Tiger in the Hot Zone (Shifter Agents Book 4)

by Lauren Esker

  "A shot is going to bring them down on us like flies!" Bassi was saying.

  Julius ignored her, sighting through the rifle's scope. Peri looked where he was looking. It was movement that drew her eye, the tawny shape of some kind of big cat, a cougar or lion, loping across the hillside on an intercept course with them.

  "Go back!" she screamed. "Go back! He's got a gun!"

  Julius casually kicked her in the face, and as she reeled, tasting blood, the rifle crashed. Peri blinked her watering eyes as the cougar tumbled end-over-end down a slope and lay in a heap of tawny fur.

  Maybe it was a normal cat, not a shifter at all ...

  But she didn't believe that.

  Julius stowed the rifle over his shoulder and pulled her to her feet by the hair. "Help!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "Help, I'm being abducted, he's got a gun—"

  He slapped her hard enough to rattle her teeth. As the slap spun her around, she glimpsed Bassi wincing. This seemed important but for the moment, she couldn't figure out why, not with her ears ringing and her vision full of stars. Julius pulled her into a stumbling run, holding her by a bruising grip on her arm, and for a few minutes she had to concentrate on running.

  They scrambled down the steep slope on the back side of the hill. At the bottom was an old road, discernible as little more than a paler track across the yellow rocks, with a dusty Jeep parked on it. Julius opened the door and flung Peri into the backseat. The hot air in the car was stifling. Bassi started to take the front passenger seat.

  "Back," Julius said. "Watch her." He tossed the rifle onto the passenger seat, gunned the engine as Bassi hastily scrambled into the back, and whipped the Jeep around in a sickening turn while Bassi was still closing her door. Both the women were flung against the back of the front seats.

  Bassi yelled something angry in Italian. Julius retorted tersely in the same language.

  Peri accidentally bit her tongue as the Jeep jolted over the rough terrain, but she managed, with some effort, to sit up. She eyed the door handle, but didn't dare try jumping out, not at the speed they were going.

  Instead she settled in to wait for an opportunity. No one had thought to take her phone from her yet. Beside her, Bassi had managed to belt herself in—Peri had left hers off, not wanting to delay if she had an opportunity to jump out—and was staring ahead, grim-faced.

  She doesn't like violence, Peri thought. That was what had struck her as significant earlier. Not that Bassi was opposed to it; she'd engineered the explosion at the safehouse, after all. But killing discreetly at a distance was different from having murder done right in front of you. Bassi didn't like getting her hands dirty.

  If I can get her alone, I don't think she'd be able to stop me from getting away. I'm not the world's best fighter, but she doesn't like fighting at all. I bet I can take her.

  But Julius had that hunting rifle. Peri knew from her rural childhood that scoped rifles like the one he carried were accurate to a distance of several hundred yards. Wearing her regular walking leg, over rough terrain, she wasn't going to be much of a sprinter, but even with her running leg on, she couldn't outrun a bullet.

  They were on flat land now, though the ride was no less rough. Julius had gunned the Jeep to at least sixty mph, and they bounced wildly over every bump.

  Wait—aren't we still inside the fence?

  Peering between the seats with the vents blowing hot air in her face, she saw the landscape rocketing by like a video of dirt-track racing. The needle was pushing 80 now. The dark line of the fence stretched in front of them, marching through clumps of brush, past cactus and gnarled trees.

  It was starting to sink in, to her disbelief, that Julius had marched into a heavily guarded government compound, broken out Bassi, kidnapped Peri, and killed two people before marching out again.

  Secret government conspiracy, my ass. If this is the best they can do, I demand more black helicopters right this very minute!

  As if on cue, something shot across the Jeep's hood, there and gone so fast it was nothing but a dark blur looming in their vision. Bassi yelped and Peri's heart rate kicked up a notch. If they'd hit it at this speed, the exploding windshield would have shredded them.

  "What was that?" Bassi demanded.

  "Drone," Julius said, eyes ahead. He'd turned slightly and was approaching the fence at an angle rather than head-on.

  Drone? Peri looked out the rear window. Through the Jeep's huge dust cloud, it took her a minute to spot the drone, off to the side and falling quickly behind. Two more were visible, scudding in from the sunward direction.

  The military used drones to kill people, didn't it? I take it back about the black helicopters! No missile strikes, please! An even worse thought occurred to her an instant later: did the SCB know there was a hostage in the car?

  The drones didn't seem to be threatening them, merely observing. Back in the direction they'd come from, at the base of the sun-hazed hills, Peri spotted dust clouds sprouting like mushrooms. The SCB was scrambling a response and using the drones to pinpoint their location.

  And not just drones. A hawk swooped over the Jeep, which had begun to slow as it approached the fence. Farther off, some kind of large bird, a vulture or eagle, circled lazily in the blue-white sky.

  By now the Jeep had slowed to no more than thirty miles an hour. Dust streamed out behind them in a long rooster tail. Julius wrenched the steering wheel, putting them into a sudden turn, and the Jeep bounded through a gap in the fence. Peri glimpsed the jagged edges of cut mesh and several strands of copper wire strung across the top, connecting the severed halves of the fence and (she assumed) stopping an alarm from going off.

  Now they were jolting across the rougher desert outside the fence, sliding through patches of sand, tilting as the Jeep barely managed to avoid getting stuck on rocks. After several hundred yards of this bone-rattling progress, they slewed onto a road and Julius gunned the engine. Their side road ended at a T-junction with the highway and he blew out onto the main road without slowing down, ignoring the mad honking of an 18-wheeler that had to brake to avoid hitting him.

  "We haven't lost them," Bassi said tightly. Looking back, Peri glimpsed more dust plumes inside the fence. "There aren't very many roads to choose from out here. You understand that, right?"

  When Julius didn't answer, she turned to Peri. "You. Empty your pockets. Now."

  Well, there had been a chance they wouldn't check. Peri shoved her hands in her pockets. "Make me."

  "Give us trouble and the next time we stop, Julius will shoot you. Do you think he won't?"

  Losing the phone meant losing any hope of being able to contact her potential rescuers. It meant losing her world. Peri clenched her teeth and clamped her fingers around her phone. "I haven't got anything in my pockets."

  "Liar," Bassi snapped and seized Peri's wrist. Peri, thoroughly fed up by now, headbutted her. It shocked them both almost equally. Bassi jerked back and clapped her hands to her face. Peri's phone went flying and skittered under the seat.

  "Bitch!" Bassi said, muffled, around her clamped hand. Her nose was bleeding. Peri's forehead hurt, but it was worth it.

  Abruptly Julius slammed on the brakes, sending Peri sliding against the back of the front seats. They'd been doing at least 80, sailing around slower-moving vehicles; now they veered off the road with a shriek of tormented tires. For a heart-stopping moment, Peri thought the car was going to flip over.

  It was little consolation that Bassi looked as terrified as Peri felt.

  Julius, however, did not appear to have even noticed the scuffling in the backseat. He'd pulled into the gravel parking lot of an abandoned gas station, two pumps swathed in faded canvas covers and a small square building bleached to the color of bone. Peri pressed against the door as the Jeep jolted across the gravel and pulled around behind the building. A nondescript four-door sedan with a rental sticker was parked in the minimal pool of shade.

  "Go," Julius snapped, grabbing the rifle. "Ba
ckseat, both of you."

  Peri briefly entertained the idea of trying to grab her phone, but Bassi caught her by the arm and hustled her to the other car. So much for that. Peri glanced up into the pitiless, cloud-free sky and saw no sign of their aerial escort. The drones must not have been able to keep pace with the car.

  While Julius fumbled with the keys to unlock the sedan, Peri got a better look at him. When she'd first seen him, she had assumed he was flushed from the sun. And maybe that was part of it. But he looked bad to her—pale except for hot flares of red over his cheekbones, with blue crescent shadows under his eyes and sweat-plastered hair.

  He'd been hurt yesterday, so maybe he was still under the weather from his accelerated healing and not enough sleep. But then he coughed softly, and she was sure.

  As she got the backseat of the ovenlike car, Peri couldn't help saying, "Are you sick?"

  Bassi shot her a fast, horrified look.

  Julius didn't answer. He started the engine and pulled slowly around the corner of the gas station.

  "Julius," Bassi said.

  They turned into the flow of traffic, this time settling in at the speed limit, one nondescript commuter vehicle indistinguishable from the others. The locks on the doors popped down automatically. It was sweltering inside the car, the air conditioning doing little except stirring the hot air.

  "Julius."

  "Shut up back there."

  "Julius, is she right? Are you sick?"

  "No," he said. "Shut up."

  They drove in silence for a few miles, their speed edging up again. Traffic was sparse here. Julius veered around other vehicles without signaling. Peri divided her attention between the back window, where she desperately hoped to see something other than big-rigs and farm trucks, and Bassi's stonelike expression next to her. Finally Peri whispered, "If you can get him to take us back, they're working on a cure back there—"

  "Stop talking," Bassi said, low, her voice icy. "You heard the man."

  Up in the front seat, Julius muttered something in Italian. Startled out of her musing, Peri looked out the back window. The flashing red and blue lights of a police cruiser were closing on them.

  "You can't drive like a maniac here, I've told you a million times," Bassi said harshly. "We're in America. They are very bothered by speeding here."

  Julius didn't say anything. Instead, he punched the accelerator. The cop gave a single whoop of his siren.

  "You can't outrun them in this," Bassi protested. "Are you mad? Julius, if this is what you consider an escape plan—"

  There was still no answer from the front seat, but Julius stomped the brake. The car fishtailed slightly, the cop closed very suddenly on their rear bumper (Peri could imagine him cursing back there, too), before Julius pulled off onto the shoulder. The patrol car pulled off behind them.

  Looking back, Peri watched a highway patrolman in a wide-brimmed hat get out of his patrol car. She'd never been so glad to see someone who was technically working for The Man.

  "Nice plan." Bassi's voice was as scalding as an irate middle-school teacher's.

  "I'll do the talking," Julius said.

  Peri slid a hand very quietly to the car door and touched her thumb to the lock release. She wasn't sure what she could do; as tempting as it was to leap out while they were stopped, Julius had the rifle, and she didn't want to get herself or an unsuspecting highway patrolman killed. Still, maybe she could get a message out—

  —wait. The rifle.

  The cop was going to see the rifle. Julius had to know that.

  Even as that thought jumped into the forefront of her brain, the patrol officer leaned down and knocked on the window.

  Julius rolled it down a few inches, snatched the rifle from its place beside him, and shot the cop.

  It all happened so fast the victim didn't have time to do anything more than open his mouth. The shot was deafening. Peri reeled back in her seat, and Bassi clapped her hands over her ears.

  Julius stamped the gas and peeled away, leaving the body lying on the shoulder of the road a few yards in front of the patrol car with its flashing lights.

  "Are you insane?" Bassi managed to get out, a mile or two down the road. Her face was white, a scattering of freckles standing out starkly. "He will have called it in. They're going to have every trooper in a hundred-mile radius out looking for us."

  "Doesn't matter." He was driving one-handed, the other resting on the rifle. "By that time we'll be where we're going."

  "Where?" Bassi demanded. Mountains marched away to their right, and the desert stretched empty, an endless sea of rocks, cactus, and the occasional ranch or small town. "There's absolutely nothing out here!"

  "I've got a place to hole up."

  "I hope it has a bathroom and laboratory facilities."

  Julius didn't say anything. Peri occupied herself with noting landmarks and road signs. She tried not to think about the fact that a hostage who had seen both her captors' faces and exactly where they were taking her was a hostage who probably was not expected to make it out alive.

  At this point, she didn't think Julius planned to let Bassi go, either.

  They turned away from the mountains, though the land was still rough and broken; they were, she guessed, somewhere in the north foothills of the mountains around Tucson, or possibly entering the outskirts of a new mountain range. She wished she'd paid more attention to Arizona geography while she had the chance.

  Railroad tracks paralleled the road, intermittently visible and dotted with the remains of crumbling grain elevators and an occasional ghost town marked by the collapsing skeleton of an old hotel or a few scattered mobile home trailers.

  Noah had suggested visiting a ghost town while they were in Arizona. All things considered, I would've preferred one of the touristy ones with hitching posts and saloons that have those old-timey swinging doors.

  Thinking of Noah brought a desperate ache, a longing that approached physical pain. She couldn't bear thinking of him all alone in that hospital bed, with no one to hold his hand.

  Have they even called his parents? she thought with a sudden jolt. His dad was the director of the whole organization, so surely he knew. Noah should have his family there if she couldn't be.

  He was going to be okay, she told herself. He had the whole SCB looking out for him and trying to find a cure. He was better off than she was right now.

  "Did you bring water?" Bassi asked. "We're all going to end up dehydrated—"

  "Shut up."

  Peri was no longer at all sure Julius was thinking clearly. She hadn't seen him take a drink since they'd been in the car. Between the fever she was now sure he was running, and the heat and exertion, he had to be in bad shape.

  Thinking about it made her aware of how thirsty she was. Sweat plastered her T-shirt to her back. The AC blasting between the front seats was almost too cold now, but it was still fighting to overcome the heat trapped in the car throughout the blazing afternoon.

  She kept looking for the welcome sight of police lights behind them, but the highway lay empty, shimmering with heat mirages. Surely someone had found that poor highway patrolman by now. But that doesn't mean they know who did it, or how to find us ...

  Julius slowed, and Peri braced herself, placing one hand on the door handle, as he turned off the highway onto a narrow, unpaved road. She was used to rural roads in Washington, where even the roughest roads had to be hacked out of the forest and layered with gravel to stop them from turning into mud wallows in the rain. Here, with few to no trees in the way, their "road" was, in places, recognizable as such only by the twin tire ruts scraped through the sagebrush. The Jeep would have managed better; as it was, Peri winced at the sound of the sedan's underside scraping across rocks.

  The land was rumpled like an unmade bed, a chaotic welter of hills and canyons, washouts and bluffs. Despite the isolation, the countryside wasn't completely lacking in signs of human habitation. They crossed railroad tracks and a cattle gate. A w
ire fence paralleled the road for a mile or so. They passed a distant farmhouse and a burned-out trailer that looked downright post-apocalyptic.

  The road went into a steep-sided slot canyon and there, at the canyon mouth, the car slammed into a pothole, slewed sideways, and came to rest with the passenger side leaning against a massive boulder that had eroded and fallen in times long past.

  "You broke an axle," Bassi said. "Wonderful."

  "It's not far. We'll walk."

  Julius got out, slung the rifle over his shoulder, and opened the trunk. Bassi urged Peri out of the car with an impatient shove, since she couldn't get out on her side.

  It was unbearably hot and very still. Peri could hear traffic on the highway—so near, yet so far; they couldn't be more than a few miles away from it. She could probably walk to it, even with her artificial leg and this heat.

  Yeah, and how far will you get before he puts a bullet in your back?

  Julius tossed a length of rope to Bassi. "Tie her hands."

  Bassi bound Peri's hands in front of her body by wrapping the rope around and around until she ran out, then tying it in a set of several square knots, knotted on themselves. For good measure, she knotted the very ends to the rest of the rope. Peri stared down at the wad of rope holding her hands together; they were crossed over at the wrists, palm to palm, which at least still gave her the ability to pick things up. "Nice job. You're a total noob at this kidnapping thing, aren't you?"

  "No one asked for your opinion," Bassi said tartly.

  Julius took a two-gallon water jug out of the trunk and rested it on his shoulder opposite the rifle. "Walk," he said.

  "I don't suppose we could have a drink before we start walking?" Peri asked hopefully.

  "Walk," he repeated, resting a hand on the rifle.

  Walking it was, then. Julius led the way and Bassi went behind, with Peri between them. The shade of the canyon walls fell over them as they followed the faint traces of the old road, but the heat was still punishing. The sweaty stump of Peri's leg was starting to chafe. She raised her bound hands to feel the sunburned tip of her nose.