As he donned his clothes, Alec couldn’t help watching while Nella, standing at the far side of the bed, did the same. Her pale body was slender, sleek and sexy as hell as she pulled on jeans and buttoned on a black shirt. No bra to cover those tempting breasts…
“Here, make yourself useful,” she said. Her camouflage uniform was slung over a chair. She yanked the top sheet off the bed from beneath the coverlet. “Fold this up. We need to take it along.”
He was curious but didn’t ask why. Instead, he did as she requested. She joined him in a minute, and together they finished folding.
Her gaze met his as she took possession of the sheet. For a moment she looked vulnerable. He wanted to pull her back into his arms. But then her golden eyes turned steely. “I guess we needed to get that out of our system before we could work together.” Her tone sounded indifferent, and she turned away and crammed the sheet into the larger of the two bags she’d said they needed to take along.
What the hell was she talking about? The fact they’d had sex? “I’d say it’s anything but out of our system,” he contradicted irritably. “If anything, it’s just whetted my appetite for more.”
“Get over it,” she said. “You’re about to lose interest real fast.”
Sitting in Alec’s high-end sedan as he drove to their destination, Nella didn’t feel even an iota of the nonchalance she showed. But glibness hid her sense of longing for what could never be. Sure, they’d just made love—again, after all these years—and it was even more phenomenal than back then.
But his interest in her as a person, let alone a sexual partner, was about to evaporate.
To accomplish their goal, she was about to shift. She knew how he reacted to that. Knew that, even with his boss’s assertions, he couldn’t quite accept it.
Well, he would. Soon.
And what if something went wrong? She could hardly inform him that she was about to drink a shape-shifting elixir that was an earlier formulation than the one currently approved for use by Alpha Force. The newer formulation had made her ill recently, when combined with her human female hormones at the wrong time of the month. That wouldn’t be a factor today, but even so, she didn’t consider the later formulation the best for her. The earlier version, while imperfect, was preferable for now.
The elixir gave Alpha Force members the ability to shift at will. Otherwise, they would only change during the full moon, with no control over it—the way it had been when she was in school. The elixir also enhanced their ability to retain human awareness while changed.
“Tell me anything else you know about the location of the thumb drive,” she said, mostly to make conversation.
“You’ve seen the best information I could get. We have a general fix on Jonash’s office, thanks to the GPS chip. But its layout and furnishings…well, that you’ll have to play by ear.”
Before leaving the hotel room, Alec had booted up his laptop computer and shown her their destination—the headquarters of Jonash’s employer, Omnibus International Communications. Alec had scoped it out as soon as the congressman discovered that the thumb drive was missing, and they’d tracked its location. He had obviously leaped in, taking on his mission even before realizing what it really was about, something Nella had seen in him before. And admired.
Because the target building was a historic landmark built in the late nineteenth century, it was featured online on sites devoted to Washington, D.C., architecture. Plus, there were other Internet resources such as Google Earth that allowed people to look at any location from cameras on satellites and even zoom in on structures from multiple angles.
Fortunately it looked like the kind of building Nella should be able to access with ease. Only a few stories high, it had architectural details that made it a lot easier than a sleek modern structure for her to get into. And Alec had already scoped it out in person, too, and seen that windows were often left open on the upper floors. Maybe the old building’s air-conditioning system needed an upgrade. All the better for her to fulfill her mission.
“Then tell me everything else you know about Jonash and OIC,” she said.
Alec glanced at her with another unreadable expression, which changed to irritation. Even so, he complied. He talked about Omnibus, telling Nella mostly things she already knew but that showed he had done his homework here, too—left nothing to chance. For example, OIC, one of the world’s largest media conglomerates, had a mega-structure that included everything from cable-television networks to tabloid magazines and newspapers.
Nella shuddered to think what would happen if Alpha Force was revealed in any of them, let alone in all of them. It could no longer function as the ultimate covert military unit.
That couldn’t happen.
They arrived at the OIC headquarters building quickly. Nella couldn’t help feeling nervous. She shook it off. She would succeed.
She had become a medical doctor because she had wanted to learn everything about physiology and the scientific possibilities surrounding beings like her.
She’d joined the very specialized Alpha Force to associate with other shape-shifters and to use her special talents for the good of her country. And of course, to obtain the benefits of its wonderful elixir and participate in studies to improve it.
She might never have another assignment as critical—especially if she failed now.
“It’s your game.” Alec’s growl suggested he wasn’t pleased with that idea. “Where would you like me to park?”
“I saw an alley on the east side when we looked at the layout on the computer, between our target and the office building next door. See if you can pull in there—but watch out for security cameras.”
Fortunately they saw none. The alley was remote and dark and seemed perfect to Nella, especially since it had an area for trash containers beneath an overhang that was currently empty, a good shelter for her to work in. “Let me out here,” she said. “Then go find somewhere to wait.”
“No way.” He glared at her, then pulled the car into the shadows beneath the overhang. “It wasn’t my goal to become your assistant, but since that’s my job now, I’ll stay with you as long as possible. Watch your back. You got any problem with that?”
She did…and she didn’t. “Have it your way,” she said with an indifference she didn’t feel. She grabbed her two bags from the backseat of the car, then got out.
At the front of the car, she pulled the vial of liquid crucial to her operation out of the bigger bag, followed by the other important piece of equipment: the battery-operated light that, when turned on, was close enough to moonlight to allow her to change.
Without another word to Alec, she set up the light right in front of the car, turned it on and, bracing herself for all that was to come, she drank the elixir.
Alec stood between his car and the building, his back against the wall in the darkest gloom of the alley. Watching. Waiting. Preparing himself to scoff at how gullible he’d been to think he was going to see some woo-woo transformation right in front of his eyes.
The same transformation he had seen all those years ago and hadn’t believed because he was drunk—and didn’t want to believe.
Well, he was cold sober now. And he still didn’t want to believe…did he?
The light Nella turned on was focused into a small conic area, but very bright. She had unscrewed the lid from a glass jar and drunk the contents. And then…
She glanced at him as she yanked the sheet they had folded out of the larger of the bags she had brought along, shook it open and held it up as if planning to hide behind it. But then, glaring at him defiantly, she instead shoved it back into the bag. And started peeling off her clothes.
His body reacted as he stared at her lovely form once more, quickly nude. He reacted, subduing an urge to grab her. Make love to her again.
But he realized what she was doing: getting ready to morph into a lynx.
Wasn’t she? Was it real? Did he want it to be real?
Hell, yes. It would mean that he hadn’t been crazy or hallucinating then. That his boss, Congressman Crowther, was a crafty SOB who spouted platitudes about the transparency and openness of the U.S. military to the government employees with sufficient security clearances to supervise its ops, while ensuring that it had the finances to use the most bizarre and potentially useful kinds of really covert resources imaginable. Or unimaginable.
And that he, Alec, had made love with one of the world’s most unique women.
That should bother him, shouldn’t it?
Hell…
He tensed. Nella’s pale body shivered, even as she hunched over. Grew smaller. Smaller?
She had freed her long, light brown hair from its knot behind her head. It appeared to grow shorter—even as fur of the same color appeared on her shrinking body.
In moments Nella was no longer there. In her place stood a feline creature, with dark tufts of fur on its—her—pointed ears. She stood still for an instant as if orienting herself to her surroundings, then turned and ducked so that the strap of the smaller bag Nella had brought draped over her head.
Then she turned and stared straight at Alec with intense golden eyes. Nella’s intense golden eyes, clearly aware of him. Challenging him.
Alec stared back—and to his surprise felt no revulsion, but interest. Attraction of a kind he didn’t understand. Didn’t need to understand. Not now.
For suddenly the lynx bolted from their cover beneath the overhang and into the darkness of the alley.