Another shot split the air over his head and Noah pressed himself closer to the floor—if that was possible. He was inching his way back toward the trapdoor. Luckily, it was still open and inviting him to drop down and out of the range of fire.
“Don't.” The harsh word came from Christina. “Don’t move.”
Noah had already decided that the spot they'd come from—which was empty—was better and safer than the one they jumped up into.
Christina was lying still, a silent form amid the leaves and detritus on the floor of the house. Looking around and making assessments, she operated in the way he'd been trained to do, but was finding very difficult at the moment.
Clearly, she had been shot at far more often than he had.
Behind him, the wall suddenly exploded again, sending chunks of plaster raining down. Though he wanted to turn his head and assess any threats coming from that side, he didn’t dare move. Another bullet would come far faster than any of his reflexes would work.
Instead of watching Christina, he scanned the area, trusting that the agent would do what was right.
He almost lost his lunch as he watched her fiddle around on her clothing and then pull out her badge. She held it up high and yelled at the top of her voice, “Agent Christina Pines.”
The silence in the air following her proclamation startled Noah, who thought these people might start shooting at FBI agents on their property. Some would and some wouldn’t, but these guys were clearly already five bullets into the “yes, we’ll shoot” camp.
But if the FBI was already there and they were already shooting? Well this was more likely to be a Waco or a Ruby Ridge than a Gosh sorry, my bad.
She hollered out again. “FBI. NightShade division. Agent Christina Pines.”
This time, a gruff voice replied, “I heard you.”
The statement had a definite Hold your horses tone to it. In any other situation, Noah would have found that funny, but here he was happy for any tone as long as his head remained attached to his body and his blood wasn't pumping out of a hole in his chest.
Christina was far bolder than he, slowly rocking upward and coming to a sitting position. She should have been on her toes, he thought, even as he debated getting up himself.
If she was safe sitting up, then he would look ridiculous lying here, face down in the leaves and dirt. But if he stood, or even moved to curl himself into a small ball, he might get shot.
If he was up, he could also be ready to run. So Noah began slowly rolling to his side and pulling his feet up. He was trying to look non-threatening as he pulled his limbs into a better position to run, if he had to.
It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t know if Christina could outrun bullets. Or did they bounce off her? He’d seen a lot of strange things in his few encounters with NightShade officers. Also, he knew what she definitely could do—so why hadn't she made these people think things like don’t shoot at the agents in the old house?
He was beginning to get very irritated when she offered up his name.
“This is a fellow agent, Noah Kimball,” she told the voice in the distance. And now Noah did get to his feet. He was opening his mouth to tell her to shut the fuck up when she turned and, under her breath, growled, “What are you exactly? A Pinkerton?”
He hopped up, his toes now firmly planted under him, ready to run. The fact that a bullet hadn’t cut the air for almost a full minute was now making him more nervous, not less. Out of breath with his tension, he ground out a one-word response. “Later.”
Even he wasn't quite sure what he technically was on this case.
But right now, he was more concerned with her lassaiz faire stance, sitting cross-legged in the dirt, while shooters pointed guns at them.
Just as he was getting ready to berate her, he watched a form appear out of the distance. A man in light-colored clothing was getting close enough to no longer blend into the tall golden grasses and the trees. He walked in waist-high grass, his rifle in his hand. At least now he aimed up, not at Noah.
He didn’t relax.
The man was rounder, older. Mostly bald or with thin, pale hair. He was flanked on either side by young, virile men wearing only sweat pants. There were seven of them. Noah took stock as they slowly got closer.
He didn’t see any guns other than the rifle. It matched the shots he’d heard fired. Still, Noah held tightly to his own gun, which seemed to have miraculously appeared in his hand.
“Put it in your holster” Christina spat the words at him without moving her mouth. She smiled and waved at the approaching people as Noah debated.
Christina hadn't even drawn hers. He was trusting the hell out of her on this one. But he slid the firearm back into its holster.
There seemed to be an unspoken agreement that the two groups would wait to talk until the men got to the building. So Christina turned to Noah, clearly much more relaxed than he was, and more than she’d been when they were getting shot at.
“I really thought we'd run into them sooner.”
Noah took a moment to wrap his mind around it. She’d said a whole family lived here—or at least most of it. They were like Donovan. And the ones in the Caribbean. Were these wolves everywhere?
“I knew they were here,” Christina said softly, almost as though she was psychic. But in the next breath, she cleared it up. “Did you notice the lack of wildlife? For a place that’s been abandoned for several years, there are only a few birds. Just little songbirds here and there in the trees, but no real evidence of fox burrows or deer or cougar packs, the kinds of things you’d expect—”
Noah interrupted her. “I saw coyotes in the distance yesterday.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, as though he were being ridiculously dumb. And after a moment, he realized he was. It hadn't been coyotes he'd seen in the distance. Fuck, yeah. He'd been dumb.
Mentally, he'd known what was here. He'd seen Donovan. He’d never seen one of them do a full change, but it had been enough to know the form the other agent could assume. Noah had seen the men in the Caribbean, and a few women, also do it. He should have been more alert.
In fact, the closer the little group got, the clearer it became. He saw one of the people was a woman. A tank top graced her narrower shoulders and she had a firm, rigid style to her gait. Her hair was a shock of white on her head.
Noah was still assessing when Christina called out, “Hey, Will!”
Suddenly, she sounded not just confident of the people approaching, but downright friendly. She stood up and dusted off her butt. “Figured I'd run into y'all down in the tunnels.”
Y'all? Noah thought. Maybe she was just adopting local customs.
But as they got closer, and Noah became more convinced that his life wasn't in mortal peril, he noticed something strange. The group of the five of them walked in almost military precision. He’d catalogued it when they first popped up, but he hadn't stopped to think about why they might be doing it.
As he scanned around, he found another person far in the distance. And as he looked further, he spotted another. He noticed the grass ruffling off to the sides of the walkers. It seemed several wolves were following along.
This was the pack. It wasn’t random at all. They acted in military precision on purpose. And Noah was willing to bet the scant clothing on some was because they’d gotten close as wolves and then changed in the grass right in front of him. Only he hadn’t seen it.
The group was not random at all. They’d made sure they had every weapon at their disposal—guns, opposable thumbs, speech, speed, stealth, and teeth. As they’d gotten even closer, he noticed that their eyes were wary. They looked at him differently than they did Christina. They were on the lookout for something threatening. But that something was neither Noah nor Christina.