––––––––

Tess closed the door and walked down the long hallway with occasional doors on each side, which led to rooms holding other shifter detainees from unrelated crimes.

She kept expecting her thundering heart to slow down. What was going on with her body?

Colin was a suspect in her Black River Wolf Pack case.

One of the jackal shifters had identified him as a wolf shifter, which had made Colin look even guiltier when no wolf pack in the general vicinity had a missing male.

Rogues didn’t last long without support.

Something about the man felt familiar, which made no sense.

Or maybe it was the weird way her energy had come to life around him.

Like that was a positive sign?

If anything, it was extremely bizarre since she had minimal association with shifters beyond research projects and the consultants hired to work with SCIS. She stayed on her toes around those jackal shifters and felt guilty about it, because they wanted to be treated like staff.

That meant everyone shared the staff lounge and sometimes she was in there alone with the jackals.

But the wolf shifter in the room she’d just left hadn’t made her feel anxious like the jackals. Tense, yes, but not fear. In fact it was just the opposite. She’d wanted to stay by his side.

She didn’t want to admit she’d felt attracted to Colin.

The man was half burned to death. Between the swelling and the burst blood vessels under his cornea, she couldn’t even see his one good eye well enough to make out its true color.

Physical appearance had never been the first thing to attract Tess.

A smile could catch her eye, but it was her ability to nail the genuine person in a first meeting that had always piqued her interest.

Colin sounded genuine, but he also hid secrets.

Rubbing her arms, she couldn’t push off the insane urge to go back to Colin and spend more time with him. She’d been drawn to him and when he’d touched her ...

She’d felt it in her womb.

That was another thing she wouldn’t admit to anyone. She wanted to know more about him, and she couldn’t honestly call it a professional interest.

More than ever, she wanted to see him healthy just to find out what he looked like.

Was he telling the truth about his presence at the bomb scene?

If so, how could she allow them to put an innocent shifter in a death pit? That was her term for the subterranean holding facilities. Shifters might not be entirely human, but ... they weren’t entirely animal either.

Her father would lose his mind if he heard her utter that sentiment.

She’d come a long way from the young college woman who cringed at the first televised images of the shifter-on-shifter bloodbaths. The same woman who had agreed with her father’s rage over innocent humans being killed by these anomalies of nature.

Knowledge made the difference.

She still got her back up when an innocent was harmed, but she could now admit being open-minded enough to consider all innocent people, human or not.

The bottom line for her was right and wrong when intelligence was involved. Shifters who walked the earth in human form had human intelligence and had to be held accountable ... but so did regular humans.

Stopping short of the elevators thirty feet away, she leaned against a wall, in no hurry to see her SCIS boss until she got her body and mind in line. It had been tough getting selected for this position, but she’d found her calling and was determined to become the first female to reach the level of director at SCIS national headquarters. To do that, she had to prove herself at every turn, which meant not hesitating to be decisive when dealing with shifters. It also meant never showing a weak front, but at the same time knowing when to fight a battle she believed in.

She’d been raised by a strong woman and would not fold in the face of conflict, but ...

Colin had her in a mental and emotional flux.

Why?

She couldn’t be sidetracked from gaining justice.

Tess struggled to find a balance in all of this because of what had happened with her mom. No shifter had attacked her mother, but one had tried to mug her, then another had stepped into the fray and they’d had a territorial battle.

Being caught in the midst of a violent battle with two men shifting into animals, fighting over who got the human, had been too much for her mom’s heart.

Her mom had died because of out-of-control shifters.

That should clear up any confusion Tess had, even if she did hold herself just as responsible for not being with her mom that night.

Tess kept waiting for that moment of clarity.

It didn’t come and she knew why.

For one brief moment, she’d been intimidated by Colin. He’d grabbed her wrist and she’d just shut down in panic, at a loss for what to do or say. What had he done? Relaxed his grip and stroked his thumb over her skin.

His gentle touch had felt as if someone reached inside and stroked her heart.

No man had drawn that kind of reaction from her since, well, since college.

Damn Daniel Cole Cavanaugh’s soul.

The first time she’d had a feminine reaction to a man in forever and it had to be with a rogue shifter?

This was entirely Cole’s fault.

Do you realize how insane that would sound out loud, Tess?

Yes, which was why she kept it to herself. She never talked about this kind of thing, mainly because she had no girlfriends. Unless she counted the obstinate, contract shifter investigator on the SCIS team. Tess had met the woman after hours for drinks just one time since coming to take this position in the Spartanburg office.

Not share-your-secrets girlfriend material, definitely, but networking was networking, Tess would keep engaging for sake of their professional relationship.

Turning toward the elevator, she pulled out her mobile phone and started scrolling through messages.

“Tess? Wait up,” Theo Brantley called to her from where he’d just exited the elevator on this floor.

Brantley had that clean-cut Fed look, which made sense. SCIS had recruited him from the FBI division that originally dealt with shifters when they first came out to humans. Brantley had been one of the few to step forward and take control of a chaotic situation.

Then he’d put in for a position with SCIS as head of security at the Spartanburg branch, and had accepted the assignment working with Tess like a gentleman even though she had been designated as lead agent on the Black River Pack case.

For the right woman, Brantley would be a catch with his dark-blond hair cut in the latest style for a mover and shaker in their world. His eyes had always seemed an odd shade of light brown to her, but sharp as a hawk’s, and attractive enough to go with a perfect nose and mouth. Moving all of that around in a lean, fit body meant a commitment to working out.

Yep, he had all the right packaging for the perfect boyfriend.

He’d even asked her out. Twice.

She’d politely turned him down, finally citing that she never dated anyone where she worked, which was far nicer than saying she wasn’t at ease around him.  

Her problem.

She didn’t feel comfortable with any of the men at this SCIS office, and she wasn’t entirely sure why. It didn’t matter. She knew better than to date anyone from her business life.

Sure, she’d had a few flings since college, but she never let anyone get close. Who could blame her? She’d opened herself up once and that relationship had destroyed her faith in love.

When Brantley walked up to her, his gaze jumped past her face and in the direction of the room where Colin slept, then back to her. “What are you doing here?”

He was her partner on this assignment at SCIS, and protocol demanded that she inform him of all her trips to see John Doe, aka Colin, but that would have been a problem. She’d been making more visits than normal over the past two days.

Nothing he needed to know.

Brantley was sharp, and he would latch onto anything that hinted of failure to maintain clinical objectivity about shifters at all times. He’d made it clear that he had little regard for any shifter, other than the jackals he oversaw for SCIS. She could have pushed to be involved with managing the jackals, but she’d been relieved when he volunteered to take the lead on jackal relations.

One less headache, which freed her up to focus on areas she considered more important.

Shrugging, she explained, “Just checking on our suspect from the explosion. We need to know as soon as he’s ready to talk.”

“Time to wake him up.”

That was not Brantley’s call to make, but she didn’t argue. “He’s awake.”

Brantley’s eyes bulged. “You went in there alone? You should have contacted me.”

Tess bristled at the insinuation that she needed an escort, since that was not agency protocol for someone in her position. Brantley wouldn’t need backup, but he clearly thought a woman would.

His subtle innuendo always pointed in that direction, but like any good ladder climber, he was careful with his words. Still, she’d caught on to his attitude and had no intention of giving him an opening to make a case that would cast her as a poor choice for director at some point.

She held her temper and calmly stated, “He’s still weak from the tranq, so I don’t need an escort. Besides, I have a stun gun, just like everyone else.”

But she hadn’t considered reaching for the weapon under her jacket.

If she had, she couldn’t have used it. Not while he was touching her.

The security professional who’d instructed her on the specially made weapon had never expected her to willingly be in contact with someone she might have to drop. There’d been no training for that scenario.

Brantley scowled. “I know you’re capable of using a defensive weapon, but you can’t assume you’re safe just because you have it.”

She’d never told anyone that she carried the weapon and was prepared to use it at any moment mainly because of the jackal shifters who worked for SCIS. That would go over like a vat of boiling oil dropped on this man’s head.

Brantley gave her a put-upon look. “Don’t give me that look of indignation. I’m only saying we have no information on this shifter. He might have changed shape and attacked you.”

“He’s still half dead and has straps on an arm and a thigh. He isn’t a threat yet.”  In fact, she kept thinking he needed her, but she had no reason to stay when he was clearly too exhausted to talk any more.

“You can’t know he’s not a threat, Tessella,” Brantley argued.

Someone without her background, or sincere interest in all things shifters, was not qualified to tell her what she could know or not know.

But she had to be a team player, so she nicely explained, “I’m here because I do understand who and what I’m dealing with when it comes to shifters, as much as anybody in today’s world can know. In fact, I probably own the most extensive library in existence on this topic, since professionals around the world contact me for advice and information.” 

She stopped short of reminding Brantley that it was her research, sometimes groundbreaking, on individual shifter animal traits, habitat, psychology and interaction that had landed her this position with SCIS.

He knew.

She waited for the obvious to sink in.

He held up his hands. “Hey, don’t bite my head off. I’m just saying I’m concerned about you taking risks, that’s all. No one is questioning your expertise. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Argh. She hated to be dealt with as if she were an emotional female. “I’m not upset. But I am tired and ready to crack this case.”

“I’m right there with you, hon.”

She started to say, “Don’t call me hon,” something she had not tolerated while in school, but this was one of those battles that would not be worth the damage. He rarely used that term. If she chastised him for the slipup, word would get back to the staff, which was primarily male, and they’d start treating her like she had perpetual PMS.

She spun Brantley’s original question on him. “What are you doing here this time of night?”

“Checking on John Doe. How lucid is he?”

Something told her to be careful with what she said. “He remembers before the explosion, but says he was not involved with it. He claims to be an innocent bystander.”

Brantley made a snorting sound. “You didn’t believe him, did you?”

Part of her wanted to speak up for Colin, to be his voice, to ensure he was treated fairly.

That was a big leap from the Tess who had wanted to put all shifters into holes after her mother’s death.

The years of studying and boosting her education on shifters had given her some distance. She’d needed it to be able to approach this work with clinical professionalism and not wear her heart on her sleeve.

It still hurt, but her mother had once told her to never allow an obstacle to get in the way of her goal.

Not even grief.

With regard to his pointedly asking if she believed their captive, Tess shook her head rather than give voice to words that might not sound sincere. “Let’s not jump to unsubstantiated conclusions. Everyone deserves a fair investigation. I’m heading home. I’ll be back early. We can interrogate him together. If the protein doesn’t kick in and our shifter doesn’t shift tonight, I think he’ll be ready to shift tomorrow. Maybe then he won’t be so distracted by his injuries.”

“That works for me.” 

But Brantley remained in place after saying that.

When she lifted her eyebrows in question, he said, “I’m waiting on the medical team to check his vitals. Have to give the chief an update.”

He meant Southeastern SCIS Chief of Local Operations Marlin Fender, who answered directly to the national SCIS headquarters in DC. Fender was also a friend of her father. Their friendship had developed through Fender’s reporting to her father’s congressional committee on shifter issues.

That was fine. Fender had never shown her any preferential treatment, which was just the way she wanted it.

In fact, he’d been on her back for weeks to get results.

“I’m on my way there now to brief the chief,” she told Brantley.

He smiled. “Great. I’ll just take a look at John Doe and call it a night.”

Nodding at Brantley, she walked away. The weight of worry on her shoulders grew heavier with every step, pushing her to go back and be present when the medics went in.

Wouldn’t Brantley love her hovering?

He’d never owned up to wanting the director’s position, but he did and she was his top competition.

She’d bring the roof down on her head if she went back to observe Colin now, because the worst mistake she could make was showing a bias for mercy toward any shifter. Brantley would report that in a nanosecond, then Fender would no doubt let it slip around her father.

She had worked her backside off for years to cut through the steel apron strings her father held and had no intention of answering to him for her actions in this job.

Her father had wanted her to throw in the towel and join a law firm one of his buddies ran.

Never going to happen.

But to succeed here, she couldn’t show any compassion when it came time to interrogate their prisoner.

He had one chance at convincing her and Brantley of his true identity tomorrow and that he was not a Black River pack member. If he hesitated and made her feel like a fool for being sympathetic, all her good will would fly out the window.

Her gut said that wolf shifter was telling the truth, but she’d been fooled once in the past when her emotions got involved, and she couldn’t dismiss the possibility that he had been playing her.

If he had, he’d find out that while she would be fair to a fault, she was the last woman any man should ever cross.