Living Extinct (8 page)

“I’m driving,” he barked, his voice still too husky to clearly form the words. He reached inside and slammed the vehicle into park.

Moira shot to the passenger side, letting out a squeal when Juan opened that door.

“It would be nice if you’d allow me time to get my clothes.” His usual charm had a hard edge to it.

Moira swallowed a scream, turning the sound that escaped her lips into a frustrated grunt. She had a damn good view of Juan’s cock as he straightened, leaving the passenger door open. He gave her a nice ass shot when he walked to the open door of the cabin.

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Living Extinct

She was either too stunned to fight, or the realization that escape was futile had finally sunk in. There was no resistance when Dante took her wrist, pulling her naked body to his and yanking her out of the car. He was a bit too rough when he opened the back door and shoved her onto the seat, sliding in next to her. She’d learn real damn fast that he could be pushed only so far. Had she succeeded in leaving him on the side of the mountain, it wouldn’t have been pretty when he caught up with her.

Juan didn’t waste time dressing then shut the passenger door before sliding behind the driver’s seat. “You two don’t do anything back there that I wouldn’t do.” His usual teasing nature had returned. “And Dante, damn, man. A new hood for this thing is going to cost a pretty penny.”

Moira froze. The car pulled away from the small cabin. Dante didn’t let go of her and she didn’t resist him. Sensing an overwhelming sadness creeping from her pores usually would have had an impact on him, but the carnal side of him hadn’t faded yet.

Anger, need and primal, determined lust spawned by a hard run in his fur dominated the air around them. Whether she could climb into his mind or not, there wasn’t a shred of doubt in him that she smelled his emotions.

At the moment, he couldn’t have cared less.

39

Lorie O’Clare

Stale coffee and the aging smell of flour, sugar and fried oil hung heavily as the afternoon wore on. Two more weeks and Rose Silverman’s thirty-day notice would be up. She’d served her time and diligently entered data for Werewolf Affairs for over five years. A change was needed. Time to raise her cubs instead of letting some day care service do it.

The mountains beckoned to her as she stared out the window at the end of the narrow office—an office she’d grown to think of as a caged pen. No more artificial air.

No more stale smells that lingered day after day in the busy office. Rose couldn’t wait to run in the meadows, get more involved with her pack, lay her kill at her mate’s feet.

Her computer beeped, indicating she had mail. Rose glanced at it then focused on the clock on the wall that ticked endlessly. No more watching the clock, aching for five o’clock to come around. No more responding to tedious e-mails.

The phone rang. Mattie Wilson, one of the younger bitches in the office, grabbed it.

Not a problem. Rose didn’t mind letting the others at Werewolf Affairs fight to work their way up the ladder. She was so close to being out of there.

“WA,” Mattie said in a cheerful voice.

Rose remembered the time one of the younger secretaries answered the phone, saying, “Werewolf Affairs.” A big no-no. Even though humans, for the most part, tolerated the packs in their cities didn’t mean that they wanted to hear about werewolves. One wrong number dialed and they’d have headaches for weeks. Very few humans knew about this particular branch of the FBI.

The doors opened into the lobby just past the secretarial pool. For a brief moment Rose smelled the outdoors, the hint of rain coming off the mountains, the many scents carried in on the cool afternoon breeze. The smells faded quickly, aftershave and the thick odor of werewolves taking over. Their masculine scents grew. Rose glanced toward them, noticing two werewolves in suits just past the double doors.

“Rose?” Mattie turned around, her expression puzzled. “I don’t know how to do this.”

“How to do what?” Rose gave Mattie half her attention.

Outside the secretarial pool, the two werewolves strolled inside like they owned the place. Curiosity hit her.

Mattie smelled her interest in the men outside and frowned. Rose gave her a defiant look. She was a happily mated bitch and didn’t give a rat’s ass if some other bitch misinterpreted what she smelled.

“What do you need?” she asked stiffly.

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Living Extinct

“It’s someone in Washington.” Mattie held up her receiver, her hand covering the mouthpiece. “They want me to pull up a file and delete it. I don’t have clearance.”

“Put them on hold and transfer it to me.” Rose glared at the younger woman for her lack of professionalism. “I’ll take the call.”

Mattie didn’t like relinquishing such an important call. Frustration filled the air, blocking the scents of the werewolves in the outer office. No one had asked Rose to train someone to take her place so she wasn’t going to waste time giving explanations.

“This is Rose Silverman,” she said politely into the phone. Her attention remained on the two werewolves standing on the other side of the doors to the secretarial pool.

She would die to know what they were doing here. “How may I help you?”

“I’ve got a code zero that I need to send through,” the young werewolf on the other end of the line said. He offered his identification number, which she typed in to the computer for validation.

Rose brought up the appropriate screen. Mattie had moved behind her. Let the bitch watch if she wanted. It wouldn’t surprise Rose at all if Mattie fought to get her job before she even had her paws out the door.

“Your identification number is verified,” she told him, then offered hers and listened while he typed it in.

“You’re verified as well.” The mundane policy was simple, yet necessary so that no one could pretend to be with the agency and remove werewolves from the system.

Rose clicked on the file. It popped up on the screen, and she read the numbers that the computer gave the file. “Code number is seven, seven, five, three, zero, four.”

The werewolf on the other end of the line repeated the numbers back to her. Rose barely listened. Distracted when the two werewolves in suits entered the inner office, she grunted into the phone. Mattie moved around her quickly, all smiles as she quickly asked the werewolves if they’d like coffee. The other bitches in the office all quit working as well.

Once upon a time, Rose would have growled at the bitches in the office for giving a lazy appearance. The last thing they wanted werewolves from Washington thinking was that they didn’t run a tight ship here. She no longer cared though. Her days here were over. Just two more weeks and what happened with the government would no longer be any concern of hers.

Before long she’d be with her cubs all day, taking them to school, picking them up.

No longer would they be bussed to after-school care, forced to be civil around humans.

Rose and her mate, Bruce, believed in raising their den to be respectful of humans. After all, they were a lesser species, half of a whole. But neither of them had ever wanted their cubs to have to deal with humans on a daily basis. Soon she’d be raising her cubs the werewolf way, getting more active with the pack, joining the committees and tending to pack business.

“Okay. Transmitting the file for deletion now.” The werewolf on the other end of the phone brought her back to reality.

41

Lorie O’Clare

For now, she still worked here, still had a job to do. A code zero meant some poor werewolf had died on the job. Part of what she did was delete all knowledge that the agent had ever worked with WA—basically doing cleanup. Within minutes, it would be as if the werewolf never existed. Agents for WA, and especially GWAR, the more covert part of the agency, sure got a fine farewell if they didn’t make it back from a mission.

Not her problem.

“It’s loading now. Approximate deletion time one minute and thirty seconds.” It had been policy for longer than she’d worked there that two members of WA had to witness the deletion of a file.

And it made sense. Sort of a checks-and-balances type of thing. The werewolf on the other end of the line stared at the same thing on his screen that she saw on hers. No one werewolf could go around deleting files this way.

She looked up when she heard Mattie say her name and then point to her. Rose raised an eyebrow as the two werewolves in suits gave her their attention.

“A file has just been sent to you for deletion,” one of the suits said to her, not making it a question.

“I’ve got it on the screen now.” She didn’t know why her stomach suddenly twisted in knots.

“Stop the deletion.” The same werewolf gave the order as if it were that simple a process.

“What?” she stammered, staring down at the red bar that moved to the halfway point on her screen.

Forty-five seconds remained until this werewolf disappeared in to the void of Nowheresville.

“It’s already in progress.” Suddenly she felt as green as some of the other bitches in the office.

The small picture on the top right-hand corner of her screen caught her eye first.

Rose remembered the young bitch being in the office just a few days ago. Her caramel-colored skin and long, sleek black hair made her stand out easily. Rose hadn’t spoken to the bitch personally, but she’d overheard her say a few words to one of the other agents.

The young bitch had a lovely accent. Not an American werewolf. Rose hadn’t been sure what pack the agent was from. Too many of the agents with WA, and especially with GWAR, didn’t belong to packs. Rose remembered thinking the bitch was so young to be living a life of such solitude.

She glanced at the two werewolves. “I’ve never seen either of you before.”

“Not surprising.” The older of the two agents offered no further explanation, instead rattling off his identification number to her.

The second agent did the same.

Quickly pulling up both agents on a separate screen, she looked at the pictures of the two werewolves, which matched the males in front of her.

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Living Extinct

“Are you sure you want me to stop the deletion?” Rose raced to get her thoughts in order and remember the reversal sequence required to stop a deletion. The werewolf, a tall, thin man with graying hair and equally gray eyes, reached around her desk and took the phone from her before she could react. Placing it quietly on its cradle, his smell grew aggressive.

“Stop the deletion now.”

Rose’s heart started pounding. She hit the wrong key at first and then quickly struck the backspace key. Twenty-five seconds remained.

“I can’t,” she began, quickly clearing her voice. There was nothing worse than being intimidated by some werewolf with a God complex. “There is no way one werewolf can reverse this process.”

She glared at him, gathering her wits about her quickly. What was he going to do, fire her?

The other werewolf moved around one of the unoccupied desks. “Give me the code.”

Rose licked her lips. There was procedure to follow here. At the moment, she couldn’t remember for the life of her what it was, but it was clearly written policy somewhere. Nothing happened in WA that wasn’t laid out in written policy.

Rose heard herself rattling off the code while she clicked on the file, and then found the abort screen. The pretty young bitch whose picture stared at her shouldn’t be wiped out of the system if she wasn’t dead. Rose didn’t remember much about her, but if they’d discovered at the last minute that she’d lived instead of died on her mission, then Rose would do her part to ensure she didn’t go through hell for it. Wiping a werewolf out with a code zero meant they no longer existed. The bitch had been too young to die.

Rose watched the program start to run. She scanned the profile of the young bitch, Moira Tangaree, age twenty-three. She was from the island of Malta. Rose had never heard of Malta werewolves, but there were many breeds out there. She imagined the young bitch’s pack were beautiful in their furs.

“It’s taken care of,” the werewolf at the desk said.

The older werewolf looked down at her and nodded once. “Shut down your computer and come with us, please.”

Rose didn’t like the sound of that. She glared at him, doing what he asked and ignoring the curious stares of the other bitches in the room. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Respect ran deep among werewolves. She wouldn’t question the two werewolves in front of the other bitches. But as soon as they were alone…

“Show me your badges, please,” she said first thing when the two werewolves closed the door behind them.

She crossed her arms and stared at the suits, managing to keep her heart from pounding furiously in her chest. There was no way they’d smell her nervousness.

43

Lorie O’Clare

“Of course.” The gray-haired werewolf moved around the desk.

This was Paul Ortiz’ office, her boss. Most of the time he was in the field, as he’d been all week. Rose pretty much ran this branch. The older agent pushed a button on the side of the desk, allowing a small panel to appear. Without hesitating, he punched in the code that secured the office, locking the door and ensuring no recording devices were activated.

Rose’s heart lodged in her throat. No one was supposed to know that panel existed.

One at a time the two werewolves showed her their badges. She nodded mutely, noting only the stamped insignia indicating they were official WA agents. She despised the salty smell of nervousness, especially when it came from her.

“Rose. Have a seat.” The gray werewolf barely moved his mouth when he spoke.

She swallowed, fighting fear that welled up inside her. She’d done nothing wrong.

No matter that these werewolves had the power to destroy a den, a pack, anyone—that wouldn’t happen to her. All she did was clerical work. Her review had come back with rave scores. In two weeks she’d be out of here. There wasn’t a damn thing to worry about.

Taking the seat opposite him, she straightened, holding her head high. “What can I do for you?” she asked calmly.