An Alpha's Tempest (Water Bear Shifters 4) (2 page)

“Okay,” Evan said. “Do you have a key for the boats, though?”

“They usually leave them in there,” Rhythm said. “They don’t seem all that concerned with someone stealing them. I mean, why would they be? We’re on the outskirts of civilization, and everyone out here already has their own boat, anyway.”

“True,” Evan said, wincing as he struggled to keep his feet moving.

“I’m not even sure why the lab needs boats, to be honest. Maybe they just enjoy the option to commute long distances that way, since the lab is right on the edge of the water here.”

Evan’s eyes darkened. “They probably use the boats to search out and capture bear shifters for their tests.”

“Did they bring you back here in a boat?” Rhythm asked, glancing over her shoulder. The lab was quiet, but Evan was taking a long time to move a very short distance. She was starting to worry that someone was going to cross paths with them and see him escaping before they could make it out of the building.

“I don’t know how they brought me here, to be honest,” Evan said. “I was on a hunting trip with my clan, and they managed to separate me from the group. I fought them as best I could, but they were better armed than me and I was outnumbered. The last thing I remember is fighting desperately out on the tundra, trying to ward them off. They must have knocked me out or something, because the next thing I remember is waking up in that cell you found me in.”

Rhythm shook her head in disgust. “I can’t believe I’ve been working for such awful people and I didn’t even realize it. I’m such an idiot.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Evan said. “They’re very skilled at covering their tracks. They must have started to trust you, though, if your boss let you have his keycard.”

“I guess. He seemed overwhelmed today. Like he didn’t even have time to go take a piss. They must be on the verge of some big breakthrough in their research,” Rhythm said with a shudder.

Thankfully, they had reached the back exit that led to the boats. Rhythm shivered as the cold, outdoor air hit her, then breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that one of the boats was parked at the dock, just waiting for her and Evan. Just a few more minutes, and they would be on that boat speeding away from here. She glanced behind her again as they slipped out the door, relieved to see that the hallway was still empty. Evan hobbled along in silence now, so drained of energy that he couldn’t even talk. Their progress was painfully slow, but steady. Evan grunted in pain every now and then, but he kept moving forward. Just as they reached the long dock, Rhythm heard a shout behind her.

“Hey!” the voice yelled. “What the hell are you doing? Where are you going with our test subject?”

Rhythm’s breath caught in her throat, and she started to turn around to look, but Evan suddenly seemed to have gained strength.

“Don’t look back,” he said. “You’ll lose valuable time, and every second counts right now. Just keep moving forward.”

Rhythm swallowed the lump in her throat and did as she was told, shuffling down the dock as quickly as Evan’s pace would allow. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and her ears roared as blood rushed to them from her quickly growing panic. Moments later, the deafening sound of an alarm started ringing through the air, followed by more shouting. Rhythm could hear the sound of boots behind them, running toward them. She willed herself to stay calm as she and Evan reached the boat. In one quick jump, Evan launched himself over the side of the boat and crumpled in a heap on its floor, roaring in pain. He didn’t move an inch after that, and Rhythm guessed that he had used up the last of his energy to get into the boat. She hopped in after him, then quickly started unwinding the rope that held the boat to the dock.

She chanced a glance up, then immediately regretted looking. A swarm of guards, all with guns trained on the boat, were running toward her.

“Stop, or we’ll shoot,” one of them yelled out. Rhythm ignored him as she finished untying the boat, and then quickly jumped behind the wheel. As she had hoped, the keys were in the ignition, and she started up the motor. As the boat roared to life, the shouting behind her increased, and shots began to ring out into the air.

Rhythm had never been so terrified in her life. She was a simple chemist, who had taken what she thought was a very boring, safe job at a pharmaceutical company. How had she gone from filling out research charts this morning, to speeding away on a boat this afternoon with bullets whizzing past her ears?

She didn’t have time to ponder the question right now. She needed to get far away from the lab, and fast. She breathed a prayer of thanks that the second boat was gone today. The last thing she wanted was a boat full of angry security guards chasing her while she sped away with a half-dead bear shifter on board. She looked down at Evan, who still hadn’t moved. She wasn’t entirely sure whether he was even still alive, but there was nothing she could do to check on him right now. If she slowed down for even a second, they were both going to be dead.

A loud popping sound rang out as a bullet hit the side of the boat, and Rhythm sucked in her breath in terror. Just keep moving, she told herself. Eventually you’ll be far enough away that their bullets can’t reach you.

Another loud popping sound rang out, and a few moments later a bullet hit one of the windows on the back cabin of the boat. Rhythm heard the sound of cascading shards of glass filling the air, but she still refused to look back. In fact, she didn’t look back for a very long time, even after she had made it far enough away that the sounds of gunfire had faded completely away. When she finally slowed down, she realized that she had no idea where she was, and that the boat was making an odd sputtering noise.

She killed the engine and jumped down to the floor where Evan was lying.

“Evan? Evan, are you still with me?” she asked, her voice bordering on hysterical. She had to get her emotions under control, but the shock of the day was quickly catching up with her. She felt her hands shaking as she moved to check Evan’s pulse, which was still there. He moaned, and she realized he was shivering violently.

“Oh, shit, you’re still half naked and it’s freezing out here,” Rhythm said. She stood up and went below deck of the boat, hoping that she would find some sort of clothing or blankets down there to keep him warm. That’s when she realized that the real trouble had only just started. There were several inches of water below deck, and that water level was steadily rising.

“Oh, shit,” Rhythm said again. She took a deep breath, and told herself not to panic. The first thing she needed to do was find clothes for Evan before he froze to death. She saw a pair of large galoshes at the foot of the stairs, and quickly slipped them onto her feet. Wading through the water, she started opening cabinets, praying for some sort of blankets or spare clothing. She cast a worried glance down at her feet, trying to remain calm at the realization of how quickly the water was beginning to rise. Freaking out wouldn’t do anyone any good right now.

When she reached the last cabinet, she let out a shout of triumph. The cabinet was filled with emergency supplies—including insulated water survival suits, personal flotation devices, and signal lights. Rhythm quickly gathered up two of everything, then struggled up the stairs with the gear. She knelt by Evan, and managed to get the survival suit on him with great effort. She glanced down toward the lower deck and winced. The water was rapidly rising, and she didn’t know how long the boat was going to hold. She ran to the boat’s radio, and frantically started sending out a mayday call. She didn’t even know their coordinates, and she didn’t understand the strange gauges on the boat’s instrument panel. Clearly, this boat had undergone significant aftermarket modifications. Rhythm set up what she hoped was a distress signal, but it was hard to be sure what was actually being sent out. She hoped it wasn’t some sort of homing signal that would allow the crew at the lab to locate her, stranded out here in the ocean.

Rhythm quickly slipped on her own survival suit, and then got flotation devices on both her and Evan. Evan mumbled something about leaving him and saving herself, but Rhythm ignored him. She’d come too far now to just give up hope for him completely. She grabbed some spare rope on the boats deck and tied her and Evan together with it, so that at least if they ended up being just bodies to be found, they would both be found together. She shuddered at the thought, and pushed it out of her mind. The sky was growing darker by the minute, and the temperature was dropping. The survival suits would keep them from freezing in the ice cold water, but if no one found them, they would both eventually die of dehydration. Evan was already doing poorly, and Rhythm feared he wouldn’t last much longer without medical attention. She tried another mayday call, but received no answer. She wasn’t even sure that the radio was working properly.

As darkness enveloped the boat completely, Rhythm watched the water rising to the upper deck. The boat wasn’t going to stay afloat much longer, and she didn’t want to chance being dragged down with it when it sunk. It was time to abandon ship, and hope for the best.

“Come on, Evan,” she said, standing and dragging him toward the edge of the boat with her. “It’s time to go for a swim.”

With a splash, she and Evan tumbled over the side of the boat and into the cold, Arctic water. Even though their survival suits kept them warm, Rhythm couldn’t stop herself from shivering. This situation was, by far, the most terrifying ordeal she had ever experienced.

Minutes later, Rhythm watched the boat sink completely below the surface, and she started praying for a miracle.

Ben Harrington’s desk looked like something that might belong to a crazy professor. Pages full of messily scribbled notes filled the workspace, many of them ringed with coffee stains. A half-eaten tangerine sat in the left corner, next to a red leather journal. Pens and pencils littered the table, along with a few balled up sheets of paper here and there.

But Ben wasn’t a professor. Far from it, actually. He was the copilot of a Coast Guard Rescue Crew, and an alpha panda shifter. And he had a big problem: he was a being hunted by a group of scientists who had become obsessed with killing off bear shifters.

No matter how many times Ben reviewed and analyzed the limited information that he did have on these men, none of it made sense. He couldn’t figure out where they might be hiding, or what, exactly, their plan to kill him and the other bear shifters might be. These guys knew how to expertly cover their tracks, and Ben knew that every day that passed was a day closer to the possibility of total elimination of bear shifters.

Ben rubbed his right shoulder the way he always did when he was thinking hard but couldn’t figure out a problem. He glanced over his notes and sighed, then picked up his tangerine and took another bite. He looked down at the fruit and frowned, then tossed it into the wastebasket under his desk. He still hadn’t quite adjusted to the bland fruit in Alaska. All of the citrus fruit here had to be imported, which meant it wasn’t nearly as fresh as the citrus fruit Ben had enjoyed in San Diego, California—the city from which he had just moved.

Despite his tangerine leaving something to be desired, Ben had been happy with Alaska overall. In the three months that he’d been here, he had already come to love the raw wilderness that Alaska had to offer. He had even adjusted to the cold, although the locals warned him that the worst was still ahead of him. They told him that November’s temperatures had nothing on February’s coldest days, and Ben shivered as he thought about dealing with months of subzero days.

The work here had been challenging but rewarding. Ben and his fellow crew members—all alpha panda shifters as well—ran helicopter search and rescue missions for people stranded out in the freezing Alaska waters. If a boat began to sink, or if someone on board a vessel had a medical emergency, Ben and his crew were there to fly them out. Brett, the rescue swimmer on Ben’s crew, even jumped into the water to swim out to people who needed saving. The work was tough, but Ben couldn’t imagine doing anything else for a job. The gratitude in the eyes of every single person they rescued was more reward than any salary could ever be. The crew had performed hundreds of rescues in San Diego, but being in Kodiak, Alaska, with its frigid temperatures, had required them to step up their game even more. Ben was enjoying the additional challenges, and the change of scenery.

What he
wasn’t
enjoying was the seeming futility of all of his efforts to search for the scientists. Ben and his crew had found out, thanks to a clan of Alaskan polar bear shifters known as the Northern Lights Clan, that the scientists were hiding and working somewhere in Alaska. This was why the crew had moved up here—so they could be closer to the scientists’ operations, and, hopefully, figure out a way to find them and stop them. But, so far, the time in Alaska hadn’t brought them any closer to finding their enemies. Ben sighed, and picked up a pen from his desk, hovering it over one of his pages of notes. He frowned, trying to make sense of all the pieces of the puzzle that he had scrawled onto the papers in front of him, but none of it made sense. With a frustrated grunt, Ben threw his pen down on the desk with force.

This whole situation was such bullshit. Half a decade ago, Ben had been the proud alpha of a wonderful clan of pandas. He had held a position of authority and respect. But then the scientists had wiped out his clan, along with most other pandas, by using a virus aimed specifically at pandas. Now, Ben was just a bear on the run, always looking over his shoulder and never quite sure how to get one step ahead of his enemies. He desperately wanted to get rid of the specter of the scientists once and for all, but he couldn’t fight them if he couldn’t find them.

A knock on the door startled him out of his thoughts. He stood, and went to open the door. His crew, along with two members of the Northern Lights Clan, were holding an emergency meeting to try to spur some progress on their efforts to locate the scientists. Ben doubted that a simple brainstorming session would help them out much. He’d been over every shred of intelligence they had on the scientists hundreds of times, and none of it made sense. He knew the other bear shifters had all done the same. They’d had numerous phone calls and exchanged dozens of emails. Just being in the same room was unlikely to suddenly cast light on the situation.

Still, Ben had agreed to the meeting, figuring that it couldn’t hurt things. And it would be nice to have everyone over at his place. It had been a while since he’d entertained company. Yesterday, he had gone to the store excitedly to boost his stockpile of beer and snacks. He was looking forward to having his best friends hanging out under his roof.

When he opened the door, Brett and Lance were standing there, looking like they had just come from the gym.

“Do you guys do anything else in your free time besides work out?” Ben asked as he opened the door wide to let them in.

Brett shrugged. “Gotta stay in shape. These Alaskan waters are no joke, and I’d rather be a workout-crazed rescue swimmer than a dead rescue swimmer.”

Ben wrinkled his nose. “Fair enough, but couldn’t you at least have showered before coming over?”

“Sorry. We ran out of time,” Brett said with another shrug.

“Whatever,” Ben said. “Better I have to smell it than Aubrey, I guess. Poor girl. How’d you ever get her to agree to date you?”

Brett winked at Ben. “She couldn’t resist my charming personality.”

Ben snorted. “Ha, yeah. Well, it must have been your personality, because it definitely wasn’t your looks.”

Brett let out a belly laugh, and Lance rolled his eyes. “While you two are bickering, do you mind if I grab a beer?” Lance asked. “I need to relax after spending the morning with Brett.”

Ben laughed, but Brett tried to punch Lance in the arm. Lance dodged the punch, and Ben pointed in the direction of the kitchen. “Fridge is fully stocked. Help yourself.”

“At least I have a woman,” Brett said to Ben as Lance made his way to the kitchen. “You can’t get any girl to put up with you.”

Ben wagged his finger at Brett. “No, no, my good man. I’m just smart enough to know that women are nothing but trouble. I’m quite happy with my carefree bachelor lifestyle.”

It was Brett’s turn to roll his eyes, but he said nothing as he followed Lance to the kitchen. A few minutes later, they both came back holding frosty beer bottles, and they clinked them together in a toast just as another knock sounded at the door.

Ben opened the door again to find Ace, the final member of the Rescue Crew, standing there with Neal and Ryker, polar bear shifters from the Northern Lights Clan. Ace had flown up to Glacier Point, where the polar bear shifters lived, and picked them up in a small, private aircraft. The plan was for them to spend several days in Kodiak, and then Ben would fly them home. Having two guys around with a pilot’s license definitely came in handy at times.

“Come on in, guys. Nice to see you, Neal and Ryker. It’s been a while,” Ben said.

Neal reached out to give Ben a hearty one-armed hug, adding a few slaps on the back in for good measure. Ryker followed suit moments later. Neal was the alpha of the Northern Lights Clan, and he was no stranger to dealing with threats to his clan. A few years ago, he had won the respect of all the Arctic Clans when he defeated the Blizzards, a clan that had been on the warpath with the intent to completely take over any bear shifters standing in their way. Ryker was Neal’s right-hand man, and had been the main point of contact between the panda shifters and the Northern Lights Clan.

“Good to see you, too, Ben,” Neal said, looking around. “Good to see all of you. I can’t thank you enough for agreeing to meet with us on such short notice.”

“Our pleasure,” Ace said, settling into the couch and kicking off his shoes. “I just wish the meeting was for happier reasons. Does anyone have any new information?”

Ben held up his hands. “Wait just a minute—first things first. Before we start talking shop, does anyone want a beer?”

Neal and Ryker said they’d love a beer, and Ace said he didn’t want to be left out if everyone else was drinking. After a few minutes of gathering beers and snacks, the group finally settled in around Ben’s coffee table to get down to business.

“We haven’t necessarily made any big progress,” Ryker said, rubbing his forehead with the back of his palm. “But we did discover some interesting information. Our clan member, Eric, has been keeping an eye on the old warehouse near us that the scientists used to use as a headquarters, before they realized the location had been compromised. Things there had been pretty quiet for some time, but over the last couple of weeks, several people have been coming through. From what Eric can tell, they’re new hires that the scientists are putting to work in labs.”

Ben leaned forward in his armchair. “So, you think if we could track one of these new hires, they might lead us to the scientists?”

“It’s not quite that simple,” Neal said. “The scientists are being very careful to move the new hires around in a random pattern. They’re bouncing them around from city to city, and moving them at night so it’s harder to keep an eye on things. They’ve taken great pains to keep the new hires away from wherever their main hub is, as far as we can tell.”

“Right,” Ryker agreed. “We’ve been trying to follow the new hires, but we always seem to lose them at one point or another. The scientists know they’re being watched, and they’re very good at eliminating any clues to where they are. The good news, though, is that the stream of new hires seems to be fairly steady. So if we keep trying, and can figure out their game, there’s a possibility that we’ll eventually be able to actually track one of these people to their end workstation.”

Ace frowned. “Are they really that hard to track? Surely with all of the bear shifters in Alaska, we should be able to keep tabs on at least one or two of these employees.”

Neal shrugged. “Well, to answer your question—yes, they are really that hard to track. The scientists are good at this game, and they have a lot of technology at their disposal to help erase any trail they leave behind. But, you’re also right that we’ve got pretty much all the bear shifters in Alaska on our side with this endeavor. We all want to see the threat of the scientists ended. Ryker and I have been discussing this, and we think our best shot at following one of these new employees is to somehow get an organized network of shifters keeping an eye out throughout the entire state. Eric will do his best to get a photograph of each new hire, and we’ll send it out to the network. With eyes in every city, surely we’ll be able to outsmart the scientists at some point.”

“That sounds like a reasonable plan,” Lance said. “But I don’t understand why we can’t just storm the warehouse and take one of these new employees hostage. If we know they’re coming through on a regular basis, why don’t we just plan to surprise them and overtake them? Once we have one of the new hires in custody, we could try to get them to talk, and tell us where they were being sent. If they refuse to talk, we could still use them as a bargaining chip to try to get information from the scientists.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think that would work,” Neal said. “For one thing, I don’t think these new hires are told exactly where they’ll be going. They probably don’t have much information to give. And, for another thing, the warehouse is heavily guarded. We’re likely to suffer casualties if we attack. And for what? It’s not their main headquarters, so we’re not severely crippling their operations. It’s unlikely that we’ll find any useful information stored there. The scientists know better than that. And, honestly, forget about using an employee as a bargaining chip. These are low-level grunt workers. I guarantee that the scientists consider them expendable, and would not care enough about them to try to bargain for their release.”

Ben sighed. “Sounds like organizing a network of shifters to watch is our best bet, then. This whole waiting game is maddening, though. Every day that we don’t find the scientists is another day closer to them achieving their goals.”

“I know,” Neal said, running his fingers through his hair. “My clan is getting frustrated, too. We’ve lived through some hard times before, with the Blizzard clan wars, and we were hoping to have some time to live in peace and quiet for a while. This whole situation with the scientists is infuriating. But we’ll get them. Don’t worry. If we all work together, we’re stronger than them, and smarter than them. They may have won a few battles, but the bear shifters
will
win this war.”

“Damn straight,” Ace said, slamming his fist down on the coffee table, causing a few of the beer bottles on it to jump. “We’ll get them, and make them regret every bear they’ve killed.”

Murmurs of impassioned agreement rose from the group. Everyone was ready for this threat to be eliminated.”

“Does anyone want to take on the task of organizing a watch group?” Ryker asked. “It’s going to be a big job, but it’s a very important one.”

“Ben?” Lance asked. “Any ideas on how to get started?”