Chapter Seventeen

 

 

Tank

 

It’s full dark when Sam and I arrive at the tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire that surrounds the compound. There are a few small outbuildings, but the two cars in the dirt lot are in front of the large main building.

“That’s where the server room is,” Sam points out.

“How do you know?”

“Kylie hacked a satellite to get updated images.”

I mentally put her on my don’t ever piss off list, and hunch down to wait. There is a hut with a few guards carrying automatic weapons, to keep out anyone entering the road. Most of their security lies in not showing up on any map. Their mistake, our good luck.

I try to get a good scent of the place. It smells like shifters, but not just one type. Wolf, and a few others I’m not familiar with. No fox.

Two men walk out of the building and head to the cars.

Sam brought weapons for us—funny-shaped black guns. “Tranquilizers,” he tells me. “Garrett doesn’t want any deaths.” I rest my hand on it as we wait.

“All right,” Sam says, when the last car rolls past the guard’s gate. We creep around to the back of the compound and he puts on gloves to use the bolt cutters.

“Wait.” I point to a sign that indicates electric current.

“It’s off,” Sam says. “Not sure why. It was probably built to keep shifters in, rather than out.”

“Maybe there’s no one they need to keep in right now.” I hope it’s not true. That doesn’t bode well for Foxfire’s dad.

We crawl through the small hole Sam makes. He pulls it shut behind us so a guard won’t notice the breach. From there it’s a short run to the back of the main building. The scent of shifters is much stronger here, clashing with a myriad of other smells: bleach, chemicals, and cleansing fluid over darker scents. Blood. Fur. Fear.

Under the cover of darkness, we reach a door. I stand watch while Sam crouches to pick the lock. I stop him before he opens it.

“Alarm?”

Sam shakes his head. “They think they’re safe.”

I hold my breath as he opens it, but nothing triggers. “All right. Go fast. Find the server room.”

We follow our noses down a sick-smelling corridor. The harsh cleansers used to clean this place almost numb my nose, but Sam seems to know just where he’s going. I follow him, committing a few turns to memory until he comes to a quiet office filled with powered-down machines.

“Here.” He pulls a seat up to a computer. “This will be a few minutes.”

I hover in the door, keeping watch. The guards should patrol this place regularly. My hope is that they’re complacent. So far, they are. I’d hate to get into a firefight with them. Our weapons will be no match for theirs. Especially if the guards are used to bringing down shifters.

Sam’s face is eerily lit by the screen.

“How much longer?” I ask.

“I’m in. Ten minutes.”

Just enough time for me to search the building and see if Johnny is here. “Be right back.”

I sneak down the hall, following my nose around a few turns. There’s a definite animal smell that not even the antiseptic can mask. What sort of shifter, I can’t say.

I reach a stairwell and ease the door open. The shifter scent hits me full force, along with the scent of blood and shit. Breathing through my mouth, I descend the stairs. Tingles run up and down my spine as I enter the basement. There are large cages on the other side of the door. The smell is even stronger. This is where they keep their secrets.

Inside, I prowl up and down the rows of empty cages. There are several separate rooms of them, each smelling a little different. Different shifters, I guess. Each room fans off the central one, which is a lab full of racks of test tubes, computers, and tables with heavy restraints. The smell of fear is strongest here. I gag and back out.

One more round of the place, and I reach a wall with small doors leading to cells. I glance in each one, relying on my nose to tell me if anyone’s living. There’s a few on the end with no window looking in. I almost miss checking when my foot hits the desk nearby and the console comes to life. On screen is a dark room. A camera on one of the cells. As I watch, the shadows move. In the darkness glow two bright eyes.

There’s only one creature in here, other than me. A shifter. A prisoner.

I go to the door and rap on it. “Hey. Anyone alive in there?”

I wait a few minutes. Nothing. I need to be getting back up to Sam. I’m about to leave when a growl brings my wolf to high alert.

“Who wants to know?” a deep voice asks.

“I’m a friend. I’m looking for a fox shifter. The father of my mate.”

“Are you a prisoner or one of them?”

“Neither. I’m here to get you out.” It’s the truth. The plan is just to do reconnaissance, and wait for the pack to do a full out rescue within the next few nights. “We will free you and whoever else is here, I swear on the life of my mate.”

“You here for Johnny?”

“You know him?”

“Get me out, and I’ll take you to him.”

Damn. That’s not the plan. “Is this door alarmed?”

“Not anymore. I’m not the threat I used to be.”

Here goes nothing. I study the door. I could try to kick it in, but it’s probably built to withstand shifters. “Hang on,” I mutter and rip the hinges off, backing up as the door wrenches open from the inside.

“I’m armed,” I say as the prisoner climbs out.

“I’m no threat, the shifter growls. He’s huge but emaciated, his ribs jutting from his large frame. His scent is rich and smoky.

“What’s your animal?”

“You can’t smell me, wolf?” He turns his head and gives me the full force of his stare. Golden eyes with a small black pupil. Lion.

I recognize the tattoo on his shoulder.

“Special forces?”

He nods.

“How long have you been here?”

A pause, and then an awful laugh. If I were in wolf form, my fur would stand on end. “To long. Far too long.”

“We don’t have much time.”

“This way.”

I follow him back up the stairs, ears perked for any noises. The hall upstairs is as dark and silent as ever.

“What the fuck were they doing in here?” I mutter as we pass another lab room.

“Experiments on shifters,” the tortured lion says. “They’re obsessed with bloodline. Sometimes…” His head cocks to the side as if he’s remembering something. “Sometimes,” he mutters, almost to himself, “they breed them.”

I keep my distance as we turn down another hall. I don’t have to be a shrink to know this guy is crazy.

“In here,” he says. My wolf makes me wait until he backs away to peer through the door.

There’s no one in the room. Just a large white box and the smell of ash and death.

“Cremation,” my guide rasps. “That’s how they get rid of the evidence. You want to find Johnny? He’s in there.” And he lets out another laugh.

I reel back, gut twisting with the awful sound.

The lion shifter leaps forward and slams my head against the wall. I drop to a knee, dazed. When I find my balance, the lion is gone.

Fuck.

I race back to Sam. He’s not at the same computer, but over by the wall. “We got to go.”

He rises and hurries to a table to pack up his tools. “What happened to you?”

I swipe at my face. My nose is bleeding.

“Found a prisoner and freed him. We need to move, now.”

The prisoner might be smart enough to escape but might not care about not setting off alarms.

Sure enough, as we dart into the hall, lights flood the building. Alarms blare.

“Shit.”

“Come on,” Sam grabs me and pulls me another way. As we run, shouts hit the building outside.

“What are we going to do? We’re surrounded.”

“Plan B,” Sam says grimly. He pushes me against the wall and presses against it next to me. “Brace yourself.”

“Wh—”

A blast shakes the building.

 

~.~

 

Foxfire

 

“Foxfire,” my mom calls from her perch atop Daisy. “Something’s going on.”

“What?” I ask, but as soon as I stand on the seat, hanging out the front door, I can see. There are floodlights on at the compound and blaring alarms blaring. “Oh no.”

“What’s happening?”

“Trouble,” I say. “With a capital T.”

 

~.~

 

Tank

 

“What the fuck was that?” I shout as the shock of the blast rings in my ear. The sprinklers cut on, and we run through the slick hall.

“Plan B.” Sam doesn’t explain.

“You set a bomb?”

“Just in case we needed a diversion.” He’s creepily calm. Still a slender, mild-looking shifter—apart from the piercings and tats. But there’s gleam in his eye I don’t like.

“Come on.” I race toward the door at the end of the hall. If we’re lucky, the guards are distracted enough we can still escape.

But when I stick my head out, lights flash my way.

“Shit.”

“This way. There’s another exit.”

“How do you know?”

Sam propels me forward. “I’ve been here before.”

I don’t have time for the WTF rattling through my brain.

More shouts ring through the building. The guards from the hut are inside, and now it’s a game of cat and mouse to make sure they don’t find us.

We duck into a room, a normal-looking office.

I crouch behind a desk, muttering curses. Sam squats next to me, an oasis of calm.

“Another ten seconds, and then we run for it.” He nods to the window.

I stare at him.

“Wait for it,” Sam says, and I brace.

Sure enough, another blast ripples through the building, this one larger, shaking the floor. Sam rushes past me, and I follow, overtaking him to slam feet-first into the glass. It breaks under my flying weight. I roll on the lawn, Sam right behind. We find our feet and pelt toward the fence but don’t quite make it before the guards notice us and shout. We slam ourselves to the safe side of a small outbuilding before machinegun fire comes our way.

“Shit,” Sam says. “The fence is back on.”

Sure enough, the metal hums and crackles with electric charge, probably enough to knock a shifter unconscious.

“There.” Sam points to a hole in the fence, metal slashed open.

I give a silent thanks to the newly freed lion. Sure, he was crazy. But I’m beginning to fear Sam could give him a run for his money.

“We can get to it if we have a distraction. Got any more explosives?”

Sam shakes his head.

I hear the guards getting closer and put my hand on my gun. I just hope they’re not shooting to kill. Or, if we’re captured, that the pack is close behind.

I’m about to dart out and make my last stand when something whistles and pops overhead. Sam and I duck at an explosion. But instead of an earth-shattering blast, the sky lights up with colored lights.

Fireworks. Beautiful, loud fireworks, exploding above the guard tower. A perfect distraction.

“Foxfire,” I whisper before grabbing Sam and shoving him first through the shredded hole in the fence toward freedom.

 

~.~

 

Foxfire

 

Green lights explode above me.

“That’s a little too close for comfort,” Sunny calls. I ignore her, lighting three more and letting them sing off into the night sky. They blossom white, red, and blue. A little early for the Fourth of July. Maybe that’s why the guy behind the counter looked at me like I was nuts when I bought out his stock.

“So patriotic!” Sunny crows with delight.

The compound’s alive with red alert. Lights, alarms blaring, shots fired.

Hopefully, this is enough of a distraction. We just gotta set them all off and get out of here before someone comes to investigate.

“This one’s a big one.” Sunny hands me another. I set it up farther away, light the fuse, and run.

A screech and the sky pops with purple rain.

 

~.~

 

Tank

 

Sam and I slog up the hill. The alarms and lights are still behind us, along with enough rocket’s red glare to make me worried Foxfire won’t escape in time. There are guards after us—a few bullets spattered the earth behind us before we took to the woods, but the rest might go after my mate and her mother.

“Where are we going?” I call to Sam, and nearly run into a giant blade.

“Here.” Sam ducks around me and pulls off the camo netting covering our escape vehicle.

Make that, our escape helicopter.

“Get in.” Sam straps himself into the pilot’s seat.

“You have a freaking helicopter?”

“It’s Jackson’s. Kylie found it and thought it’d be cool.” He flips switches, and the comms come on. “It’s actually a Bell 222, but we modified it for stealth mode.” He grins, an eerie sight. “I call it the Air Wolf.”

 

~.~

Foxfire

 

I shoot the last of our rockets off and run to the car.

“Shut the doors,” I scream to Sunny. “We’ve got to move.”

The little bus squeals as I tear out of our hiding place across the road. We pass the compound, still bright and full of chaos. I hope.

“Come on, come on,” I whisper to the bus as it chugs up a hill.

“Foxfire, we need to go faster,” Sunny reports. “I think they saw us.”

Sure enough, a caravan of black Jeeps tears out after us. We pass one coming up the road the opposite way. It does a U-turn and follows.

“Hang on!” I press the gas pedal to the floor. Daisy hurtles down the highway, shaking as it goes faster than it’s ever gone before.

It’s not enough. The guards are hanging out the Jeep windows, and they have guns.

And they’re gaining on us.

 

~.~

Tank

 

“Closer,” I shout to Sam. We’re hovering over the road, our lights spotlighting the action below.

“I can’t,” Sam says. “They’ve got guns.”

“Closer, goddammit.” Foxfire and her mom are in that bus. They’re in danger. She risked her life setting off fireworks.

“What are you going to do? Jump on one of the Jeeps?”

“If I have to.”

“They’re not gonna get anywhere close to her. Just hang on.”

“Fuck that.” I rise up from my seat, steadying myself as the helicopter dips.

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” Sam soothes. I’d rip his throat out if he wasn’t flying the helicopter. “We got backup.”

“What?”

Shots ring out below us. I shout, gripping the side, watching the VW bus from above, helpless.

But Foxfire and her mom don’t slow. Instead, the Jeeps skid on the road. Some veer off, others jerk and roll to a stop, blocking the highway. The last vehicles crash into them.

“What’s happening?”

“I told you,” Sam says. “Backup.”

Then I hear it. The roar of motorcycles. One by one, they tear out from under cover where they ambushed the Jeeps. They weave easily around the wreckage. More shots fire, but the bikes all get clear. They zoom down the road and surround the VW bus.

Sam flies overhead, the spotlight skimming a few of the helmets, including two red ones. Jared and Trey got teased mercilessly for choosing that color. They bring up the rear, escorting the VW bus. Leading the pack is a huge Harley. As Sam swoops the helicopter lower, Garrett raises his fist in salute. The rest of the pack does the same, and even though they can’t see us, Sam and I raise our fists before zooming back up to cover the pack as they protect my baby and bring her home.