Her Lone Wolf

by Paige Tyler

  It didn’t help things any when his shifter side came out in his teens. He’d had no idea what the hell was happening to him and didn’t know how to handle it. After getting thrown out of high school at sixteen for fighting, he’d lived on the streets doing what he had to in order to survive. The petty crimes he committed turned into other, more serious offenses, which had landed him in jail on more than one occasion.

  But that didn’t stop Clayne from doing things his own way. He followed a code that didn’t make sense to anyone but him. He’d rarely carried a gun, even in situations where someone might shoot him. He wouldn’t take things from people he considered weaker than he was, and he never did what other people told him to do.

  That code had both kept him out of trouble, and gotten him into it. More often than not, people viewed a man as independent as Clayne as a problem. No one could tell where his loyalties lay, and that scared them.

  Clayne’s bizarre code of ethics was ultimately what put him on the DCO radar. At the time, he’d never told her what he’d done and she hadn’t asked, but she’d gotten the impression he would have gone to prison for a really long time if they hadn’t recruited him.

  It wasn’t until later that she’d finally learned what kind of trouble he’d gotten into. She’d wondered so many times since then how Clayne’s life—and hers—might have been different if she’d met him before he’d gotten mixed up in the things he had. They probably wouldn’t be chasing serial killers, that’s for sure.

  “Agent Beckett!”

  Danica turned to see a blond man running down the hall to catch up with them. She thought his name was Collins. Or was it Foster?

  “Thank God I found you,” he said breathlessly. “Carhart wants you and Agent Buchanan in the command center ASAP.”

  Crap. What had they done now? Or had her boss simply come up with a new form of torture to keep them occupied and out of the way?

  “The Hunter made contact, and he’s demanding to talk to Agent Buchanan.”

  * * *

  Watching Ivy cry tore at Landon’s gut. And he couldn’t do a damn thing to comfort her because no one in the DCO could know they were husband and wife because workplace romance was against the rules. So he stood there outside the abandoned farmhouse in Saskatchewan, Canada, and cursed the stupid rule that forced them to keep it a secret.

  They’d been visiting Jayson when John called saying he wanted them to check out another possible hybrid research lab. The DCO had tracked several large computers perfect for handling the huge amount of data that came with modeling and simulating DNA strands, as well as various medical equipment, to a rural community outside of Saskatchewan. He and Ivy would have been here weeks ago, but now that the doctors knew the DCO was on to them, they’d started covering their tracks. The farmhouse was one of at least twenty different places all over the globe that had come up as possible locations in the past week. Almost all of them had turned out to be bogus, which meant the doctors were deliberately leaking false information, knowing the DCO had limited resources to cover all of them.

  John wasn’t the only one at the DCO who was concerned. While everyone knew the doctors were out there somewhere, they’d all thought Stutmeir had been the driving force behind the hybrid research. With him dead, the DCO assumed the program would fall apart. Clearly, it hadn’t. While they hadn’t stumbled on any more nests of vicious man-made shifters, they’d still found evidence of research. And now they had decoy labs popping up all over the world. Even if the doctors weren’t actually in all of them, it took a huge amount of money to make the DCO think they were. This wasn’t some small-time operation. It was large, well-funded, and growing.

  Landon swore under his breath as the two scientists who’d come with them examined the body of the teenage girl they’d found. She was a pretty girl, or had been before the doctors had experimented on her. But while she bore the telltale signs of hybrid research—the horribly twisted body and expression of incredible pain permanently etched on her face—they’d found something else that was both different and disturbing. The fingernails of one hand were elongated and curved—almost like Ivy’s, but not quite.

  Up until now, all the hybrid claws they’d seen had been straight and rough, regardless of the shifter breed they were trying to mimic. Even Tanner, who sometimes seemed more shifter than hybrid, lacked Ivy’s perfectly shaped and curved claws. But the claws on this poor dead girl’s right hand were eerily close in appearance to Ivy’s.

  That was why his wife was taking it so hard. The knowledge that they may have used her stolen DNA to warp the pretty girl’s body was tearing her up inside.

  Landon wished again he could take her in his arms, but he couldn’t risk it, not with the two scientists a few feet away. All he could do was watch as tears ran down his wife’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be,” he said softly.

  “I’m just not used to seeing children like this.” She tried to wipe the tears from her cheeks, but more took their place.

  Landon threw a glance at the scientists. They were kneeling beside the body of the girl, not paying any attention to him and Ivy.

  Screw this.

  He took his wife’s hand. “Come here.”

  He yanked her away from the dreadful scene and behind the Yukon they’d rented, both so that she wouldn’t have to see the kid anymore and so they’d be away from prying eyes. Then he pulled her into his arms and held her tightly.

  “You never get used to it,” he whispered in her ear. “I saw more than my fair share of this kind of thing—not the hybrid part—but children lying broken, beaten, and dead. Afghanistan, Iraq, the Sudan…it’s always the same and it’s never easy to deal with. The day it stops bothering you is the day you know there’s something wrong with you.” He ran his hand over her long, silky hair. “We’ll get those bastards, sweetheart. I promise.”

  Ivy rested her head on his shoulder, her gaze going to the back of the farm where the scientists were busy taking pictures and collecting samples. She would forever blame herself for letting those doctors get her DNA. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t her fault, that she couldn’t have done anything to stop them, or that they’d be conducting their twisted experiments with or without her DNA. The way Ivy saw it, if they’d never gotten her DNA, this kid might still be alive.

  Landon opened his mouth to say something comforting when the satellite phone rang. He swore under his breath and dug it out of his pocket.

  “Donovan.”

  “Landon, it’s John. We’ve got another possible research lab in Norway I need you to check out. Kendra’s already got you and Ivy booked on a flight. She’s sending you the details now.”

  Landon was tempted to tell John he’d have to find someone else to handle this one. Ivy needed time to deal with what she’d just seen, and he didn’t want her walking into some makeshift lab filled with more dead bodies. But one look at his wife stopped the words in his throat.

  She’d obviously heard what John said—that wasn’t a shock since her hearing was ten times better than Landon’s would ever be—and was nodding her head.

  “Landon, you there?” John asked.

  “Yeah. We’ll check it out and call you.”

  He hung up without waiting for a reply and shoved the phone back in his pocket. “You sure about this?” he asked Ivy.

  She nodded. “I shudder to think what we’re going to find in Norway, and pray that it’s not another little girl, but if there’s even a chance we might find something that leads us to Klaus and Renard, I want to be there.”

  When that happened, Landon knew Ivy was going to make them sorry they’d ever been born—for what they’d done to her and that innocent little girl. And Landon swore he would do everything it took to help his wife get that chance.

  Chapter 6

  Clayne walked into the room to find Carhart waiting for him, along with a dozen other agents, tech people, and profilers. He couldn’t help but notice C
arhart looked like someone had pissed all over his Wheaties. And from the way he was glowering at Clayne, he was giving him all the credit.

  Foster—the fed who’d been sent to fetch them—leaned over to fill him in since it was obvious Carhart sure as hell wasn’t going to do it.

  “The Hunter’s called several times over the last hour or so demanding to speak with you.” He glanced at Danica. “I tried your cell phone repeatedly, but it kept going to voice mail.”

  The man kept his voice low, as if he was afraid Carhart might overhear. Clayne didn’t think he was wrong. Carhart seemed like one of those vindictive pricks who’d go after the low guy on the totem pole just because he was mad at Clayne.

  “What did he say?” Danica asked, not bothering to explain the reason she hadn’t answered the phone. Clayne suspected it had something to do with not wanting to round up any more of Carhart’s suspects. He couldn’t blame her.

  “Not much, really, once Carhart told him you weren’t around,” Foster said. “He threatened to kill someone else tonight if you weren’t here the next time he called.”

  Clayne could have said something snide about the stupid-ass suspects he’d been running around all day picking up, but why take it out on a guy who had nothing to do with giving those orders?

  “You’re telling me even though he’s called half a dozen times, you still can’t get a fix on his location?”

  Clayne glanced up to see Carhart intimidating some poor techie working the phones. Shit, he was practically foaming at the mouth. To his credit, the computer geek didn’t flinch.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but whoever this guy is, he’s smart as hell. I think he’s calling from a bootleg satellite phone, which is completely untraceable with the technology we have. Plus, he’s bouncing the calls through phone service centers throughout the federal government. I don’t even know how to do that.”

  Carhart swore and turned away to stare out the window. Clayne ignored the fed as a freckled-face, redheaded guy hurried over. The profiler who looked like he was twelve, Wayne Hobson.

  “The first call came through around noon, and he’s been calling on the half hour every hour since then. The guy knew every detail, including the missing canine teeth. That immediately red-flagged his call and routed him to us. He said he won’t talk to anyone except the big, angry guy who chased him out in El Dorado Hills.” Hobson gave him a sheepish look and adjusted his glasses. “We figured he had to mean you.”

  Guess that explained why Carhart was so pissed. Knowing the killer’d only talk to the outcast from the DHS instead of the head of the task force must really be sticking in his craw.

  Clayne glanced at his watch. Almost four o’clock. If the killer was true to his word, he’d call soon. The rest of the men and women in the room were obviously aware of the time, too. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Well, everyone except Carhart. He looked as if he’d sucked on a lemon.

  The phone rang, putting an end to any and all conversation.

  The tech manning the phone looked to Carhart, who nodded.

  “This is Senior Agent Carhart,” he said in his best I’m-in-charge-here voice when the tech thumbed the button on the speakerphone in the center of the conference room table.

  “You again.” There was a snort on the other end of the line. “I told you that the next time I called, I’d only talk to the leidolf. If you don’t put him on the phone in ten seconds, I’m going to walk outside and kill the first person I come across.”

  Clayne ignored the baffled looks he was getting. The damn killer not only knew he was a shifter, but he knew he was a wolf shifter. Leidolf was an old Scandinavian word for hunting wolf or fighting wolf, or some stupid shit like that. Luckily no one else in the room—except maybe for Danica—understood the significance of the word.

  Between his knowledge of the old Norse term, and the trouble he was giving the FBI computer techs, Clayne’s opinion of the guy was changing drastically. A shifter who enjoyed killing was bad enough, but a smart shifter who enjoyed killing was even more dangerous.

  Clayne stepped closer to the table. “I’m right here. What the hell do you need to tell me? Any one of the agents working the case could have escorted you to jail. Hell, if you were that eager to turn yourself in, you could have done it at any police station.”

  Clayne saw Carhart’s mouth tighten. It probably wasn’t something the fed would have said, but that was tough. He wanted to provoke some kind of reaction from the shifter. Nut jobs like him typically took themselves extremely seriously and usually didn’t like people making a joke of their handiwork.

  The shifter laughed softly, as if he was genuinely amused by the jab. Clayne had to admit, it was one menacing sound. If the fact that the guy killed people for pleasure wasn’t enough to convince him the cat shifter was insane, that laugh sure did.

  “I’m glad to see you have a sense of humor.” Clayne didn’t know how it was possible, but the tone in the shifter’s voice dropped the temperature in the room a few degrees. “I was a little worried you were one of those serious alpha dogs. But it’s good to know you like having fun. It will make the game much more interesting.”

  “Game, huh?” Clayne let out a snort of his own. “Should I go get a ball of yarn?”

  On the other side of the room, Carhart’s eyes narrowed.

  “Touché,” the killer said. “As much as I’d like to sit here and one-up you, I did call for a reason. I have a special game I want to play with you. I think you’ll like it.”

  “There’s only one kind of game I’m interested in,” Clayne snarled. “Tell me where you are and I’ll show you how to play it. I promise I’ll come alone.”

  The cat shifter laughed again. “That’s tempting. But I like my game better. I’m going to grab another rabbit, then hunt him twelve hours after I do. All you have to do to save the rabbit is stop me before I rip out its throat.”

  The entire room went a few shades paler as he detailed exactly how he was going to hunt his rabbit and what he was going to do to the man when he caught him.

  “This guy is a complete fruitcake,” Tony whispered to Danica.

  Understatement there.

  Clayne rested his palms on the table, leaning closer to the phone. “You’ve clearly thought this out, so I’ll play along. Go ahead and give me the cryptic clue you spent all day coming up with so I can get started.”

  “I’m not giving you any clue,” the killer said. “That’d make it too easy for you. What fun would that be?”

  When Clayne caught this psycho’s ass, it was going to be anything but fun. For the cat shifter anyway. “If you want me to play this kind of game, you have to follow the rules. And everyone knows the rules say you have to give me a sporting chance. If not, I might as well go home and catch a game on TV.”

  Clayne knew he was taking a chance. The killer could tell him to screw off and hang up. But he was counting on the cat shifter’s arrogance.

  There was a distinct feline hiss on the other end of the phone. “Fine. But since I’m making this so easy on you, I’m going to give you less time to find me. The hunt will start at ten p.m. Of course, now I have to go collect my rabbit much faster, but I still think that’s fair. Hope you FBI pogues have those recorders going, because I’ll only say this once—Zero…Nine…N…Zero…Nine.” He paused, then added, “Don’t be late, Leidolf. That would be a tragedy.”

  Then he hung up.

  Carhart looked at the tech working the trace. “Anything?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Dammit! Get working on the code he gave us.” Carhart rounded on Clayne. “Where the hell did you get your negotiation training? You should have played up to the Hunter’s ego and let him think he was running the show so you could drag more information out of him. If you would have taken control of the conversation and asked the right questions, we might have been able to stop him before he kidnaps his next victim.”

  Clayne wondered if grabbing the head of the task force b
y the shirt and ripping him a new one would be crossing the line. Probably. “What kind of information? The victim’s name and address? That asshole wasn’t going to give us shit.”

  Carhart’s face turned so red Clayne thought he was going to explode. He might have if Hobson hadn’t jumped in.

  “Agent Buchanan’s right, sir,” he said. “The Hunter doesn’t simply act like a predator; he thinks of himself as one. He’s a type A dominant personality in the extreme. He’d see any attempt to cozy up to him as a sign of weakness. That’s why he wouldn’t talk to any of us. He doesn’t consider us worth his time.” He gestured to Clayne. “The Hunter sees Agent Buchanan as different from the rest of us because he chased him and scared him off his kill. That’s what probably piqued his interest. That word he used—leidolf—I’ve heard it somewhere before. It means hunter or wolf or something like that. He thinks of Agent Buchanan as an equal. When Agent Buchanan challenged him over the phone, matching aggression for aggression, it only confirmed what the Hunter already knew. He’s now more interested in playing this game with Agent Buchanan than he is in killing. It might cause him to make a mistake.”

  Well, damn. Clayne might have to adjust his opinion of profilers. Not all of them were oxygen thieves.

  Carhart didn’t look as if he was buying what Hobson was selling, but at least he didn’t look like he was going to have a coronary anymore. After a moment, he nodded. “Okay, Wayne. I see your point. But we’re still in a bad tactical position on this one.”

  Which was a nice way of saying Carhart didn’t want his ass hanging in the breeze if and when this next victim turned up dead. But Clayne couldn’t disagree with the part about this being a clusterfuck. The shifter had given them a clue, but it was so damn vague, there was no telling what it referred to. Six hours to stop a killer wasn’t much time when he’d probably been planning this hunt for days. Which was what the cat shifter was counting on. It was why he’d given them that hint. He knew they’d still be spinning their wheels regardless of what he said.