by J. D. Tyler
“It’s nicer than I expected,” Rowan admitted, admiring the dark green carpet and cream-colored walls adorned with sconces that reminded her of the inside of a nice hotel. “On the drive here, I envisioned something much more stark and unfriendly. You know, what with it being a top secret compound and all that.”
“Which begs the question of how you found out about us.” The doc cut her a curious stare.
Rowan smirked. “I guess that’s something your illustrious leader can tell you if he wants—after he and I have a little chat.”
“Touché,” Mackenzie said with a laugh.
As they walked, a glint of silver at the vee of the other woman’s blouse caught Rowan’s eye. A round disk about the size of a silver dollar hung there, suspended on a sturdy chain. It struck her as being a bit heavy, like a piece of jewelry more suited to a man. But what did she know? She was a cop, not a fashion critic.
“That’s a gorgeous pendant,” she said, waving a hand at the doc’s chest.
Mackenzie started and glanced down at the item as though she’d forgotten it was there. “Thanks.”
She peered closer. “Is that a… pentagram?”
“Yes, it is.” But the doc didn’t offer anything further.
Tough. Cops liked answers. “Cool. Are you Wiccan?”
“No.” A hint of annoyance crept into the doc’s tone, and her words became clipped as she tucked the disk under her blouse again. “The necklace was a gift.”
Subject closed, at least for now. But Rowan sensed a story there and sooner or later she’d ferret out the mystery. Investigating, prying answers from people who didn’t want to give them, was in her blood. For the time being, she let it go.
She had bigger fish to fry.
Mackenzie led her through a maze of corridors, and Rowan made sure to catalog every turn in her brain. The information would come in handy whether she stayed or had to get the fuck out of here fast.
Finally the doc halted in front of a closed door and nodded. “This is Nick’s office. Don’t be intimidated—he’s not as mean as he looks.”
“That’s okay, because I’m meaner than I look.” She wasn’t kidding, but Mackenzie smiled anyway, giving Rowan’s arm a squeeze.
“I’ll check on you later.”
“Thanks.” Rowan watched the woman start back the way they’d come, then turned her attention to the door. Heaving a fortifying breath, she gave three sharp raps and waited until she heard the man’s deep voice call out for her to come in before turning the knob and stepping inside.
The interior of Westfall’s office was much the same as her room—comfortable but nothing too fancy. A big desk equipped with a laptop and a cordless phone fit the space nicely, leaving room for a couple of stuffed chairs across from it. But the man himself quickly captured her attention as he rose and offered her his hand, his expression unreadable.
“Miss Chase.”
“Rowan, please.”
“Nick.” They shook hands and then he sat, gesturing for her to do the same.
“Who told you I was coming here?” she asked, careful not to sound defensive right off the bat. It wouldn’t do to piss off the man who might have the answers she needed.
“No one.” He held her gaze, his deep blue eyes seeming to look right into her soul.
She wondered what he saw there. “Then when I arrived, how did you know my name?”
The handsome dark-haired man appeared to consider his reply carefully before he finally spoke. “I’m a PreCog.”
“Come again?”
“I’m a PreCog. I sometimes see events before they happen.”
Rowan stared at him, wondering which one of them was nuts. Maybe Luis Garcia really had shot her and she was lying in some hospital in a coma, dreaming all of this.
She cleared her throat. “On top of being a wolf-man? Right. Sure you are. Listen, it doesn’t make two shits to me who ratted me out or what delusions of grandeur you’re suffering from. I just came here to—”
“Find out what happened to Micah,” he interrupted softly.
That rattled her for a couple of seconds, but she shook it off. “Not impressed. I’m sure the person who told you I was coming also told you why.” Leaning forward, she felt the slow boil of anger begin on hearing this stranger speak her brother’s name in such a familiar way. Her fingers dug into the arms of her chair. “So let’s just cut all the dancing around the subject. If Micah’s alive, tell me where he is and why in God’s name I was told he was dead. If he is dead, help me get his body home.”
Those last words emerged from her lips as though she was being strangled, stopping short of uttering the inane phrase about needing closure. There would never be closure if Micah truly was gone, the bleeding hole in her heart never filled.
“It’s not that simple.”
Months of alternating between grief and frustration with getting the runaround had frazzled her temper, and it snapped. “What the hell do you mean? He’s either dead or alive!” she shouted. “Which one is it?”
“I don’t know!”
His thundering tone echoed in the enclosed space, leaving a stunned silence in its wake. She blinked at Nick’s miserable expression, the slump of his big shoulders. “He’s missing?”
“Off the record, yes.”
“That Navy guy, General Jarrod Grant, said… The government lied to me,” she whispered. “They said Micah was killed during training maneuvers and that his body couldn’t be recovered. I buried an empty fucking box while that bastard Grant handed me an American flag and told me how sorry he was. And all the time I was grieving, my brother was out there somewhere, possibly alive, waiting to be rescued. Maybe still is.”
The horrible reality blew her mind. The lack of her brother’s body had disturbed her all along, and deep down she’d thought—prayed—that the report of his “death” had been a mistake. But to find out the whole thing was an outright lie? Rage churned, too big for her skin, threatening to tear her apart.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” he said sincerely. “I would have preferred to tell you the truth, but I was overruled.”
“By whom? General Grant?”
“Yes.”
She wanted her gun back. Then she’d shoot someone. All she needed was the correct target.
“What is the truth? Was my brother really in the SEALs when he disappeared?”
“No. By then he was working here, as a member of the Alpha Pack team.”
“But in the beginning, he was with the Navy, right?” That’s what he’d told her, all those years. Now she wondered how well she’d known her brother.
“Yes, he was, just like many of my men before this compound opened about five years ago. There was a different team leader then, and I replaced him a little over six months ago. After he, Micah, and several other Pack members were allegedly killed.” His gaze bored into her.
She studied him for a minute, thinking. “The general. Would he be any relation to Mackenzie Grant?”
Nick nodded. “Jarrod Grant is Mac’s father… and my main contact with the military. We sort of work together.”
“Wow, you’re all just one big happy family, huh?”
He ignored her sarcasm. “Most of the time, though we have our squabbles now and then.”
She stood and paced a little, stopped and stared out the window over his head. The rage had subsided to a bearable level, but the slow burn of anger remained. Along with a big side helping of frustration. “Why didn’t you know?”
“Excuse me?”
She looked down at him to see him frowning at her in question. “You claim to be psychic, right? Why didn’t you know what was going to happen to my brother and stop it?”
His expression became sympathetic. “I’m not psychic; I’m a PreCog. Big difference, because the visions I receive as a PreCog are only a small part of psychic ability. Anyway, I was a special agent with the FBI at the time Micah and the others vanished. I didn’t know the team members seven months ag
o, but even if I had there’s no guarantee I would’ve seen the event in time to avert it, or at all. I’m not omniscient.”
“So you pick up what you can, like spotty cable television reception?”
One corner of his mouth curled up. “Something like that.”
It was a really nice mouth, too. Sexy. The big bastard was probably an animal in the sack. Though like Dean, the buttoned-down sort wasn’t really her type. Shutting off that line of thinking, she focused on her mission, crossing her arms over her chest. “Okay, the twenty questions routine is wearing me out, and when I’m tired I get cranky. Fill in the blanks for me, starting with what the hell my brother’s job here entails, what he was doing when he disappeared, and what you think happened.”
Nick took a long time to answer. But when he did, his voice was low and patient. “Like most of the team, Micah’s a wolf shifter. Almost six years ago, when he and several of the others were part of a Navy SEAL team stationed in the mountains of Afghanistan, they were attacked by rogue werewolves.”
He gave her a few seconds to digest that tidbit, and she took the time. “All right. I’m a cop, and we deal in facts. I saw men turn into wolves—and one into a panther. I think maybe I’m in a coma and dreaming, but I’ll go with it.”
The man chuckled, shaking his head. “No, you’re very much awake, though before long you’ll wish you weren’t.” He paused. “As the survivors recovered from the attack in a military hospital, physicians discovered anomalies in their blood work. It wasn’t long before the first man shifted into a wolf right in his hospital bed, and chaos ensued.”
“I can imagine.” What a wild tale. But still, she had seen the results with her own two eyes.
“Studies were conducted on the men, and it was found that each of them not only could shift into a wolf but had various special abilities.”
“Like the one you claim as a PreCog?”
He didn’t comment on her apparent continuing doubt. “Exactly. But each man’s is different. One is a Telepath; one’s a Firestarter…” He trailed off, a look of sadness shadowing his face before he went on. “It turned out they’d possessed these tendencies since childhood, but after they became shifters, the power of their gifts had increased many times over.”
“Assuming I can buy what you’re saying, what is Micah’s so-called gift?” She couldn’t wait to hear this.
“He was—or is—a Dreamwalker. The team and the doctors here told me that your brother could literally visit people’s dreams to communicate.”
Rowan’s legs grew weak and she sat down in the chair again, hard. Instantly, she was transported back to when she and Micah were children. Growing up, she’d had dreams in which she talked with her brother about whatever, and she distinctly recalled several occasions where they’d compared notes and discovered they’d had the same dream. But a lot of people had those. Didn’t they?
No, they didn’t. Not the same dream at the same time. What if…
Her mind whirled with the implications, and the truth was wrenched from her gut. “I haven’t dreamed about my brother in almost a year.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s dead,” Nick said gently.
“Unlike what I was told by your colleague, General Grant,” she snapped, swiping impatiently at a stray tear.
“That was done against my better judgment.”
“And yet you didn’t rectify his lie.”
“I wanted something solid to give Micah’s family first,” he said firmly. “Grant was right in not giving the relatives false hope, and he didn’t want the questions that listing them as ‘missing’ would prompt. I just don’t agree we should’ve claimed they were dead without the bodies to prove it.”
She could almost feel her insides crumbling under the weight of all she’d learned. Especially about the brother she loved more than her own life. If he could walk in dreams, and yet hadn’t visited hers in months, chances were he really was gone. Despite Grant’s lie.
“Fortunately, I do have something I can share with you.”
Shaken out of her downward spiral, she snapped her gaze to his. “I’m listening.”
“A few weeks ago my team conducted a rescue op at a facility where some nasty experiments were being performed on shifters and humans. While there, one of my men swore he caught Micah’s scent.”
“His scent?”
“Yeah. Wolves have an excellent sense of smell. We can discern the signature of each individual scent and never forget it.”
“Sure you can.” Jesus Christ in a tutu. “So, was it Micah’s? Do you have any other evidence?”
“Actually, we do. One of the shifters we rescued told us that a man named Micah, who’d been kept in a nearby cage, had been moved just a few days before we busted into the place. We have reason to believe—”
“Hang on. Are you telling me whoever took my brother put him in a fucking cage, then treated him like a goddamned animal for whatever twisted reason?”
Nick sighed, looking weary. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The man also fits your brother’s description.”
“What are those assholes doing to my little brother?” she asked, her voice low and dangerous.
To his credit, Nick didn’t mince words. “We’ve learned that a company by the name of NewLife Technology, headed by Orson Chappell, has a secret project. Their goal is to take shifter DNA and genetic strands, combine them with humans’, and morph them into a new, invincible breed of soldiers.”
“In layman’s terms?”
“They’re trying to create super-shifters with Psy abilities, and they hope to mass-produce them like an automobile factory would produce cars. If they succeed, humanity as we know it is history.” He scowled. “Chappell is murdering people in the process, too. You can bet his reasons have nothing to do with bettering this country or saving lives, but involve his own power and greed.”
Rowan gaped at him, trying to assimilate this new information. The seconds ticked by as the man watched her. “And how is that different from what you’re doing here? Because from where I sit, I’ve been lied to and cheated out of the only family I have left. How do I know you haven’t turned the story completely around, that you’re not the bad guys?”
“That’s a fair question. But let me ask you this—why would we have greeted you as shifters instead of humans when we could’ve kept that part of us a secret? We could have met you with a show of force, turned you away, and you never would’ve found out about us or what’s going on with Micah.”
“But you didn’t make me leave, and you all showed me one of your secrets.”
“Exactly.”
And they hadn’t harmed her in any way. They’d shown her their collective underbelly, so to speak, and hadn’t attacked. All at once it hit her. “You wanted to gain my trust. To show me you’re the good guys.”
He smiled. “Well, I don’t know about good. But as my men are fond of saying, we’re not the guys you have to worry about.”
Okay, that seemed logical. But none of it was very comforting.
Suddenly she was so damned tired. Her mind couldn’t handle any more. “This is all so messed up,” she muttered, shoving a strand of hair out of her face.
Dark humor colored his reply. “No argument there.”
“So what does your Alpha Pack team do?”
“We’re enforcers of a sort. We take care of paranormal problems that pop up all over the world.”
She couldn’t help it—a laugh escaped that was absent of humor and a lot on edge. “Pop up? Like the measles? What are we talking here, ghosties and ghoulies?”
“Yes. And much worse.”
The man said that with a straight face, too. “Okay, I’ll bite. Like what?”
“Vampires, rogue shifters of all kinds, witches, demons. You name it. If some being in the paranormal community is wreaking havoc, we get called out to either capture it or eliminate it. Some of them we bring here to undergo rehabilitation. You’ll meet the rest of our residents soon enoug
h.” He shrugged, as though dealing with these creatures was an everyday occurrence.
“And I suppose you can prove everything you’re telling me?”
“I can, though I can sense you’re already starting to believe me whether you want to or not.”
“I still want solid proof.” She noted he didn’t seem concerned by this, which meant one of two things: he knew she wouldn’t be here long enough for it to be an issue, or he really could produce the evidence she wanted. Either way was troubling. “What about you? You said that you’ve only known these guys for a few months, so how did you become a wolf? Were you attacked, too?”
“No. I was born a shifter.”
Another surprise, which she couldn’t keep off her face. “That’s… neat. Was your family—”
“My family is not up for discussion,” he said coolly.
Whoa, the drop in temperature could’ve given her frostbite. Message received. “Hey, my bad. You can’t blame me for being curious after hearing all of this. No hard feelings?”
The man relaxed some, and nodded. “Not at all.”
She hesitated. “Assuming I can ever, in a zillion years, swallow that you guys battle mythical creatures, why enlighten me? Why not just tell me Micah is dead and send me on my way?”
“I could have,” he acknowledged. “But you’d already learned of our compound and I saw right away you’re not the type of person to be put off once you’re on the hunt. We’re similar that way, you and I.”
“True enough.”
“Besides, your journey led you here for another reason besides finding your brother. One every bit as important.”
“What— Oh. More psychic stuff, huh?”
“PreCog, and yes.”
“Whatever.” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Barely. But she couldn’t help but be curious about his mysterious claim. “What other reason would there be?”
He looked uncomfortable for a second, then shook his head. “Can’t tell you that. As a rule, I try not to influence others’ life decisions, which means I don’t interfere with free will.”
“Well, thanks, Great and Powerful Oz,” she deadpanned. “That’s real helpful. Now what?”
