by Alisa Woods
A sickening dread ran through her with those words. She lifted her trembling chin to him. “It’s just what shifters do.”
His eyes widened a little. “You’ve been isolated. Kept away from other shifters. What would you know about what shifters can do… and not.” He almost was talking to himself, not to her.
She scowled, but at least he was putting the scalpel down. Then he seemed to think better of that and snatched it back up again, holding it up to her face.
She shrunk away, crying out an inarticulate sound of fear. “Stop!”
He got in her face, close enough to smell his foul breath. “Shift!” he demanded, his lips twitching with anger and a bizarre kind of insanity.
“Okay, I will, I swear!” She squeezed her eyes shut, turning away from him and focusing on calling her wolf. A moment later, she had shifted, but she was still trapped on the gurney with bindings at her feet and hands that seemed to shrink to her form. A wide leather strap across her chest also held her down.
She looked back to Agent Smith, to make sure he had put away the scalpel. He had taken several steps back, looking at her with wide eyes again, this time in shock. “You shifted,” he whispered to himself.
Wasn’t that what he wanted? Fuck, this guy was straight-up crazy.
He pointed the scalpel at her but kept his distance. “Shift back to human!” he ordered.
She did, struggling to worm her way back into her clothes during the shift. Her skirt managed to stay in place during the change, but her blouse was half off her shoulder, and her bra was down around her waist. She was in danger of being exposed, but that was the least of her problems.
Agent Smith stalked over with the scalpel, brandishing it in front of her face again. “I gave you the suppressor! How are you still able to shift?” Spittle was forming at the edges of his mouth. “What’s so special about you, Grace? What is this… this… unnatural ability to heal? Is it related to your rare pigment? Have you always had this ability?”
At least she could answer that last one. “Yes, as long as I can remember. I’ve always healed pretty much instantly.” She hoped that would keep the scalpel from coming closer.
But his eyes continued to hold a kind of horror. “This isn’t something to cure,” he said, talking to himself again. “This is way too valuable.” He snapped his fingers, excited about some thought inside his crazy head. “The serums… the side effects… this would eliminate them.” He looked back to her with wild eyes. “Our attempts to create super soldiers have been hapless at best. The subjects are hard-pressed to withstand the change. But if they had this ability—this enhanced healing ability of yours—then there is literally nothing we couldn’t do.”
Her mouth dropped open. Super soldiers? What the hell?
The crazy in his eyes just simmered up to high. “How far does this super healing of yours go?”
“I… I don’t know…” She was having a hard time breathing.
“Maybe we need to find out.”
He came at her with the scalpel again.
She screamed until she was hoarse… and prayed someone would hear.
Jared cruised into the nondescript office building as if he actually belonged there.
Piper had worked up an ID for him, complete with his photo and all the right security protocols, but it was nine o’clock at night and pretty suspicious for him to be straggling into work.
Or maybe not, given this was an NSA building. They must have all kinds of unconventional activities. But security also had to be tight. His cover story of visiting from another division with some kind of high clearance waiver to get inside without an escort would hopefully hold up. It wasn’t far from the truth, given Piper had pulled in all her favors to make this happen. Jared didn’t know what the NSA was up to or how Agent Smith could be conducting secret experiments on shifters without them knowing, but everything was compartmentalized in intelligence. The right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, most of the time, by design. So it was possible Agent Smith had gone off book, and his activities weren’t officially sanctioned, at least by the NSA.
Clearly the Senator approved.
A guard with a badge that read “Johnson” gave Jared a dark-eyed stare as he passed the ID through the scanner. Jared hadn’t brought a weapon of any kind—Piper had warned him about the weapons scanner. Even if he was permitted to carry, they might check the registration. Which would not bode well for actually getting past the checkpoint.
“Good evening,” Jared said, trying to appear cool yet friendly. Definitely not someone sneaking in with falsified ID.
Johnson just gave him a nod and raised a hand to keep him from cruising through the weapons arch. The guard checked Jared’s ID on the computer at his station. Apparently, the clearance via scan wasn’t sufficient.
It took an agonizing ten seconds, but Johnson finally waved him through the arch. Thankfully, Jared’s hidden mic and earbud didn’t set it off. Then again, they were mainly plastic, designed for minimum detectability, and he currently had them switched off. He was going into this with his shifter abilities and an urgent need to rescue Grace, but not much else.
Once he was down the hall and around the corner, striding past offices that appeared locked, he activated his earbud and the microphone sewn into the collar of his white dress shirt.
“All right, I’m in,” he whispered. Jace was on the other end to guide him. Taylor, their computer whiz within the pack, had tricked out Jared’s phone to help with some of the security measures he might encounter, but mostly the pack was on standby outside, in case Jared got into trouble he couldn’t get out of—then they would come and get him and Grace the hell out of there by force.
Which was no one’s preferred option.
If they all got caught, Olivia had documentation ready to go public—hopefully, that would pull them out of whatever government tangle they found themselves in. It was a great plan, except he had no idea where Grace actually was inside the building.
“Okay,” Jace said over the tiny earbud stuck way inside Jared’s ear. “I need you to get your phone next to one of the security scanners by a door. Hopefully, Taylor’s hack will let you access the entry and exit log, so we can track down Agent Smith. Or Sanders. If he’s calling himself something else, it might be a little more tricky.”
“Copy that.” Jared shuffled quietly down the hall. The whole place seemed to have emptied out, at least on this level. He fished his phone out of his pocket and held it up to one of the scanners near the end of the hall. “All right, phone in place.”
His phone made a few pinging sounds, and the face of it popped up an app that was remotely activated by Taylor and running through some kind of protocol.
Jared heard a scuffle of shoes down the hall, and he leaned against the doorway, blocking what he was doing with his body. Whoever it was disappeared down another turn.
“Any chance of moving this along faster?” he asked in a whisper.
“Standby.” That was Jace again. It took another ten seconds or so, but his brother finally said, “All right, Taylor says she’s in the basement. Apparently, Agent Smith’s been down there for most of the day.”
Most of the day. Shit. His stomach bunched into a hard knot, and he had to not think about Grace being in Agent Smith’s grasp. His worst fears were biting at the edges of his mind—had been ever since he found out Agent Smith had her—but Jared was here, now, to get her. He had to focus on that, or his nightmares would keep him from doing what he needed to do.
Jared scanned his way into the elevator and then used his keycard to access the buttons for the basement. “There are three levels of basement here, guys,” he said into the mic.
“Sanders scanned into Room 312,” Jace responded. “I’m guessing third level down.”
Made sense. Jared punched the number, and the elevator swooped down. When the doors opened, he stepped out but froze almost immediately. There was a distant keening that prickled the hairs on the back of
his neck. It was way too high-pitched, far too much like he imagined Grace would sound if she were screaming.
He took off in the direction of the sound. “Did you hear that?” he whispered as he ran, trying to keep his footsteps light so as not to give any warning.
“Not picking up anything but your heavy breathing,” Jace said.
Jared scanned the door numbers and finally found Room 312. The sound had stopped, and he hesitated at the door. Surprise was about the only thing he had going for him. He held the key card in one hand and braced his other hand on the doorknob.
“I’m going in,” he whispered. Just before he scanned the key card, another scream let loose—it was definitely inside the room. His heart lurched. He shoved open the door as soon as it clicked the clearance and barreled into the room as fast as he could, but then he stumbled to a stop—Agent Smith hovered over a gurney with someone strapped to it. That someone was covered in blood, but even from across the room, Jared could see the long tumble of brown hair…
Grace.
Jared roared and shifted as he leaped across the room to reach them. Agent Smith was buried in his godforsaken act of torture, and Jared almost reached him before he could react. At the last second, the man pulled a gun from his blood-flecked G-man jacket—it went off just as Jared arrived in a blinding fury of fur and teeth and claws. A screaming pain ripped through Jared’s shoulder, but his momentum barreled him into Agent Smith and took him down. Jared lunged for his throat, just barely clamping his jaws around it when the gun went off again, this time punching Jared in the gut and loosening his hold. That fucking gun! He shifted back to human and made a grab for it. They were grappling close-quarters now. Smith was tall, but weak, at least compared to Jared’s shifter strength, even with two bullets in him. He quickly wrestled the gun away, shoved it into Agent Smith’s side, and pulled the trigger.
He felt the body convulse against him as the bullet ripped through. The shocked look on Agent Smith’s face made it clear the bullet had done its job. Jared had seen that face many times before, usually plowed into the dirt, twisted and crumpled from his distant shot. Sometimes they wore a splatter of blood, like Agent Smith did. Sometimes it just pooled around their bodies, an inching red stain on the earth.
Jared shuddered as a warm, wet liquid slid past his knee—his naked, post-shift body was still clinging to Agent Smith’s. Jared shoved away, climbing up from the floor and shakily pointing the gun at Agent Smith’s head. But the man’s look of shock was fixed. Jared didn’t need to pull the trigger.
Smith was dead.
That didn’t stop Jared from wanting to pump five more bullets into him. At the same time, he was frozen in place, hand shaking and heart racing.
A static of shouts sounded in his ear. Numbly, he dug the earbud out and dropped it to the ground to make it shut up. But the voices kept coming. Nearby. Someone was calling his name. A strangled cry of frustration finally snapped him out of his haze.
“Jared!” It was Grace, still strapped to the gurney and covered with blood. Oh God, the blood. Everywhere.
He dropped the gun, staggered to her side, and tried to force his shaking hands to work the straps. “Grace, Grace…” His damn hands were useless, bumbling. His vision blurred as her blood-soaked form lay before him. “Oh God, Grace, he hurt you.” His voice was a sob. His mind was shutting down. He couldn’t get the straps off. With a growl that rumbled through his entire body, he shifted one handful of claws and ripped the bindings free.
She lurched up from the gurney and wrapped her arms around his neck. The hot, slick feel of her blood sliding across his body made him nearly double over in pain. Jared should never have asked her to do this thing, this terrible, stupid thing of revealing what she was. This was all his fault. His fault.
His arms were shaking as they held her.
“I’m okay,” she whispered against his cheek. “I promise, I’m okay.”
She was hugging him and telling him everything was fine, but the world was closing down around him. Her shredded, blood-soaked clothes pressed against his naked body. Everything inside him clenched and twisted. He was turning inside out with the pain of it.
“Grace, I have to get you… Jace is outside… he can stitch you up.” God, what had he done? Tears threatened to overwhelm him.
“Jared, look at me!” she ordered as she stepped back from him and held him at arm’s length. “I am fine!”
She was absolutely covered everywhere in blood, and yet… somehow she was still standing. He didn’t understand it.
She must be in shock.
He gently took her shoulders in his hands. They were shaking less now. “You’re not fine, sweet Grace. Honey, he’s hurt you. We need to get you some help.”
His legs were weak, probably from the gunshot wounds in his shoulder and through his side, or he’d be scooping her up in his arms right now.
She gave him a crazy half smile that blew his mind, then stepped back out of his reach to the cabinet. He watched in a daze as she grabbed a towel and started wiping herself down. Slowly the blood came off… and what was left behind astounded him. Her beautiful, creamy flesh was crisscrossed with thin white lines, but the blood… the blood all wiped away.
And there were no gaping wounds left behind.
He stumbled over to her, finally in command of his senses again, and grabbed hold of her shoulders, scanning her up and down.
She put her delicate hands on his cheeks and brought his gaze back up to hers. “I won’t say it didn’t hurt.” Her lips trembled in a way that made him want to kill Agent Smith all over again. “But I’m all right now. I think…” She stood a little straighter. “I know I’m different than other shifters. I heal faster. In fact, so much so that I blew Agent Smith’s mind. He decided to test the limits of how fast I could heal. Lots of times.”
A lump surged up in his throat. “Oh God, Grace, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? You’re rescuing me, right? That’s not something to be sorry about.” She looked a little concerned now.
A small laugh bubbled up, a crazy one, so he kept it inside. “Yes, I’m rescuing you.” He looked her up and down again, disbelieving, but it seemed just as she said. She had scars—so many scars, God—but no open wounds. Bloody clothes but no bleeding cuts. “Are you really okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”
She smiled. “I am now.” She looked to Agent Smith’s body on the floor behind him. “Please tell me he’s really dead.”
Jared dropped his hands from her shoulders and clenched them tight at his sides. “I want to kill him again. About ten more times for what he did to you.”
Grace narrowed her eyes at the body. “I would have done it myself if you hadn’t.” She looked back at him, her gaze roaming over his naked, blood-covered body. Some of the blood was hers, some Agent Smith’s, but some was definitely leaking out of him. “He shot you, didn’t he? I heard the gun go off, but I couldn’t see—”
“I’m fine, Grace.” And he was, even though the pain was throbbing through his mental haze and making him dizzy. But there must not be anything major hit—he wasn’t crashing like he had when Agent Smith shot him the first three times.
She frowned. “We need to get you out of here. Soon. But first…” She gestured around the lab. “The serums are here. All his research is here. We have to destroy everything before we leave.”
His head was buzzing with relief, but she was right—they had to think through what to do next. Agent Smith was dead. More than one shot had been fired; Jared couldn’t even remember how many at this point.
“Someone will be here any second,” he said. “They will have heard the gunfire.”
Grace shook her head. “Maybe not. I’ve been screaming… well, for a long time. But this place is soundproofed. I think he brought a lot of people here.”
That wrenching feeling wanted to turn him inside out again. Smith had tortured her. Fuck. He pulled her into his arms again, holding her tight. “Grace, I’m dying inside th
at you suffered through all this. All because of me.” He was choking up again as he held her.
She pulled back and peered into his eyes. “Jared River, the only thing that got me through was the hope that I would live to find you. And here you are, rescuing me! You’re literally the answer to all my prayers.” Her eyes were shining, and her words crashed into him and stirred things around. Just like they always did.
He allowed himself a small smile. “I could say the same thing about you.”
Her beautiful eyes glittered with something like hope, and it made his heart soar.
She smiled up at him. “We definitely need to discuss this further. Later. But right now…”
“No, you’re right.” He sucked in a breath—she really was all right. And they needed to focus on getting out. “Show me what we need to destroy. Then we’re getting the hell out of here.”
Jared scrambled to get his clothes back on, his two gunshot wounds making a mess of everything. He fumbled to make sure the microphone was still sewn into his collar, but he couldn’t find the earbud.
They had to be panicking outside, so he just spoke into the mic. “I’ve found Grace. Agent Smith is dead. We’re destroying his research. Lost audio. Will be leaving the building when we're done.” Turning to Grace he said, “My brothers and the pack are waiting for us outside. They’re probably losing their minds.” Jared hoped they could hear that, and it would calm down whatever chaos was going on in the van.
He and Grace quickly searched the cabinets, finding hundreds of refrigerated vials. They poured out what they could into the sink and smashed the rest. But the most important research data was almost certain to be stored electronically on the computers scattered around the lab.
“Were going to have a hard time destroying all this,” Jared said. There were three laptops and two desktop computers.
“That’s okay,” Grace said. “We’re taking it with us.” She snagged the laptops and handed them to Jared, then went at the desktops until she had the covers off and could dig inside. She quickly pulled out two hard drives, straggling wires behind.
