Assuming there would be enough left of her to crawl.
The buzz of her cell phone startled her from her doom-plagued thoughts. She flipped it open before the vibrations had time to still, but not before she'd glimpsed Annie's name on the caller ID screen.
"It's about frickin' time," Sam barked, not bothering with niceties. She wasn't feeling nice. "I've been waiting to hear from you all day I What were you—"
"Sam, I'm in trouble."
The quietly panicked tone in Annie's voice kept Sam from venting her instinctive response. "What do you mean?"
"I'm in the lab, and I think someone followed me here. I think they're trying to break in. I need help."
Cursing, Sam looked down at her snazzy black suit and consigned it to the rag bin. "Five minutes."
Pressing the end button, she bolted for the club's back door and impatiently pounded out the alarm code. She shoved the door open, and by the time it locked shut behind her she was racing to the lab as fast as her four feet would carry her.
* * *
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When the secure cell rang, Noah froze. He didn't have a call scheduled, and in his experience unexpected news usually turned out to be bad news. He punched the send button. "This is one."
"Option C."
"Aw, fuck."
And that's how Option C got its name.
The line went dead, but then Noah was already stripping as he yanked items out of their storage spots. From the dresser he pulled on a pair of black trousers and a long-sleeved black T-shirt guaranteed to wick away moisture and preserve body heat. The closet yielded a webbed vest already stocked with mission gear and a lethal-looking sidearm in matte black. He spared a wistful thought for the assault rifle he would have carried on an ordinary operation, stomped his feet into well-worn and flexibly soled boots, and headed for the roof.
Making his way soundlessly down the five-story steel fire escape provided something of a challenge, but not enough to slow him down. He had to pause for a minute to be sure no one stirred in the alley behind the club, but he still made it to the designated pay phone in under seven minutes. The unofficial time limit was always fifteen.
He punched in Carter's number. "Who lit the match?"
"A few of our friends from up north, mainly. Jammer sent up the alarm that they had a group out tonight looking like business, but it was Scooter who picked them up. I've had him watching the building where our white-coated friends work. In a remarkable coincidence, something's stirring there tonight, and it looks to be a damned sight bigger than a mouse."
Noah fought back a tidal wave of anger. He hadn't thought Hammond would lose his patience quite this fast. "They send their whole team?"
"Naw. Probably figured they'd only need a couple of bozos with a tranq gun to handle the woman. Who marched into the whole mess about fifteen minutes ago and triggered Scooter's internal alarm system."
Christ. This newsreel just kept getting better and better. "What the hell was the woman planning to do in the lab at eleven on a Sunday night?"
"Can't tell you that, but I can tell you that the B-team seemed pretty excited to see her. Scooter reckons they've got their own eye on the place, but he hasn't spotted it."
"Where are you?"
"On-site. Just me and Scooter."
"I'm on my way. Both of you stay out of sight unless they get inside. If they do, I want you to keep them away from the good doctor. Understood?"
"Damn skippy and passed right along. I'm out." Had Noah mentioned he'd had a bad feeling about this mission right from the start?
One thing Sam had to give to the jerks skulking around the building that housed Annie's lab: they had the least-in-sight trick down pat. It wasn't easy to stay completely out of sight in Manhattan, no matter what time of day or night, and it had to be even harder for a couple of full-grown men than it was for one largish, dog-like creature.
By the time she got to the building, her tongue was hanging out from the hard run, but she didn't waste time panting. Darting into the alley behind the building, she put her nose to the ground and got to work.
In her wolf form, the scents of the city proved nearly overwhelming, her senses so sharp and tuned in, she could tell what the people walking past on the street had eaten for lunch earlier. She could hear the heartbeats of the ones closest to the mouth of the alley, and the air had taken on a flavor, a taste of humanity and machinery muddled together in a knot of perception. Her vision had sharpened and flattened at the same time, allowing her to see farther in lower light but sacrificing some of the detail her human eyes had perceived. She didn't need detail, though, to know that the two—sniff… no, three—men had split up, fanning out from a central point near the back end of the alley where the large Dumpsters would have provided partial concealment.
Loping forward, she heard the soft click of her claws against the pavement and made a mental note to ask Aunt Ruby to trim them for her next weekend. Too late to worry about it now, though. She'd have to rely on the fact that the sound was so low, the men she trailed were unlikely to hear it over their own breathing.
A loading dock shut off with dark metal doors stretched across the back of the blind alley, providing access into the rear service areas of the lab building. The men had gathered in front of them, had lingered long enough to make plans and for one of them to smoke a cigarette. Looking around, she saw no butts littering the ground, so he'd been smart enough to pack his trash with him. Too bad he'd been too stupid to avoid stinking himself up in the first place. The smoke would make him easier to track, so she pinpointed his trail and began to follow his footsteps across the concrete.
Up.
Growling her displeasure, she found where he'd climbed up the fire escape and halted. He'd drawn the ladder back up after him, probably to cover his tracks, but that made it easier for her to follow if she'd been inclined. Without thumbs, ladder climbing fell out of her repertoire, but jumping the ten feet to the lowest platform she could handle. She considered the idea, then dismissed it. The stairs up to subsequent levels were manageable but not appealing. If the steady fading of the fumes in the rising air was right, he was headed for the roof, which made him a guard or a lookout, not the point man. She could let him go. For now.
Back to the loading doors. Scent number two struck her as almost subtle after the stink of Camel man, but she didn't find it any pleasanter. Instead of the basically organic if chemically tainted and offensive smell of charred tobacco, number two smelled like stale sweat and anger. She wrinkled her nose and blew out a sneezing breath. No way would she mistake this scent for one belonging to anyone else, but that didn't mean she relished the prospect of following it anywhere.
She paused to check in on number three just to have a frame of reference and paused. Puzzled, she sniffed again. This one smelled… different. Not better, just not like anything else she could remember encountering.
There was, at the base of it, the unmistakable meaty, chemical scent of modern human, overlaid with the usual blend of soaps and creams and sprays they liked to layer on. At least, that's what she got on the first sniff. On the second, it was gone, all of it, as if it hadn't existed. Frowning, she tried to wrap her mind around that. Scent didn't disappear and reappear. It wasn't made that way. She sniffed again and smelled something… other. Not Other. At least, not precisely. Number three didn't smell like a were or a demon or a changeling. He didn't smell Fae or witchy, and since he smelled at all, he obviously wasn't a vampire. He just didn't smell quite right.
Forgetting all about the stink of number two, she focused on the alien scent of number three and began to trace where it separated from its companions.
With her nose on the trail and her eyes on the ground before her, she cocked her ears to the sides to listen for trouble. Her mind hadn't changed when she shifted, but her brain chemistry had altered, turning down the volume in some places and up in others. As a wolf, she could divide her senses much more easily than as a human; she could snea
k and not worry about being snuck up on.
A light breeze ruffled her fur and brought a fresh wave of scent washing in from the western side of the building. On it floated the there-and-gone scent of number three. He'd gone in through the loading bay doors, she realized abruptly; he was already inside.
Retracing her steps deeper into the alley, Sam jumped onto the ledge in front of the doors and sniffed curiously. The scent was here, but the doors remained closed. Biting back a snarl, Sam checked the alley behind her and shifted just long enough to grasp the lever handle and pry the bay door open enough to slip through. She had fur again before the door finished its descent. Considering her choices at that point were either fur or nudity, she'd stick with fur.
Once inside, she caught the scent again and followed it deep into the building's service areas. She'd never been back here before, but her sense of direction kept her from getting too disoriented, and the faint traces of human and not quite human kept her on the trail. The farther inside the building it went, the more she picked up her pace.
Her lack of pockets meant she couldn't carry a cell phone, so she hoped Annie was all right. It had taken Sam longer than the five minutes she'd promised to get this far downtown, but she'd definitely made it in little more than ten. If Annie could hold on another ten, they might be okay.
The slick flooring inside the building slowed Sam's going a fraction and the polished linoleum failed to hold a scent as tightly as the porous concrete outside, but it didn't take a nose like hers to tell that the scent was getting stronger the deeper she went into the building. When it turned abruptly into a stairwell, she nudged the door open and followed. It was definitely headed up. Toward the lab.
They had too big a head start. She'd have to leave the trail and head straight for Annie.
If luck was on Sam's side, her one enormous advantage might work out in her favor—she knew this building, and they didn't. She could head straight for the lab and not waste time checking wrong turns or empty rooms. Too bad she'd temporarily forfeited the ability to cross her fingers.
She gathered speed as she loped up the concrete steps, the rough treads helping her keep her feet under her. At the landing for the fifth floor, she paused and put her nose to the ground. She couldn't smell any traces of number three in this particular doorway, but that didn't mean he hadn't detoured and taken another stairway. She'd sacrificed that certainty for speed on the way up.
Cautiously she nudged open the swinging door into the corridor and slipped through. Keeping to the shadows wasn't difficult, since most of the building's interior lights had been turned off to conserve power. Even the university was going green these days. She gave thanks for the shadows she could find anyway, since the sight of a large gray-brown timber wolf roaming the halls would have disconcerted anyone she might meet.
Her rips curled away from her teeth as she lifted her nose to scent the air. There was the trace of something off in the air, she thought, but it wasn't strong enough for her to be sure if the men she'd been hunting were inside or their scent simply lingered in her nostrils and in the atmosphere of the building. Good HVAC systems made air scenting a hit-or-miss proposition these days. Recirculated air in a large enclosed space could smell of things that hadn't been present for hours or days, which was why she kept her nose to the ground wherever possible. Ground trails never lied.
A rippling shadow caught her eye. Freezing in place, she hunkered down and lifted her nose. A second later, the air currents shifted, and she smelled adrenaline and hostility, their stench masking everything else in the area. Number two was headed toward the lab.
Bristling, she slunk silently along the wall. The man had his back to her and his attention focused on his goal. He wouldn't notice her until she was on top of him. Slowly, carefully, she began to close the distance between them. A hundred feet. Fifty. Twenty. Ten. Her muscles tensed as she gathered herself, drew back. Leapt.
She hit his side, forcing him to spin and face her. He had decent reflexes for a human, she had to give him that much, but he was still a man, not a Lupine. Sam was faster. She jumped again and dropped him. He landed on his back with a grunt and the weight of 150 pounds of wolf on his chest, pinning him down.
Getting between him and his hands, she cut off his reflexive reach for his rifle. Well, he still reached, but he couldn't shoulder, and he definitely couldn't aim. He couldn't even swing the barrel around to get it pointing in her direction. She could smell the stink of sedatives above the bite of powder and knew he carried tranquilizers instead of bullets. He wouldn't get a chance to use them. Fixing her eyes on his, she bared her teeth and snarled.
He snarled back. "Bitch."
Some men were so unoriginal.
She went for his throat, but he'd anticipated that. He dropped the rifle and brought one arm up and over to protect the vulnerable spot. That pissed Sam off, because it hinted that he knew what he was dealing with. Most humans didn't know how to fend off a wolf attack, much less a werewolf attack, but this one had at least some idea.
Still, he didn't know all the tricks. She proved it by taking advantage of the unattended position of his raised forearm and sinking her teeth into the inside of his wrist. If he'd been smart, he'd have shown her the back of his arm where the muscles were thicker and harder. Her fangs sheared easily through the tendons in his wrist, making him scream and rendering his right arm effectively useless. There wasn't time to quibble over being nice. She needed to protect Annie.
He jerked his arms reflexively away, baring his throat. Sam's jaws closed around it and clenched. Fifteen seconds of firm pressure around the trachea and carotid arteries and his struggles dissolved into boneless unconsciousness. As soon as she felt him go limp, she dropped him, not even pausing at the cracking thud of his skull smacking into the hard floor. In the still silence of the nearly deserted building, that scream would travel. She expected to see his pals racing toward her any second.
Grimly she poured on a burst of speed and sped toward the lab. She skidded around the final corner, scrambled to regain her traction, and barreled headfirst into a large, immovable object with the scent of spice and man.
Disbelieving, her head shot up and her eyes locked with Noah's.
A mix of full-out running and creative bumper hitching got Noah to the lab building in seventeen minutes. He didn't waste a second struggling for his breath, just headed straight for the stairwell. His information on Annie Cryer told him her lab was located on the fifth floor; his instincts told him that was where the B-team was headed. The scream that greeted him when he burst onto the floor confirmed it.
His instincts had said nothing about Sam crashing into him just outside the door.
They'd come from opposite sides of the building and made contact by way of her firm, furry body slamming into his knees at approximately 20 miles an hour. The impact knocked him on his ass, but that was nothing compared to the impact of looking into the eyes of a huge, shaggy timber wolf and seeing his woman staring back at him.
She blinked, a look of consternation creeping into her eyes. Noah felt his jaw clench. "What the hell are you doing here?"
She shook her head, a movement that somehow involved half her body and reminded him of his parents' springer spaniel coming in out of the rain. Not what Noah wanted to think about in connection to the woman who'd spent the last night wet and open beneath him.
She gave a low growl and jerked her head in the direction he'd come from, her eyebrows flexing insistently.
He shook his head. "I just came from there. No one else is over that way."
A twirl of her tail and a soft, low wuff assured him no threat was going to sneak up from the way she'd come, either. Ignoring the strange feeling of having had a complete conversation with someone who couldn't speak, he shoved a hand through his short-cropped hair and pushed himself to his feet.
"Then we've lost them," he said, surprised by how much his own voice sounded like a growl. "After the scream I heard coming from up here, anyone
with an exit strategy would have exited, and anyone without one would have been here by now." He lowered his chin and glared at her. "What was that scream, anyway?"
She gave a very canine shrug and lifted one paw to scratch at the laboratory door. It opened, and Annie stuck a nervous head out, her eyes widening when she caught sight of him. "Who are you?"
"Noah Baker. Abby's brother." He and Annie might not have met in the six months since he'd known the Silverbacks, but he knew she and Abby had become friends, so he hoped dropping his sister's name would reassure her. He pointed at Sam. "Aren't you going to ask who she is?"
Annie gave him an odd look. "That's Sam. Even if I hadn't known her since we were babies, I'm the one who called her, so it wouldn't have been that tough to figure out."
"And why, exactly, did you call her?"
Annie's expression went smooth and guarded. "I heard someone trying to break in. I got freaked out."
He stifled the urge to launch a full-scale interrogation and turned his glare back on Sam. "For God's sake, are you going to stay like that all day? Shift back. I have a few things I want to talk to you about."
Sam gave another one of those full-body shakes, accompanied this time by a narrow glare.
"She can't," Annie explained, apparently tipped off by the thunder in Noah's expression. "This isn't like the movies, where her clothes changed into her fur and will magically change back when she shifts again. If she shifts back now, she'll be naked."
"So what? I've already seen it. Shift back."
Annie's eyes went wide, and Sam growled at him. Snarled, really, but he wasn't in the mood to make distinctions.
"I want to talk to you," he repeated.
Sam planted her haunches on the floor, her tail twitching in irritation.
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