Tiger in the Hot Zone (Shifter Agents Book 4)

by Lauren Esker

  Just as the tension of the standoff approached its breaking point, the break came in a completely unexpected way. A small, stocky woman, her glasses winking in the lights along the runway, stormed past the agents on the airstrip. She was wearing a respirator mask and gloves, but otherwise hadn't bothered with a full-body quarantine suit like the other agents. She smacked Costa in the chest with a mask.

  "Quinn Costa! What's the use of having quarantine procedures if you of all people aren't following them?"

  "Hi, Aunt Mavis," Trish said. She looked like she was about to burst into tears, visibly crumpling with relief at the arrival of backup.

  "Hello, dear. Quinn, roll up your sleeve."

  "Is this going to be another of your antivirus whatchamathings?" Costa said in a resigned tone. Some of the tension had gone out of the air with Mavis's arrival. "I assume it'll hurt as much as the last one."

  "More," she declared with some relish, jabbing a needle into his upper arm. "I have one for each of the rest of you, but first you need to stop potentially contaminating the entire area and get into the clean room we've prepared for you."

  Even though the mood was more relaxed now that Mavis Begay had taken charge, Noah was still acutely aware, as they were escorted to the lab complex by a phalanx of agents, that the situation could change again in a heartbeat. He kept Peri close to him.

  The "clean room" was a trailer, or rather, two trailers docked together and sheeted in plastic around the entrance. Noah could think of nothing but the movie E.T., which wasn't a very comforting thought. Under plastic sheets billowing in the night breeze, they turned over everything they had with them, from their phones to the overnight bags they'd taken to Flagstaff, to be sealed in large plastic bags by two quarantine-suited agents.

  "I can't be out of touch with my family," Dawn protested. "When are we getting our phones back?"

  "Once you're through the showers and everything's been disinfected," Mavis said, lifting the plastic sheet to slip into the entryway with them. "We were lucky get a portable shower unit onsite in the amount of time we had, so we can keep the water supplies separate. You'll find sleeping quarters on the other side. I expect we'll probably be able to release you in the morning, but we need more information first." She waved a gloved hand in a "hurry up" motion. "Come on, clothes off. We've also got some more shots for you—sorry—and some tests to run."

  The shifters began to strip down, but Peri and Dawn balked.

  "What's wrong?" one of the technicians asked, looking confused.

  Dawn grimaced and began reluctantly unbuttoning her shirt. "I suppose a men's and women's section is too much to ask for."

  "Oh, right, you're human," Mavis said as she laid out her sample kit. "Sorry, I didn't even think of that. For us, being naked around each other goes along with the shifting. We're used to it. I'm afraid you'll have to put up with it."

  "The locker rooms at most SCB facilities are integrated as well," Noah told Peri.

  "I don't know if that's very enlightened of you or just weird."

  "It makes sense," Trish said, peeling out of her underwear and getting an appreciative grin from Delgado as she did so. "Shifters see each other naked every time we shift. There's no point in being coy about it."

  "Wait, what?" Dawn said. "You're all like that?"

  Trish clamped her mouth shut. Mavis looked startled. "How much does she know?"

  "A lot more than she did before," Noah murmured.

  Dawn stared around the room, her gaze lingering in particular on Delgado's face, which was now bare of the concealing sunglasses. She appeared to be teetering on the edge of panic.

  "It's okay," Peri said quickly. "I'm human, just like you."

  "But they're not?" Dawn's voice rose and cracked.

  "There are good shapeshifters and bad shapeshifters, just like people—I mean, not that you guys aren't people—Noah, help me out here."

  "I thought she knew," Mavis said accusingly. "If I'd known she didn't know, we'd have tried to provide separate quarters for the humans."

  Peri helped Dawn sit down. "Deep breaths. It's okay. This is weird for me too."

  "Here." Trish deposited an armload of towels in Dawn's lap. "You can be the keeper of the towels and pass them out to everyone. How's that sound?"

  Peri smiled at her gratefully. Trish shrugged and leaned close to whisper—Noah, with his sharper shifter hearing, heard it easily—"She's a mom. She needs a job to do."

  Mavis and the lab techs moved among them, taking blood and saliva samples and giving them all shots while they stripped. Costa was right, Noah thought, rubbing at the spot on his upper arm with his thumb. Unlike the relatively painless shots yesterday, these things hurt.

  "We're dosing you all with the most high-powered antivirals we've got," one of the techs explained. "You may feel ill and experience some pain at the injection site for the next few hours, especially the shifters among you. I suggest you try to sleep it off."

  Peri's artificial leg nearly caused an altercation. The lab techs insisted it needed to be disinfected; Peri was having none of that. "I need it. To walk on. What am I supposed to do, hop around on one leg until you get around to giving it back?"

  "We'll be very careful with it."

  "That's not the point! Besides, I'm human. I can't even catch your disease anyway!"

  In the end, Peri lost the fight. Noah held her with a supportive arm around her waist while she glowered at the techs wrapping her leg in plastic. Mavis, meanwhile, was passing around bottles of disturbingly bright pink foam. "I need all of you to use this when you shower. It'll decontaminate you more thoroughly than soap and water alone."

  As they left with the plastic-wrapped bundles, Peri shouted after the tech carrying her leg, "You break it, you bought it!"

  "Are you always this loud?" Caine growled at her. Stripping off his clothes had revealed stark black tattoos that twisted around his arms all the way from wrist to shoulders. The winding, spiky patterns made Noah think of barbed wire or thorny bushes—an appropriate metaphor for his personality. The side of his face, shoulder, and one arm were laced with the pinkish lines of fast-healing claw marks from his fight with Julius.

  "I'm naked and standing here on one leg. Give me a break, dude."

  "Showers," Delgado said quickly, since Noah was starting to bristle in Peri's defense. "Let's just get that done, why don't we."

  The trailer contained three shower stalls. Noah and Peri wordlessly took the same one. As he opened the door for Peri, Noah saw Trish and Delgado exchange a long glance, and then choose one of their own.

  The shower stall was designed for one person, not two. By now they were getting good at the two-person shower shuffle, but they hadn't tried it in this cramped a space before. Peri's tightly wound nerves caused her to dissolve in half-hysterical giggles as she and Noah maneuvered around each other, while he held her up with an arm around her, under her armpits. He heard similar noises from Trisha and Delgado's stall.

  Under the hot flow of water, Peri stretched to bring her lips to Noah's ear. "I'm glad you got me off like a billion times last night, because otherwise this would be really hard to take."

  She held up the bottle of pink foam. Noah cupped his hand under it and she squirted a generous dollop into his palm, which he then massaged into her hair.

  "I'm perfectly capable of platonic showering," Noah muttered back, rubbing his fingers through her hair and enjoying the way she leaned into his touch like a cat. He carefully avoided the scrapes and bruises on her shoulder and arm as he continued to soap her down.

  A fist slammed against the other side of the wall separating their stall from Trish and Delgado's. "First of all, you jerks, we can hear you," Trish said. "And second, we are not having sex in here! And I hope you aren't either."

  "The lady doth protest too much!" Peri called back.

  "Don't get this stuff in your eyes," Noah told her.

  "You sweet talker," she sighed. They shuffled around so she could get her f
ace under the flow of water.

  "If y'all use all the water before I get a turn, there are gonna be words," Dawn called down the row of showers. By this, Noah assumed that Caine had taken the third stall and was showering in grim silence, the same way he did everything else.

  "She's right," Peri muttered. "These showers are portable, so the water is probably limited. Here, turn around, let me soap you up while you do me."

  The stuff wasn't precisely soap. It was slightly gritty and it stung. Noah avoided her delicate bits, and she did the same when she did him, lowering herself gracefully to the floor of the shower by using his arm as a monkeybar.

  It wasn't really sexual—well, not as much as he'd expected, anyway. Mainly it just felt good to run his hands across her body under the flowing water and feeling her relax, the tension and trauma beginning to seep out of her. By the time they left the shower stall, Noah helping her along with an arm around her and matching up their steps so he functioned as her extra leg, they both sagged with weariness, barely propping each other up.

  Dawn handed them each a towel. "One of the lab people stopped by and brought this for you," she told Peri, holding out a crutch.

  "Huh. I guess it's the least they can do after stealing my leg in the first place." Leaning on Noah, Peri flipped the crutch upside down and adjusted its height using the wing-nut screws in the hollow aluminum body, then tested her weight on it.

  "Good?" Noah asked, toweling off.

  "It'll do. I'd still rather have my leg back."

  They were the first out and therefore the first into the adjoining trailer, which had a row of cots neatly made up with blankets and pillows. Hospital scrubs had been laid out on each cot for their use. Designed to be one size fits all, they hung off Peri like a sack and stretched tight across Noah's shoulders.

  But they were, by God, clean, and he was clean (almost painfully so), and safe, and with Peri.

  "Oh, hey, they brought us food." Peri opened the top box in a stack of small cardboard takeout boxes. "Fish sandwich. Ewww. Pass. Oh, hamburger. I'll take it. What do you want?" she asked through a mouthful.

  "I'm not really hungry," Noah admitted.

  Peri lowered her burger, with a large bite out of it, to stare at him in worry.

  "Stop looking at me like that. It's just been a long day, and Dr. Begay is right about that antiviral stuff making me feel queasy, that's all." He flopped on the nearest cot and threw his arm over his face. The sharp smell of the pink foam, painfully intense to his shifter senses, had made his headache worse. The lights seemed too bright.

  "I'm the one who got chased by a serial killer. Are you sure you're not getting sick?"

  "I'm not getting sick."

  "Promise?"

  Noah propped himself up on his elbows. "Promise. They said the injections might make us feel lousy. I think that's all it is. How do you feel?"

  "Hungry," she said, and dug into the carton of fries that had come with the burger.

  Trish and Delgado came in, toweling off. Peri politely looked the other way, though neither of the other women seemed to notice or care, while they got dressed and then went to investigate the food.

  "When we woke up this morning, I really didn't think we'd be in Tucson tonight," Delgado said. "Let alone in quarantine."

  "I just want to sleep," Trish said. The scrubs revealed the scar across her collarbone, a pale puckered mark on her light brown skin. It was only a few days since she'd been shot; Noah kept forgetting that.

  Caine came in, grabbed a pair of scrubs, and took a cot at the end without speaking.

  "They didn't even give us books or a TV," Peri complained. "What are we supposed to do, play 'I spy' until we fall asleep?"

  "I assume sleeping is what we're supposed to be doing," Delgado said. "I am also going to optimistically assume that we will be allowed phone calls in the morning, and won't be illegally detained for too much longer without an opportunity to contact anyone. Anyone want to suggest odds on that?"

  "Fifty-fifty," Caine said from his corner.

  Noah noticed Peri stiffen at Caine's words. "They're not going to detain us," he said before the room could erupt in full-blown panic. "Among other reasons, I'm the director's son, and I promise you I will raise a hell of a fight if anyone tries."

  Dawn came in on the tail end of the conversation with a towel wrapped around her. She looked around nervously and hunched on the end of an unoccupied cot.

  "Hi there. Fish or burger?" Peri asked, waving a box at her. "There don't seem to be any vegetarian options, sorry."

  "Fish, I guess." Dawn accepted the box from her and smiled wanly. With the bright lipstick washed off, she looked older and much more tired. "I'm sorry. I'm not handling this very well."

  "Trust me, I know how you feel," Peri told her. "I think you're dealing with it great. A week ago, I didn't know about any of this either. They really need to develop a better way of breaking the news gently," she added with a scowl in the general direction of the shifters in the room.

  "If you come up with one, be our guest," Delgado said.

  "But they're going to let us out?" Dawn asked hopefully. "Soon, I mean."

  "If they aren't ready to release us in the morning, I'll talk to my contacts and get it straightened out," Noah promised.

  He wondered if his reassurances sounded as weak to the others as they did to him. As much as he wanted to believe the SCB wasn't planning on holding them indefinitely, there was not only precedent, but a place to put them. The SCB maintained its own top-secret prison for shifter criminals, dubbed The Ranch, in rural Wyoming.

  The Ranch was a practical and necessary measure, because rogue shifters couldn't be put through the regular criminal justice system. A normal prison couldn't hold someone who could shift into a snake or a sparrow, and the true facts of a case involving shifters couldn't be revealed in a courtroom.

  But now he found himself wondering if The Ranch had an isolation wing, and if they were all going to wake up to find themselves bundled onto another flight, this time a one-way flight to Wyoming.

  Don't borrow trouble. Dad runs the agency, and Mom is no slouch in the fighting-City-Hall department herself. You've got powerful allies.

  We're gonna be okay.

  But if that wasn't the case—if we were just nobodies scooped up by the SCB—

  Peri distracted him from his gloomy thoughts by stumping over to sit on the edge of his cot. "While you're filing complaints, be sure and mention my leg, would you? I don't plan on being Hopalong for the next few days."

  "Consider it done." Noah rolled toward her, intending to give her a kiss, but it resulted in a squawk from Peri and an undignified struggle to keep both of them from falling off.

  "Let's face it," Peri said, red-faced as she recovered. "This cot is not big enough for two people."

  "Thank heaven," Caine growled from his end of the room.

  Someone, Noah wasn't sure who, got up and turned off most of the lights, leaving the room dim and quiet. He began to drift, until he felt Peri's small hand patting his brow. "What now?" he asked, opening his eyes.

  "Just feeling for fever," Peri said fretfully. "You're a little bit warm."

  "Yeah, that's because we just got out of the shower. Anyway, shifters can run hot compared to normal humans."

  "But—"

  "Trust me, for the next few days," Delgado said, "all of us are going to be manufacturing a full-blown case of the flu from every tiny cough. Let's not start tonight, okay?"

  "It'll be all right." Noah squeezed Peri's hand and turned his head to receive her kiss. "Go to bed. I'll still be here when you wake up."

  Her lips were soft on his, and when she pulled her hand away, her fingers trailed slowly and reluctantly through his before dropping away. The cot next to him creaked as she crawled in.

  Exhaustion dragged him under like a dark tide, and he gave way to its pull.

  Chapter Twenty

  Peri woke with a jolt from a nightmare that faded as soon as her
eyes were open, leaving only a lingering sense of unease.

  It was morning, and the inside of the trailer was lit by clear, white-gold sunlight streaming through small louvered windows near the ceiling. The louvers were tightly closed, the trailer already growing hot. She'd kicked off her blanket in the night. Sweat plastered her scrubs to her body and stung the healing road rash on her shoulder.

  Even as alarming stories crossed her mind of detainees left to suffocate in hundred-degree heat, air conditioning came on with a thump and a rattle, and a cool breeze blew across her bed, drying the sweat on her body.

  It didn't look like more sleep was in the cards for today. She sat up and looked around. Everyone else still slept, except for Caine. The cot at the end was empty, the blankets pushed aside in an untidy heap.

  If he wasn't in bed, then he must be in the adjoining trailer with the showers and bathroom facilities. She didn't want to run into him, but when the minutes ticked by without the slightest sound of running water or footsteps in the trailer next door, she began to wonder if he was still in quarantine at all.

  It just figures if they were going to let one of us go, it'd be Caine.

  Or maybe they're letting us all out now?

  That hopeful thought got her up and moving. She crutched into the shower trailer and first of all checked the door, finding it firmly locked. There were only three shower stalls and two bathroom stalls, and she could tell by glancing under the doors that Caine wasn't in any of them.

  So he'd abandoned the rest of them. Asshole. But that also meant someone had let him out, which seemed like a good sign.

  Peri used the toilet, washed her sticky face at the sink with a damp paper towel, and drank handfuls of tinny-tasting water from her cupped hands until she felt a little less dehydrated. Other than that, she didn't feel bad, certainly not like she was coming down with a fatal, contagious illness.

  If she banged on the door, would someone let her out too?

  She was tempted to try it. The feeling of being locked in was a growing itch inside her, crawling under her skin. However, learning for sure that she couldn't get out might be worse.