Flexing his shoulder muscles, he twisted his wrists in opposite directions at the same time. The plastic of the zip ties held for a fraction of a second, digging into his skin, but then snapped with an audible pop.
Biting back a growl, Trevor grabbed the orderly by the shoulder, slinging him across the hall and bouncing him off the opposite wall with a loud thud.
Brooklyn was twisting her arms back and forth, trying with all her might to get the plastic bands off her wrists or at least loosen them. But all she did was chafe the hell out of herself. If she kept that up, she was going to hurt herself badly, maybe even cut off the blood flow to her fingers.
Trevor grabbed one of her arms and steadied her. “Hold still.”
When she complied, he slipped one of his claws under the plastic cuff material and yanked, severing the thick restraint in a single swipe.
Trevor didn’t have time to check to see if Brooklyn was okay, because four orderlies rounded the corner to find out what all the commotion was. That’s when everything went to shit.
He threw himself at the four men, but one of them already had his Taser out and tagged Trevor right in the middle of the chest before he could reach them, sending a couple of thousand volts through his body. Trevor stiffened, every muscle in his body contracting at once.
Yeah…that frigging hurt.
A shifter could manage a hit from a Taser, but that didn’t mean it was fun, and it still slowed him down as he fought to reach up and jerk the barbed electrical probes out of his chest.
That gave the other three men all the time they needed to dogpile him. He growled but did everything he could to keep his claws and fangs from extending. He fought them with pure and simple muscle power and technique, shoving them away to give him room to maneuver, slamming one against the wall and another into the floor. But then one of the idiots jumped on his back and shoved a needle in his shoulder, injecting him with some clear liquid.
Assuming it was some sedative that the orderlies carried to handle unruly patients, Trevor didn’t expect it to have an effect on him, but he’d barely slung one guy off his back and was reaching for another one trying to get to his feet, when the whole corridor went wobbly, and his knees when weak.
What kind of frigging drug had they just pumped into him? He never knew a shifter could be taken this easily, especially one like him, who usually shrugged off drugs like they were nothing.
Trevor took a step forward, hoping movement would force his body to metabolize the drug faster, but his feet wouldn’t work, and he saw the floor coming up to say hello to his face. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt that much when he landed.
Brooklyn tried to run, but one of the orderlies chased her down and shoved her violently to the floor. Trevor promised to find that particular man and kick the shit out of him as soon as whatever drug they’d given him had worn off.
The last thing he saw was someone getting a grip on his ankles and dragging him toward the doors of the isolation ward. If his mouth worked, he might have laughed. He had wanted to get in there, after all.
* * *
“Crap. We’re in deep trouble,” Ivy said over her headset microphone as a van full of men who looked like mercenaries unloaded in front of the Stillwater facility.
It had been bad enough when those four orderlies had run off into the woods with night-vision goggles and silenced automatic weapons thirty minutes ago. Now it looked like Mahsood and Brand were bringing in heavyweight backup. If her experienced eyes weren’t fooling her, these new guys were military to the core. And all those bags they were toting sure as heck weren’t carrying stethoscopes in them. They were weapons—lots and lots of weapons.
This mission was getting uglier by the second.
“What’s wrong?” Her husband’s voice came over the line.
“That member of the Committee funding Mahsood’s research just sent in more muscle,” she said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Landon replied, his voice taking on that whisper-soft tone he used when he was worried about being overheard while out in the bush. “I think Frasier and his crew have given up on capturing Ian. They’ve turned around as a group and are heading to your location.”
Dammit. That was all they needed. More heavily armed men converging on Stillwater.
Landon had been trailing Frasier and his group since Friday night, keeping tabs on them and making sure they never got too close to Ian. That had been a tough task, because Frasier’s crew was well trained, and that tracker they had was damn good. If Landon hadn’t slipped in to mess up Ian’s trail a couple of times, Frasier probably would have caught the hybrid teen by now.
The one good thing was that Landon and the hybrid had crossed paths a few times. Somehow, the kid seemed to realize Landon was out there helping him. For a hybrid, Ian seemed to have it together.
While her husband had been running through the woods, keeping an eye on Ian, Ivy had been stuck watching Stillwater to make sure Trevor and Brooklyn didn’t get in trouble. They hadn’t yet, if the recently moved piece of surgical tape on the window was any indication.
But that could change quickly.
“What do you think Frasier will do when he gets here?” she asked, dreading the answer.
When Landon didn’t answer, Ivy felt a tendril of worry creep up her spine. She hated working apart from her soulmate like this. It felt wrong the entire time they were apart, and it made thinking straight damn near impossible. But it was necessary, so she forced down her fear and pushed it into the dark hole it had crawled out of.
“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s tired of chasing after Ian and decided to go to the source instead,” Landon finally said. “He’s probably going to break into Mahsood’s lab to get his hands on the man’s research. Hell, he might even go after Mahsood. Once he has what he wants, he can chase Ian at his leisure without worrying about what happens if the hybrid gets away.”
