Tiger in the Hot Zone (Shifter Agents Book 4)

by Lauren Esker

  "Sitrep, Moreland!" Thiessen barked in her ear.

  Peri risked a peek around the end of the row of shelves. Julius was striding through the store with a gun in each hand, a sawed-off shotgun pointed at the ceiling and a rifle slung over his opposite shoulder.

  "Julius is here, we're gonna die, help," she babbled. "I'm in a Happy Home Helper store on the corner of—"

  "I know where you are. I'm close." His words were punctuated with rapid footsteps; he was running now. "The other team is en route. Can you get out the back?"

  "Is there a back way out?" Peri asked Dawn, who was frozen in mute horror.

  "The—the lumberyard, we can get out through the loading door in the lumberyard." Dawn visibly clawed her way back from the edge of mindless panic. "The police, has anyone called—"

  Fulvius broke and ran.

  "No, you idiot!" Peri yelled after him.

  Too terrified to do anything except flee, Fulvius raced through the paint section. Julius was out of sight, but his shotgun boomed just as Fulvius nearly made it to FLOORING SOLUTIONS. Blood painted a wide stripe across a display of tile samples and Fulvius collapsed like a rag doll.

  Dawn staggered.

  "Don't faint!" Peri ordered, grabbing a handful of Dawn's denim shirt. Distantly she was aware that she was starting to get alarmingly blasé about running for her life. "Which way, which way?"

  "This way," Dawn gasped and pulled Peri with her as she began to run.

  The women fled through the store, collecting several more terrified employees and customers as they ran, and tore through an EMPLOYEES ONLY door into brilliant, hot sunshine. Peri squinted, instantly blind. Gravel crunched underfoot; the air smelled of sawdust and hot concrete. She almost ran into a pile of lumber before throwing herself behind it. "Agent Thiessen, where are you?"

  "Who are you talking to?" Dawn panted.

  "Just got to the lumberyard behind the store," Thiessen's voice said calmly in her ear. "Caine is already inside. Where are you?"

  "Hiding behind a pile of boards while the Terminator chases me!"

  "Don't panic," Thiessen said softly. "You're doing great. Stay where you are and be quiet."

  A chorus of screams from the lumberyard workers signaled Julius's arrival. From where she was, Peri could see a forklift operator flee his machine, abandoning it in the act of lifting a stack of plywood with the forks.

  Footsteps crunched on the gravel, not too far away.

  Peri clapped her hand over her earpiece, afraid Thiessen's voice would give her away. Even her heartbeat seemed much too loud. Dawn wore a look of abject terror, and Peri tensed to grab her in case she tried to bolt as Fulvius had, but she seemed to be keeping her panic under control.

  The footsteps sounded like they were approaching the women's hiding place, not furtively but in a direct, purposeful march, as if Julius really was able to hear their heartbeats.

  "Stop right there!" Thiessen shouted, and it wasn't until Peri saw Dawn's startled reaction that she realized she was hearing it not just through the earpiece but in the real world as well.

  She peeked out from behind the pile of lumber and saw Thiessen down at the end of an aisle of stacked lumber, his gun trained on Julius. She hadn't realized Julius was so close to her. He was no more than twenty feet away, and as soon as her gaze fell on him, she could no more have moved than she could have flown. All her muscles locked rigid with terror.

  But Julius's attention was on Thiessen instead of her. He fired the shotgun and Thiessen dodged behind one of the lumber piles as the shotgun load tore splinters out of the wood. It all happened so fast Peri could barely see either of them move; they were like blurs of motion.

  Caine appeared behind Julius in the doorway of the store, little visible of him in the near-darkness except the white flash of his face and hands, the glint of light on his gun. He was pointing his weapon at Julius's back.

  Whether or not Julius knew he was there, Peri wasn't sure, but Julius took a running leap at the nearest pile of lumber and sprang to the top of it. Peri's mouth fell open. It had to be ten feet to the top. He'd jumped it like it was nothing.

  He crouched to avoid presenting a target against the sky and looked around. His cold killer's eyes met Peri's, and her breath stopped in her lungs. Beside her, Dawn made a faint whimpering sound.

  Peri expected to die, her lifeblood blown out of her body like she'd just seen happen to Fulvius. Instead, Julius leaped casually from his lumber pile to the top of the one the women were hiding behind. There was the snap of a gunshot as Thiessen or Caine took advantage of the opportunity to take a shot at him, but either they missed or he shrugged it off. He landed with a thump and then leaped from there to the ground, mere feet from Peri and Dawn.

  Distant sirens wailed. Too little, too late, Peri thought, staring up at Julius. She had one hand on Dawn's shoulder; she didn't remember putting it there.

  Noah ... I'm sorry ...

  But Julius didn't shoot her. Instead he seized her by the hair. Peri screamed in shock and terror as she was nearly dragged off her feet. Julius pivoted around, holding her in front of him as a human shield.

  Thiessen appeared around the end of the lumber pile. "Move one muscle and I'll—"

  He stopped at the sight of the hostage, and in that frozen instant, Julius shot him.

  Caine came out of nowhere. Literally out of nowhere—Peri didn't hear a thing, didn't see him until he appeared almost under Julius's elbow, unloading several shots into Julius's chest at point-blank range.

  Julius dropped Peri, who fell bruisingly to the gravel. His body contorted, and she realized, staring up at him in abject fear, that he was shifting. His shirt split at the seams, and under it, some kind of body armor tore apart. Caine had gotten him at least once despite the armor; she glimpsed streaks of blood on his skin before shaggy dark fur sprouted to cover it.

  "What," Dawn managed faintly.

  Caine snapped off several more shots at the bear in mid-transformation before it was on him, roaring. Peri expected him to shift too, but he didn't. Instead he copied Julius's earlier maneuver, more gracefully but less powerfully, vaulting up to the top of a lumber pile where he began to reload.

  Peri scuttled backward, crab-crawling on the gravel to get out from under Julius's feet before she was trampled. Julius's attention was now on Caine, but a blow from one of those massive paws with its scimitar claws would crush her skull just the same if it happened by accident or on purpose.

  The bear reared up on its hind legs, and Peri was horrified to see that it was tall enough to reach Caine with its teeth and claws. How could it be so big? It swung a huge paw at him, knocking him off the top of the lumber pile like it was swatting a fly.

  With Julius distracted, Peri wondered if she dared go for one of the dropped guns on the ground. But she'd have to run right under those giant paws. It would be suicide.

  Dawn's shaking hand closed on Peri's shoulder. Her fingers were ice cold. "He's a bear," she whispered.

  "It's called shifting," Peri told her. Oh God, when did I become an expert on this? "Dawn, we have to do something. There's help on the way, but he's going to kill Agent Caine. Can you think of anything?"

  Dawn bit her lower lip, teeth denting the magenta lipstick. Then she said, "The forklift. I can drive it. I'm certified."

  Peri turned a startled gaze on the forklift, idling where it had been abandoned by its panicked operator. Best of all, getting to it didn't require getting too close to the bear. Peri had to pull a fear-frozen Dawn into motion, and then they stumbled together across the gravel to the forklift. There was only one seat. Dawn took that, while Peri clung on beside her.

  The controls looked simple enough, a forward/backward gearshift and a set of levers to operate the tines. Dawn threw the forklift into gear, making a tight turn while the load of plywood wobbled on the tines.

  "What do I do?" Dawn asked. "Should I just run it into him?"

  "Yes, go, go!"

  This is suicide, Peri
thought as they rapidly closed with the bear. It was also exhilarating. Her hair streamed back behind her. Dawn was sparing no speed.

  Caine was down on the ground again, and the bear, with all its attention on him, didn't see them coming. They collided with it from behind, plywood and all. Momentum rammed the tines into Julius's furry backside and pushed him headfirst into the nearest lumber pile.

  Julius let out a shocked roar. Dawn threw the forklift into reverse, its wheels spinning on gravel. As Julius turned with terrifying speed, Peri shrieked "Duck!" and pulled Dawn low in the seat. The paw that would have taken Dawn's head off instead smacked the forklift's frame, lifting the tires on that side off the ground. It would probably have been able to recover if Dawn hadn't been gunning the accelerator. Instead the ground-side tires caught, the other ones offered no resistance, and the forklift flipped itself.

  The roll cage of the open-sided cab protected them from being crushed, but they were both flung heavily to the ground. Peri cried out in pain as her shoulder raked the gravel.

  The bear reared above them, huge paws ready to tear them apart—and then staggered backward under the boom of a shotgun.

  Caine had managed to get Julius's guns. He looked awful, one side of his face masked in blood, but he strode forward, firing again and again. The bear was driven back, the gravel splattered with its blood. Roaring impotent fury, it stumbled, turned, and fled.

  Peri reached out with a trembling hand, found the key, and turned off the forklift's engine. "Are you okay?" she asked Dawn shakily.

  Dawn nodded without speaking. The two women clambered out of the overturned forklift, leaning on each other.

  "That was amazing," Peri said. "You were great."

  Dawn shook her head. She seemed to be going into shock. Peri helped her sit down with her back against the side of the lumber pile.

  The lumberyard was filling up with people now. Peri recognized the bright-colored hair of her doppelganger Nakamura, which made her realize she'd lost her hat at some point. She didn't even remember if it had fallen off when they were running through the store or when Julius grabbed her.

  A wailing siren cut off somewhere nearby. Peri couldn't help being relieved that she wasn't the one who'd have to explain this situation to the regular cops.

  Caine reappeared with the same eerie suddenness as before—she knew he wasn't really appearing out of thin air, but damn, he could move quietly—and knelt beside Thiessen's body. Peri forced herself to get up, her legs wobbling under her. Her scraped shoulder stung viciously. She limped over to Caine.

  "Where is Julius? Did you find him?"

  "Escaped," Caine said without looking up. He reached out and closed Thiessen's staring eyes.

  "Is he dead?" She felt stupid as soon as the words were out. No living person would be lying in a position like that, twisted with his face turned up to the sky. Living people would blink.

  She expected Caine to glare at her, but when he glanced up, she was shocked by the raw, open hurt on his bloody face. He looked mortally wounded. The expression was hidden so quickly she was left wondering if she'd imagined it.

  "You know," Caine said in an almost conversational tone as he stood up, "he had a family. Wife and daughter."

  "I'm sorry. I ..." She didn't have words for it. She was so tired of violence and death following her around. A wave of bone-chilling cold washed through her, leaving her shivering. "That Valeria guy who wanted to talk to me—he's dead too. Inside."

  "I saw him," Caine said.

  "They died because of me."

  He made a sound somewhere between a grunt and a snort of disdain. "Don't be melodramatic."

  Peri darted a look at him. His bloody face still showed no expression. "You were right," she said, choking out the words. "It was a bad plan."

  "The plan was shit," Caine said. "But Thiessen was running the op. His call, in the end. Not yours. We were the ones who blew it, not you."

  Peri wasn't sure what to say to that. She turned to look at Dawn, who had her head down, resting on her knees. "The paint store lady helped out a lot. Uh, she saw Julius shift."

  "I know she did." Caine let out a long breath with a tired hitch in it. "Call Delgado's team," he ordered. "Get them up to date."

  Peri didn't realize until Caine walked off that he'd just given her an assignment ... like an agent.

  She had to try several times to get out her phone, and then she dropped it. Instead of bending down to pick it up, she sat down abruptly next to it; she didn't quite fall. She held it for a minute before her hands steadied enough that she could find Noah's preset.

  Wherever Noah was, Peri hoped his group was having a less disastrous day than hers.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Trish's cousin Breena met Noah's group in the hospital lobby. She was much older than Trish, a small, round woman in her forties with a placid demeanor, but there was something very tight around her eyes and the corners of her mouth.

  "Come with me, please." She punched a code into the keypad of a locked door, escorting them beyond the visitors' areas of the hospital.

  "Did you find a way to isolate the patient?" Delgado asked.

  "I'm doing my best. We're not a large enough hospital to have a dedicated infectious diseases wing, so I have him in a private room, away from the other patients as much as possible. Unfortunately a couple of the orderlies have seen him already."

  "We're not trying to hide him—" Delgado began.

  "No, you don't understand. You'll know when you see him. Here, this way."

  She took them into an empty exam room, where she gave them each a pair of scrubs and, from a different shelf, masks and gloves. "Just put them on over your clothes." She was suiting actions to words herself, pulling on a pair of yellow scrubs over her blue ones with practiced speed. "Infectious disease protocol. Anything you're wearing when you go into his room needs to be stripped off and put in the biohazard bin when you come out. Mav said this doesn't affect humans?"

  "Not as far as we know, though it's possible humans could be carriers," Noah said, fumbling behind his neck to secure the face mask. "And we don't know how contagious it is. What have you been telling people to keep them away from him?"

  "There's nothing I can tell people that won't be reported to the Centers for Disease Control. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria, SARS, infectious meningitis—any disease I could use as an excuse will also be tracked by the CDC and the hospital, which is going to make it much harder to treat and transfer him since that's not what he has. Right now I'm just being as vague as possible, but I can't keep it up for long. I hope you have somewhere to put him other than this hospital."

  Noah looked at Delgado.

  "If he does have a shifter-only disease, we'll rush him down to the medical facilities at our labs," she said.

  "You guys are definitely better set up to handle this than we are."

  Breena pulled on her gloves with a snap and set a brisk pace across the ward. She led them past the doors of patient rooms, most standing slightly open, offering glimpses of privacy curtains or patients reclining and watching TV. The room where she stopped had its door closed all the way, with a biohazard symbol on a card fixed to it. Noah could hear low moaning coming from within.

  "I need to warn you," Breena said quietly. "This isn't going to be easy to look at."

  "We're professionals. No worries," Delgado said reassuringly.

  Noah steeled himself as she opened the door.

  The privacy curtain just in front of the door was drawn, the room warm enough to feel stifling. While Trish paused to close the door behind them, Breena drew back the curtain, giving Noah his first view of the man in the bed.

  It wasn't actually as bad as his worst fears. There were no disgusting bodily fluids. The patient was twisting and thrashing, writhing in obvious pain in a way that made Noah's skin crawl with sympathetic discomfort, but he seemed to be intact and semi-conscious and ...

  ... wait. The patient wasn't just moving in pain. He
was ... shifting?

  Noah took a step closer, mesmerized in horror. The man seemed to be struggling on the verge of a shift without ever going through it. His bones were moving under the skin, trying to rearrange themselves. Joints twisted and untwisted; bones and ligaments made audible cracks and pops as they morphed in and out of shape, stretching and pulling abused flesh. The man's olive skin was dark with bruises from subcutaneous bleeding.

  "That poor bastard," Delgado said softly. Out of the corner of his eye, Noah saw her cross herself. Trish's eyes above her mask were horrorstruck.

  "He's torn out his IV again," Breena murmured, and went around to the other side of the bed.

  The man's jaw twisted and stretched horribly before snapping back into place. He moaned again, turning his pain-wracked face toward them, and as his cheekbones slid temporarily back into place, Noah was hit with two things.

  First of all, the sense of shifter recognition didn't feel quite right. And second, he'd seen this man before.

  Delgado put a gloved hand on his arm. "You doing okay? I've seen some things, but this ..."

  "I know him," Noah said.

  Breena glanced up as she worked to reinsert the IV, her dark eyes sympathetic.

  "Hell," Delgado said, "that's rough, man."

  "You don't understand. He's not a friend. I last saw him when he shot at me outside the King County coroner's office. This guy is one of them."

  "Oh, my God." Trish put her gloved hand over her mouth, her eyes riveted to the patient in fascinated horror. "I didn't get a good look back then, but ... is that what you guys have been talking about? I see what you mean. It's like, he feels like one of us, and yet he doesn't. Does it feel different to you too, Bree?"

  "I thought it was because of the disease," Breena said.

  "No, he's one of the guys we caught stealing the first batch of victims' bodies from the coroner's office. He's Valeria." Noah gave a short, almost hysterical laugh. "It's true. The idiots invented a custom shifter disease that kills them too."

  "Which means it really is contagious," Delgado said tightly, and cold shock washed through Noah, a rush of adrenaline that prickled through his body and made his skin tingle as his hairs stood on end.