by Alisa Woods
“Sleeping beauty has arisen,” Jace said with a smirk.
That must mean Jared was off the medical watch list.
“Whatever you guys are doing, I’m ready to do my part.” Jared gestured to the table. “What do you have?”
“We’re just working out a plan of action,” Jaxson said. “So your timing for getting back in the game is pretty good. How do you feel?”
Jared frowned. He was standing, wasn’t he? “I’m good. Did you find Grace?”
“Well, sort of.” Jace picked up an image of an office building and held it up for Jared. “We think she’s in here.”
Piper tapped the image. “You’re never going to guess what this is.”
“Agent Smith’s day job as a middle manager?” Jared was surprised he had any sense of humor at all in him. He shut that down pretty quick and chalked it up to the heady recovery.
“Supposedly it’s the headquarters for an import-export logistics company,” Piper said with a smirk. “It’s an open secret in intelligence circles, however, that it’s the local NSA office.”
National Security Agency—the feds. “Shit.” Jared humor faded quickly. “Why is Grace there?”
Jaxson gathered up several more images. “We’ve been tracing Agent Smith’s pings on your facial recognition software. This morning, about the time you were at the Senator’s estate, we found several hits tracking him through cameras on street surveillance and local banks. Then he went off grid. The last image has him pulling into the parking lot of the NSA’s secret HQ. We didn’t know what it was until Piper clued us in.”
“So you know Agent Smith is there, but not Grace?” Jared frowned again. “Did you check her office?”
Jaxson nodded. “The party line at the campaign headquarters is that she’s home with the flu.”
Jared ground his teeth. “So the Senator’s got a cover story already. One that will keep her out for a while.” This was getting worse and worse.
Piper nodded and gave him a knowing look. “We know Grace was in the car with Agent Smith as he pulled into the parking lot. We’ve got seven red light camera images just before he arrived—all with a man fitting Agent Smith’s description, and a woman with long brown hair like Grace. Although she looked like she was sleeping.”
Jared momentarily squeezed his eyes shut. Smith had her. Jared had waited too long.
“And he’s still in there,” Jaxson added. “We’ve had surveillance on him from the moment we knew he was inside.”
Piper gave Jared a concerned look, like she was reading his thoughts. “We can’t just storm in there,” she chastised him, then glanced at Jaxson and Jace. “We’ve been debating the options, and we figure the best is falsified ID. I can get you clearance through my office. I was going to go in myself, but I can hook you up. Unless you’re not feeling up to it…”
“No. I’m doing this.” It came out harsher than he meant.
Piper just nodded, like she expected that answer. Jared narrowed his eyes at his brothers, daring them to stop him.
Jace just held up his hands. “Hey, I was voting for waiting until you woke up. No way I wanted to answer to you for having sent my mate after yours.”
His mate. Jared’s throat closed up. Because inside, deep where his wolf lived, he already knew she was. If she would have him.
He cleared throat, and the sound carried in the silence that had suddenly dropped across the room. “Right. I’m going after my mate.”
When Grace awoke, slowly swimming out of the haze the tranquilizer, she was inside a cage.
It was the kind of cage you would put a dog in—a very large dog, but still nowhere near large enough for a human. She was lying down, but when she sat up, her head almost grazed the top of the fine steel mesh. She rubbed at the blurriness in her eyes, not quite believing she was caged like an animal. As she blinked and focused beyond the thin metal bars, she jerked with surprise.
Agent Smith sat outside her cage in a swivel chair. It was an ordinary office chair—black, cushioned—and he was slowly rotating it, back and forth.
“Nice to see you awake, Ms. Krepky.” His eyes glittered, a small smile tugging at his lips.
A shudder ran through her, but she didn’t answer, just whipped her gaze around the room to see where she was. It looked like a lab—stainless steel countertops and cabinets and a gurney at one end. The smell of steel and antiseptic tinged sour on her tongue and competed with the sickness rising at the back of her throat. Whatever this place was, her father knew about it… and sent her here. He had turned her over to Agent Smith, casting her aside like yesterday’s trash as soon as he knew she wasn’t his biological daughter.
And Jared… God, Agent Smith shot him three times. Was he dead? She knew from personal experience how fast shifters could heal, but there was a limit… even a tough Marine would have a hard time surviving being shot at point-blank range. The horror of that—of losing him, of it being her fault—ripped through her, gutting her out. Her wolf howled a mournful cry.
“If you’re thinking of screaming,” Agent Smith said, “don’t bother. We’re in a basement that I long ago outfitted with the best in noise suppression. No one comes down here, and you aren’t the first visitor I’ve had.”
Fear for herself pushed through her agony about Jared and seized hold of her chest. But she wasn’t going to let her father just dispose of her. Or let this Agent Smith person experiment on her. She was determined to find a way out, and for that she needed more information.
“What have you done with Jared?” She edged forward, up on her knees, and grasped onto the cage door. The construction was pretty flimsy. Maybe she could wrench the door off its hinges once Agent Smith left her alone.
His smile grew. “I’m sure he’s bled out by now. Although I’m kind of hoping he caught a couple extra bullets before that happened. A little more pain for one of the River brothers would make my day.”
The anger rose up in her, and she gripped the cage harder, curling her fingers around the metal and pushing against it to test its strength. “So you enjoy inflicting pain on people. Nice. Don’t you ever look in the mirror, Agent Smith, and wonder what went wrong with your life?”
He smirked. “I’m not the one in the cage.” Then he cocked his head to the side. “Your father was surprised to find out you were a shifter, but he should have known better, especially given your mother couldn’t keep her pants on.”
The thin bars of the cage bit into her hand. “You don’t know anything about my mother.”
His smile grew. “Your father let his wishful thinking get in the way of the truth—that anyone can be a shifter. In fact, that’s the problem. They’re hiding under the skin of everyone around us, waiting to seduce our women and impregnate them with their spawn. That’s what you are, Grace. The unwanted bastard child of a transient shifter who fucked your mother and left her behind. Your father told me the story. Did he ever tell you?”
She banged her fist against the cage door, and it rattled the entire thing. “All I need to know about my father is that I’m here. With you.”
Agent Smith wheeled his chair closer, leaning forward and putting his elbows on his knees, templing his fingers. He was getting way too much pleasure out of this. “Yes, you are, Ms. Krepky. And I cannot wait to get started with you.”
The cold trickle in her stomach surged up into a gush, a tsunami of fear that washed through her body. She leaned away from him, then scuttled backward until she bumped against the wire mesh—the cage just wasn’t big enough to go anywhere.
He licked his lips, and Grace’s stomach lurched. “There are so many things I want to do with you, Grace, but don’t worry—having sex with you is not one of them.”
She supposed that should make her feel better, but it didn’t. This Agent Smith character got off on hurting people… he might not rape her, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to hurt her. And enjoy it in the process.
Words caught in her throat, but she sucked in a breath a
nd forced them out. “My father said he doesn’t like dead bodies.” She hoped that was actually true. Except it sounded like Agent Smith had already killed Jared. Which made her heart squeeze again, forcing tears to burn at the back of her eyes.
“Oh, I’m not going to kill you. But we will have some fun along the way.”
He was trying to scare her, so she refused to let his creepy words rattle her. “Your idea of fun is one of those things that comes with a diagnosis. What do you want from me?”
“Well, for starters, I’d like you to shift.” He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “You seem to have a little trouble controlling your wolf. But that’s not anywhere near the most unique thing about you, is it, Grace?”
“What are you talking about?” She honestly didn’t know.
“For one, the color of your fur. I’m intrigued by your unique lineage—I’d almost thought the white wolf was only legend. But here you are—different and conveniently in my cage. Your father doesn’t know who impregnated your mother, although I suspect he plans to use the general registration program to track him down.” Agent Smith lifted one eyebrow. “How does that saying go? All politics is personal. Certainly true in your father’s case.”
Grace was beginning to wonder if it was true in Agent Smith’s case as well—or if he just had some deep loathing for shifters programmed into his DNA. She was still coming to grips with the idea that her biological father was a shifter… but she hadn’t gotten to the point of wondering who that shifter might be. Or where he might’ve gone. He obviously didn’t stick around long.
“I don’t suppose you know who your true father is,” Agent Smith tried.
She narrowed her eyes. “Why does it even matter?”
He rose up out of his chair and loomed over her cage. “It matters because understanding shifters is everything. It’s the key to keeping control of our world. Your father’s legislation is the culmination of the effort, not the beginning. I have been working on this for years—studying, analyzing, tracking down shifters, showing how pervasive they are in our society and how much of a danger they are to it.” He gestured to her. “You’re a prime example, Grace. You’re exactly what I don’t want to see happen.” He wrinkled up his nose, disgusted. “Humans breeding with shifters. Polluting our DNA with your genes. Ruining our families and our bloodlines. Most shifters mate with each other, and if they simply kept to that, it would be bad enough. But you don’t restrain yourselves, do you? You and your wanton sexuality, seducing the human population and creating halfling abominations like yourself. It has to be stopped.”
Grace’s eyes slowly went wide as she listened to his hate-filled and frankly irrational ranting. This had to be personal for him to feel this much loathing. “So this is all about… segregation? You want to keep humans and shifters apart?”
Agent Smith shrugged one shoulder. “That doesn’t go anywhere near far enough. Your father’s legislation will flush out the shifters hiding among our population. Then we can domesticate the animals, turn them into non-shifters permanently, so they can’t corrupt the gene pool. This beast nature of yours has to be controlled, Grace. Cured.” His lip curled back as he said it.
Grace was shaking again. “I don’t need to be cured!”
“You’re unnatural. Something I’m going to fix.” He gestured around the empty basement lab where she was being held prisoner. “My operations have been curtailed lately—those River brothers managed that much—but it doesn’t matter. I already have the serums I need. I can cure you of your base animal tendencies, as well as use the shifter genetic serums I’ve developed as a weapon against our enemies. At least in that way, your kind can prove useful.” He crouched down next to her cage door. “Now, Grace, how about you shift for me? I need a sample of that blood of yours in shifter form with that unique fur color.”
Grace lifted her chin in defiance. “I’m not cooperating with you.”
A small smirk grew on his face. “I was hoping you might say that. I’d be happy to have a witch force you to shift, but bringing witches into the building is a little… inconvenient. But there are other ways to accomplish the same goal, especially for a young woman like yourself who’s particularly inexperienced at controlling her wolf.”
The gleam in his eye made her physically ill. She didn’t want to cooperate, but she knew she couldn’t control her wolf. She’d already lost it once, in her father’s office, revealing herself. She was sure she would lose whatever game Agent Smith wanted to play.
“That won’t be necessary.” Grace closed her eyes and forced herself to shift. She wasn’t sure what would happen next, but when she opened her eyes as a wolf, Agent Smith already had a gun out. A familiar pinch pierced her fur coat. Darkness swam around her, and she lost control of her limbs, slumping to the floor.
The last thing she heard was, “Thank you for your cooperation, Grace.”
Then the darkness closed in.
This time, when Grace started to wake up, she kept her eyes closed.
She was lying on something hard and flat and cold. There were bindings holding her down, across her ankles and hands and chest. The same smell of steel and antiseptic pervaded her nose. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew where she was—the gurney. A sickening drop in her stomach accompanied that realization.
She opened her eyes—Agent Smith sat next to her in that same spinning office chair. Only this time he looked pissed. A glance down at her body, showed she was back to human. She had no recollection of shifting—it must’ve happened while she was out.
Agent Smith loomed closer with his angry face. “I need you to shift again, Grace.”
She scowled at him. “What? Did you spill all the blood you took the first time?”
He spoke through gritted teeth. “Your shifting ability is apparently unstable even when you’re unconscious. You had the annoying tendency of shifting back and forth. Then you shifted human and stayed that way.” He glared at her like he thought she had foiled him on purpose.
“I was unconscious. It’s not like I could control it.” She gave him a look like he was a nutjob. Which he obviously was.
She needed to focus on getting out of this mess, but her thoughts kept drifting to Jared. The idea of him being dead just surged tears to her eyes and threatened to break her heart into pieces. He was just starting to live again… her wolf broke out into a pitiful cry. Grace had to shove her mind away from those thoughts. She could mourn Jared properly once she was free. Or find him… she still held out the faintest of hopes that he had survived. Shifters were tough, and that man was the toughest she had ever seen. Marine tough. But she had to acknowledge the reality—she was on her own here. No one was coming to rescue her.
Agent Smith rose up from his chair and loomed over the gurney. “Are you going to shift for me again, Grace? Or do I need to persuade you?”
The gush of fear was back, but her rising anger fought against it. “You had your chance. I’m not playing your games anymore!”
He snarled and reached over to somewhere she couldn’t see… then came back with something that glinted silver in his hand. She twisted to take a look—the scalpel caught the overhead lights in its stainless steel polish.
“Wait…” she said, suddenly finding it hard to breathe. “What are you doing?”
He didn’t answer, just grabbed hold of her hand, which was bound by a leather cuff, flipped it over to expose the back, and quickly whipped the scalpel across it. A sharp pain jumped from her hand and raced up her arm.
She couldn’t help crying out, more from the shock than the pain. She lifted her head and stared with horror at the blossoming red line. Agent Smith wiped the blood from the scalpel on a small cloth and dropped it next to her.
“Too bad your human blood doesn’t have quite the same properties as your shifter blood. But I’m quite willing to extract as much of it as necessary to get you to shift.”
The stinging pain of the slice quickly faded. But when she didn’t shift
immediately, Agent Smith took another swipe across her hand, making her cry out again.
“You sick fuck!” The pain faded quickly again—she’d always healed super fast from her scrapes and sprains as a child. She knew it was a shifter trait, so she had kept it hidden from her father. But even at a young age, she knew it was unusual.
Agent Smith had this twisted look on his face. “Don’t talk dirty to me, Ms. Krepky.” He snorted at his own joke, but it sent even more chills through her. He retrieved the cloth to wipe the scalpel again and swiped roughly at her hand to clear away the blood.
Then he stared at the back of her hand.
Grace knew the cuts would be gone by now, probably leaving behind faint white lines like they usually did.
A frown slowly morphed his face from the sick, twisted look of enjoyment to one so intense it freaked her out even more. Then he slammed her hand down flat to the gurney and dove into it with the scalpel.
The pain was insane… like he was cutting off her hand! A scream ripped her throat.
He pulled back, holding the bloody scalpel aloft. Shaking with horror, she lifted her head to look—massive amounts of blood gushed up to obscure most of her hand, but the bone and fleshy stubs of muscle were sticking out. Her stomach lurched at the sight. But as she watched, the muscles writhed like snakes, stitching themselves back together. The rest was lost under a coating of blood.
Agent Smith stared open-mouthed at her hand. Then he grabbed the cloth again and roughly scrubbed away the blood. It hurt a little because she was still healing, but by the time he wiped the blood away, she could tell without looking that it was fixed.
The horror on his face would’ve been gratifying, except he still held the bloody scalpel aloft, and that sent lightning strikes of terror through her body.
“Extraordinary,” he whispered, still staring at her now-healed hand. He slowly dragged his gaze up to hers. “You heal very quickly, Ms. Krepky.”
