Guardian Wolf

chapter 2



“Hello, Grace.” Simon continued to stride into the room when he saw her. Of course he had expected to see her here. Colonel Otis had ordered Simon to act as her tour guide that day.

For reasons he didn’t want to think about too deeply, he had agreed without objection.

Grace rose from a chair facing the colonel’s desk and turned. Her movements were slow and supple, her expression neutral. “Hi, Simon,” she said in a soft, cool monotone.

“So you’ve met.” Colonel Nelson Otis sounded irritated, as if he’d planned some startling introduction. Like, Parran, you stupid civilian doctor, I want you to meet this pretty lady physician who was smart enough to join the military. Otis had made it clear he held the civilians around here in disdain. “I thought you’d mostly dealt with the clerical staff yesterday, Dr. Andreas,” Otis continued, “filling out forms, reviewing hospital policies and all that.”

“Pretty much.” Grace crossed the room toward Simon. She didn’t mention that they’d met before. A good thing. Otherwise, they might have to explain the circumstances, and that could be uncomfortable even now. She held out her hand for a businesslike shake. “Good to see you again, Simon.”

Her grip was firm, even as her sable-brown eyes flashed with her lie. She’d been one hell of a good-looker back then. Now, she was even more beautiful, if that was possible: slender in her scrubs and medical jacket, with pert facial features including high cheekbones. Her silver-blond hair had been longer before. Now it was styled in a shaggy cut that brushed her eyebrows and skimmed her shoulders. She smelled like flowers, light and fragrant, yet there was also something heavier about her scent. Something damned appealing. And familiar. He’d imagined smelling it again from the moment he’d heard the name Grace Andreas once more. Her lips were pursed, but he suspected they’d still be highly enjoyable to kiss.

Not that he’d ever get the chance to test that theory.

“Good to see you, too,” he said, sorry to realize that he meant it. Many of the times he’d thought of Grace during the years since they’d met in their first term of pre-med studies, he’d wondered if she had followed through, become a doctor. If so, where she practiced. If not, what else she’d done with her life.

He could have found out. The Internet was filled with resources that could tell him.

He purposely hadn’t looked.

“So,” he said, “you ready to go see the Charles Carder Infectious Diseases Center?”

“Sure.” She turned back to the commander and saluted smartly. “Thank you, sir.”

Yeah, Simon got it even before seeing her. She was in the military despite being dressed like him. The idea turned him off—a little, at least. He had joined the medical staff for reasons of his own. It didn’t mean he had to like the fact that this hospital was affiliated with, and run by, the military.

What he did like was its amazingly useful lab facilities. And that he could visit them frequently, with few questions and no impediments.



He opened the door and let Grace walk briskly through the secretary’s area and beyond, into the wide hallway of the admin wing. It was on the top floor, the third.

“We need to go down a floor to get to the infectious diseases center,” Simon told Grace. “The stairs are there.” He pointed to a closed door with a sign above depicting a stairway.

“I figured,” Grace said drily.

“Would you prefer the elevator?” Simon asked.

“The stairs are fine.”

That was the extent of their conversation until they were on the second floor. The silence was anything but comfortable.

As they started walking along the polished floors of the long, meandering hallway, past other hospital wings, Grace said, “So you’re in internal medicine now. Interesting. I’d have figured you for emergency medicine, years ago, or maybe surgery. Better yet, an area related to anatomy. Or something else altogether, like dermatology. Or veterinary medicine.” She looked up at him challengingly.

Why did that expression on her beautiful face make his insides start to burn? Or maybe it was simply the sudden closeness again of Grace, after their very long separation.

“Same goes,” he retorted, intentionally making his tone grating. “Are we going to start on that same woo-woo obsession of yours all over again?” He glared right back—and was discomfited to see what appeared to be a gleam of triumph in her eyes before she looked away.

As if she finally had gotten him to admit the “truth” she had goaded him for so pointedly back in pre-med.

She couldn’t really know…could she?

Even if she didn’t, her being here, at such a critical time to his personal experiments, could be a huge problem. He needed to work even harder, after his only partly successful test last night.



The second-floor hallway seemed to go on forever. That should have been a bad thing, considering the chilly atmosphere between them. Even so, Grace couldn’t help feeling excited that she was once again in Simon’s presence.

Although it hurt. She couldn’t turn off her emotions now any more than she’d been able to way back when they’d known each other.

She had loved Simon, nearly from the time they had met in their first pre-med classes at Michigan State University. Their passion had been nearly overwhelming, their lovemaking incredible and intense.

And then he was gone. He transferred to another school at the end of the first term.



Left her.

Never mind that she had been the one to break things off first. She had expected candor from the man she wanted to spend her life with. Instead, she had gotten equivocations. Lies. Ridicule.

She had nearly revealed to him what she was in order to get him to disclose that he, too, was a shifter—assuming it was true.

Thanks to his derision, she’d never dared to mention it.

Good thing.

“Here we are,” Simon finally said at a door with frosted windows. The wall beside it held large metallic letters reading Charles Carder Infectious Diseases Center. He held the door open, and Grace walked in.

The next half hour was a blur of introductions to the nursing staff and other physicians, and a tour of the facilities.

One person Grace met was Captain Moe Scoles, also a doctor, the head of the Infectious Diseases Center. He was working on a computer inside a moderate-sized office beside a nurse’s station. Tall, with hair shorn nearly to his scalp, he gave Grace a rundown of the extra precautions taken here, where the illnesses were, of course, contagious—often highly so. Then he told Grace, “We’re all staffed up today, but we’ll assign you an office tomorrow and put you to work seeing patients.”

“Thanks, sir.” That meant she would have the afternoon to start something else she intended to do—all with the design of aiding in her real mission.

To get started, she needed to cut short her uncomfortable interlude with Simon. “Thanks for showing me around,” she told him once they were back in the corridor.

“You’re welcome.” His golden-brown eyes bored into hers. “It really is good to see you again, Grace.” He sounded surprised, the words apparently erupting from him without fore-thought. His wide lips immediately flattened as if he were trying to withdraw what he’d said.

She couldn’t help smiling at his sudden unease. “I’m as surprised about it as you are.” She kept her words intentionally ambiguous. “I’m sure we’ll see each other around. Don’t worry. I don’t bite.” Catching the slight widening of his eyes, she couldn’t help adding, “Do you?”

She hurried down the hall—but not before hearing a burst of laughter from behind her.



Okay, she had intended to goad him, Simon thought as he started to walk in the opposite direction to look in on a patient. But it had nevertheless struck him as humorous. This time.



But the reason they’d broken up was because Grace had tried hard to get him to admit he was a shapeshifter. She hadn’t been teasing about it—or so he’d believed.

She’d even hinted that she might be one too. For a while, he had hoped it was true, had interpreted her scent, her movements, as if she was. How great it would have been, if they’d had something so profound in common.

But after what his extended family had gone through before he went off to school…well, he wasn’t about to burst out with the truth, trust just anyone, even someone who’d gotten under his skin that way.

She hadn’t given up. Her insistence rubbed him wrong, and he’d just poked fun at her—supposedly—ridiculous claims.

And then she’d backed off. Good thing he hadn’t said anything—though he still wished he knew why she’d zeroed in on him. Was she related to that murderous group? He didn’t want to think so. But to protect himself and his family, he’d backed off too.

And in retrospect…?

Well, hell. After all this time, it didn’t matter. She was in the military, so he’d been right. She couldn’t be a shifter. Back then, something about him, something he’d said or done, had simply made her curious. Hopefully, now that she was older, wiser and a whole lot more distant from him, she’d lay off the subject.

Except, perhaps, to make jokes about it.

But he had to stay away from her. As far as possible, despite, or possibly because of, the way she still attracted him.

He didn’t want her, or anyone else, interfering with what he was here to accomplish.



At lunchtime, Simon headed toward the stairway to the medical center’s lobby floor, where the cafeteria was located beyond the auditorium. On his way, he heard children’s laughter from somewhere down the second-floor hallway. Curious, he veered in that direction.

And saw Grace in the large visitors’ lounge with a dog that looked mostly German shepherd. Three kids were there, too, dressed in hospital gowns. Half a dozen nurses also watched.

The dog, wearing a vest identifying it as a therapy dog, was sitting on its haunches, waving both paws in the air. That brought another peal of laughter from the children—two boys and a girl.

One boy—Sammy—was Simon’s patient. He’d had such a severe case of gastroenteritis that he’d had to be hospitalized. He had tested positive for norovirus, which was highly contagious, so the kid had been pretty much isolated until well on the mend. He was due to go home tomorrow.

Simon’s enhanced sense of smell had helped in his diagnosis, as always—as well as confirmation that Sammy was healing.

No problem now with him being with the other children—or being entertained by the German shepherd. It now had its head in Sammy’s lap, and the boy petted it gently while the other kids watched in envy.

Simon drew closer, leaning his shoulder against the wall and crossing his arms as he watched. Grace smiled angelically as she, too, regarded the scene. She was more relaxed than she’d seemed before with him. That somehow made her look sexier, too. He tried to hold back his smile as he continued to observe.

The dog next nuzzled the little girl’s hand as she sat in a metal-armed chair. The child squealed “Tilly!” in delight and leaped up toward the dog.

The dog—presumably Tilly—ran away, but when she turned back her head was down submissively, her tail wagging.

“Gently, honey.” Grace took the little girl’s hand, leading her to Tilly and showing her how to pet the dog.



Soon, Tilly slowly approached the remaining boy, who had apparently learned his lesson. He sat still until the dog nuzzled his hand, then stroked her head gently. When Tilly finally moved away, Grace gestured, and the dog stood up on her hind legs and danced in a circle—earning a treat.

Simon had little doubt that all three kids would heal a bit faster now, thanks to the minutes of pleasure Tilly gave them.

“Show’s over, gang,” Grace said. Everyone clapped—Simon included. She seemed to notice him then and aimed her smile at him.

He momentarily considered turning his grin into a scowl. Hadn’t he vowed to stay away from her?

Instead, he felt his smile widen.

As the nurses collected the children, he gave a fake salute to Grace and headed down the hall.



Grace had noticed Simon the moment he appeared in the corridor. She had sucked in her breath when he had stopped to watch Tilly do her performance with the kids.

Sure, she would continue to run into him. Would even seek him out, if necessary to her mission. But the past would remain the past.

So why had she felt so breathless at the sight of him? And so self-conscious, as if Tilly and she were both on display and needed to impress him.

She knew the answer. He was still so damned sexy that she couldn’t help being constantly aware of his appealing maleness. And remembering what he was like in bed…

That was in the past too, she chided herself. It wouldn’t happen again.

“Let’s go, Tilly.” She snapped on her dog’s leash. They weren’t yet through with the patient therapy she’d hoped to accomplish that day, before she took on treating patients tomorrow. For now, she was relying on Kristine to do the initial recon work—like learning all the ways to approach the biohazards storage area.

Later, Grace would commence her own recon. From Colonel Otis, she had learned the location of the laboratories where patient samples were taken for testing—samples that, if from the most harmful of communicable diseases, could be turned into potentially lethal biohazards. She would visit there later, when fewer people would be wandering the hospital’s halls.

For now, Grace headed for the hospital’s senior-care unit. Some colleagues who also worked with therapy dogs were much too depressed after visiting patients whose cognition was severely impaired by age-related diseases. Grace, though, found it stirring to see people whom she’d been told barely moved, or recognized anyone, perk up at seeing an energetic, caring animal like Tilly.

Grace had told the nurses ahead of time about her impending visit. Half-a-dozen seniors, mostly in wheelchairs and with blankets over their laps, sat in a semicircle in a lounge similar to that where Tilly and she had met with the children. This therapy session, too, resulted in lots of laughter, even with some patients who stared off into the distance until Tilly bumped them with her nose.

This time, no Simon observed them. Just as well. He was too much of a distraction.

For their planned final session of the day, Grace led Tilly to the psychiatric unit. As with the senior unit, it was behind a locked door to ensure no patient walked away without a doctor’s approval. Having the door click shut behind them hadn’t bothered Grace in the seniors’ area. Here, she wasn’t clear what to expect from the patients, so she felt a little uneasy.

Ten patients waited in this lounge—eight men and two women, most in cotton robes tied over their hospital gowns.

The head nurse, whose name tag read Ellie Yong, came up to Grace. “Mostly PTSD patients,” she said softly, as if conveying something confidential. But in a major military hospital like Charles Carder, that’s what Grace had anticipated.

She soon lost her uneasiness—most of it, at least—during the nurses’ welcome. They introduced Grace and Tilly first and then the patients, calling each by name. Some were quiet, yet stared at her mistrustfully. She assumed they were still in the deepest stages of post-traumatic stress disorder. Several were apparently undergoing detoxification for drug addiction, since she scented some of the medicines often used to help.

One patient, Sgt. Norman Ivers, seemed almost angry about having the dog around, yelling at Tilly and looming over her until the poor dog lay down submissively. Grace determined to tell the nurses to keep him in his room next time Tilly and she visited.

Another, Sgt. Jim Kubowski, seemed utterly indifferent at first, but when Tilly sat in front of him and offered her paw, he shook it, then got down on the floor and hugged the dog.

One patient, PFC George Harper, seemed to really adore Tilly. Another, Pvt. Alice Johns, knelt on the floor and cried on Tilly, and Grace vowed to bring the dog back as often as possible to cheer her.



Soon, Tilly had run through her repertoire of tricks. Their visit was over. “We’ll be back soon,” Grace assured those patients who appeared to give a damn.

She enjoyed this part of her assignment, working with all kinds of patients with Tilly as a therapy dog.

Too bad the rest of her mission wasn’t as likely to give her this much enjoyment.



In the hallway outside the psychiatric unit, Grace considered what to do next. It was getting late, but there was still some daylight. She intended to explore parts of the hospital she hadn’t seen yet, but it remained too early for what she wanted to do.

Instead, she went outside onto the hospital grounds and called Kristine on her cell phone. Her aide said she was around the side of the hospital building with Bailey.

They met up at the sidewalk near the curved patient drop-off area. Grace asked softly, “Have you found anything out yet? Do you know where the entrance to that tunnel is?”

“Of course,” Kristine asserted. “That’s what I do—figure out what you’ll want to see and locate it.”

Grace laughed. “Does that mean you’ve figured out who we’re after so we can easily track down our suspect?”



The sergeant smiled. “Wouldn’t want to take away your fun, ma’am.” She gave a mock salute.

Their dogs leashed beside them, Kristine led Grace toward the emergency-room entrance at the side of the medical center’s largest wing, then around the corner to a delivery area. Fortunately, nothing was going on there. She used her security card to get all four of them back inside the facility.

The tunnel entrance was off a room filled with boxes of benign medical supplies like bandages—but not far from the door to a stairway that, Grace determined, most likely led down to the floor containing labs where fluids and other samples were tested. Made sense, she thought.

Making sure no one was around to see them, they entered the tunnel. Grace saw no particular security there, but not many people were likely to know about this passageway, except staff members who delivered the biohazards to their storage area beyond the main outdoor parking lot. Grace and Kristine and the dogs walked swiftly along the concrete corridor, the sound of their footsteps echoing slightly in the confined area. It was illuminated by occasional recessed lights, and Grace’s nose wrinkled at the dry, musty scent of the surrounding emptiness.

Soon they reached the end. Kristine carefully opened the door and peered out. “We’re okay.” She held the door open, then led Grace and the dogs through a large, nearly empty parking lot toward its far end.

“There.” She pointed toward the concrete outbuilding Grace had seen briefly before—twice, including while shifted. She’d left it to Kristine to start gathering details about it.

The building was compact and nondescript, with a couple of doors visible. It could have been for storage of garden equipment, or electrical fuses and circuitry for the hospital—whatever. The fenced area around it contained yuccas and palm trees and other drought-tolerant plants that were politically correct for this dry climate. The only thing that indicated it was more than a boring, ordinary storage shed was the illuminated office at one end. In it sat a couple of uniformed soldiers.

“Have you talked to the guards?” Grace asked Kristine.

“Yep, at least the ones on duty earlier. They try to keep their presence low-key, like they’re just guarding the parking lot and not what’s behind that door.”

“But some biohazards were stolen while guys were on watch?”

“Seems that way.”

“Interesting. I’ll need to find out the excuses given by whomever was on duty during the times samples were taken from here.”



“Count me in,” Kristine said. “Sounds like fun. The building’s not as bland as it looks, by the way.” She pointed toward the door farthest to the left. “On that side is the incineration unit where they dispose of the biohazards.”

“Why do they do it here, I wonder?” Grace mused. “Aren’t there companies that are specially rigged to pick up this kind of material to dispose of it offsite, away from the hospitals?”

“I gather it’s because of the volume and security issues,” Kristine said. “Better to deal with it here than take the chance someone will hijack a disposal truck.”

“A bit of irony,” Grace said.

“Seems that way,” her aide acknowledged. “Anyway, it’s nice and eco-friendly, I gather—everything’s burned, not much ash, nothing escapes into the air. Poof, and the danger is gone…unless the stuff’s stolen first.”

“And that’s exactly what we need to stop,” said Grace.



Grace considered asking Kristine to take Tilly back to their quarters on the air-force base, but it was time for one further piece of exploration, and she wanted her cover dog along.

A short while later, Grace walked slowly along the dimly lit corridor deep in the bowels of the Charles Carder Medical Center. Her rubber-soled shoes made no noise on the gleaming linoleum floor, although Tilly’s nails clicked lightly.

She spotted security cameras that hadn’t been doing their job reliably. Neither had other security devices, including those requiring people to use key cards to enter this floor. Many tests were conducted in the multiple labs on this level of the hospital. But all that security, including locked doors and storage cabinets, and guards out by the storage area, hadn’t prevented the disappearance of biohazard materials collected from patients with potentially dangerous communicable diseases. They weren’t always large samples, but their theft was enough to worry those who knew.

Hence Grace’s mission.

What was that? Tilly had heard the soft click, too. She had been well trained not to bark, which would scare off any subject of their hunt. Instead, she sat still on the slick floor and looked up at Grace, waiting for a command.

Grace held up her hand in the signal that meant “good girl.” Then she gave the signal for Tilly to stay.

This was only her second day here. Would it be this easy for her to discover the perpetrator of the thefts? That would be ideal for the U.S. government, and even for Alpha Force. But Grace had hoped to utilize her very special shifting powers more to fulfill her mission…

Her back against the wall, she slid along the hall toward where the click had originated—the opening of one of the many doors along this corridor?

Yes—one only a few feet away from her swung inward. Grace reached down toward her weapon, a small revolver she’d retrieved from Kristine before heading down here this night and hid in a holster strapped to her waist beneath her loose white medical jacket. As a doctor in addition to her other assets and skills, she believed in preserving life—except at the expense of another’s…or hers.

She hadn’t really expected to need to use the gun, but she was prepared, just in case.

In another instant, a man opened a door and strode into the hall.

It was Simon.