by Zoe Chant
You’re a bunch of losers, she informed her imaginary boyfriends— imaginary ex-boyfriends, now. It never even occurred to me to have any of you turn into a panther.
Shane turned again, bent to kiss her forehead, then took the soap from her and returned the favor. She melted against him, letting him turn her this way and that to caress every inch of her body with lather-soft hands.
When they finally got out of the shower, he frowned again at the bite on her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have done that. There’s no way to explain it if a nurse sees it.”
“Hopefully they won’t make me put on a hospital gown. They didn’t today.”
Shane didn’t look reassured. His habitual wary alertness, which had eased after they’d made love, had returned.
“Hey...” Catalina touched his arm. “You always wake up early, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s push the beds together,” she suggested. “We can move them back before Dr. Elihu shows up.”
His eyes narrowed, and she knew he was weighing odds, risks, and benefits before he nodded. “Okay.”
After their usual dinner of something, they moved the cots together. Catalina nestled herself against Shane and put her arms around him. His muscles were taut as strung wires, and she could guess what he was worrying about. But he held her close, making her feel loved and safe.
“Better than cats,” she murmured.
“What?”
“I usually sleep with my cats,” she explained. “They’re nice and cozy on a cold night. But you’re even cozier.”
“That’s definitely one of the most interesting compliments I’ve ever gotten from a woman,” remarked Shane. “How many cats do you have?”
“Four.” She waited a beat, then added, “Including you.”
He chuckled, and she felt him relax.
“Don’t wake me up for a shower in the morning,” Catalina said sleepily. “The one we just had will do me for the day.”
To her confusion, Shane again tensed beside her. “No, you should take another.”
“Why?”
After a pause, he said, “I like the way your hair smells when it’s wet.”
She laughed in surprise. “All this time, you’ve been dragging me out of bed so you can smell my hair?”
Unabashed, Shane said, “Yes.”
“You’re weird.” She turned her head, presenting him with her hair. “But sure. That’s how much I like you, I’ll let you wake me up at the crack of dawn just so you can enjoy sniffing my hair. Weird hot bodyguard.”
He kissed the back of her head. “I appreciate it. Weird hot cat lady.”
Chapter Six
Catalina
When Shane shook Catalina awake the next morning, her first thought was that they really had made love. He really did love her. It hadn’t just been the sort of dream that feels great while you’re having it and depresses you when you wake up and realize that it hadn’t really happened.
She lazily reached up and caught his hand, bringing it to her lips. “You’re real.”
He bent and kissed her. “So are you. Up and at ’em.”
The next thing she noticed was that the cots were already back in their usual places. She blinked up at him. “You moved the bed without waking me up?”
“You sleep like a rock.” He lifted her off the cot and set her on her feet. “Go wash your hair for me.”
“Why don’t we shower together?”
“Can’t risk it. They might show up early. If I’m outside, I won’t let them open the door on you.”
Catalina went and took her solo shower. When she emerged, she marched up to Shane and leaned against his chest. “Go on.”
He bent and buried his face in her wet hair, taking a few deep inhales before he straightened. “Thanks. That’ll keep me going for the day. Do me a favor? Listen at the door. See if you can hear them coming before they open it.”
“Sure.”
Shane went into the bathroom and closed the door. The room felt empty without him. Catalina spent a moment imagining Shane wet and naked, then went and listened at the door. When the clunk of the lock opening sounded right at her ear, she nearly jumped a foot in the air. Then she hastily settled down on her bed as the door swung open.
Dr. Elihu, flanked by the usual array of guards, glanced around the room and under the cots, glared at the closed shower door, then snapped his fingers at her. “Come on, Mendez.”
A guard asked, “Do you want me to check the bathroom?”
The doctor turned bright red. “No, I do not!”
Catalina walked along the corridors, yawning. She’d memorized the route by now, so her mind was mostly occupied with figuring out how to conceal the bite on her shoulder if a nurse did ask her to put on a hospital gown. A sudden fit of modesty that required her to change in a bathroom? Careful handling of the gown and her shirt to make sure the nurse never saw her shoulder?
To Catalina’s relief and amusement, once she got to the medical testing rooms, she was settled in front of a computer, had electrodes attached to her head, and was told to play Grand Theft Auto 5.
She snickered. “Seriously?”
“It’s a solid test for certain reflexes, skills, and problem-solving abilities,” Dr. Elihu replied condescendingly. “But I’m hardly going to stand over your shoulder and watch you giggle your way through hours of virtual mayhem.”
He turned to a medical technician. “Run her for five hours. She gets a ten-minute break every half hour for the first two hours. Next three hours, run her without a break, to measure her responses under fatigue.”
“Yes, doctor,” said the technician.
Dr. Elihu swept out, taking three of the guards with him. The remaining three stayed in the room, their tranquilizer guns held ready.
As if I’d try to jump three armed men, Catalina thought. I may be brave, but I’m not stupid.
She turned to the screen, wondering if Shane played video games. Probably he either loved them and was a world-class player, or they bored him because he was too good at them and they weren’t challenging. Though even if they did bore him, she bet he’d be glad to have them now. Even Donkey Kong would be preferable to one more day locked up alone.
“Play the game, Mendez,” the technician ordered. She clicked a stop-watch. “Now.”
Catalina began to play. She’d just blown up a bank vault when she heard a loud crack behind her. Another crack sounded as she turned around.
Shane was in the room. Two of the guards were down on the floor, and the third was swinging his gun to bear on Shane. The technician was starting to open her mouth to scream.
Catalina jumped up and clapped her hand over the woman’s mouth, stifling her yell. The technician struggled with her, but Catalina held her tight. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Shane snatch the tranquilizer gun from the last guard’s hand, then punch him in the jaw. The guard dropped.
Shane turned, fast as lightning but so gracefully that it almost seemed to be in slow motion, and fired the tranquilizer gun at the technician. The woman went limp in Catalina’s arms. Instinctively, Catalina caught her, then lowered her to the floor.
Then Shane and Catalina were the only ones standing, with four bodies on the floor and a bunch of bank robbers yelling on a computer screen. The entire fight had taken only seconds.
“Good work.” Shane wasn’t even breathing hard. He pointed to the technician. “Get into her clothes.”
Catalina scrambled to strip out of her own clothing and into the technician’s scrubs. The woman was taller and slimmer than her, but she squeezed into the scrubs. Shane was doing the same with the tallest guard’s clothes, and also not finding them a good fit.
Catalina tried to roll up the technician’s pants, but they kept flopping down. She finally took a pair of shears from a medical kit and cut them off at the ankles so they wouldn’t trip her.
“Pass me that kit,” Shane said.
Catalina handed it to him. He dumped ou
t the contents, then rolled up their discarded clothes and stuck them in it.
“It might be cold outside,” he explained. “I don’t know where we are. I know I said I’ve been here before, but I meant that I’ve been to a base like this one. I’m pretty sure it’s not literally the same one.”
Catalina had resisted the urge to quiz him, but she couldn’t stand it any more. “How in the world did you get here?”
“I told you I can sneak up on people,” Shane replied, trying to wedge his feet into the guard’s shoes. “I’m not invisible— people will see me if they look for me, and I show up on video— but they won’t notice me if they’re not looking. I walked out of the bathroom when your back was turned, lay on my cot, and pulled a blanket over myself. So long as everyone believed I was in the bathroom and didn’t wonder, ‘What if he’s actually on the bed?’ they’d just think they saw rumpled sheets. Once you all turned to go out, I followed you out the door.”
“No way!” Catalina laughed, realizing how neatly he’d set it all up. “I can’t believe you convinced me that you liked smelling my hair.”
“I do like smelling your hair. But you had to actually believe I was in the shower. One glance anywhere else would have ruined the whole thing.” Shane gave up on the guard’s shoes and put his own back on. “Well, hopefully no one will notice my feet. People usually aren’t very observant. Did you notice if there’s any water bottles in here?”
Catalina pointed. “In that cupboard.”
He stuffed as many bottles as he could fit into the kit, laid two tranquilizer guns on top, and handed her the kit. “You carry this. If I start shooting, back me up. You take the easy shots, I’ll take the hard ones. Don’t fire in my direction, even if it looks easy. I move pretty fast, and if I get hit by friendly fire, it’s all over.”
“Okay.”
Shane rummaged through the unconscious guards’ pockets until he found a lighter and a Swiss Army knife, which he put in his own pocket. “All right. We’ve got everything we need to survive.”
“A lighter, a Swiss Army knife, two tranquilizer guns, a change of clothes, and four bottles of water?”
“Three tranquilizer guns.” Shane indicated the holstered one at his side. He looked her over, his gaze traveling from her sneakers— the technician’s shoes had been much too big for her to wear— to the badge pinned on her scrubs. Then he laid his hand on her shoulder. “Ready?”
Everything had happened so quickly, Catalina hadn’t had time to register if she was afraid or not. Now that she had time, she found that she wasn’t. Shane was with her, and his plan had worked spectacularly so far. Her nerves tingled with a mixture of adrenaline, excitement, trust, and love. She didn’t want to be anywhere but where she was, with Shane at her side.
“Ready,” she said.
Chapter Seven
Shane
The cool readiness of combat filled Shane. He had no more doubt, no more fear. It didn’t matter what had happened before or what might happen later. All that mattered was now. He wasn’t a man who regretted the past or worried about losing the woman he loved. He was a predator intent on nothing but protecting his mate, defeating his enemies, and escaping his cage.
“Don’t talk if anyone might be around,” he said. “People who don’t look at your face might recognize your voice.”
“Gotcha.”
He beckoned to Catalina. She followed, eagerness and excitement written all over her pretty face. She might not be a crack shot or have a poker face, but she was strong, quick-thinking, and fearless. There was no one he’d rather have at his side.
They stepped out of the medical room and into an empty corridor. He set a brisk pace, relying on his knowledge of the layout of the other base and hoping this one was similar. He glanced down each corridor they passed, until he came to a bank of elevators. He passed the security guard’s badge over the sensor, and an elevator door opened.
Two guards and a doctor stepped out of the elevator.
Shane gave them a brief nod, then stepped inside the elevator. Catalina followed. Once the doors closed, he heard her breath whoosh out in a gasp.
“I can’t believe they didn’t recognize us,” she said.
“They looked at our uniforms, not our faces.” Shane hit the button with the highest number. “I think this place is mostly underground. This should take us near an exit.”
The elevator doors slid open on another corridor. They once again began walking. Shane’s nerves hummed with alertness. Exits were likely to be well-guarded, and they’d need to get out without an alarm being raised. He’d have to move fast, and be lucky as well.
They passed a few medical technicians, who didn’t acknowledge them, and then he came to his destination, a door with six guards at the ready.
Shane walked up to it, casually holding up his badge. A guard gave it a perfunctory glance and waved him through. Shane started to step forward, unable to believe how easy it had been.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Catalina hold up her own badge. Another guard glanced at it, then frowned and looked back at her. “Hey— You’re not Denise. What are you doing with her badge?”
Shane whipped around and slammed his elbow into the guard’s jaw. The man crumpled. Before he even hit the floor, Shane drew his tranquilizer gun and fired rapidly, fanning the area. But the paralysis wasn’t instantaneous, and he wasn’t sure how many he’d hit. Two guards grabbed for their radios, two for their guns, and one lunged at Shane, trying to disarm him.
The radios were the biggest danger. Shane side-stepped the guard attacking him, protecting his gun-hand but taking a hard blow to the head. He wasn’t close enough to either of the guards going for their radios to hit them, but he was within kicking distance of one. He roundhouse-kicked one in the head, then turned to go for the other. But Catalina was already grabbing for that guard’s radio. They wrestled for it for a second, then that guard slid to the floor. Catalina had delayed the man for long enough for the dart Shane had shot him with to take effect.
A second guard dropped, paralyzed. But the guard in front of him was firing at him. Shane dropped and rolled, then kicked out from the floor, catching the man in the knee. He fell with a cry of pain that cut off as Shane kicked him in the head.
“Behind you!” Catalina gasped.
Shane rolled again, catching a quick glimpse of Catalina jumping in front of the last guard. Her back was to him, but Shane heard the soft hiss of a dart being fired. She sucked in her breath in surprise or pain. Then she dove forward, tackling the guard who had shot her. It was only a few seconds before she went limp and slid to the floor, but that was all the time Shane needed to spring to his feet and slam the guard into the wall. The man’s head cracked against hard plaster, and his eyes rolled back.
Shane let him fall, forcing himself to scan the area before he did anything else. All the guards were down, unconscious or paralyzed. No one else was in sight. Only then did he kneel beside Catalina.
Other than a dart in her chest, she seemed unhurt. She was obviously paralyzed, but her eyes were open and she was breathing easily. He pulled out the dart.
“We won,” he said, and kissed her cheek. “Now it’s my turn to carry you.”
He lifted her over his shoulders, then picked up the medical kit she’d never had time to open. The entire fight had lasted only a little longer than the one in the lab, maybe a minute. She hadn’t been able to get to her gun, but she’d still stopped a guard from alerting the entire base, then taken the dart meant for Shane.
My mate, he thought. It amazed him as much as it had the first time he’d looked into her eyes. My partner.
Shane headed for the door, not knowing if he’d find scorching desert or frozen tundra or even a bustling city. Though he seriously doubted that a secret base would be in a city; it would be far too easy for any escapee to summon help with a single phone call.
He kicked the door open.
The landscape before him was green and lush, the sky o
vercast, the air fresh and chilly. The evergreen forest before him was backed by snow-capped mountains. Behind him, the base was disguised as a smallish government building with an entrance to an underground parking lot, and a narrow road leading out from that.
Shane ran into the forest. He undoubtedly didn’t have much time before an alarm sounded— if one hadn’t gone off already. Twigs snapped underfoot, but he took no care to cover his trail just yet. First, he needed to put some distance between himself and pursuit. If the way looked difficult, he took it, running between boulders and crashing through thorny bushes.
He climbed a ridge and dashed down the other side, listening for the sound of running water. Shane heard a faint rippling sound and followed it to a shallow creek. He briefly laid Catalina down, took off his shoes and tied them around his neck, then picked her up again and waded upstream, running barefoot over the smooth stones and mud that lined the bottom. The creek grew deeper and faster, then divided. Shane took the wilder route that wound through a canyon. He was in luck. The creek— now almost a river— divided again. He took a fork at random, and followed it through a series of small waterfalls, scrambling up the slippery underwater rocks, climbing with one hand and using his other to hold tight to Catalina.
He’d been hiking for hours with water up to his thighs when he heard Catalina’s breathing change and felt her body jerk as she came suddenly awake.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ve got you.”
He felt her squirm as she looked around. “Hey, we got away! Where are we?”
“It looks like the Sierra Nevada mountain range, same as their last base.”
“Oh! Then you know where we are.”
“Not really. The Sierra Nevadas are four hundred miles long and about seventy wide. We could be anywhere within that. I don’t recognize this area at all.”
She squirmed again. “Put me down. I can walk.”
He shook his head. “Not yet. That shifter you met got your scent. They’ll pick up mine too, from where we fled the base, but I’m hoping to confuse them a bit. If they can’t find yours, they might think we got separated, and then they’ll split up. If they do catch up with us, I’d rather deal with one at a time.”