Cats Got Your Tongue (Shifter Squad Six) (5 page)

“Kelis Murdoch, aye. United States Marine Corps, flies attack helicopters.”

“The fuck was she doing on a charter plane leased for football teams?” Tex asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Your guess is as good as ours is, or hers,” Grim said, his mood stilling slightly. “She said she got sent back from her gate when she was boarding a commercial flight to Boston, told to come here. The stewardess walked her in so she was obviously on the manifest, but I don’t know why. When we got the lists, there was no mention of any women, let alone someone in the service.”

The three men exchanged looks as Grant appeared around the corner, his steps rather light for a man who’d gotten his ass partially handed to him by some enemy operatives. But Grim did not have to ponder too long to understand his brother’s good mood. It was all Kelis. Apparently she had an effect even on the seemingly constantly grouchy medic.

“Grant, what do you think of this Kelis Murdoch?” Connor queried as Grant came to a stop at their side, though his eyes were already tallying up the carnage around them.

“What do you mean?” he asked, echoing the question in Grim’s mind.

“Well, don’t you think it’s rather peculiar we suddenly found ourselves with a fully combat-trained pilot on board, despite having no inclination that she would be here to begin with? She is not one of our agents and the original assumption was that whatever The Arctics planned on using would not be given to the pilots, which was obviously wrong. And since we got a bit carried away here,” Connor noted, pointing a thumb at the hill of dead commandos, “we would have been up shit’s creek without a paddle if she hadn’t been here.”

“I’m sure we would have landed the plane fine,” Tex said dismissively, though the tone of his voice told Grim that he wasn’t entirely sure of that.

“I think she had no idea why she was sent to this flight. If I had to wager a guess, I’d say this has Spade written all over it,” Grant commented, his expression clouding over slightly.

“Anyone agree with Grant?” Connor asked, looking at Grim and Tex.

“Sounds about right to me,” Tex said, wiping his bloodied knife against the headrest of the chair behind him.

“I can’t argue with that. Either she’s an enemy operative and she didn’t reveal herself or The Firm sent her here. We can’t let her walk out on us without making sure, though,” Grim said with a heavy heart.

It pained him to think that the spunky, delicious morsel of a woman currently flying them to safety could have anything to do with The Arctics. But on first sight, even he had thought that her blonde hair and blue eyes were too good to be true. His rational side had to consider the possibility, but his emotional side was thoroughly convinced that she had no ties to the werewolf wackjobs that had orchestrated this whole mess. And his cougar agreed. That was all the confirmation Grim needed.

“It’s settled then. While our happy campers go to medical checks and some conditioning to forget that all of this ever happened, Kelis comes with us. I assume you two want to take up guard duty?” Connor queried, his gaze flicking between Grant and Grim.

“Sir, yes sir,” Grim said with a smile, earning a chuckle from Connor.

“Very well then.”

As if on call, Kelis’s soft voice came over the intercom, full of confidence and knowing exactly what she was doing. Grim wasn’t sure if she could be any sexier if she tried.

“Gentlemen, buckle in. We’re going in for a landing and it might be a rocky one.”

Grant was already crouching next to a leaner-looking man, possibly one of the teams’ quarterbacks, who looked slightly worse for wear. No wonder, considering a smaller man probably couldn’t have held up very well against all those human mountains that had been swinging their fists around like drunken Irishmen on St Paddy’s Day.

“He’ll be fine, man. Sit down,” Grim said, finding a seat that seemed more clean than bloody and putting the seatbelt on.

“Duty first,” Grant grumbled, making sure the man’s airway wasn’t constricted.

It had been a hell of a day. They’d smuggled themselves in on the plane, expecting a small scuffle with a potential Arctics’ drug test, and they’d found themselves in something straight out of some sort of Marvel movie, chemical agents being used to turn common humans into frenzied killing machines. Grim had to figure that the reason the football teams had been chosen was to see how much damage they could really do with the neurotoxin, while The Arctics kept a watchful eye over all of it.

But as it sometimes happened, The Firm was one step ahead of the baddies and Squad Six got to have some fun. Not that The Firm was particularly squeaky clean or made of angel dust and butterfly wings itself, but as far as Grim could tell, it was at least more on the side of good than it was on the side of evil. Granted, The Arctics weren’t much of a measuring stick to use to confirm that.

Grim relaxed against the seat with a sigh, feeling the aftereffects of going blow for blow with not only trained Arctics operatives, but some pretty hard-hitting football jocks as well. He was certainly going to feel those bruises. But it didn’t seem to matter that much this time. Usually, Grim would be somewhat sour at the end of a mission, not at all enthused by the paperwork and reports they had to file on the accounts.

This time, it meant that any minute wasted might mean one moment longer with Kelis. And that was oddly enticing.

“So what do you really think about Kelis?” Grim asked as Grant sat down in time for the airplane to let its landing gear down.

“As long as she gets us on the ground in one piece, I have nothing but admiration for her,” Grant said, giving Grim a pointed look.

“That’s not what I’m asking, man.”

“I know.”

Grant smirked and Grim caught hold of that, shaking his head slightly with a grin of his own. The twins had not really discussed what would happen if they ever found a woman that interested them both. In general, cougars rarely had Alpha twins to begin with, as they were more solitary creatures, but Grim and Grant had been the first of their parents’ children and most definitely twins, so that was one convention they’d broken as soon as they could.

It rarely seemed like an option, really, finding
one
woman that would satisfy them both as well as tie them together more. While they were close, they’d mostly kept their love lives separate because they had vastly different tastes. Grim liked women with attitude and drive, crazy girls who could start off drinking tequila at the beginning of the night and then lead him to bungee jumping in Brazil by the next morning.

Grant, on the other hand, appreciated women who could hold a conversation with him and challenge him intellectually. It was a Herculean task finding a woman that would fit those two very different molds.

Yet with Kelis, Grim got the sneaking suspicion that they might have been getting awfully close.

CHAPTER FIVE

Kelis

“What?! You can’t keep me here against my will! I’ll have my goddamn captain tear you new ones!” Kelis hissed as she found herself in a makeshift bunker, not a window in sight, staring daggers at the broad, decisive forms of Connor, Grim, and Grant.

Grim was standing with his arms crossed over his chest, blocking the door, and Grant had taken up position on one of the bunks, his eyes firmly on Kelis though his hands seemed to be working hard at checking the contents of his medpack. Connor stood closest to Kelis and for a fantastic moment, she considered how hard she could hit him and whether she could take the lieutenant out before both Grim and Grant were on her.

“I apologize, Miss Murdoch, but it is what it is. You yourself admitted that your appearance on the plane was a surprise and seemingly orchestrated by someone else. We have contacted our people and they know nothing about why you might have ended up on an airplane stocked full of highly dangerous neurotoxins, on its way to becoming a human testing lab in the sky. As such, I can’t let you go before we can hand you over to our intelligence unit.”

“This is fucking nuts. I got the plane down, didn’t I? You think I fly Boeing 747s on a whim because I get fucking
bored
or something? I don’t know what kind of bullshit was going on in that plane and Grim and Grant can attest that one of those blond psychos was trying to kill me too, which I don’t think they would do if I were
working
for them. Right? I just want to go home already,” she said, her last words rising to a slight pitch of desperation as she noticed Connor’s unmoving expression and the twins looking equally as morose.

“Nevertheless, we can’t let you leave. Grim and Grant will keep you company. The medical staff has assured me that you will be fine. Whatever that toxin was, it is leaving your system rapidly. You may feel more emotional and aggressive, but I have every faith that my squad mates can keep you and themselves safe. Accept my apologies. This shouldn’t take more than a day.”

“A day?! You mean I have to wait a whole day before I get to San Francisco?!”

“No,” Connor said, his lips twitching for a moment. “You’ll have to potentially wait a day until intelligence comes to pick you up. Pennsylvania is apparently rather sleepy. I can’t give you a timeline as to when you could find yourself back at home.”

“Someone’s going to have to let my unit know,” Kelis finally said, her voice a strangled growl, irritation rising and falling to the beat of her heart.

She saw that there was no point in getting upset, but something drove her to spit fire and brimstone and to be more enraged than anything else. How the hell could they be keeping her like this? She’d played along during the whole thing! When doctors were sticking needles in her, when a psychologist was asking her how she
felt
, and even when they’d confiscated all of her possessions during one of the admittedly fastest and cleanest disaster mop-ups she’d ever seen.

But a part of her was perhaps expecting to be treated with a bit more dignity and respect than she was at the moment.

“Don’t worry. I’ll have our colonel call your captain,” Connor said with a smirk. “I hear they play golf together.”

“Is there anyone Hemingway does not play golf with?” Grim queried from his stand at the door.

“You,” Grant said with a snort as Connor turned around and headed for the door, exchanging a few quiet words with Grim before heading out.

The heavy click behind him told Kelis in so few words that she’d been locked in with the two men, and there was little she could do about it. She stomped to the nearest cot and collapsed on it with an angry groan, grabbing the pillow and scrunching it between her fingers as if it had done her a grave personal injustice.

“Cheer up, Leatherneck. You’ll be back home in no time,” Grant said with a chuckle.

“Easy for you to say, Frogman,” Kelis said, twisting on the cot, tossing a glare in Grant’s general direction, but deciding to share it with Grim as well for good measure. “Apparently you two have nothing better to do than babysit me, but I do. I have about twenty hours of sleep to catch up on before I have to be back on duty tour.”

“Yeah? Where are you heading to?” Grim asked, apparently bypassing the whole song and dance about how entirely unhappy she was to be there.

“Afghanistan. Again,” Kelis said with a sigh, figuring it didn’t really matter if they knew or not.

By the sound of things, Connor or the people he worked for had already pulled her file anyway and scraped up more information on her than she herself probably knew. Always a great bit of fun, finding out that the government and certain covert companies knew more than you’d ever be willing to share about yourself with even your closest friend.

How the hell did I get here? You just had to be a hero, didn’t you, Kelis. Couldn’t just stay down, huff in that sweet-smelling gas and go on a rampage like the rest of them. You’d be on your way home now, not remembering any of this shit!

She’d seen glimpses of the conditioning the football players were getting. After being checked and tagged, they’d been wheeled into interrogation and the ones who seemed to be generally worthless had gotten a nice, long, thorough talk with some people who seemed to know everything about how to twist a human psyche around their pinkie fingers, until the guy who’d gone in bore no real resemblance to the one who came out. They all looked blissfully happy and none the wiser to all the horrible things they’d been a part of that day.

Kelis had to imagine there was some kind of a heavy medical cocktail involved as well, but after the beating their bodies had taken after the one on the airplane, she figured their bodies didn’t give much of a crap anymore.