Page 50 of Wolf Unleashed
“We’ll have to move fast, sweetie, before that wolf in you gets stronger. We need to kill it, which means we have to destroy that blood-bond first.”
Alyssa pushed the fear aside and calmly asked, “Destroy? How?”
“By killing the shifter you’re bonded to, of course.”
Chapter Thirteen
ALYSSA
Alyssa used her one-hour exercise period outside to jog inside the perimeter of the camp and look for weaknesses in security. There were none that she could see, but that didn’t mean an opportunity wouldn’t present itself. The camp was a series of six single-story buildings laid out in two rows, with barbed wire surrounding the entire area and deer blinds in the trees serving as guard towers. She hadn’t noticed those her first two days until she’d heard two men talking high up in a tree.
Though the compound was surrounded by trees on one side and a mountain face on the other. The WSSO took every precaution to stay hidden and secure, including using camouflage netting on the roofs of the buildings. It reminded her of a prison camp on TV from World War II movies, except without any guard dogs. She thought the absence of guard dogs was odd, but not a lot of what these terrorists did made sense to her.
“Not there,” Cooper, the younger of the two guards who followed her, said as she tried diverting between the two buildings farthest from the main gate.
“What is this building?” she asked.
“None of your business,” said Voss, the senior guard.
“A lab then,” she said. His jaw clenched.Bingo.So far she’d determined one of the buildings was housing for staff and guards, a second held the mess, and another munitions and military equipment. That’s the one she needed access to. As for the building which held her locked room, every door they passed in the building was open and the rooms inside were dark and empty. The building had been dedicated to her alone, even though she was locked in one room. The compound didn’t seem large enough for the WSSO to be able to waste space like that. Only one building remained unidentified.
“Where is my father? I haven’t seen him for a week.”
“None of your business, sweetheart,” Cooper added, letting his hand run down her arm.
“Your hour’s up. Back to your room.” Voss pushed past them to lead the way back to her building.
She didn’t pull her arm away from Cooper this time. Never mind that his touch made her skin crawl. He could be the key to her escaping.
“You seem restless,” Cooper said as his hand slipped to her lower back and nudged her forward. “I can take the edge off.” His hand slipped lower, curving over her ass.
It took every ounce of control Alyssa had not to swing and clock him. Voss, who had a good ten-foot lead, either didn’t notice or care that Cooper was propositioning her.
Cooper was right, though. She was restless. Beyond restless, in fact. She spent most of her days staring at her door, wondering if that would be the moment that her dad would enter to tell her he’d killed Maddox and they could then proceed with killing her wolf.
Terror shot through her at the very real possibility that Maddox was dead. She had lost the connection to him two days ago. And what about Tiernan and Rafe? Tiernan was an excellent scout. He should have tracked her by now. Had her father killed him? Alyssa was starting to think she’d never see any of her men again. If they were still alive, she knew they were doing everything they could to find her. And that thought warmed her.
“My fatherismy business. I should be allowed to see him.”
“You’re one of them. Another animal, like all the others we have locked up.” Voss said, his eyes traveling to the middle building, mountain-side.
Others? “What others?”
“Like you, but worse. Full shifters. The ones the doctors experiment on. One day, the doctors here will find a way to kill the animals in them.”
“You can’t experiment on them like their rats! You could kill them!”
“Sacrifices must be made so we can eventually cure the rest of the shifters out there. It’s the only way to save mankind. And don’t get any bright ideas about escaping, Miss Monroe. I see how you’ve been scoping the place. The only reason you’re allowed out here to exercise is because your father ordered it. All lab rats remain locked up before and after they’re needed.”
Just another lab rat. But now she knew there were other innocents here. Even if she made it into the armory, she couldn’t simply blow up these building indiscriminately. That left escaping and returning with help as her only option.
So far, the only plan she’d come up with was to hijack one of the supply trucks that rolled in every three days. That meant overpowering her guards, making it to a truck unseen, and then crashing through the front gate. The odds of succeeding were low, but she had to try. Overpowering two armed guards was the part she hadn’t quite figured out, or how she’d outrun the remaining guards once she broke through the gate. The guards in the deer blinds had the advantage of scopes and a clear line of sight. They could shoot out the tires or shoot her through the windshield.
A horn sounded at the front gate. The guards hustled her back to her building. She pretended to trip and hit the ground, stalling long enough for her to see the van pulling through the gate. Five armed guards surrounded the van just as her guards hoisted her up by her upper arms and dragged her backward. Digging her heels in did nothing except cause one sneaker to pull off.
“Hey, I lost my shoe.”
They stopped and Cooper retrieved her shoe.
