Authors: Paige Tyler
a World War II movie.
He scanned the top of the high wall that surrounded the building on three sides. It was wide enough to
serve as a walkway, but no one was prowling around up there. Why would they? It wasn’t like they were
expecting him and Ivy. He hoped.
He jerked his head at the mountain. “What do you think about climbing that? It’d give us a great view of
the grounds.”
Ivy chewed on her lip as she considered it. Her green eyes were bright in his NVGs. “I don’t know. The
stone up there looks really loose. If we try to climb it, we could start a rockslide.”
Which would be a dead giveaway to anyone inside the lodge that someone was there.
“Plan B, then,” he said. “We hike back into the hills to see if we can get a look over the wall.”
He followed her up the slope, stopping when she did. It didn’t give them the kind of view the
mountainside would have, but it was safer.
There was only one way in and out of the property, a set of wrought-iron gates wide enough to
accommodate a tractor trailer. A flash of movement caught his eye and he shifted his gaze to see two men
standing off to the side. One was leaning back against the wall, a cigarette casually dangling from his
fingers. The other held a Styrofoam cup in his hand. Landon narrowed his eyes, searching for signs of a
weapon on either man, but he couldn’t see any.
“Do you think those are Stutmeir’s men?” Ivy asked.
“Neither of them are carrying weapons, so it’s hard to say. They could work for the company that owns
the lodge and be up here on some kind of retreat.”
He took the night vision scope from his pack and slewed it from one end of the lodge to the other,
hoping to see Stutmeir through the windows.
“Anything?” Ivy asked.
Landon shook his head. “The only way to be sure is to get inside and look around.” He looked at her.
“You up for that?”
“If you are.”
They didn’t have much choice. John wanted confirmation Stutmeir was there and what the situation
was. That meant going in.
Landon handed her the scope and jerked his chin at the part of the building he’d scanned earlier. “That
side of the lodge looks deserted.”
She put the scope to her eye, then frowned. “If Stutmeir’s here, wouldn’t he have guards patrolling the
property?”
“You’d think so. It seems sloppy for someone with his reputation. Your kitty cat senses telling you
anything?”
Ivy shook her head. “Not much. There’s a background hum that’s always there in situations like this,
but it doesn’t seem like there’s any serious danger.” She lowered the scope. “Maybe Stutmeir doesn’t have
enough men to cover the scientists he’s holding prisoner and guard the property.”
He snorted. “We should be so lucky.”
Landon put the scope away, double-checked to make sure he had everything he needed in his tactical
vest, then hid both their packs under the thickest foliage he could find. The plan was simple—get in, recon
the situation, and then get out without being seen. After that, they’d call in the cavalry.
Piece of cake.
Chapter 14
The wall wasn’t hard for Ivy to climb. At the top, she cautiously peeked over to make sure no one was
around, then leaped over the railing and motioned for Landon to follow. The plan had been for her to lower
a rope down to him, but the roughly stacked stone had cracks and crevices large enough for him to use as
handholds, so he could climb it as easily as she could. When he got to the top, he stretched out on his
stomach beside her.
“Still no sign of anyone,” she whispered.
Even the two guys who’d been outside had gone back in. Ivy chewed on her lip thoughtfully as she
surveyed the lodge. The place was dark except for a few lights on the first floor. That was good for her and
Landon.
She glanced at him. “I don’t see anyone on the top floors. If we can find a way in from up here, we
won’t have to climb down into the courtyard.”
He pointed. “It looks like the wall meets up with the top floor. Even if it doesn’t go all the way, it’ll at
least get us close enough to access one of the windows.”
Fortunately, the wall went all the way to the building. Unfortunately, the door at the end was locked.
Landon shifted impatiently behind her as she picked the lock. No doubt he would have preferred to
kick in the door, but that’d get them a lot of unwanted attention. The lock was unsophisticated, so he didn’t
have to wait long for her to pick it.
Making sure Landon was ready to cover her, Ivy took out her SIG 9mm and cautiously opened the
door.
Ivy expected the inside of the lodge to be as cold and unappealing as its rough-hewn exterior, but
though the interior was rather dark, it was still obvious the place was intended to be warm and inviting. The
atrium that extended all the way from the ground floor to their level probably had a lot to do with that.
Thankfully, the place seemed to be deserted—at least the level they were on.
She walked over to the railing separating the walkway around the top level from the open-air atrium
and looked down. She didn’t see anyone all the way to the ground floor. There was a dim glow coming
from a hallway down there, though. That must have been the lights she and Landon had seen from outside.
She strained her ears but didn’t hear anything.
Landon jerked his head toward the far end of the floor. “The stairs are over there.”
As she turned to follow, a blood-curdling scream echoed off the walls. It was followed by a long,
drawn-out howl that turned into a deep-throated roar before finally tapering off and leaving an eerie
silence.
Ivy spun around, every hair on her body standing on end. Her fangs elongated. Her claws came out. Her
animal instincts screamed at her to run and hide at the same time they demanded she attack and kill. The
classic fight or flight response, only a hundred times more powerful, and it made her entire body tremble
with the need to do something.
“What the hell was that?” Landon’s question was a hoarse whisper.
She didn’t answer. There was only one thing in the world that could make a sound like that.
“Ivy?” Landon put his hand on her arm and turned her to face him. “What is it?”
She bit back a growl. “A shifter.”
The shifter roared again, the sound lower and filled with unimaginable pain. Ivy’s stomach churned.
What was happening to him?
The fight or flight response hit her again even harder than before, and this time she couldn’t ignore it.
Unable to stop herself, she pulled out of Landon’s grasp and vaulted over the railing to the atrium five
floors below. The fall brought her to her knees and knocked the breath from her lungs, but she barely
noticed as she jumped up and raced toward the screams.
Landon shouted into her earpiece, telling her to wait, but she barely registered his voice. She wanted to
stop but couldn’t. Nothing mattered but finding the shifter and helping him.
She let her feline senses take over and lead her through the maze of hallways and down two flights of
stairs to a door that stood ajar. The air coming from the room beyond was filled with the scent of blood,
pain, and terror so strong it almost made her cry.
She slowed her steps, nostrils flaring as she neared the partially open door. She’d thought she smelled
one shifter, but now she realized there was more than one. A lot more. Ten, maybe fifteen.
Were they all being tortured? Growling low in her throat, Ivy moved forward, her hands working as she
imagined rending the flesh of whoever was hurting one of her kind. It was only then she remembered she
was holding a weapon. She almost didn’t recognize it. Tightening her grip on the pistol, she pushed open
the door.
Unlike the hallway, the room was brightly lit, and she blinked as it momentarily blinded her. When she
could see again, she discovered she was in some sort of makeshift medical clinic terrifyingly similar to the
one in the warehouse in Atlanta. Except this one wasn’t empty.
A group of men were clustered around one of the beds, their backs to her. A shifter was strapped down
to the bed, a heart rate monitor and a bunch of other things she didn’t recognize hooked to his naked chest.
She cringed as his body contorted in obvious pain. His claws and fangs came out and went back in over
and over as if he couldn’t quite complete the change. After one more gut-wrenching howl, he stiffened,
then went still, his body limp.
The men murmured something among themselves, but Ivy didn’t hear it. She was too busy trying to
figure out which of them was responsible for the shifter’s death so she could tear him to pieces first.
She tensed, ready to launch herself at them when the shifter bolted upright, breaking the straps securing
his wrists to the bed as if they were tissue paper. He flexed his fingers, studying his claws as if he’d never
seen them before. They didn’t hold his interest for long as his nose picked up a scent. He jerked his head up
to look at her, his eyes glowing red.
Ivy took an involuntary step back, shock breaking the control her feline side had wrestled from her.
Rational thought slowly returned as she looked at the…thing on the bed. Shifters didn’t have red eyes. Not
normal shifters anyway.
Alerted to her presence, the men surrounding the bed spun around to look in her direction. She was
stunned to see that most of them were the same red-eyed kind of shifter that was sitting on the bed. They
smelled like shifters, but there was something off about them. She didn’t know quite what it was, but the
way their eyes blazed with excitement and hunger scared her.
That fear broke the final hold her feline half had on her. Perversely, she’d finally stumbled on a way to
break herself out of the shifter zone when it took over—fear. But right now, she couldn’t let that emotion
take charge, either. Something was incredibly wrong here.
Stutmeir wasn’t making a bioweapon in this mountain retreat—he never had been. He was making
something far more terrifying.
She had to warn Landon.
“I’ll be damned. That’s her—the one I told you about.”
Ivy recognized the man’s voice but couldn’t remember from where. She was still trying to wrap her
head around what Stutmeir was doing.
“Take her alive,” another man ordered.
Instinct took over again, only this time, the instinctive action came from years of training, and Ivy was
the one in control. Lifting her weapon, she fired off what she hoped were enough shots to slow down the
shifters, then turned and ran.
They followed immediately, growling like rabid dogs as they chased after her. She fired her pistol
behind her, but either her aim was worse than she thought or they were bulletproof because not a single one
went down.
She made it to the second set of stairs when she felt a stinging pain in her leg, then another in her back.
She winced and glanced down, expecting to see blood spurting from a bullet wound, but instead there was
a dart sticking out of her leg.
Tranquilizers
.
She pulled them out and kept running, speeding up as she raced toward the atrium. “Landon!”
“Ivy!” Landon’s voice was breathless in her ear. “Shit. I heard gunshots. Where the hell—?”
“Listen to me!” She didn’t know how much time she had until she lost consciousness, and she needed
to get as much information to Landon as she could. “Stutmeir’s not making a bioweapon. He’s making
shifters. They’ve already hit me with tranquilizers. Get out of here while you can.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you!”
“You have to. Someone has to warn the DCO.” She’d made it to the first floor and began weaving her
way through the maze of hallways. “I’ll be right behind you.”
She was almost to the atrium when the drugs she’d been hit with kicked in and she was suddenly
lightheaded. Ten feet later, it felt like her feet had turned to lead. Within ten more feet, she was on her
knees, her muscles refusing to follow her orders anymore. As she collapsed, she caught a glimpse of tall
windows with velvet drapes and realized she was in the atrium.
Somewhere above her, Landon swore.
She lifted her head. He was swinging his legs over the railing, preparing to jump down from the second
floor so he could come to her rescue like he had so many times before. The thought of what those
things
in
there would do to him made her eyes fill with tears.
“Landon, no!” she screamed at him. “Run. Get out of here. They’re coming.”
Gunfire came from the hallway behind her, drowning her words. Landon threw himself backward over
the railing onto the second-floor walkway to immediately return fire. She thought she heard bodies hit the
floor, but she wasn’t sure. Those things were fast—faster than she was maybe—and they didn’t go down
easy. No one had ordered them to take Landon alive, either, so they were riddling the whole second floor