Some shifters had special mutations which gifted them with unusual powers. The most common mutations were healers and Shamans. However, there were shifters who could levitate objects, or, like Karen’s sister, communicate psychically and read minds. Then there were anomalies like Karen’s brother. He was a male healer, the only one known in the world. All other healers were female.
This was an especially touchy subject for Karen, because the human mercenaries had tried to kidnap her and her family because of their mutations. Apparently, the human army Colonel who’d run the secret laboratory had been obsessed with mutations.
Somehow, Colonel Clinton Bradwell had also found that Timber Valley had an unusually high level of mutations. A few months earlier, a gang of human mercenaries had attempted to kidnap shifter children from a summer camp, and had almost gotten away with it. Karen’s brother and sister had been among them.
The thought made Dash ill. The human mercenaries looked on their kind as animals. Who knows what they would have done to them? They might have dissected the children the same way that they did the adults. Tortured them…his claws shot out, and he forced them back in again.
“Who were the humans?” Karen’s voice sounded faint now.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to identify them. I reported it to the Wardens, and they set up a tap on her phone. She had several conversations with unknown parties, and you were referenced in one of them. She said that she was talking to you every day and you and your family were safe – so far.”
“Did she say anything else about us?”
“No.”
“I see.” Karen’s voice had turned grim.
“We were going to keep monitoring the situation, try to get her to lead us to whoever she was talking to, but this morning we overheard her talking about kidnapping another shifter, some time very soon. We had to move in today; we couldn’t take that risk.”
“You’re sure?”
“She specifically said that they needed to have plenty of men on hand in case he wolfs out.”
“I’m having a very hard time believing that. I’ve known Isadora for years. What did she say when you took her into custody?”
“Nothing. She refuses to say a word, which is suspicious. If she’s innocent, why wouldn’t she defend herself and explain what the hell she’s doing giving all these samples to humans?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m going to fly there first thing in the morning.”
“Don’t, Karen, there’s nothing that you can do for her. This is a matter for the Wardens; she has no rights to an attorney in a matter like this. Our Shaman will be back in town in a few hours and then he’ll question her.”
“There must be some explanation for this other than money. Isadora’s the least mercenary person I know. Remember when she volunteered to work for me for free while I was trying to get my business going?”
“Maybe it’s a revenge thing. She’s striking back at those who rejected her.” Even as he said it, he didn’t believe it. Did he?
“Isadora’s not bitter,” Karen argued. “She dislikes her family, sure, but overall, she has plenty of friends, she goes out and parties and has a good time, she’s got her own little crowd of rebels who like her, and all that poking at authority is fun for her. She doesn’t do it out of anger.”
“Believe me, I’m as baffled as you, but there’s no denying what she said on those phone calls. Listen, the sheriff just walked in, I’ll have to let you go.” He hung up the phone.
Then he pushed back his chair and stood up.
Karen was right. There must be something more behind this. Isadora wouldn’t sell out her kind for money. What could it be then? Was somebody threatening her? He couldn’t imagine that either. If someone tried to intimidate Isadora, she’d go lynx on them and rip their face off or die trying.
He walked over to the sheriff’s office and knocked on the door. The sheriff, who was typing on his computer, nodded at him to come in.
“I’m going to go back and talk to Isadora again. Maybe she’ll say something to me. Can I speak to her without the guards present?”
Sheriff Connors frowned at him. “She’s in a jail cell. Why would I need to guard her?”
Dash looked at him with alarm.
“Sir, you are talking about Isadora Mosswood. She picks locks faster than you can blink. She likes to break into buildings, steal things, and then leave the stuff out on the town square, just for fun. She can get out of handcuffs in under five seconds. You left her unguarded?”
“Come on, Dash, I know what I’m doing.” Connors tone was annoyed. “That cell is very secure. If you’re so worried, I’ll show you right now.” He pushed back his chair and stood up.
This ought to be good, Dash thought to himself. It would be funny if the situation wasn’t so serious.
They walked down the hallway and into the jail section, to find exactly what Dash knew they’d find – an empty cell.
* * *
I told you so, I told you so, I told you so…Dash bit back on the overwhelming urge to shout out the words at Sheriff Connors as they headed down the hallway to the office of Chief Warden Loren Redthorne. Redthorne travelled around the country a lot, but when he was in Timber Valley he had a suite of rooms in a building attached to the Sheriff’s building. That way, they could more easily share information.
Not for the first time, Dash found himself missing Steele and wishing that they hadn’t had to exile him. Connors was proving to be an overly rigid bureaucrat, completely lacking in imagination or the ability to think on his feet. He’d been fine as a lieutenant; he sucked as sheriff.
Now, thanks to Sheriff Connors, Isadora was on the loose. God knows how long she’d been gone, or where she’d headed. Dash had really wanted her to be questioned by Cody. It was better for all concerned, including her. Now that she was in the wind, every shifter cop in the territory would be hunting for her – and who knew what would happen if they cornered her? She should have stayed in her jail cell where she was safe.
Of course, he wasn’t worried about her welfare, he reminded himself. He only wanted to ensure that the investigation was carried out properly.
Sheriff Connors yanked open the door and bustled into the office, with Dash following behind. Warden Redthorne sat at the head of a conference table. With him was the Chief Elder, Jordan Fleetfoot, as well as Dash’s uncle, Vince Battle, the Alpha of the Battle pack, and Redthorne’s secretary, Fawn. They met regularly to keep updated on the investigation into Colonel Bradwell and his group of mercenaries.
Fawn, a round-faced, curly haired wolf shifter, bustled about on the sidelines, pouring coffee into mugs.
“I hear you lost the lynx. That’s disappointing,” Warden Redthorne said to Sheriff Connors, as he accepted a coffee mug from Fawn. “You should have kept guards on her.”
Connors face flushed with humiliation. He straightened up and glowered at Warden Redthorne. “My sergeant failed to inform me that Isadora is known for her skills in lock picking.”
“You mean you failed to ask about the history of a prisoner who poses a threat to the existence of all shifters, and that is somehow the fault of your subordinate?” Redthorne pinned Connors in place with a cold, angry look, and let out a rumbling growl.
He was an Alpha. Connors wasn’t.
Connors’ face turned even redder, and he ducked his head submissively. “My apologies.”
Dash permitted himself a quick smile as he took a seat. He suspected Connors wouldn’t be serving another term as sheriff after this term ended, which couldn’t come soon enough for him. Fawn set cups of coffee in front of everyone, as Warden Redthorne took a seat at the head of the table.
“My men have alerted all the agencies in the territory and in all surrounding states. We’ll find her,” Connors said confidently.
“We’ll see.” Warden Redthorne sounded less enthused. “In the meantime, I’m here to update you on the investigation into Colonel Bradwell. We’ve found out some disturb
ing information.”
More disturbing than knowing that a rogue army colonel knew of their existence and viewed shifters as disposable lab rats to be experimented on? Dash thought. It was hard to imagine.
“What have you found out?” Jordan Fleetfoot leaned forward anxiously. He was an older shifter, with silver hair, recently elected as Chief Elder. He’d be reporting back to the other Elders, who lived in various parts of the country supervising their territories.
“We found the arms dealer that he’d been working with,” Redthorne said. “Then we managed to hack into the arms dealer’s cell phone and listen in on some of his conversations. Bradwell definitely plans to rebuild the laboratory and continue his work. We don’t know where or when.”
Dash felt rage boiling up inside him, and he stifled a low growl. He could see fur bristling on the faces of the other people in the room.
He thought of the tortures that the kidnapped shifters had endured. They’d been zapped with electricity to force them to shift. Some of them had been dissected alive, while others were forced to watch. The attempt of Colonel Bradwell to abduct a group of children attending a summer camp on the Battle pack’s property had been most horrifying of all. What would they have done with those children and young teens? Would they have treated them any better than the adults that they’d tortured?
“As long as those bastards are out there, every shifter cub and kitten in the country is in danger,” Dash growled.
“I haven’t even gotten to the most disturbing part yet,” Redthorne said.
Well, this day just kept getting better and better.
“During one of the arms dealers’ conversations, he talked about Bradwell working with a scientist from Korslovia, a man named Zador Horvath. The arms dealer had introduced Bradwell to Zador. It turns out that they had a similar laboratory in Korslovia for many years, located at a remote labor camp for political prisoners. Scientists in Korslovia had stumbled on the existence of our kind, and have been experimenting on them for more than a decade.”
“Korslovia is a dictatorship, isn’t it?” Connors asked. “In the Middle East?”
“They are in Eastern Europe, and their dictatorship was overthrown and replaced by a democracy two years ago,” Dash said. Korslovia was a war torn country which had been having military coups for years. They had suffered under dictator after dictator; hopefully the new democratic government would succeed where the previous governments had failed.
He saw Connors shoot him a dirty look. Dash had just showed him up in front of everyone. Dash exchanged a glance with Warden Redthorne, who scowled and looked away. He knew what Redthorne was thinking; he was holding Connors up in comparison to the former sheriff, and finding him wanting. Redthorne had been the one to order Steele’s exile, however, and now they were all living with the consequences.
In some ways, Dash could understand it. Colonel Bradwell was the living embodiment of why shifters didn’t want their existence revealed to humans; the fear was that most humans might react the same way that he did, looking on shifters as less than human and treating them as such. Steele had risked revealing the existence of shifters to the world; shifter law said he had to pay the price.
Still, Dash kept wondering if they could have taken less extreme measures.
Well, they didn’t have time to worry about that now.
“So, here’s what’s really alarming,” Redthorne said. “It appears that the reason Bradwell was so obsessed with this project, so determined to carry on with it no matter what, is that the scientists in Korslovia actually succeeded in their mission. They’d succeeded in turning humans into shifters.”
There were exclamations of shock and anger in the room. Could that even be possible? In all of shifter’s known history, going back thousands of years, there had never been a case of someone being born human and then turning shifter.
“Where are these human shifters?” Fleetfoot demanded.
“Dead. When the dictatorship was overthrown, Zador blew up the lab and killed them, along with the other scientists and most of the test subjects. According to our contacts in Korslovia, we now believe that Zador fled the country and came to America on a fake visa shortly afterwards.”
“We originally were told that Colonel Bradwell accidentally stumbled on the existence of shifters when he came across one during a military training exercise,” Chief Elder Fleetfoot said.
Loren nodded. “That is what we were led to believe at the time. We now think that the exercise was a cover, and he was out there looking for a shifter to capture,” Loren said. “Horvath somehow knew where communities of shifters live in the United States, and told him where to look. That’s the information that we’re picking up from the arms dealer’s conversations, anyway.”
“Do we have a way to find this scientist?” Fleetfoot asked. “It sounds as if he’s as big a danger to us as Colonel Bradwell is. We need to find out how he knows about the location of our shifter communities.”
“Unfortunately, no known photographs of him exist,” Redthorne said. “We have descriptions of him from the few people who managed to escape his lab. He’s a white male in his fifties, but that’s all that we have.”
“Hair color? Eye color? Facial characteristics?” Connors persisted.
“Those can be, and most likely have been, changed. Hair dye, contact lenses, cosmetic surgery.”
“So where does this leave us?” Chief Elder Fleetfoot asked.
“With far too many unanswered questions. We’re continuing to talk to the Korslovian shifters, to see what information we can get from them. They’re as eager to find this scientist as we are,” Warden Redthorne said.
He glanced at Connors. “I’d like Dash to work with the Wardens in searching for Isadora. They have a history, he knows her, he may be able to aid us in tracking her down faster than we would without him.”
“Thank you,” Dash said fervently, and then, at Sheriff Connor’s angry look, finished up quickly “for trusting me with this important assignment, Warden Redthorne.”
As everyone got up to file out of the room, he found himself wondering if a transfer to the Wardens department might be in order for the near future.
First things first, however. He had to help them find Isadora before she got hurt – that is, before she could hurt anyone.
Damn that lynx, he thought unhappily as he headed out to his patrol car. The sooner she was in custody, the sooner he’d be able to stop thinking about her night and day – wouldn’t he?
Chapter Three
Isadora pulled her minivan into the far end of a parking lot by a small convenience store, yawned heavily, and gulped the last of her large coffee. She’d driven for a dozen hours to a spot two hours outside of Lonesome Pine, Montana. She was exhausted, but she couldn’t stop now. The end-game was almost in sight.
“I need a catnap,” she muttered to herself. “Ha ha. Catnap. I’m hilarious.”
She was parked near a small rural store with a faded sign that proclaimed that it was “Raymond’s Gas N Gulp.” The parking lot was hemmed in by pine trees swaying in the cool fall breeze. The delightful pine scents of the forest swirled in her nostrils, along with the reek of gasoline and the bitter scent of burnt coffee drifting from the store.
She glanced at the other cars parked in the lot. She didn’t smell any other shifters. Maybe she’d really given everybody the slip.
Even if she ran into any other shifters who knew about the APB on her, they wouldn’t recognize her at a glance. She didn’t look like herself any more.
She’d been prepared for this day; she’d stashed bags with disguises in various hiding spots throughout Timber Valley, in case the time came that she had to run.
Once she’d shimmied out of the jail cell window, she’d shifted into lynx form, fetched the bag, and started running with the bag dangling from her mouth. About fifty miles outside of Timber Valley, she’d shifted back to human form, pulled on a blond wig, taken off her nose stud and skull earrings,
and pulled on a floral pastel dress with tights and pink Ugg boots. She wore a pink cable knit sweater hiding the tattoos on her arms. Then she’d climbed into the minivan that she’d stashed outside of town in case of emergency, and hightailed it north.
Goth girl had disappeared, to be replaced by a respectable preppie girl who would – she shuddered at the thought – have met with her parents full approval.
She glanced at herself in the rearview mirror, and grimaced. She looked like she should be on the cover of “Career Girl” magazine.
“Of all the indignities that I’m suffering, this is the worst,” she grumbled.
Then she climbed out of the car and looked around the parking lot.
Were Warriordemon1 and Savageslayer even going to show up? Hobos weren’t always the most reliable of shifters. There were usually reasons that they weren’t members of prides or packs. Some were free spirits, some were anti-social, and some were downright crazy. Just like human Hobos. Isadora had always enjoyed staying at Hobo camps when she’d travelled in the past, and now that she had a mission, the Hobo network was turning out to be especially useful.
She wished she knew what Warriordemon1 and Savageslayer looked like. There was a code phrase they were supposed to use when they walked up; it was “I hear the weather’s going to turn nasty later.” Anyway, it gave her time to buy some more coffee and maybe a six pack of highly caffeinated soda. She was dying here.
As she walked across the parking lot towards the store, a blue station wagon pulled in, and she glanced over to see who it was. The doors opened, and four men climbed out. They moved like cops, and smelled like shifters.
They were in a human area, so of course the car was unmarked and the men were plainclothes. Most shifter towns officially didn’t exist, so when the shifter law enforcement left their own area, they never drove their police vehicles or wore their uniforms; it would cause too many questions. However, they still had legal jurisdiction over shifters everywhere.
Timber Valley Pack: Lynx On The Loose( A Paranormal Romance With Shifters) Page 2