Shifter's Claim (The Shadow Shifters) (17 page)

He was asking if Bas would kill Priya when Rome ordered it. Bas had asked himself that question more than once since meeting her and still hadn’t come up with an answer.

“It’s not going to come to that.”

“There’s no alternate ending here, Bas,” Jacques warned.

At that Bas growled, his cat fighting the words as vehemently as the man intended to. “I said I know what I’m doing! I’ll handle her and I’ll deal with Rome.”

“He’s the head of the Stateside Assembly. Just how do you plan to
deal
with him?”

That question was meant to leave a stinging impact on Bas. What it did in actuality was piss him off just a little more. “I said I’d deal with it and I will,” was his final retort. “What you need to do is find those rogues and let me know the moment we’re ready to head out and bring those fuckers back to the bunker. Are we clear on that?”

Jacques turned from him then, focusing his gaze on the monitors once more. “Clear as ice, sir,” was his stony reply.

*   *   *

Bas didn’t slam the door to his office, that would have been futile. He didn’t swipe all the papers from his desk, curse a blue streak, or even growl like his kind was used to doing. As angered as he was by Jacques’s words of killing Priya, he wouldn’t let it show. He couldn’t.

Sitting at his desk, he switched on his computer and waited. Elbows planted on the desk blotter, hands folded, he let his forehead fall into his palms. In and out, he breathed slowly, not counting down from one hundred because that tended to irritate him more than help. Instead he focused on the air around him, the intake and expulsion, his lungs inflating and deflating. Focus.

On that last intake of breath his teeth clenched. He could still smell her. Not the jasmine or hibiscus or the simply alluring scent he’d first lifted from her that night in the hotel, but her essence. It was the barest, most primal part of her and he could still smell it on his hands even though he’d stopped to wash them after leaving her in the spa. Inhaling deeply he let the scent waft through him and closed his eyes.

“Dammit!”

His palms flattened on the desk loudly.

Focus, he reminded himself. Just fucking focus.

His fingers moved quickly over the keyboard until his e-mail box was up displaying over one hundred unread messages. The first one he clicked on was from Jacques. It was Priya’s background report. He read it word for word, twice. Then cursed again.

None of this was news to him. She was a reporter, the youngest of four children, struggling financially, but living the life she’d always wanted to live. Or so it appeared. There had to be something, a big-ass something that would make her act recklessly enough to pursue a story that wasn’t authorized by her boss and to risk her life.

There were three more attachments to the e-mail, one that was a list of IP addresses and locations. Another that showed an e-mail that had been sent to [email protected] from [email protected].

They must be exposed. Deadline: 60 days

Bas looked away from the computer to the desk calendar and counted from the date of the e-mail forward. Twenty-two days left. Now there was a rumble in his chest, his fingers curled into a fist, and his temples throbbed. Somebody was threatening her to expose them, the question was who and why.

Just as he was about to dedicate some time to trying to figure that out there was a knock at his door.

“Come in,” Bas said, pressing a button to clear his computer screen.

“Got something for you, boss,” Dana Booth said as he stepped into his office.

The massage therapist was also a shadow shifter and a damn good researcher as well.

Bas signaled him to come in and waited until he was seated across from him before replying, “What did you find?”

“The shipment came from the lab, just like the labels said. As far as I could trace they left the Comastaz facility one week ago; the refrigeration apparatus built into the crates was only good for seven days. The samples needed to make it to their destination by then or risk contamination.”

“So they’re no good now?” Bas asked, not sure why but not altogether pleased by that assessment.

Dana shook his head. “No good now. But somebody at that lab put a trace on those crates. See, at first they were shipped through UPS to an address in Mexico. Then back to the US with the drugs and guns.”

“Why?” Bas asked immediately. “Why ship crates of blood from the US to Mexico then back to the US again?”

“That’s where I come up short. My thought is we need to get somebody into Comastaz to get some definitive answers. Unless one of those buttheads in the bunker starts giving up some real information.”

Bas was almost positive he’d gotten all the information he was going to get from them. They couldn’t tell what they didn’t know and it made sense that they weren’t trusted with all the pertinent information. After dismissing Dana and thanking him for the information, Bas sat back in his chair, thinking about how fucked up things were becoming on the shifter front and how one woman was once again turning him inside out. He let loose a roar that may have startled the resort guests if he hadn’t ensured that his office was soundproof and situated at the farthest end of the floor.

Inside his cat paced impatiently and Bas, against the training he’d implemented years before, let it roam. He allowed the pushing and felt the crack of bones as the partial shift took over. It wasn’t something they did often, but his restraint and patience had taught the cat this type of obedience, this yielding to the human form that Bas had required after Mariah’s death.

His elongated teeth pricked his bottom lip, eyes dilated until he knew they were no longer gray but golden yellow. He roared again, pushing away from his desk to go and stand at the window. It was growing dark outside even though he had no idea how long he’d been closed in here. The cat wanted to run, it wanted to hunt, to kill whoever was threatening Priya. Bas needed to find out who that was first, he needed to find that out before he did anything else, before she found proof of their existence and before Rome ordered her death.

Chapter 15

She was in his room, again. Locked in, even if discreetly and it was partially her fault this time. After Bas had left her naked and unfulfilled on the table in the spa she’d hurriedly dressed and opened the door to go after him. Only to run face-first into the wide, hard chest of a man with a squared jaw and a tribal tattoo wrapped around his neck.

“I’ll take you upstairs, ma’am,” he’d said in a robotic tone.

“No, thank you. I know my way,” she’d said, then tried to move around him. She should have known that wasn’t going to work since he almost blocked the entire doorway with his spread-leg stance and bodybuilder-like physique. A body that should have aroused her, considering the nerve-wracking point she had approached with her celibacy endeavor. But there was nothing, only the low hum of being jilted by the infamous Sebastian Perry.

“I will take you,” he continued as he stepped to the side to let her pass, and then quickly moved to stand beside her once she was in the hallway. “Mr. Perry’s orders.”

Of course, she thought, frowning at his words. “You follow all of Mr. Perry’s orders?” Everybody around here seemed to do whatever that man said.

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I do.”

“Why?” she demanded, then softened her voice a little. “I mean, do you work for the resort or Mr. Perry personally?”

There was no immediate response and Priya thought he might not answer her at all. When she looked over to him he seemed to be contemplating what to say.

“Does Mr. Perry dictate your answers too?”

He did something then that shocked her. He smiled, a wide toothy grin that gave this large muscled man a mischievous little-boy look that reminded her of Malik.

“He does not dictate anything. I just do my job,” he told her.

“And right now your job is to escort me up to his room and lock me inside. Am I correct?” she continued when they’d walked through the reception area of the spa, out the double doors that led into the resort.

“My job is to make sure you are safe until he returns.”

“Oh, like a bodyguard? I’ve never had my own private bodyguard before.” Her fake exuberance did not appear to be lost on him, but it obviously did not change his course.

He shook his head. “Then I guess I’m honored.”

Once inside the elevator she looked the man up and down once more. He wasn’t her enemy, she thought drably. He wasn’t the man who’d driven her desire up so high and so fast she thought she might actually die when the release finally hit her, then left her there looking and feeling like a fool. He was just doing his job and she was taking her sexual frustrations out on him.

“What’s your name?” she asked. “Or are you allowed to tell me?”

“I’m Paolo.”

He spoke like he wanted to say more but was maybe being forced not to. That might be taking things a little too far, she thought, since there was no one here to actually stop him from talking.

“Nice to meet you, Paolo,” was her simple reply.

From there Priya had chosen not to fire off any more questions about Bas or the staff. Mostly because she knew he wasn’t going to give her any of the answers she hoped for. The fact was Bas was clearly the boss here at Perryville. He was the boss and he was the only man that had ever aroused her and left her hanging, which she feared was a bigger issue than his staff refusing to give up any dirt about him.

Still, she’d been amused as they approached the door to Bas’s suite and she wondered how they would get in. Standing close and watching his every move, she asked, “Don’t tell me you don’t have a key,” she quipped.

Paolo turned to her then, giving her a breathtaking smile that might have stopped the heart of another woman, but paled in comparison to Bas’s reserved allure. “I have a temporary code,” was his reply.

Priya nodded as he turned his attention back to the control panel, watching every button he pushed, filing the information away for later use.

Now, here she was once again in the room that had secret doors and computers with basically no information on them. Light switches she couldn’t find, windows that had no latches, automatic mini-blinds that worked on anyone else’s command but hers. And just because she was already thinking that things couldn’t get any worse, her cell phone chirped.

A few seconds later Priya was mumbling something to herself, dropping her head into her hands, and sighing. Lolo couldn’t trace the e-mails, not even the one she’d received just yesterday. So she still had no idea who was blackmailing her. Two weeks ago they’d sent her a picture of Malik. He’d looked okay, disgruntled and probably angry as hell at being held captive. But she had no idea where he was.

Coming here was supposed to help him. It was supposed to lead her to the answers they wanted. Instead, courtesy of the reputed playboy, she’d been sucked into his spell, letting him touch her and take her to higher heights than she’d ever reached before. She’d thought it would help break down his barriers, but she didn’t know any more now than she’d known before. Obviously she wasn’t good at the sex-in-exchange-for-information work ethic, either.

In twenty-two days her brother would be killed and her mother would be devastated. Priya would be a failure both on the professional and the familial fronts. And then what?

“Dammit!” she cursed, replying to Lolo’s text with quick keystrokes.

Pausing, she reached farther into her purse and pulled out that business card. She was texting him the e-mail address and telephone number of Agent Dorian Wilson. She wanted him to send the e-mail message to the FBI. If she couldn’t save Malik, maybe the Feds could.

With that done, Priya also admitted that it was time for her to leave Perryville. Bas wasn’t going to give her any information she needed, no matter his “trust me, I can help you” routine. It was all a part of his seduction. It was that reputed seduction that had garnered him so many women and his infamous reputation. Besides that, he would never betray Roman Reynolds, the same way none of his employees here would ever betray him. She found her other bag and pulled out some clean clothes. The first thing she needed to do, desperately because this scent that hovered over her was driving her mad with rage, was take a hot shower to rinse his traitorous touch from her skin. Then, she was getting the hell out of this room; if she had to break through a window to get someone’s attention, she was leaving Perryville Resorts tonight!

*   *   *

It was quiet in his room when Bas returned, blissfully so. During the entire ride up the five floors to his penthouse suite his mind had buzzed with words like
human, rogue, breasts, guns, blood, sweet, wet, drugs,
until he was sure his fist would connect with the wall at any moment. Squeezing the bridge of his nose as he stepped off the elevator, Bas reached for focus once more, for balance. Two things that had been hard as hell to come by in the years since he’d returned from the Gungi.

Memories of that night had assailed him on a regular basis, and then, each time he opened or closed his eyes he’d see hers—blue eyes, light and helpless, and soulless because of him. On the heels of his parents’ divorce, not being able to save Mariah had been devastating to Bas. It had also been the catalyst to his rebirth, or should he say the emergence of the man he was today. The fearless and shrewd businessman who never took no for an answer and never did anything half-assed. On a good day he was flawless, on a bad one, he was still better than the vast majority of ass-kissing backstabbers in the business. As far as the Assembly went, he was a hell of a fighter and a leader, as recognized by his appointment to Faction Leader. He was also a loyal friend to Rome and had pledged his allegiance to him eternally.

Or until the moment the leader asked him to kill Priya.

Then, they were definitely going to have problems.

As he walked into the suite he couldn’t come up with the words to explain why he felt so protective of her, or why he wanted so desperately to harbor the one person on this earth at the moment that could do the most harm to his people. She could destroy them all with one story, one revelation, and then where would they be? The staunchest and fiercest rule of the
Ètica
was their autonomy, because it not only prevented the shifters from having to go into a defensive mode among the human world but it also protected the humans from the unknown that would surely be the death of them. With that said, was it fair not to give them the heads-up that there was another race living amongst them, a very deadly-if-provoked race at that? Priya had posed that question to him last night and Bas had been haunted by her words ever since.