Saving Autumn Read online

  They climbed out together, Mia not allowing Peter time to do the whole chivalry thing. Too much would make her uncomfortable. She led the way to the apartment building and pressed the buzzer for the intercom.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s Mia Henderson. I hope I’m not disturbing you. I brought a friend with me.”

  “No, no. Of course not. Come on up.”

  The buzzer sounded and the latch opened on the door. They went in and caught the elevator up to the fifth floor.

  Dana West was waiting in the doorway and swept Mia into her embrace. “Mia, how lovely to see you. I hope you’re well, after everything you’ve been through.”

  She untangled herself. “Yes, thank you. I’m fine. I wanted to see how you guys were holding up. You’ve been through a lot yourselves.”

  “We’d still be going through it if it wasn’t for you.”

  She felt herself blush. “I didn’t do a lot, really, apart from get myself in trouble.”

  “Oh, nonsense. You got our son back, didn’t you?”

  “With a little help,” she said, and turned to Peter, who lurked behind her. “Actually, this is one of the men who helped me. Peter Haverly was working at the facility where they held Toby. He’s the one who freed me.”

  Robert West appeared behind his wife’s shoulder and leaned forward to shake Peter’s hand. “Well, then, we thank you too, Mr. Haverly. Come, take a seat,” he said, leading them into the small but modern living room. “Can I get you anything to drink? A coffee, perhaps?”

  “It’s Peter, please, and I’m fine.” He looked to Mia, who waved a hand to indicate she too was okay. They settled themselves onto the couch. “How is Toby getting on?” he asked.

  Peter’s mom and dad exchanged a look. “He’s okay,” Robert said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “He’s spending a lot of time in his room.”

  Both parents glanced in the direction of the living room door. The muffled sound of rock music thumped down the hallway.

  “Toby!” Dana called. “We’ve got visitors. Are you going to come out and say hi?”

  The music reverberating from behind the shut bedroom door didn’t decrease in volume.

  She shot them an apologetic look and got to her feet. “He probably didn’t hear me. I won’t be a minute.” She headed out of the room, toward her son’s bedroom.

  The music blasted as she opened the door and then quieted again. Mia heard muffled voices, sounding strained. She, Peter, and Toby’s father all exchanged an awkward glance as the seconds ticked by and arguing voices filtered through to them. Finally, the music was switched off and she reappeared, her son shuffling along behind her.

  “Toby, this is Mia Henderson and Peter Haverly. They were involved in your rescue from … that place.”

  Sullenly, the boy lifted his dark eyes to observe the visitors. He stared at Mia from beneath an equally dark flop of hair which hung too long over his forehead and jerked his chin at her. “Hey.”

  “Hi, Toby. How are you doing?”

  As a reply, the boy only shrugged. His gaze flicked to where Peter sat and his eyes narrowed. “What’s he doing here?” His voice was tinged with an acid bite.

  “Toby!” said his mother, shocked.

  “What?” He glared at her. “He was one of the men who kept me in that place.”

  Peter lifted both hands and shook his head. “No, Toby. You don’t understand. I was always on your side.”

  Robert West straightened in his seat, leaning forward, a frown on his face. Mia could feel the suspicion radiating off him, his natural instinct to protect his son.

  “I know it may not have always looked that way, Toby, but I was always trying to protect you.” Peter’s eyes widened, eyebrows lifting, trying to convey more than he was saying. “To protect us.”

  “It’s okay,” said Dana. “We know Toby is like that guy on television, the one who …” Once again, she struggled with the words. “Turned into a wolf.”

  Peter visibly relaxed, his shoulders slumping. “Okay. Well, that makes things easier.”

  “We’d always suspected something was different about him,” Robert said. “Of course, we’d never quite made the jump to that option, but it does all make sense.”

  Not for the first time, Mia wondered what type of animal Toby shifted into. Is it rude to ask? Perhaps Peter somehow already knew. Maybe they could sense these things about each other? She made a mental note to quiz him later.

  But Toby wasn’t about to let things go so easily. “I don’t know how you could do that, man,” he said with a scowl. “Watching what he did to us. It’s just wrong.”

  “Those same people locked me away and hurt me too, Toby. As soon as they found out I was trying to help shifters and not them.”

  “Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  “Toby!” His mother exclaimed again. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Haverly.”

  He lifted a hand. “Don’t be. I don’t blame Toby for being bitter. I would be too.”

  “I’m not bitter,” the boy muttered. “I’m pissed.”

  “Toby,” Mia said gently. The boy turned to her, his lower lip slightly pouted, his hair falling over his eyes. “We never came here to upset you. We just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  Peter took over, his tone soft. “Things are going on in the city right now, with shifters. You’re a teenager, I’m sure you’ve been online, seen some of the footage for and against shifters. I just wanted to make sure you know to stay well away from it all.”

  The parents exchanged a glance and Toby bristled. “What I do is none of your business.”

  Mia interrupted. “No, but you’re a minor, so what you do is your parents’ business.”

  That same glance was exchanged and Dana lifted her hand to her mouth and started to chew on a hangnail.

  Peter frowned. “Are we missing something?”

  Toby’s father gave the boy a glance, somewhere between pride and frustration. “Toby is a bit of a whiz with computers. If there’s something available to find, I can guarantee he’s already found it.”

  “Is that true?” Mia asked Toby.

  The boy’s normally pale skin heated with color. “Yeah, of course I’ve seen what that other shifter did. And either him or some other dude has been putting out a call on a couple of private, coded message boards for local shifters to meet and get organized.”

  “Get organized?” said Mia. “For what?”

  Toby gave a nonchalant shrug. “To let the world know shifters exist and that we won’t be pushed around anymore.”

  “That must be what happened in the shooting downtown,” Peter said. “The one in the warehouse. Other people must have got wind of the meeting and tried to break it up.”

  Dana had paled. “Shooting? You mean people like Toby were involved?” Something dawned on her face and she turned to her son. “You didn’t go, did you?”

  Toby rolled his eyes. “No, Mom. I stayed in my room all night just like I promised.” The hint of sarcasm in his tone didn’t go unnoticed by Mia. “Anyway, that meeting was small fish compared to everything else happening.”

  Peter frowned and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “What do you mean?”

  His eyes shifted to the ground and he started to jiggle his knee. For a moment, he said nothing, but then he lifted his head, his eyes narrowed as he took in Peter. “You still work for the government, right?”

  Peter held his gaze and nodded. “For the moment, though I’m on suspension. I am the subject of several internal inquiries because of what happened with you and the two other shifters. But as far as I’m aware, the government doesn’t know what I am. The one person who might know, I haven’t seen or heard anything of since that day.”

  “So if you’re working for the government, does that mean you’re still involved with shifter research?”

  Peter frowned. “With Dumas dead, there shouldn’t be any shifter research.”

  “But what if I told
you there was? Where do your loyalties lie?”

  “My loyalties are always with my people, with other shifters. Despite what you might have thought, they always have been.”

  Toby’s glance shifted to Mia.

  Despite only having known Peter for a few days, she thought they could trust him. He was steady, grounded, as if nothing rattled him. Plus, the man had saved her life.

  She nodded. “It’s okay, you can trust him.”

  Toby took a breath. “Okay, but if I end up in juvie, I’ll hold you to blame.”

  His father groaned and put his head in his hands. “Oh, God, what now?” he muttered.

  Toby ignored him. For the first time, the boy appeared confident, his gaze direct, his jaw tight. “I’m not just good with computers, I’m practically a fucking genius with computers.”

  “Seriously, Toby, watch your language!” his mom said.

  He shrugged an apology. “The thing is, I found out all your names from the police and news reports, which was easy enough—anyone could have done it—then I hacked into the Department of Defense.”

  His father leaped to his feet. “You did what? Toby, you could end up in prison for that, never mind juvenile detention!”

  “So? I figured I’ve been locked up for a whole lot less.” He got to his feet. “Let me show you what I found.”

  They followed him into his bedroom. Mia was taken back to her school days, to the musty, boy-smell of the locker room. Despite Toby’s unkempt appearance, his bedroom was surprisingly tidy. A couple of posters of rock bands were pinned above the single made-up bed. A cell phone sat beside a half-empty glass of water on the bedside table. Otherwise, the room was fairly sparse, dominated mainly by the large, flat screen monitor of the powerful PC in the corner.

  Toby pulled a seat, a comfortable-looking leather chair on wheels, in front of the computer and touched the mouse to bring the screen to life. Saying nothing, eyes glued to the screen, his fingers ran over the keyboard with such speed the clicks of the keys seemed to blend together.

  Pages flashed up, numerous different ones moving across the screen while he clicked on some and reduced others. Mia barely had the chance to read the words displayed … defense … system … work … project. She glanced at Peter’s strong profile, solemn and serious as he tried to follow the pages Toby brought up. He must have sensed her watching him, for he glanced at her and gave her a brief nod to acknowledge that he recognized some of what Toby was finding, perhaps recognized the headings that flashed up almost faster than the eye could follow.

  Finally, Toby settled on a page covered in lists of numbers and corresponding words. Mia couldn’t make head or tail of it.

  The boy sat back. “I found my name first,” he said. “Together with the other two they held with me with, the man and woman, Michael and Kasa.” He glanced over his shoulder at Peter. “Your buddy, Blake Wolfcollar, is also here.” He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “But I don’t remember seeing your name anywhere. Haverly, right?”

  Peter answered with a nod. “That’s a good thing. It means Dumas never got the chance to report my betrayal to the people above him before he died. He never knew what I was, though he may have suspected.”

  Toby continued. “Well, I haven’t seen you in the files. They’re encrypted, but I got past that easily enough.”

  “Files?” asked Mia, baffled. “What kind of files?”

  Peter was the one to answer. “Toby has hacked into the Department of Defense and found our names and profiles under Operation Pursuit. That’s the name of the project Dumas was in charge of and the reason Toby and the others were abducted.”

  Peter leaned across Toby and jabbed his finger at the columns of numbers on the screen. “What do all these pages of names and numbers mean?”

  “They’re dates and times and places. It seems to me like someone has been keeping track of all of us shifters.”

  “I guess Dumas needed to keep track of everyone in order to organize the abductions.”

  But Toby shook his head. “No, you misunderstand. These dates and times have been programmed in since that asshole Dumas died. It looks to me like someone is continuing his good work.”

  “But I thought it was all finished with now,” Mia said. “I mean, with Dumas gone …”

  “Plenty of data has been added since Dumas’s death. These files are definitely ongoing, which means someone is still keeping an eye on us. The main name that comes up over and over again, though, is the blonde scientist your friend Blake was with when they rescued us.”

  Mia frowned. “Autumn? Why would her name come up? She was only working on the project, the same as Peter.”

  Peter turned to her, a look in his eyes, somewhere between curiosity and concern. “Did Autumn not tell you?”

  Her stomach clenched, suddenly nervous for her friend. “Told me what?”

  His eyes flicked away. “I’m not sure if—”

  Mia squared her shoulders. “You tell me what it is, Peter Haverly. Maybe she hasn’t told me something, and I’m sure she has her reasons, but that girl is like a sister to me, and if there’s something I should know about all of this, I won’t let it drop until you do.”

  He folded his arms and said nothing.

  She wouldn’t let herself be intimidated. Yes, he was a little older than her, held a high-profile job, and then there was the thing about him being able to turn into a mountain lion, but she had her own strengths. While she might not be academically smart like Autumn or have her best friend’s leggy, blonde good looks, she had her own kind of intelligence and charm. Because of her small stature and the curse, or perhaps blessing, of looking younger than she actually was, people tended to underestimate her.

  Beneath the cute pixie hairstyle and the button nose, Mia was tough. She’d needed to be in her job. She’d interviewed dangerous men, violent step-fathers and suspicious neighbors suspected in having something to do with the disappearances of missing children. She also had the sort of face people trusted. She’d once found a sixteen-year-old boy whom the police believed to have run away from home, but who had actually managed to get himself trapped inside an old, disused well. The boy had packed a bag, planning to go and spend the night with a girlfriend his parents knew nothing about. The girlfriend had been too scared to tell the police they’d been dating, as she’d been worried her extremely strict father would find out.

  Mia had been able to talk to the girl on her level and coaxed out the truth. The young couple would meet in an old cottage on the outskirts of some woods, but the boy hadn’t turned up. After searching the area, she’d discovered the well and found the boy, unconscious and wedged on the wooden slats which had been used to cover the top of the well to prevent such an accident happening. The wood broke when the boy unknowingly stood on the boards, and they split, but wedged half way down, catching him. He’d been lucky that they had. He’d knocked his head as he’d fallen. If the boards had not wedged, he would have drowned in the water at the bottom.

  Yes, she was smart, and she tended to look into situations deeper than others. She got the feeling this was one of those situations.

  “Autumn is involved in this as more than just a scientist, isn’t she? Is that the reason Blake took her away?”

  Peter hesitated, and then nodded. “Yes, she is. Do you know about the job she was working on, the reason for her being employed by Dumas?”

  Mia shook her head. “She said it was confidential, which is pretty normal. But she was excited about the job.”

  “The project was about finding a way to increase the power of the United States military. Dumas wanted to find a way to turn regular soldiers into shifters, to use their powers of strength, healing, and foresight to create a super army. He wanted Autumn to replicate the genetic shift of shifters in human cells.”

  “And was she able to?”

  “Yes, but only with the addition of her blood acting as a kind of catalyst.”

  “Couldn’t it just have been blood in gener
al?”

  “Possibly. That’s what Autumn thought might be happening, too. But plenty of geneticists had worked on the project before her. I’m sure that would have already been tested, but we didn’t have access to the files to find that out.”

  “We do now,” interrupted Toby.

  Peter glanced at Mia. “We need to call Blake. He needs to see this.”

  Chapter Five

  CHOGAN WOKE WITH the taste of blood and fury thick on his tongue.

  From the quality of the light drifting through the slats of the cheap motel blinds, he guessed he’d slept right through morning and into the afternoon. The lateness of the hour didn’t surprise him. He’d not gotten to bed until dawn, and, even then, he’d been unable to sleep, tossing and turning on the thin mattress as he ran the events of the night over in his head.

  Who were the people who had attacked them?

  The thing bothering him the most was how they’d learned about where to find the gathering of shifters. He’d been careful not to tell anyone other than shifters about the meeting, using coded online message boards only other shifters would know about, so it only made sense to assume that either a fellow shifter was plotting against them, or someone close to another shifter had betrayed them. He swore he’d find out who was behind the attack and make them pay.

  Chogan sat up and ran a hand through his hair. The strands were matted and encrusted with blood. Dark streaks, almost appearing black, marked his nut-brown skin, and slightly lighter streaks dirtied the stiff, off-white sheets on the bed. The cut on his shoulder had healed by the time he’d reached the motel, but the blood of the men he’d been forced to kill still covered his skin.

  If he didn’t want to end up locked in a cell, he’d need to rid himself of any evidence that he’d been involved in the fight last night. Though he wanted to be able to go to the cops and explain how they were the victims, not the aggressors, he would never be believed.

  This was the whole reason for the revolution, he reasoned to himself. He should be able to go to the police. If he and the others hadn’t been forced to take things into their own hands, those people would have got away with ambushing them simply because shifters were currently forced to keep themselves hidden. Once they were mainstream, they wouldn’t be able to be attacked while their attackers went on their way, safe in the knowledge that they would never be prosecuted. He wanted spirit shifters to be treated as equals to regular humans. No lies or blended truths or hiding in the shadows.