Guard Wolf (Shifter Agents Book 2)

by Lauren Esker

  "Is that a rhetorical question?"

  "No!" Avery said. "Hiding isn't the answer to our problems; it's the cause of at least half of them. Think about this whole situation, for example. Finding these kids' parents would be a hell of a lot easier if we could get the city's entire missing-children apparatus involved, instead of just the parts of it that will believe us when we tell them they aren't lost puppies." This caused the idea of putting up lost-puppy posters to flash through his mind, but he discarded the idea as quickly as it came. If the children had truly been subjected to lab experiments, the last thing he wanted to do was draw attention to them. At least until he had a better idea of what was going on.

  "There's no stuffing the cat back into the bag once it's out, though," Cho pointed out. "And there are just as many ways it could all go terribly wrong if we do go officially public. Shifters forcibly drafted to work for the military, anyone? How about being turned into test subjects in government labs?"

  Her thoughts echoed his a little too closely, and an involuntary shiver swept over him. "Hey, I thought I was the cynic around here."

  Cho patted his arm. "Avery, I hate to break it to you, but you are about the furthest thing from a cynic I ever met. You are an enormous marshmallow in a wolf suit."

  "Thanks a bunch."

  She smiled and checked her phone.

  "Late for an appointment?"

  "No, the security service that handles the Market was supposed to get back to me about camera footage. The guy I talked to yesterday might not be in yet."

  "I suppose it's too much to hope that the kids' streetcorner was under surveillance."

  "You're right, and there are actually fewer security cameras than I was hoping for, but there is one nearby that might have caught something. Someone walking around with a large box can't possibly be that hard to spot." Her phone chimed. "Speak of the devil."

  At the Market's security office, they both flashed their badges: Special Crimes Bureau, Department of Homeland Security. The sleepy-looking security guard gazed in amazement. "Homeland Security? Really? Weren't you the one that was asking about a box of puppies yesterday?"

  "It's related to an ongoing investigation," Cho said primly.

  The security tapes were digital, and he duplicated the file onto a USB drive for them. Avery had been expecting to be asked to produce a warrant, which they didn't have, but apparently the words "Homeland Security" had not lost their power to charm, intimidate, and open doors, even though the SCB was only grouped under that department for lack of anywhere better to put it.

  "On the bright side, we can review this back at the office, in the comfort of our very own SCB desk chairs," Cho remarked as they walked out. "First, of course, we need to pick up coffee."

  "How do you live?" Avery asked, half admiring.

  ***

  Back at the office, he found a message waiting for him. The Evergreen Clinic, which handled medical care for Seattle's shifters, wanted to see him about the pups. He left Cho with the security footage and tore out of the office.

  His fertile imagination conjured an entire flock of paranoid concerns on his way over to the clinic—they were carriers of a fatal disease! they'd been used for horrible lab experiments! they'd been sexually abused! When he got there, however, he found no panic and no hazmat-suited nurses; instead the receptionist pointed him to one of the exam rooms.

  The room had been converted into a playroom by laying down a blanket on the floor and bringing in some cheap plastic toys from the family waiting area in the lobby. Yesenia Veliz was sitting on the blanket with two puppies sleeping in her lap, one on its back and the other sprawled indecorously over her knee with its legs spread out. The other two tussled over a plastic shovel and toy beach pail.

  "Hey," Yesenia said, giving him a little wave.

  "Hey." He couldn't stop watching the puppies. They weren't playing tug of war with the shovel, as he'd first thought. Instead, they had become fascinated by putting the shovel into the bucket—using their mouths in lieu of hands—and taking it back out. Anyone looking at them for more than ten seconds could have detected conscious thought and deliberation behind it, at least to the extent that a toddler was capable of.

  How old are they mentally? he wondered, watching them. Werewolf puppies must age slowly to keep pace with their human side, but young mammals of any given level of development were comparatively more advanced than humans. Baby hoofed animals, such as deer, were born with the physical and mental coordination to walk within a few hours of birth. Were young shifters actually smarter in their animal bodies than as the human children they could shift into? Had anyone studied it?

  It seemed like the sort of thing Nicole would know ...

  Yesenia patted the blanket beside her, jolting him out of his blank stare at the puppies. "Did you find anything?"

  Avery opted to sit, instead, on the wheeled stool that had been pushed against the wall, since getting up off the floor was always difficult for him. He was giving Yesenia an overview of the morning's activities when Dr. Willa Lafitte, the closest thing to a shifter medical expert in the Pacific Northwest division of the SCB, came in along with an unexpected but welcome newcomer: Nicole Yates, as if she'd been conjured by his thoughts of her.

  She stopped when she saw Avery and gave him a quick, startled smile, her eyes warm. He was struck all over again by how pretty she was, her round face framed with gently wavy, dark brown hair that glimmered with chestnut highlights. It would be gorgeous in the sun, he thought irrelevantly.

  "I thought it would be a good idea to have the children's caseworker present while I discuss my findings," the doctor said. "Hello, Avery."

  "I had an appointment at the clinic anyway with one of my other clients," Nicole put in. "You and I are just running into each other all over town today, aren't we?"

  "I guess we are." He turned to Dr. Lafitte. "I thought you and the Chief were on vacation."

  "She still is," Dr. Lafitte said with a brief smile. "Pam and Terra are still in Hawaii." Terra Lafitte was her daughter from her first marriage. "I had to come back early for a meeting I couldn't get out of. All work and no play when you're the boss, I suppose."

  She didn't seem worried or alarmed, which released some of Avery's lingering vestiges of anxiety. "What did you find out? Did you see the shaved patches on their legs?"

  "I did. But I'll get to that." She picked up one of the puppies that had been playing with the shovel, handling it gently but firmly. "They're actually in excellent health. From the physical development of their wolf side I'd say they're somewhere between a year and two years old. They're not underweight or undersized, so they've been well fed, and they don't show any signs of attachment disorders. I'm sure they're missing their caregiver, but they seem to consider all adults to be sources of comfort and protection, so I doubt they've had bad experiences with strangers."

  While Dr. Lafitte was talking, Nicole crouched down to pet the other puppy in the shovel-playing group. It toddled over to her happily, trying to climb into her lap.

  "See?" Dr. Lafitte said. She handed the puppy she was holding to Avery. It wagged its tail and tried to chew on the buttons of his jacket. "These aren't abused children. At least not in any overt way."

  "I'd agree with that," Nicole said, picking up the one that was now interested in her. "They're friendly, active, and curious. They aren't exhibiting signs of trauma or abuse."

  "For the most part," Dr. Lafitte said. "There are, however, a few things I found interesting when I was examining them. Those shaved places on their legs are definitely consistent with having been shaved for injection or IV placement. Young shifters heal even faster than adults, so it's difficult to determine exactly what was done, but I actually believe they might have had implanted ports that were removed."

  Nicole looked up from dandling the puppy. "I'm sorry, what do you mean?"

  "A port with attached catheter, put in for administering medication. Chemotherapy patients often have them, for instance
. They wouldn't normally be inserted in the leg. The chest is a more common location. However, the person who inserted it might have had concerns about their young age or perhaps the port causing damage during shifting. See, there is some scarring here and here, that probably didn't come from an IV." She grasped the leg of the puppy in Avery's arms, turning it over. He couldn't see the difference she was trying to indicate, but he nodded regardless. Blood thumped in his ears.

  "Furthermore," she continued, "I think they're familiar with a clinical setting. Notice how comfortable they are in the exam room. Most kids wouldn't be this relaxed in a doctor's office. They didn't even react when I took blood. Needles aren't new to them."

  Avery took a breath, trying to push down his emotional reaction. "They came from a lab," he said flatly.

  "Let's not jump to conclusions. It's also possible they were ill and are consequently used to being around doctors. Wherever it was that they picked up the familiarity, it clearly wasn't traumatizing for them. They aren't afraid of me, or bothered by being examined."

  "They didn't like being locked up in the kennel," Avery said. Nicole looked up, her face sympathetic. "Do you think they might have been kept in—" He swallowed. "A cage?"

  "No jumping to conclusions, I said. Yes, it's possible. There are also perfectly benign reasons why active young children wouldn't want to be confined. However, there is something else as well." She reached out to the puppy Avery was holding, petted its ears, and then pulled up a thick pinch of the loose skin on its shoulders. "See this?"

  Nicole stood up to look as well. Avery wasn't sure what she was pointing out—and then he saw it, a shiny and freshly healed patch of hairless skin, no bigger than the end of a pencil eraser.

  "What made that?" Nicole asked.

  "I don't know," Dr. Lafitte said, "but it's fresh. In order to be this visible despite shifter healing, it must have happened in the last day or two. And all of them have it."

  "Same place?" Avery asked.

  "Yes. It could have been another medical device, or an implanted microchip, which someone took out. The location is consistent with the latter, at least in terms of where it might be implanted on a dog or cat."

  Nicole met Avery's eyes. Her eyes, so dark they looked black from a distance, were a dozen subtle shades of brown up close. "Lends some credence to the lab theory, doesn't it," she said.

  "Some parents use GPS trackers for their kids," Dr. Lafitte pointed out. "Worn, not implanted, but it's always possible this was something similar, or perhaps their parents were using pet microchip technology to make sure they could reliably retrieve their kids in case they got mistaken for dogs and picked up by Animal Control."

  The puppy in Avery's arms stretched to mouth at Nicole's hands. Meanwhile, the one she'd deserted came toddling over to stand up with its paws on her leg, and gave a small, squeaky yap.

  "Why yes, I am ignoring you to play with your brother, silly." Nicole scooped it up and the one Avery was holding almost fell out of his arms twisting around in an attempt to play-bite its sibling.

  Not traumatized, he thought. Not abused or starved or neglected. Just microchipped like dogs and left out in a box in the rain ... why?

  "Whoever left them in the Market—what did they hope to accomplish?" he asked. "If it was a rescue, it doesn't seem like much of one."

  "Maybe their home, whatever it was, became unsafe," Nicole suggested. "So unsafe that whoever left them in the box thought they'd be better off wherever they ended up."

  "In a household full of humans who thought they were dogs?" Yesenia said incredulously from the floor. "How could that possibly be the better option?"

  "You'd be surprised," Nicole said. "It's definitely a step up from some of the things I've seen."

  "So here's a thought," Avery said, before his mind could start spinning out vivid reels of just how much worse it could get. "Leaving them out on the sidewalk in a box doesn't sound to me like the act of an adult. We may be dealing with another child, slightly older, who had to get them away from someone else, but operating on a child's logic, couldn't think of a better way to do it."

  "Or it could be revenge, even," Nicole said. "An older sibling, driven by jealousy of the new babies in the family. They may not have meant to hurt their little brothers and sisters, just get them out of the way—"

  Avery was already shaking his head. "No. Not werewolves."

  "Avery," Nicole began gently. "Werewolves are just as capable of—"

  "This isn't some kind of misplaced species loyalty. Trust me, I know a lot about the various ways werewolf pack dynamics can go wrong. But not like that. Exiling someone from the pack is ... it's huge. More than huge. I don't think there's an equivalent for it in the human world."

  "Actually, I can back him up on this," Dr. Lafitte put in. "There's no actual scholarship on this, but as far as I can tell, the way werewolves bond to their packs is similar to the parent-child bond, and just as hard to violate."

  "Excuse me?" Nicole said. "I'm sorry, but I deal every day with families in which that bond is damaged or broken."

  "From the parents' end, yes. Some parents don't bond to their children. Others are unable to avoid taking advantage of the position of power they find themselves in. But vanishingly few children fail to bond to their parents, or would actively seek to hurt their parents without provocation."

  No, Avery thought, that's not it at all. Maybe the analogy worked if you weren't a werewolf. But the sense of pack that went along with being a werewolf was an emotion that he didn't have a name for. There was no word for it in English, or, he suspected, in any other language, since werewolves didn't have a language of their own.

  He could have tried to explain, but in a room full of non-werewolves, he didn't think he'd be able to do a good enough job to get them to understand. Besides, was he even the person who should be explaining anyway? Maybe it really is like that for most of us. I'm the one who comes from a broken pack. Maybe I don't even know what it is to be a werewolf anyway.

  The baby werewolf in his arms sensed his distress, although he was fairly sure he'd done a good enough job of hiding it that no one else noticed. It placed its paws on his chest and stretched up to lick his face with its baby tongue.

  Avery laughed softly and looked down into its eyes: clear brown, shot with gold.

  You're being stupid, he told himself. Casey called it, and you know it. You have to remember these are someone else's kids, and as soon as we find that someone, they're going back where they came from. Even if not, they'll be in a proper foster home soon, and you'll never see them again.

  "So the question is," he said, to distract himself from his increasingly gloomy thoughts, "how does all of this help us find out who they are? They may have come from a lab or hospital. And then again, maybe not."

  Dr. Lafitte nodded. "I can put out feelers to people I know, and let you know if I learn anything. At the very least, I can reassure you they were healthy and well cared for, wherever they were."

  Avery was saved from having to answer when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He put the puppy back down on the floor and found a text from Cho. Nothing on the security tapes so far. So bored. Oh my god. Any clues on your end?

  Maybe. Not sure. Fill you in soon, he typed back, and looked up. "Yesenia, would you be able to keep watching them for a little while? I can take them back this evening."

  "Oh no," Yesenia commented playfully. "What a hardship."

  Nicole smiled at Avery, deepening her irresistible dimples. "And I'm working on getting them into a foster home, so you won't be stuck on babysitting duty for very much longer. One more night at most, I think. I should have something lined up in the next day or two. And now ..." She tapped her watch. "I'm late for another appointment. Nice to see you again, Doctor ... Avery." There was the slightest lingering of her smile as she turned away, dragging his attention after her like a planet caught in the gravitational pull of a star.

  "If you still have a minute, Agent," Dr. Lafitte s
aid, oblivious to the fact that Avery was no longer paying attention. "I'd like to go over some basic care for the kids. Granted, it's mostly from websites on raising orphaned puppies, but as long as they are puppies, I think the same principles—"

  "Just a minute," Avery said absently. Nicole was vanishing around the corner. "I need to say something to Ni—to Ms. Yates. I'll be right back."

  He hurried after her, telling himself even as he went that he was being foolish, he was only going to make her think he was some kind of stalkery weirdo. She'd told him she wasn't married. Still, she could be seeing someone ... or maybe she wasn't interested at all.

  But if you never ask, you'll never know.

  "Hey—Nicole?" She turned to look at him, and he told himself not to back down. Just go for it. The worst she could do was say no. "I think I owe you a cup of coffee. You want to grab one sometime?"

  She smiled, bringing out the dimples again and setting alight a sparkle in her eyes. "Right now I have to run to an appointment. But I'll see your invitation and raise you. How about dinner?"

  "Tonight?" he said, his head spinning. Just being near her was intoxicating, as if her scent—lightly floral and vividly female—was a drug. Even with his keen sense of smell, he'd never experienced anything like it.

  "If you're free. Shockingly, I actually think I am, unless I have an emergency come up. Which I should warn you is a possibility."

  "For me, too. So, uh ..." He tried to think of a restaurant. Any restaurant. His mind had gone blank. "What kind of food do you like?"

  Dimples again. "Whatever my sister cooks for me, usually. I live in her house and I don't even remember the last time I went out for anything that wasn't work-related. How about I text you when I get off work, and we can figure out what we're in the mood for?"

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, I'd like that. A lot. Did I give you one of my cards?"