by Zoe Chant
Pete chuckled, shaking his head in amazement. “It’s like a three-ring circus.”
“Isn’t it great? I see stuff like that every day without even leaving my apartment.”
He glanced at her curiously. “You really love it here, don’t you?”
“I do. Sometimes it gets a bit much, and then…” She broke off. Pete didn’t want to talk about the cave bear (cave bear!) and she didn’t want to talk about what she used to do when it got a bit much. She concluded, “But mostly I love it. How about you?”
He stepped on the gas, neatly inserting himself into a tiny break in the traffic flow in true Refuge City style. “It’s noisy and crowded and smelly. But I think it might be growing on me. A bit.”
“Nothing like an old lady hurling beer cans to get you to see the city in a new light, huh?”
Pete smiled, the skin around his brown eyes crinkling. “I’ll tell you what really made that moment for me. She kept the Bud Light Lime just to chuck at people. The can she was drinking from was a craft beer.”
“That does make it even better,” Tirzah said, who hadn’t noticed. Pete must have eyes like a hawk. Or a cave bear.
As he approached the high-security-looking building with an understated sign reading Defenders, Inc., she wondered once again about him, his team, cave bears and flying kittens and secret experiments. She did respect Pete’s request to discuss it later. But she was dying of curiosity, too. Override wasn’t just a name, but a part of her, the part that pried and spied and learned secrets.
She’d given her word not to demand answers just yet. But she couldn’t help hoping that some of Pete’s teammates would be around. Merlin Merrick, for instance, the one who supposedly turned into some kind of raptor. He sounded like he might be a talker.
CHAPTER 6
Since her accident, Tirzah had started noticing all sorts of things she never had when she’d been able to step over curbs and walk down stairs and use both her hands while she was standing up. The world was a completely different place when you used a wheelchair. With a very few exceptions, it just wasn’t built for people like her. Even doctors’ offices frequently had heavy manual doors without doorstops, so she could hold them open or move her chair through, but not both at the same time.
And don’t even get me started about the height of supermarket shelves!
Whoever had designed the Defenders building had clearly considered the possibility that people might visit in wheelchairs. For every curb or set of stairs, there was a clearly visible ramp. The buttons for summoning elevators went low enough for her to hit without standing up or even stretching, and there was no unpleasant bump when she went in.
“This place is really accessible,” she remarked to Pete, who was holding Batcat’s carrier. He made a noncommittal grunt in response. An air of gloom had descended upon him once they’d spotted the building, and it had only gotten darker and heavier when they’d pulled into the underground parking lot.
As the elevator ascended, she suddenly remembered something. “About Batcat—Is she a secret here? Or—”
The bell dinged, and the doors slid open.
A scene of unbelievable chaos met her eyes. And ears. Some small flying thing was zipping around the office, with one man in hot pursuit, another apparently trying to film it, and others trying to avoid both the flying creature and the pursuit. Tirzah tried hard to get a visual lock on it, but could see nothing more than a blur of color and motion, like a hummingbird’s wings.
“Don’t open the windows!” yelled a lithe blond man, who was vaulting over desks and chairs while making wild swipes at it with a butterfly net. She recognized him from her research as Merlin Merrick, the raptor shifter with a million probably-fake jobs.
A tall man with auburn hair and an angular face, whom she recognized as Ransom Pierce—the hellhound!—opened the nearest window, making Merlin let out a howl of outrage.
A burly black man with silvering hair and beard said with remarkable calm, “You’re all probably scaring it. If everyone would just stay still and keep quiet, maybe it’d land somewhere.”
“Hey! I have a client—” Pete’s voice was drowned out in the general ruckus. He tried again, more loudly. “I have a CLIENT here! Everyone, shut up and sit down!”
This made no impression on anyone. Except for the flying thing, which whipped around and arrowed straight for Pete and Tirzah.
The next thing Tirzah knew, Pete had thrust Batcat’s carrier into her arms and leaped in front of her.
She held her breath. The entire room seemed to hold its breath. In the sudden silence, she clearly heard the buzz of tiny, rapidly flapping wings as the creature circled Pete’s head. Then it zipped out the window, and was gone.
“Ransom!” yelled Merlin. “I was about to get it!”
Not at all apologetically, Ransom said, “I couldn’t hear myself think.”
“Thanks a lot,” said the man who’d been trying to film it. He had thick black hair and hazel eyes, and looked vaguely familiar. Maybe she’d seen him in her research too…? “I can tell you already that none of this footage is usable. Exactly how am I supposed to make your security system weird flying creature-proof when don’t even know what it is?”
“Talk less, work more,” Ransom suggested.
The burly black man cleared his throat. “We have a visitor. Let’s try to make a sane impression.”
From the looks everyone gave him, Tirzah guessed that he was the boss. He must have his hands full!
“Hi, I’m Pete’s new client. Tirzah Lowenstein.” She offered him her hand.
He shook it gravely. “Roland Walker. How did you manage to hire Pete without going through me first?”
“She, uh…” Pete trailed off, looking at her. He was obviously unsettled, though she wasn’t sure if it was by all the commotion or by his boss finding out Pete had gone over his head.
As for her, she was still processing what had just happened. Pete had jumped to put his own body between her and some possibly dangerous, totally unknown thing, and he’d done it faster than she could blink.
That’s his job, she reminded herself. That’s all.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that it had meant something more.
Since Pete was clearly at a loss to explain her, she said, “Should we show them?” She nodded at the cat carrier, from which forlorn meows were emanating. “Cut right to the chase?”
“Yeah.” Pete squared his shoulders, like he was ready to spring into action all over again. “Yeah, let’s do that. Let me close the window.”
As Pete went to shut the window, Merlin’s blue eyes gleamed. “You need to close the window before you open the cat carrier and showing us your cat will explain everything? Is it a flying kitten?”
Not one of the men reacted as if Merlin had made a joke or said something random and weird.
Ransom went white.
Roland folded his hands together and looked thoughtfully from Pete to Tirzah to the cat carrier.
“Oh, no,” said the man with hazel eyes. “NO. I want absolutely nothing to do with this. Don’t bother calling me for anything till you’ve got this completely squared away. I’ll be in Bali. Or, actually, I’ll be anywhere but Bali, because I don’t even want to tell you where I’m going!”
With that, Tirzah recognized him. She’d heard that voice before, on podcasts and TV, and seen that face. She’d just never expected to actually meet the tech genius billionaire himself.
“Oh my God,” she blurted out. “You’re Carter Howe! You’re my inspiration! When the news came out that your plane had gone down and they thought you were dead, I cried all day. And when I heard that you weren’t, I—um.” Her face burning, she said, “Sorry. Sorry. Fangirl moment. You must be so sick of that. Pretend you didn’t hear it. Pleased to meet you.”
But he didn’t seem annoyed. In fact, Carter sounded quite sincere as he said, “Pleased to meet you! And not at all. Are you a fan of my phones?”
“I love y
our phones! But I’m a—er, I work in cyber security, you see, so—”
Carter burst out laughing. “Sorry. I just realized how you and Pete must have met. Very elegant hijacking; I was impressed. You really made me work to track you down, too.”
“That means so much to me, coming from you,” Tirzah said, beaming. Over Carter’s shoulder, she saw Pete looking like a thundercloud. “Oh, sorry, Pete, I got distracted. Carter is such a hero of mine. I can’t believe you know him… How do you know each other?”
It was like her words sucked all the cheer out of the room. A heavy silence fell, and even Merlin’s bright smile faltered.
“Apex,” Roland said quietly. “Let’s see your cat.”
Tirzah opened the cage. An angry spitting sound came from within, and then a small sphere of black fur rocketed out, hissing furiously, and began zooming around the room. Tirzah clicked to her, but it took a few minutes before Batcat recovered from the indignity of the carrier and deigned to land on Tirzah’s shoulder.
“Aww,” said Merlin, extending his hand. “Hello, cutie!”
Batcat, apparently sensing a kindred spirit in the realm of havoc-wreaking, nuzzled him and purred.
“This is a matter that concerns the entire team,” Roland said. “If it’s all right with you, Tirzah, I’d like them all to hear your story.”
“I’m not on the team,” Carter said promptly, but he made no move to leave.
“Let me rephrase that,” Roland said. “A matter that concerns the entire team and Carter.”
“Sure, you can all hear it,” Tirzah said.
Once again, she told her story. Roland and Ransom stopped her a few times to ask questions, Carter said he was an admirer of Override’s work, and Merlin let out an actual cheer when she recounted running over Jerry’s toes. When she got to the part about the Apex file, she emailed it to all of their accounts, so they could open it on their laptops.
As they read it, she looked from man to man, wondering who she could quiz in return once she was done. She already knew Pete didn’t want to talk about any cave bear-related issues. Much as she was dying to know if her role model could turn into something, Carter had nearly walked out the door just at the mention of flying kittens. Ransom sat in forbidding silence, the stark angles of his face as impassive as a statue’s, and though she didn’t know what a hellhound even was, she didn’t think she wanted to meet one. Roland seemed approachable, but he hadn’t been in the Apex file. That left Merlin.
Yes. Merlin would be perfect. He was friendly, he seemed less traumatized than Pete, and he could easily demonstrate his power without trashing the office. She couldn’t wait to see what kind of raptor he turned into. A hawk? An eagle? Or could he become any type of bird of prey?
Tirzah had to admit, she was a bit jealous. She’d always wished she could fly…
Merlin, a fast reader, finished and looked up before the rest of them. Tirzah pounced. “Merlin, could you turn into a raptor for me? I’d really love to see it!”
“Sure!” Merlin set down his laptop and bounced up.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pete hold up his hand. Even as his mouth was beginning to form the word, “Wait,” Merlin vanished.
Tirzah was suddenly face to face with a velociraptor.
She let out a shriek and tried to throw herself backward. Her wheelchair stayed in place, as she’d locked its wheels earlier, but rocked so hard that it nearly tipped over.
Pete grabbed her chair, steadying it, and roared, “Goddammit, Merlin!”
The dinosaur shrank to the size of a St. Bernard, then a Labrador retriever, then enlarged to St. Bernard size again. By then Tirzah had realized the nature of her error. Her panic gave way to slightly hysterical laughter.
“Sorry,” she gasped. “My fault! I saw ‘raptor,’ and I thought ‘hawk.’ Not ‘velociraptor!’”
“He still should’ve warned you,” Pete said, glaring at the velociraptor. Tirzah was impressed that he could sustain a glare when faced with a dinosaur that was rapidly switching between cat and hamster sizes.
“Seriously, Pete, I asked,” Tirzah said.
The velociraptor shot up to human size, then became Merlin again. “Whew. Got stuck there a moment. Sorry about that. I thought you knew. It says ‘raptor’ because the main difference between the raptor dinosaurs is their size, and I can change mine. The one I turned into first was actually a Utahraptor. That’s the real dinosaur that Jurassic Park called velociraptors, I guess because it sounds cooler. Actual velociraptors are the size of a—”
“Chicken,” chorused the men, as Merlin said, “Small dog.”
“Okay,” said Carter. “If it makes you feel better, you’re the size of a Chihuahua.”
As Merlin and Carter began squabbling over what animal was the size of a velociraptor, Roland turned to Pete. “What have you told her already? About everything.”
“Not much. I said I’d tell her what I could. Later.” Pete turned to Tirzah, wry amusement in his eyes. “Not the patient type, are you?”
“Well…” She couldn’t deny it. “Would you rather have someone else explain it to me? So I can know, but you don’t have to be the one who tells me?”
As she said it, she realized that she wanted to hear Pete’s story from Pete himself. But not if it was too painful for him to talk about it.
“No. No, I’d rather tell you myself.” He took a breath and went on calmly, “The short version is that me, Merlin, and Ransom were on a team of Recon Marines. We were ambushed and taken to a secret lab. The people running it made us into shifters. Just like the file says. Roland had been captured too, but separately. He was in the Army.”
Pete stopped, glanced at Carter, who was giving him a say anything and I’ll murder you with my bare hands look, and said, “Carter was part of the team that rescued us.”
Pete was silent for so long that Tirzah thought he’d said all he was going to say, but then he added, “We found some animals at the lab. Flying kittens, like Batcat. Miniature dragons. Some of them got adopted by the team that came to rescue us—that was Protection, Inc., the west coast branch—but the rest disappeared before we got a good look at them. That’s why I figured Batcat was either one of those or came from a different Apex lab.”
Once again, Pete fell silent.
“Okay. Thanks.” Tirzah could see that even saying that much hadn’t been any fun for him, so she didn’t press him, though it all raised far more questions than it had answered.
“Apex was the black ops agency that had started the experiments,” Roland said. He glanced at Carter, then said, “That is, they’d been doing this sort of thing for a while. But by the time Pete’s team and I had been captured, Apex had been taken over by something… stranger.”
“Stranger how?” Tirzah asked.
The men all glanced at each other. Reluctantly, Pete said, “Lamorat called them… uh… wizard-scientists.”
Tirzah felt her eyebrows shoot up. Then she remembered Batcat, not to mention the velociraptor, and they fell again. She supposed that once you were dealing with flying cats and men who turned into cave bears and dinosaurs and hellhounds, wizard-scientists fit right in.
“We’d hoped we’d seen the last of them,” Roland said. “But it seems like there’s at least one left. So Pete will protect you while the rest of us figure out what’s going on and track them down.”
A lively conversation began between the men as they started discussing the technical nitty-gritty of how to make her apartment more secure and follow up on the clues she’d given them.
Between Roland’s calm confidence, Carter’s technical genius, Merlin’s quick wits, Ransom’s aura of still waters running deep, and most of all, the way Pete stood by her like an unbreakable shield, Tirzah relaxed. She was in danger, and yet she felt safe.
Come to think of it, she’d felt safe almost from the moment Pete had broken into her apartment.
Pete, on the other hand, seemed increasingly unsettled. Finally, he got u
p, muttered something about having to make a phone call, and walked out.
Tirzah wondered who he was calling, that it had to be done in private. The other men were making calls to various contacts from where they were. Then she put the expression on his face together with him walking out, and knew exactly what sort of call he was making.
He’s calling his girlfriend to tell her he’s got a job and he’s going to have to cancel their plans for the weekend.
The realization that Pete had a girlfriend struck an unexpected pang into her heart.
What did you expect? Tirzah told herself. A hot guy like him, strong and protective and brave and considerate and funny, of course he’s already taken.
Wonder if his girlfriend knows he turns into a cave bear…?
CHAPTER 7
P ete took one last glance at Tirzah, making sure she looked comfortable being left alone with that bunch of weirdos, then ducked into his office and closed the soundproofed door.
First he called his mother, who didn’t pick up. He left a message to let her know he had a 24-7 job and wouldn’t be home until it was done.
And then came the difficult call. It was ten minutes into recess at Caro’s school. He hated to upset her in the middle of school, but it would be difficult to have a private phone call later, when he’d be in Tirzah’s small apartment. His team knew he had a daughter, but it wasn’t because Pete had told them and he’d made sure they didn’t know anything more than that. The safest thing for Caro was to keep her completely separate from his dangerous job, which meant that he didn’t even discuss her existence with anyone involved in his job. Not even with a sweet woman like Tirzah.
Caro answered immediately. “Hey, Dad. If you were wondering if I changed my mind about cilantro, I still hate it. Bananas too.”