Hawk’s Challenge

by Linda O. Johnston

  “I—” Logan tried to talk, but the pressure at his throat only made him gag.

  “My damned superiors know,” J.D. spat. “They questioned me. If I go back there, it’s only a matter of time till I’m thrown in prison—the military kind.”

  Logan’s mind reeled. What the guy was saying made no sense. J.D. worked for the military? Alpha Force was a real operation? Shapeshifters existed? How was that possible?

  He couldn’t focus on those questions now. Not when he had to fight back if he wanted to survive.

  He pulled his left arm up—and shot his attacker in the face with pepper spray.

  The guy screamed. For a moment, his grip loosened, and Logan was able to break free. He gasped for air, but he didn’t have time to try to catch his breath.

  Instead, he took the stance he’d learned in a self-defense class he’d taken while researching one of his stories. His attacker was still shouting, rubbing his eyes as he drew closer to Logan.

  That was when Logan attacked. Using his hands to protect his face, he kicked J.D. in the gut. The guy roared and barreled toward him, even though his eyes were still closed and flooding with tears.

  Logan moved out of the way. J.D. nearly slammed into the wall, but stopped short and turned just in time. His expression changed from pained to fury, and he stared through narrowed, wet eyes.

  Logan knew himself. He wasn’t a fighter, especially against a guy this strong. Running was his only option. But J.D. charged, grabbing him around the chest so tightly that Logan could no longer move his arms. The breath was choked out of him once more. He tried to kick J.D. again, but he didn’t have any leverage.

  Was this it? He didn’t want to die, not now. If he survived, he could use this in one of his novels—now he knew what it felt like to be under attack. Defenseless.

  But of course, that was only if he survived.

  Suddenly Logan heard a whooshing noise, accompanied by a shrill, rasping screech.

  “No, you bitch!” his attacker shouted, and suddenly Logan was free. He stepped back, once again attempting to catch his breath.

  That was when he saw the large bird—was it a red-tailed hawk?—with its talons attached to J.D.’s scalp. The hawk pecked at his eyes which were seeping blood.

  It must have swooped in through the opening left by the broken door, but why? And why had it attacked J.D.?

  Only then did Logan allow his thoughts to race in the direction they’d gone before, when J.D. had first stormed into his house and suggested that everything he’d ever told Logan was for real. J.D.’s drunken musings hadn’t just been the ramblings of a sloshed mind. They were the real deal—or at least J.D. thought they were.

  There couldn’t really be a covert military unit of shapeshifters. And yet—what if the hawk that had soared in to help him…

  No way.

  J.D.’s fists flailed at the bird that still clutched him, its wings beating the air to keep it centered and balanced. One of his fists connected with the hawk’s side, and it teetered for a moment.

  “No!” Logan cried as J.D. pushed the creature off him and began to pummel it.

  Logan swept his eyes around the entry for something, anything, he could use as a weapon. His eyes settled on the framed pictures of his first book covers hanging on the wall. He grabbed the nearest and yanked it free. Could it help? It had to.

  With no hesitation, he flipped it sideways, where it could do the most damage, and slammed it hard against J.D.’s throat.

  The man fell to the floor.

  The hawk landed on the door that lay spread across the entry’s floor.

  It perched there, and Logan knew he must be crazy, because it seemed to look at him and nod.

  She watched as Logan sped into another room. He returned with long extension cords that he used to tie up his attacker who lay unconscious on the floor.

  She’d been injured by the man’s fist and felt unstable. She wanted to fly out of there fast, before…

  But then she felt it—the tugging, ripping, painful yet familiar sensation that meant she was about to change.

  To become human again.

  Not now! Not here! Not with Logan around to watch. That, even more than the ramblings of the man who’d told him about Alpha Force, would prove to Logan the truth.

  She raised her wings and attempted to fly, but the one that had been struck was too hurt to move. She had to get out of there, so she began hopping toward the open doorway.

  Too late. She felt her limbs grow and shift. Soon her entire body began to morph.

  She locked her avian gaze onto Logan’s human one as her shift became inevitable.

  Logan watched, fascinated, as the small hawk changed, growing longer, larger. It wasn’t even a bird now—its feathers were absorbed into its body until only skin remained. Fair skin. The familiar, nude body of a woman.

  Autumn.

  She moaned, and he rushed over to her to help. Her left arm was bent at an odd angle. Broken, because J.D. had struck the bird’s wing?

  Bird? Autumn? A shapeshifter?

  Then the rambling tale on which he had based Covert Extreme actually had basis in reality? Did this mean there actually was a military force of shapeshifters?

  “Logan?” The soft female voice did little to bring him back to reality. He looked at Autumn, really looked at her—then stripped off his T-shirt and pulled it over her head as she struggled to sit up.

  Not that he minded looking at her gorgeous, naked body. But for now, that only added to the surrealism of the moment.

  “Are you all right?” he asked her calmly.

  “More or less.” Her dark eyes studied him almost fearfully, as if she expected him to turn on her. Wrap her up in wires as he’d done to J.D. Her skin was pale, and she looked so vulnerable that he wanted to grab her and hold her tight.

  But not yet.

  “Your arm?” he asked casually.

  “I’ll have to see a doctor, but I’ve got several I trust. I’ll be fine. But, Logan—”

  “I think you owe me some answers,” he told her.

  She nodded. “Yes, but—”

  Three people suddenly stormed through the door opening—all in military fatigues.

  “Autumn, you okay?” demanded a tall, lean woman with red-highlighted hair pulled starkly from her face. She peered at them through glasses.

  “I’m fine, Ruby.”

  The two men bent down and dragged J.D. to his feet. “We’ll handle him,” they told the women. “Sgt. Craig Friessel, you’re under arrest for treason.”

  J.D. glared at them, but said nothing. And then the three men exited.

  “So…what about my answers,” Logan said to Autumn.

  “Maybe I should leave you two alone,” Ruby said.

  “No, but, Logan, I’d like for you to come with us,” Autumn said. “I want to introduce you to Alpha Force.”

  CHAPTER 6

  They had formed a short caravan. In the darkness of night, three vehicles drove the lonely roads toward Ft. Lukman on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

  The first was the government-issue sedan assigned to Sgt. Ruby Belmont. Autumn wondered whether she should have ridden with her aide instead of in Logan’s upscale silver sedan, which followed closely behind Ruby. He’d hardly said a word in the ten minutes since they’d started out, except to ask general, unemotional questions about where they were headed.

  Autumn, now clad in the camo uniform that Ruby had brought for her, was feeling anything but unemotional.

  Bringing up the rear, a black military SUV was driven by the Alpha Force security detail comprised of the two guys who had arrested Staff Sgt. Craig Friessel. Also known as J.D. and as Beer Guy, Friessel was now restrained in the backseat.

  He’d admitted to calling himself J.D. for John Doe, and little else. But Logan had identified him as the source of many of the details in his new novel that he’d believed to be imaginary.

  Friessel had been with Alpha Force for almost two years. He knew al
l about the shapeshifting abilities of its core members, and how those talents were enhanced by the special elixir initially formulated by their commanding officer, Major Connell—all details that Logan had incorporated into his story. At least Friessel hadn’t given him actual names.

  How he had known where Logan lived wasn’t yet clear. He’d attacked Logan because the writer had promised not to reveal his source. Which Logan hadn’t. He hadn’t even known that any part of what Friessel had spewed to him was true.

  And now, Autumn was in a quandary. For the sake of her assignment, and the military unit she worked for and adored, she had to get a commitment from Logan not to reveal what he had seen, both during the attack…and after. Of course, some arm-twisting would come from her superior officers when they reached Ft. Lukman. Her commanding officers had to debrief Logan and get his promise to keep quiet about what he had seen—and also not to ever disclose the reality behind the premise of his new thriller.

  For her own sake…well, she had fallen hard for Logan. She’d wanted to kill Friessel when she’d arrived at Logan’s place and seen him attacking Logan. She was glad now that Friessel had survived—he would be prosecuted for treason, for breaching his security clearance and revealing Alpha Force’s secrets. He would—

  “So tell me about it,” Logan said.

  Autumn jumped in her seat as his deep, sexy voice reverberated in the silence.

  “Tell you about what?” she asked softly, but suspected she knew what he wanted. An explanation of shapeshifting. How and why she was a hawk, how it felt to be one.

  “You know, it never dawned on me that Beer Guy could have been describing something real.” Logan aimed a brief glance in her direction. “If I’d known…well, I had one hell of a good time making things up about the fictional military troop that I stuck in my book. He told me things that I figured came from an imagination even flakier than mine.”

  Autumn smiled ironically, and looked out the windshield, as if the narrow, twisting road, illuminated only by the headlights of the cars, absorbed her attention. “So you admit to having a flaky imagination?” she finally asked. Her tone was light, though she knew this fledgling conversation could turn ominously dark in an instant.

  “How else could I write such outrageous thrillers?” he responded.

  Autumn laughed. “It definitely is outrageous, isn’t it? I mean, who but your readers would ever buy that the U.S. military has a covert unit composed largely of shapeshifters?”

  “Outrageous, yes.” His tone had turned serious. “But I’d like some details.”

  “I figured,” she said softly.

  How much should she tell him? And did she dare ask what he thought about shapeshifting now that he knew it wasn’t all fiction?

  What he thought about shapeshifters?

  What he thought about her?

  The answer was a foregone conclusion, she knew—and that tore her up inside.

  She might have fallen hard for Logan Valliere. He might even have fallen for her, too.

  But now that he knew who, and what, she was…well, she might as well enjoy the brief time they once again had together.

  Logan drove quietly, listening to Autumn describe how she had grown up knowing she was a shifter, as were many members of her family. How delighted she had been to learn of Alpha Force, that there were others out there like her, whose unique skills could be useful and even celebrated.

  “I used to only shift under the full moon,” she said. “When I flew as a hawk, I felt liberated. Wild. Wonderful! And yet…”

  “Yet?” he prompted, fascinated despite himself.

  “Before I was introduced to the Alpha Force elixir, I was fully bird when I shifted, body and mind. I couldn’t think like a person. I hunted and swooped down on prey—loved every moment of it—but I wouldn’t have known to attack Friessel while he was hurting you.”

  “So the stuff is that good?”

  “Yeah. It’s almost as good as the version you made up in Covert Extreme.”

  He laughed. “It’s so amazing, so absolutely cool, to imagine that what I was writing about in that book could resemble reality. Or that Beer Guy, aka J.D., wasn’t making things up.”

  She inhaled deeply, as if considering what to say next. “It’s real, Logan. That’s what my commanding officers want to discuss with you. We’ve already accomplished a lot of good work at Alpha Force. And there’s always more to do. But if word gets out that we’re real—”

  “Then you’d spend all your time fighting off paparazzi instead of bad guys. And the element of surprise would be lost.” And others would know the secrets hidden by this amazingly hot woman. He didn’t like that idea at all. “It could definitely hurt your effectiveness as a military unit. I understand that.”

  “You’ll keep what you’ve learned to yourself, then?” She sounded so hopeful. He glanced over toward her, toward the lovely face that he’d come to cherish.

  If he did what she wanted, would she stay in his life? Did he want her to?

  Hell, yes. He had a lot to learn about her—and not just what it felt like to morph into a hawk.

  He yearned to learn every inch of her body—the human part of it. To make love with her forever.

  But he also knew that the night they’d met, she’d been using him to learn what he knew about Alpha Force and where he’d gotten his information.

  That hurt.

  If promising to stay quiet meant more contact with Autumn, could he ever believe she was seeing him because she wanted to, and not because she thought keeping an eye on him would protect her unit?

  Autumn and her team were back in General Yarrow’s office at Ft. Lukman, with one addition: Logan.

  He’d been impressed with Yarrow’s collection of first editions of classic sci-fi and horror thrillers. He’d also seemed impressed by the general himself, and by Major Connell.

  The general sat behind his sumptuous desk. The man had the resources of the entire U.S. government behind him, and as he’d mentioned, the ear of a congressman or two. They all revered Alpha Force—even though they didn’t all necessarily know the factors behind its unqualified successes in getting answers and protecting the country.

  “You’re the direct commanding officer of Alpha Force?” Logan asked Major Connell, who sat on his left side.

  “That’s right,” Drew said, regarding him with hard golden eyes.

  “So you’re the one who first put together this unit and cemented it together with your special shapeshifting elixir.”

  Drew met Autumn’s gaze. Should she explain what she had, and hadn’t admitted to Logan, and why she’d chosen to do so?

  But Drew looked away first. “That’s right. I’m sure that Autumn has started to tell you who we are and why we’re requesting your discretion. In your writing as well as any promotion you do, you’ll need to continue to say that it all sprang from your imagination. In turn, we’d be willing to brainstorm with you, help you with some ideas that might work well in books—and help you disguise them to throw off anyone who might actually know or believe in us.”

  “And if I don’t agree?”

  “Ah,” said the general, standing behind his desk. Despite wearing camo like the rest of his staff, he looked formal and in control. “Someone with a reputation for having a wild imagination like yours could easily be portrayed as a blathering idiot who’d say anything to sell books. And that would be the least of it if you cross us. Or—”

  “Or nothing.” Logan rose. “I’m fascinated by what you all are and what you do. But let me tell you one thing. I’ll only agree to your requests if my only contact is with Autumn.” He threw her a look. “Can we go outside now?”

  Drew stood, too. Amazingly, he was smiling. “In case it makes a difference,” he said, “let me tell you, Logan, that I’m married to the most wonderful non-shifting woman in the world. She knows about me—and the fact that I happen to change into a werewolf at times. She’s a veterinarian, which works to everyone’s benefit. We
even have a baby now.”

  Autumn felt both mortified and hopeful as Logan shook Drew’s hand, then turned to her.

  “Interesting. I might be able to use that in my writing someday—disguised, of course.” He turned to Autumn. “Let’s go talk about where I go from here, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  As they walked out of the general’s office, Autumn ignored the smirk Ruby shot her.

  Once they were in the hallway, Logan took her hand.

  It sent a current of electricity through her, turning on every synapse within her. She looked up into his blue eyes.

  “This stuff is incredible,” he told her. “I’m going to have a hell of a time using it in my stories and figuring what works best for both poetic license and the good of the country. I may not be as patriotic as you and your fellow shifters here, but I don’t want anything bad to happen to you…or the rest of them. And the idea that my most incredible plot elements are actually based in truth and that you’re actually a shapeshifting hawk, of all things… I love it!”

  That’s when he bent down, pulled her into his arms, and gave her a heated kiss that reminded her of their wonderful, too-brief night together—yet promised more.

  “I love…it, too,” she whispered when she allowed herself to pull away. She glanced around. They stood in the main building at the facility, where anyone could walk by at any time. “Can we go someplace more private to talk about it? Like, my quarters here at Ft. Lukman?”

  “Is this another attempt to buy my cooperation?”

  She looked at him, stung. “Is that what you think—that we’re trying to buy you off? That I used sex to try to manipulate you?”

  “Didn’t you?” he countered.

  “I cherish Alpha Force and what it stands for—decency and integrity, among other things. I made love with you because…well, because I couldn’t resist. If that helped me get the information I needed to protect the team, that was an additional benefit, not the reason I did it.”

  His serious expression split into a grin. “You couldn’t resist, huh? Sounds good to me. You might try seeing how much cooperation I agree to after another night like that. Maybe dozens more nights, who knows?”