Chapter 14
Tanner muttered a curse as he left a message for Trevor. Where the hell was he on a Sunday morning?
He scrolled through the numbers on the burner phone and clicked on Adam’s.
Tanner had waited until Sunday to snoop around Dick’s office, figuring there’d be more of a chance it’d be empty. Since Tanner lived on the complex, he happened to know for a fact that Dick worked whenever the hell he wanted to. Fortunately, Dick wasn’t there. Unfortunately, Dick’s secretary, Phyllis, was. Worse, she spotted him before he could duck out. On the upside, Trevor was right about her liking Tanner. The minute she’d seen him, a smile spread across her face, and she sagged with obvious relief. She’d been trying to make a pot of coffee for the past thirty minutes with no luck.
The fact that the damn machine was so complicated it needed to have a control panel was half the problem. The other half was that it had apparently been built for use on the International Space Station. It had a cartridge that could be preloaded with filters so it could make twenty pots in succession—if the filters didn’t run out…or get jammed. He’d seen industrial copiers that were easier to clear than that thing.
While Tanner fixed it, he made small talk with Phyllis. At the same time, he tried to come up with some way to get her out of the office. But short of asking her to look for some nonexistent part for the coffee pot, he couldn’t come up with anything.
He was still thinking about that when Phyllis’s phone rang. When he realized it was Dick, Tanner thought for sure the man was on his way into the office, but after eavesdropping on their conversation, he realized Dick wasn’t in town.
“Dick away on business?” he asked when Phyllis had hung up.
She shook her head as she dropped her cell phone into her purse. “No. He just took the weekend off.”
Tanner paused, coffee filters in hand. Could it be this easy? Maybe he wouldn’t have to use the widget Evan had given him to decipher the password on Dick’s computer at all.
“Is he down at his farm?” Tanner asked Phyllis, trying to sound casual.
Her brow furrowed. “Farm?”
“Yeah, his farm. I heard him mention going down to the farm a lot, so I assumed it was his. I have to admit, Dick doesn’t strike me as the farming type. Just can’t see him sitting on top of a tractor, plowing the fields.”
Phyllis laughed. “Dick doesn’t own a farm. As far as I know, the man has never been on a tractor in his life. The farm is the nickname for the Chadwick-Thorn research facility near Millers Creek, North Carolina. I think they call it that because it’s built on the remains of an old chicken farm. Dick goes there a few times a year.”
Well, damn. It really had been that easy.
Tanner shook his head, still amazed at his good fortune as he waited for Adam to answer. The shifter picked up on the second ring.
“I’ve got some information for you,” Tanner said.
“It’s going to have to wait,” Adam said curtly. “I need you to bring Zarina to the safe house in Charles City. Now.”
Tanner tensed, his fangs trying to come out as fear gripped him. “What’s wrong?”
“Kendra’s in labor. The doctor and nurse were supposed to be here an hour ago, and they aren’t answering their phones. I’m worried Thorn’s men got to them.”
“Shit,” Tanner muttered. “It’s going to take me at least an hour and a half to get to Charles City. Maybe you should take Kendra to a hospital.”
“We can’t risk it,” Adam said. “If Thorn is onto us, the first place he’ll be watching is the hospital.”
Tanner felt his fangs extend. He closed his eyes for a moment and forced himself to calm down. “Okay. We’re on our way. Tell Kendra to hold on.”
Hanging up, Tanner dialed Zarina’s number, praying she was working in the lab. Luckily, she was. He explained the situation as he raced across the quad in the center of the complex. She was ready and waiting for him near her car by the time he got there.
“I’ll drive,” he said.
Zarina didn’t argue, simply tossed him the keys and jumped into the passenger seat.
Even without a lot of traffic, the drive to the bed-and-breakfast seemed to take forever. Tanner heard Kendra’s screams of pain the moment he got out of the car. He glanced at Zarina to see her looking just as concerned as he was.
“We have to hurry,” Zarina said, dragging a big duffel bag full of medical gear out of the backseat and shoving it in his direction.
They ran for the big wraparound porch, hurrying up the steps. Declan, wolf shifter Clayne Buchanan, and Adam met them at the top.
