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  The sergeant muttered something, then said, “Of course.”

  “Take your time. In an hour or so, you can go back to the investigation you started yesterday. I’ll want you to bring Tilly to the hospital for therapy visits this afternoon. Meantime, get some rest.” Kristine wasn’t reporting for nurse duty until tomorrow.

  “Yes, ma’am,” her aide said crisply, humor in her tone. “I’ll get an extra forty winks for you, too.”

  Smiling, Grace called the medical center–commander’s office. She learned from his secretary that he would squeeze her in first thing that morning.

  After donning white hospital scrubs and attractive yet comfortable rubber-soled shoes, she left for the hospital next door. On arrival, she stopped in a doctor’s lounge she’d seen yesterday, grabbed a spare medical jacket from its supply of extras, and pinned onto it the name tag she’d been given.

  The medical-center building was vast and smelled of antiseptics overlying odors of wounds and disease. As Grace hurried through the halls, she glanced at the faces of people she passed. She recognized a few she’d met yesterday, but their scents were not the one she had smelled in last night’s moonlight.

  In a few minutes, she arrived at the commander’s office.

  “Have a seat, Lieutenant.” Colonel Nelson Otis waved in the direction of the chairs facing his gray metal desk, where file folders were stacked in six neat piles. Like Grace, he was both a military officer and a medical doctor.

  “Thank you, sir.” Grace sat down.

  Colonel Otis was a large man, also dressed in a white lab jacket. His face was round, his gray hair a stubble that started halfway back on his head. He sat behind the desk in his large, military-pristine office, regarding her so intensely over half-glasses that she felt uncomfortable.

  But she regarded him right back with an unwavering stare. She had long ago learned to deal with people who attempted to intimidate her for no reason other than to stroke their egos. She had to be careful with her attitude, now that she was in the military, but in most Alpha Force situations, she fortunately did not have to impress the brass to whom she ostensibly reported. Her real commanding officers were on the East Coast, at Ft. Lukman on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

  On the other hand, she had to get along with folks on her missions, especially egotistical military sorts. She made herself look away first.

  “What did you think of your first day here yesterday, Lieutenant?” the colonel asked. “Did you find out who our thief is?”

  She doubted he would be so sarcastic with a man in her position. He of course had no idea of her special abilities, or why she was much better qualified to find the missing hazardous substances than almost any other member of the military.

  He certainly didn’t know how she had patrolled the air base and medical center last night.

  “Not yet, sir. But I will.”

  “Don’t get overconfident,” he snapped. “I’ve had not only local military security but also investigators from the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations check things out, and they found nothing definitive. Because of the sensitive nature of what’s being stolen, and the need for a quick resolution, I asked for additional help—and they had you and your buddies assigned to Zimmer. But none of you seems the kind to figure this out fast. A medical doctor, a flight communications officer and some NCOs—who the hell are you?”

  “We’re members of Alpha Force, Colonel.” Grace knew that the pride that came through in her tone would only irritate him more. “I know you’ve been told we’re a covert special ops force, sir.” If he only knew how special…

  “But nothing more about you,” he asserted belligerently. He was aware, though, that all Alpha Force members who had been sent for this assignment were women, which undoubtedly factored into his attitude. He seemed all old-school military to her.

  “No, sir,” she responded politely. “As I said, our operations are covert. But you can always speak with General Greg Yarrow, who oversees our operations. He’ll vouch for us.”

  “I’ve already done that. He’s as closemouthed as you.” The colonel settled back, apparently deciding that confronting her antagonistically wasn’t getting him anywhere. “Okay, tell me about your initial impressions. Did you see anything that might help accomplish your mission as fast as we need it done?”

  “Not yet, but I’ll make sure we do our best to bring down the perpetrators as quickly as possible, sir,” she said, purposely obscure.

  “I’m sure you will.” The colonel rose, using his bulk to move his chair from beneath his desk. She was clearly about to be dismissed—and was glad. “What’s your next move?”

  “I want to retrieve my therapy dog from my assistant and start my visits to the appropriate floors first. Then I’ll check out the infectious diseases wing, start seeing patients soon.”

  “Those areas aren’t where you’ll find anything relating to our thefts.” He snapped at her once more, and she swallowed her irritated retort.

  “No, sir. But I hope to be of service as a medical doctor, as well as visiting patients with my dog. Both are part of my cover, and as a doctor dealing with infectious diseases I’ll oversee extraction of the kinds of samples from patients that can become biohazards like those that were stolen. I’ll report anything I find of potential interest to you.”

  “Yeah, you do that. Meantime, I’ll get you started with your medical duties.” He lifted the receiver on the phone on his desk and pushed a button. “Is he here yet?” he immediately asked whomever answered. “Good. Send him in.” He looked at Grace. “One of our other infectious-disease specialists will take you to that wing and introduce you around, since I assume you didn’t meet anyone there yesterday with all the paperwork you were doing.”

  A shudder of warning immediately passed through Grace. It was all she could do to continue just to sit and keep an impassive yet interested expression on her face.

  It surely wouldn’t be…

  A knock sounded on the closed office door. Whoever was there opened it without waiting for the colonel’s response.

  An instant later, a man walked into the room. He was tall, broad-shouldered beneath a white medical jacket similar to Grace’s but much larger. He was great-looking, with longish thick black hair and a sharp facial structure. His straight, dark eyebrows and wide lips underscored his angry-looking scowl as he glanced at her. The look lightened considerably as he turned to the colonel. “Good morning,” he said.

  “You ready to show Dr. Andreas around?” Colonel Otis asked.

  “Of course.” He turned back toward her. This time, his expression was neutral, but it still sent shivers cascading down Grace’s spine.

  It was Simon Parran. He looked even better than he had all those years ago, if that was possible. And she had indeed caught his intriguing masculine scent last night.

  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, perhap
s, 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.