Page 7 of Red Dragon’s Heart

But she’d made herself unrecognizable: different hair, different makeup, colored contacts, deliciously curvy instead of gaunt, her cheeks full and rounded instead of hollow like they were in the ID picture. Even the lips weren’t pinched and sneering, but soft and full, quirking easily with humor.

The idea that he’d thought about kissing her made him want to spit on the floor.

After she’d checked all the computers one last time, she disappeared into the back to gather up her belongings, same as the last few nights.

His instinct was not to let her out of his sight. Hell, he’d been feeling that way since he first started coming here—on some subconscious level, he must have recognized her after all.

Now it made sense, how obsessed he’d been with her.

But he needed to check out that warehouse before she got there. If he were really lucky, she would have already stashed the data drives there—and he could just grab them, circle back, scoop her up, and fly her straight back to the lair.

If he wasn’t lucky—and when was he ever?—then he would wait until she showed up at the warehouse with the data, ready for the meeting. If he could find a good location inside, he could try to get video of the exchange. That would give the Shifter Council official proof that Chisholm was party to the experimentation on shifters, which would be all they needed to take him down.

And then he could scoop up Fox and the data and take off. He could handle a puny human CEO and half a dozen minions while standing on one foot, with his left talon tied behind his back.

Fury burned inside him, deep down where his dragon’s flame was hidden. He tried to keep it banked—strong emotion brought out the monster.

And fury kept him from thinking straight.

He had to get this right. It would be his only chance.

After memorizing the location of the warehouse, Zakerek left the coffee shop and went back to the top level of the nearby parking garage he’d been using for his takeoffs and landings. Cloaking himself, he Changed and headed to Madeleine’s rendezvous site.

It was in a rundown industrial park, near a strip of small businesses that required large spaces—a truck repair shop, a sword-fighting school, an electronics recycling center, an auto-parts store.

As he landed on the roof of Madeleine’s warehouse, he heard the roof creaking under his dragon’s weight, and Changed back quickly. Grateful that dragon magic allowed him to keep his clothes during a Change, so he wasn’t up here naked, he found the access door leading down into the warehouse, broke the doorknob lock with one twist of his wrist, and stole softly down the stairs.

He hadn’t seen any vehicles outside or sensed people inside, so it looked like Fox’s contacts were keeping to the deal she’d set. So far, so good.

It was easy to see which second-floor offices she planned on using for the exchange. They were next door to each other, situated along a balcony that looked out over the main warehouse floor.

The first office was drafty from the clumsily boarded-over partial window reconstruction in its outer wall—they hadn’t even bothered to take out the debris chute before they abandoned work.

Nonetheless, it had what was clearly a brand-new two-way mirror installed in the top half of the adjacent wall, with a view into the conference room next door.

Zakerek went up and knocked experimentally on the glass. It wasn’t glass—it was some kind of clear polymer, unusually thick.

Bulletproof. Hmmm.

While this room held bits and pieces of scarred, broken office furniture and miscellaneous construction debris, he could see through the window that the room next door was swept clean. The only thing inside it was a metal table with a large rectangular box on top, also made of metal, standing at right angles to the two-way mirror and apparently bolted to the floor.

What the hell?

Zakerek went over there, noting that both rooms had newly-installed steel doors with bolt locks. Madeleine Fox had to have spent thousands of dollars on the mirror and the doors—for a place she didn’t own, or even lease, as far as he could tell.

This wasn’t just going to be a simple exchange. But damned if he could figure out what she was planning.

The interior of the metal box was in two sections about two feet square, with a vertical divider in between. One side was covered by a thick, clear plexiglass door that slid back and forth. The box was attached to the table, and he could see wiring running down through the table legs.

This had to be something Fox had installed.

He knelt down to examine the wiring more closely, and he saw something else—something barely visible in the gloom. Tiny openings along the inside of the open compartment, and under the table. When he shone the flashlight from his phone on them, he could see what looked like micro-thin rubber tubing inside them.

Zakerek sat back on his heels. He’d seen something like this in high-end security systems for very, very rich people with expensive art and few scruples. They were conduits for some kind of gas that released when a display case was tampered with.

Knockout gas—or even something more lethal.

He looked around the room again, realizing this room had no windows, and no escape except through the reinforced steel door. Suddenly it all made sense.