“Where are we going?” Taylor asked as he followed Angelica up the stairs.

“Did you get the reference to his bedmate?” Angelica said over her shoulder, her hair swinging into her face. She paused on the landing to impatiently push the errant strands, and he was struck anew by how beautiful she was, even when she was flustered and angry and dressed in nothing special, without a trace of makeup on her face.

Damn, he loved her.

“Yeah. A little gross. Why?” he asked, forcing himself to get back on track, to think, which is what he should have been doing all along.

“He became very elusive and tried to put off the question. When I suggested a social call with his girl he actually started to panic, his eyes widened, and he began breathing more shallowly. There’s something he’s hiding.” She turned back to resume the climb. “And while you were watching him I was watching Franco.”

For a moment he wasn’t sure he heard her clearly. “The guard?”

Angelica nodded, coming to a halt in front of an unmarked door. She turned to face him as he climbed the last steps. “He was repulsed.”

“We all were,” Taylor said as he caught up with her. She shook her head, her hand still on the doorknob. “No. I mean repulsed. He was sick to his stomach in a way far beyond any visual of our large friend in flagrante delicto. He was pissed off.”

“So his boss is shtupping a friend of his?”

“Shtupping? How old are you? No, I asked him where they stayed. He told me and immediately left. He wants us to interfere, Taylor. I think there’s something very wrong here. Very wrong.”

Which is what his own intuition had been screaming at him to notice for some time now, only he hadn’t been listening. For a moment he had the wild urge to order her back down the stairs, to let him go forward from here. He was better equipped to face the danger.

But she’d never forgive him for that. Angelica was most decidedly a very independent and capable young woman. And he’d just as soon try ordering his tiger self to become a vegetarian as get in her way when she was on the scent of something. Especially, as he was finding out, if it meant that someone might be suffering somewhere.

They opened the door.

The setup was like something out of an old horror movie. The building had to date back to WWII and so the hallway was narrow, with several nondescript doors on each side, transoms hovering over each, most painted shut. A few wedged open for the sake of what air flow there was. The whole place smelled of mold, of too many people living in too small a space. Why was there always the scent of onions, when the people ate in the cafeteria?

Wary, feeling vulnerable and exposed, they moved down the hallway, Taylor taking the lead.

Angelica didn’t seem to mind. In fact, she hung back a little, just as unsure.

At the end of the hall, a door stood on its own with no number, no marking to distinguish it from the rest, save the unique location of it.

“Okay, so which one is his?”

“In my building, Manchester has the room at the end of the hall. I was in it once...” She smiled at Taylor’s expression. “Don’t ask. Anyway, his room was twice the size of mine. If this building stays true to the shape of that one—”

“Then our grandiose lieutenant will have that one.” Taylor pointed to the door at the end of the hall, thinking, of course. In any horror movie, it’s always the last door in a very long hall.

With the other doors opening suddenly, releasing the entire forces of hell the moment the intrepid heroes are past, thereby cutting off any possible escape.

He shook himself. It wasn’t like him to see the bogeyman. Aftereffect of the pheromone?

Focus, Taylor. Focus.

“Can you hear anything through the door?” she whispered as they approached. “Your hearing is better than mine.”

He smiled a little. “I’m not quite that good,” he murmured, and paused in front of the apartment, considering the door and the transom overhead. If anything, he should be able to hear something through there, but not only was this window painted shut but it looked like someone had put a piece of cardboard over the glass, so no one could see in. Why do that? You’d need a stepladder to see anything...

“Whatever it was he was babbling about pulled him out of bed so fast his face was still red from his exertions.”

Taylor looked at her. He was impressed. Very impressed. But then, he shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, she’d been trained to be observant. Though it took a wicked nasty mind to put things together in quite the way you needed to sometimes. “You’re a natural at this.”

“Thanks.” She flashed him a grin. “Let’s just hope that Franco can keep him busy long enough for us to check this out.”

Taylor pressed his ear against the door. “I hear something. It’s like a whistling sound. And something with it... like a puppy... I can’t tell.”

“A puppy?” Their eyes met. Durant wasn’t exactly a dog person. “Can you pick the lock?” Her voice had taken on a slightly panicked note.

“Of course.” He grinned and lifted one leg. The powerful kick crashed the door off its hinges and splintered the doorjamb.

“Subtle,” she murmured, trying to look past him even before the dust had cleared.

There was no holding her back. Angelica took the lead, looking behind her as though to make sure that Taylor was following before slipping into the room. She took a look at the rumpled bed and the young lady lying on it and turned, her face a mask of absolute horror.

A child.

Lying on the bed.

A girl. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen. Fifteen at most. Naked with one foot chained to the bedpost, clutching a thin sheet in delicate, fine-boned hands. She faced the wall, flinching, expecting some new terrifying thing, and it was all Taylor could do to control the rage. His hands shook, and he blinked and blinked again, struggling to see past the red haze that filled his sight.

“I will kill him,” he said, and it was he and the tiger who spoke as one, something that should have shocked him. But it didn’t.

And he meant every word.

He couldn’t contain it. The fury that tore through him, the desire to change, the tiger roaring to be let out, to exact a revenge that would be terrible and oh so deserved.

“I will fucking kill him.”