by Zoe Chant
Well, that was to his advantage.
When the guards showed up at the front of the building for their third pass, Seth leaned back again. “When they turn around the side, we’ll wait for a count of thirty, and then go. We’re going to have to figure out the front door fast. If we can’t get it open by two minutes before they come back—” Seth pointed at his watch, indicating the timer he’d just set—“we’ll come back here and figure out what to do next. Clear?”
Cassie nodded. “Clear.” She kissed him quickly. “For luck.”
Seth was feeling luckier than he’d been his entire life with her at his side, so he returned the kiss with the pure conviction that it would work.
They turned their attention back to the building, and when the guards disappeared around the corner, Seth started counting under his breath.
At thirty, they ran swiftly and silently across the clearing to the door. Cassie kept up right beside him and only made a small amount of noise, easily attributable to a squirrel or a raccoon.
Seth let out a sigh of relief when they reached the doorway. No alarm had been raised that he could tell.
Cassie was already looking over the door, so Seth stayed facing outward, just in case the guards heard something or returned early.
“It’s just a keypad,” she reported quietly. “Trying the first code.”
He heard her tapping it in, and then there was a quiet click.
She turned the handle. “It worked,” she breathed.
Seth turned back, and they both slipped through the open door, with Seth in the lead. They were in.
Inside, Seth immediately had to shield his eyes. He’d been expecting the place to be dark in the middle of the night, or at least only dimly-lit.
Instead, he was overwhelmed by a sudden fluorescent glare. Everything was lit up as though it was noon.
Fortunately, there were no security guards set up immediately inside the door. Seth motioned Cassie behind him and started quietly down the hall.
At first, there was nothing that seemed too incriminating, just a bunch of locked and darkened offices. They made their way through several corridors, turning corners and trying doorknobs, and found nothing.
Then Seth peered cautiously around corner and immediately snatched his head back. “That’s it,” he breathed.
“What’s it?”
“There’s another door with a keypad at the end of this hallway. That must be what the other passcode is for, and whatever they’re working on must be behind that door.”
“Then the other security guards are probably back there, too,” Cassie concluded.
Seth nodded. “But we can’t find anything else out without going through that door, so we’re going to have to take the risk.” He frowned. “You stay here.”
“Seth—!” Cassie protested.
“Just for a few minutes,” Seth countered. “I’ll use the passcode to open the door. If no security guards jump on me immediately, you come on out. If they do...”
Cassie nodded reluctantly. “I’ll go call for help.”
“You go call for help,” Seth confirmed.
“Okay.” She didn’t look happy about it, but she clearly understood his reasoning.
Seth and Cassie had both memorized the passcodes on the way over, so Seth ventured down the hallway to the door.
He listened at it for a few minutes before trying anything, but it was heavy steel and he doubted any sounds could have made it through even if something was happening on the other side.
So there was nothing for it but to try the code. He tapped it in.
The door clicked.
He pushed it open.
Seth had been expecting that there would be at least one guard, because it was the logical place to put one, and he’d been planning on knocking the man out. If there had been two, it might’ve taken a little more effort, but he was fairly certain he could manage it.
Traveling the world alone as he did, he needed to be able to defend himself if necessary, and shifting into lion form wasn’t always an option. So he was capable at self-defense, and he kept in practice as much as he had the time for. With his shifter strength, he knew he could subdue a couple of ordinary humans, especially if he had the element of surprise.
But it wasn’t a couple of ordinary humans.
It was eight.
And they had guns.
As all eight guns were immediately raised to point at him, Seth instincts rose in an overwhelming wave, and he shifted to his lion form, ready to fight.
He inhaled to roar first, wanting to warn Cassie to get out.
He only got the beginning of the roar out, though, because two of the guards stepped forward and fired immediately. Rather than shock or fear at his sudden transformation, their faces showed only focused determination.
Expecting to feel the pain of bullets, Seth was surprised that he only felt the tiny prick of needles.
Tranquillizers, he thought. Well, that’s fine, then, even a double dose for a human won’t touch me in my lion form.
But somehow his roar, which had started out full-throated and terrible, stuttered to a halt. And somehow the corridor was getting blurry.
What is this? his lion raged. They can’t do this to us!
But it seemed like they could, because that was the last thought either Seth or his lion had before the world faded to black.
***
Cassie froze when she heard the roar.
She knew it was Seth. That immense sound was something she could only imagine coming from a lion. It seemed to roll down the hallway toward her like a physical thing, filling her ears and shaking her chest.
But even without the roar, she would’ve known he was in trouble. It was like an icy hand had suddenly gripped her heart. Seth! her mind screamed. Seth! You need to help Seth!
As she thought that, the roar stuttered out, the sound faltering in a way that brought her heart into her mouth.
She barely stopped herself from running around the corner and down the hallway to him. Instead, she carefully peeked around it, holding onto the wall like she could physically keep herself from plunging into the fray.
She could see his lion form, and he was being overwhelmed by a crowd of guards—more than they’d even thought there would be. Every part of her body screamed, Go and help him!
But if she went to him, that wouldn’t help anyone, let alone Seth. She’d just get herself hurt, too. She had to get out of here and call for help.
There was enough noise going on at the other end of the hall that she wasn’t worried anyone would hear her. She started running back the way they’d come. Her sense of direction was pretty good, so it wasn’t hard to retrace their turns back to the front door.
But once there, she hesitated. Would the guards be waiting? Were they right outside, or on the other end of the building?
Wait. Seth had showed her his watch when they were about to head in. She’d automatically marked the time: 12:34. As they’d watched the building, they’d learned that the guards were on a fifteen-minute rotation around the building, and they’d been about two minutes from turning the corner when she’d looked at Seth’s watch.
She checked her phone. 1:07. Thirty-three minutes later. They should be just around the corner and out of sight.
The door had a keypad on this side, too, which was strange. Why did people need a passcode to get out?
Well, no matter why. The door might just be alarmed, so people could keep track of who came and went. She didn’t want to alert everyone that someone was at this door as well as the inside door, so she quickly punched in the code, pushed open the door a crack, and peeked outside.
No one was in sight. Cassie took off running toward the darkened forest.
Her breath sobbed in her chest as she ran. That was odd. She might have a few more curves than fashion magazines thought was right, but she was in good shape: she hiked much harder trails than this level path. She shouldn’t be out of breath yet.
; Then her eyes spilled over. She wasn’t out of breath at all. She was crying.
Don’t leave Seth behind!
He was back there, maybe being shot, maybe being beaten. Something awful was happening to him, and here she was running away!
This is what he wants you to do, she told herself firmly. Get a safe distance away, and then call for help.
So she focused on running. She was far out of sight of the building by now, but she didn’t want to risk the possibility that they would start looking for Seth’s accomplices.
When she reached her car, she threw herself into the driver’s seat and started it up, pulling out of her little cul-de-sac parking spot and driving as quickly as she safely could away from the lab.
She took a few turns on the mountain roads, vaguely remembering which way to go from her hikes, until she found a vista spot right by the opening to a trail. There was no reason anyone would look for lab-breakers here.
Then she pulled out her phone.
She had two bars of reception, which was going to have to be good enough. Normally, Cassie was irritated that cell phone reception was spreading further and further into the mountains, because sometimes she really wanted to be away from it all.
But she’d always acknowledged that the arguments in favor were solid: if hikers were in trouble, it could be days and days before anyone found them. If they could call for help, their lives could be saved.
And now she was the one in trouble. She dialed Max Rowland with shaky fingers.
“Hello, who is this?”
The voice was clipped and impatient. She bet Max Rowland didn’t get a lot of calls on his personal cell phone from random unknown numbers.
“Hello, Mr. Rowland? My name is Cassie Shaw—”
“I don’t want any of what you’re selling, thank you.”
“Wait, wait! It’s about Seth!” Cassie shouted, hoping to catch him before he hung up on what he thought was a telemarketer.
There was a long pause, and for a terrible second she thought he really had hung up.
Then, “What about Seth?”
Cassie sagged in relief. “Mr. Rowland, I work for RGS, in your Rocky Mountain office. I’m the administrative assistant to Dave Crews, the head of the office. Your brother came here this morning—” God, was it only this morning? “—to investigate our research lab.”
“He told you that was what he was doing?”
Now the voice had an exasperated tone, and Cassie smiled a little in spite of the situation. Max Rowland did sound just like an older brother.
“He asked for my help,” she sort-of-explained, deciding to leave out the whole mate part of the equation for now. She didn’t want to sound like a hysterical girlfriend to Max Rowland. “I knew where the facility was and I wanted to find out what was going on inside it just as much as he did.”
“All right.” Max didn’t sound satisfied, but he didn’t ask any more questions about who she was, at least. “What happened?”
“Seth’s been captured!” Cassie burst out. “We snuck inside—I found the passcodes—and they had about five times more guards than payroll had said they would! And they captured Seth even after he shifted—”
“You saw him shift?” Max interrupted, sounding dangerous.
Cassie stuttered to a stop. That’s right, leaving out the mate part of the explanation had left a few other things out too.
“Um, yes. You see, I’m his mate?”
There was another pause. “I’m flying out there.”
“You’re—”
“Flying out there. I’m leaving now to take the company jet. You can meet me at your office in approximately six hours.”
“But Seth needs help now!”
Cassie realized that she’d sounded a little more high-handed than Max Rowland usually heard from people in his day-to-day life.
Well, too bad for him. His brother was in trouble, and six hours from now, God only knew what would’ve happened to him.
“There’s not much I can do in six hours,” Max said, and his voice had gentled a little. “I can’t order the police to raid the building without enough proof for a warrant, in part because the paperwork proving that the building is the property of my company is mysteriously missing.”
“Do you really need the police?” Cassie asked skeptically.
“Even I can’t make a private security force materialize from thin air. I’ll bring my own security with me, and if necessary I can hire some more manpower in Denver. If we have to raid the building and explain the situation to the police later, then we will. I’ll be making some calls on the way to the jet. By tomorrow morning, I should be able to make some things happen. Until then, you need to trust that Seth can take care of himself.”
“I trust Seth,” Cassie said fiercely. “I don’t trust anyone else in that building.”
“Seth’s been making his own way around the world since he was eighteen years old,” Max said. “He can keep himself alive for another six hours.”
His voice sounded like he was making it an order. Like Seth better hear him and make it happen.
Cassie remembered what Seth had said about Max. If something goes wrong, he can bring the wrath of—well, of himself—down on anyone he wants to.
Cassie hoped Max’s wrath was as impressive as Seth had made it sound, because they were going to need it.
“Now, I have to get off the phone so that I can actually make those calls,” Max said. “Go home and get some sleep, and meet me at your office tomorrow morning.”
“All right,” Cassie said reluctantly.
She only heard silence in response. When she looked at her phone, she realized Max had already hung up on her.
What a jerk, she thought, but it was only half-hearted. When you were that rich and powerful, you weren’t a jerk anymore, you were just efficient, or something.
Maybe he was just in a hurry to help Seth. Even over the phone, she could tell that underneath those clipped, efficient tones, Max Rowland was worried about his brother.
Well, that made two of them.
Slowly, Cassie started up her car again. It took all of her willpower to start driving back toward town, instead of taking the road up to the lab.
You can’t do anything, she reminded herself. All you can do is get hurt too. The lab was definitely on guard now, so even if she did go back, she probably wouldn’t even be able to get close to the building.
They’d probably changed the passcodes already, too, since it had been clear that Seth knew them. Cassie’s knowledge wasn’t going to help Seth anymore.
So she drove slowly home, parked in her building’s parking lot, and went upstairs to her apartment.
The dinner dishes were still in the sink. Her bed was rumpled, and the bedroom still had a hint of musk to it from when she and Seth had been making love.
She couldn’t sleep in that bed. Not while Seth was being held in the lab.
At least she knew he wasn’t dead. The icy worry that had gripped her when he was taken was still pounding at the back of her mind. It was more than just worry, it was a bone-deep knowledge that Seth was in trouble, more solid and certain than any hunch or deduction she’d ever had. That must be because they were mates.
She had to trust that if he’d been killed, she would know.
And if he was killed, nothing was going to stop her from bringing that whole lab down. She’d take a sledgehammer to it herself if she had to.
Cassie curled up on her couch and settled in to wait until morning.
***
The first thing Seth was aware of was a pounding in his head.
He was lying on some hard surface, and he had the worst headache he’d ever had in his life. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, and a pit of nausea in his stomach.
He couldn’t remember what had happened. He wasn’t the type to get drunk enough for a hangover like this. Had he fallen and hit his head?
Only one way to find out. He braced himself and opened his eyes.
Harsh fluorescent lighting stabbed right through his pupils and into his brain like an ice pick. He squeezed his eyes shut again immediately, letting out a pained groan.
“There he is,” a voice said somewhere to his right.
Seth opened his eyes again. They watered fiercely in the bright light, and his headache had tripled, but he forced himself to keep them open until they adjusted.
When he could see again, it was immediately apparent that Seth was lying on the floor in a cell.
The steel bars filling his vision, blocking off the wide corridor in front of him, were the biggest hint.
“Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty,” said the same voice.
Everything beyond the bars was blurry. Seth brought a hand up to rub his eyes, and discovered that it wasn’t just his head. He hurt all over.
But his vision was quickly improving. After a moment, he could actually see into the cell across the hall from him, where a dark-haired man with a sardonic expression was watching him.
The whole thing came rushing back. Max. The lab. Breaking in. “Cassie!”
“Close, but no,” said the dark-haired man. “I’m Kevin.”
“No, I—” Seth pushed himself up and had to stop talking while the world pulsed black and red for a second.
When he could see again, the dark-haired man—Kevin—was looking more sympathetic. “Give it a few minutes,” he advised. “Their tranqs are something else.”
Seth shook his head emphatically, which hurt a hell of a lot, and said, “Cassie, my mate. Is she here? Did you see her?”
Kevin shook his head slowly. “You’re the only new one in tonight.”
“She must have gotten away, then. Thank God.” Seth relaxed.
“Happy day,” said Kevin. “You’re still here, though.”
“Can you leave the guy alone, Kevin?”
The second voice was female, and sounded tired and annoyed. It was coming from Seth’s left, and he assumed it had to belong to the person in the cell next to him. The walls were solid, though, not bars, so he couldn’t see her.
“His mate got away. Let him be happy about it,” the female prisoner continued. “And maybe let the rest of us get back to sleep.”