LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Fire?” The general’s look somehow hardened, despite the overall laxness and pain in his features. “Hell.” That apparently cost him a lot of effort, since he grew silent again.

      The siren was extremely loud now. Sara saw the ambulance screech up to the entry kiosk that, only a few minutes earlier, had admitted the general’s now-destroyed car.

      The EMTs were allowed in immediately. They quickly gave the general an initial exam, and then loaded him into their vehicle. Lieutenant Grace Andreas-Parran and her husband, Lieutenant Simon Parran, who had just joined the group around the accident site, got into the ambulance with him. Jason also let Sara know who the newly arrived man was—and that he was a doctor, too.

      “There are a lot of medical doctors in this unit,” Sara said. Did that have something to do with their apparently woo-woo nature, or did their backgrounds somehow help to mask what Alpha Force was really about?

      “Yeah, there are,” Jason responded. “In case you’re wondering, those two are especially appropriate to go with the general. They recently returned here after dealing with an ordeal of their own.” Sara had heard about that from the general. “They’ll take good care of him.”

      Major Drew Connell stood beside Sara and Jason, along with some Alpha Force members Sara recognized and other people she didn’t. As the ambulance pulled out of the gate, Drew turned toward them.

      “So, cuz,” he said to Jason, then gestured toward the smoldering hulk of the destroyed car. An emergency truck with a Ft. Lukman sign on the side had pulled up and was spraying the wreck with chemicals, presumably to put out the fire. “I doubt there’ll be much left to examine, but when those guys are done I want you to take a lot of pictures. We’ll need to secure the wreck where it is temporarily, but I want you to move it ASAP into a secure part of the main parking structure and cordon it off so no one can reach it till I get a good forensics team here to check it out. I need to know exactly what happened. Vehicles like that don’t just catch fire for no reason. You okay with that?”

      “Is that an order, Major?”

      “It sure is, Sergeant.”

      Jason offered up a halfhearted salute along with his grim smile that looked right at home on his sharp-featured, too-handsome face. “You’ve got it, cuz. Er, sir.”

      Sara didn’t smile, even though she recognized the lightness in the exchange between the two cousins as most likely their way of dealing with this terrible event.

      At least the general had survived. But now, as Drew had suggested, they had to figure out what had happened.

      She wasn’t certain how, but she intended to help.

      She would do all that she could to bring to justice anyone involved with endangering her CO.

      * * *

      One of the first things Jason had done after enlisting in the military, and showing up at Ft. Lukman for a very specialized form of basic training, was to check out the closest auto-repair and maintenance facilities.

      Jason understood from even before he enlisted that his primary official assignment would be to take care of Ft. Lukman’s vehicles, which was what he knew best...besides shapeshifting. Oh, and stealing cars—but that would remain in his past. Like it or not, he’d started over here, as a member of Alpha Force.

      The base didn’t have much in the way of auto-repair equipment for him to use, though. He’d bought some of the basics. But he had also needed to figure out where he could rent what he’d need only occasionally.

      As a result, he had an immediate answer when Drew asked, “Any idea how you’re going to move that thing?”

      They both watched the base security guys who’d finished spraying the damaged vehicle with foam to end its smoldering.

      “Sure do,” Jason said. “There’s a well-equipped service station in Mary Glen that has a car-carrier tow truck to haul in wrecks or whatever. I’ll see if I can rent it. If not, I’ll get the owner to bring it here and move the carcass for us.”

      “Sounds good. Meantime, I’ll keep an eye on that hulk to make sure no one plays with it. We don’t want any further destruction of evidence of what caused the fire, especially if it was somehow deliberately set.”

      Jason turned to walk through the substantial group of onlookers still hanging out despite dissipation of the excitement. Sara McLinder remained among them. In fact, the lieutenant hadn’t moved, and he couldn’t read the expression on her beautiful but clearly sad face as she continued to stare in the direction where the general’s ambulance had departed. But it held more than sorrow. Anger? Determination?

      Hell, he wanted to find out what she was thinking. He approached her and asked impulsively, “Hey, Lieutenant, you haven’t been here long enough to visit our nearest town, Mary Glen, have you?”

      She turned toward him and blinked her amazing blue-green eyes as if she’d just been brought back to awareness from some kind of dream. “No,” she said slowly, as if wondering why he asked, “I haven’t.”

      “Okay, then, come with me while I pick up a truck to move that thing. We won’t stay long, but at least you’ll get a sense of the place.” He paused then drew nearer and said in a confidential tone too soft for nearby members of the Ultra Special Forces Team to hear. “Oh, and by the way, some of the townsfolk even believe in shapeshifters. I’ll tell you all about them on the way.”

      * * *

      Sara was fascinated.

      First of all, she liked that, riding beside Jason in his souped-up, old, red Mustang, she could pay much more attention to the road leading away from Ft. Lukman. It was surrounded by gorgeous, thick woodlands composed of trees including mature oaks as well as evergreens.

      The road was basically two-lane—barely. They made a sharp left turn at the edge of the base, and Jason swerved to avoid some stones on the pavement.

      Sara was definitely an urbanite, but she still found the area charming and attractive. Definitely worth visiting.

      But not under these circumstances.

      “How far is Mary Glen from here?” she asked Jason.

      “Not far in mileage.” He glanced toward her from the driver’s seat for only an instant before redirecting his eyes back to the risky road. “Light years away in attitude.”

      “I suppose you’re going to explain,” she said.

      “I suppose I am.” He grinned. And then he began telling her an utterly wild tale about Mary Glen and some murders that had been committed there over several years. “I don’t have firsthand knowledge of this,” Jason said, “But my cuz Drew told me about it. It’s how he met his wife, Melanie, in fact. Now they even have a kid—little Emily.”

      “Really?” Sara said. “Now I’m getting interested.”

      “Okay, I’ll tell you about it. First of all, he said a lot of townsfolk bought into the legend of shapeshifters living in the area. I don’t go to town a lot, but I gather some of its citizens still believe the story. If nothing else, they liked the legend because it brought tourists—and, in fact, it’s one reason Ft. Lukman was established so near Mary Glen, as only loonies like them would buy into the rumor that anyone had seen shifters in the area. Other people here, though, hated both the idea and shapeshifters.”

      He explained how the parents of Lieutenant Patrick Worley, one of the members of Alpha Force, had been killed by silver bullets, about a year apart, theoretically because they were werewolves.

      “And in fact, Dr. Worley, senior, was a shifter. After he died, Patrick sold his dad’s veterinary practice to Dr. Melanie Harding—Melanie Harding-Connell now, my cousin-in-law. Drew’s wife.”

      It seemed that a cult of shapeshifting groupies used to hang out in Mary Glen hoping to see, and perhaps dispose of, some shapeshifters by shooting

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