Damn the arrogant, secretive, lying SOB!
In her mind, Grace dared anyone to approach her as she walked along the lighted paths across the Charles Carder campus and back toward her quarters on the air-force base. She was ready to kick some serious butt. Strangle someone.
Most of all, she wanted to throttle Simon.
She had made it so easy for him to disclose what he was. She shouldn’t have to reveal that she knew the truth about him. He should just tell her. They’d had sex again, hadn’t they? Gotten close once more. And now he was just acting defensive.
Well, she had all but called him a thief, and of something that could label him a terrorist if her allegation was true.
Grace started to calm down as she approached the gate between the two facilities. She could understand his fury about that—if it wasn’t just an act.
What would she do if—when—Simon finally told her what he was? Throw herself back into his arms and say she had always wanted to find a werewolf to care for? Make love with?
If he asked why, she would have to lie to him—as he was lying to her. Or at least misdirecting her, hiding the truth. She might have a reason that was in the interest of national security, but it would be a lie nonetheless.
She sighed as she walked up to the boxy building that housed her apartment. Things could never be open and aboveboard between Simon and her. Hoping for his confession was a major reason why she had gone with him to his place that night—his confession to being a werewolf, like her.
Not his confession to having anything to do with the biohazards thefts.
Despite his having been in the area at the right time, she didn’t actually believe he could be guilty of that—even if he hadn’t yet shifted. She would most likely defend him if anyone accused him—unless, of course, they had irrefutable evidence otherwise.
She entered the building and walked up the steps to her unit, needing the exercise to blow off the excess energy from her now-dissipating anger.
Despite how late it was, Grace sat in her small living room half an hour later with the rest of her Alpha Force team, along with Tilly and Bailey. Autumn Kater’s cover animal, the red-tailed hawk Venus, was present, too, in a small cage designed for portability. She had a much larger one in Autumn’s quarters, but was most often left free inside that space. She was well trained, and remained as unfettered as possible.
No wine was present, and the wee hours of the morning were not a good time for coffee, in case anyone harbored any hope of catching another hour or two of sleep. Grace had put out glasses of ice water for the humans, plus a bowl for the dogs to share. Autumn would need to provide Venus with anything she needed.
“Any more information on the driver of that delivery car?” Grace asked.
Grace knew Autumn. Trusted her integrity and intelligence. If the guy’s leaving with something other than what he went in with made Autumn suspicious, then it had been a suspicious act.
“Not enough, damn it.” Autumn stood from the stiff-backed chair she had chosen and began to pace the small room. She was slender and not very tall, and with long arms that Grace could visualize morphing into wings. Her hair was brown with red highlights, and the length of her nose vaguely suggested a beak. But it was her dark, penetrating eyes that looked most hawk-like, appearing to see everything. “I’ve been looking into it more, but they’ve been cagey with their responses. They’ve not disclosed a good reason for the guy to have taken beer away from the site.”
“My bet is that it was a different brand than the pizza place usually sold and the guy was having a party,” Ruby said. “The guards probably knew the delivery guy. Got invited to his party as long as they supplied some beer.”
“Maybe,” Grace said. “But it could have been a planned diversion. And next time, assuming there is a next time—”
“I’ll just be a good little raptor,” Autumn affirmed, “and watch what’s going on below me. Let someone else follow anyone suspicious.”
“Like maybe a wolf,” Grace said, smiling. “Especially if the real security guys don’t do what they’re supposed to.”
“Kristine said that you shifted, too, after the theft,” Autumn said. “Did you see anything interesting?”
Grace wished that her fellow Alpha Force members would stop asking her that, no matter how appropriate it was. “Nothing that would help identify the thief,” she answered.
“And tonight,” Ruby said. “You were with that other infectious-diseases specialist, right? Kristine said you might have seen him wandering around after the theft occurred. Do you think he was involved?”
Grace hadn’t given Kristine any details—especially not the most important one. But her aide knew that, whatever she had been doing this night, it had to involve the matter they were investigating, at least peripherally. Grace had decided not to try to sneak Kristine into Simon’s apartment to try to hack his computer. Too many further complications if she was caught.
Or if she did find proof of what Simon was. No, Grace wanted to be the only one to uncover that.
“My current belief is that he might have been conducting his own investigation,” Grace said. He hadn’t said so, but that would explain why he happened to have shifted that night—assuming he had control over it without a full moon. Maybe she could get him to confirm he was looking into the thefts, at least.
“So he’s not a person of interest?” Kristine asked.
I wouldn’t say that, Grace thought. But to her Alpha Force comrades she said, “To my knowledge, he wasn’t the thief, just a doctor concerned about the biohazard samples after the prior thefts.”
“With good reason,” Kristine said.
“True,” Grace responded, then moved their conversation—but not her thoughts—away from Simon.
At 1300 hours, Grace walked down a hall toward the office of Major Louis Dryson. He was the commanding officer of the Air Force Security Forces stationed at the Zimmer Air Force Base, now assigned also to handle security at Charles Carder—the person she had mentioned to Drew Connell as someone she wanted to speak with.
She’d set her alarm to awaken her at 0800 so she could call early and set up this appointment, and had stayed up long enough to take Tilly for a short walk. Then she went back to bed.
Not that she had slept much. She kept rehashing her time with Simon last night—both the extraordinarily good and the ill-tempered bad. Despite anticipating a somewhat unpleasant face-off with Major Dryson, she looked forward even less to the next time she saw Simon. There was bound to be a further confrontation.
Which would hurt all the more now that they’d shared such a wonderful time in bed—before all hell had broken loose between them. Again.
She reached the major’s office. A woman with the insignia of a master sergeant on her camo uniform sat behind the desk in the outer office. She looked up as Grace entered. “Lt. Andreas?” she asked. “That’s right.”
“Major Dryson is expecting you.” She stood, opened the door behind her and announced Grace’s presence.
The man in a similar uniform who stood behind a much larger desk was broad and barrel-chested. He gestured impatiently for Grace to enter, as if he had ordered her appearance and she was late. “Have a seat, lieutenant.” As Grace complied, he continued, “Colonel Otis at the hospital asked that I cooperate with you, so tell me what you need from me.” His tone suggested that the last thing he wanted was to do anything for her, but he watched her expectantly, hazel eyes frowning beneath thick glasses.
Grace wasn’t about to play his game. She took a moment to look around his small, neat office, her gaze lighting on his desktop computer and files stacked nearby. There was nothing unusual or especially enlightening about the room or its contents, but she took her time before returning her gaze to Dryson’s.
“As the colonel may have told you, I’m here on a special assignment to find out who is stealing biohazard specimens at Charles Carder and help to apprehend them. I assume that’s your intention, too, so I
believe it’s in our best interests to pool any information we have.”
“Then do you have any information to share with me, lieutenant?”
“Probably nothing you don’t already know, since your unit is conducting the official investigation into the incident that occurred the other night. You’ve probably investigated some of the earlier thefts as well.”
“I assume you thought you could just buzz in here,” he said scornfully, “figure out what was going on and take credit for capturing our thieves. Was that why you hadn’t come to talk to me before this?”
In a way, that was true. Whatever their mission, the local security forces had been ineffective in stopping the thefts and arresting the perpetrators, so their value was already suspect.
Even more, keeping Alpha Force and its presence here low-key was paramount to its effectiveness—and to ensuring that its covert nature remained secret.
“Sorry, sir, but I only arrived a few days ago, and I needed to establish my cover at the hospital facility. I actually am a medical doctor, specializing in infectious diseases. That was one reason why I was chosen for this particular assignment.”
“And your unit—Alpha Force, isn’t it? That’s what the colonel said.” The colonel should have been more discreet, not even giving out the name of her unit. “It has some better plan for catching our tangos?”
“Although it’s a good possibility, we’re not sure our targets are terrorists, sir. In any event, we knew this assignment wasn’t going to be a slam-dunk, but our team members work separately from other units with the same goal as we have.”
“Why is that?” He had stood, and his expression was even more belligerent, as if he intended to attack Grace for not buckling under his command.
“As Colonel Otis may have told you, sir, our unit is covert, and so is how we conduct our operations. As much as we want to achieve the objective of fixing this potentially critical situation, we have to handle it our way, just as you have to handle it your way. We don’t currently have any genuine suspects, but if that changes we’ll let you know. How about you? Are there any suspects currently on your radar that we should know about?”
His sudden grin was as disconcerting as his scowl had been. “We’re checking into the viability of several people seen near the storage building that night as suspects. You’re one of them, lieutenant. So is Sgt. Norwood, and I understand she’s part of your team. A couple of others, too—a few doctors, some hospital visitors, a delivery guy…but so far no one sticks out as being more than just a person of interest.”
A few doctors. Did that include Simon? Had anyone else seen him in wolf form—or changing? Unlikely. Grace hadn’t seen or otherwise sensed anyone else nearby then. But he could have been seen before or afterward in human form.
Maybe she should warn him. That might only cause another argument between them—if she told him she wasn’t the only one who needed to clear him. But candor in this, at least, was possible and could help him. This major might not only glom on to Simon as his main suspect, but might also ignore better ones if he could more easily pin the theft on Simon.
She had intended to talk to Simon later anyway. Set up a time to bring Tilly back to the hospital to visit with his young patient as well as act as a diversion for more kids, seniors and psychiatric patients again…as her ongoing excuse to visit other areas of the hospital where infectious-disease specialists might not otherwise go.
She’d be cautious about how to let Simon know of this additional suspicion against him. But it was important—especially because he was a shifter. If anyone besides her found out, the repercussions could be horrific.
“Here’s my card with my cell phone number, major,” Grace said, taking it from her pocket. “I’ll stay in touch with you, but if you find yourself focusing on any particular suspects, I’d appreciate your letting me know. Our respective superior officers will, too.” She threw that in to make sure this difficult man remembered that they both held positions in the military and were under orders to figure this out.
But he could never know what her specific orders, and abilities, happened to be.
Chapter 8
Grace watched for Simon for the rest of the day, but only saw him at a distance, or in a patient’s room. He seemed to be avoiding her.
She wished that didn’t hurt so much.
But pain or not, she had to talk to him. To warn him. He might not be high on her suspect list, but he could be on Dryson’s—and if Simon was under surveillance, he might get caught by someone in authority, and even on camera, doing something he clearly wanted no one to know about.
How different today was from yesterday, when Grace was full of anticipation about meeting Simon for dinner—and hoping to get him alone to sound him out about the night of the thefts. And, okay, she admitted to herself that she had also wanted to get him alone for other reasons.
Reasons that had gone way beyond her expectations. Making love with Simon once more had been an experience she would relive over and over in her mind—and her sated body—even if it never happened again.
That was part of her pain, even though—or maybe because—she knew it was reality.
But even so, she cared enough to pass along her warning, then leave him alone, the way he clearly wanted. She allowed her most canine senses leeway to find him that day—the distant sound of his voice, his masculine scent wafting among all the usual hospital aromas. She finally got to the point that she delayed seeing a patient of her own to wait for Simon in the hallway, after seeing him enter a room to check on one of his patients—that boy, Eddie.
Was she stalking Simon? In a way. He shot a glare at her as he came out, talking to a nurse.
“May I speak with you, Dr. Parran?” she called.
“Sorry,” he muttered, sounding not at all sorry. “I have to follow up on this now, Dr. Andreas. I’ll talk to you later.”
But Grace knew he intended that to be a lie. Shades of their college days all over again.
For now, she gave up. One way or another, she would catch up with Simon before this day ended and pass along the warning. For his sake.
And then?
Then, she would back off the way she never had in the old days—until they had given up on each other. Despite the wonders they had shared the night before, she was older now, and wiser.
Simon Parran and she would never have a relationship of any kind besides a professional one.
She would live with that. The pain she felt now was acute, but it would soften with time, as it had before. Eventually.
But if there was any way of learning how Simon had shifted outside the full moon, she owed it to Alpha Force to do so.
His duties at the hospital had ended for the day, and Simon looked around before heading along the now-quiet hall on the hospital’s first floor, toward the stairway to the downstairs lab area. It was time now for him to get back to his extracurricular activities.
He wished he could return to them with the same enthusiasm he’d had previously. But too many things had happened to interfere with all he had intended to achieve here at Charles Carder.
The biohazards thefts, for one thing. He’d known of the prior ones, but they had been surpassed by the latest event. Having this severe strain of shigella bacteria in the wrong hands was a potential disaster. And so far, he had been unable to do anything about it.
Then there was Grace. He’d had a hell of a time concentrating on being a doctor that day instead of a man ruled by his private parts.
He had seen her around even before she had waited to talk to him outside Eddie’s room. Smelled her light floral aroma at a distance, too. It mesmerized him, engulfed his senses, sparked recollections of the greatest aspects of the night before.
That aroma seemed to follow him everywhere. He passed a few visitors, an orderly, some maintenance workers as he walked along, yet he scented Grace—or imagined he did. He reached the door to the stairs and took the knob in his hand…and then realized it wasn’t hi
s imagination after all. Grace was hurrying along the hall toward him, the muted sound of the treads of her soft-soled shoes squishing along the linoleum.
No good way to avoid her now. He wasn’t about to hurry down the stairway—especially since she was likely to follow. “Hi, Grace,” he said as she caught up with him. He purposely made his tone stiff, unwelcoming.
She obviously recognized that, since a brief cloud of emotion—pain?—washed over her face before she regained a neutral expression. “Hello, Simon. I know you’re not interested in talking to me, but I did want to touch base with you about bringing Tilly for a session with your young patient.” She leaned toward him, and her scent wafted over him like a soft, caressing shower. “There’s something else you need to know, too.” A couple of hospital visitors passed by, talking quietly and not looking at them, but Grace glanced in their direction. “Can we go someplace more private to talk?” she asked softly.
She glanced toward the door where he had stopped. He wasn’t about to suggest that she accompany him down to the lab area. She might expect an invitation into the room where he worked. “How about my office upstairs?”
His office was near Grace’s—an equally small one with a computer for checking patient records and communicating with other physicians by e-mail and phone. He could talk to Grace there behind closed doors—although he doubted that was a good idea. Maybe he could use the department lounge instead. Moe Scoles and his assistant would probably be gone for the day, and not many other doctors or staff were likely to be present either.
They took the stairs at the end of the hall up to the second floor and walked nearly silently toward the infectious-diseases wing. Simon peered into the department lounge before gesturing for Grace to precede him in there. “I’d like a cola,” he said, heading for the soft-drink machine in the corner of the small room furnished with a few aging chairs of mismatched green-and-yellow slipcovers. “Want anything?” He wasn’t really thirsty, but that gave him a reason to enter the lounge without explaining to Grace that he wanted to be somewhere from which he could leave more easily than his office if their conversation was as difficult as he anticipated.
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