Jace (River Pack Wolves 2) (Paranormal Romance) by Alisa Woods

second floor and a small office with the door that he quickly closed behind him. He logged into his computer and scanned his messages.
    “Give me a minute,” he said, “and I’ll see if there’s any hint of on-base unusual activity. Then I’ll see what I can do about finding out what happened to Noah.”
    While Daniel worked his computer, Jace stared out the window at the sprawling campus. Where would Piper have gone? She had to already be on base. Which meant she must’ve used Daniel’s ID. The question was… why hadn’t the guards at the gate mentioned anything about that? It should have come up during their security check, at the least. Piper was counterintelligence—did she just waltz in with false ID? Probably. If what Daniel said was correct—and there was no doubt Piper was unpredictable—then maybe she didn’t do the logical thing. Maybe she was holding off, laying low until she came up with a better way to access the Joint Base’s resources. Then again, the girl who grabbed him and kissed him in his own kitchen, after breaking into his house, didn’t seem like the type to hesitate to action.
    A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.
    A short brown-haired woman popped her head in the door. “Sir? Your father would like to see you in his office.” She ducked her head and closed the door behind her, as if she knew she was delivering bad news and needed to escape quickly.
    Jace threw a fast look at Daniel, eyebrows quirked up. “Does that happen often?”
    Daniel’s face was clouded, a deep scowl immediately setting in. “Never.” He had already risen up from his chair, but then he hesitated and shut down his computer.
    Before he could reach the door, Jace caught up to him and asked, “Do you think your searches about Noah tipped him off?”
    Daniel shook his head. “I barely got through my email.”
    They didn’t speak on the walk up to the Colonel’s office, which was apparently on the third floor in the far corner overlooking a manicured and spectacularly green lawn.
    Daniel paused before knocking on the door. “Let me do the talking. We don’t want to give anything away if we don’t have to.”
    Jace just nodded. Whatever the family dynamics were, he was certain Daniel knew them better than he did.
    Daniel knocked on the door but didn’t wait for permission—he just strode in, full of sudden confidence, as if he was marching into a gladiator ring and needed to wear all of his courage in his bristled-out stance. It telegraphed his alpha-ness in a very obvious way. Daniel was younger than him by at least five years, but any shifter with military training had their alpha nature fully emerged by the time they graduated boot camp. The River pack was filled with military wolves, each of whom could easily have their own pack. It was part of what made the River pack strong, the willingness of so many alpha males to submit to the one pack alpha, his brother, Jaxson. It was also the reason why so many of the local packs came to them when they had some kind of problem with the shifter world. Or even the non-shifter world.
    Daniel approached his father’s huge oak desk with his shoulders thrown back and his head held high. “You wished to see me, sir?”
    Daniel’s father didn’t look up from his phone, ignoring their entrance, a move clearly meant to put Daniel in his place. The Colonel’s desk was lined with several crystalline-etched awards, each prominently displaying his name—Lt. Col. Astor Wilding. The metals decorating the Colonel’s chest were likewise prominent. Which was even more obnoxious, given the dress code throughout the building was regulation desert camouflage, as far as Jace could tell.
    The Colonel looked like he was ready for a parade of one.
    Jace disliked him immediately. And not just a casual dislike, either. It was a visceral sort of thing, deep in his gut—his wolf was reacting to a presence it had identified as the enemy. Not just another alpha wolf—that