Roman's Gold (Underground Heat, Book 1) (4 page)

“Yeah, I think so. No radio calls to land immediately and turn myself in.” A short bark of a laugh followed the words.

“Sorry about the food crisis. I only thought they’d be with me for a week, but it’s been nearly three.”

The pilot blew out an audible breath. “Yeah, we’re running out of hiding places. Not even sure you’re all that safe anymore—”

“What?” She leaned forward, heart beating harder.

“Uh, sorry. Thought your contact would have told you.”

“He didn’t tell me anything. As long as you opened your mouth, I need to know.”

“Let me check what I can tell you.”

The pilot keyed something into his console. A moment later, her contact—also the head of the shifter underground in California—shimmered into life on the screen. Max’s mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear him because the pilot had muted the sound. The screen faded to gray. “Okay,” he said, “I was cleared to tell you … some things.”

Kate rolled her eyes. She’d taken a huge chance when she signed on to help the underground. It didn’t sit well they were keeping secrets from her.

“It’s the new Tracker task force. They’ve gotten some sort of drug to make them more sensitive to us. According to Max, half a dozen of our hiding places were busted in the last week.”

“I knew the first part—about the drug. Dear God. How many of us did they get?”

“Nearly a hundred.”

She bit her lip. The next question was a hard one, but she wanted to know. “Have they started killing us yet?”

The pilot nodded. “Before they actually sign us into prison.” He grunted in disgust. “Guess they figure if there’s no official record, we never existed.”

Kate dropped her head into her hands and rubbed her temples. “We have to fight back—before they kill all of us.”

“We’re talking about it—”

“We’re going to run out of time while we’re talking.” Her voice ended on a shrill note she didn’t like at all. “Is it like this in the other cities, too?”

Another nod. “Mostly even worse than here.”

Kate sighed. “What’s your plan for all that?” She gestured at the stacks of food crates surrounding her.

“I’ll drop you in the woods behind your home. Scoped it out before I came to get you. It’s actually outside the city. Not an approved zone, but I’ll chance it. It will take less time to unload on the ground than it would if we used the winch to lower each box.”

She thought about the logistics of carrying the twenty or so boxes through thick woods to her house. It would take hours. “Can I get the other three to help? They’re strong enough. In fact, two are well enough to leave—if there were anywhere for them to go.”

“It would be best if you kept them hidden. All you really need for tonight are a couple of boxes. You can bring the rest inside over the next few days.”

“If no one finds them.”

“There’s always that,” he agreed. “I’m starting down. Hang onto something since you’re not strapped in.”

“Earlier, you said I wasn’t safe anymore.”

His hands moved over the controls and the hovercraft banked sharply. “It’s that new task force. They may know who you are. We’re not certain, though. Your best bet is to keep to your normal routine.”

“Why? So they can find me.”

“No, so you don’t look suspicious.”

“What if I don’t agree with that strategy?” Her stomach clenched. The thought of capture and imprisonment made her want to jump out of her skin. Those like her did not do well in prison. The guards passed them around just as freely as they did with hookers. Apparently they hadn’t heard about the part of the two-year-old law forbidding sexual congress with shifters.

The pilot ignored her question. “Landing in T minus ten, nine, eight…”

She gripped an aluminum strut and prepared for impact. Without wings or rotors, landings were jarring. The craft hit, bounced, and hit again. “Ooph.” She groaned and rubbed her tailbone.

The whirr of the pilot’s seatbelt as it retracted rang in her ears. He stood over her, hands extended. “Sorry about that. Let me help you up.”

“Nah, I’m okay.” She scrambled to her feet and draped the strap of her bag over one shoulder. “Let’s get this stuff unloaded.”

It didn’t take all that long. The biggest time-guzzler was unshackling the boxes from where they’d been secured against the body of the hovercraft. She stood and watched the craft float into the air, then turned and looked at the stacks of crates. The woods were thick here. It was possible the food would stay hidden long enough to move it to her basement. She hefted a box. Not bad. If she were careful, she could stack them and take two at a time.

Kate turned in a circle. Everything looked the same.
Crap, which way is home?
Logic dictated downhill, but she wasn’t certain. She sniffed, but all she smelled were trees and small rodents. She clicked the display of her wrist computer, activated a map program, and told it to find her address. It was sluggish because of the tree cover. Eventually, an arrow pointed to her left with the information beneath that she was eight tenths of a mile from her target location. She slid the computer into a pocket, picked up two boxes, and started walking.

She marked her route so she could find the boxes again. It was extra insurance. Her feline sense of smell would probably have been fine without physical symbols. Every time she stopped to notch a tree branch with her pocketknife or scratch something in the dirt, her skin crawled with apprehension, but it was nothing compared with her anxiety once she traded the forest canopy for open streets. It was only about a block to her house, but still…

Cat senses on high alert, shifter magic fanned about her, she crept forward. It would be impossible to explain why she’d emerged from the woods with two crates of black market food. If anyone so much as showed their head, she’d dump the boxes, shift, and make a run for it. She was fast as a mountain lion. Nothing human could catch her.

By the time she came around to her back door, Kate dripped sweat. The next nine trips would have to be after dark. She might have a heart attack if she had to run the gauntlet again in broad daylight. Kate pressed her palm to the lock, grateful for the modern electronics she’d installed a few years back. The door opened and she shoved the boxes inside. Kate sank down on one of them, blowing hard. With shaking hands, she unwound her scarf and mopped her face with it.

Got to check on Tara, Joe, and Mike.

With their animal senses, they would have either heard or smelled her, probably both. They had to be hungry. There hadn’t been any food since yesterday. She got to her feet and unlocked the door leading to the basement. Then she got one of the boxes and balanced it carefully while she made her way down the steep staircase.

Her house was over a hundred years old. Built around nineteen-twenty, it was made of wood and stone and glass. She’d blown into town with another new identity a few months before purchasing it. In those days, she’d worked as a schoolteacher. Normally, she’d have moved away long since, but most of the other houses around her had emptied out as the government made it progressively more difficult to own anything. She’d faked her death a few times and ginned up legal documents, leaving the house to a relative. A smattering of magic to alter her appearance with illusion and she was all set for another twenty-five years or so.

Kate left the lights out, feeling her way from the bottom of the staircase to the hidden wall panel. She used her feline night vision and punched in the code to open it. Joe grabbed the box out of her arms and dropped it on the floor. Mike pried it open with a claw. A bear in his animal form, he was partially shifted. Hunger was easier to tolerate that way. “Wow, Kate. Thanks,” Joe murmured, keeping his voice soft. He pulled a package of crackers and another of processed cheese out and ripped into them.

Kate glanced around. “Where’s Tara?”

“Back here.” The woman’s soft voice sounded from a darkened recess. She was a coyote in her animal form.

“Come eat.” Kate kept her voice neutral. She didn’t want to tell them how bad things were out in the world.

The slightly built woman with long brown hair crept forward. Her eyes were swollen and her face blotchy. Kate wrapped her arms around her. “You’ve been crying. Are you feeling ill again?” Tara had been badly beaten in prison and sexually assaulted repeatedly.

Tara’s dark eyes gleamed in the gloom of the basement. “No. I’ve been listening to the vid feed.”

“What?” Kate drew back, put her hands on Tara’s shoulders, and shook her. Not hard, but enough to get her attention. “You know that’s against the rules. What if someone tracked a net use spike here? Everyone knows I’m gone at work all day. You’ll give yourselves away.”

“It’s my fault.” Mike set down a can of peaches and wiped the back of his paw/hand across his mouth. “We had to know what was going on. Being down here is almost as bad as being in prison.”

“So one of you went upstairs and turned on my computer?”

“I did.” Tara hung her head. “What I heard was so bad I ran away. The guys heard the door, came after me, and dragged me back.”

“Where the fuck did you think you were going to go?” Anger raked Kate’s nerve endings and made her stomach sour.

“We’re putting you at risk.” Joe stopped shoveling food into his mouth and looked at her. “It would be safer for you if we did leave.” He shook tawny hair back from his face. A mountain lion like her, he shared her amber eyes and feline features.

The anger bled out of her. All of them were running scared. What they needed to do was stand and fight, except there weren’t enough of them. Shifters were so long-lived, they produced very few children. They needed an edge and she had no idea what it might be. “There’re a bunch more boxes of food in the woods,” she said slowly. “You might hole up in some of the caves in the hills.”

“I like that.” Mike shimmered back to wholly human form. Like all bear shifters, he had a burly build. Light brown curls fluffed around a strong-boned face. Hazel eyes glittered at the prospect of freedom. “It’s not natural living in this basement. If the fuckers are going to kill me, I’d like to see the sky again and be a bear for a while.” He made a grab for his clothes and got dressed.

“I second that,” Joe muttered.

“Me, too,” Tara chimed in.

“How about this?” Mike’s jaw set in a hard line. He laid a hand on Kate’s arm. “Once it gets dark, you can show us where the food crates are. If you want, you could stay for a while. We could all shift and pretend it was like the old days.”

“What a grand idea.” Tara draped an arm around Joe and leaned into him. He hugged her back.

Kate shut her eyes and blew out a breath. “You may not be as safe—”

“From what I saw on the vid feed today,” Tara interrupted, “you’re not safe here. They’ve got this new elite task force. And a drug which makes it so they can smell us. I saw bunches of us being herded off to prison.” Her voice caught.

Kate didn’t bother to tell her about the shifters being shot.

“Anyway, we’ve decided,” Joe said. “We were going to tell you once you got home. We really appreciate all you’ve done for us, but it’s time for us to go.”

* * * *

An hour after full dark, Kate crept from her house in human form. Her cat wanted out. It had been a struggle to keep it contained.
“But the night hours belong to cats,”
it had whined.
“We never go out at night anymore.”
Kate tried to reason with her bond animal, but safety wasn’t part of the cat’s vocabulary. As far as she was concerned, curving canines, sharp claws, and speed could defeat any enemy.

Kate was dressed all in black; she’d smeared dirt on her face to hide its pale tone. Once she got to the end of the street, she whistled, faded into the nearest trees at the edge of the woods, and waited. One by one, Tara, Joe, and Mike joined her. Kate led the way deeper into the woods, using her feline senses to track her earlier path from marker to marker.

“Here we are,” she whispered. The others’ hearing was just as acute as hers. She had no doubt they heard her.

“Kachingo! Jackpot!” Joe exclaimed and patted a box. Apparently he wasn’t as worried as her about being overheard.

“This is great,” Mike said. “Shit, wonder how the underground gets all this black market food.”

Tara dropped her clothes on one of the boxes. In moments, she shimmered into a sleek coyote and took off at a run through the trees. The men followed suit. Joe nudged her with his muzzle.
“Join us?”

She didn’t think it wise, but the allure of her animal form was impossible to resist. Her cat screeched inside her head.
“Take your damned clothes off.”
A reluctant smile curved Kate’s lips. She loved her speed and her grace as a mountain lion. And the acuity of all her senses. Kate shucked her way out of her garments. She piled them atop the other clothes and gave her body the command to shift.

Yesssss…
Warm fur sprouted, her torso lengthened. Powerful hindquarters bunched and she launched herself after the others. Scents bombarded her. She could tap into her feline sense of smell as a human, but it was so much more acute after she first shifted, it was almost painful. Before the latest spate of governmental edicts a couple of years back, she’d taken to her animal form almost daily. Now she was lucky if she spent an hour a month as a mountain lion. Sometimes, she shifted in her house just to remember what it felt like. It wasn’t enough to satisfy the cat, though, and it had gotten progressively harder to force it into submission. It growled and snapped and told her in no uncertain terms shifters weren’t meant to spend all their time in human form.

“You’re free, sweetie. Go for it,”
she told the cat.

“I intend to.”

Their muzzle twitched. Prey. A field mouse skittered a few feet ahead. Kate pounced. The wonderful taste of hot blood warmed her gullet. She crunched through small bones. Suddenly wary, Kate fanned magic around her. All she felt was Tara, Joe and Mike. After a moment’s hesitation, she ran toward them. They were gamboling in a small clearing; they looked so happy, goddamn it, it broke her heart.