make sure. Then I realized I didn’t have the first idea how to get ahold of Colonel Stafford. So I pulled out my cell phone and called Dr. Shumacher.
She answered before the phone had finished ringing. “Hello? Kitty?”
“Hi, Dr. Schumacher. I was wondering, could you give me Colonel Stafford’s phone number? I mean, if he even has a cell phone. Or if he has a secretary who has one. Or whatever.” My phone voice sounded like my radio voice, I realized—I came across far peppier than I was really feeling.
“Kitty, where are you, what’s happening, what’s going on?”
I hesitated a beat. “I expected Colonel Stafford would have called you the minute I showed up.”
“No, he didn’t,” she said, sounding frustrated. I couldn’t blame her for being put out. She probably thought she and Stafford were partners on equal footing. Stafford probably wasn’t thinking about her at all.
I sighed. “Fort Carson’s under lockdown. I managed to talk Stafford into letting us through because I thought I knew where to find Walters, and I was right.”
“He’s at the hospital,” Schumacher said. “He’s trying to release Vanderman.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He already has.”
“I should be there, I should have found a way there, this never should have happened.”
“Are you snowed in in Denver?”
“The news says it’s a storm of the century.”
“Hey, we usually get those every ten years or so,” I said. Ben was watching me, smirking—so I was still being too chipper. Tyler was braced like he was going to pounce on the first thing that came around the corner. He hadn’t drawn the gun yet. Maybe he wanted to do this with his bare claws. “Doctor, I need to get ahold of Stafford. I need to tell him what’s happening here.”
“I’ll call the colonel,” Shumacher said firmly, determined to be back in charge. I wanted to growl at her. That wasn’t what I asked, that wasn’t what I wanted to have happen.
“Doctor, how are you going to know what to tell him? You have no idea what’s going on here—”
“It’s my project. I’ll call him.” She hung up.
We were all going to die. I slammed my phone closed and shoved it back into my pocket. I didn’t want to think about what version of the story Shumacher was going to tell the colonel. He might just gas the place the place and call it a day.
“Someone needs to go outside and catch Stafford on the way in, tell him what’s happening,” I said.
Tyler said, “If we get to a land line we can call the front gate. They’ll be in radio contact.”
I smiled. “That’s so low tech it’s cool.”
“And in the meantime, we do what? Wait for our guys to stroll along and ask them to stop by for coffee?” Ben smelled twitchy, sweat breaking out despite the chill. He tapped his leg and looked like he was ready to start pacing.
“We have to keep them in the basement. We can’t let them get out.” We’d probably have to shoot them, which made me angry. And hopeless. I turned to Tyler. “Can you go tell Stafford that Walters is here and Vanderman’s out?”
“Kitty, you should just go upstairs and wait for him. You can explain it all when he gets here,” Ben said.
“I don’t think Stafford would even listen to me. He’ll listen to Tyler.”
“He won’t have a choice. Would you please just go upstairs?”
Ben wanted me out of here—he didn’t want me to face down Walters and Vanderman. We looked at each other, and I saw so many unspoken words. So much fierce protectiveness. I had a sudden urge to throw myself at him and wrap all my limbs around him. My hands itched from wanting to grab him.
“Ben, you should go,” Tyler said. “Stafford will listen to you.”
“Like hell. I’m not leaving Kitty here,” Ben said.
“Kitty has the best chance of talking them down,” he said. “And if she can’t talk them down, there’s me. So you have to go talk to Stafford.”
“I hate to say it, but we’re way past talking,” I said. It wasn’t just Vanderman who’d be up on murder charges now.
“You have to try,” Tyler said. “It can’t be too late.”
He wasn’t worried about Walters or Vanderman; he was worried about himself. He had to believe it was possible for them to come back from that dark place. Because then it would be possible for Tyler.
Ben said, “I’m not leaving you.”
I grabbed hold of his collar and pulled him to me. He cupped my face in his hands. Our kiss tasted hot and anxious after all the cold and stress of the day. It melted me, just a little. Enough to keep going until we cleaned up this mess.
“I’ll be okay,” I said, a statement made mostly on faith .
Ben nodded, but his frown wracked his whole face. “There’s got to be a phone in one of these offices. Shout if you hit trouble.”
“Hell, yeah,” I said.
Ben trotted back down the hallway and ducked into the first unlocked office. I almost yelled at him to close and lock the door behind him—but he did so without me having to tell him. Couldn’t have anyone sneaking up on him.
Tyler and I continued, toward Vanderman’s cell, looking for the rogues.
“Where else could they go?” I asked in a whisper.
“There’s the elevator.”
The elevator was at the other end of the hallway, around the next corner. “They wouldn’t take the elevator, would they?”
Werewolves on the edge of wild, on the hunt, would follow the trails of human scent. Their animal sides at the fore, they might not think of taking an elevator—the scent trail would be cut off. And even if they did think of it, they wouldn’t want to get trapped in a tiny steel box. At least, I wouldn’t.
“I don’t know,” he said. “If they know the stairs are cut off because we’re here—yeah, they might.”
“So we should go lock the elevator.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It all seems so futile.”
“Don’t say that. Remember, we’re here to save Walters.”
He shook his head. “Captain Gordon would have hated this. Hated what we’ve all turned into. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“I’m sure he was a very nice guy, but right now I’m royally pissed off at him.”
Tyler actually chuckled.
A crash rattled the hallway behind us, like a door breaking—I thought it was behind us, but these hallways looped back on each other, and with all the tile, they echoed. It might have come from the office where Ben had locked himself—or it might have come from around the next corner. Tyler and I were looking in opposite directions.
“That’s gotta be Van,” Tyler said.
“And Walters, right?” I said. “They wouldn’t have separated, would they?”
Or maybe they would. They were a wolf pack on the hunt—hunting us, the rival pack in their territory. They’d be moving to flank us.
“Go,” I said, and Tyler ran, back to where we’d left Ben.
So, either we’d split them up, or they’d split us up. We wouldn’t know which until it was all finished and we figured out who won. Except no one was going to win this thing.
Another crash sounded, and this time I was pretty sure it had come from the next hallway, where the elevator was. Maybe I could shut down the elevator. I stepped carefully, a Wolf creeping in this mad human forest —and smelled werewolves all around me, hunting, spilling blood. I had to listen, watch, smell, feel.
I turned the corner to find Vanderman throwing himself at a locked door. He was naked, as if he’d just woken up from shifting back from wolf and hadn’t bothered with clothing. He looked primal, his muscles flexing as he shouldered into the door, rattling it in its frame. Teeth bared, snarling, he grabbed the handle and wrestled with it, twisting, wrenching, looking for all the world like a dog with a chew toy.
The dead bolt cracked the frame; the door wrenched out of place. On the other side, two women screamed.
