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Rick pulled a gold locket out of his pocket. “I found this earlier, and though I could’ve asked around to find the owner, I knew we were going to do this today, so I thought…”

“All right.” Zeke almost sighed. This was all his gift was good for, really. They might as well put him in charge of the lost and found.

Rick laid the locket on the table, and Zeke approached cautiously. Such a personal item might have unforeseen emotions imbued into it. He touched the chain and saw immediately how Rick had found it.

“It was on the floor of the cafeteria, under the table by the door to the kitchen. You found it as you were finishing breakfast and heading here. It’s Celine’s,” Zeke said as he saw the image of the pretty blonde who worked in the kitchen of their building.

“Celine Santini?” Rick asked, referring to one of the few civilians on base who worked doing food prep in their mess hall.

Zeke nodded. He had an image of Celine sitting at the same table earlier this morning, having taken the locket off to look at the tiny photos inside.

That had been just a few hours ago. And she’d been crying.

Zeke didn’t really want to share the intensely personal images in his mind.

The strong shifter woman he’d come to know a bit over the past few weeks had a core of steel.

But seeing the photos in this locket that was clearly special to her, had made her vulnerable in a way he hadn’t expected.

He delved deeper and realized immediately why.

“The locket contains photos of her parents,” he said in a casual tone. “She usually wears it, but this morning before the cafeteria opened, she took it off to look at their photos. Today is the anniversary of their deaths,” he added in a somber tone.

He wasn’t going to say more. He would not reveal her pain any more than he already had. He respected her too much to do that.

“Oh.” Rick’s mouth tightened. Every member of the unit had lost loved ones. Rick understood. “That’s rough. She seems like a nice girl.”

Zeke picked up the locket and put it in his shirt pocket. “She is. I’ll give it back to her once we’re done here.”

Zeke didn’t go into the fact that he was more than a little attracted to the pretty blonde.

Any excuse to talk to her was welcome, but returning her locket was important.

He knew she was in a bad place emotionally today, of all days.

He’d felt the grief and sorrow that she’d felt as she’d gazed at the little photos.

She would be devastated to think she’d lost her locket and that last remaining link to her parents.

He had also gleaned a bit about the tragedy that had struck her folks.

They’d been murdered, and Celine had a lot of anger and guilt about it.

Anger that those who’d done the deed had never been caught, and guilt about not being there when her parents had needed her.

Though she probably would have died right along with them, she had a vague feeling that if only she’d been there, she might’ve been able to stop the heinous crime in some way.

Zeke realized it bothered him that those who had killed Celine’s parents hadn’t been caught and wondered if there was anything he could do to identify them.

Maybe his gift might help, if he could get access to something that had been at the crime scene.

Or, maybe, he could do some good, old-fashioned investigating to see if he could bring any new information to light.

He’d talk to Mandy when he had a moment.

She was Wil’s fiancée, but she’d been a police detective in Seattle and had joined the unit as a consultant to help with the investigation into why they were being hunted, and by whom.

He could ask her for pointers on how to investigate a murder.

He was sure she’d be willing to coach him.

She was good people and he was happy for his friend and brother-in-arms to have found such a nice woman to share his life with.

Zeke couldn’t ask her to investigate herself, but he had a lot of free time on his hands now that the unit was sidelined here on the island.

There were only so many hours that could be filled with testing of his lame gift, physical training and guard duty.

The nights, in particular, ran long when he didn’t draw the night shift.

He didn’t require much, and there were a lot of dark hours when the rest of the world—except those who were on duty—were asleep.

Maybe he could fill some of that time with research into the crime.

Though he wasn’t sure he’d be able to find anything useful while stuck here on the island, and he couldn’t go ashore to the crime scene.

At least, he didn’t think such a trip would be sanctioned.

Every man in the unit was being hunted by foreign agents, and in recent months, they had only been allowed off the base for very limited amounts of time, and only in extreme circumstances.

Too many people around them had already been hurt trying to get to them.

In particular, the women who were involved with members of the unit had been targeted.

Casey had been kidnapped and taken out to sea where Hal had rescued her with the help of a friendly pod of dolphins.

And, most recently, Lynn had been shot on her way to join the unit as an advisor.

Rick had healed her, of course, but if that bullet had been just a bit to the left, it might have killed her before Rick had a chance to work his magic.

Though, come to think of it, Zeke wasn’t really sure about that.

He’d seen Rick do some pretty amazing things since they’d all been changed.

As the unit’s doctor, he’d saved the life of just about every guy in the unit at one time or another.

Only, now he could do it with the healing touch of his hands and whatever magic had been gifted to him by that mysterious djinn they’d encountered in the desert.

Zeke touched the next object Rick put before him and rattled off what he saw.

It was a pencil that had been used just that morning to make a grocery list in the kitchen.

From the list of ingredients, it looked like they would be having lasagna sometime very soon, if not tonight.

That news was greeted with enthusiasm by everyone in the room.

The chef who ran their cafeteria was excellent and made killer lasagna that everyone loved.

He was also a big bruiser of a master chief who happened to be Celine’s grandfather, though he looked barely old enough to be her dad.

Shifters just aged differently than regular people.

Zeke was learning, alongside the rest of his unit, that shifters spent most of their lives in their prime, living a very robust few centuries if they didn’t die in action.

They also didn’t get sick. Not like normal human beings.

They had fast metabolisms and super sharp senses.

They ate more than anyone he knew and stayed fit regardless of how much they consumed.

He suspected the extreme energy needed to shapeshift used up a lot of those calories, as did the lean muscle sported by their animal forms and all the physical activity they did on a daily basis.

The shifter soldiers on this base were all lean, mean, fighting machines by anyone’s definition, and they had superior skills.

Of course, Zeke and his unit were elite Green Berets, so even before they’d been gifted with magical abilities, they could have worked alongside the shifters any day. In fact, they had worked alongside shifters without even knowing such beings existed, for years.

This base, however, had been established and manned solely by shifters until Zeke’s unit had needed a place to land.

They’d been stashed here and put under the supervision of the base commander, Lester Kinkaid, who was himself a shifter, and the leader of all the shifters on this base and, likely, in the entire Navy.

Perhaps every shifter in every branch of the military.

Zeke wasn’t really sure how far old Lester’s influence stretched.

Alpha, they called it. Zeke had learned that shifters answered to their Alpha, and for the military shifters, ol’ Lester was it.

Zeke’s mind drifted as Rick gave him a few more objects to touch. Nothing was all that interesting, and he realized Rick was going easy on him for some reason. Zeke had enough.

“Why are you only giving me new things?” he asked after the last item. “This isn’t a real test, Doc. We need to see what I can do with something with a bit of history.”

“Like that urn you touched back in Baghdad?” Rick countered, one eyebrow rising in challenge.

They both knew that Zeke had passed out after touching a truly ancient urn that had been used to hold the blood of several warlords’ enemies in ancient times.

The violence and cruelty that object had seen had overwhelmed Zeke’s senses and caused him to black out.

He still winced at the memory, but he had to learn to deal with such things if he was going to be able to function in the field again at all.

“I need to learn how to control it, Doc,” Zeke said quietly. “We both know that.”

Rick sighed, then looked down. He shook his head slowly, then moved to a satchel that rested on his desk. He removed something from it and brought it over to Zeke’s table.