by Rebecca York
Quinn reached for his hand, squeezing his fingers. And he squeezed back, silently admitting that it was impossible to fight what he felt for her.
But what about later? Five years from now, would she end up hating him?
A jangling like the ringing of an old-fashioned telephone made him jump. Would he ever get used to phone calls comingand going everywhere including the bathroom?
Ross answered, “Yeah?”
It was Jacob, who had stayed out at Flagstaff Farm to keep an eye on Bowie and the militia.
His voice came over the speaker—another modern feature.
“We’ve got a problem. There’s considerable activity on the property. I think they’re getting ready to make a move.”
“But it’s a day early,” Caleb answered from the backseat.
“Maybe that wolf in the bedroom made Bowie nervous.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
As they continued to speak, Caleb kept his gaze on the back of Ross’s head, a sick feeling rising in his throat.
“How soon are they moving out?” the detective asked.
“I can’t be sure. But probably tonight. I’ll let you know if anything else happens.”
“What the hell are we going to do?” Caleb asked when the call had concluded.
“You were entirely focused on trying to get help from Ruckleman,” Ross answered. “But the rest of us have been making contingency plans.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“They’re not exactly fully formed,” Quinn put in, her voice heavy with frustration.
That was one of the things he loved about her. She was alwaysstraightforward. Well, maybe she hadn’t been when she’d been trying to get the Marshalls not to kill him. He wasn’t real proud of his attitude toward them back then. But he understood it. He’d been operating out of werewolf anger—and misinformation.
Ross turned to look at him. “We’ve been calling in reinforcements.By the time we get home, Sam and Olivia Morganshould be there.”
“Sam and Olivia?” he asked.
“Sam used to be Johnny Marshall, my brother. After he got framed for a murder in a bar, he took off for California. He’s had a very colorful career as a thief.”
Quinn goggled at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No. He’s going to be a big help,” Ross answered. “And so will his wife, Olivia. Logan’s brother Lance is already there. He left his wife, Savannah, home because she’s pregnant.”
He gave Caleb a direct look. “Are you going to be uncomfortablewith so many of the pack on hand?”
“No,” Caleb answered, hoping he could handle it. Hell, he had to handle it. He swallowed. “Did you tell them what happened to me?”
“Yeah,” Ross answered. “They’re all intrigued to meet a man who was dead for seventy-five years.”
And what do they think about a werewolf who’s stuck in human form? He kept that question to himself.
Logan looked at him. “Um, maybe you want to change your clothes before you meet them. I have a shower out back. And spare clothing in the shed.”
“You do?”
“So I can clean up after work without messing up the house.”
“Thanks for the offer.”
When they pulled into the driveway, he headed around back. After showering and shaving, he changed clothes. Then he took a deep breath and went to meet more of his family.
When he stepped into the great room, the conversation stopped.
“Here he is,” Ross said, then introduced him to Lance, Sam, Olivia, and his wife, Megan.
To Caleb’s relief, everyone acted like he belonged there.
Now that he’d gotten past his murderous rage at Aden’s descendants, he silently admitted that he liked these men— and their wives. Too bad he could never be their equal.
Later, he’d have to decide how much he could stand to be the impotent wolf among them. For now, they were all too busy working out a plan for keeping Colonel Jim Bowie and his men from leaving Flagstaff Farm with the bombs.
“Zarah and I can use the same technique on Bowie and his men that we used on the guards in Ruckleman’s building,” Quinn said. She turned to Zarah. “Why did it stop working?”
“Because we didn’t have a visual link between us, I think. This time we’ll stay where we can see each other.”
“Outside the farm boundaries,” Caleb said, his voice emphatic.
He listened to the conversation swirling around him. It was obvious that Ross was the leader of the pack, although nobody was stupid enough to say it out loud.
QUINN and Zarah went off into a corner to practice strengthening the control technique, since it was a key elementin Ross’s plans for the attack.
“Maybe we should go off where we have more privacy,” Quinn murmured.
“We won’t have privacy during the operation. We need to work under battlefield conditions,” Zarah answered. “So let’s stay here.”
They built the link, focusing on each other’s minds as the others worked out plans. Then, suddenly, Quinn felt the connectionsnap.
“What happened?”
“Sorry. I’ll be right back.”
When Zarah got up and headed down the hall, Quinn figuredthat probably the baby had kicked her in the bladder.
She came back a few minutes later, her face white as chalk as she stood in the doorway.
Quinn quickly crossed the room to her friend. “What’s wrong?”
Zarah looked at her, her eyes large and panicked. “I . . . I’m bleeding.”
“Great Mother. When did you find out?”
“Just now. I felt . . .” She flushed and lowered her voice, turning her back to the people in the great room. “A little wet. So I went into the bathroom to check.” She looked at Quinn with brimming eyes. “It’s much too early for the baby.”
Megan, who was near enough to hear the worried conversation,rushed over. “Let’s go into the bedroom where we can have some privacy.”
Zarah gave her a grateful look, then turned to Quinn. “Will you come, too?”
“Of course.”
As they walked down the hall, Megan said, “You know I’m a doctor.”
“Like my obstetrician?” Zarah asked, hope in her voice.
“I have a different specialty.”
Zarah’s worried look came back.
“But we all have training in every field of medicine,” Megan said.
When they’d stepped into Zarah’s bedroom and closed the door, Zarah pulled off her panties and showed Megan the small bloodstain on them.
“You’re not in any pain? No cramping.”
“No,” Zarah said.
“What month are you in?”
“The fourth.”
“That’s all excellent. I think it’s just that a piece of the placenta broke off.”
Zarah sucked in a sharp breath. “Is that bad?”
“No, not bad at all. But you should have your doctor examineyou. I’ll take you to the emergency room,” she said.
“Would you?” Zarah asked, her gratitude shining in her voice.
“Of course.”
Quinn went out to report what was happening. Then Megan and Zarah appeared.
“I’m sorry, I won’t be able to help Quinn immobilize the men,” she said in a low voice as she looked at the expectant faces of everyone in the group.
Quinn could feel the tension that suddenly filled the room, since their role had been a key factor in the assault.
Ross was the one who answered. “Of course not,” he said. “You go make sure everything is all right with you and the baby.”
Quinn turned to her friend. “I should stay here, so we can come up with something else. Will you be all right without me?”
“Yes,” Zarah answered.
When she and Megan had left, Ross cleared his throat. “I guess we go to plan B.”
“What’s plan B?” Lance asked.
“I don’t know yet. But we’ll think of something.”
Before anybody else could speak, Ross’s cell phone rang, and he put it on speaker again. It was Jacob.
“Bad news,” he said. “I think they’re getting ready to leave the farm.”
“Before dark?”
"Maybe they’re moving to a staging area nearer D.C. They’ve got two vans and a couple of SUVs.”
“Can you stop them?” Ross asked.
“I’m going to try. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Meanwhile, maybe you’d better start driving out here.”
Ross stood. “We’d better finish the planning session on the way out there.”
JACOB took one more look through his binoculars. Then he headed back to the woods where he’d left his backpack. He’d come up with a plan. It was risky, but he couldn’t think of any alternative.
First he got out a knife in a leather sheath. Then he changed to wolf form. Taking the sheathed blade in his mouth, he started back toward the fence that bordered the farm.
The two dogs he’d met the night before came trotting up when he slipped through the wooden rails. But this time they recognized him. And when he began humming to them the way he had the night before, they both gave him friendly greetings, then stayed with him as he headed toward the centerof the compound. Men were moving around, and he waited until the area was clear to slip under one of the vans.
Now came the tricky part. As a wolf, he couldn’t hold the knife tightly enough in his mouth to do what he needed to do. So he set down the knife, then, as he lay on the ground under one of the vans, he said the chant in his head that changed him from wolf to man. Moments later, he was naked, exposed, and praying that nobody was going to look under the vehicle.
One of the dogs growled at him, the hairs on its back bristling.
Jacob spoke to him in a low voice, telling him that everythingwas all right—that he was a man as well as a wolf.
In the middle of his speech, he saw booted feet approachingthe truck and clamped his mouth shut.
He waited with the knife in his hand and his breath frozen in his lungs. When a man bent down to talk to the dogs, he clenched the knife, prepared to strike if the guy bent any lower and happened to see a naked arm or leg under the vehicle.
MINUTES after Ross had spoken to Jacob, they started gettingready to leave.
“Are we going in as wolves?” Lance asked, then glanced at Caleb before looking away.
Caleb struggled not to let his natural reaction show. “Maybe I can go in as a ghost,” he answered.
“Whatever we decide, we’re going to make sure we’re armed,” Ross cut in. “The colonel’s men will have automatic weapons. So I brought along Uzi’s.”
“Which are what?” Caleb asked.
“Small Israeli-made machine guns.”
“That’s a company? Like Winchester?”
“No, a country. You’d call it the Holy Land.”
“They make deadly weapons there?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Yeah, right.” He shook his head. “I know guys who carriedrevolvers,” Caleb said. “But I never used one.” He started to say tooth and claw were his specialty but choked off the words before they reached his lips.
“With a machine gun, bullets come out in a rapid stream, meaning you have more chance of killing.”
Ross looked at Lance. “Will you give Caleb a quick lessonin machine-gun handling? Then follow us out to Frederick?”
“Yeah,” his cousin answered.
Caleb wondered if he was annoyed at being asked to stay back. But he knew why Ross hadn’t asked Logan. He and Logan still rubbed each other the wrong way.
The others left in two of the SUVs, and Lance took Caleb and two of the Uzi’s down to the firing range.
“In battle, you won’t have ear protectors,” he said. “But we’ll use them now—to preserve your hearing.”
After some instruction, Caleb took the gun and aimed at the target. But he wasn’t prepared for the kick, and his first bursts of bullets went way above the bull’s-eye.
QUINN kept stifling the impulse to glance over her shoulderas they rode toward Flagstaff Farm. She didn’t like leavingCaleb back at Logan’s house. But she wasn’t going to protest. A firing lesson made sense. Caleb had never shot a modern weapon. He needed to know what it felt like.
Hoping to ease the tightness in her chest, she turned to Olivia, the wife of Sam Morgan, who was sitting beside her in the back of the SUV. They’d all talked about their special abilities at the planning session, and Quinn had been surprisedto hear that everyone in Olivia’s family had a psychic talent.
“Did you ever try to influence another person’s thoughts?” she asked.
“Yes,” Olivia answered, “when Sam and I were under attackfrom the man trying to kill him and dominate me. But that was only one man.”
“Maybe together we could reach more,” Quinn answered.
“If we had time to practice.”
“Open your mind,” Quinn said, “Try to be receptive to me.” Then she flushed, thinking how presumptive she’d been. She was a former slave, and she was giving orders to a woman she’d just met. A woman who had grown up rich, from what she’d heard.
But Olivia smiled at her. “Yes, that’s a good idea.” She reached for Quinn’s hand, leaned back against the seat, and closed her eyes.
Quinn did the same, searching for a link to the other woman. It was crazy, thinking they could do it under these circumstances, but she would try it. Because Caleb’s life might depend on her success. Colonel Bowie had sent men to kill Wyatt Reynolds. And Caleb was in that body now. Bowie was going to react when he saw him again—and it wouldn’t be to stretch out an arm and shake hands. When the colonel looked at Caleb, he was going to see his enemy.
So she strove to make a connection with Olivia. At first she felt nothing.
“Just let it happen,” Olivia murmured.
“Yes,” Quinn answered. She knew from the other woman’s response that she’d felt something.
So she tried a more relaxed approach, pretending that Olivia was like Zarah—an old friend.
And in a few moments, she felt the tendrils of the other woman’s thoughts reaching toward her.
Good.
She could feel Olivia smile, then hear her mental voice.
How much can we do? And how long will this last?
I wish I knew.
What orders should we give them, if we can reach their minds?
Nothing complicated. We’ve got to keep it simple.
AFTER what felt like centuries, the man moved away, and Jacob let out the breath he’d been holding.
Then he inched toward the right front tire and pressed the point of the knife into the black rubber.
Quickly, he made similar holes in the three other tires. Then he waited, listening.
The hiss of air escaping sounded like the roaring of NiagaraFalls to him. But he hoped it wouldn’t be quite so obviousto anyone passing by.
Of course, there was something he hadn’t thought about. Now that the tires were deflating, the van was pressing lower to the ground, giving him a lot less room.
Would it come down far enough to crush him? He hoped not.
In a low voice, he murmured the chant that changed him from man to wolf again. The change never felt pleasant, but the pain was greater this time because he’d done it so recentlyand because he had to be in such an awkward position.All he could do was grit his teeth and ride above the punishment to his muscles and tendons. When the transformationwas complete, he started to slither out and head for the other van.
But he ran smack into a man who had come pounding towardhim from one of the buildings.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The man stopped in his tracks when he saw an animal he hadn’t been expecting. Jacob used that moment of surpriseto spring at him, knocking him to the ground.
Only half his mission was accomplished. He’d disabled one van, but he knew he’d just run out of options.
&nbs
p; Hoping he could escape, he took off toward the fence.
“What the hell?” the guy shouted.
Then a bullet hit the dirt behind Jacob, and he sprinted ahead. The fence was in front of him. He’d wiggled under a split rail to get in here. But that took too much time.
Instead, he leaped higher than he ever had in his life, clearing the barrier by millimeters.
COLONEL Bowie strode across the compound. Every man had his job in the current operation.
“Give the order to move out,” he said to Sergeant Caldwell.
Before the man could comply, the sound of gunfire broke out through the compound.
Eyes blazing, Bowie ran toward the staging area. He’d given explicit orders that shooting around the bomb was dangerous. So what the hell was going on?
Private Pinder was standing with his arms outstretched, a Sig in his hands. Obviously, he’d been firing toward the woods.
“Weapon down.”
To his credit, the man instantly obeyed.
“What’s going on?” Bowie barked.
“The tires on the lead van are punctured. I think a wolf did it.”
Bowie laughed, a harsh sound that held no mirth. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, sir.”
“How did a wolf get past our dogs?” he demanded. But even as he spoke, an image flashed into his mind, an image of a furry body leaping through the window of his quarters and out into the night.
Pinder shook his head, then squatted down and pointed to the closest tire.
Bowie squatted beside him, his eyes going from the front tire to the rear. They were both flat. He cursed under his breath, then lay down on the ground and looked under the vehicle. Sliding forward on the blacktop surface, he stretched out his arm and pulled out a knife, holding it up to Pinder.
“You think a damn wolf was using this thing?”
“No, sir.”