Johnson just gave him a nod and raised a hand to keep him from cruising through the weapons arch. The guard checked Jared’s ID on the computer at his station. Apparently, the clearance via scan wasn’t sufficient.
It took an agonizing ten seconds, but Johnson finally waved him through the arch. Thankfully, Jared’s hidden mic and earbud didn’t set it off. Then again, they were mainly plastic, designed for minimum detectability, and he currently had them switched off. He was going into this with his shifter abilities and an urgent need to rescue Grace, but not much else.
Once he was down the hall and around the corner, striding past offices that appeared locked, he activated his earbud and the microphone sewn into the collar of his white dress shirt.
“All right, I’m in,” he whispered. Jace was on the other end to guide him. Taylor, their computer whiz within the pack, had tricked out Jared’s phone to help with some of the security measures he might encounter, but mostly the pack was on standby outside, in case Jared got into trouble he couldn’t get out of—then they would come and get him and Grace the hell out of there by force.
Which was no one’s preferred option.
If they all got caught, Olivia had documentation ready to go public—hopefully, that would pull them out of whatever government tangle they found themselves in. It was a great plan, except he had no idea where Grace actually was inside the building.
“Okay,” Jace said over the tiny earbud stuck way inside Jared’s ear. “I need you to get your phone next to one of the security scanners by a door. Hopefully, Taylor’s hack will let you access the entry and exit log, so we can track down Agent Smith. Or Sanders. If he’s calling himself something else, it might be a little more tricky.”
“Copy that.” Jared shuffled quietly down the hall. The whole place seemed to have emptied out, at least on this level. He fished his phone out of his pocket and held it up to one of the scanners near the end of the hall. “All right, phone in place.”
His phone made a few pinging sounds, and the face of it popped up an app that was remotely activated by Taylor and running through some kind of protocol.
Jared heard a scuffle of shoes down the hall, and he leaned against the doorway, blocking what he was doing with his body. Whoever it was disappeared down another turn.
“Any chance of moving this along faster?” he asked in a whisper.
“Standby.” That was Jace again. It took another ten seconds or so, but his brother finally said, “All right, Taylor says she’s in the basement. Apparently, Agent Smith’s been down there for most of the day.”
Most of the day. Shit. His stomach bunched into a hard knot, and he had to not think about Grace being in Agent Smith’s grasp. His worst fears were biting at the edges of his mind—had been ever since he found out Agent Smith had her—but Jared was here, now, to get her. He had to focus on that, or his nightmares would keep him from doing what he needed to do.
Jared scanned his way into the elevator and then used his keycard to access the buttons for the basement. “There are three levels of basement here, guys,” he said into the mic.
“Sanders scanned into Room 312,” Jace responded. “I’m guessing third level down.”
Made sense. Jared punched the number, and the elevator swooped down. When the doors opened, he stepped out but froze almost immediately. There was a distant keening that prickled the hairs on the back of his neck. It was way too high-pitched, far too much like he imagined Grace would sound if she were screaming.
He took off in the direction of the sound. “Did you hear that?” he whispered as he ran, trying to keep his footsteps light so as not to give any warning.
“Not picking up anything but your heavy breathing,” Jace said.
Jared scanned the door numbers and finally found Room 312. The sound had stopped, and he hesitated at the door. Surprise was about the only thing he had going for him. He held the key card in one hand and braced his other hand on the doorknob.
“I’m going in,” he whispered. Just before he scanned the key card, another scream let loose—it was definitely inside the room. His heart lurched. He shoved open the door as soon as it clicked the clearance and barreled into the room as fast as he could, but then he stumbled to a stop—Agent Smith hovered over a gurney with someone strapped to it. That someone was covered in blood, but even from across the room, Jared could see the long tumble of brown hair…
Grace.
Jared roared and shifted as he leaped across the room to reach them. Agent Smith was buried in his godforsaken act of torture, and Jared almost reached him before he could react. At the last second, the man pulled a gun from his blood-flecked G-man jacket—it went off just as Jared arrived in a blinding fury of fur and teeth and claws. A screaming pain ripped through Jared’s shoulder, but his momentum barreled him into Agent Smith and took him down. Jared lunged for his throat, just barely clamping his jaws around it when the gun went off again, this time punching Jared in the gut and loosening his hold. That fucking gun! He shifted back to human and made a grab for it. They were grappling close-quarters now. Smith was tall, but weak, at least compared to Jared’s shifter strength, even with two bullets in him. He quickly wrestled the gun away, shoved it into Agent Smith’s side, and pulled the trigger.