Taylor got as far as his apartment in D.C. There he spent a fleeting time throwing items into a bag and booking flights on his computer. If he was still ‘on the clock’ as Randall suggested, he could charge the trip to the CIA, but at this point he might be pushing it a little too far. He sighed and whipped out his credit card, wondering just how bad the damage was going to be.

He found a connecting flight from London to Johannesburg to Lusaka. Fifteen hours in the air and another four on the ground. He booked a flight at 6:35 AM out of Dulles, and when there was nothing else to be done he took a shower.

He walked out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his waist, and stopped cold at the entrance to the living room.

If he hadn’t been so distracted he would have heard the intruder. At least that’s what he told himself as he stood there, his hair still dripping, leaving rivulets of chilly water down his back. At the very least his... other... senses should have let him know someone was there.

Damn, I’m starting to wonder if I really do need that vacation.

He composed himself, not wanting his boss to see the surprise he was feeling, and moved easily into the room, going to the bar to pour himself a drink. No point in offering one to his unwanted guest; he was already sipping from a scotch he’d obviously poured for himself.

“What do you want, Randall?” he asked, not bothering with pleasantries.

“I let myself in,” Randall said unnecessarily, lounging back easily in the chair, long legs crossed at the ankles, looking for all the world like he owned the place.

“I see that,” Taylor muttered, lifting his own glass to his lips, feeling the whiskey burn all the way down. “Why?”

“I fired you today,” Randall admitted, sitting up and resting his elbows on his knees. He looked troubled, his eyes evasive, a small frown marring his broad forehead. “The general was quite insistent. He was somewhat disappointed in your sudden absence.”

“So... that’s it?” Taylor asked, setting his glass down with a thud. “I’m fired?”

“Well...” Randall said and shrugged a little, “you will be once the paperwork is processed.” He gulped down what remained of his drink and set it on the end table, missing the coaster by several inches. Not that he noticed. “Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find the paperwork; I must have left it somewhere. No idea where. It’ll probably take days to find.” He rose to his feet and stretched. “Of course, if you return the conquering hero it’s possible that the paperwork might not get anywhere at all and no one would know. And then you wouldn’t be fired at all.”

Taylor threw up his hands. He knew when he was defeated. Right now Randall had him right where he wanted him. Or needed him, maybe. “What is it you want me to do?”

“The opposite of what the general wants. He wants you to do some recon for him in Malaysia. But the numbers don’t add up. There’s nothing there. Just a few remote villages that your girlfriend would love.” He walked over to the bar and poured himself another drink. “Did you know she had a case for you?”

“No.” Taylor shook his head. “We’ve been doing the long-distance romance thing. I called her to ask if she was ready for a vacation. As per your orders, I might add.”

“Damn.” Randall looked askance at him. “Does that really work? The long-distance thing, I mean.”

“Hell, no.” Taylor gave a rather chagrined smile and shook his head. “I only take cold showers anymore. And then I recite baseball stats just to keep focused.”

“Well, the general knew,” Randall muttered, returning to his seat where he settled himself and nursed his drink thoughtfully. “While he was raging and blowing piss and vinegar over your sudden departure, he said something about your being whipped. Being at her beck and call.”

“How the hell would he know she called me?” Even more troubling, what he hadn’t pointed out to Randall was that he was using a new phone. One he’d only gotten yesterday when his old one had gone missing.

A fact which was starting to look more and more suspicious. Like maybe he hadn’t left it sitting on the counter at Starbucks after all.

“Indeed. And might I also point out that he was here, in our midst unexpectedly, suddenly screaming about a budget point no one had ever heard of before.”

“You think he knew about Angelica and what she uncovered? It was 0400 here when she sent that email.”

“I think he knows more than I do,” Randall admitted. “What the hell is so important in the middle of the jungle? And why the hell can’t she go work in a city somewhere? They have poor people, too.” Randall took another slug and shook his head.

“If he knew about the video, he knew I’d probably call her at some point, or more likely she would probably have called me if I hadn’t responded.” Taylor shook his head. “I should’ve checked my email first thing this morning, but I was late, and then you wanted to talk vacation. Not that it matters. What’s important here—”

“—is that she’s under surveillance,” Randall finished. “And when you get there, you will be, too. And whoever is looking that closely has a direct line to a three-star general who just so happens to have some pull with the congressional funds that cover the CIA. I don’t know what your cute little doctor stumbled into...” He left it hanging there, an open-ended question for Taylor to answer.

Taylor didn’t.

Randall shook his head. “Well, whatever it is, you’re in too deep and I hate the idea of sending you out naked on this one.”

Taylor looked down at himself. “I have a towel,” he pointed out.

“Nothing even close to what I mean. You’re fired, you’re off the payroll, even if I ‘lose’ the papers; you’re not getting any help from anyone. Remember that. You and she are both flapping in the wind. I can’t help you, not this time.”

“All right,” Taylor said, and thought quickly. “Then I need a favor.”

Randall laughed. “You must not be hearing me clearly,” he said, putting the glass down. “I said you can’t get help.”

“Not from you.” Taylor said. “All I need is for you to look the other way.”

Randall got up and shoved his hands into his pockets and walked to the door. “You don’t get it. I’m not looking any way. You don’t exist. Call in a favor from the devil for all I officially care.” He opened the door and looked back over his shoulder. “I’ll keep my head down, out of trouble. I suggest you do the same. If things change, I’ll be in touch.”

“In touch?” Taylor asked, turning around to set a bottle back on the bar. “How? I’m persona non-grata.”

But Randall was gone. Son of a bitch should have been a shifter himself for how fast he moved.

Taylor was dressed before he found the satellite phone stashed in his bag.

It was probably a hell of a lot more secure than the one he’d bought just yesterday.

He winced when he realized his prepaid tickets would be wasted. Let whoever was in on this little game think he was flying commercial. He had other options, and if he moved fast he could be well on his way before anyone even figured out he wasn’t showing up at the airport. Taylor dropped the carry-on bag for a duffle. He included two pistols, ammo, and a blade that was pure black and six inches long. Now that he wasn’t flying with the airlines, the carry-on options were limitless.

I’m counting on an awful lot by calling in a favor.

He grabbed the satellite phone as he stepped outside. From the roof of his building it would take some serious tech to overhear his plans. Maybe he was being a little paranoid, but right now that could be a good thing. Trust no one. You’re on your own.

It made no sense what was going on. But his gut told him something was very, very off. So he went with it.

The number he dialed went through a series of clicks and pauses before he heard the voice of the person he was calling. Taylor wasn’t the only one who was paranoid.

“Hey, Dusty. I need a favor. A hot-drop.”

Dusty wasn’t one to ask unnecessary questions. “Where?”

“East Africa. Kind of remote.”

“The package?”

“Me.”

There was a long silence. “Welcome back to the game.”

Taylor bit back a chuckle. He’d worked with Dusty a couple of years back, a complicated case that didn’t exist on paper. “Easy, boy. It’s just a one-off. Can you do it?”

“When was the last time you jumped?”

“Two years.”

“You’re rusty.”

“Yeah. And we’d have to do it at night.” Hell, how hard can it be? Like falling off a bike. “So, are we on?”

“Your funeral. When?”

“Now.”

“Give a guy some warning.” Dusty paused. There was a sound of keys clacking. Another pause. “Two hours, the abandoned airstrip.”

“Thanks, Dusty.”

But the line was already dead. Taylor grabbed his duffle and tightened the combat boots he hadn’t worn in years. He paused, staring at the picture of her that sat on the table next to the door. Her smiling face in a silver frame. The same he’d had on his phone. He touched the cheek, imagining its warmth under his fingertips. Remembering the way his fingers had tangled in her hair. Her smell.

I can’t lose her.

Please, Angelica, for shit’s sake, stay low, stay hidden, stay safe.

***

“DUSTY. DAMN IT...”

I should be grateful. I am grateful. The trip would have been the better part of nineteen, maybe twenty hours. Under surveillance. I can do it in five now. Alone. He held onto the strap while the plane took an unsettling dip. The plane shook and rattled as though it had hit a wall up in the clouds. If this piece of shit holds together. I haven’t seen anything this old outside of an airshow—at least those don’t have large areas of rust on them.

The door to the cockpit opened and a man in full combat gear, complete with face-obscuring gas mask, stepped out. He looked at Taylor and held up five fingers. So far, the unknown soldier was his only companion, outside of the guy in the cockpit, presumably flying the plane. If his position was leaked, he wouldn’t have to look far to find it. He stared at the man’s hand and tried to figure out just what he was signaling.

Great. Five what?

Unfortunately, the cabin of this plane was not pressurized, and the thin air whipping through the thousand leaks and broken seams precluded any chance to speak. At least I’m the one wearing the parachute.

The presumptive pilot, or perhaps co-pilot, walked slowly to the controls on one wall and pulled a lever. The back of the plane opened, revealing a ramp that led down to a cloud bank. Dawn was starting to break over a jungle canopy and the tops of the trees were disarmingly close. The pilot held up four fingers.

Five minutes, then. I knew that. Taylor glared at the man just to show he wasn’t intimidated. I know that once I’m off, you’re going to pressurize the plane and turn on the heaters, so you and your copilot can have a mini-rave, aren’t you? He got up and stretched. Then flexed, bent, turned, and stomped the built-up idleness until he was ready.

Three.

Taylor pulled the pistols and checked them. They were both unloaded, a safety measure until he was on the ground.

Two.

He stored the guns and strapped the bag to his chest. He double-checked the parachute straps and the release cable.

One.

He stood at the edge of the ramp and watched the trees roll under them. It wasn’t the first time he thought that jumping blind was incredibly stupid. He would trust everything to this person who was going to....

GO!

GO!

GO!

Taylor shook his head and ran as fast as he could. He’d stalled at the last second because he’d only just realized that the person violently gesturing at him was a woman. It had startled him a little—the last he’d heard, Dusty wouldn’t have a woman in his outfit. He shook his head, ran down the ramp, and flung himself into the air. It was as though the plane had flown out from under him. He was sailing through the humidity of the jungle, feeling each thermal as it rose against him.

There was a clear spot below him, and he aimed for it as best he could. It wasn’t the first jump he’d ever made, though he’d never cared for it much. In the service his trainer called it the apex of stupidity, jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. But every country claimed sovereignty over their airspace, and while they might not want every plane from all corners to come pay them a visit it would be impolite to refuse someone the right to fly over your country on their merry way to become someone else’s problem.

So Taylor fell out of the plane on its way past Nigeria and well into Cameroon, which eliminated several hours of red tape and stale questions. He was also able to bypass the security systems airports had put into place precisely to prevent people like him from carrying guns and knives and other weapons into their countries.

He rolled in the air, the occasional updraft adding a buoyancy that helped him navigate to the clearing. He tucked in and made himself as thin as he could to allow the air to slip past him, thus increasing his speed. When he judged that his descent was directly in line with the clearing he spread his arms and legs and arched his back, throwing out his chest to allow the wind resistance to slow him considerably.

Only then did he pull the cord.

The parachute exploded from the backpack, pulling him violently upward as the silk caught the wind and billowed into an arching sail. He was off-target again, so he pulled the strap on the left and bled a little of the air to arc that direction.

It was a delicate operation. Pulling it too hard would mean that the parachute would collapse on that side, and if it didn’t get tangled or caught it might fill up again before he raced headlong into the floor of the jungle. He used the ropes with a great deal of caution.

He landed roughly. The terrain wasn’t even, though the woods were clear. With the momentum of the fall he needed to run a few steps when he landed, to bleed off the speed of his landing. The ground was soft and loamy; his feet sank as soon as he touched, and he couldn’t free himself in time to take the energy from the landing.

He heard the SNAP before he felt the pain. He was on his face in the dirt, being pulled along by the parachute that was now billowing in the breeze like a sail from an old-fashioned pirate ship and dragging him over the ground.

He hit the release on the front of the harness and the chute snapped and pulled free, but his shoulder wasn’t clear. He cried out as the harness pulled his left arm from the socket, which was about par for the course. He hadn’t had a thing go right since she’d sent him that blasted email.

Taylor lay in the jungle, hurt and alone. He stared at the sunrise sky turning an array of soft pastels, heralding the start to the day. From where he lay on his back he had a glorious view through the leafy canopy of the trees around him. The jungle slowly forgave him his violent intrusion and came to life around him, the call of bird and beast letting him know that he was less alone than he’d originally thought.

With my luck I’ll get stomped by an elephant. The clearing circled a pool of water, a widening of a stream that had been dammed some time ago by fallen debris. He lay in the middle of what appeared to be an animal trail.

Definitely time to move.

He managed to free the kit from his chest and then began the grueling ordeal of getting his shirt off over the dislocated shoulder. By the time his torso was bare he was sweating, and his mouth was dry, painfully dry. The pool of water might as well have been a million miles away.

Fighting to stay conscious he was able to unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants, but the boots he wore took a great deal of effort to get untied enough to pull off.

He was near enough naked, though he lacked the energy to pull his pants completely off. He fell back and stared up at the bright sky of the clearing and willed himself to change. Nothing happened. He ground his teeth against the pain and tried again. Nothing.

Taylor lay back and closed his eyes, breathing evenly and ignoring the searing pain that washed over him in waves from his shoulder and his leg. He concentrated on breathing. Just that.

It took a few minutes. Only when he was calm did he feel the change happen.

For as long as he’d lived, from puberty to now, for all the many times he’d transformed, it never got easier. Bones snapped and reformed, his breathing eased a bit and then stopped as his airways closed off and reopened in a different configuration. His eyes refused the light and then blinked, and he saw in a greater and brighter way than ever before.

Hands palsied and caught as fingers retreated and his palms cracked and shattered. Bone became sharp claws that slid into the sheaths of giant paws.

A moment later a mighty cat lay in the loam of the jungle floor, watching a billowing white cloth wrap around a tree, cords whipping frantically in the twisting wind. The tiger stood, stretched, and took stock. A bag lay at his feet. It was covered in the familiar scent, the other memory’s scent. There was death in that bag; the strong smell of what the other memory called “gun oil”.

The cat sniffed the leather and cloth; the man-scent was thick on them all. This was a strange place. It smelled different from the last place where the mate, the other memory’s mate, once ran from hunters. They were hunters now. He sensed the danger though he didn’t understand it.

The other memory echoed the image of the mate. Trying to draw his attention away from the danger. It was pointed to her now, striving to reach her. The cat snarled and shook itself. It hadn’t been out in a long time, and now it was in a new place without familiar scents and still missing the mate. The other memory clearly couldn’t be trusted. The cat refused to leave again but bounded and ran through the jungle, finding high ground, finding small foods to replenish the healing.

After a brief time, because they are all too short, it relented and slunk back to the bag and the leather and cloth. The cat, still half angry and resentful, lay down where he’d awoken, watching the white cloth wrap around a tree and slowly deflate as the wind died and there was nothing left to catch.

It was a blue sky and a soft bed that allowed the cat to change again. Too soon after waking, while there was still so much to test and taste and hunt and explore. The cat cried out once before Taylor woke, naked on the spongy surface, healed and just a little bit sad.

He dressed rapidly, thankful that he’d endured the pain of getting out of the shirt instead of tearing it to shreds as was usual.

I may be spending a fortune on shirts but think of all the medical bills I’ve saved.

He gathered the expended parachute and roughly shoved it all into the pack as best he could and dropped that into the trees for the monkeys to find. Then he gathered his bag and headed off in the general direction of a fairly good-sized town with a clinic in the exact center of it.

Only, this town wasn’t here last month. It’s currently one of the fastest-growing cities in Africa. Populated almost entirely by refugees.

Taylor didn’t allow himself to wander as he thought, refusing to head off in any direction but the one that would take him the fastest to his only goal.

Angelica.

He picked up his pace and began to run.