by Chant, Zoe
Eli frowned, his fists clenching. “Wish I knew how much of the security they’ve turned back on. Well, we’ve got to risk it. I’ll take—”
A different man’s voice spoke. “Hey. What’s that in his ear?”
A loud rustle sounded, and then the oily man’s voice spoke again— directly into the mike. “Ah-ha. Hello there. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
Eli’s blue eyes met Paisley’s. She knew him well enough now to know that the cool stillness that settled over him was the calm before the storm.
He took the earbud from her and put it into his ear. “I guess you’ve got the laser trip wires turned back on, huh?”
A pause. Still holding her gaze, he nodded. “Fine. Let’s negotiate a surrender. I want me and my partner released unhurt at the end of this. But first, I want to bring some samples of the armor up to the office, and have you show me exactly how I put it on wrong.”
Paisley wished they’d had time to actually discuss a plan, but she had a pretty good idea what he had in mind. She pointed at the cat-sized ventilation duct she’d crawled in from.
Eli nodded, mouthing, “Good luck.” Then he mimed clawing.
Paisley felt a fierce grin settle over her face. It remained as bared teeth as she became a cat.
“Yeah. I’m that guy.” Eli paused, listening. “No, we just wanted to make a point. If you can demonstrate that the armor works when it’s used as directed, we’ll walk away.” Eli paused again. “Glad we’re on the same page. I’m in R&D. Nice trap you’ve got on the body armor, by the way. What is it, a tranquilizer dart?”
He crouched and hid the empty antidote syringe under a dummy. Paisley leaped into the duct. As she bolted into the darkness, she heard Eli replacing the first screw on its screen.
Air burned in Paisley’s lungs as she ran faster than she had ever run before. Now she knew long it took to go through the maze of ventilation shafts between the room Eli was in, and the room where Jackson was being held hostage. She didn’t believe for an instant that SmartDefense intended to negotiate a surrender. They just wanted to get Eli up to the room so they could interrogate him, and then they’d kill him and Jackson.
Paisley was their ace in the hole. She had to get there before Eli and Jackson had to choose between fighting against terrible odds, or revealing the existence of werebears to the worst possible people.
Bright spots danced before Paisley’s eyes by the time she reached the screen in the office wall. She sank down behind it, panting, and peered out, safe in the knowledge that no on the room could see into the duct.
Eli was already in the office, held firmly between two big guards. A pile of bulletproof vests lay on the floor nearby. Reed must have agreed to the demand Eli had made in R&D, and attempted to lull his suspicions by letting him bring up samples.
Four more guards stood with guns aimed and ready. Two of them were guarding Eli, and two were guarding Jackson.
Paisley barely stopped herself from screaming with fury at the sight of Jackson. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall, his face bruised and battered. Blood had run down his face and soaked into his white shirt. His eyes were half-closed, and he leaned his head against the wall as if he couldn’t hold it up by himself.
He was also, Paisley noticed, sitting right beneath the screen she was hiding behind. Her worry eased a little at the thought that his position had to be deliberate. He might not be anywhere near as badly hurt as he looked.
The last man in the room was the only one who was unarmed. He was a big guy in a suit, with fleshy features and an aura of scumbag. Paisley recognized him from the info Eli and Jackson had given her: Victor Reed, the CEO of SmartDefense. Her lips writhed back in a soundless snarl.
Claw his eyeballs out! Paisley’s cat howled.
She forced herself to hold back and think like a human. Reed wasn’t the important one. The guards were, with their guns. She wasn’t sure how much Jackson could do; he was injured, and he wasn’t a fighter like Eli. But if she could distract the guards for even a few seconds, she bet Eli could take them all out.
Unfortunately, none of the guards were within leaping distance. The person Paisley was closest to was Jackson, but though his guards had pistols aimed at him, they were standing across the room. She gave an inner growl of frustration.
Eli’s blue gaze scanned the room, avoiding Paisley’s vent, then settled on Jackson. She hoped Eli had guessed that she was there.
“Who else knows about your little mission?” Reed demanded.
Eli hesitated, biting his lower lip and looking nervous and uncertain. Since Paisley had seen that Eli stayed calm even when he thought he was dying, that gave her confidence. He was plotting something.
“No one,” Eli said at last. “No one knows. Just Jack— uh— Brandon and me.”
Reed rolled his eyes. “We know who your friend is. Once we figured out that you were the SEAL who complained about the armor, we looked up your associates. He’s Jackson Ford, the inventor. Who else knows?”
“No one!” Jackson put in. His voice was slurred and weak, just like Eli’s had been when he’d been poisoned. It was so similar, in fact, that it had to be an imitation. Paisley’s confidence rose again.
“We didn’t tell—” Jackson broke off with a grunt of pain. He clutched at his side.
“Did they kick you in the ribs?” Eli asked. He bit his lip again, looking worried.
“Yeah,” Jackson mumbled.
Eli turned to Reed. He sounded increasingly desperate as he spoke. “Jackson needs medical attention. I think he has broken ribs. He might be bleeding internally. Look, let’s forget about this whole thing. You took away our proof. There’s nothing we can do to stop the contract now. Let me take him to the hospital, and none of— neither of us— will ever say anything. I already lost Ryan— I can’t lose Jackson too!”
Reed’s lips curled in an unpleasant smile. “None of you will ever say anything? I think you’re still holding out on me. If you don’t want to lose Jackson too—” Reed mockingly imitated Eli’s tones. “—then you won’t keep lying.”
Reed snapped his fingers at the four armed guards, gesturing to them to move closer to Jackson. They stepped toward him but, to Paisley’s frustration, halted outside of her jumping range.
“Who else knows?” Reed demanded.
“No one!” Eli’s voice cracked. “Come on, don’t do this. He’s injured already— one more blow could kill him!”
“What happens to him is completely up to you.” Reed flicked his fingers at the guards.
They stepped forward again, coming closer and closer, until they stood over Jackson. The guards lowered their guns, getting ready to kick or hit him.
“Last chance—” Reed began.
Paisley burst through the screen.
She had a split second to enjoy the guards’ eyes bulging in shock as she hurtled toward their faces, and then she was on them. Paisley wrapped all four legs around the nearest guard’s head, like the face-hugger in Alien. He flailed his arms wildly, his shriek muffled in her belly fur.
She raked her claws across his head, then catapulted to the next guard. He tried to duck, flinging up his arms to protect his face. She landed on his shoulder, digging in all her claws, and sank her teeth into his ear. He screamed like a cat with its tail slammed in a door.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Eli jerk free of the two guards holding him, and take down one with a punch to the jaw and the other with an elbow to the chin. Before they even hit the ground, he’d lunged forward and punched out one of the armed guards that Paisley hadn’t clawed yet.
As she leaped on to the last unclawed guard still standing, Jackson rolled aside, jumped up, grabbed a heavy quartz paperweight off the desk, and slammed it into the head of the first guard she’d clawed. He crumpled to the floor.
Paisley clawed and bit the final guard, easily dodging his grasping hands, then spotted Reed, his jaw still dropped in amazement, yanking his cell phone out o
f his pocket. With a keening caterwaul of outrage, she launched herself at him. He was too far for her to reach, but she thumped on to the floor at his feet, then climbed up his legs. He yelled in pain and kicked out, but she held fast, clawing her way upward to sink her teeth into his hand.
He flung her off, but she landed on her feet in time to see the cell phone go skittering across the floor. Jackson stopped it with his foot, then stomped on it with a satisfying crack. Eli grabbed Reed and slammed him into the wall with an even more satisfying thud.
Paisley looked around the room. All the guards lay unconscious on the floor. Jackson sank into the desk chair, panting, shoulders slumped. Eli, his forearm across Reed’s throat, wasn’t even out of breath.
“What the hell?” Reed burst out, sounding half-strangled and all-outraged. “A cat? An attack cat? No one can train a cat to attack people!”
“A Navy SEAL can do anything,” Eli said. “Except survive a bullet to the heart.”
Even Reed had no reply to that.
“I’ve got the data back.” Jackson swept a flash drive off the desk and into his pocket. “Let me just make sure no one else is coming.”
He typed rapidly, then looked up. “Coast is clear. We can leave whenever we want.”
Paisley jumped into Jackson’s lap. He reached down and petted her. She purred and licked his hand.
“You’re making fools of yourselves,” Reed said. “Have you looked at the data? You’re breaking the law and ruining your own lives over a flaw within acceptable bounds—”
Eli’s forearm pressed harder into Reed’s throat. Reed choked and gasped.
“Let him talk,” Jackson said.
Eli let up the pressure. Reed coughed and went on, “The flaw only affects one in a million vests.”
“One in every four thousand,” Jackson put in. “According to your own secret product testing reports. Two bad vests in one SEAL team— what were the odds of that? But hey, usually they work. Make back all the money you put into it, and a big profit on top— so what if you’re risking soldiers’ lives? Odds are, the defective vests will never be hit, and no one will ever need to know there’s anything wrong with the armor.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the armor. No product is perfect.” Reed glared at Eli. “You’re a Navy SEAL. You should know about acceptable risks.”
“So acceptable that you set traps to murder anyone who tries to investigate your product?” Eli shook his head in disgust. “Well, let’s test out these acceptable risks. Have you ever been shot while you’re wearing body armor?”
Reed let out a contemptuous snort.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Eli said. “It’s not like in the movies. It hurts. It knocks you down. You get a huge bruise, and sometimes you break ribs. It’s no fun. But it won’t kill you.”
Without taking his eyes off Reed, Eli backed away from him, then picked up a fallen guard’s pistol.
“Jackson, you’re recording all this, right?” Eli asked.
“Every sleazy word.” Jackson kept petting Paisley, but his other hand brandished a miniature video camera.
Eli bent over the pile of bulletproof vests. He selected one bulky vest and one thin one. “I saw that you were comparing your vests with the current-issue ones. Good science. So I’ll give you a choice. I’m going to fire at your heart while you wear one of them. You get to choose which one.”
“You have got to be kidding,” Reed burst out.
Paisley couldn’t help letting out a satisfied meow. Jackson smiled and scratched her between the ears. Reed’s furious glare raked over her as well as Jackson and Eli.
Eli tossed the vests at Reed, who clumsily caught them.
“Pick a vest,” Eli said. “I grabbed them at random from your storeroom. If you have confidence in your product, wear it and stop me from getting video I can use to discredit you and your cutting-edge armor. If you don’t want to risk a one in four thousand chance of dying, wear the old vest. I guarantee you, the old ones work. I’ve product-tested them myself.”
Eli raised the pistol. “Choose.”
Reed’s gaze flickered from one vest to the other, then moved to Eli’s set expression, took a brief and incredulous detour to Paisley, and finally settled on Jackson’s video camera. Then, defiantly, he put on the SmartDefense vest. “See? I trust my product.”
“Let’s hope that one works better than Ryan’s and mine did,” Eli replied. “Jackson, don’t watch this. You’ve never seen anyone die of a gunshot wound. It’s painful and bloody. Might give you nightmares.”
“Okay. Thanks for the warning.” Jackson kept filming, but he turned his face to the wall.
Eli leveled the pistol at Reed’s heart. Then he flicked off the safety with a sharp click.
“Wait, wait!” Reed screamed. “Don’t shoot!”
His face twisted in terror, Reed ripped off the SmartDefense vest and flung it to the floor. Then he snatched up the old vest and strapped it on with shaking hands.
Eli’s deep exhale broke the stillness of the room. A tension Paisley hadn’t realized he’d been carrying slipped away from his face. At long last, he seemed at peace.
“Okay,” Eli said. “We’re done here. I don’t hurt people who can’t fight back, no matter how much they deserve it. I’ll just tie you up so we can get out safely. Kneel down and put your hands behind your back.”
Sulkily, Reed obeyed. But as Eli tied him up with rope from his pack, he muttered viciously, “Your buddy doesn’t look good. I hope he does have internal injuries.”
Alarmed, Paisley twisted around to peer up at Jackson’s face. She couldn’t see color as a cat, but his skin was a shade paler than normal. He wasn’t just resting his elbows on the desk, he was leaning on them like they were all that was holding him up.
She meowed urgently.
“It’s okay... Um... Kitty,” Jackson muttered. “I’ll be all right.”
Paisley cuddled up closer to him, mewing softly in what she hoped was a comforting manner.
“Have fun getting your buddy and the armor and the cat out before the lasers come back on,” Reed jeered.
“The cat walks by herself. And I’m done listening to you.” Eli yanked off one of Reed’s polished shoes, taking the sock with it, then stuffed the sock into his mouth.
Reed’s face twisted with rage and humiliation as he tried and failed to spit out the sock.
“Security cameras are offline.” Jackson gave a meaningful glance to Paisley, then to the backpack where she’d stashed her clothes.
“Right.” Eli gathered up the armor, then grabbed Jackson’s backpack. He dumped it all out in the corridor outside the office, then whistled. “Here, kitty, kitty. Go guard our stuff.”
As Reed watched incredulously, his cheeks puffed out by the sock, Paisley jumped off Jackson’s lap and raced into the corridor. The door closed behind her.
She was already so focused on human things, like worry for Jackson and happiness at Eli’s triumph, that she shifted in an instant. Seconds later, she was fully dressed. Paisley crammed some of the armor into the backpack and scooped up the rest. She was straightening up when Eli and Jackson came out. Eli wore his own backpack and was supporting Jackson with an arm around his waist. Jackson had one arm over Eli’s broad shoulders.
The door closed behind them. Jackson said, “It’s soundproof. We can talk now.”
Immediately, Paisley said, “Do you need to go to the hospital?”
Jackson shook his head, then immediately winced, his free hand lifting to touch his blood-smeared temple. “Whoa, bad idea.”
“Let’s get out of here first,” Eli said. “We rented an apartment. I can check him there. I’d rather not have a record of us showing up at a hospital right after the break-in at SmartDefense. And like I said, shifters heal better than humans.”
That reassured Paisley. And at least Jackson was walking, even if he did need help.
Two steps later, Jackson’s eyes slid shut and he sagged against Eli. Pais
ley dropped the armor and caught his shoulder, but it wasn’t necessary; Eli didn’t let him fall.
“I got him.” Eli easily hoisted Jackson over his shoulders. “Don’t be scared, Paisley. I really think he’ll be fine. When we were cubs, I dared him to climb a cliff with me. He slipped, I tried to catch him, and we both fell and knocked ourselves out cold. Our parents found us, put us to bed, and made us some soup. We were both fine in the morning.”
Paisley picked up the armor. “I don’t know how to make soup. I only do take-out. Would he rather have wonton, or hot and sour?”
An unexpectedly sweet smile lit Eli’s face as he started walking again. “He’d rather have chicken noodle. But I’ll make the soup. You can curl up next to him and purr.”
Paisley laughed. “I can do that.”
They made it to the service entrance of SmartDefense without any problems. Paisley scouted for onlookers, then signaled to Eli that it was safe to come out. He carried Jackson to his car. Paisley opened the back door and got in, and Eli laid him down in the back seat with his head in her lap.
Paisley inspected Jackson as Eli drove, frowning at the cuts and bruises on his handsome face. He’d willingly taken a brutal beating rather than give her away. And Eli had tried to protect her even when he’d thought he was dying.
It didn’t matter how long she’d spent unloved and alone. She was loved now, and she knew that Jackson and Eli would never betray her or hurt her or let her down. And all they wanted from her in return was for her to love them back.
She’d leaped to their defense without a second thought, attacking four armed men as a housecat. But believing in love— trusting in love— admitting to love— felt so much more dangerous than that. Even now, she wasn’t sure she could bring herself to say that word aloud.
Jackson’s eyes fluttered open. He looked confused, his gaze drifting from Paisley’s face to the back of Eli’s head. “Are we going home?”
Paisley took his hand. “Home is with the people who love you, remember? You’re already home.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess I am.” Jackson squeezed her hand, then closed his eyes again, slipping back into unconsciousness.