Page 57 of Boxed In

“With caution.”

Brand opened his toolkit and gloved up. Before stepping through the door, he pulled out the sidearm stashed in one of the deep pockets of his coveralls and held the weapon in a two-handed grip.

The place was a mess. Somebody had pulled out drawers, turned over furniture and yanked books from the shelves and left them in a pile on the floor. The refrigerator and freezer stood open. And a bottle of catsup lay in a pool of red goo in the middle of the floor.

Brand made a rough sound and reported to Frank through the mike he was wearing. “Someone wanted to trash this place. After making a royal mess with her belongings, they poured catsup all over the floor.”

“I’m betting they didn’t find the box,” Frank answered. “I think they spilled the catsup out of frustration. And they’re long gone.”

Brand proceeded through the apartment, finding every room had been savaged.

In the bedroom, clothes from the closet littered the floor. And shoes were scattered on top of them.

Brand was in the bathroom, looking at the medications dumped into the tub, when Frank’s voice came over the earpiece he was wearing.

“Somebody must have called the cops. They just pulled up in front of the building. Get the hell out of there. I’ll meet you on the other side of the woods.”

Brand was one of Decorah’s werewolf agents. Instinctively, he tore off his overalls, dropped his weapon, and said the ancient chant that changed him from man to wolf. Then he picked up the gun in his mouth. As a cop came around the side of the building, a gray wolf charged out of the apartment and headed for the trees.

He was too late to make a clean getaway.

He heard a strangled exclamation behind him before a bullet whizzed past his head. He dashed into the shadows, dodging between trees, leaving the cop behind him.

oOo

Behind Luke, Olivia made a small sound. “We can’t get in.”

“Not yet,” he answered. It wasn’t Luke speaking. The warrior replied with a kind of confidence that Luke wished he possessed.

Or maybe not. This guy’s tendency to rush off half-cocked had almost gotten them killed.

Quiet, the warrior’s voice spoke inside his head. I must concentrate.

Aye aye, sir. Luke stopped talking abruptly when he felt the warrior narrow his focus.

He picked up a crystal that lay on the desk beside the computer and turned it in his hand.

“What are you doing?” Olivia asked.

“Meditating,” he said in a slow, even voice that was barely a whisper. “Let me concentrate.”

Zabastian continued to play with the crystal as Luke closed his eyes, shutting out the world, cooperating as best he could with the man who was running the show.

At least at this moment, he couldn’t help admiring the warrior’s iron will and the depths of his concentration.

Luke had never been one for meditation. But he recognized what Zabastian was doing. He was going into a deep trance that would be impossible for most people.

He felt his consciousness alter, felt himself disappear into a land where few men could follow.

In his perception, he seemed to be walking in a beautiful garden, with flagstone paths wandering through beds of pastel flowers.

It was a peaceful and soul-satisfying scene. From the warrior’s imagination? Or was this a real place he had visited?

He let the man’s feet carry him along, into another area. Now they were in an herb garden, and he let his fingers brush against the leaves of the plants, the scents wafting up toward him. At the same time, he knew that in the real world, one of his hands gripped the crystal, and the fingers of the other hand brushed against the letters and numbers of the keyboard. That was part of the process, too.

The garden and the keyboard were one—in some mysterious part of the universe where humans could never travel, except with the power of their minds.

Luke was along for the walk. His lips curved into a smile as numbers and letters formed in his mind.

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