by Laura Taylor
For now, though, the group was taking a half hour break for dinner. The hall was right on the edge of the college campus, and there was a café across the road, so Skip headed over to get a bite to eat. The street was mostly deserted, but there were a dozen or so students loitering outside the hall, some eating, a couple of them using the break to smoke a cigarette, so she figured she wasn’t going anywhere too isolated. The café had a good range of things to eat, sandwiches, lasagne, quiche… She stared at the counter, trying to choose, eventually deciding on a mushroom pie and a fruit smoothie. Then she settled herself at one of the tables and opened her laptop – not the usual one she used, as that one contained too much sensitive information, but the spare the Den kept for excursions like this, good functionality but nothing that could get them into trouble if it somehow got lost or fell into the wrong hands. She pulled up the notes she’d been making in the seminar and began rereading them, making a list of questions to ask the lecturer later on.
Miller sighed as he drove the SUV into the centre of the town. His team mates were hungry, and though Miller had no appetite himself, he’d brought them here to search for a quick dinner.
He slowed the car as they reached a row of shops. A few still had lights on, and he spotted a small café that looked like a good place to get a simple meal, so he pulled in to the curb. “Will this do?” he asked his two companions. They were amiable enough men, but with Miller’s ongoing crisis of conscience about his current line of work, he’d been having a hard time keeping his temper in check today. Everything seemed to be annoying him more than usual, and he was hoping that neither of them would object to the simple café. After a long day, he had little desire to drive all over town looking for a place to eat.
“Good enough,” Daniel said, unclipping his seatbelt and hopping out of the car. Steve just shrugged.
There weren’t many people around, one or two inside the café, another couple hanging around outside the hall across the street. Miller hoped that that meant they would get served quickly, and could get out of here. He was sorely longing for a little time to himself in his hotel room.
Steve opened the door to the café, just as a young woman on the other side of the door went to do the same. She stepped back, politely letting them pass, and Miller smiled at her, opening his mouth to say thank you…
And froze in his tracks. It was the girl from Scotland, the one he’d seen at the start of the battle with the shifters. His shock at seeing her here was eclipsed only by his relief that she was still alive. She’d vanished by the end of the battle, and he’d had no idea whether she’d escaped, or been killed.
The girl looked up at him, recognising him in the same instant, and if he’d had any doubt as to her identity, the immediate look of horror on her face did away with it.
He didn’t want to hurt her, had in mind to just ignore her and keep walking, but in the split second between recognising her and making that decision, Steve had seen the look on his face, registered the shock on the girl’s, and reached the completely obvious conclusion: she was a shifter.
Moving with a speed that startled even Miller, Steve spun around and grabbed the girl, slamming a hand over her mouth so she couldn’t speak, and hauled her out of the café. He was twice her size, the girl just a tiny slip of a thing, and her struggles were useless against his greater strength.
“Shifter,” Steve hissed at Daniel, and his other companion wasted no time in helping to subdue the girl. It was a few short steps back to the car, not nearly a long enough time for Miller to come up with a plan B, a strategy for letting the girl slip out of this unexpected trap.
“Open the door,” Steve snapped, and, not knowing what else to do, Miller did. He could hardly protest that they shouldn’t take her, after all. Officially, he was still working for the Noturatii, and hadn’t got anywhere near close enough to formulating an exit strategy to think of anything useful to do now.
Steve hauled her into the back seat, while Daniel slammed the door then jumped into the passenger seat. Feeling numb, Miller got into the driver’s seat.
Daniel pulled out his gun and pointed it at the girl’s head. “Sit still, or you’ll have a bullet in your skull.” The girl went still, glaring daggers at them all while Steve kept his hand over her mouth.
“You know this girl?” Steve asked Miller, still keeping a tight grip on her. “She’s a shifter, yeah?”
Miller nodded, his mind not working fast enough in his shock to come up with a plausible denial. “Saw her in Scotland,” he said shortly, feeling his gut churn.
“Hand over your phone,” Daniel barked at the girl, and after a moment’s hesitation, she did.
“We need to drug her,” Steve said pragmatically. Taking a conscious and struggling captive all the way back to London was going to be a nightmare, but Daniel shook his head.
“Can’t. We don’t have anything. This was supposed to be a simple recon mission.”
“Fuck,” Steve swore. “We’ve at least got some handcuffs, right?” The girl struggled at that, causing Steve to tighten his grip on her, pressing his forearm against her throat until she was struggling to breathe. “In the glove box?” he suggested, and moments later, Daniel came up with a set. He tossed them onto Steve’s lap and pointed his gun at the girl again.
“You stay still, or you’re dead. Got it?”
The girl glared at him, but didn’t move as Steve released her carefully, then locked the handcuffs around her wrists, her hands secured behind her back. “Miller! Move it! We can’t hang around here all day,” Steve snapped, and Miller obediently started the car and put it into gear. Steve shoved the girl into the seat behind Miller’s, reaching over to pull the seatbelt around her and do it up. “Don’t want you getting any ideas about leaping out of the car,” he growled at her, then slid into his own seat and pulled out his gun, taking over guard duty from Daniel.
“Stop here,” Daniel barked suddenly, and Miller did. Daniel hopped out of the car and dashed over to a nearby rubbish bin, dumping the girl’s phone inside, then raced back to the car. It was another pragmatic move, as they could easily assume that the shifters’ phones were traceable via GPS chips, much as the Noturatii’s were. “Now, let’s get this piece of filth back to London,” he said to Miller, a look of triumph on his face.
Keeping most of his attention on the road, Miller programmed their new destination into the GPS, and minutes later, they were heading out of town, along a series of winding roads that would lead them back to the motorway.
“What’s in the bag?” Daniel asked, referring to the small backpack the girl had been carrying, and he reached for it, checking inside. “Water bottle. Jumper. Booking form for… hmm, a computer seminar. Fascinating,” he said drily. “And what have we here? A laptop.” He smirked at the girl, who said nothing. “I wonder what little gems will show up on this one.” He opened it up, but it was immediately apparent that the computer was not only password protected, but also encrypted in some way.
“No matter,” he said, closing the thing and putting it back in the bag. “The lab will be able to get into this later. And then all your secrets will be ours.”
Miller glanced at the girl in the rear view mirror, just in time to see her roll her eyes, and he concluded that there was nothing of value on the laptop. It wasn’t likely she would just be wandering the streets carrying confidential information, after all.
The girl stared out the window, ignoring the gun still pointed in her direction. She was gutsy, Miller had to admit, calm under pressure, able to maintain her self control. She hadn’t spoken a single word after they’d got her into the car. And as the miles slid by, he had to wonder what she was thinking. Praying someone would come and rescue her? Regretting the decision to attend the seminar? Or plotting her imminent escape?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
As the minutes dragged by, Miller’s mind was running double time. After his initial shock had worn off, the reality of his situation had sunk in. What a fucking cock-
up. He’d requested this assignment specifically because he’d thought it a good way to avoid doing any immediate harm to the shifters, and instead, he’d accidentally kidnapped one of them, the very one that he had been most eager not to harm.
What the hell was he supposed to do now? He drove slowly, and not just because the road was narrow and winding. They were out in the countryside, stone walls lining fields on either side of the road, but they hadn’t reached the motorway yet, and he scrambled for some ploy that would give the girl a chance to escape. A stop for fuel? No, the tank was more than half full. A bathroom break? If the girl asked for one, it might wash, but he could hardly suggest it to her off his own back. What other excuse might there be for stopping the car? It was drizzling, ominous clouds gathering in the distance, and he turned the wipers on, feeling the seconds ticking by with each swipe of the blades across the glass.
And with each passing moment, his thoughts became bleaker. It was bad enough that he’d helped these thugs for this long, under the honest but misguided belief that he was doing the right thing. But to continue to do so now, when he knew it was wrong, when he knew exactly what kind of nightmare he would be condemning this girl to… No. If he didn’t find a way to help her, he would be damning himself straight to hell.
As he desperately sought a solution, his eyes wandered over the road ahead. At the next bend, the stone wall curved to the right, with the line of the road. And in a split second, his racing mind analysed a thousand tiny details.
The two other men were seated on the left hand side of the car, the woman sitting directly behind Miller. She had her seatbelt on. This car was an older model, with no airbags fitted. A side impact would likely kill whichever passengers were on the side of the collision. And shape shifters were generally more difficult to kill than ordinary humans. He wasn’t sure how they did it, but there were dozens of stories in the Noturatii’s files of shifters who had been mortally wounded, only to change forms, pick themselves up and carry on fighting.
And in that moment, the decision was made. He was not going to hand this woman over to be tortured at the hands of the Noturatii. His own death was preferable to the guilt that that act would heap upon his soul.
Miller put his foot down, increasing the car’s speed. He stared straight at the wall, waited for the last moment, then spun the wheel so that the car swerved, slid; it hit the barrier side on, crushing the two men on the left of the car. And as he felt the jarring impact, there were only two thoughts in his mind. ‘God forgive me’, and ‘Please let her survive.’
Skip felt the impact of the crash without warning. She was flung sideways, her seatbelt snapping taut, a scream escaping her involuntarily as the car groaned, screeched and buckled. It seemed to take forever to stop moving, for the shaking to end, but the instant it had, Skip forcibly pulled herself together, glancing around, mind racing as she rapidly assessed the situation.
The car was a wreck, the left side a crumpled mess of twisted metal. The man beside her was injured, bleeding profusely. The one in the front passenger seat was dead, and the one driving seemed to have hit his head, perhaps suffering from concussion as he made no attempt to move.
Twisting around, she tried to reach the seatbelt release with her restrained hands. There were tiny shards of glass all over the seat, the window shattered, and she cut herself on the sharp edges, but ignored the pain. Then she felt the clip, and pressed the button, the seatbelt retracting obediently, and she was free.
Now to be rid of the handcuffs. Shifting was the quickest, easiest way to deal with that, but with her heart racing and adrenaline pumping through her, she was finding it hard to focus enough to manage it. Calm down, she told herself firmly. Take a deep breath. And concentrate…
Miller fought back a wave of dizziness as he realised the car had stopped moving. A scrabbling sound from the back seat alerted him to the fact that the girl was alive and fighting to escape, and he felt a rush of relief that she had survived. He unclipped his belt and searched Daniel quickly for the keys to the cuffs, trying not to look at the way the side of his head had caved in with the impact. He found the keys in his shirt pocket and scrambled out of the car, desperate to see if the girl was hurt.
Knees shaking, he opened her door and saw that she’d undone the seatbelt. She recoiled at his arrival and bared her teeth, so he backed up a fraction. “Hey, easy. It’s okay. I’m going to get the cuffs off you.” He leaned in again, and she allowed him to tug her hands towards him, eyeing him distrustfully, but saying nothing. A moment later the cuffs were undone. “Are you-?”
The girl elbowed him in the throat, knocking him back from the car, and he felt hands fumbling at his waist as he lurched backwards, hand to his throat as he coughed and winced.
“You stay away from me!” she snarled, and Miller realised that in his moment of inattention, she’d leapt out of the car and… taken his gun. Fuck. She brandished it at him now, backing slowly away down the road, and he held up his hands in surrender. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, eyes on the gun, trying to sound calm.
“Damn right you’re not.”
She was bleeding, he realised quickly, as she stumbled away down the road, a dozen shallow cuts on her hands from the broken windows, much the same as Miller had received. But nothing serious enough to kill her.
Without another word, she shifted into wolf form and took off. Thank God, she was safe… but his relief turned to terror when a gunshot split the air and he heard a pained yelp from the wolf. He spun around to see Steve staring out the back window of the car, the glass completely shattered, a gun in his hand. Fucking hell, he’d survived. And shot the girl.
Without even thinking about it, Miller dived through the still open door and punched Steve in the face, then grabbed the gun out of his hands and shot him in the head. He stared at the bloody mess, stunned by his own actions, but not quite able to regret them.
He scrambled out of the car again to check on the wolf. She was staring at him, whining and struggling as she dragged an injured back leg, blood pouring from the wound, and his heart lurched in his chest as he realised he might not have saved her after all. The wound looked bad, blood pumping, painting the road red.
But then she shifted again, a panicked look in her eyes as she regained her human form. The rain was falling heavier now, and they were both getting rapidly drenched. She glanced from Miller to Steve and back again, not seeming to believe what she was seeing.
“Why did you do that?” she asked, fear and astonishment in her voice.
“You’re hurt,” Miller said, taking a step forward. “You need to get to a hospital.” Or a vet clinic, maybe? How did the shifters deal with injuries to their animal forms?
“I’m fine,” the girl snapped, climbing slowly to her feet. “Why did you shoot that man?”
Miller glanced at Steve. “I’m leaving the Noturatii,” he said simply.
“Put the fucking gun down!” she ordered suddenly, lifting her stolen gun again and pointing it at him, and Miller realised that Steve’s gun was still in his hand. “I’m not going to hurt you-”
“Gun down!”
Not keen on getting shot, he carefully bent over and set the gun on the road. “Now slide it over to me,” she demanded, and Miller did, giving it a solid push so that it slid across the wet bitumen and landed at her feet. Not taking her eyes off him once, she reached down, picked up the second gun, put the safety on and slid it into the waistband of her shorts. And then she sneered at him, picking up their conversation where it had left off. “Nobody leaves the Noturatii. Not unless it’s in a body bag.”
“I know. But what they’re doing is wrong. So I’m leaving.” Odd, how it sounded so simple now, when he’d spent the past two weeks agonising over the idea like he was contemplating the meaning of life itself.
Skip stared at the man, feeling totally confused. She should shoot him. He was Noturatii, dangerous, a threat to her continued survival. Silas had been quite thorough in his lessons on f
irearms. She had a steady hand and good aim. She imagined the man’s heart beating beneath his chest, a palm-sized target that would be an easy shot from here.
But the sad truth was that, in all her years in the Den, in all the battles with the Noturatii, she’d never actually killed someone before. And she found that now, when it came down to it, it wasn’t quite as easy as Silas had made her believe. Ever since she’d joined the Den, the more senior wolves had taken it upon themselves to protect her from danger, and so, aside from her training in the Den’s shooting range, she’d never been in a position to have to pull that trigger.
“That’s bullshit,” she snarled at him, not believing he was serious. “You were in Scotland. You shot a whole bunch of my friends, two fucking weeks ago, and now you say it’s all bad and evil and you’re just leaving? That’s fucking bullshit.” She was backing away slowly down the road, and the man followed, matching her pace.
“I deeply regret what I did in Scotland,” he said, the admission sounding heartfelt. “I’m so sorry for the loss of your friends.”
He was lying, Skip told herself firmly. She let her wolf senses come to the fore, the shifters’ canine sides extremely adept at detecting lies, and tested his body language, his tone, his facial expression… which left her even more confused when everything checked out. By all indications, he was telling the truth.
She glanced at the dead man, his bloodied face just visible through the shattered back window. The man had just shot his friend, right in front of her, because the other man had shot her. Her bullet wound was going to be a serious problem, but for as long as she stayed in human form, it wouldn’t kill her. Once she got back to the Den, they could arrange for a doctor to do surgery… She squashed the creeping fear that told her the wound was bad. She’d been bleeding heavily, the bullet catching her at the top of her left leg, and she wondered whether it had gone straight through and into her abdomen. If that was the case, she could be in serious trouble…