your fun, ma’am.” She gave a mock salute.
Their dogs leashed beside them, Kristine led Grace toward the emergency-room entrance at the side of the medical center’s largest wing, then around the corner to a delivery area. Fortunately, nothing was going on there. She used her security card to get all four of them back inside the facility.
The tunnel entrance was off a room filled with boxes of benign medical supplies like bandages—but not far from the door to a stairway that, Grace determined, most likely led down to the floor containing labs where fluids and other samples were tested. Made sense, she thought.
Making sure no one was around to see them, they entered the tunnel. Grace saw no particular security there, but not many people were likely to know about this passageway, except staff members who delivered the biohazards to their storage area beyond the main outdoor parking lot. Grace and Kristine and the dogs walked swiftly along the concrete corridor, the sound of their footsteps echoing slightly in the confined area. It was illuminated by occasional recessed lights, and Grace’s nose wrinkled at the dry, musty scent of the surrounding emptiness.
Soon they reached the end. Kristine carefully opened the door and peered out. “We’re okay.” She held the door open, then led Grace and the dogs through a large, nearly empty parking lot toward its far end.
“There.” She pointed toward the concrete outbuilding Grace had seen briefly before—twice, including while shifted. She’d left it to Kristine to start gathering details about it.
The building was compact and nondescript, with a couple of doors visible. It could have been for storage of garden equipment, or electrical fuses and circuitry for the hospital—whatever. The fenced area around it contained yuccas and palm trees and other drought-tolerant plants that were politically correct for this dry climate. The only thing that indicated it was more than a boring, ordinary storage shed was the illuminated office at one end. In it sat a couple of uniformed soldiers.
“Have you talked to the guards?” Grace asked Kristine.
“Yep, at least the ones on duty earlier.
They try to keep their presence low-key, like they’re just guarding the parking lot and not what’s behind that door.”
“But some biohazards were stolen while guys were on watch?”
“Seems that way.”
“Interesting. I’ll need to find out the excuses given by whomever was on duty during the times samples were taken from here.”
“Count me in,” Kristine said. “Sounds like fun. The building’s not as bland as it looks, by the way.” She pointed toward the door farthest to the left. “On that side is the incineration unit where they dispose of the biohazards.”
“Why do they do it here, I wonder?” Grace mused. “Aren’t there companies that are specially rigged to pick up this kind of material to dispose of it offsite, away from the hospitals?”
“I gather it’s because of the volume and security issues,” Kristine said. “Better to deal with it here than take the chance someone will hijack a disposal truck.”
“A bit of irony,” Grace said.
“Seems that way,” her aide acknowledged. “Anyway, it’s nice and eco-friendly, I gather—everything’s burned, not much ash, nothing escapes into the air. Poof, and the danger is gone … unless the stuff’s stolen first.”
“And that’s exactly what we need to stop,” said Grace.
Grace considered asking Kristine to take Tilly back to their quarters on the air-force base, but it was time for one further piece of exploration, and she wanted her cover dog along.
A short while later, Grace walked slowly along the dimly lit corridor deep in the bowels of the Charles Carder Medical Center. Her rubber-soled shoes made no noise on the gleaming linoleum floor, although Tilly’s nails clicked lightly.
She spotted security cameras that hadn’t been doing their job reliably. Neither had other security devices, including those requiring people to use key cards to enter this floor. Many tests were conducted in the multiple labs on this level of the hospital. But all that security, including locked doors and storage cabinets, and guards out by the storage area, hadn’t prevented the disappearance of biohazard materials collected from patients with potentially dangerous communicable diseases. They weren’t always large samples, but their theft was enough to worry those who knew.
Hence Grace’s mission.
What was that? Tilly had heard the soft click, too. She had been well trained not to bark, which would scare off any subject of their hunt. Instead, she sat still on the slick floor and looked up at Grace, waiting for a command.
Grace held up her hand in the signal that meant “good girl.” Then she gave the signal for Tilly to stay.
This was only her second day here. Would it be this easy for her to discover the perpetrator of the thefts? That would be ideal for the U.S. government, and even for Alpha Force. But Grace had hoped to utilize her very special shifting powers more to fulfill her mission …
Her back against the wall, she slid along the hall toward where the click had originated—the opening of one of the many doors along this corridor?
Yes—one only a few feet away from her swung inward. Grace reached down toward her weapon, a small revolver she’d retrieved from Kristine before heading down here this night and hid in a holster strapped to her waist beneath her loose white medical jacket. As a doctor in addition to her other assets and skills, she believed in preserving life—except at the expense of another’s … or hers.
She hadn’t really expected to need to use the gun, but she was prepared, just in case.
In another instant, a man opened a door and strode into the hall. It was Simon.
Chapter 3
“What are you doing here, Grace?” Simon demanded, knowing he sounded defensive. Was she following him?
If so, how? As always, he’d checked around the area carefully before going into the lab. Listened. Scented the air. No one had been around.
He’d have known, especially if it was Grace—wouldn’t he?
But he was imagining her everywhere now. He’d already acknowledged to himself that the tour he’d given her had been far from the first time he thought he sensed her after learning she’d be around.
Even early yesterday, when he shifted back to human form at daybreak, he had thought—worried—that she was nearby. Had even believed he caught her addictive scent.
He was often hazy, though, during and immediately after a shift, especially an uncontrolled one at the full moon. And now, even a partially controlled one. That was something he intended to fix by perfecting what he had just been working on in the lab behind him.
His formulation would not, however, help his imagination.
Grace had motioned for her dog to sit on the hallway floor beside her. Now she regarded Simon coolly yet with a hint of amusement. As if she recalled the old days, when he’d made such an effort to answer each of her questions
