“I understand,” Sara said. “Sorry. I’ll leave you alone now.” She noticed Manning’s frown at his superior officer until Samantha looked his way. He gave a brief shrug of his narrow shoulders in Sara’s direction then aimed a concerned expression toward the woman beside him.
Apparently, the guy didn’t necessarily agree with his boss, but he obeyed military protocol and didn’t voice an opinion.
Sara turned and strode off. Instead of the walk she had planned around the building, though, she decided to head in a different direction.
Down the center road of the base.
The one that would take her to its farthest building, the main quarters of the cover dogs, and hidden laboratories, of Alpha Force.
In case she was right about the nature of the animal she had glimpsed and heard, she believed it—he?—would be heading there.
* * *
Jason was in a downstairs lab. He had just changed back to human form and lay on the cold, hard floor. He hadn’t even wanted to go into the small office to sit on a more comfortable chair.
Noel had ushered him down there after seeing the wolf’s condition, helped him into his clothes, made a call or two.
“So,” Noel said. “You okay? That looked like a pretty rough shift, and you weren’t looking so great before, either.”
“Something was definitely wrong,” Jason said then coughed again. “Suspicious,” he managed to hack out.
“What was it?” He looked up at the sound of the female voice to see that Sara had joined them.
Sara. She must still have the general’s key card to get down here. What had she been doing outside her quarters?
Talking to those USFT people? Was she conniving in some manner with them?
Even if she was, she had managed to help him that night.
And she surely was much too smart to collude with them in public.
“Don’t know.” He coughed again.
“Don’t try to talk,” Sara said. She looked toward Noel as if to get his concurrence.
“That’s right. Tell us later what happened. Right now, just relax.”
He continued just to lie there and listened as Sara, bless her, explained to Noel what had occurred from her perspective.
“I didn’t know for sure it was Jason, or even a shifted Alpha Force member,” she said, “but I heard a strange noise like coughing then saw the form of a canine in the distance. I’d noticed a couple of the USFT people standing outside the BOQ and figured I’d better distract them, just in case.”
Jason couldn’t stay quiet at that. “I saw you. Wondered. Thanks.”
At her bright, pleased smile, he wanted to kiss her again. Only better.
Instead, he just coughed.
“Are you going to be okay?” She sounded worried.
He nodded. “Just wish I knew what it was.” Each word came out softly and slowly as he kept trying not to cough.
“We’ll figure it out.” This time, the speaker was Major Drew Connell, who’d just arrived. “Let me examine you, maybe run some tests.” His cuz was obviously wearing his medical hat at the moment, which pleased Jason.
“Fine,” he said. “Noel, would you walk Sara back to her quarters?”
“Sure,” his aide said, though he sounded worried. “Unless you think I can help here, sir.” He was obviously talking to Drew.
“I think you can help best by doing as Jason suggested. Then return here and we’ll talk about what we find.”
“And you’ll let me know, too?” Sara asked.
“Absolutely.”
Chapter 8
The walk back to her quarters with Staff Sergeant Noel Chuma felt tense to Sara—and not because of her companion. Noel seemed like a nice enough guy who stayed friendly while constantly surveying their surroundings, doing his job of protecting her.
Maybe his efficiency was part of what disturbed her. It was as if he assumed there were people—or whatever—watching them, ready to attack.
She wished she could refute that possibility.
Instead, she decided to talk to him, without, hopefully, distracting him too much.
“How did you get recruited into Alpha Force?” she asked.
“I like challenges.” He glanced down at her beneath the dim light with a huge grin. “And what could be more challenging than helping out a whole group of shapeshifters?”
That gave Sara pause. “Then you knew about them before you joined?”
“I was already in the military, spent a year deployed to Afghanistan, and figured I’d had enough combat experience to ramp my military career up a notch. I started asking around, learned that there was this highly covert unit that needed some extra guys, so I threw my name onto their list of possibles. I heard from Major Connell a couple of days later. He came to see me at my base in Texas, which seemed unusual. I assumed I’d be the one who’d have to travel. I guess I answered his questions okay since he put me at the top of his list. That was when he started asking really weird questions about what I believed about people and the universe and things, or creatures, that were unusual. Guess I did okay there, too, since he offered me the position—after swearing me to absolute secrecy. Now, here I am!”
And so was she, Sara thought. She had also been vetted—by General Yarrow before he took her on as an aide. But he hadn’t been as upfront as Noel described about the units that were under his particular aegis.
She might never have known about Alpha Force and what it really was if he hadn’t come to trust her implicitly.
Was she happy now? Well, she liked that he did trust her. She liked working with the general.
But did she like being here, in this situation, being surrounded by people whose characteristics still seemed unreal, no matter what she’d seen?
Amazingly, the answer was yes. Or it would be if they figured out what had happened to Greg Yarrow and his vehicle, and resolved that satisfactorily.
Including finding out what had sickened Jason, in wolf form, that evening.
They reached the BOQ, and Noel offered to accompany her to her unit to make sure everything was okay. Sara still felt somewhat spooked, so she agreed.
All seemed fine. It was empty. At this late hour, they didn’t even see any other building occupants up and about.
Noel left after a pleasant goodbye, leaving Sara wishing things had turned out way differently that day, on many fronts. But at least the general would be okay. And it was still much better that Jason hadn’t been the one to walk her home.
Jason. How was he doing? Well, she could always call, as an interested superior officer, to find out.
As she pulled her cell phone from her pocket, it rang.
It didn’t show a name—but the number had a local area code.
“Hello?” she said.
“Sara? It’s Jason.” There was still a raspiness to his voice, although it could just have been the connection. “You back at your place?”
“Yes. Our walk here was uneventful, and Noel just left.” She paused for only a second. “How are you feeling?”
“Mad.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean. Nice of you to ask. I’m fine. And I also want to find out what caused that reaction. Fast.”
“Then you’ll be—”
“Checking it out tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep.”
“I’ll help,” Sara said, not sure what she could do that would be useful. But whatever it was that had affected Jason so badly had to be related in some way to the cause of the burning of General Yarrow’s car.
She wanted answers—and, she realized, not only because the general had been harmed. She sought retribution for Jason’s sake now, too.
Just because he was a member of Alpha Force, on the general’s team, she told herself—recognizing it was at least a partial lie. She cared about what happened to Jason—more than she should, and for reasons she didn’t want to think about.
But she did think about them when Jason prepared t
o hang up. “By the way,” he said, his tone soft and somehow amazingly sexy over the phone. “I called to make sure you got there okay, but I also wanted to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For having my back. If you hadn’t distracted those USFT guys, they might have noticed a coughing wolf sneaking around the base. Not good.”
She considered sloughing off what he said, but realized he not only was right, but that she appreciated his acknowledgment, too. “You’re welcome,” she said, equally softly. “I know you’d do the same if the situation warranted it.”
“Count on it,” he said with no hesitation. Then he paused. “So...see you tomorrow.”
“Absolutely,” she said. “We’ll try to figure out what you breathed in while you were shifted.”
“I’ll try to find out,” he contradicted sharply. “There’s no need for you—”
“I’ll be helping out, Sergeant.” She used a no-nonsense military tone.
Another pause. Then, “Thanks, Lieutenant.” And he hung up.
Leaving Sara wondering if she had made a mistake.
She wondered that far into the night.
* * *
Jason slept on and off that night in his small, private quarters. He told himself that his intermittent coughing, which hadn’t completely gone away, was what kept waking him.
Or maybe it was Shadow’s restlessness. He had brought his cover dog back when he’d left the building housing the lab and kennels. He was glad for the company. Shadow was his real bud. Gave him affection without asking anything from him but pats on the head and treats.
But Jason knew that it was partly irritation that kept him from sleeping soundly.
He recognized that he had to talk to Drew about the strange scratches on the door to the lab.
But even more, there was the stark reminder that Sara McLinder wasn’t just a woman who happened to be hot and attractive to him.
No, she was definitely hands-off. A superior officer. The kind of woman who thrived on giving orders.
Well, he may have had to buckle under and join the military to redeem himself. Stuck himself into a position where he had to take orders, since that was preferable to prison. Maybe even stay for the rest of his life, since he wanted continued access to the Alpha Force elixir.
But that didn’t mean he had to like all aspects of it. Or to feel attraction to a woman who could force his submission by just tossing words at him.
No matter how much she turned him on.
He eventually gave up and got out of bed around six-thirty. He showered, put on his uniform and took Shadow for a walk.
Lots of people were up and about already at Ft. Lukman. Some were Alpha Force members, wolf shifters who were also walking their cover dogs, including Seth Ambers and his dog Spike, Marshall Vincenzo and his dog Zarlon, and Jock Larabey with his dog Click.
“Morning,” Jason said as Shadow and he caught up with them just outside the base’s primary office building. The dogs all traded greetings by sniffs.
“Heard about what happened last night,” Marshall said in a low voice. He was a generally quiet guy, about Jason’s height and built even more muscularly—had spent his childhood, while not shifted, doing martial arts, Jason had heard. Zarlon looked more like a German shepherd than most of the cover dogs, and Jason had seen that Marshall, too, resembled a shepherd when shifted.
“Yeah,” Seth said. “You okay?” He, on the other hand, looked more like a football player while in human form. Spike resembled a wolf and had a hint of wildness about him, but he obeyed Seth just fine.
Jock gave a nod toward Jason, lifting his massive shoulders as if he was ready to hear the worst. His dog Click had a touch of German shepherd in his wolf appearance—but that was okay, since so did Jock while shifted. “What we heard sounded bad, but you look all right. Are you?”
Jason figured he might be asked how he felt a lot today. “I’m fine. I just want to figure out what happened.”
“We all do,” Seth said. He might even more than other Alpha Force members. From what Jason had heard, Seth had been injured months ago during a training exercise with another military unit—while in wolf form, too. “In fact, there’s already a contingent of people who met at the labs early this morning for orders and information. They’re already preparing to collect samples of dirt and vegetation in the area where you were walking. They’re also looking into whether someone tried to break into the lab and said you reported scratches on the stairway door. Didn’t they contact you?”
“No. Where are they now?”
“Still at the lab,” Jock answered. “Drew was there—said you’d described where you’d been checking things out while shifted last night, so I guess that was why no one got in touch with you. They probably figured you ought to rest.”
“Like I said, I’m fine,” Jason responded, holding back his irritation. He didn’t like people making assumptions about him any more than he enjoyed taking orders—but the latter was a necessary evil as long as he stayed in the military. The former? Total garbage. “Think I’ll go see if I can give them any more info before they go off on some wild-goose chase.”
He gave his usual halfhearted salute to the three lieutenants, aiming it even more toward their dogs, who probably deserved it more than the humans. Then Shadow and he stepped into high gear to hurry to the lab building.
When they got downstairs to the small office near the spacious lab facilities, Sara was there with Drew, Jonas Truro and Colleen Hodell.
“Good morning, cuz.” Drew appeared surprised to see him. The others, too, sounded as if they hadn’t expected him.
“What’re you up to?” Jason asked.
“We were just going to try to retrace your steps yesterday,” Sara said. “While you were shifted. When you inhaled—whatever. That’s what we intend to find out. Just in case—well, we’ve been speculating that it was intentional. That someone who knew about Alpha Force’s nature, and its wolf shifters, planted something to hide evidence of what they did to set the general’s car on fire. We decided to collect a lot of samples this morning from the route you took.” How could she look so calm and concerned in the face of the perfidious act she was engaged in? That they all were doing—solving his issue without even asking his advice.
But Sara’s involvement was the most biting of all. Which didn’t make sense. Jason should have been more upset about Drew’s cutting him out.
“And how, exactly,” he said, “do you intend to retrace the steps of someone without asking that someone exactly where he walked?”
“You told me most of it last night,” Drew said. “I did look at those scratches on the door, too, by the way. We’ll be doing more investigation of that, too.”
“And I saw you on at least part of your walk while ill,” Sara reminded him. “Plus, we spoke with the general to confirm the last part of his route before he turned into Ft. Lukman.”
“I’ve just been handing out some sanitary and sealable containers from the lab for collecting samples,” Drew said. “I figured this was a good group of people to conduct the examination. Jonas has a medical background, Colleen—as a shifting feline—won’t necessarily react the same way to a contaminant as a werewolf, and Sara—” He seemed to hesitate.
“I just insisted on being included,” she said, “as a key representative of General Yarrow.” She stared with her flashing blue-green eyes, as if challenging him to tell her to bug off.
Which he wouldn’t. In fact, he found her dedication admirable, although he’d never admit that to her.
“Fine,” he said. “I insist on being included, too, as a party with a whole lot of interest in what happened. Besides, it won’t hurt to have a shifter in human form along to check out the odors without having the even more acute senses of a wolf.”
The entire group soon walked up the stairway from the underground lab, all of them carrying paraphernalia for collecting dirt samples.
As they started along the walkway toward the
base’s entrance, Jason found himself beside Sara.
Not that he’d planned it that way...or had he?
“Guess you got your way,” he said to start a conversation—or argument, whichever worked out.
“What do you mean?” Her tone sounded innocuous, as if she didn’t recall pulling rank on him over the phone last night.
“I mean, here you are, helping out.”
She glanced at him with her sparkling eyes, which again contained a challenge. “Yes, I am. Any problem with that?”
“No, ma’am.” He gave her a salute that arguably looked real, then glanced around. The others were ahead. It might look as if he gave a damn if he stepped up his pace to catch up.
Sara stopped altogether, reaching to grasp his arm. “Look, Jason, I didn’t intend to start a war between us, but my assignment as an aide makes me want to know everything, solve all problems and...” She looked away. “I was worried about you yesterday.” She glanced back, raising her chin almost belligerently. “If I’m going to be hooked up with Alpha Force for a day, or a week or month or longer, I intend to do all I can to help it and all its members. That includes helping to discover sources of anything that can harm any of you, to the extent I can. So if you don’t like that, tough.”
To his chagrin, he did like it. He liked her.
In fact, at this moment, he had a much-too-strong urge to kiss those defiantly pursed lips once again.
Instead, he just grinned. “Oh, I do like it, Lieutenant, ma’am. If anyone can solve this mystery, I’ll put my money on you.”
* * *
But it didn’t appear that this mystery would be solved any more quickly than determining who might have tried to get into the lab area, Sara thought a while later as she stood with Jason, Jonas and Colleen near the stop sign about half a mile from the entrance to Ft. Lukman. She had hooked the straps of her backpack over her arm so she could access its contents and stick whatever she collected into it most easily.
The general would have made a right turn here onto the final road to his destination. Since he’d have stopped, this was a logical place for someone to do...well, whatever was done.
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