Cole
The assignment should have been simple. Cole Masters and his team had been tasked with retrieving a high-profile individual who was being held against his will. The low-life thugs who had kidnapped him were looking for a big payout from the man’s rich family. It was the type of rescue operation that Cole and the other members of his SWAT team had carried out dozens of times in the past. So itshouldhave been simple.
But this time was different. Cole felt it as soon as he entered the old warehouse where the hostage was being held—something wasoff, but he couldn’t put his finger on what exactly was wrong.
He lifted his nose and scented the air, trying to determine what had caused the hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.
“You smelling something?” Nash whispered, so quietly it wouldn’t have been audible to anyone who wasn’t a shifter.
Cole frowned, then scented the air again. “I’m not sure. Don’t you smell that? It’s almost…floral. I think there’s a woman in here.”
There should only have been three perps on guard duty, all men. The hostage was supposed to have been the only other person present. The team had spent an hour watching the building and saw only two hostiles through one of the windows at the back of the warehouse.
No one had entered or left since the team had arrived.
“I don’t smell anything,” Nash said.
Cole wasn’t surprised. Nash was a bear shifter and though he had a great sense of smell when shifted into his bear form, his senses weren’t nearly as well developed as those of a wolf shifter, like Cole. A wolf’s sense of smell was second to none.
He played the faint floral scent across his senses and turned it over in his mind. It was unlike anything he’d ever encountered. His muscles bunched. The scent was so incredible it made him want to charge into the building, consequences be damned. He fought a battle of personal restraint. He couldn’t scent any blood, but what if the perps had hurt this woman?
Cole shook his head—which did nothing to clear it of that incredible scent or his newfound insanity—then stood up to his full height. He’d been picked for the FBI SWAT team because he was good at his job. One of the best, in fact—level-headed, focused, quick thinking and incredibly fast on his feet. Then, of course, there was the weapons training he possessed, the tactical skills, and the fact that at thirty years of age, he was in the best physical shape of his life. He and his teammates were like a well-oiled machine. They got in, got the job done, then got out with as few casualties as possible.
So why did an innocent floral scent make him want to disregard all his many hours of training and time in the field? Inside, Cole’s wolf was agitated, doing what Cole could only have described as internal pacing. It practically begged to be set free.
Easy boy, Cole cautioned.This will be over before you know it.
To his left, Cole’s team leader, Flint, was also scenting the air. He turned to Cole then shook his head.
“I’m getting nothing. Let’s move closer.”
Cole nodded his agreement, relieved to get moving again, although he was surprised that Flint couldn’t smell anything. Flint’s sense of smell almost rivaled Cole’s. Weird. But Cole supposed that was why each individual had been picked to be on the team—because they each brought their own unique ‘gifts’ on top of all the training they had received from the FBI.
They spread out across the room, and Hawk made a hand signal that informed the rest of the team that he was going to follow the back wall. Kit went left and made the same signal. The warehouse was in the old meatpacking district of the city and had once been used as a canning factory. It was empty now, save for a few rats, but they kept out of the way, sensing that there were bigger predators on their turf.
The closer the team got to the back of the building, the stronger the floral scent became. Inside him, Cole’s wolf erupted into chaos, yipping and clawing to be set free. Cole tried to slow down his breathing, but his wolf kept fighting him.
“Yeah, there’s a woman in here, alright,” Ice whispered. “She smellsgood.”
Cole glared at him. “Head in the game, asshole.”
When Ice frowned back at him, Cole sighed and shook his head.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. It was hard to think straight with his wolf going crazy like that, and the floral scent taking over all his senses.
He wasn’t sure why he’d snapped at his teammate, but he hadn’t liked Ice talking about the woman in such a way. Weird. Why was he getting defensive about a woman he’d never met? When they got closer still to the back of the building, the woman’s fragrance became all that Cole could smell, and that bothered him immensely. He was usually more than able to differentiate between the many different scents in a room, but it was as if he had lost that ability now. The heady floral fragrance was so potent, it made him feel lightheaded, and he had to stop moving forward for fear that he might fall on his ass.
Nash looked back at him and frowned. “Dude, what’s up?”
Cole shook his head and motioned for his friend to keep moving. He couldn’t have explained what was wrong with him if he’d tried. Besides, he didn’t want his team to worry about him when they were in the middle of a rescue operation.
Each member of the team was only as strong as every other member, and if one of the guys didn’t have their head on straight, they all suffered. His team was depending on him. There were armed criminals in this building, and his teammates’ lives, and especially his partner’s life, would be in his hands. The only way that worked was if they believed incontrovertibly that their partner was in tip-top condition, both physicallyandmentally. Cole was far from it.
He forced himself to get moving again, and when he finally reached the back wall, he leaned up against it and breathed a sigh of relief. There were three doors along the wall that they knew from studying the floor plans of the building, were two offices and a storage room. Every door was closed.
Hawk put his ear to the furthest door on the right then shook his head. Empty. To their left, Kit moved in front of the door nearest to her and scented the air before she also put her ear to the door. Another negative. That meant the room behind the door nearest to Cole was the one that had to be occupied.
They knew from the building plans that there were two rooms behind this door, a larger room which had been used as a storeroom, and the smaller room in front, which had once been an employee break room.
