Pack Dynamics by Julie Frost Page A

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    Alex ensconced himself in the yellow bedroom’s easy chair, his stocking feet propped on the side table. Ben sat against the headboard of the bed with Janni sleeping curled beside him.
    “Ha,” Ben said, poking a finger at his screen.
    Alex looked up. “Got something?”
    “They’re not covering their tracks as well as they ought to.” He sent it over to Alex’s computer.
    Alex lifted his eyebrows; this email had come into his company server from someone on the outside, into a dummy inbox. “Interesting. How far can you track this through anonymizers? Can you tell who received it?”
    “It’ll take me awhile.” Ben tapped furiously on the keys.
    “Question is,” Alex said, “what can we do with the info once we have it?”
    “They weren’t shy about hurting any of us.” Ben shoved his glasses up his nose. “I vote we return the favor. Maybe I’m not active military anymore, but I haven’t forgotten how.”
    “What was the whole point of them taking you, anyway?” Alex still couldn’t wrap his brain around it.
    “‘You people had better back off,’” Ben quoted, trembling a little with either anger or reaction—Alex couldn’t tell which—and rubbing at the healing marks around his wrists. “‘Or your girlfriend is next.’” His fingers tightened around Janni’s shoulder, and his lips tightened into a white line. Alex could see the visible effort he was making to keep himself together, and wondered a little at it.
    “Bastards,” Alex said.
    Ben clicked a link with a little more emphasis than he needed. “Yeah, well, they caught me unaware. It won’t happen again. They have no idea.” He frowned. “Wait …” Then tilted his head. “Okay, this is weird.”
    Alex craned his neck. “What’ve you got?”
    “An internal memo about lupus. Except Janni’s aunt has that, and this doesn’t scan. And there’s something about … bats?”
    “Send it over,” Alex said.
    A few clicks, and he was reading it. “Oh. Um.” He wasn’t sure how much he should say about this to someone who wasn’t an industry insider. Lycanthropy and vampirism weren’t something anyone talked about much, and it was usually hidden in code references like this. An idea nibbled at the back of his brain …
    And was interrupted by Megan bursting into the room before it could come to fruition. Her hair was wet and so were her clothes.
    “What the—?” Alex started. His feet hit the floor as he sat straight up.
    “There’s a man with a rifle up on the hill. Not one of your security guys.”
    “You went out in the thunderstorm? Megan!” Not that it was about the storm, it was about her safety, he was supposed to keep her safe, what the hell had she been thinking, and wasn’t she going to take a nap?
    “I can’t believe you didn’t have someone do a perimeter sweep. Preferably with a helicopter and a great big spotlight.” Her hands fisted on her hips.
    “I wouldn’t send a chopper out in this weather. I wouldn’t send you out in this weather either. What the hell, Megan?” He nearly hyperventilated, which was a bad idea, considering the fact that his lung still wasn’t quite right. The blood sang in his ears, and he missed the first part of her next sentence.
    “ … to take a walk. I like the rain. And apparently it’s a good thing I did.”
    He stared at her in disbelief. “Did it not occur to you that a man on the hill with a rifle could, I don’t know, shoot you?”
    “It didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t have people looking for a man on the hill with a rifle after what happened tonight! I stayed hidden, and he didn’t see me.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you think we should do something about him?”
    “Well, yes, obviously.” He picked up the phone on the table beside the bed, dialed his Chief of Security Jeremy Hasgrave, and spoke a few words. “Should be taken care of.”
    “You’re welcome,” she said.
    “Megan …” Alex closed his eyes and brought his