Guardian Wolf. Linda Johnston O.
started walking away.
Obviously he had no interest in talking to her just then. Well, so what? She was busy, too.
Still, she felt inordinately hurt by his slight. She had an urge to kick him in that nice, firm butt she watched with angry interest as he headed for the examination-room’s door.
And followed him. As she exited the room after him, she called, “Yeah, see you later, Dr. Parran,” and headed in the opposite direction. Feeling upset. Angry.
Not a good time for her cell phone to ring. Especially when it was her commanding officer, Major Drew Connell.
She walked out a door for privacy as she answered.
“Any new developments, Grace? I heard from Colonel Otis that they’re likely to have a large enough batch of contaminants to incinerate them tonight or tomorrow.”
“I wondered about that,” Grace said. “Especially after today.” Holding the phone tight against her ear in the warm breeze as she strolled along a path beside the building, she related what had occurred in the emergency room that morning. “A lot of samples of probable shigellosis-infected fluids were collected, maybe a more virulent strain than we normally see. We still have work to ensure the outbreak is stopped. Plus, we have to make sure no one gets hold of these samples and creates a man-made shigellosis outbreak. I know some strains are fairly harmless, and the disease can’t be passed to more than a few people at a time, but it sometimes appears on lists of possible biological weapons, since the worst varieties can get pretty severe and there’s no vaccine.”
“So you and Kristine, and maybe Autumn and Ruby, too—how about keeping watch on that supposedly secret storage area in the parking lot tonight? This might be when our bad guys make their move. And it might be a good thing to have different perspectives in addition to human.”
“That’s what I thought, too. I’ll take a look around, and if it appears useful I’ll shift. I’ll also tell Autumn to. We’ll report to you in the morning.”
For the rest of the day, Simon avoided Grace as much as possible.
Too many possibilities of her getting in his way. Asking questions.
Distracting him with her luscious body as well as her inevitable curiosity.
He regretted—to some extent—his abruptness with her, but he needed to step back. Get some perspective. Ensure that he had time, and his thoughts, to himself that night.
He hadn’t been joking with Grace last night, near his lab. Biohazard materials had been stolen before around here—including during the prior outbreak of shigellosis, which seemed a lot more benign than this one.
The latest shigella bacterial samples would be a practical haul for the thief.
“What do you think?” Grace asked Kristine. They were in Grace’s car in the parking lot behind the medical center. Both were in civilian T-shirts and jeans, to blend in with visitors to the medical center once they exited the vehicle. They’d left their dogs in their living quarters again, at least for now.
“The best places for a wolf to hide aren’t too near this building.” Her aide peered first at the open space near the building, then away from the rows of cars and toward the vegetated areas near the perimeter fencing.
“My thoughts, too. A hawk, though—maybe only Autumn should shift tonight and just perch somewhere to watch.”
“Sounds good. I’ll let Autumn and Ruby know.”
He prowled. At the edges of the medical center. Hiding in bushes. Sometimes between cars. Concern about being seen. But he was faster, now, than any human. More cunning.
Elation. His shift, late this night, was on his own terms. His human awareness, in wolf form, was the best ever.
He would watch where samples were stored. He would—
Wait. The sounds. Human voices in distress, and more.
The smells—ugly. Unnatural here.
Something was wrong.
He carefully slunk toward the area, staying in shadows.
All night so far, Grace had felt frustrated. She’d hoped to shift into wolf form, but she knew her decision and Kristine’s made sense.
Instead, only Autumn shifted, as they’d discussed. The others had, one by one, pulled their cars into the area near the outbuilding and parked, looking as if they were there to visit a patient in the medical center. Each walked casually by the glassed-in office where the guards sat and peeked in. Then they drove somewhere else and parked again, and covertly kept an eye on the area.
Kristine had gone first. Then Ruby. Then Grace, and then they started the routine all over again. They all reported to one another by phone.
“I saw a little activity in the office,” Ruby had said a few minutes ago, after her second swing through the parking lot. “Could be a delivery was made then, since a couple of people were there in hospital jackets. I hid behind a van and watched for a while. They left and the guards settled back down. Everything appeared fine.”
Now it was Grace’s second turn. She pulled once more into the parking lot and drove toward the far end. She parked several rows from the building, finding a spot near a couple of other cars in the sparsely occupied lot. Then she sauntered in the direction of the building, surrounded by its drought-tolerant landscaping.
Was that the scent of a wolf? A shifter? Or was her mind playing tricks?
She looked around, peering into shadows, seeing and hearing no movement. But the scent did not go away.
Was she simply daydreaming of Simon … again?
She tried to shrug off the sensations as she neared the guards’ office. She saw no one through the glass window.
Could they be on a break? Unlikely that they’d both be gone at the same time.
Grace looked around. She still saw no one else around. And then she inhaled deeply, purposely invoking her enhanced senses once more.
That’s when she smelled a different scent—something incongruously chemical in the warm night air.
“Damn!” she whispered as she put her hand over her pocket, feeling the small pistol she had hidden there, just in case. She headed toward the guard enclosure.
The scent, though still faint, grew stronger the closer she got.
The gate in the wire fence wasn’t locked, and Grace burst through it. By the time she looked through the window into the building, she suspected what she would see: two bodies in uniform, lying on the floor. Were they still alive?
She pulled out her weapon, sighting along it as she pivoted. She saw no one else. Leaving the door open to dissipate any remaining chemical in the air so she could enter as safely as possible, she hurried in, felt for pulses. Yes, thank heavens. They were merely unconscious.
One more thing to do, then, before calling for assistance. She checked the door to the adjoining storage area.
It was unlocked. No surprise.
Neither was she surprised to see that it was empty.
The biohazards specimens were gone.
Chapter 4
“You’re sure you want to do this now?” Kristine asked.
Grace stood with her aide in almost total darkness, sheltered by hedges, between the hospital grounds and air-force base. Nighttime heat surrounded them, as well as the slight aroma of jet fuel. They had left both dogs in their apartments.
The investigation of the theft was currently the focus of the security units at both the hospital and the air-force base, but no one