“Be careful while I’m away, okay?” he said. “And don’t do anything crazy.”
“We will,” they promised in unison.
“You be careful, too,” Chloe said.
“And come home soon,” Zoe added.
Jake picked up his bag but didn’t head for the door. Instead, he stood there wondering if working for STAT was a good idea. Because right then, the alpha werewolf in him didn’t like the notion of being separated from his pack.
But then Zoe and Chloe were hurrying him out the door so he wouldn’t miss his ride, and all he was left with were doubts.
Chapter 2
London
When her new teammates walked in the door of the small medical clinic in the basement of the American embassy in London, Jes immediately knew which one Jake Huang was. When she’d talked to Nathan McKay on the phone earlier, he’d described Jake as a charismatic man who commanded any room he stepped into. McKay was right.
Asian American with jet-black hair and dark eyes, Jake was easily six five. It was obvious he was extremely well built under that leather jacket, muscular more in that lean Tarzan kind of way than the bulky look of someone who lifted a buttload of weights. As he crossed the room, Jes couldn’t help noticing the graceful way he moved.
Like an animal—a predator.
Then again, he was a werewolf.
He extended his hand. “Agent Ridley. Jake Huang.” He glanced at the other people with him—two more werewolves; a tall, dark-haired guy; and a woman with lavender eyes and hair to match. “Harley Grant, Caleb Lynch, Forrest Albright, and Misty Swanson,” he said, pointing to each as he introduced them before turning back to her. “It’s nice finally meeting you, though I wish it could have been under different circumstances.”
Jes had worked with Forrest on a few other missions and got along well with him. She knew Misty by reputation and had heard a lot of good things about her but had never been in the field with her. The technopath would be a good addition to the team.
“Likewise,” she said.
Jake’s hand was warm, his grip firm, and while Jes knew it was stupid, she couldn’t stop herself from peeking at his fingers, half expecting to see claws. There weren’t any, but when she lifted her gaze to his, the expression there made her wonder if he’d somehow picked up on her thoughts. What if werewolves could read minds? She supposed it was possible. They wouldn’t be the first supernaturals she’d run into with that talent.
Jes had been stunned when McKay told her he was sending a pack of werewolves to help find the creature that had killed her teammates. Then he’d really blown her mind by adding she was being assigned to the team permanently.
She’d heard rumors for the past several weeks that STAT was considering bringing in more supernaturals. She supposed it made sense. Saving the world from monsters was a nearly impossible job to start with, but after discovering a little while ago that vampires and werewolves existed, STAT realized they were in over their heads and needed an assist.
Jes never thought that assistance would come in the form of a pack of werewolves.
Part of her understood the people STAT was recruiting weren’t like the monsters she’d spent the past couple years chasing. That said, she wasn’t thrilled at the idea of working with Jake and his friends, especially after her former teammates might very well have been killed by werewolves.
“I’m surprised you came here straight from the airport,” she said, releasing his hand, a little uncomfortable thinking about what Jake’s claws actually did look like. She’d seen photos STAT had taken when they’d first encountered werewolves. She knew what he and his friends looked like when they wanted to. “I know flying from DC to London can wear you out.”
“We wanted to get here as fast as possible, so we could take a look at the bodies of your teammates and get them back to their families for a proper burial,” Jake said.
Jes opened her mouth to reply, then realized she wasn’t sure what to say. Jake was right. She didn’t know Neal and Jaime all that well, but she did want to get them back home. They deserved that. It was nice Jake thought the same, even though he’d never even met the two men.
She nodded. “Okay. They’re back this way. The embassy has a cold storage room for when they need to repatriate deceased American citizens.”
The two Marine Corps embassy guards who’d been stationed at the door outside the room eyeballed her and her new team but didn’t say a word as they walked inside. They already knew Jes was an agent and probably assumed the people with her were the same.
Not quite a freezer, the room was cold enough to see your breath. Jes led them over to the metal tables in the center and wordlessly pulled the sheets down to the waist, revealing both men’s upper bodies. They’d been stripped of their blood-soaked clothes and cleaned up as much as possible, but there was only so much that could be done with jagged wounds as vicious as theirs. Even though she’d already seen the bodies, she couldn’t keep from cringing at the sight. Around her, everyone else flinched, too. She was a little surprised to see Jake and the other werewolves react that way. Surely, they must be used to seeing stuff like this.
“The embassy doctor did a preliminary exam,” Jes said as Jake moved around to stand across from her. “There was no saliva in the wounds, which made her think they were caused by claws instead of fangs. Based on the similarity of the wounds, the directionality, and the depth, she believes Neal and Jaime were killed by the same creature—or creatures.”
“Did you see more than one of them at the scene?” Forrest asked.
Chapter 3
Zarina woke to the sound of voices outside the tent. She frowned and pushed herself up on an elbow, trying to hear what Tanner and the other man were saying, but they were speaking too quietly for her to make anything out. Sighing, she flopped back down on the sleeping bags. Considering she’d never spent the night in a tent in the middle of the forest, she was surprised by how well she’d slept.
Of course, she probably wouldn’t be nearly this well rested if she’d been huddled outside by the fire trying to stay warm and freaking out about every little sound she heard. Instead, she’d snuggled down in Tanner’s sleeping bag, surrounded by his scent and secure in the knowledge that absolutely nothing was going to get past him in the darkness, not even a big, pissed-off grizzly bear.
She started to smile at that, but then froze as she remembered what Tanner had said the night before about park rangers not liking people staying in the forest for extended periods of time.
She bolted up, reaching for the zipper on the door flap only to realize she was still cocooned in the double sleeping bags she’d slept in the night before. The arrangement had been cozy when she’d been freezing her butt off, but now it was claustrophobic.