Tiger in the Hot Zone (Shifter Agents Book 4)

by Lauren Esker

  The only good thing about the heat was the sweat lubricating her wrists and making it easier to twist them in their bonds. Despite Bassi's overkill on the knots, she hadn't pulled the ropes as tight as she could have. Peri thought she might be able to squirm free if she had some time to herself.

  "Where on Earth are we going?" Bassi asked irritably.

  "Place to hide out for a little while. Ask her some questions."

  Peri flinched. She kept forgetting, for whole minutes at a time, that the end of this road was probably going to be her death.

  Unless the SCB finds me.

  Noah, please find me.

  They rounded a bend in the canyon and came upon a cluster of old buildings, ramshackle structures of tin sheeting and sun-bleached wood. It's an old mine, Peri thought, looking up at square shaft openings high in the canyon walls.

  "That one," Julius said. He used the rifle to point to a steep path leading up. "Take her up; I'll follow."

  "Are you joking?" Bassi groaned, but she pushed Peri roughly ahead of her.

  "I don't climb very well," Peri tried. "My leg—"

  "Climb or I shoot you here," Julius ground out.

  Peri was actually a pretty good climber, even with her prosthetic leg. Her bound hands were the biggest problem, but she managed to put on a burst of speed and scrambled ahead of Bassi to the mine opening. It was shored up with ancient wooden beams, dried and cracked from years in the desert sun, and low enough that Peri had to duck to get in. At a quick glance around, she saw that Julius, or somebody, had already been here. There were boxes of canned food and bottled water, a heap of blankets and sleeping bags, and a few other items like a camp stove and a lantern, still in their store packaging. It was all fresh and new, with no dust.

  Peri poked at the boxes as quickly as she could with her bound hands. If she could find a weapon, a gun, something—

  There were boxes of rifle ammo, but she couldn't find any guns. It was hard to see in the dim cave after the brilliance of the sun outside.

  "Where the hell did she go?" Bassi demanded from the front of the cave. "If you're trying to ambush us back there—"

  "Keep your pants on, lady, I'm just looking for—" Her eye fell on a cardboard box of juice bottles. "Something to drink," she finished, tearing open the front of the box. It wasn't entirely a lie; her throat was so dry it cramped on the first swallow of warm grape juice.

  "Toss me one of those," Bassi ordered.

  Peri thought about refusing but decided to save the arguments for things that mattered. Setting the open bottle upright on top of the boxes, she used both hands to fling an unopened juice bottle in Bassi's general direction. It bounced off the side of the cave and rolled out of reach. Bassi had to scramble to retrieve it.

  "Oops," Peri said. She sat on another box and drank her juice, holding it awkwardly in her bound hands.

  Julius appeared in the cave mouth. He dropped the water jug from his shoulder to the sandy floor—it fell so hard Peri winced, expecting it to split open—and then crouched to tear open a box of Gatorade bottles.

  Peri eyed him. Gatorade bottle in hand, he slumped against the wooden cribbing supporting the cave wall, shifting the rifle out of the way without taking it off his shoulder. He looked even worse than he had before. They were all a mess after a hike in the punishing afternoon heat, but she didn't think he was doing well.

  "Okay, for the thousandth time, why are we here?" Bassi asked after drinking half the bottle of grape juice. "You could have gotten us a hotel room in Phoenix, but no, we're in a cave with no running water, no air conditioning ..."

  "Valeria's got a death order out on us. Stay away from cities, airports—" He paused for a long pull on the Gatorade bottle.

  "For how long?"

  "Long as we need to. 'Til they stop looking."

  "I don't believe this," Bassi muttered. She crouched to open a box of granola bars, ripping at it with such fury that when she finally tore it open, the packaged bars scattered across the cave floor.

  Peri silently finished her bottle of juice. She had to stay strong, stay alert, and take any opportunity for escape that presented itself, because she couldn't count on the SCB finding her in time.

  A number of clocks were ticking down right now. One countdown involved whatever other assassins the Valeria had sent to find them, people apparently even Julius was afraid of. And another was the disease raging inside Julius's ravaged body. She didn't like her chances if she was still his captive when he reached the delirium stage.

  Noah, I hope you're doing okay, and I hope you guys are looking for me, because I could really use some help right about now.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  "You think there's something they aren't telling us?"

  Trish's weak voice was worried. Noah roused himself from a light doze and turned his head to find her propped up on her elbow. Right now he wasn't even sure he could raise his head. He didn't remember the last time he'd been this sick. In fact, he wasn't sure if he'd ever been this sick.

  But Trish was right. Something was going on. The atmosphere earlier in the day had been relatively relaxed, with Lafitte and the other medical staff working hard to keep them comfortable and even making jokes with them. Now everyone was in a hurry and no one wanted to talk. He hadn't seen Peri or Delgado in awhile.

  "More cases of the disease?" Trish asked quietly, dropping her voice when footsteps went by in the hall. "You think things got worse in Seattle?"

  "I don't know."

  Trish dropped her head onto the pillow. "I hope everyone's okay up there."

  "Yeah. Me too." He hated being sidelined like this.

  And he'd started to hurt in new, frightening ways. He'd had joint and muscle aches from the start, yesterday's headache growing into a deep ache throughout his body that was similar to a regular flu. But these were new, pins-and-needles bursts of sharp, twinging pain that came and went, especially in his hands and feet.

  Where all those small bones are.

  The worst part wasn't the pain, though. The worst part was that he could feel his body trying to ready itself for an involuntary shift. For his entire life, his shifting had been completely under his control. The feeling was something like a muscle cramp, the way a muscle could suddenly and uncontrollably twist despite all attempts to stop it, but all over his body. Trying to stop it was like trying to stop a bout of vomiting—uncomfortable, barely possible at this point, and with the unpleasant awareness that it was going to reach a point where it would happen no matter what he did.

  He had tried transforming during one of those bouts, to see if it was any less uncomfortable to just give in to it. As it turned out, it wasn't. He turned into an equally ill tiger, pulled out his IV and tore his scrubs, and got chewed out by a medical tech. When he turned human again, he was even more weak and wiped out. Shifting took energy, normally not enough to be noticeable. But like trying to lift a heavy box or climb a flight of stairs, it became progressively more difficult and exhausting the weaker you got.

  Lafitte came in with a steel tray of instruments. "So, there's very good news for you both. The antiviral cocktail we're using now is showing very promising signs against disease cultures in the lab, and both your blood samples are starting to show a reduction in virus load as well."

  "Meaning?" Noah groaned as she slipped a needle into his IV.

  "Meaning we think if we can catch it early, the disease is entirely curable." Lafitte's eyes crinkled in a smile above her mask. "The farther along it is, the harder it's going to be to stop, but we got the first antiviral doses into both of you before you'd even begun showing symptoms. There's every reason to believe you'll make a full recovery. We've also got what appears to be a working vaccine that we're already testing in some volunteers."

  "That's amazing," Trish said, rolling over to look up as Lafitte turned to deliver the other syringe to her IV. "You guys work fast."

  "We had help."

  "So that creepy Valeria doctor came through?
" Noah asked.

  "She did, in a major way. She was most of the way to a vaccine on her own when your bunch nabbed her. It was just a matter of replicating her work here." She stopped abruptly enough that Noah sensed she'd started to say something else and caught herself.

  "So what's going on out there, then?" Trish said.

  "I'm not sure what you mean."

  "Come on, something's up. Cat and Peri haven't been back to see us in hours. Everybody's distracted too. If you guys actually have the disease under control, what's the problem?"

  "Patient Zero," Noah guessed. "You haven't said anything about the other patient."

  "I don't think that's relevant—"

  "It's hella relevant if he's not responding to the drugs," Trish pointed out.

  "Felici died a couple of hours ago," Lafitte said reluctantly. "But his case was much further advanced than either of yours. There was simply too much damage to his internal organs."

  Noah sank back onto his pillows. "So this is fatal?"

  "We already knew it could be fatal if left untreated," Lafitte stressed. "Felici was in the end stages of the disease when we got him here. You aren't. The cases in Seattle and Buffalo are responding to the antivirals as well; it seems that if we can hit it hard enough in the first few hours, we can reverse it completely and rapidly."

  "Wait, cases in Buffalo?" Noah tried to push himself up to a sitting position, but his head swam and the bones somewhere in his rib cage tried to writhe. He settled for propping himself on an elbow as Trish was doing. "Cho? She's got it, doesn't she?"

  "A very mild case. She's improving already."

  "Cho's fine, we're fine, everyone's fine," Noah said dryly. "And there is definitely something you're not telling us. Where is Peri? Where's Cat Delgado?"

  "Delgado's been released for light duty now that we have the vaccine. She's busy."

  "And Peri?" His chest was starting to tighten. Something was wrong. He'd known Peri wouldn't leave him alone like this if she had a choice. "Does the disease affect humans too? Is it worse for humans?"

  "No, no. We're confident by now that humans can't catch it at all. Peri is ..." Lafitte stopped again.

  Noah clenched his teeth and forced himself to sit up. Even as the room swam around him, he began fumbling with his IV. "If I have to go find her on her own, I'm going to."

  Lafitte's hand closed over his. "Stop that. I'll tell you what's happening with Peri on one condition, that you stay in this bed until the drugs have taken effect. Deal?"

  "Deal," Noah said, a promise he had no intention of keeping if Peri needed him.

  "The Valeria have taken both Peri and Dr. Bassi. They are alive and unhurt as far as we know," she said quickly as Noah wrenched his hand out of her grasp. "Every available agent is out right now looking for them. There is absolutely nothing you can do in your present condition except get in the way, understand?"

  "Noah, Noah—she's right and you know it," Trish said. "The best thing you can do for Peri right now is get your strength back."

  "You just said you were going to stay in bed," Lafitte added, pushing him back as he struggled to get up. In his present condition, he was too weak to fight her off.

  "I didn't know Peri was in the hands of killers!"

  "And you're currently a walking biohazard, not to mention sick as a dog. If, and only if, you stay in bed—" She pushed him back down after another escape attempt. "—I'll make sure you're kept updated on the rescue in progress and I'll consider, consider mind you, letting you be in the ops room, with suitable precautions, as soon as I feel you're strong enough. Otherwise you're going to be locked in here until your health gets the all-clear, got it?"

  It took all his self-control to stay flat on his back when Lafitte took her hands off him. "You'll keep me updated."

  "Every hour on the dot," she promised. "Or if anything breaks in the case."

  ***

  Outside the cave, the opposite wall of the canyon gleamed like white gold in the afternoon light, painted with lengthening purple-tinted shadows.

  Using a piece of rope she found in one of the boxes, Bassi had tied Peri to one of the crossbars on the wooden cribbing, binding the other end to the rope around Peri's wrists in a stack of amateurish knots that would've done Rube Goldberg proud. It might not be the most professional tying job, but so far it was holding. Peri had just enough rope that she could sit down. She was on the opposite side of the cave from the supplies, but it was not a large cave and she'd managed to stretch far enough to retrieve a blanket from the pile, dragging it over with her foot so she had something to sit on that offered a little protection from sand, spiders, scorpions, and other unpleasant things starting with "S."

  Repeated and prolonged whining about being thirsty eventually resulted in Bassi giving her a bottle of water and a handful of granola bars, "to shut you up." Half a bottle of water, another bottle of juice, and a couple of granola bars went a long way toward making her feel less shaky and more capable of escape.

  She'd come up with a couple of ideas for getting loose. She still thought she could pull her hands out of Bassi's crude bindings if she struggled enough. The dry wood of the mine's support structure felt none too sturdy; if she threw her weight against it, she might be able to snap the ancient beam she was tied to, although she'd also risk bringing the ceiling down on her head.

  Let's call that our avenue of last resort.

  She looked toward the mouth of the cave. Julius was crouched against the light with the rifle across his knees. He'd rebuffed all of Bassi's efforts to talk to him, and now Bassi was sitting stonily beside the pile of supplies.

  "Hey," Peri said. "Dr. Bassi. Uh ..." What was Bassi's first name again? "Veronica. Yo."

  "Don't talk to me."

  "Come on, you don't really plan to stay out here for however long he wants to keep you here, do you?" She lowered her voice. "I think we can all see his Happy Meal is missing a handful of fries."

  "You think this is a joke?" Bassi snarled.

  Peri gave her bonds a quick tug. "Dude. I'm tied to a post. Come on. My point is, you're letting the sick, possibly delirious, definitely not compos mentis dude with the rifle call the shots, and I don't think you want the same things he wants."

  "How do you know what I want?"

  "You helped the SCB work on a cure. You could've stonewalled, or flat-out refused, or made them think you were helping while you made poison instead—" A sick feeling twisted in her stomach. "You didn't, did you? Tell me you didn't!"

  Bassi turned her face away, staring into the dark depths of the mine. Peri kicked at her foot but was unable to reach her.

  "If you told them how to make poison thinking it was medicine, I'm going to come over there and—I'll kill you, Bassi. With my bare hands. I really will." The depths of her rage astonished her. She'd raised her voice; Julius glanced back into the cave, steadied himself on the wall as he weaved in place, and looked away again.

  "I didn't," Bassi said softly. "My help was genuine. When I ... left, we'd already put together what was probably a functional vaccine. I had been working on it myself at the Flagstaff lab—though all my research is most likely destroyed now."

  "Well, that's unexpectedly Samaritan-like of you."

  "I didn't do it for you. I did it for Felici and the others like him."

  "Oh." Peri studied Bassi in the shadows of the cave, her anger fading. "It really bothers you that Felici's dead, doesn't it?"

  "It ... shouldn't. If it's true that the disease doesn't affect humans, then he was never one, was he?" She nodded toward Julius in the mouth of the cave, swaying slightly where he crouched. "Or him."

  "Maybe not, or maybe we've all got a little bit of shifter in us, all of us humans."

  Bassi shuddered, repulsed. "That's sick. Of course not."

  "Really? Would you stake your life on it? You were making a vaccine for your friends, even if you keep trying to tell yourself that they don't deserve it. I think you know the lines between humans and
shifters aren't as clear-cut as they always told you."

  "And you should know, shouldn't you," Bassi sneered. "You've been fucking one, after all. What's the appeal? Is it fun for you? Does he have animal parts down there?"

  "What about Felici?" Peri shot back. "Was he just a dog to you? A pet?"

  "You're disgusting."

  "Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot."

  There was a moment of silence while the two women glared at each other.

  "If you're trying to talk me into letting you go, your diplomacy skills need some work," Bassi said at last.

  "Diplomacy's not my strong suit." Peri jerked her hands against the rope. "You know, I talked to another of your compatriots recently. Fulvius? Ring any bells?"

  Bassi looked up quickly. "Where is he now?"

  "Dead," Peri said mercilessly, and got a mean sort of pleasure from the way Bassi blanched. "Julius shot him right in front of me. Do you really think he's not going to kill you if he changes his mind?"

  Bassi swallowed. Her gaze went to Julius, crouched in the cave mouth, paying no apparent attention to them. Peri was pretty sure he would start paying attention in a hurry if she tried to make a break for it, though.

  "You're a piece of work, you know that, lady? You killed my friend Zach back at the safehouse." Friend was stretching it, but she still felt sick every time she thought about him, or about the two dead men at Blue Mountain Farm. So many people had already died. The unlucky highway cop was just the latest in a long line of tragedies. "You tried to kill all of us that night. It's different when you look people in the eyes while you do it, isn't it?"

  "Believe it or not, I never wanted anyone to die." Bassi's gaze dropped to her hands. "This has all gotten so out of control—"

  "Except a few million shifters, but who cares about them?"

  "We are in a war," Bassi snapped. "In war, you have to do things you hate, to protect innocents."

  "Yeah? And how's that working out for you?"

  Bassi didn't have a chance to reply. At the mouth of the cave, Julius let out a hoarse yell and sprang to his feet, bringing the rifle to his shoulder. He fired at something Peri couldn't see—not down into the canyon, but up into the sky. Peri flinched and covered her ears against the noise.