Chapter Two

Sam hung his head low, letting his long, bleached-blonde hair swing forward to hide his face, avoiding the all-seeing eye of the hospital security camera. He pushed the oversized maintenance cart into the stairway where it took up most of the landing and hefted the mop and bucket up the one flight of stairs to the hospital’s secure wing on the fifth floor, where Ian was already positioned on the landing. Marcus came down from the stairs above. In the artificial light, his pale blue scrubs glowed blue, making his dark skin look even darker than normal. They met in front of the locked fifth-floor door.

“How long until the CDC comes?” Sam placed the mop and bucket in a corner, ready to grab for cover in case anyone came. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his thighs. “The target is vulnerable here. We need to move soon. Once the CDC grabs her, we’re done.”

“We just got the call.” Marcus’s face was grim. “They were delayed by the collision. But they’re sending a back-up transport.”

“Damn it! They were supposed to be delayed for an hour or more.” Sam ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

“We’re out of time.” Marcus’s lips twisted. “Look, my break is over in ten minutes. I’ll go back into the security wing, disable the system and distract Darla. You’ll have three minutes, tops, before I turn the system back on.”

“Can’t you give us more time?” Ian asked.

“No. The system has a fail-safe. After three minutes you need to have a second key card input or it turns on an alarm. We’re lucky. It has the three minutes delay only because the alarm going off drives Dr. Smythe crazy.”

“Is the target ready to go?” Sam wanted to move, needed to move. Once they were in action he’d settle down, but right now, doing nothing was killing him. Just being inside the hospital for the last hour, with its pungent scents and artificial light was almost enough to drive his wolf into a frenzy. Good thing Marcus was a dormant, with no wolf inside, or he’d never have been able to handle the nurse’s job.

“Yeah. Darla gave her a sedative just before I took my break. Just disconnect the IV and take her out. She should be completely unconscious when you take her. One thing, she’s really hurt. She’s stabilized, but just barely.”

Sam shook his head. “Is it even worth it? Is she going to live?”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.” Marcus shook his head. He gave a nervous glance up the stairs. “Look, I need to go. Give me ten minutes, and then call my cell. If it’s clear I’ll tell you we’re on. If not, then get out. We won’t be taking her.”

“Marcus—” Ian shifted his weight from foot to foot “—we’ve got to take her. If the CDC gets her we’ll be up shit creek.”

“Can’t see you two in jail.” Marcus grinned, flashing his trademark white teeth. He always said the ladies loved a man with white teeth, and Marcus loved the ladies. “I’d be okay, but you two? No way. Your wolves would eat their way out of your bellies before the first day.” He gave a short laugh, turned, and headed up the stairs to the sixth floor where he would blend in, as if he’d been hanging out on his break before heading back to the fifth floor and the locked wing.

Sam and Ian waited in the empty stairwell.

“Shit, you know it really screwed things up for us that they tested her for lyco,” Ian said. “How in the hell did she get it?”

“I don’t know, but she did.” Sam checked the time on his phone. Five minutes left. “And with the CDC having complete control of anyone who tests positive, she’ll be in their experimental labs before we know it. Then we’re really fucked.”

Ian and he gave each other that look that said they were fucked anyway. They’d known each other since high school, worked together as enforcers for Sam’s old pack for almost as long and when he’d moved packs and joined up with the Ram’s Haven enforcers, Ian had been right behind him. Sam knew going into this op there was no one he’d rather have at his back. Whether Ian felt the same after Sam’s recent walk on the crazy side? He had no clue. But there was no time to ask.

“Better call.” Ian pulled on his ball cap and reached for his latex gloves as Sam punched the number into the throw-away phone.

Marcus picked up on the third ring. “Hey, babe, you aren’t supposed to call me at work.”

“Hey babe yourself.” Sam rolled his eyes at Ian. “Are we on?”

“Yeah, we’re on. I’ll see you tonight. I gotta go. I shouldn’t even have the phone on. Bye, sweetie.”

“Bye, sugar-cakes. See you tonight.” Sam hung up and tucked the phone in his pocket. “Okay, swipe the card.” He pulled on his own gloves and got ready, the latex sticking on his sweaty palms. Three minutes to get to the room, punch the code, disconnect the IV, and get her out to the stairwell. It was going to be tight.

Ian opened the door and pasted the latch with duct tape. The wing was quiet. Too quiet. All the tiny hairs on Sam’s neck lifted up in warning.

He had to remind himself that the quiet was a good thing for them. The powers that be had had the entire wing cleared. They were petrified of lyco.

Sam jerked his chin into a quick nod and they moved. Into the wide corridor and down past the empty nurses station. Ian punched in the code and they were in.

The room was nearly bare, only the essentials to keep the patient alive had been left. A locked room in the psych ward was the only place the CDC had felt was safe enough for a lyco patient. If they only knew how easy they’d made this by moving her here and isolating her. It almost made Sam laugh.

Ian disconnected the IV like a professional while Sam used the bolt cutters on the restraints. He tried not to look at the patient’s face, the purple-black swollen features doing a good imitation of a Halloween mask buried in a fall of luxurious dark red hair.

One and a half minutes.

Sam scooped up her long body, blankets and all. She weighed surprisingly less than he’d thought with her height. Her head lolled off his arm, but he couldn’t stop to do anything about it. Good thing she didn’t have a brain or spinal injury or they never would have been able to attempt this. He carried her across the room and out past Ian, holding the door.

They moved back past the empty nurse’s station. Marcus’s muffled voice and a woman’s responding laugh sounded down the hall. He smiled. Marcus was flirting. What else was new?

They headed for the stairwell.

Thirty seconds left.

Ian brushed the side of the nurse’s station. A pen clattered to the floor.

“Did you hear something?” The female voice echoed down the empty hall. Sam sucked in his breath.

“Oh, honey, that was just the sound of my heart, beating loud at your gorgeous presence.”

The woman giggled. Both Sam and Ian exhaled, Ian shaking his head at Marcus’s corny line. Sam balanced the lanky redhead and ducked the camera. It should be disabled, but he knew better than to bank on it. Under his breath he counted the seconds. Ian pushed in front of him and grabbed the landing door.

And they were out. Smooth as French Silk pie.

Down on the fourth-floor landing, Sam folded her into the maintenance cart, hiding her in the prepared space. He laid her head as gently as he could in the corner, tucking the blankets around her and stuffing handfuls of her slippery fall of hair in after her. Then he shut her in.

They pushed the maintenance cart through the fourth-floor hall, past the main bank of elevators. Ian carried the mop and bucket. Each step had to be slow. Excruciating, janitors paid-by-the-hour, slow.

Finally, they were in sight of the small back elevator. Ten more steps.

A tiny Native American woman, shoulders stooped with age, waited in front of the metal doors. She had a small beaded bag suspended on an old string around her neck, and she held a large bag in one gnarled hand, long, sharp, metal needles protruding, dangling bright red and yellow yarns. The ding sounded, the doors opened. She stepped into the elevator and pressed a button, a gap-toothed grin spreading across her wrinkled brown face.

Sam maneuvered the cart into the elevator, and Ian got in behind him. The doors shut. From inside the cart came a low moan. The woman jerked, the wide smile on her face sliding away. Sam fake coughed into his elbow.

“That sounds bad.” The old woman moved to the other side of the elevator, reaching for her necklace and holding it like a talisman against Sam’s cough. “Hot honey and lemon in whiskey, works every time.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Sam nodded, keeping his overlong hair swung low, mindful of the elevator camera. Come on, come on. Their cargo couldn’t be waking up. If she did, and found herself stuffed in the close quarters of the cart, there was no telling what she’d do. He faked another long hacking cough, just in case. Finally the elevator dinged on their level of the parking garage.

“Ma’am.” Ian touched his cap.

The old woman gave him a tight nod, her body pressed into the side of the elevator, as far away from Sam as she could get. “Honey and lemon,” she called after them as they exited and wheeled the cart out the elevator doors and out into the lobby of the underground parking lot.

They didn’t speak until the cart had been wheeled up the panel van’s wheelchair ramp and they were inside with the doors shut.

“I almost wet myself when I saw that old lady,” Ian said.

“Yeah. Thank God she wasn’t security.” Sam climbed into the driver’s seat, his body still tight with the tension from the op. The adrenaline coursing through his veins would take time to ease off. He rolled his neck and drove the van out into the heat of a sunny fall day in Colorado. He could hear Ian rattling around in the back, checking on their companion. “She still out?”

“Yeah.”

They passed the police cars blocking the front entrance for the CDC, and headed for the freeway—and the freedom of the Rocky Mountains.

They’d done their part. They’d saved the woman from the CDC and their experiments. Now they just had to hope she survived.