“You drop me off here.” Eric pointed to a spot on Highway 95. “I’ll go through the desert. It’s dark now, and I’m very good at navigating terrain without being seen.”

“It’s a long way, and it’s rough,” Xavier said. “Mountains, canyons, dry lakes, you name it.”

“Norway wasn’t easy either, and this time I don’t have bombs strapped to me.”

Diego interrupted. “Fine for you getting in. But how are you going to get Iona and Cassidy out safely, with my daughter?”

“Reid.”

Diego relaxed a little, but only a little. “Reid can only teleport to someplace he’s seen.”

“Which is why you’re giving me a satellite phone and a camera and a way to send you photos with your state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. Show the photos to Reid, and he can get there.” Eric hoped.

“Eric, this is my mate and daughter…”

“And when I need a helicopter and machine guns, I’ll call you. There’s no way you can keep up with me through the desert, no way you can sneak into wherever they are like I can. If you want to drive around to the front gate and create a distraction, be my guest. But I need someone to get the photos to Reid as soon as I send them.”

“Diego, he’s right,” Xavier said. “It would take you too long to cross that country on foot, and any vehicle will be seen. Let him go. I’ll take care of alerting Reid.”

Diego’s face was hard, but he gave Eric a nod. “Fine.” He fingered his pistol again. “If you want a distraction, I’ll give you a distraction.”

“It’s still a long way,” Xavier said to Eric. “Straight through desert, no water. You sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be just fine,” Eric said.

The mate bond would pull him on. It was already urging him out the door, to run, run, run to Iona’s side.

“Get me the equipment and let’s go,” Eric said. Every minute could be a minute too late.

“You got it,” Xavier said. He managed a grin. “Say hi to the aliens for me.”

Up, up, and up. Iona climbed eight floors, panting by the time she reached the top. She opened the door a crack, and finally found people.

Not many. She hadn’t scented them in the stairwell—she’d smelled them only when she opened the door, which meant the doorway must be airtight. To keep germs out, she reasoned as she slunk inside.

This floor was a laboratory. While she’d found the lower floors to be old and cluttered, the lab here had state-of-the-art technology.

Rows of sealed, glassed-in cooling units marched down the room, each containing racks and racks of test tubes. Lab tables held glass-fronted exhaust hoods with gloves extending into them so people wouldn’t have to put their bare hands onto whatever was inside. At the far end of the room, two people wearing white clean-room suits and surgical caps studied large flat-screen computer monitors.

Iona was bringing her panther germs and the dirt from the floors below into their pristine lab. Aw, wasn’t that too bad?

Being a black cat against all this white was a decided disadvantage. Iona slunk from bench to bench, keeping low. The lab workers, fascinated by whatever was on their screens, never looked up and never saw her.

As Iona paused to decide what to do—rip into their bodies until they talked or question them calmly?—she heard Amanda cry.

The sound was faint, very weak, and would have been inaudible to a human. But Iona, Shifter and now a member of the cub’s pride, heard her loud and clear.

Iona couldn’t smell Amanda, which meant they had her sealed in someplace, like the hoods on the lab tables. She’d kill them.

The thought formed and grew, delighting the half-Shifter beast and panther. Even Iona the human wasn’t alarmed. Killing these researchers for hurting Amanda sounded like a good idea.

Iona picked her way forward as far as she could as a panther, then silently rose into her human form—effortlessly this time. She took a small acetylene torch from a holder on one of the lab benches and walked forward on bare feet.

As she drew closer, she saw that the large computer screens nearly hid a small glass window behind them. The two researchers fixed their attention not on the window, but on the screens, which showed electronic scans of a baby. Amanda.

Amanda lay beyond the glass in a room where she was being X-rayed or MRI’d or whatever, and she was crying.

Iona turned on the acetylene torch, stepped forward, and aimed the stream of fire at one of the computer screens. It melted.

The researchers, a man and a woman, swung around. The woman screamed. The man said in shock, “What the hell?”

Neither looked like they were going to grab for her, so Iona melted the second computer monitor. Both were now nicely warped, useless hunks of plastic.

“Open up that room and take her out of there,” Iona commanded.

“How did you escape?” the man asked, still staring. “Where are your clothes?” His gaze swiveled to Iona’s br**sts, his mouth dropping open. Some researcher he was.

“Robbie,” the woman wailed.

“Don’t worry,” Robbie said. “She’s not a Shifter. Call security.”

Iona snarled. She morphed into her half-Shifter beast, swung the acetylene torch’s canister, and smacked Robbie on the side of the head with it. Robbie’s eyes rolled back, and he fell to the linoleum in a boneless heap.

The woman screamed again and dove for the red fire alarm on the wall. Iona got there before she did, smacked the woman out of the way, and slammed her fist against the base of the woman’s skull. The woman slid silently downward, joining Robbie on the floor.

Iona set down the torch and fumbled to open the door imprisoning Amanda, praying it wasn’t sealed by an electronic lock opened by the computers she’d just melted. But, no, the researchers were at least wise enough to have a door with an ordinary handle, which Iona nearly broke when she wrenched open the door.

She rushed inside the little booth, which had scanners surrounding the tiny baby on the table. Amanda’s body was nearly covered with sticky nodes that attached multiple wires to her skin. She too was being fed an IV drip, the needle huge in the tiny arm into which it had been shoved.

Amanda was crying fretfully, a child alone, scared, and unhappy. Iona peeled the disks from the baby’s skin and gently tugged the needle out of her arm. Amanda began to cry more strongly, and Iona swept her up.