by Kit Tunstall
He tried to fight back the possessive urge to shove away the other man and place himself as a barrier between Tianna and Chesabogue. He didn’t like seeing another’s hands on her, even though his intellectual side understood she needed to grasp how to control the dogsled. He still breathed a sigh of relief when Chesabogue stepped back and turned to him.
“Would you like me to show you too?”
Devon shook his head. “I watched what you showed Tianna.” He wouldn’t have been able to look away if he had tried, feeling the need to monitor Chesabogue’s hands at all times to ensure they weren’t too familiarly placed on his mate. Was this going to be his new normal? He hoped he would settle in to the role and ease up a little bit in the jealousy department. He wasn’t accustomed to feeling possessive over a woman, and it was a bit disquieting, though it also felt right on a deep level.
Chesabogue must have taken him at his word, because he simply nodded and moved over to the third sled, which also had eight dogs like Devon’s. They were soon underway, and it was a bit more difficult than he’d anticipated, but Devon mastered the skill of mushing, at least enough for their trip to retrieve Loris.
They traveled at least two hours over the snowy terrain before reaching a rustic wooden dwelling. Devon halted his team after Chesabogue did the same, and Tianna brought up the rear, stopping behind them. When she stepped off her sled, she seemed a little shaky, so he put his arm around her for support—and because any reason was a good reason to hold her. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “I’m just a little stiff from the ride.” She looked at the dwelling before turning her attention to Chesabogue. “What is this place?”
“It’s a fur cabin. When we’re out trapping, we can stop here for shelter and to process the furs we acquire.”
Devon could tell from the way her body stiffened that she didn’t like that information, but she didn’t say anything. She just nodded before looking at him again, as though awaiting a cue from Devon himself.
He spent a moment inhaling, savoring the air and searching for Loris’s pheromone signature. It was there, but fainter than he would have expected. The foreign scent of others also overlapped, and he was certain he detected the wrong scent of the hybrid soldiers.
He growled low in his throat as he took the handgun Chesabogue had provided for him in the box of supplies, grasping it firmly as he moved forward. Chesabogue fell in line behind him, holding a hunting rifle, and Tianna clung to him. He turned to frown at her. “Stay right here with the dogs. I don’t know what we’re going to find in there, but I think you’ll be safer out here until I give you the go-ahead.”
She glared at him, crossing her arms over her chest and clearly disliking his order, but surprisingly didn’t argue. He wasn’t certain what had made her relent, but he was thankful not to have to deal with her protests and explain to her why she was safer outside, since she lacked any training for entering hostile territory.
There were no tangos inside, but also no sign of Loris. The cabin was a mess, indicating someone had put up quite a fight. He had expected to find Loris’s body, just as he’d found Benjamin’s, but whoever had come before them seemed to have taken her instead. Would they have taken Benjamin’s as well if he hadn’t fought so hard to protect Tianna?
After searching the area thoroughly, he went to the doorway and beckoned Tianna closer. When she stepped across the threshold, her eyes widened at the sight before her. “Is your friend gone?”
He nodded. “At least she isn’t dead. Or she wasn’t killed here.”
“They must have left some kind of clue behind.” She straightened her shoulders as she looked at the mess before delving into it. Devon joined her, as did Chesabogue. He was the one who produced a torn patch less than twenty minutes after they had started sifting through the debris. He handed it over to Devon, saying, “This looks military to me, but I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t recognize what it might be.”
Devon took the patch, a streamlined, aggressive looking eagle along with a few letters underneath it. He could make out a P, an R, and what he thought was a C at the end. The two middle letters were shredded beyond recognition.
Tianna came to peer over his shoulder. “Do you recognize it?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen this before. Maybe you can dig up something about it?”
She took the patch from his hand, but looked discouraged. “I destroyed all my electronics, so I have no way to identify it.”
“I also found this,” said Chesabogue. He pulled the phone from his pocket. “It was on the table by the bed, and I assume it’s Loris’.”
Tianna took it, looking at it carefully. “It might help, if she has a data plan, and we’re within range.”
Chesabogue removed another phone from his pocket, turning it on before nodding. “I have service, so that should as well.”
Tianna turned it over in her hand, popping off the back and pulling out a SIM card a moment later. “This is a prepaid brand I think, so she might or might not have a data plan.” After sliding it back in place, she popped in the battery and put on the cover before turning over the phone and flipping it on.
Her eyes gleamed, and her expression revealed her excitement a moment later, telling Devon before she ever spoke that she had a data plan. As Tianna sat at the table, Devon drew Chesabogue aside. “I don’t think there’s anything else here you can do for us, if you want to return home. I’ll try to keep you updated if we find her.”
The other man nodded. “I’ll see to the dogs and leave them supplies for a couple of days. If you haven’t returned them by tomorrow, we’ll come retrieve them.”
Devon frowned slightly. “Are they safe to leave alone?” He wasn’t certain yet, but he imagined he would need to send for a chopper within the next little while, and he didn’t want to put the dogs at risk.
Chesabogue nodded. “There’s an enclosure behind the house built specifically for the dogs. Loris didn’t keep a team here, because she didn’t want to draw attention to her presence, but there are supplies on hand for dog teams, so the dogs will be fine.”
Devon held out his hand, shaking the other man’s firmly. “Thank you for everything.”
“If you find her and keep her safe, that will be thanks enough. My son would like a chance to know his mother, and I’m certain Loris would like the same once the danger has passed.”
Devon walked him out, amused when Tianna barely looked up from the phone, though she did share a word of parting with Chesabogue. Less than ten minutes later, he waved his hand briefly in response to Chesabogue as the other man mushed away. Then he returned to the cabin, going straight to Tianna to sit beside her at the small table. “Any luck?”
She barely glanced up at him. “The connection’s really slow, so it’s taking me a while. This could take hours.”
Devon moved away from her to retrieve the radio, setting it up and contacting Malcolm. He relayed what they knew, agreeing with Malcolm’s suggestion that they stay put at the cabin until Tianna had a lead, or at least for the next hour or two. He wanted them away from there as quickly as possible, but it would take a helicopter at least that long to reach them. Devon hoped they had a destination in mind by the time the helicopter arrived.
Tianna had paused in her search long enough to send a picture of the patch to Malcolm, but she was engrossed in it again. Devon paced around the cabin, looking carefully through the debris to make sure they hadn’t overlooked anything else, but finding nothing else of interest that was clearly relevant to identifying their teammate’s location.
Almost an hour later, Tianna let out an excited squeak as she called his name. He was barely a few feet from her, so he was beside her in under a second, dropping down into one of the sturdy wooden chairs beside her peer over her shoulder. His eyes widened when he saw the full emblem on the screen. “That looks like the same one, doesn’t it?”
She nodded. “It’s a special forces patch for PRSCC. They were an
elite unit out of Joint Base Leon-Belson, but they were supposedly decommissioned in the sixties along with that base.”
He looked at the patch on the table. “That certainly doesn’t look fifty-plus years old, does it?”
She shook her head. “My guess is they aren’t as decommissioned as the Department of Defense wants everyone to think.”
“Or they were opened again on the sly using black ops funding. There’s a unit for Project Shift at Fort Glacier, but we knew about that one and infiltrated it to rescue Wyatt. It’s possible they’ve always had more than one location, or they’ve shifted their base of operations since then to keep us from returning.”
Tianna seem to agree with him as she nodded. “I think it’s our only lead at the moment. It feels almost too easy, doesn’t it?”
He nodded, his mouth tight. “I was just thinking that myself.” He flipped it over, tracing his fingers over the Velcro loops. “It only attaches with Velcro, so it is certainly conceivable that it was torn during a fight. Loris herself might have snatched it off and hoped we would find it as a clue, or…”
“It could be a trap,” said Tianna. Her eyes were solemn, and her expression betrayed her fear.
Devon nodded just once. He didn’t have a strong enough sense of anything to go by his gut. The only thing he knew for certain was they couldn’t afford to ignore this lead if they might find Loris from pursuing it. “Let me contact Malcolm, and we’ll proceed from there.”
***
A different helicopter pilot had retrieved them from Loris’s hideout, flying several hours south until they rendezvoused with a small twin-engine plane and a private airfield. That carried them discreetly over the border, and Tianna was certain they had passed illegally, since they hadn’t had to go through customs or show their passports. That was beneficial to her, since she had destroyed all of her identification, including her passport, because it bore an RFID chip that could be used to track her.
When they landed at another small airfield, she couldn’t be certain without asking, but she thought they must be in Minnesota. The snow and the bitter cold clued her in, along with the knowledge that Leon-Belson was located in Minnesota.
Ostensibly, it was an abandoned military installation that hadn’t been in use for decades, and as they approached on foot several hours later after leaving their SUV miles away, it certainly gave every appearance of being what it was supposed to be—abandoned and unused. There was a general state of disrepair about the whole upper installation, and the only thing that appeared even moderately maintained was the guardhouse.
And the fence. As she drew closer, staying low as she followed Devon to the point where he was rendezvousing with his team, she realized the structure looked brand-new and quite modern compared to the rest of the buildings. Someone had put up a new fence around the exterior, and recently. Wicked barbed wire topped it, and from the faint hum she could hear even at this distance, it must have voltage flowing through it. It made no sense to waste the resources to protect fifty-year-old buildings if there wasn’t something underneath them worth hiding.
One moment, all she saw was snow, and the next, four forms had solidified in front of her. They all wore white outerwear, and from the way they held themselves, she assumed they were hardened soldiers. One of the four figures was slighter than the rest, and she tentatively identified that one as female, assuming that must be Lex.
She couldn’t identify which one was Wyatt versus Malcolm, but she was certain the oldest face belonged to Colonel George Wallace, who she knew from speaking with Devon during the time they were snowed in was the one who’d recruited all of them for Project Shift. A wave of dislike swept over her, though she had no reason to feel that way other than instinctively being angry with the older man for involving Devon in this.
As quickly as it had risen, the emotion faded. After all, Devon had made the choice to enter, and he’d been acting under faulty information, the same as the colonel, when he’d chosen to join the program.
They didn’t bother to introduce themselves, and she didn’t press the issue. There were more important things at the moment than formal introductions. She quickly gleaned who was Malcolm, and who was Wyatt based on the way Devon addressed them, but she maintained her silence and listened as they planned their entry into the base.
She was frankly amazed to be there, having expected Devon to insist she stay behind somewhere where she would be safer. He must have reached the same conclusion that she had, which was she would be safer with him than she would be without him. Even under the circumstances, when she wasn’t trained for infiltrating the base and couldn’t provide a good supportive role, she still felt safer with him than she would have holed up somewhere, not knowing what was happening.
Once everyone seemed to understand the plan, herself included, they moved silently toward the base. She felt like a clumsy oaf in comparison to the smooth way they all glided, though she tried to console herself with the knowledge that she wasn’t actually that graceless. She simply seemed that way in comparison to the group of shifters.
She watched with interest as Malcolm placed a small device near the fence. She had gleaned from the plan that it was some type of EMP pulse, and it would knock out the power supply to the fence, at least temporarily, but she was surprised by how compact it was.
It seemed to work just as they had planned, because Malcolm and Wyatt were soon clipping through the wires of the fencing to create a space for them to pass through. She was somewhere in the middle of the group, getting on her belly and slithering through the hole before joining Lex and George on the inside. Devon came next, followed by Wyatt, and finally Malcolm. He pulled the wire down, rolling it closed behind them. It would pass a cursory inspection, but anyone looking closely would see that was their entry point.
She stayed close to Devon, as she had been instructed, while the group of them moved across the grounds. All the buildings appeared abandoned, but they were able to identify where they needed to go by following the path of truck tires. There had been recent snowfall, but not enough to completely fill in the imprints, and they followed it to one of the large buildings that must have once been a hanger.
Inside, there were several trucks, and they were all much newer than they should have been for a decommissioned base that had been closed for half a century. Everything else about the building seemed to be authentically aged, down to a layer of dust coating most of the surfaces, except the floor. It had been swept clean and recently, so there were no footprints to track.
She averted her eyes when Lex started shedding her clothes, quickly inferring the woman was shifting for some reason. When she looked back, a dark brown and gray coyote stood in a place where Lex had been, inhaling deeply.
On lithe feet, the coyote bounded to the wall farthest from them, pressing her nose against a panel. Then she came back, shifting as she moved, and dressed quickly, tucking her dark hair under her white cap again before speaking. “There’s a door there. I’m sure the rest of you can smell their pheromones, and that’s where the scent’s originating.”
She looked at Devon, cocking a brow. He nodded and then bent his mouth to Tianna’s ear, whispering, “She has a keen sense of smell, even better than the rest of us. We can sense the soldier things, and I’ve detected Loris’s signature as well, so they must have a structure underneath this building.”
She followed Devon as they moved toward the spot where Lex had identified a door. It didn’t take them long to figure out the opening mechanism, and the wall slid back to reveal a sturdy steel door. A surge of joy went through her when she saw the electronic panel system. “I can help you with this.” She squirmed when all eyes turned to her. “I recognize the system, and I’ve accessed one before.”
Malcolm arched a dark blond brow. “Under what circumstances?”
She licked her lips, wishing he hadn’t asked that. “I once went to an underground conference for hackers, and one of the activities was bypassing electronic securi
ty systems. I did my exercise on the same system.”
He looked skeptical, but handed her his laptop. When she had completed the exercise as part of her conference registration, she’d had only a basic laptop to work with, which had forced her to construct the code for breaching the security system from scratch. At the time, she had been annoyed by the considerable time investment, and it had taken her hours to crack the system, though she’d been among the first to finish in her group.
Now, she was glad to have the practice, and re-creating the code was a lot faster. In under twenty minutes, the door released with a faint hiss, and Malcolm was able to push it open a couple of inches, testing if it was really unlocked. He looked impressed when she handed back his laptop, and she was happy to have been able to contribute something to the endeavor.
They slipped through one by one, moving quietly and stealthily. She was the exception, feeling like she would trip over her feet when she tried to slide through the narrow opening. They hadn’t opened the door very wide, not wanting to draw attention in case someone stood in the hallway. She dared risk a couple of extra inches, since others had already passed without alerting them to the presence of soldiers on the other side of the door.
Tianna breathed a sigh of relief when she was in the corridor with them, and they were all together again. They moved quietly down the corridor, heading toward the only door at the end of the hallway. Once again, she ran her deactivation program, and the door opened with a slight hiss after four minutes.
As before, she was toward the end of the group sliding into the corridor, finding they were in a large antechamber this time. There were three hallways extending outward, and she was certain what Malcolm was going to say before he ever verbalized it, and she was already mentally shaking her head at the idea.
“We need to split up. George, you and Wyatt take the left, Lex and I will go straight, and Devon, you go to the right.”
Tianna wanted to glare at him for leaving her out, but it was understandable. It was a fluke that she’d been able to contribute anything to getting them this far, and she certainly didn’t have the military skills required to act as Devon’s true partner in the circumstances.