by Paige Tyler
“She’s upstairs,” he growled at Remy.
“Go!” Remy ordered. “I’ll back this guy out of your way.”
Before Alex could tell his friend that wasn’t necessary, Remy stepped around him and walked straight toward the guard. The guy got off another shot, this one burying itself somewhere in Remy’s shoulder. Remy didn’t slow down but simply lifted his gun and started popping shots into the cinder-block wall inches from the guard’s head. The man ducked away from the exploding concrete, then began backpedaling down the hallway as Remy put round after round into the wall near his head.
Alex didn’t hang around to see more. He hit the stairs at a run, just as more gunfire erupted throughout the building. It sounded like Brooks and Max had run into trouble too.
Kelsey’s scent grew stronger with every step. Alex shoved open the metal door to the second floor just in time to see the doctor and another guard dragging a very woozy Carla Jones toward the elevator at the far end of the hallway. The guard turned, holding Carla in front of him while he drew his weapon and aimed it in Alex’s direction.
Seeing the man with one of the kidnapped girls put an end to any uncertainty in Alex’s mind about the guards’ involvement in the situation. Alex’s bullet went through the part of the man’s shoulder that wasn’t hidden behind the girl. The guard went down, taking Carla with him.
That left the doctor standing there alone. His eyes widened in fear as Alex advanced on him. The gun probably didn’t scare him nearly as much as the sight of Alex’s fangs and glowing gold eyes. Alex didn’t give a damn. Closing the distance between them, he dug his claws into the man’s lab coat and smashed him against the nearest wall before tossing him down the hallway.
Bending down, Alex gently picked up Carla from the floor, moving her off to the side so he could sit her up against the wall. She was heavily drugged, so she was pretty much out of it, but her eyes still widened when she caught sight of his face.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Alex closed his eyes and took deep, slow breaths, trying to get his shift back under control. He’d done it. He’d found the girls. He could calm down now.
He was almost there when he heard pounding coming from either side of him. He opened his eyes and saw two girls peering at him through the slim glass insert of the doors they were locked behind. Sara Collins was on his left, Abigail Elliott on the right.
Alex was up and moving, still fighting to get his fangs and claws to behave themselves. He reached the door on the right in two strides and slammed his shoulder into it. The minute it flew open, he had an armful of frightened girl trying to attach herself to him like an alien life form.
He put his hands on Abigail’s shoulders, gently trying to get her to arm’s length so he could check for injuries, but now that she’d latched on to him, she refused to let go. She didn’t seem injured, but she was definitely in full-on panic mode, and the terror burning brightly in her eyes was heart-wrenching to see.
Murmuring something he hoped would calm her down, he wrapped his arm around her and led her across the corridor so he could rescue Sara. Fortunately, Max came running out of the stairwell just then and helped get the terrified girl off him.
“I got her,” Max said softly.
Alex took advantage of the assistance, gently disengaging from Abigail so he could smash open the other door. Thankfully, Sara didn’t latch on to him like Abigail, but instead hurried down the hallway to check on Carla. Alex quickly moved to the next door down the corridor, knowing from the scent coming from underneath that it was Kelsey’s room.
But when he burst inside, Kelsey wasn’t there.
His heart beating faster, he ran out and kicked in the next door, then the next, even though he knew those rooms were empty too.
Alex raced back down the hallway. Carla was still out of it, and Abigail seemed too frazzled to help, but Sara looked reasonably calm.
“Where’s Kelsey?” he asked urgently as he dropped to a knee beside her.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. They came and took her out of here on a stretcher five minutes before you showed up. I don’t know where they took her.”
Alex growled, his fangs sliding out again. Fuck!
Getting to his feet, he turned toward the door to the stairwell before looking back at Max and the three girls. Sara might be able to walk out of here on her own, but the other two sure as hell couldn’t.
“I’ll get them out of here,” Max said. “Go after Kelsey.”
Alex nodded, then turned and sprinted for the stairwell, praying he wasn’t too late.
* * *
Lacey was waiting as patiently as she could in Alex’s truck, sure everything was going to be fine, that Alex and his SWAT teammates would get Kelsey and the other girls out, when an ambulance pulled into the parking lot and backed up to the loading dock along the rear of the building. Ten seconds later, a guy in a white lab coat came out the back door of the building, wheeling a gurney with someone on it. The driver, also dressed in a white lab coat, got out and helped the man shove the gurney into the back of the ambulance. Then both men turned and disappeared inside the building.
She thought her heart had been pumping hard before, but she’d been wrong. Right now it was thudding so wildly, she thought it might jump out of her chest. The person on that gurney was almost certainly one of the girls who’d been kidnapped—maybe even Kelsey. Lacey couldn’t let these people drive away with whoever it was.
For half a second, she wondered if she should try to call Alex, but then chided herself for how dumb that was. He wasn’t going to answer his cell phone in the middle of looking for the girls. If she wanted to tell him, she’d have to go into the building and find him, and she didn’t have time for that. She had no idea where he and the other SWAT guys even were.
Opening the door, Lacey hopped out of the truck and ran for the loading dock before she lost her courage—or came to her senses.
She was gasping for air before she even got to the knee-high loading dock, for no other reason than she was so terrified, it felt like her throat was closing up. She slowed as she ducked her head to peek in the back of the ambulance, suddenly scared of what she would see. What if whoever was on the gurney was already dead?
Her breath hitched at the sight of the girl’s blond hair. Heart in her throat, she climbed into the ambulance, sobbing out loud at the sight of her sister lying there so still. But Kelsey was breathing, albeit slowly. Knowing she’d never be able to carry her, Lacey jerked on the gurney, trying to back it out of the ambulance. She didn’t have a lot of time before those men came back.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when the building behind her erupted with gunfire. The urge to run inside after Alex shocked her to the core. It was so strong that she almost gave in. Then she got a grip on herself. Alex was a werewolf. He could take care of himself. Kelsey couldn’t. Lacey had to get her out of here—now.
She’d just figured out the wheels of the gurney were locked into the ambulance and that she was going to have to release the latch on the floor to get her out when a familiar voice right behind her froze her solid.
“Well, isn’t this precious?” Pendergraff said.
Lacey snapped her head around just in time to see the butt of a pistol coming down straight at her temple. Stars exploded in her vision, and she found her knees giving out no matter how much she fought to stay upright.
“Drive!” Pendergraff snarled to someone in the front of the vehicle.
Lacey stumbled backward, falling to the floor as the ambulance sped away from the loading dock. Her head hit something on the way down, but while it made her vision swim even worse than it already was, oddly enough, it didn’t hurt. A part of her realized that was probably a bad thing.
All those thoughts got pushed aside as a man in a white lab coat leaned over Kelsey. Lacey grit her teeth, trying to push herself uprig
ht so she could grab the man’s leg. Pendergraff kicked her in the shoulder, knocking her down.
“The only reason I didn’t shoot you on sight is because there might be a few parts in you that someone can use,” he sneered, the scars on his face making the expression even more evil looking. “But if you piss me off, I’ll shoot you in the head. No one will need that.”
Lacey stopped trying to get up, but only because she realized they wouldn’t do anything to Kelsey while they were in the ambulance. She needed to wait and pray that Alex would find them in time—or she lucked out and managed to rescue them both on her own.
Chapter 18
Alex followed Kelsey’s scent through the first floor and out the back of the building, ignoring the growls and shooting going on all around him. When he came out on a loading dock, he discovered that things were even worse than he’d feared. Kelsey’s scent was definitely back here, but so was Lacey’s, which meant she’d been on this dock mere seconds ago. He glanced hopefully at his truck, but she wasn’t there. His head started to spin. What the hell had Lacey been doing back here?
She’d been trying to help her sister, because he’d completely fucked up that task himself.
Shit.
As much as Alex wanted to continue the mental ass kicking he was giving himself, he needed to focus. He sniffed the air, picking up the smell of burnt tires. A vehicle had just squealed away from the building, and his gut told him Lacey and Kelsey were inside it. Looking up, he saw a pair of taillights disappearing into the darkness in the distance. That had to be them.
Alex took off running, only to stop before he’d gone a hundred feet. He could run damn fast, but there was no way he could catch a vehicle, not with the head start this one had.
He stood in the middle of the road, weighing his options. Knowing Kelsey had been kidnapped so they could harvest her organs, he could make a few educated guesses about where that vehicle had been taking Lacey and her sister. This part of town had a lot of hospitals and surgical clinics, which was likely why so many of McDonald’s research facilities were located in this area. If they were planning to cut into Kelsey, it would stand to reason they were heading for a place that could handle a major surgery. Even if he threw out all the hospitals—they’d definitely notice something weird going on—it still left a lot of places to search.
He reached for his phone, thinking Becker and his damn computers could do something, but then stopped. He couldn’t just wait around and hope Becker might figure out where Lacey and her sister were. He’d wasted time once before up in Rochester, and innocent people had paid the price.
Alex jogged back to the loading dock, going with the only real link he had to Lacey and Kelsey—their scents. While he could smell both of them, Lacey’s scent was much stronger. Maybe it was thanks to the connection that had been developing between them before everything went wrong.
He closed his eyes, pushing his shift and trying to lock onto her scent. Once he had it, he moved away from the loading dock, praying he could stay on her scent even though she was in a moving vehicle. But the scent began to get lighter the farther he moved from the loading dock. Within fifty feet, it disappeared completely.
He doubled back and picked up the scent again, then leaned down closer to the ground as he fought to force his shift as far as he could take it. Both Khaki and Brooks had said his inability to push his shift was holding back his sense of smell. Now was the time to get past that.
He pushed so hard that his jaw ached as the bones popped, making room for more teeth. Lacey’s scent immediately got stronger, and he broke into a run as he moved out onto the main road in front of the building. But once again, the trail began to fade the moment he got to the place where the vehicle he was trying to follow had picked up speed. Alex let out a growl of rage and frustration that reverberated off the nearby buildings. Spent, he dropped to his knees in the grass beside the road.
He closed his eyes and sat back on his heels, shoving against that wall inside himself that had always kept him from fully connecting with his inner wolf. Even though he’d spent years training with Gage and the other members of the Pack who could pull off a full shift, he’d never knocked a dent in that wall. He had no idea why he hadn’t been able to do it, and right then, he didn’t care. He needed to track Lacey’s scent, or she was going to die. He was going to push his shift as far as he had to, because he flat-out refused to let another person—especially Lacey or Kelsey—die because he’d screwed up again. What had happened with that family in Rochester was never happening again. He didn’t care what he had to do.
Gage always talked about relaxing and letting the shift roll through you, but Alex didn’t have time to relax and let anything happen. He needed to shift—and he needed to do it now.
Eyes still closed, he visualized the wolf form he wanted to take, then reached out to that shape. He dug his fingers into the fur of the mental image of the beast in his head, dragging it toward him. He poured every ounce of rage, frustration, and fear he had into the effort, imagining himself becoming one with the wolf inside. He didn’t have to try very hard to find the ragged and raw emotions necessary to do it. The thought of Lacey and Kelsey ending up like Nicole Arend was all it took.
He hadn’t realized he’d fallen forward onto his hands until he felt his arms explode in pain. He ignored the sensation and kept reaching for the image of the wolf in his head.
He could feel the change coming, so fast it seemed like every part of his body was ripping apart at the same time. The pain of bones and muscles twisting into new shapes, ligaments and tendons popping like pieces of wet string, and fur shoving its way through his skin was so intense, all he could do was let out a sound that started as a shout and quickly became a howl so loud, it seemed to tear apart the night air.
A part of Alex realized he probably should have pulled off his clothes before trying to shift, but it was way too late for that. There was no way to stop it now. He wouldn’t know how to stop this even if he’d wanted to.
His T-shirt shredded like tissue paper as his back elongated and shoulders twisted downward in a totally different shape. The jeans didn’t hold up much longer, though the big leather belt started to hurt like hell as it constricted across his stomach. He instinctively reached down with his head and snapped through the thick leather with a mouthful of teeth he hadn’t realized he’d grown. He was more worried about the boots, but they were the easiest part. When his feet changed into paws, he simply stepped out of them.
He felt powerful, ready to explode into motion as he stood there on all four paws instead of his hands and knees. He would have expected everything to feel strange and off-balance. But he felt as comfortable in his wolf form as he did in his human one.
He looked down, lingering on the broad expanse of his furry chest before moving to his huge paws sinking deep into the grass. He took a few quick steps and was relieved to discover that all four legs seemed to work together properly without him having to think about it. He glanced back at the remains of his clothes, wallet, cell phone, and weapon. There was nothing to be done. He would have to leave all of it here.
Alex moved forward, not sure if it would be as easy to run as it was to walk, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. He had bigger concerns to focus on, namely Lacey. He took a deep breath through his nose, and a million different scents seemed to explode in his head. Within seconds, he filtered through them and tossed aside all of them but Lacey’s.
If he wasn’t so freaking worried about Lacey and her sister, Alex would have laughed at how easy it was to pick up Lacey’s scent now—if a wolf could laugh. It was almost like there was a glowing line of fireflies flowing in the air above the road. But the line wasn’t visible to his eyes, only to his nose.
He took another deep breath and locked on the direction of her scent, then tore after the vehicle. Fortunately, his paws and legs behaved, gathering more and more speed by the seco
nd.
Alex had no idea what the hell he was going to do when he found Lacey and Kelsey, since he was in wolf form and didn’t have a gun, but it was something he’d deal with later. He would find Lacey and her sister in full wolf form—or his naked human one. He didn’t care which. All that mattered was that he saved them.
The buildings began to blur around him as he leaned forward and pushed for more speed. He had no idea how fast he was running, but it was definitely in the hauling ass category. As he ran, he couldn’t help but take in the world around him. He was surprised how different everything looked. He seemed to be missing some parts of the color palette, with most of the colors seeming to be toward the red end of the spectrum. He could see better and farther in the dark than he would ever have thought possible.
Alex abruptly realized that he’d veered onto a fairly busy road and was running right down the center of it. Drivers honked their horns and veered off the road to avoid him. He couldn’t blame them. He was as big as a bull and probably ten times as scary looking. Alex winced when he accidently sideswiped a car that steered too close to him.
He wasn’t sure how long he ran. Time didn’t seem to feel the same to him in his wolf form. All he knew was that he covered fifteen miles in a ridiculously short period of time. He followed the unwavering scent trail to another fancy brick-and-glass facility called West Ridge Surgery Center. He ran straight past the main entrance and around to the rear of the building. The place looked nearly empty, with only a few of the windows lit on the upper floors and maybe a dozen cars scattered around the parking lot.
The nondescript ambulance parked by the automatic doors in the back told him he was at the right place. Lacey’s and Kelsey’s scents were all over the vehicle. He could smell them clearly, even though he was still two hundred feet away.