Protector Panther (Protection, Inc 3)

“Uh-huh.” He pulled his legs in and sat cross-legged on the floor, which was almost as good a view as she’d gotten with his legs stretched out. She tried not to look at anything below his waist. “Maybe it was just as well I had a day with nothing to do but rest and stretch.”

“Were you stuck here the whole time?”

He nodded. “They’re punishing me for running away. Torture by boredom. What did they do to you? Just tests, right?”

“Right...”

He caught her hesitation. “Tell me exactly what happened and where you went. Every detail that you can remember, down to the layout of the building.”

“So you can plan our escape?”

“Yeah. I’ve done it before.”

She had no doubt that he could. He looked like he could do anything. What would he be like in bed? He could probably take a woman to places she’d never even imagined...

Stop that, she told herself.

Trying not to look at him too much, she began recounting her day, starting with her conversation with Dr. Elihu. She skipped the part about Shane’s probable career as an assassin, since that had to be a painful topic, but asked him, “What did Dr. Elihu mean when he said you could tell me the price of desertion? Did he just mean they’d kill me if I tried to escape?”

Shane brushed a strand of black hair from his forehead. Catalina was doing her best not to be hypnotized by his body, but it was challenging when every single part of him was so completely worth looking at. His hands were long-fingered and deft, with the tiny scars over the knuckles you got by practicing martial arts or fighting for real. Or both.

“No,” Shane replied, jerking her attention back to the conversation. “He meant that once you undergo the ultimate predator process, if you survive, you need regular medical care to keep your body from rejecting it.”

“Like an organ transplant?” Catalina said. “You have to take immune-suppressing medication?”

“More like dialysis,” Shane replied. “There’s a machine that takes out your blood and does something to it, and then transfuses it back. Dr. Elihu wouldn’t tell me how it works. He said I couldn’t understand it, but he was just being a dick. He wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be able to have it done anywhere else, so I’d have to keep coming back here.”

Catalina frowned. “But you escaped. Did you figure out how to have it done? Or are you due for a treatment?”

“Neither.” Shane didn’t say anything more for a long time, letting an uncomfortable silence stretch out. Finally, he said, “I don’t need it any more. But that doesn’t apply to you. If you go through the process, you’ll be stuck here.”

There was obviously a lot he wasn’t telling her, but it seemed hard enough for him to have said what he had. Catalina decided not to press him farther, and returned to her account of her day in the lab. He listened intently, his gaze distant, as if he was memorizing everything. Then his eyes snapped into sharp focus when she described her meeting with the man who could supposedly track her down if she escaped.

“Was that true?” she asked. “Or was Dr. Elihu playing mind games?”

“Both, probably,” Shane replied. “Any shifter can track by scent. But there’s ways around that.”

“What about getting taken over by your animal? True? Or mind games?”

Shane’s expression was as bleak as it had been when he’d mentioned black ops. “That could definitely happen.”

How do you know? Catalina wondered. Because Dr. Elihu told you? Or because it nearly happened to you?

In a distinct Let’s change the subject voice, he said, “Want to have dinner? They brought in some MREs.”

He pointed to the corner. It now contained two packages of military rations, plus two stacks of new clothes. She went over and inspected the clothes. They’d both gotten a week’s worth of jeans, T-shirts, pajamas, and underwear, and Catalina had additionally gotten several bras.

She hastily dropped a T-shirt over the bras and panties, and scooped up an MRE as a distraction. “Are these things really as gross as everyone says?”

“You tell me. I’m used to them.”

He opened the packages and assembled the chemical heater. While he took them into the bathroom to run water into them to start the heater, Catalina read the instructions. When he came out, she was laughing.

“What’s so funny?” He sat down and leaned the packages against the sole of his shoe, making her laugh harder.

She pointed to a diagram of how to heat an MRE, with each part from “heater” to “folded end” neatly labeled. The MRE in the drawing leaned against a rock labeled “rock or something.”

Catalina tapped his foot. “‘Or something.’”