Top Gun Tiger (Protection, Inc 7)

The light dimmed, and the bird of fire was gone. Roland staggered. Pete jumped to steady him. In the center of the room, only an immense gray heap in the shape of tentacles and dragon heads remained. And then a breath of air touched it, and it collapsed into a shapeless pile of ash.

A door slid open. Rafa, Lucas, and Fiona piled in with guns drawn.

“Humans, freeze!” Rafa yelled. “Dog-thing! Dinosaur! Lie down!”

The huge black hound turned its burning eyes toward him. Destiny could swear she saw a familiar expression of world-weary cynicism in them. And then the hound dissolved in a wisp of smoke, leaving behind only Ransom and his own sardonic gaze.

“Still want me to lie down?” he inquired.

“He’s one of the good guys,” Ethan said hurriedly. Waving his hand to encompass Merlin, who was now vacillating between chicken and human-sized raptors, he said, “And so’s he. And these guys.” He indicated Roland, Pete, and Carter.

Fiona gave Carter a cold stare, and didn’t lower her gun. “I wouldn’t be so sure about him.”

Justin put his arm around her shoulders. “He did fly us here. And he’s been very helpful.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Carter said.

“That wasn’t a ‘dog-thing,’” said Lucas. “That was a hellhound. But I thought they were legendary.”

“So speaks the dragon,” replied Rafa. “But who are you all?”

Ethan quickly introduced everyone,

adding, “And I’ll tell you the rest of the story on the way home.”

Fiona looked down at the Cerberus puppy, which was panting happily at Justin’s feet. “I can’t wait.”

“Same,” said Rafa, glancing from the butterfly kitten clinging to Catalina’s shoulder to the moth kitten clinging to Shane’s to the blue dragon on Nick’s forearm and finally and most incredulously, to the Cerberus puppy, which was now licking Fiona’s hands with three small pink tongues.

“Have you finished searching the base?” Destiny asked.

Lucas nodded. “Not a stone left unturned.”

“We threw everyone out,” Rafa said. “Some of them piled into planes and took off, and the rest of them fled into the jungle. Either the Indian police will find them and deport them, or something in the jungle will find them and eat them.”

“Hopefully the latter,” said Shane, reaching up to stroke the gray kitten on his shoulder. It rubbed its head against his chin and purred.

Sounding very pleased with herself, Fiona said, “The self-destruct is ready to remote-activate as soon as we’re all out.”

“You didn’t find any prisoners?” Roland asked, as if he couldn’t help himself. But his sad eyes told Destiny that he already knew the answer.

“None,” said Fiona. “Did we miss someone?”

“No.” After a moment, Roland added, very quietly and more to himself than to anyone in the room, “I’ll never even know her name.”

Destiny, who was standing nearby, heard him. “I’m so sorry.”

“I wish we could’ve gotten here sooner,” Ethan said.

Roland shook his head. “I woke up wearing that collar. Whatever they did to me, they did right away. And she was already… gone. The only person who could’ve saved her was me, back in the US. If I’d convinced her to leave me… If I hadn’t rolled my car in front of her, so she felt obliged to help me...”

“That was her choice,” said Ransom. “It’s better to die as yourself than become a person you’d despise.”

“What the professor is trying to say,” Pete broke in, “is it wasn’t your fault. You tried to save her. She tried to save you. Sometimes things just don’t work out, no matter how hard you try.”

“This place—these sorts of places—break people,” Carter said.

“I didn’t save anyone either,” Shane said softly.