Page 8 of Handcuffed to the Bear (Shifter Agents #1)

CHAPTER 8

A quiet, intense emergency atmosphere prevailed over the Seattle office of the SCB. It wasn’t exactly panic mode, not yet. But as the morning rolled by without a check-in from Jack, the feeling of imminent disaster deepened and Avery’s tense nerves screwed tighter.

“This op is blown,” he snapped, facing off with Division Chief Stiers inside the half-open door of her office.

“We can’t assume that, Agent Hollen. If we go in with all hands on deck, we will blow it, and jeopardize an agent’s life.”

Stiers was a tall, angular woman in her late forties, her graying blond hair cropped close to her head. Most shifters reflected their animal form in some way—Jen Cho, for example, was recognizably gecko-esque, though her twelve-cup-a-day coffee addiction probably also had something to do with it—but there was nothing owl-like about Pam Stiers. If Avery hadn’t known her shifter type, he’d have guessed an eagle or a cheetah: something regal, serene, swift, and deadly.

Of course, owls were swift and deadly too, and you didn’t see them coming until they dropped on you out of nowhere, borne on silent wings.

“Look, Avery,” Stiers said, her voice shifting to a softer register. “You know I’m not going to hang Jack out to dry. But you also know that he’s not always the best at remembering he’s working with a team. If he’s running his own game on the inside, the last thing he’d want us to do is come in with guns blazing and blow his cover.”

As much as Avery wanted to argue with her, he couldn’t. Jack had been written up more than once for missing check-ins or failing to take the overall plan into consideration when an opportunity presented itself. He was a damn good field agent: smart, resourceful, and skilled. He just wasn’t a team player by nature.

Intern Rosen tapped lightly and stuck her head in. “Ma’am? We got word back from Canadian Customs. The Lion’s Share cruise ship didn’t cross the border. Coast Guard says it’s heading back now and should be in port soonish. Do you want to send anybody to intercept it?”

“Not directly,” Stiers said. “But I want Eva Kemp’s team standing by when it docks. I want to know exactly who gets off that ship, and where they go.”

Rosen nodded and withdrew.

“We’re going to find him,” Avery said, as much to himself as to her.

“Of course we are.” She gave him a ghost of a smile, and Avery caught a glimpse of the concern for her missing agent that lurked under her severe demeanor. “Right now, the best way we can do that is by staying calm and looking for him under the Fallons’ radar. We can blow the panic whistle later.”

“Do you want me with Kemp’s team?”

“Not right now. Since you’re Ross’s point of contact, I don’t want you potentially out of touch. Check in on Cho and Rosen, see what they need.”

It felt like being given busywork, even though he knew she was right. He didn’t even get the satisfaction of stomping out of her office. She was doing everything she could, and he saw her pick up the phone as he left, probably to get in touch with another of the agencies where she had contacts. She was on his side. He just wished he could do more to help.

Damn it, Jack, if you’ve decided to go cowboying off on your own this time, I’ll strangle you.

He found Cho in the main conference room, poring over a huge nautical map of Puget Sound, pinned down on one side with a large mug of coffee. The conference table was covered with detailed marine charts of the coast from Seattle to Alaska.

“Oh hey,” Cho said, waving him over to the table. She twiddled a red marker between her fingers, tapping it idly on the map. The Lion’s Share Software’s cruise route from past years was marked in various colors. “As far as we can figure from the marine radio chatter, nothing out of the ordinary happened last night. The boat toodled around the San Juan islands like always, and then headed back.”

“Any places someone could have gotten off along the way?”

She gave him a Well, duh look. “Oh, gosh, anywhere ? It’s not exactly the open ocean. They could easily have put in for a little while at any of the islands, or rendezvoused with a boat.”

“Damn it, Jack,” Avery sighed. He could imagine, all too easily, Jack coming upon some sort of rendezvous or clandestine meeting, and taking off in pursuit without telling anyone. “We should’ve put in a big cat shifter. Less likely to be caught out as a spy.”

“They don’t grow on trees,” Cho pointed out. “Dev was on another case, and Noah won’t do field work, you know that.”

“He’s still an agent,” Avery muttered. “Where is the Director’s golden boy, anyway?”

“Over in Idaho with everybody else. He’s running the official cover-up operation.” She shoved a box of push pins into his hand. “Stop letting your head spin around the worst-case scenarios, and start marking potential harbors along the route.”

“We don’t even know he’s still on the U.S. side of the border. Regardless of what Customs says, if Jack left with someone, they could’ve sailed right across while it was dark.”

“Seeing how we know absolutely nothing so far, including whether anyone is missing at all, Avery, stop being a worry-wolf and push some pins.”

An intern came in with a coffeepot and a stack of cups, and Cho brightened. “Nice job,” she said, and the kid beamed. “Although we’re going to need sugar and creamer, too. Lots of it.”

He must be one of the new recruits, since Avery didn’t recognize him. He looked sixteen, but he had to be at least eighteen or he wouldn’t have been allowed in the op center for liability reasons.

“Who are you, anyway?” Avery asked him, waylaying him before he could rush off on Cho’s command.

“Intern Pete Mayhew, sir!”

The kid made his prey instincts twitch, not to mention that just looking at him made Avery feel exhausted and unbearably old.

“Okay, I gotta ask,” Avery said. “What’s your shifter animal?”

“Jumping spider, sir!”

.... oh. He would’ve guessed squirrel.

“Why is he running coffee errands instead of doing something useful?” he murmured to Cho after the kid scurried off to get the coffee mix-ins.

“Because he is amazingly, spectacularly incompetent at everything else,” she murmured back. “At least this way, Rosen and the other interns don’t have to keep cleaning up his filing errors.”

“When did we hire him?”

“Three days ago.”

“And why did we hire him?”

“Because everybody’s got to start somewhere, Avery. I’m sure you remember what it was like being that age.” She took a sip of her coffee and made a face. “Well, I guess we can add another item to the list of things he’s not good at.”

“When I was his age, I was in the Army.” His leg twinged a reminder. “Which worked out wonderfully for everyone involved, so yeah, point taken.”

Cho gave him a sympathetic look. “That’s where you met Jack, isn’t it?”

“He saved my life.” Avery set down the coffee cup; he’d lost his taste for it. “I’m going to look for their hunting grounds again.”

They still didn’t know where the Fallons took their victims: whether it was one place or a lot of places, private land or public. Their informant thought the Fallons owned private hunting land somewhere, but didn’t know where it was. So far, a search of property records had turned up nothing, just a handful of different vacation homes in assorted urban locations. If the Fallons did have some private land somewhere rural, they must have hidden it somehow, under a different person’s name or under the name of a company they owned. Trying to find it was like looking for a needle in a haystack—a Canada-sized haystack, at that.

But if Jack was there, he had to try.

Avery got up and lurched off to start digging through property records.

* * *

By early afternoon, he’d accomplished nothing other than finding a lot of places it wasn’t. And Jack still hadn’t called in. Shortly after Intern Mayhew brought lunch (with half the orders mixed up, but at least there was enough for everyone), Rosen leaned in to report that Eva Kemp and her team were back.

“Before you ask, Agent Ross wasn’t on the ship, and that’s all I know. They picked up our informant when he got off. Eva’s down in Interrogation with him now.”

Eva was an orca shifter. She looked every inch the predator: sleek, tall, and lethal, her long black hair pulled back in a severe braid with a single white stripe down the side. Avery found her looming over the lion shifter who had been sending them inside information from the Fallons’ organization.

“I told you, I don’t know,” he was saying as Avery slipped into the room as quietly as he was able. “I’m just doing routine security work, right? Hell, Mara’s on the outs with me anyway. Nobody tells me anything.”

Eva rested her fists on the beat-up metal table and added some extra threat to her usual looming. “Look, we know our guy got on that boat yesterday, and so did all of the Fallons. Today, our guy doesn’t get off, and neither do most of the Fallons. What did they do, jump out and swim?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you!”

Avery wasn’t sure whether to believe that, but he spoke up quietly. “If they did leave the ship at some point during the cruise, where might they have gone?”

The informant shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t seem to know much, do you?” Eva asked.

Avery said, “You told us earlier that you thought the Fallons had some private hunting land somewhere up north. Is there anything else that you can tell us about that?”

“I told you, I’ve got no idea. I just helped clean up after they got back.”

“Canada side of the border?” Eva said.

“Maybe. I kinda always thought it was pretty far. Sometimes they’d use a helicopter to get there. They had their own private one.”

Cho was waiting outside the interrogation room when they came out. “Anything?” she asked.

“Nggghh,” Avery said.

“Well, I came down to tell you there’s a big storm system tracking in from the Pacific. We’ve got access to a search and rescue chopper if we need it, but if the weather gets bad, we might be grounded.”

“All the more reason to move as fast as we can,” Avery said. “I need to talk to Stiers.”

He found her in the conference room. “Chief,” he said without bothering with niceties. “I think we need to bring in one of the Fallons. Any Fallon we can get a warrant for.”

“According to Mister Helpful back there, at least one of the sisters is still in Seattle,” Eva put in.

Stiers looked between the two of them. “If we do that, this op is well and truly blown.”

“It’s blown already,” Avery said.

“If they’re holding Ross somewhere, we may be tipping them off that we’re onto them. You know what that means as well as I do.”

“I know. It’s a risk. I understand that. I think we have to take the gamble.”

Stiers stared at him for a long time with her unblinking owl’s glare. Then she shook her head. “You’re his handler. You know him better than I do. And your instincts have always been good. If you think it’s worth hauling in one of the Fallons, we’ll do it.”

“I do,” Avery said, and prayed silently that he hadn’t just signed Jack’s death warrant.