Page 17 of Hunted

“Well, since campus police have conveniently decided to keep a wide perimeter on this one, no doubt due to orders from higher ups in the government, that isn’t going to be an issue.”

Vlad rolled his eyes. “I know that and you know that. But they’re doing everything in their power to make it hard to create a secure perimeter around the area. Jori has been setting the wards in the evening before she clocks out. During the day, Rowan and her team have been manually checking people coming in and out of the lab.”

“Well, that works great for the FedEx guy,” I said sarcastically. “They do realize Matteo Rossi is going to have vamps jump him in, right?”

“In a closed space like that lab?” Vlad shook his head. “He’ll bring two or three guys armed to the teeth with assault weapons and it will be all over in seconds before anyone can stop him.”

Beside him, Ellie went strangely still.

I shot Vlad a dark look. “You want to shut your mouth with that threat assessment unless I ask for it?”

To his credit, he looked contrite. “I’m sorry.”

The buzzing pressure in my mind grew louder as we ascended another flight of stairs. Humans swarmed the floor above us. No vampires or shapeshifters.

“If anyone asks, which they won’t,” I shot Vlad a pointed look, “we’re here sniffing for bombs. Keep your head down and act like you belong.”

“Sniffing—?” Vlad started just as I shifted into my wolf form. He yelped, jumping back a step. “Um, no offense, but unless everyone in that lab is drunk, this is never going to work. The public has seen plenty of video by now all over social media detailing how to tell the difference between standard breeds of dogs like huskies and German shepherds, regular wolves and werewolves. Differences in weight and ear shape. Bone structure and fang length—”

“This is our best option,” Ellie said calmly, smoothing her fingers over the fur at the back of my neck. “And River will be fine. If anyone starts to get suspicious, he’ll nudge their thoughts in a different direction. Won’t you?”

I growled.

“Yes,” Vlad said dryly. “Such an improvement.”

I lunged for his leg. He dematerialized out of the way, muttering something about wolves and how we should definitely stop at the vet on the way back to Blood Moon and get me tested for worms. I led the way down the hall towards the lab, holding back only when Ellie cleared her throat. Shit. I hadn’t brought a leash and I was supposed to be behaving like I’d been through years of training at the police academy, not like I was about to go rogue and start plowing through all the trashcans looking for discarded corndog wrappers like Brody’s golden retriever, Major. Slowing, I stayed obediently by Ellie’s side.

“Such a good dog,” Vlad said sarcastically.

I flattened my ears as we reached the officer standing guard at the door to the lab. He straightened, starting towards Ellie. I plucked the memory of seeing us out of his mind, blurring the edges. Blinking, he rubbed his temples.

Inside the lab, a crime scene technician was dusting for prints. A female officer was taking photographs.

“That dog—” started Fingerprints, beginning to hyperventilate exactly the way my brother West did when people couldn’t follow the seventeen-step rules he laid out during Dungeons and Dragons night. And that was when we played the simplified kid’s version.

“Won’t touch anything,” said Ellie brightly. “He’s very well trained. But we were told to sweep for explosives.”

“Someone already did that.”

“I was told to sweep again.” She nodded to me, clucking her tongue, and I began sniffing at the corners of the room.

Werewolves didn’t have the full range of colors that humans could see but our vision was sharper. My mother used to train us in wolf form to distinguish scents by taking something as small as one of my brother’s Legos and tying it to one of the family goats. We had to track the correct goat out into the bluffs as if it were August who’d been kidnapped, without simply going to each goat one by one to check them.

Most people in Blood Moon took one look at our family and saw my sheriff dad and my mom, who in her slim cut jeans and stylish tops, looked more like a model than someone with seven boys at home, and assumed he was the hard-ass and she spent all her time baking cookies. And okay, she baked amazing cookies. Although Dallas kind of commandeered the kitchen from about the age of seven. But that was another story. Folks in town never saw the Sofia Montemayor-Caldwell who met us as we got off the bus in full tactical gear, instructed us to leave our backpacks on the porch, grab a single water bottle and a protein bar, and follow her out to the paintball course for tactics training. Or out to the barn to practice hand to hand combat.

I could still remember the first month of Tracer boot camp when a fifth of my class had been cut because they’d failed the timed obstacle course, unable to shift from one form to another in full tactical gear while carrying assault weapons. It sounded brutal, but if you couldn’t control your shift in a combat situation, no way was it right to put the rest of your team in a situation where you failed to reform the magazines in your assault rifle and got everyone else sent in with you killed in a raid. Fortunately, my mom had been a Tracer and a lot of this stuff had been drilled into us from the time we were old enough to shift for the first time at four or five.

I sniffed at the corner of a massive refrigerator, picking up the scent of not just one but two unfamiliar werewolves. Interesting. I whined. Ellie started towards me.

“Shouldn’t he be on a leash?”

“Probably,” muttered Vlad under his breath, yelping when I nipped at his ankle. “I mean, uh, this is part of his training.”

Ellie made her way over to the refrigerator. She opened it, looked inside for a moment, then swore under her breath.

“Should you be doing that?” Fingerprints called.

I resisted the urge to bite him.