Page 13 of Shifter and the Succubus (The Pack #1)

Jason blew out a hard breath, and it took form and floated around him in the frozen air.

It was already early afternoon, so the temperature wouldn’t be climbing much more that day.

He walked toward the parking area next to his apartment building.

Misha sat waiting in the team van eating some sort of sandwich.

Jason climbed into the van shaking his head at his constantly eating teammate.

“Took you long enough,” Misha said around bites.

“You texted me fifteen minutes ago. I just got back from working out and I had to get showered and dressed. How long have you been sitting here?”

“Less than two minutes,” Misha said with a wink.

Jason rolled his eyes at his obnoxious teammate and Misha chuckled. “If I don’t give you a hard time, who will?”

“Kyle?”

Misha’s chuckle morphed into a belly laugh as he crumpled the sandwich wrapper. “Very true.”

“So what’s up?”

“We traced one of the trucks the smugglers used. It was abandoned behind some deserted buildings. Luckily the police haven’t noticed it yet. We need to pick it up and store it at the warehouse so we can go over it before the police impound it.”

“Got it. I’m surprised you volunteered for this and aren’t home with Callie.”

“Jean Luc and Talia left for their weekend in Vegas. Will is getting married, and Talia is standing up with him.”

Will was Talia’s former BSR teammate when she worked in Vegas and they were still tight. Jason had forgotten that was coming up. “What about Kyle?”

“Dalton got home from his trip last night, so I decided not to bother Kyle,” Misha responded without looking at him.

Jason shook his head. “Callie kicked you out, didn’t she?”

Misha cringed slightly. “She might have suggested that she needed some alone time.”

Jason just bet she did.

“Plus it’s Saturday, so the twins are home from school watching Callie like a hawk. And I asked Babushka to drop in for a visit as well.”

“That doesn’t sound like alone time to me,” Jason said with as little sarcasm as possible.

“It’s for the best.”

Was Misha saying that for Jason’s benefit or his own? He thought it better not to respond. It wasn’t like he had any experience with a committed relationship.

They drove for twenty minutes before Misha turned behind a tall row of buildings into an alley. Great. His nerves jangled as they drove farther. Hopefully no one would be shooting at them this time.

Misha parked and reached behind the seat for an evidence kit. “I want to try and pull prints from the handles before we move the truck back to the warehouse. But I don’t want to spend a long time here and draw attention to ourselves.”

They walked over to the abandoned box truck. Misha pulled on a pair of gloves before tossing him a pair, and Jason pulled them on with a snap.

Misha rummaged around in the bag he carried and pulled out a fingerprint kit and started working on the back handle and the edges of the doors where people would have most likely touched the truck bed. “I have a partial print here but everything else is smudged. Let’s go ahead and check inside.”

Jason nodded and then reached up and unhooked the handle, swinging the two doors open. The back was empty except for a broken crate in the far corner and some packing materials that rustled across the floor as the chilly air made its way into the truck.

“Well, that was anti-climactic,” Misha said. “I’m going to go dust the front cab handles and steering wheel for prints.”

“Don’t give up hope, big guy. We might find something.” Jason closed the back doors and walked slowly around the truck, checking the tires and looking for anything else that might stop them from driving it to the warehouse.

He joined Misha next to the driver’s door. “Did you find anything up front?”

“The cab looks pretty clean. I did get a couple partial fingerprints, but since this is a rental van, it could belong to anyone. The keys were on the floor, so I don’t have to hot wire it. Let’s get this to the warehouse and we can check it over some more there.”

Forty minutes later, Misha drove the team van up to the warehouse with Jason following behind in the box truck. The building looked condemned. The biohazard signs posted everywhere added a nice stay-the-hell-out ambiance.

Misha opened the bay doors and Jason pulled the truck into the warehouse with Misha following behind with the van.

Whenever they had vehicles they needed to check for evidence or other large items that were part of their cases, they brought them through the bay doors.

But the warehouse wasn’t just empty space.

Beyond the bay area they were in now were several other sections.

It housed rows and rows of shelving where evidence from their bureau cases came to stay until it could be disposed of.

And beyond the evidence lockup was a small makeshift morgue, lab, and clinic along with a couple rooms for patients that could be used in a pinch.

Jason woke up in one of those patient rooms after he had been attacked by rogue vampires and met Sabrina for the first time.

Of course she had saved his life with the help of the rest of the team and had schooled him that not every supernatural was evil. Very eye-opening given the fact that the very people he had tried to destroy were the ones who saved him. Humble soup was a part of his diet for some time after that.

He respected the hell out of Sabrina from the moment he met her.

The more time he spent working with her, the more he wanted to get to know her better.

And not because of her looks, although he would have to be clueless not to see how gorgeous she was, but because she was brilliant and sarcastic and funny.

And she had a look in her eyes like she knew a secret, and if you gave her a chance, she would share it with you.

He wondered if anyone gave her a chance.

He shook his head. What was wrong with him? Hadn’t he just told himself it was time to move on, and instead he was dredging up the past.

He climbed out of the truck, and Misha walked up to him, snapping on a new set of gloves. Jason had kept his on while he drove the box truck and had also sat on a sheet of plastic that Misha had placed on the seat, which he now pulled out and discarded.

“Let’s look this over more thoroughly,” Misha said as he started checking under the seats and along the floor.

Jason took off his coat before he walked to the back of the truck and opened the doors.

Pulling himself up into the back of the truck, he turned on his phone’s flashlight app and started to slowly inspect the truck’s floor.

Unfortunately the truck was pretty clean.

He picked up some of the packing materials and didn’t see anything that had writing or instructions on it.

Jason stepped to the corner and carefully moved the broken box to see if there was anything underneath.

His light caught a flash of something, and he pushed another piece of wood out of the way.

In the corner sat a black metal container the size of a cigar box. He picked it up.

“Misha, can you come here?”

The front cab door slammed shut, and a couple seconds later Misha stood at the tailgate. “Did you find something?”

“Yeah.” He walked over to the open doors and showed Misha the box.

“That looks like a container that would hold medical supplies.”

“Do you think we’re dealing with drugs?” Jason said.

“Anything is possible. I’m thinking we don’t open it until Sabrina is here. Let me give her a call and see if she’s available.”

Jason hesitated before speaking. “I’ve only got a few hours before I need to head home. I’ve got plans tonight.”

Misha’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Plans? What sort of plans?”

Well crap. He knew better. Why had he mentioned anything? “I’m taking Bea to dinner.”

“Bea? What about Sabrina?”

“What about her?” Jason barked.

Misha stared back at him and didn’t say anything, which was a first for the big guy.

Jason blew out a breath, getting his defensiveness in check. “I’m sorry. I know you and Kyle have been trying to get us together, but it’s not going to work.”

Misha frowned. “Have you—”

“I tried, Misha. But she shot me down.” He dropped his gaze. He’d hoped never to have to talk about it, but Misha and Kyle had to get rid of the idea that they could be matchmakers. “I’m trying to embrace my shifter side. I need to move on. It’s time to let any thoughts of Sabrina go.”

Misha grabbed his shoulder and squeezed it. “Of course. You know you have my support.”

Jason nodded. “I do.”

Misha called Sabrina, and she agreed to come to the warehouse. “Let’s check over the rest of the truck while we wait for her.”

Thirty minutes later they hadn’t found anything else that seemed to clue them in to what these smugglers were doing, except the box they hadn’t opened yet. While they waited, Misha called home and sat in the team van having an in-depth conversation with someone.

The bay door opened, and Sabrina drove her car inside and climbed out. “What did you find for me?”

Jason pointed to the box sitting at the end of the truck bed.

“Let’s get it to the lab.”

“I’ve got it,” Jason said as he picked up the box and walked with her toward the front of the warehouse.

“Where’s Misha?” Sabrina asked as she fell into step with him.

“I think he is getting an earful from Callie about his overprotectiveness.”

Sabrina grinned. “I wouldn’t be surprised. How are your sessions going with Griffin and Bea?”

“Good. I’m learning a lot, but I’m frustrated. I can’t even sense my animal.”

“Give it time. Most shifters are taught what they are from birth.”

“That’s what Bea said too.”

They reached the metal door. Sabrina held her hand on the touch pad, and the door swished open like the doors on Star Trek, leading into the morgue and lab area.

Thankfully the tables were empty. Sabrina hung up her coat and then reached for a pair of gloves from the box on the counter and pulled them on. She motioned to the middle table, and Jason set the box down.

“Misha was right. This looks like a box you would see used for medical supplies. Makes me wonder what these smugglers are dealing in.”

She flipped the two latches on the front of the box and tilted the lid up. Inside was gray packing foam. Sabrina lifted the foam lid and revealed three vials. Two were intact and one looked damaged, its lid falling to the side and liquid spilling from the vial.

The overhead lights fluttered and turned red right before an alarm sounded. The lab door slid shut.

Doc slammed the box shut and barked for him to get back.

“What the hell just happened?” he yelled over the alarm and the pounding of his heart in his ears.

“It’s our biohazard warning system,” she yelled back.

Jason’s stomach dropped. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We can’t. We’re locked in until the threat is neutralized.”

Well that seemed asinine since they were now in the middle of the damn threat.

She yanked off her gloves and grabbed two N95 masks from a drawer and handed one to him. “Might not help at this point, but it can’t hurt,” she yelled. “Take off your gloves and put them in the biohazard bin and wash up at the sink.”

He did as instructed, and she followed suit.

Thankfully the alarm stopped ringing, but the room was still bathed in red light.

“Jason! Sabrina!” Jason flinched when Misha’s voice burst through the room. Sabrina walked over next to the door and punched a button. A metal panel slid back, and a window appeared. Misha stood outside with wide eyes.

He clicked on something next to the window, and his voice came through the speaker again. “I just shut off the alarm. Are you two okay? What happened?”

“We’re okay for now. I opened the case, and there was a broken vial. The biohazard monitor shut everything down.”

“Okay. I’m going to grab my computer out of the van, and I’ll be right back.” Misha disappeared.

Jason bit back a curse. “Why does he need his laptop? Can’t he open the door with the pad on the wall?”

Sabrina shook her head before walking over to a bunch of machinery on the counter. “Misha has the biohazard system on his computer. He designed it for the building.”

“Of course he did.” Misha was a tech genius and also had a photographic memory, which made him pretty formidable even before you knew he was a powerful Shamat demon.

“I heard that,” Misha said from the window as he yanked over a cart, set his computer on it, and started typing furiously. The red overhead lights dimmed, and the regular lights came back on.

“Yeah, well did you have to design it so that it locked us inside?”

Misha frowned. “It locks down an area so that it contains the threat. But it doesn’t mean that it’s poisonous. It just means that the system detected something that could be hazardous.”

“That doesn’t make me feel better,” Jason groused.

Sabrina turned from the machinery she tinkered with and narrowed her eyes at him. “Misha designed the system after he was shot and the toxins from the bullet were released here. It’s to protect us from future attacks.”

Insert foot. “You mean when I shot him.” And there went his heart pounding in his ears again.

Misha looked up from his typing. “It is an interesting twist of fate, yes?”

Guilt weighed him down. They had put in a frickin’ biohazard alarm because of what he had done to them.

Misha shook his head. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, my friend. Even with your mask on, your eyes are full of guilt.”

“Stop looking at my guilty eyes and figure out how to get us out of here.”

“I already know how to get you out. We need to identify what is in the case and then deal with any contamination before the doors will open.”

“And how do we do that?” Jason asked.

“I’m going to get a sample and start testing it,” Sabrina said. She had on a new set of gloves and held some tools in her hand. “I want you to step back to the far corner.”

Hell no. “What are you doing, Doc?”

“Jason. We’ve already been exposed to whatever is in the container. So far we don’t seem to be reacting to it. If I test it, we can hopefully get out of here sooner.”

Something in his chest rumbled. Heat centered between his eyes, and he shut them when the room appeared to close in on him. He opened his eyes, and everything around him was bright and hyper focused, including Sabrina as she stepped closer to the box.

“Don’t,” he said, but his voice didn’t sound right. It was deeper and a growl ripped from his throat.