Page 3 of Raven's Instinct
Alan debated tackling him, then strode forward with his hand out. “Hey, Partner!” he said with his best Texas drawl. “I appear to be a bit lost in these here parts…”
“Que?” The man didn’t offer to shake Alan’s head. He didn’t look entirely convinced, but his attention was all on Alan while Juliette came up behind him, injecting him swiftly in the base of the neck. He blinked a few times and Alan caught him as he slumped forward.
“Aiden…?” Alan prodded, lowering the man to the floor. His mauled leg reminded him that he was going to be sorry tomorrow.
“Sorry, he’s notscheduledto be there!” Aiden protested. “Will he be okay?”
Juliette peeled back an eyelid to check. “He’s going to wake up in about twenty minutes from some really weird dreams that will make him question his sanity and lose his last meal. Let’s finish up, Alan! I don’t want to be here for that!”
“For someone with kids, you’re awfully squeamish,” Alan teased. He scanned the numbers on the banks of servers. “Alpha… Gamma… Delta… Charlie… seventeen, here we go!”Alan pulled the server out as far as the wires would allow. “On your mark, Aiden.”
“One twenty-block power outage and a very targeted surge in Seattle, coming up!” Aiden said cheerfully. “Go time!”
Alan pulled the wires from the back of the server and took the replacement from Juliette, careful to put them back exactly as they’d been before he slid the new one back into place. Aiden had drilled him thoroughly.
There was no sign that they’d triggered an alarm as they left the unfortunate technician in his own drool. Alan shut the door behind them and heard the lock click into place. They would be back in the States by nightfall, no one the wiser for the thorough wipe of incriminating footage from the backups. What’s more, Aiden’s newest babysitting program was now in place, scanning trillions of bytes of data for anything else that might accidentally endanger secret shifters. The power outage in Seattle would wipe the data, and they would replace it from the backup here, not aware that it had been tampered with.
The Jeep was undisturbed, and no one challenged them as they left.
“What did you mean about working at a day care?” Alan asked, once they were back on the main road.
“I want you to go undercover at Tiny Paws and make sure that no one can get in and hurt those kids,” Juliette said serenely. “It might be nothing, but I don’t want to leave them unprotected.”
“You want me to be a nanny?” Alan had done plenty of covert work, but he was having trouble wrapping his head around the idea of working undercover in aday care. It wasn’t like he could pretend to be one of the kids, which meant…
“I’ve got you signed up for legitimate childcare certification,” Juliette said. “You can cram what you need, we can provide a paper trail for the rest. I’ve already talked with the owner,and she’s agreed to hire you on while the threat level is high. Everything will be completely above board as far as she’s concerned, though I may need you to do a little investigation into the owner, Cherry, and the parents. We can’t eliminate the possibility of a breach within the day care itself. Even if we don’t want to suspect another shifter, you know as well as I do that people are susceptible to blackmail.”
“Aday care?” Alan repeated. “You actually want me to change diapers and enforce nap time for a bunch of screaming shifterbabies?” He remembered belatedly that Juliette’s son was one of those screaming shifter babies. “I mean, kids are great, I guess, probably, but…I’m…I’m not really…equipped…for…”
Juliette looked sideways at him and lifted an eyebrow and Alan realized that all he could do was dig himself deeper.
“Sounds like fun,” he said with a sigh.
“How do you always get these cake assignments?” Aiden complained in his ear. “I’d love to play trains and take naps all day.”
But Alan had a sneaking suspicion that the mission he’d just been on was going to look simple by comparison.
1
KENDRA
One of the things Kendra had never expected to appreciate about living in her van were the sunrises she was forced to enjoy.
The converted mobile vet van, fondly named Rita, had an over-the-cab bed with windows on three sides, and the blinds never kept all the light out. Two of them didn’t come down anymore, so Kendra just left them all open, and every morning, she woke with a face full of color and sunlight.
It was autumn, and they were parked just outside of Nickel City at an overlook with a view of mountains and picturesque, fall-colored foliage. It was postcard perfect, and the air had a hint of frost to it at this elevation, though there wouldn’t be snow for a few more weeks, Kendra guessed.
The rest area wasn’t technically a campground, and Kendra certainly hadn’t paid for a space, but state troopers tended to be lax about self-sufficient units that weren’t setting up a long-term camp if they only stayed one night.
The vet medical logo, with a silhouette of a horse head, and SAGE VETERINARY SERVICES script on the side of the van also got her a little slack.
And a vet with a baby?
When Amy was at her cutest and most charismatic, the two were unstoppable, but when she was at her most wretched and shrill, no one could help but feel sorry for Kendra.
“We’re a good team, darling,” Kendra murmured into Amy’s hair. “You and me against the world.”
Amy was still sleeping beside her, snuggly wrapped in footed pajamas. Kendra had put a bumper around Amy’s half of the double bed when she was a baby, but it didn’t stop her anymore and Kendra usually woke up with the little girl cuddled in her arms.
