Tiger in the Hot Zone (Shifter Agents Book 4)

by Lauren Esker

  Going after her.

  Peri broke into a run. There was a bus just pulling up at the corner. She didn't care about its destination; all she needed to do was get on it. She stumbled into the backs of the people waiting to board with a gasped "Sorry!" as she looked over her shoulder.

  The big guy had stepped out onto the sidewalk. He glanced quickly around and started walking in her direction. Peri hurried onto the bus. For a panicked instant she thought he might catch up, but then the doors shut behind her and the bus, with a hiss of air brakes, pulled away from the curb.

  She collapsed into a seat and looked out the window. Tall, Dark, and Reptilian had stopped on the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to part around him, and was watching the bus pull away. He stood as still as a statue—or, no, more like a predator, a cat watching a mouse hole. From that distance she told herself he couldn't possibly see her through the bus window, but he still seemed to be staring right at her.

  She continued to watch him, heart in her throat, until the bus turned a corner and she lost sight of him.

  A middle-aged woman with a frizzy perm and a sweet, open face leaned over toward her. "Are you all right, honey?"

  "I'm fine," Peri said, forcing a smile. "Just late for my bus. Thank you."

  She looked down at her phone, still clutched in a white-knuckled grip. Her hands were shaking. What was it about the guy that had gotten her so worked up? She had interviewed felons in prison, gone Bigfoot hunting in the woods, played chicken with junkyard attack dogs. And this guy had scared her more than any of them.

  Trying to shake it off, she paged through her photos. They were blurry but recognizable. She had been too focused on his cold eyes to pay attention to the rest of the guy's face, but looking at the pictures brought it back, the broad square jaw and flattish nose and, most particularly, the scar across his nose and cheek. In the photo it was little more than a dark smudge trailing down to be lost in the shadows on his cheek, but her mind's eye managed to retrieve a memory of three or four parallel scars, like he'd been clawed in the face by some kind of animal.

  Peri took a few long, slow breaths to calm herself before doggedly uploading the clearest of the photos. "If I go missing, tell cops 2 look 4 this bad dude," she typed. "Last seen @ House of Pho. No collar, off his leash. :) u know him? dm me!"

  Despite the cheery tone, her finger was still shaking a little as she hit the button to post it.

  ***

  Peri got off the bus at her first opportunity to transfer to a different one. By now she'd almost managed to convince herself that the morning's activities, and especially Agent Easton's arrival, had sent her off on a paranoia trip. The creepy guy with the scars was probably a perfectly nice dude with a wife and five kids. He'd stared at her because he thought she was following him instead of the other way around.

  But she still couldn't forget those eyes.

  She told herself not to judge books by their covers. Just because he had scary eyes didn't mean he was a scary guy. Some of the nicest people I ever met looked scary until I got to know them. Heck, a lot of people think I look pretty scary, with the tats and punk 'do and all.

  But ... those eyes.

  He hadn't followed her onto the bus, though. She watched carefully when she transferred to her usual homebound bus, but no one from the other bus got on the new one, and all the new arrivals were perfectly ordinary tourists, college students, and a scattering of early commuters. Peri got off one stop before her usual one, looked around carefully, and started walking. She kept one hand on her baton.

  As she approached her building, she slowed. A gray SUV was parked in front of her building, illegally pulled onto the sidewalk, nearly blocking the door. She'd have to walk right by it to get to the secure entryway.

  It's just some asshole visiting one of the other residents, she told herself. Don't be stupid.

  Someone would have to be fairly diligent to find her address. She didn't have a landline, so she wasn't in the phone book, and she got all her official mail at a post office box. They would have to get it from a source like the utility company or DMV. Still, as someone who dug up other people's secrets for a living, she knew how easy it could be to convince, bribe, or trick a minimum-wage worker into giving up that information.

  For the government, of course, all bets were off. They probably knew everything about her down to her shoe size.

  Would they consider her enough of a threat that they might try to disappear her? Was that something the feds actually did?

  She gripped her baton firmly in her right hand, and with her left, she took out her phone and tapped the video app. "This is Peri Moreland," she murmured into the phone. "I am approaching my building and there's a Yukon parked outside, smoked glass windows, license plate ..." About fifteen feet from the back of the vehicle now, she leaned over to peek at it and read off the number into the phone. "If you find this recording, call the police and give them this license number."

  She turned the phone to face outward, pointing it at the SUV as she skirted around the vehicle, as close to the building as she could get.

  When the doors slammed open and two men jumped out, she was almost unsurprised. At the very least, she was prepared to scream.

  "Help! Help! I'm being kidnapped!"

  They were big and fast, and the large SUV blocked the view of anyone on the street. They split up as they left the vehicle, moving to sandwich her between them. Peri lashed out with the baton, but the first guy ducked and simultaneously brought up a gloved hand. The baton hit his palm with a meaty smack, and he closed his fingers around it, immobilizing her weapon. The second guy closed in on her from the side and she caught a glimpse of something glinting in his hand. He had a syringe.

  "The fuck!" Peri gasped, lashing out with her artificial foot. She missed him, but also made him miss her on his first attempt to stick her in the arm. She stumbled against the side of the building, wrestling for control of her baton. She'd dropped her phone.

  She didn't feel like a reporter on the trail of a story anymore. Now she just felt helpless and terrified.

  "Come on, girl. This doesn't have to be hard." He had a heavy accent, though in the panic of the moment, she couldn't identify it. A piercing pain jabbed her hip. Syringe Guy had scored a hit through her jeans. She lost her grip on the baton.

  "Help!" she screamed as they seized her arms. "Call 911!"

  The sudden roar of an engine overrode the usual traffic noise. A red sports car veered in front of the SUV, broadside to it and completely blocking the sidewalk.

  "Help!" Peri shrieked. They were dragging her toward the SUV. Her fingers had gone numb and her tongue felt thick and tingly. She tried to kick them, but her legs wouldn't work right.

  And then Agent Easton piled into the middle of the fray, throwing punches, his face contorted with fury. Peri slipped from her kidnapper's grasp after Noah punched him in the stomach. The last thing she remembered was falling, as the drug took effect and she swirled down into a sea of stars.

  Chapter Five

  Noah plunged into the kidnappers with equal motivation to rescue Peri and make them pay for shooting Trish.

  It wasn't the same two assholes from the morgue. These were different assholes, driving a different vehicle. Which meant they had at least two teams, one tasked with body snatching and the other with kidnapping. Who were these people?

  Right now they were in a world of hurt. Noah had the element of surprise on his side, and he went for it, driving his fist into the gut of the guy holding Peri and smashing the other one in the face. As a big-cat shifter, Noah was stronger and faster than most humans, and he was pissed.

  The two men gave up on kidnapping Peri and stumbled back through the SUV's open side door, toppling onto the seats, helping pull each other inside. The engine was running. They were still scrambling in when the SUV started to lurch backward, which meant there was a third person driving.

  "Oh no you don't," Noah growled, catching the SUV's side door and stopping i
t from closing. He was dragged along as the vehicle accelerated in reverse. A couple of unlucky pedestrians shrieked and flung themselves out of the way.

  The less-injured one of the two finally managed to get his gun out, thrusting it into Noah's face. Noah jerked his head to the side and was bashed in the cheekbone for his trouble. Forced to let go, he fell onto the sidewalk with a jarring impact. The SUV reversed around the end of a row of parked cars, straightened out on the street, and roared off.

  "Fuck!"

  "Who where those guys?" asked one of the displaced pedestrians, shaken and pale. "Want me to call the cops, man?"

  "I am the cops," Noah retorted. The bruising impact with the sidewalk had skinned his left arm from elbow to wrist. Shifter healing would take care of it, but the throbbing was a painful reminder of his second failure of the day as he bent over Peri's crumpled body.

  "Ms. Moreland?"

  Shit ... how hard had she hit? He knelt beside her and lifted her head with his hand. The short hair on the back of her skull was just as soft to the touch as it looked, he couldn't help noticing.

  She didn't seem to be badly hurt. She wasn't bleeding and he didn't feel any bad bruises under her hair. By now he was at the center of a small circle of concerned citizens. "Anybody call 911?" someone asked.

  "This guy says he's a cop."

  "Yeah, I'm a cop," Noah said loudly. "Anyone get the license plate of that vehicle?"

  There were headshakes all around.

  "Hey, that's Peri," one of the onlookers said. "She lives on the third floor, I think."

  "Is she dead?" someone else asked.

  "No, she's not dead." Her breathing and pulse were slow but strong. Noah picked her up in a bridal carry, one arm under her knees and the other around her narrow back.

  "She dropped her phone, dude." The guy who'd offered to call the cops held it out. "And, uh, this." He nudged the baton with his toe.

  "Thanks. Carry them to the car for me, would you?"

  He had very temporarily forgotten the blood all over his seats, until a wave of gasps went through the curious bystanders who were trailing him like ducklings. "I just came from another case," he explained, laying Peri down in the back before taking the phone and baton. He dropped them on the floor.

  There was no sign of his promised backup. Wailing sirens let him know the city cops would be here in a minute; they were having a fun day, for sure. "Thanks," Noah told the civilians, and pulled out as flashing police lights appeared down the street.

  Normally it would be his job to deal with that end of it. Today, for a change, it was someone else's fucking problem. He needed to get Peri to the clinic.

  Damn, he thought with a glance at Peri in the backseat. These guys were serious trouble. Who were they?

  They were armed. They were foreign—at least the ones at the morgue had been; he hadn't heard these two talk. And at least one of them was a shifter.

  Or something shifter-like, anyway.

  There was a faint groan from the backseat.

  "Ms. Moreland? Can you hear me?" In the rear-view mirror, he saw her struggling feebly.

  "I think I'm gonna throw up," Peri moaned.

  "Not in my car! Wait, I'll pull over—"

  He cut off two lanes of traffic and skidded onto the sidewalk, narrowly missing a trio of elderly female tourists who glared at him and took pictures of his license plate.

  "Wow, that helped a lot," Peri said weakly from the backseat. "Thanks for that. Aces." She raised one hand in a thumbs-up and then flipped him off.

  She was draped over the seat, head hanging off the edge. However, she didn't seem to have actually thrown up (yet).

  "Go 'way," Peri muttered when he leaned over the back of his seat and tried to help her up. "I don't think I'm actually going to get sick ... at least if some people can refrain from any more stunt driving. And if some people didn't keep moving me. Stop it."

  They were starting to attract more attention than he liked. "Yeah, so, tell me if I need to pull over, okay?"

  "Nrrgh."

  Even without adding that particular insult to everything else his car had suffered lately, his car was a mess. He knew a little damage to the seats was the least of his problems right now, but his baby was going to need so much detailing after this. So much. And that was not even to speak of the scratches on the fender where the van had grazed it.

  Fuckers shoot my friend, wreck my car ... they're gonna pay.

  "Oh God," Peri groaned as he pulled out into traffic again. "I haven't had a hangover like this since I got into a drinking contest with a bunch of backyard survivalists down in Oregon. Don't ever try to outdrink dudes who buy vodka by the case ... Oh God, why did I mention the vodka."

  "Do not puke on my seats."

  "I'll keep that in mind, Mister Clean," she mumbled into the seat. In the rearview mirror, he saw her struggle to sit up and then flop limply down again. "Are those jerks with you? Are they feds?"

  "If they were, why would I have been fighting them?"

  "I don't know. I can't think." She finally managed to sit up. "Where are we going?"

  "Well, first of all, I'm taking you to a hospital where they can make sure you don't have a concussion."

  "I didn't hit my head. Assholes shot me up with something." She rubbed her temple. "I think."

  "Okay, in that case, I'm taking you to a hospital to make sure they didn't 'shoot you up' with anything dangerous. After that, you're going into protective custody."

  "Say what now?"

  He met her eyes in the rearview mirror. She looked bleary and a little cross-eyed, but also angry. "Peri, you were just the victim of an attempted kidnapping. I already tangled with some other guys that I think are connected to that bunch. They're armed and they mean business."

  "Yeah, that's why we call the police, Elliot Ness. You can't just haul me off extra-judicially."

  "I'm not! I'm taking you to a hospital. After that, we'll arrange a protection detail—"

  "Do I get to refuse?"

  "Of course you can refuse, but—"

  "Good. As long as that's settled. Where's my phone?"

  "Floor," he said, disconcerted. "Look, whoever you're calling, I think it might be a good idea to—"

  "Oh, there it is. Yesssss." She vanished from view for a moment and reappeared with her phone in hand. "I was recording that," she explained. "It should still be recording unless it filled up the memory or ran out of battery. Got the license plate too."

  "Whoa," he said, genuinely impressed. "Nice job."

  "Video's pretty blurry and goes a little haywire once I dropped the phone. Still ..." There was a pause. "Hey, your jacket's back here and it's got paint on it. Sticky paint. Eurgh."

  "That's not paint. Don't touch it."

  "Too late. What do you mean it's not paint?" Sudden silence. "Oh," she said in a small voice.

  He glanced at the mirror; she'd scooted as far away from the jacket as she could get. "Remember how I said I tangled with some other guys? They shot my colleague. She's in surgery right now. These people are bad news, Peri."

  "I got that, yeah." She went silent then, tapping on her phone.

  "What are you doing back there?" he asked. It was like trying to keep track of a hyperactive teenager.

  "Uploading," she said absently.

  "Wait, uploading what? To where?"

  "Uploading this video to my Youtube channel, what do you think?"

  Noah slammed on the brakes and cut across traffic again, winding up in a chain restaurant parking lot.

  "Ow," Peri complained. "Now I have whiplash to go with my headache."

  "Give me your phone."

  "What? Fuck you, G-man!" She hid it behind her back.

  Noah restrained himself from trying to bodily pry it away from her. "Stop that upload right now. You can't go throwing around—"

  "Throwing around what? Things the government would like me to stay quiet about?" She kept her hands tucked firmly between her back and the seat,
hiding the phone. "Sorry, buddy. These people attacked me, and this video is going live as soon as my slow-ass 4G finishes doing its job."

  "That video is evidence in an ongoing investigation."

  "Yes, and? It was taken by me, and it's evidence of an attack on me. Or are you worried it's going to make it harder to send those guys off to some secret prison somewhere?"

  There wasn't much he could say to that. The problem was, the SCB did have secret prisons—secret shifter prisons, because they couldn't exactly put criminals who could transform into lions or grizzly bears into a regular prison. And if these guys belonged to a shifter-related organization, they knew too much to just lock them up in a federal penitentiary, or even let them go to trial in the first place.

  It was the same problem he'd had all along with Peri and people like her: they were right. They might not be right in every detail, but the problems they had with the SCB's activities were legitimate ones. It was just that he didn't know of a better way to do things, not while preserving shifters' secrets and keeping everyone safe.

  "Think about it," he said instead. "As well as painting a huge target on your back, if you get the whole city calling us about every GMC utility vehicle they see, we'll be too busy running down spurious leads to do our actual jobs."

  "Or I'll mobilize a citizen army and you'll find it in no time." She cautiously took the phone out from behind her back, leaning away from him. "Also, spurious? I don't think I've ever actually heard someone use that in a sentence. Did you swallow a dictionary as a child?"

  "Aren't you supposed to be a journalist? Words are what you do for a living."

  "I didn't say it was bad." She looked up from the phone and gave him a wholly unexpected wink.

  Flustered, he pulled back onto the road. "We're almost at the clinic. Can you at least try not to precipitate any more crises until you clear the drug out of your system? I don't think this is a good time for making decisions that might endanger your life in the near future, not while you've got unknown chemical agents messing with your judgment."