CHAPTER 71

I stopped at a coffee shop in Belmont, and asked to borrow the phone. She watched me suspiciously, especially when I stepped out of ear shot, but continued to serve her customers, of which there were a fair few. Must be good coffee.

I dialed Aiden's number.

"Raven," he answered before I could say anything.

"How did you know it was me?"

"Strange number from Boston that I don't already have traced."

I frowned, not sure I believed him entirely.

"Is there something urgent you need?" he asked and I caught the hint of tension in his voice. In the background someone shouted an order. Something was happening at Hoventech and it was making Aiden unhappy.

"You trusted me to handle myself and ask for backup if I felt like I needed it?"

"Yes?" his tone changed, becoming obviously interested in what I was saying.

"I think I need back up."

I gave him the details, pinning down the location the murderer had stopped at as close as we could. As far as we could tell by referencing the GPS, he had stopped and was milling around a location close to the old mental hospital. Figured he'd pick an old, abandoned and likely haunted base. But I guess when you're running a secret government operation you didn't want to be caught by the general public either.

"give me an hour and twenty minutes," Aiden promised, "I'll send six of my best men. Unfortunately, I don't think I will be attending this time. Good luck."

Someone fired a gun in the background and Aiden hung up.

What the hell was going on at Hoventech?

It worried me, but it seemed like everything worried me lately. I couldn't afford to lose the focus so I pushed my concern down into the dark pit of growing worries I'd been collecting and focused on my goal.

I erased Aiden's number, dialed a random number and hung up, and then returned the phone to the owner.

"You've got a lot of customers," I told her, "What's the biggest draw you have?"

She was studying her phone, trying to guess if I'd done anything suspicious to it. At my words she glanced up relaxing a little.

"The coffee is pretty much the same as you can get anywhere, but the doughnuts are hand made here. My son just finished an internship with some famous french pastry chef, who's name I can't pronounce. I wasn't sure pastry was a valid career path for him," she shook her head ruefully, "but I can't complain at the business it's drawn in."

I nodded, smiling in a friendly way.

My stress must have been getting to me because she paled a little.

"I'll take three," I told her, tossing her a twenty, "to go."

Then I left the poor woman alone and stood at the end of the counter waiting for my order.

*We could go now*, my wolf suggested, *twenty minutes would give us a chance to snoop around and figure out what they're up to.*

*I'm not sure that's a good idea. We thought we could snoop around in Newcomb too and look how that turned out.*

*You think the jaguar has healed already?* She asked, her disappointment palatable.

*Possibly. It's also very possible there are others with the talent to hide themselves.*

She didn't like that.

*No, I don't. He overpowered us so easily. Like it was nothing to him.*

*And if they're luring us, specifically into a trap, we have to assume that they are aware of our talents. They're not just going to be waiting around for us to sneak up on them.*

*So what then?* She growled with impatience.

*So we use their knowledge against them.*

***

The light was starting to fade from the sky, casting deep purples and oranges through the clouds that lingered against the horizon. I'd purchased a set of cheap binoculars and had circled the old mental institution three times over from a distance. It looked about like you would expect, crumbled doorways, broken windows and graffiti. We could scent it better from here too, the smell of desperation, old medical equipment and waste, both human and not from the various squatters the building had held over the years.

The team we'd sensed earlier were inside, toward the north entrance. They moved around a little but never far enough to come out of the building itself. In all it said: come in and surprise us! We're totally unprepared.

I still didn't like it, but according to the microwave clock in the townhouse next door to me, my backup would be here any moment, and I didn't want to miss capitalizing on the distraction they would cause.

I hadn't bought a new phone since I found out that Aiden had bugged my old one, but I was beginning to realize the pitfalls of that decision. I couldn't call, or communicate with the backup team ahead of time, so I had to rely on the predictions I made about their behavior.

The most I could count on, I decided was that some of the interior team would move to counter Aiden's men. I put the binoculars away and began my approach.

There were two aspects to my plan. The first was that if these people knew of my talents and were expecting them, I would use that knowledge to make them think I was moving around exactly where I wanted them focused. The second was that if they did, indeed, have another were...something with the same abilities as myself, I would have to be extremely aware of the environment. I focused on the area around the building, tracking the small mammals, the leaves in the breeze, every sound and scent looking for signs of change that might indicate a disruption large enough to be an enemy.

Nearer the building my wolf began pointing out hidden cameras and motion detectors. They were new, and high tech, nearly invisible with a very strong electronic field, leading me to believe that our new friends weren't aware of all of our talents. Especially as my wolf seemed able to sense them from farther and farther away as she practiced.

It did affect our route around the building, however. Since I didn't want to simply shut the motion detectors, which would definitely alert the team inside, we had to avoid entire stretches of the building, and especially around doors and windows.

My wolf cloaked me from the cameras, and I began with making small disturbances, breaking twigs, leaving indents in the soft soil, and basically made it look, to anyone scouting out the physical area, like I might be planning an attempt to climb in from one of the windows in the front. Make them think I had already used my stealth abilities and was trying to get inside.

Hoping that was enough, I began climbing.

I had noticed something interesting while studying the roof with the binoculars and it was the same sort of old plumbing shaft that ran onto the roof at the diner. I was willing to bet that a plumbing shaft for an entire hospital would be at least large enough I could shimmy through it.

There were no camera's or motion detectors up top. Probably because there were no obvious entrance points. Then I waited.

Aiden's men showed up right on time, pulled into the front, as I had predicted and piled out of two separate SUV's, wearing all the tactical gear I'd come to expect.

I spent a moment wondering if I needed to give them a directive, somehow, but they seemed to know what I needed and instantly began filing through the broken front doors, swat team style.

*I hope that's distraction enough*, I told my wolf.

Then we pulled the cap off the plumbing shaft and began our descent.