Hawk’s Challenge

by Linda O. Johnston

  This was it! Exactly what Autumn had been sent to learn.

  Logan’s “fictional” thriller had been based upon the idea of some guy he’d met in a bar.

  Was it someone who knew about Alpha Force?

  Logan, as a successful writer, obviously relied a lot on his own imagination. Was this person he had referred to as “Beer Guy” at GlenB Brews just a drunk who was full of nonsense that Logan had run with? Could it be as simple as that?

  But if that were the case, why had the few details Logan had described in his interview sounded so much like Alpha Force? And was it just coincidence that GlenB Brews was so close to Maryland’s Eastern Shore—where Ft. Lukman, Alpha Force’s main base of operations, was located?

  Autumn didn’t believe in coincidences. Neither did her commanding officers.

  “So you didn’t come up with the idea yourself?” she confirmed.

  “Not exactly. This regular, I call him Beer Guy, sat beside me at the bar around the time I was coming up with the idea for the new thriller. When he found out I was a writer, he said he had an idea for me. He made me promise not to tell anyone who he was or where the concept came from. He called himself J.D., but he never did tell me who he really was. I expected he’d tell me, in his drunken stupor, about some kind of alien invasion. But when he described a covert military unit of shapeshifters? It really got my imagination going. So that’s what I wrote about. And the few times I’ve seen him since then, we’ve done some more brainstorming—wild stuff. He seems to show up most often on Friday nights, so that’s when I go there, too.”

  “Fascinating.” Autumn kept her excitement tamped down. “Has he given you ideas for any particular story lines about the shapeshifters?”

  “A couple that were really way-out there. He mentioned the covert force saving Alaska’s glaciers and stopping a bioterrorist attack. I haven’t used them yet, but I may someday.”

  Autumn’s pulse quickened. The wolf shifters in Alpha Force had in fact undertaken those missions. This didn’t sound like the ramblings of a drunk. She had to find out who Beer Guy—J.D.—was.

  “He sounds like a nutcase, but he does have one heck of an imagination,” she said to Logan. “I’d be really curious to talk to him with you sometime soon.”

  “That’s assuming he shows up at GlenB again,” Logan said. “I have ideas of my own, of course, but it’s always been so fun to run them by him, get his thoughts on the pros and cons of where I’m going. He may be crazy, but I like the way his mind works.”

  I don’t, Autumn thought. “He never told you where you could find him when he wasn’t at the bar?”

  “No. And you know, after the first few times I ran into him, I even thought about following him to see where he lived—mostly to make sure he got home without having an accident. But he drives a big old Harley-Davidson hog, and he maneuvers it too well to be followed, even when he’s drunk out of his head. I never even saw his license number. He may not even have a plate.”

  That was it! A starting point, at least. There were a few Alpha Force members who drove motorcycles. Autumn didn’t know a Harley Davidson from a Yamaha or even a Schwinn, but she would learn. And then she’d come up with some viable suspects to pursue.

  “Interesting.” Autumn yawned, both to seem uninterested in Beer Guy and to give herself an escape from the high-intensity evening. “Would you mind driving me back to the bar now? I’m ready to head home.”

  “I could drive you home,” Logan said quickly. He was probably curious about where she lived. Not a good idea—although now that she had a possible lead she might not stay in the apartment she shared with Ruby much longer.

  The idea of ending the evening—and leaving Logan—made her wince with regret. But she’d already gotten much more involved with him than she should have.

  As much as she regretted it, she needed to get away from him as soon as possible and stay away. If she didn’t, there were too many possibilities of his finding out who she really was—a member of a genuine covert military group. And that could only lead to more questions on the part of this imaginative writer… Although if his lead to Beer Guy didn’t pan out she’d have an excuse—a reason—to see Logan again.

  But that wasn’t something she dared hope for. And even if she did happen to see him again, making love with him again—as amazing as it had been—was out of the question.

  “No, thanks. Like I told you, one of my girlfriends promised to pick me up.” She hadn’t wanted him to think she was cheating on some guy. And before she thought better of it, she let herself ask one more question. “How would you feel if there really were shapeshifters, like Beer Guy claimed? Not that there actually are any, of course, but since you wrote about it, have you ever thought about it?”

  He laughed as he stood and came around the table. He reached down and grasped Autumn’s hands, pulling her up until she stood body-to-body against him.

  Then he kissed her.

  “I think it’s time to make sure you get home. Don’t take this the wrong way, but it sounds like you need some sleep,” he said as he pulled away. Autumn could taste coffee and his unique brand of sensuality on his lips.

  Only now it wasn’t nearly as enticing.

  “Then you—?”

  “Just because I write about crazy things doesn’t mean I believe they exist,” he said.

  “But what if your Beer Guy had proof? Or—”

  “Fiction may be my business, but there’s nothing that could make me believe in such nonsense.”

  CHAPTER 4

  A day had passed. Autumn and her aide, Ruby Belmont, had just arrived back at Ft. Lukman. They flashed their IDs at the guard, who knew them anyway. Then Ruby drove their government-issued sedan through the front gate. She was a tall woman who regarded the world through glasses that were anything but rose-colored. Assuming the worst about people or situations was Ruby’s forte.

  Autumn always kidded her about that. Ruby tended to be pessimistic, which was a good thing for a person who watched the tail of the shapeshifter to whom she was assigned. They’d been on several assignments together, which seemed to work out well— Autumn’s red-tailed hawk form was a good fit for a woman named Ruby, whether she liked it or not.

  In the backseat, a roomy cage housed Venus, the hawk who was Autumn’s cover in case she was ever seen on an assignment. Venus’s mother had abandoned her nest in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, where Autumn had grown up among her shapeshifting family. The mother hawk had been scared off by some teenage boys who’d tried to catch her. Autumn had in turn scared off the boys by threatening to turn them over to wildlife authorities. Not that her threat carried any weight—hawks were not an endangered species.

  Autumn had adopted Venus, nurturing her to adulthood. They shared a special bond. Plus, there was nothing more valuable to a shapeshifter than an animal to act as cover, especially for members of Alpha Force.

  Ruby stopped the car in the parking lot just inside the gate. It was fairly empty, which made the motorcycles in one corner stand out.

  “I don’t suppose you’d recognize the cycle Logan Valliere described, would you?” Ruby asked.

  “He didn’t give me much of a description,” Autumn reminded her. She’d already told Ruby almost everything Logan had told her—about Logan’s work, Beer Guy’s suggestions, and the possibility that he had inside info on Alpha Force.

  There were other things Logan had said—and done—that were definitely off limits, even for one of the people Autumn trusted most in the world.

  Logan. Autumn’s mind filled with sorrow as she thought of him, even as her body involuntarily reacted to memories of the brief time they’d spent together.

  If she had enough information to determine which member of Alpha Force had been talking to him—and she was fairly certain that the person in question was a member—she would probably never see Logan again. It would be better that way. He might even remember her with fondness.

  But if he ever learned th
at she was a member of a genuine secret military force like the one he’d written about—he might despise her. Worse yet, write about her or a fictional version of her. That would hurt more than having him in her life for such a short time.

  He’d given her that copy of Covert Extreme before he’d dropped her off back at GlenB to catch a ride from her “roommate.” Autumn had begun to read it on the drive back to the base.

  As everyone—Alpha Force honchos and lower level operatives—had suspected, the details were too on the nose to be coincidental.

  Sure, any author with imagination might come up with the idea of a secret military unit of shapeshifters. But he’d described a tonic developed by one of the unit’s commanding officers, who also happened to be a medical doctor. One that controlled shifting and human awareness. That detail wasn’t just a bit of imagination. It was fact.

  Ruby parked, and they both got out of the car. Autumn used her smartphone to take pictures of the five parked cycles. They included two Harley-Davidsons, the model Logan had said that Beer Guy drove.

  While she did that, Ruby got up close and personal, looking them over—and planting tracking devices on them. They’d already gotten the go-ahead from their commanding officer Major Drew Connell to take any necessary steps to track down the source of leaked information.

  Next, they’d run the plates by the installation’s security staff to find out who owned the hogs. Autumn didn’t know anyone in Alpha Force who had the initials “J.D.”, even though it wasn’t a very large unit. Besides, those initial could have been assumed to hide the guy’s real identity.

  His driving the Harley had been real, though.

  If figured out who that was, they might just know who sometimes hung out at the microbrewery in Glen Burnie.

  Shooting off his mouth to Logan Valliere.

  Logan sat in his home office, staring at a mostly blank computer screen.

  Damn. He was having a hard time concentrating on his writing—something that didn’t happen to him often.

  But when he’d called Autumn, he’d only gotten her voice mail, and she hadn’t called him back.

  Unlike some of the characters he wrote about, he wasn’t a cop or a government agent. Even so, he’d managed to find an apartment in Glen Burnie that had been leased to Autumn Katers.

  But when he showed up there, no one answered the buzzer. The management company would only say that the apartment had been rented recently. They didn’t keep track of the comings and goings of the tenants—and wouldn’t reveal them if they did.

  Maybe that was a good thing. He knew he was coming on much too strong, and this wasn’t the way he handled things.

  He should simply back off.

  Autumn was a mystery. Logan usually thrived on mysteries—but he didn’t like this one. Not when he had fallen so hard for a sexy woman he really didn’t know much about.

  Sure, he hadn’t wanted her to be a groupie who’d only be interested in him so that she could say she’d slept with a well-known writer. But neither had he wanted her to be a one-night stand.

  He hadn’t thought about the future when they’d gone to bed together, but on some level he’d hoped that they’d see each other again.

  Apparently, that wasn’t going to happen.

  Maybe if he could just find her, see her one more time, he’d convince himself that she was just an ordinary woman.

  One he would be able to get over.

  Autumn sat in General Yarrow’s office at Ft. Lukman. With her were Ruby and Major Drew Connell—the werewolf shapeshifter who ran Alpha Force. They were all dressed in familiar green military camo fatigues.

  General Greg Yarrow was around sixty years old, and from all Autumn had heard, he’d fought for the establishment of Alpha Force and now did all he could to keep the covert unit in operation, secretly and effectively.

  He was based at the Pentagon, although he also maintained an office at Alpha Force’s headquarters. He’d furnished it with bookshelves loaded with first editions of science fiction classics, like those written by Jules Verne and Robert Louis Stevenson.

  He sat behind his elegant wooden desk, watching his subordinates. “So you’ve had the security detail check out all the motorcycles authorized to enter this facility?” the general demanded.

  “Yes, sir,” Major Connell responded. “There only seem to be three that match the description provided by Valliere, right, Autumn?” Drew had hints of silver in his short, dark hair and golden eyes that reminded her of the feral wolf he morphed into.

  “Yes, sir.”

  They went over the three names that had been provided to the general. None had the initials J.D. Two of the men had only been with the unit for around six months. But whoever was leaking information to Logan had to have been around for over a year—Logan had started on his book at least that long ago.

  The third name on the list was Staff Sgt. Craig Friessel, who’d been with Alpha Force for going on eighteen months. He was a non-shifting member of the team who filled in when the werewolf shifters’ regularly assigned aides were not available. He had high security clearance—as did all members of Alpha Force—and seemed the most likely candidate.

  “I’ll interrogate him as soon as we’re done here,” Major Connell said angrily. “If he’s the informant, we’ll handle it. We’ll arrest him and make sure he has no opportunity to open his mouth again.”

  “Autumn? We’ve got a problem.”

  Autumn’s phone had rung in the middle of the night. It was Ruby.

  “Friessel is on the move. His cycle is heading toward Glen Burnie.”

  Autumn sat up. “How close is he?”

  “Let’s put it this way. He’s too far from here to catch up by car.”

  She heard what Ruby hadn’t said. “But a hawk could catch him.”

  “Exactly.”

  A day had passed since their meeting with the general. Major Connell had called Craig Friessel into his office. He’d used false pretenses to try to get information from the staff sergeant without revealing to Friessel that he was under suspicion.

  And now a security detail was supposed to be watching him.

  But considering his late-night exit from Ft. Lukman and the direction he was heading, Friessel knew he’d been made.

  He might be heading toward Logan’s place. Was he in danger?

  Autumn wasn’t about to take any chances. “I’ll meet you out by the parking lot in five minutes,” she told Ruby. “I’ll have shifting elixir with me. You bring the light that activates it.”

  CHAPTER 5

  When Logan’s doorbell rang in the middle of the night, he’d thought it was a dream.

  No. There it was again.

  With a groan, he turned over in bed and glanced at the clock on the bedside table. 2:00 a.m.? Who the hell was here at this hour?

  He immediately thought of Autumn. Had she shown up for another bout of hot sex? The idea stirred his body despite how tired he was.

  But surely she’d have called first. He had given her his number, and unlike her, he answered and returned phone calls.

  Still, there was no one he’d rather see on his doorstep.

  He flicked on the overhead light, then pulled on jeans and a white T-shirt.

  He also reached into the nightstand drawer and grabbed the pepper spray he kept there. Paranoid? Maybe. And the stuff wasn’t exactly a weapon for he-men like the guys he wrote about. But he wasn’t stupid. He’d made some enemies, thanks to his writing. He used real life and real people to inspire his fiction, but often the disguises he used to fictionalize fact were pretty thin, and the people he depicted weren’t happy about it.

  He didn’t turn on the lights on his way down the hall toward the front of the house, but when he got to the front door, he flicked on the outside light and looked through the peephole.

  “Hey, Valliere,” called a male voice that was muffled thanks to the thickness of the door. “I heard you were looking for me. Got some more ideas for your books.”


  It was Beer Guy. Logan had only seen him at the bar, and hadn’t ever told him where he lived. But it probably wasn’t that hard to find out.

  “I’ll meet you at GlenB tomorrow night, J.D.,” Logan shouted. He sounded drunk, as usual. Maybe he was here because he wanted to brainstorm…or maybe something else was motivating him. Logan couldn’t know.

  Either way, his showing up in the middle of the night didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

  “Hey, open up. We gotta talk.” The voice was even louder, more belligerent.

  Sure that he didn’t want to talk to the guy right now, Logan backed away from the door. But before he could formulate a plan, the door burst open, and J.D. slammed inside. He grabbed Logan by the throat.

  Logan gagged, clutching at the hand that was choking him. J.D. no longer seemed drunk. He’d always seemed laid-back, even hazy. In the loose casual clothes he’d worn, he had never given the impression that he was particularly strong.

  But that was then, this was now, and Logan knew his life hung in the balance.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing, you son of a bitch?” J.D. shouted so loudly that his voice seemed to reverberate through the entire house. There was a ruthlessness in the brown eyes Logan had once considered vague. The strong jaw that Logan had seen slack with drink was now firmly set. “I gave you ideas. Lots of them. Helped you refine them, even. And what did I ask in return? That you write about them. Tell the world about those damned shapeshifters. I hate them. They shouldn’t be real. They’re freaks. And there they are, giving others like me orders, like they’re real military officers. If everyone knows about them, they’ll have to go hide or be killed. That’s why I told you. But you weren’t to tell anyone where the ideas came from.”