Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series

by Glenna Sinclair

  The dark skinned man frowned, a nearly imperceptible movement on his exquisitely ageless features. It was like watching a statue come to life, but only barely. Jasper smiled grimly, setting the glass aside. “About the women outside,” he began, changing the subject abruptly.

  “What of them?”

  “I don’t want them touched. I drove through town earlier before I came here and I saw the amount of collateral damage you and your men inflicted while failing to secure the targets this morning.”

  “Your point?”

  His face was a mask of impassivity. But, still, Finney saw something there. He may not have been as obvious as Klaus when it came to hiding something, but that didn’t matter. The Brit could practically smell it on his boss.

  “My point, Mr. Finney, is that cleaning up messes requires resources and time. Neither of which our North American operations have infinite amounts of. We don’t control governments the same way here, and now we have to somehow sweep dead law enforcement under the rug. And two other civilians in addition to that?”

  “You know the old saying, sir: In for a penny…”

  The darker skinned man didn’t react, but instead chose to take another sip of his drink. “That may be in most situations, but not today. You are to release both of them.”

  Finney frowned, bringing up his glass of cognac for the first time since his superior had handed it to him. He took a sip, the taste of vanilla and dried citrus washing over his tongue alongside the alcoholic bite of the warming liquid.

  In all his previous operations, he’d been strictly told that results were what mattered. Strike hard, strike fast. Bring in the blood, bring in the hearts. Leave none alive to mark their passing, and never have a loose end running around. This was a game of immortals, not of men. A game where the only prize worth fighting over was everlasting life.

  Not that anyone would believe a story as wild as the existence of the Council, of course. Hell, people chose to believe in the existence of the Illuminati instead of them. And most of the people who did begin to suspect them were soon ostracized by a coordinated campaign by the council's PR department if they mentioned a word of it publicly, even in the darkest, most dusty corners of the internet.

  So why now? Why begin to care about civilians with the two women out in the carriage house?

  “Mr. Finney?”

  Realizing he’d been lost in his own thoughts about the relaxed attitudes of yesteryear, Mr. Finney blinked twice and gave his superior a flash of teeth. “I’m sorry, sir, what was that?”

  “I asked if I’d made myself clear, Finney. Did I or did I not?”

  Finney nodded, the little smile still on his lips. “Oh, of course you did, sir. Ensure the women survive. Righty-oh.” He paused and collected his thoughts before continuing. “If there's nothing else, sir, I believe I have some hostages to safeguard?”

  Jasper nodded, dismissing him. As Finney turned to leave, though, his superior cleared his throat. “One last thing, Mr. Finney.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Please begin to collect Ms. Springer from her accommodations. I'd like to have her sedated and ready to move as quickly as possible, in light of this little attack on your compound. Clearly the shifters of Frost Security won't be letting her go without a fight. Better to cut our losses and still walk away with a live subject. Wouldn't you agree?”

  “Yes, sir, of course,” Finney replied with a little nod. “I'll make sure Dr. Schneider and his technicians have her stowed away as soon as possible and ready for transport. Are there any other matters I can be of assistance in?”

  Jasper gave him a long, hard look, as if he were taking a complete measure of the man. Finally, though, he shook his head. “No, that will be all.”

  “Jolly good, sir.”

  Mr. Finney's assistant met him as he was closing the door to Jasper's impromptu field office.

  “Sir?” she asked brusquely, getting his attention.

  “What is it?” Finney snapped. “What's going wrong now?”

  She swallowed hard, her eyelid twitching as her eyes danced in her head with fear. “The shifters, sir. They're inside.”

  “Inside?” Finney hissed as he pushed past her, headed for the back doors leading out to the transmitter. “Where?”

  “We don't know, sir. We have security sweeping through looking for them.”

  “How many?”

  “We're not sure.”

  “Well, radio to Klaus to send some men from outside in here so they can take them into custody.”

  She grimaced like she'd just caught a whiff of rotten egg. “Well, sir, you see, the radios aren't exactly working.”

  Finney frowned. “Not working? At all?”

  She shook her head. “I went out and inspected the tower, sir, and someone sabotaged it, expanding the range. We could turn off the power–”

  “Turn it off?” Finney asked with a frown as he came to a stop. “Then the town would be able to contact the outside world again, while our men are still in place. No, that won't be happening. We'll just need to find them without the radios.” He crossed his arms over his chest, biting his thumb in concentration.

  “What should we do, sir?”

  The most important thing right now was getting Ms. Springer out, as his superior had ordered. But now they had the shifters inside the compound, which meant the attack on the side of the compound, with its explosions and gunfire, was simply a distraction. And every minute and every soldier they used to engage with that distraction was a waste of resources.

  Decisions, decisions. If he made the wrong move now, he'd be proving to his superior that he was correct in underestimating him. But if he did pull this off, he could be looking at a promotion within the organization.

  “Go get Klaus,” Mr. Finney said after a moment. “Run. Get him and bring him back to this room. If we hurry, maybe we can cut off their escape route. And, on your way, send a team up to collect Ms. Springer.” Before he'd even finished speaking, he was headed to the door that led to the garden outside, skirting the large table in the center of the room. “We need her sedated and ready to move, per our new instructions.”

  “Anything else, sir?”

  “Yes, there is one other thing.” Without even sparing her a glance, he simply stuck out his hand, palm up. “Your pistol.”

  She hesitated for a moment, but there was finally the snap of her leather holster as she popped open the strap that secured it in place. She placed it in his hand.

  “Silver, I assume?”

  “Yes, sir,” his assistant replied. “Per your instruction.”

  “Good,” he said and resumed his previous trajectory.

  “Sir? Where are you headed now, in case I need further instruction?”

  “To see our two insurance policies in the carriage house. I want to know why our superior wants them alive so badly. Now move!”

  Chapter Forty-five – Vanessa

  I cracked my makeshift weapon—a padlock in a sock—right across the jaw of the guard stationed outside Jessica’s door.

  He’d seen me coming and squawked for me to halt as I went running right at him, but his armor was poorly placed to stop a solid piece of steel being spun by a spry woman already at a dead sprint. He’d brought his baton up, but I painfully batted it away with my other arm, knocking it aside so I could get a strike at his face.

  “Vanessa?” Jessica shouted through the door. “Is that you?”

  “Are you okay?” I called back as I threw back the bolt and flung the door open.

  “Oh my God! What’s going on outside?” She glanced down at the guard, unconscious on the floor. “Shit! Who did that?”

  I gave her a look. “Who do you think?”

  She mouthed a silent, “Wow.” Then, “No wonder you and Peter hooked up. You’re both so hardcore!”

  I rolled my eyes as I stepped inside our gilded cage. “Jessica, get your shit. We gotta go. The guys are somewhere downstairs, and we’ve got to get to them. They�
�re only here because of us.”

  “Is that them? I thought it was, but I wasn’t sure. When I asked the guards, they didn’t answer. One of them just said he was going to check to see what was going on, but he never came back.”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding. “It’s them. I can feel it.”

  “I can, too.” She paused, giving me a look. “Wait, you can? Does that mean…?”

  I nodded again, flashing her a wolfish smile. “It does. Point me at the moon and I’ll howl all night. But we’ve got to move now, okay?”

  “Okay, let’s do it.” Her eyes glanced down at my bare feet. “Shoes?”

  I shook my head as she joined me at the door. “They took them off of me in the clinic downstairs, and I couldn’t find them.”

  “Clinic?” she asked as I dragged her out the door and into the little hallway that led to the stairs, which curled around to downstairs. I’d heard the occasional bit of shouting as I came up, but none of the voices had sounded like Peter or Richard. I’d heard some muffled gunfire earlier, too, but I wasn’t sure of the caliber or type of gun. For all I knew, the guys from Frost could have made it inside, or civil war had broken out among the members of Jaeger-Tech. Either was likely, as far as I was concerned.

  As we headed to the stairs, I briefly explained what they were doing with my blood.

  “Why?”

  “No clue. The doctor just said he was studying it, but that the Council was the one who use all the blood. They’d just been giving him samples to work with.” I licked my dry, chapped lips. “Until now, of course. Whatever they’re doing, though, we’ve gotta get out of here.”

  We set foot on the stairs, with me leading the way, my bare feet padding in near silence down the cool flagstone tile.

  Together, Jessica and I rounded the corners, moving as fast we could, as quietly as we could. We hit the fourth floor and, having met no resistance or guards of any kind, kept moving through the flat area and past a door almost identical to Jessica and my cell on the floor above. We got to the head of the next set of stairs and cautiously moved forward, gradually picking up speed as we tried to make good time to meet up with our would-be rescuers.

  And there, at the top of the stairs, that’s when I smelled him

  Peter.

  It was like a warm wave of summer, distilled into some olfactory form, coming up the stairwell to us from the floor below. And, right alongside his musk, was the distinct smell of gunpowder and oil.

  Peter Frost. My mate. The man of my dreams. The man I was meant to be with until the end of my days, before that future had been wrenched away from both of us by terrorizing forces.

  My heart jumped into overdrive at just this smallest whiff of him, my body beginning to warm at the thought of holding him again, at my lips having a chance to press themselves to his one more time. He was here. He was really here and it wasn’t just some crazy intuition. It wasn’t just some dream of a grief-stricken woman.

  I reached back, grabbed hold of Jessica’s hand, and pulled her forward.

  And that, right there, was my mistake.

  Jessica, surprised by my sudden yank of her hand, stumbled a little on the stairs, her feet tangling up beneath her. She cried out as she fell forward, knocking into me.

  I have great reflexes. Amazing grace. I can do a back handspring on a balance beam. At one point I could even do a standing back flip.

  But have a woman over a hundred pounds slam into me from behind while I’m on steep stairs that turn at odd angles, and I’m all left feet.

  The world upended itself as, together, Jessica and I tumbled forward down the stairs, all arms and legs. We were a mass of screams as we formed together into a ball and went end-over-end, the world spinning and twisting around us in a wild, raucous blur of color and motion.

  If you’ve never fallen down stone stairs, just take my word for it: don’t. Don’t do it.

  And certainly don’t end up in a tangle of bruised, contorted limbs at the feet of a pack of security guards who want to capture you.

  Because that’s exactly what we did.

  Chapter Forty-six – Peter

  “Dammit!” I roared. “She’s not here!”

  Richard and I stood in the ransacked clinic, medical devices beeping at us, the smell of Vanessa’s blood thick in the air. We’d cleared the floor on the way here and hadn’t met any additional resistance. At my feet, one of the technicians that had been knocked unconscious began to stir, a younger looking kid in his mid-twenties.

  My partner was on me in a heartbeat, pushing me back from the kid to give him some room. Clearly he knew I wasn’t dealing with a full deck of cards at this point, not with Vanessa having been subjected to all this and still missing.

  “Hey,” Murdoch called, nudging the kid with the tip of a steel-toed combat boot, his gun held at ease but more than ready to swing into position at a moment’s notice. “We’re looking for Vanessa Springer. Was she here?”

  “Vanessa…?” he asked before smacking his lips, his eyes distant and vacant. “The subject? Was that her name?”

  I leaped forward, swearing. As soon as I got to him, I was going to crush his skull in. Subject? Test subject, he meant?

  Richard strong-armed me back on instinct, knocking me back into reality. “Whoa, Pete. Yeah, that’s her name. Where’d she go?” The kid rolled onto his back and tried to sit up. Richard promptly put a boot on his chest, indicating he needed to stay down. “Where’d she go, kid?”

  The kid flopped onto his back, sighing in exhaustion as he brought a hand up to his head. His face had swelled considerably, probably from some trauma. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know! I was fighting with my dipshit of a boss over there, and next thing I know, I’m laid out on the floor. I think it was her, I think, but I can’t be sure.”

  Silently, I fumed. I turned away from Richard and stomped over to the older man in the lab coat, the one curled up against the wall like he’d been hiding from a mad shifter woman on a warpath.

  “What do you think?” Murdoch called.

  I glanced back at him, my lips formed into a sneer, my jaw clenched tighter than a workbench vice on full press. “I think she’s gone.”

  Richard looked back over his shoulder at me. “Maybe she went to get Jessica?”

  “Maybe,” I said, immediately regretting that I’d dragged him onto this floor. As tight as time was, I should have made the right call. But, no, I had to come investigate this shithole.

  “What were you doing here, anyway?” Murdoch asked the boy.

  When he didn’t get an immediate response, the kid squealed in protest. “Fuck, that hurts! What?”

  “I asked what you were doing in here, asshole!”

  “Drawing blood! Watching her vitals! Dr. Schneider knew everything, not us!”

  I couldn’t tell if it was a lie. All I could smell was fear rolling off the kid, which was understandable. I don’t think most people signed up for things like this expecting to have paramilitary sticking guns in their faces at the end of a long workday. Of course, I could always be wrong. After all, I’d been wrong about sweeping this floor, hadn’t I?

  I turned back around to face Richard’s back, where he was bent over the kid and sticking the rifle in his face. “We’re not going to get anything from him. Let’s go. Let’s get your mate.” I reached out, gripped him the shoulder, and tugged him toward the door.

  Suddenly, though, the kid’s face changed. It changed from one of confusion and fear to something akin to understanding and deeper fear. “Oh my God,” he whispered as we turned to leave. “You’re transmorphs, too, aren’t you? Just like her?”

  I stopped in my tracks as Murdoch stilled right next to me. I turned back to him as he sat up and leaned against a set of cabinets in front of the medical bed. At his feet, a female tech was still passed out, her face serene as the world passed her by.

  God, to be like that. To just be oblivious and blissfully unaware. Or maybe she was just faking it, letting the world
happen around her, to her.

  “Transmorphs?” I repeated.

  “That’s what Dr. Schneider named you guys…named your…people?”

  I glanced at Murdoch, and he had the same look on his face that I know I did. One of disgust. I looked back to the kid. “We’re shifters. That’s it. End of story. No need to come up with a new name for us, we did it a long time ago.”

  With that, we turned to go. These people weren’t going to be any help to us. All they’d done is raise more questions about what Jaeger-Tech wanted with us. Blood samples? Vitals? Subjects? There weren’t any answers here. Just stumbling blocks to finding Vanessa and Jessica.

  We left the kid holding his head and trying to wake the girl up, hit the hallway, and began to hustle back to the stairs. Two more floors. Two more floors was it.

  And then we heard them.

  The mutual, entwined screams of our mates as they came down the stairs. Screams of terror, of surprise, of shock. And, more importantly, we smelled them.

  Without so much as a glance at each other, Richard and I forgot all our military training and went racing down the hall toward the source of the sound.

  Chapter Forty-seven – Vanessa

  “Get down!”

  “Stay down!”

  “Floor, floor!”

  The three people above us, two women and one man, screamed as they waved the muzzles of their rifles in our faces. Hands up, palms out, we tried to placate them, but they kept screaming.

  If it had just been me, I would have gone after them. Maybe they had silver, maybe they didn’t. But it would have been my choice.

  It wasn’t just me, though. Jessica was here, too. A member of my pack. A woman I’d pledged to look after. A woman I already loved and cared for like a sister.

  “On your stomach!”

  “Hands behind your head!”

  And still, outside, gunshots resounded. There was another explosion, and we all heard a scream of an unknown man, one crying for his mother as he bled out on the battlefield.

  There wasn’t any way we were going to get out of this, not with the way their fingers were clearly itching to pull the triggers of their rifles.