviation Command (TAC) Readiness Center was the largest and newest command center for the Washington Army National Guard, according to their website. Piper had seen the pictures before, but the building itself was undeniably gorgeous—three stories of soaring glass and steel that let in tons of natural light. She had no doubt her father strutted through the doors like a peacock every morning. But the building was large enough—and she was early enough—that the chances of crossing paths with him should be infinitesimally small.

  She hoped.

  Two guards with semiautomatic M-16 rifles stood at the entrance, but they were primarily an honor guard, and their brusque looks didn’t concern her. Either her ID would pass, or it wouldn’t. She swiped it past the detector, the light came up green, and she cruised inside. The two-story entrance had more of the white stone flooring, which was tinged a pale rose by the early-morning sun.

  She strode confidently past the reception desk toward the offices on the main floor.

  Piper had a lot of experience acting like she knew exactly what she was doing even when she had absolutely no clue. Pretending she was precisely where she belonged was an art. With the right amount of confidence and charm, she’d proven time and again that she could convince almost anyone of anything. It was a kind of game, this mask she put on for the world, not so much a deception—at least for the good guys. The bad guys, she was happy to screw all day long. Not in the literal sense. The only men she allowed in her bed were the ones who had some decency. It was often a fine line, especially in the field, but she had a well-tuned antenna. Knowing the difference between the good guys and the bad could mean walking away or ending up in pieces. That wasn’t an exaggeration, even for a rapid-healing shifter like her. And the genuinely good guys were rare, so when she found one, her antenna pinged hard.

  Like with Jace River. She pushed that unwelcome thought aside. She’d blown her chance with him by bailing and coming here… and she didn’t plan to stick around Seattle long enough to have another.

  As she wound through the cubicle-land of the command center analysts, Piper held her head high, met the curious stares with a smile, and occasionally gave someone a friendly wave. Anyone at their desk at 6 AM was either working the early morning shift or had been there all night. As civilian counterintelligence for the Army, her time in Washington was usually spent in Olympia at the capitol building, consulting with Senator Krepky’s staff for the Senate defense subcommittee. Her clearance, her experience, and the fact that she was a shifter, all made her a resource the Army liked to exploit to keep the political types on their side.

  It was a great job, actually, and one she had no desire to lose. Not to mention that her travels conveniently kept her far from this precise building where her father, Lt. Colonel Astor Wilding held court. Ever since she had turned eighteen and stormed out of the house, staying out of her father’s orbit had been priority number one. This little mission was trespassing on her fath
er’s territory, something she had long ago vowed never to do. But Noah deserved better than to disappear into a black hole and have no one even try to find him.

  Once she had made a circuit through the first floor, she subtly tried the access to a stairwell with her key card. Locked. She didn’t want to trigger any alarms with a repeat attempt, so she made her way to the coffee room and poured herself a brimming, steaming cup. With any luck, the command center would be high enough on the food chain to have decent coffee. Which she certainly needed after being up most of the night. She took a few sips—not bad—then casually strolled back down the hall and ducked into an empty cubicle.

  The analyst who owned this ten-by-ten space had either not come in yet or stepped away. In case they’d only made a quick trip to the bathroom, Piper hung out, sipping her coffee and looking like she was just on break. After about three minutes, she set down her cup, eased into the chair, and tapped awake the computer screen.

  Her background didn’t include a specialization in computer hacking, but she was familiar with military security protocols, and she hopefully had the right ID. It wasn’t so much a matter of hacking, as just having the right access to begin with. The computer was locked down, as per protocol, but anyone with standard level access should be able to open it up again. Which she managed with a simple swipe of her key card. The prompt for the central database would be the trick. She’d already constructed a new user and password for her ID—she tapped those in, said a silent prayer, and pressed the enter key.

  Access denied.

  She typed it again hoping she had simply mistyped the first time.

  Access denied.

  Shit. Third time was either the charm… or the thing that would set off all the alarm bells. She stood up, ready to make a run for her car, as she carefully typed the string of letters and numbers one more time.

  She didn’t even finish typing before a shuffle of boots and a click sound made her look up. Standing at the entrance to her cubicle was a burly man in camouflage with an M-16 pointed at her head.