Savage Hunger: Savage, Book 1 (10 page)

They stepped outside onto the wood porch, the boards creaking beneath their footsteps. As they moved down the stairs and away from the house, she glanced around at her surroundings for the first time in daylight.

Her steps faltered and a silent gasp slid past her lips.
The beauty around them momentarily distracted her from the nightmare that had become her life.

The landscape was a lush embodiment of green trees, bushes and grass that scattered around and beyond the property. In the distance, thrusting sharply in a vision of white-tipped glory, was Mt. Hood.

“Come with me.” Warrick strode past her, catching her hand in the process and pulling her after him.

Sienna tried not to focus on the fact that his touch sent tingles of awareness up her arm and struggled to keep pace with him.

They were heading down the same road she’d tried to escape on last night. Her lips twitched, but she wasn’t really amused.

Before Warrick had taken her phone away, she’d been trying to put her ridiculously overpriced smartphone to use and locate where the hell she was on the GPS. But the signal had been too weak, and before anything had come through Warrick had shown up. She really shouldn’t have been so naïve as to think he wouldn’t notice her trying to slip out.

Now she was missing a phone and still had very little idea where they actually were. She glanced around again at their surroundings. Somewhere in central Oregon, that much she could surmise.

Warrick veered off the road and led them into a cluster of trees before stopping beneath a pine.

“How long have you been working for Feloray Laboratories, Sienna?”

And let the questioning begin.

Biting back a sigh, she tugged her hand away and moved to lean back against the trunk of the tree. Warrick touching her, even as innocently as holding her hand, was far too distracting. And she wanted to confess. Right now, more than anything, she wanted someone she could trust. But as much as she ached to, she couldn’t tell him everything. It was too risky.

“Two years. I want to get some experience in the field before I go back to get my master’s degree.”

Warrick paced between the trees, reaching up to grab a branch.

“And what exactly do you do there?”

Sienna inhaled the refreshingly clean air, let it fill her lungs and calm her as she tried to keep her mind sharp.

“Well I went to school to be a biochemist, but right now, there are not a lot of jobs out there, so I’m a grunt. With a promise to be promoted to lab technician soon. Or there was the promise.” Her mouth tightened. “As a grunt I do what they tell me to do. A lot of data entry. A lot of cleaning up of someone else’s mess.”

“And what about the shifters?” He snapped the small, thin branch from the tree and twirled it between his fingers. “Were they just another mess for you to clean up, Sienna?”

Her lips parted and a noise of indignation slipped out. Why was he always so quick to assume the worst? There’d been a time when she could do no wrong in Warrick’s eyes. So much had changed since that time though…he’d changed.

“No. I told you that I wasn’t even aware the shifters existed until yesterday.” Though she couldn’t tell him everything, at least that much was the truth.

“Ah, Sienna. I’m just not quite sure I believe you, kid.” Warrick sighed and glanced away. “You’re hiding something.”

Of course she was, and they both knew it. But he should also be smart enough to realize she wasn’t going to bend on this.

She stared at his profile, the strong line of his jaw and the curl of his mouth expressing his displeasure. The sun shone behind him, silhouetting Warrick’s muscled, beautiful body like he was Adonis.

She’d always done that. Cast Warrick in some deity-like glow that set him above all other men. Made him seem beyond extraordinary.

Her stomach fluttered with awareness. And a heat that had nothing to do with the sun beating down on them slid through her blood.

The silence between them stretched on, seeming louder than the birds chirping happily around them.

For one insane moment, she was tempted to tell him everything. To go grab the jump drive from the bathroom, and unload the emotional burden of keeping this secret.

But again Leo’s warning gave her pause. He hadn’t thrown that in there just for the hell of it, he’d completely believed there to be some kind of threat from a supposed ally to the shifters. And for creatures that shouldn’t have even existed, the P.I.A. was probably their biggest—if not only—ally.

“You trust me, Sienna. I know you do.”

“Look, Warrick, I’ve told you everything I know,” she said softly and sank her teeth into her bottom lip to avoid saying anything else.

He turned on his heel and was next to her before she could blink. His arms slammed against the tree on either side of her.

“Dammit, this isn’t one of your little games, Sienna. There’s a lot at risk here.” His gaze slid over her face and his voice gentled. “So much you can’t even begin to understand.”

With his body pressed just inches from hers, Sienna stilled. Hot awareness slid through her as she stared at the tic in his clenched jaw. Warrick had always had that unrestrained air about him, but the black stubble peppering his jaw made him seem even more dangerous and fierce.

“How did you find out about the shifters?” His voice took on a hypnotic note and she found her gaze unwillingly lifting to meet his.

Everything around them faded as her attention locked onto the gray-blue depths of his eyes. Her breathing slowed as she watched his pupils dilate. A calm settled over her.

Warrick moved his arm and a moment later he traced two fingers lightly down her cheek.

“Tell me, Sienna.”

She exhaled softly. “I was told about them.”

“Good girl.” His thumb brushed over her lower lip. “Who told you about them?”

Can’t tell him that. Don’t tell him that.

His head dipped, his lips so close to hers she could feel the hot breaths of air over her mouth.

Almost of its own violation, her body leaned into his. Her eyelids fluttered closed.

Warrick’s lips grazed the corner of her mouth. “Who told you, Sienna?”

Her lips parted on a sigh. The name ready to roll off her tongue.

“
Warrick
.”

The harsh male voice snapped her from the daze. The heaviness that had taken over her mind and body dissipated and she blinked her eyes open in dismay.

Shit.

Warrick stared down at her, his gaze clouded with frustration and a burning heat that turned her bones to liquid.

“What’s up?” he called back, without moving away from her.

Larson answered a second later. “I need you to help me with something in here.”

Sienna slipped beneath his arm and stumbled away from him. Her ankle hit a protruding root, but she caught herself before she could fall. Her body trembled from the blood rushing through her veins and she shook her head.

Dammit. How had he gotten her to almost spill her guts? What kind of crazy spell—

“We need to get back inside.” His terse command snapped between them before he turned away and walked back toward the safe house.

Obviously he expected her to follow, and really, what choice did she have? Run and get two feet away?

Sienna started after him and tried again to figure out what the hell had just happened.

Immaculate, gold-tipped nails flew across the keys on the keyboard, the rapid succession of clicking noises the only sound in the isolated office.

Jocelyn’s chest tightened as she searched for another key word that might pull up the file on her office computer.

From the corner of her eye she could see Robert pacing in front of the desk. His hands laced in front of him and his head moving back and forth in denial.

He cleared his throat. “We’ve tried everything, my love. The files disappeared with the—”

“Did I ask you to talk? Shut the fuck up.”

Merciful silence returned and she bit back another savage curse as her latest search indicated that no matching file was found. Her head started to pound and she pulled her hands from the keys to press her fingertips to her temples.

Christ almighty. How in the hell could this have happened?

Years. She’d spent years planning this. And now it was gone. Everything. The shifters. The data on what the shifters had been given.

“Surely somebody backed this information up?” she said tightly. “Didn’t you send it to me?”

“You requested the only place the data be stored was on the computer in the labs and the jump drive.”

And they’d burned down the lab after discovering the jump drive was now missing.
Taken by that little lab rat, no doubt. And the one man who could’ve recreated the data had been killed in the fire at the lab.

The pounding in her head grew stronger and a bitter smile twisted her lips. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so quick to issue his death sentence.

“You wanted as little information as possible that could be traced back to you,” Robert reminded her delicately.

“I remember what I ordered.” Her terse response had her lover flinching and stepping back. “I didn’t count on the man we hired to help growing a goddamned conscience.”

And steal the jump drive and hand it off to some unremarkable grad student…

“Has there been any update on Sienna Peters?” she demanded. “Have the police found her yet?”

She had insiders within the police department. If Sienna were to be arrested it would be all too simple to retrieve the jump drive and make the woman simply disappear. Or perhaps arrange another accident.

“No. She’s managed to avoid police detection. Her apartment hasn’t been accessed and her car is still in the parking lot at Feloray Laboratories where she was last spotted attending the gala.”

Jocelyn issued a harsh laugh. “Her face is all over the news. The police are after her. How is it possible no one has seen her?”

There was another bout of silence and when she glanced up at Robert something about his fidgety demeanor sent alarm bells off in her head.

“What is it you’re not telling me?”

He scratched the back of his head and cleared his throat. “I was waiting to say something until I could confirm—”

“
Spit it out already
.”

“It’s possible Sienna is having help and being hidden.”

Stilling, Jocelyn cocked her head. “Just who do you think is helping her?”

“The P.I.A.”

The blood rushed to her head and Jocelyn let out a strangled noise of denial. “How is this possible? We have someone on the inside with them.”

“We do. And that someone is avoiding any of my attempts at contacting him. The number we were given has been disconnected.”

She leaned back in her chair, lips parted in dismay, and turned to stare out the window. Was it possible? That the agent they’d carefully recruited and groomed for this job had turned against them? Had he told the rest of the P.I.A. who was behind the shifters’ imprisonment?

No. If so there would have been agents at her doorstep by now.

Jocelyn steepled her hands and tapped the trembling tips against her mouth.
Christ almighty.
Which meant that it was more than likely the agent had taken the payment she’d doled out, had managed to free the shifters and now hoped to make a clean break.

Except nobody had foreseen Sienna Peters getting mixed up in the equation.

“I do have some other news that might be of interest to you.”

“Robert, any news you have is of interest to me. Dammit, stop holding things back from me and spill it.”

“Sienna Peters is the daughter of Kevin Peters. In case you’re not aware, he’s—”

“I know exactly who Kevin Peters is.” Her pulse quickened and excitement zinged through her. Perhaps everything was not lost after all.

“We need to locate Miss Peters. Preferably alive.” Her mind spun with possibilities. “She could be the key to this. If we can find her, we can use her. And perhaps find our inside agent.”

She would be the perfect bait in gaining Kevin Peters’s assistance as well. If they failed at retrieving the jump drive, then Kevin Peters’s brilliant mind could be an even better plan.

Robert’s head nodded eagerly. “I’m going to see if she’s made any calls on her cell phone lately. They can trace that, right? See what tower her call bounced off of?”

“Yes. I like that idea.” She nodded absently. With a dismissive wave of her hand she turned back to her computer, murmuring, “But before you do that, make yourself useful and bring me a vodka tonic.”

“They released the name of the man killed in the fire.”

Warrick’s ears perked up at Larson’s casual statement. In fact, all the agents who’d been trying to relax around the table looked a little more alert now. They’d spent a good part of the day keeping the shifters tranquilized and on the phone with headquarters and were finally enjoying a bit of downtime.