Tempted by the Jaguar #4: Infiltration (Riverford Shifters) by Cristina Rayne Page A

sobbed when it turned easily, and she was able to pull it
open. Hunter shoved her inside so hard that she stumbled and nearly fell to her
knees. Hunter grabbed her arm again to steady her as the door slammed behind
them.
    “Come on!” Maxim exclaimed, gesturing towards a lone door at the far
end of what turned out to be a completely empty room no larger than a wide
corridor. “I can’t lock the door, and there’s at least a dozen of them only
minutes behind us. I’m not sure even the bobcats can pick them all off before
one or two can get inside. I’m afraid we don’t have time to wait for the rescue
group coming through the front to meet up with us here like we planned. That
door at the end should open to the emergency stairwell Jack mentioned.”
    Hunter pulled Kylie tightly against him and threaded their hands
together tightly. “Don’t leave my side unless you absolutely have to! Maxim,
we’ve got your rear.”
    “Maybe I should go first,” Kylie said as they raced to the stairwell.
“They might freeze just like that guard when they smell—”
    “Absolutely not!” both men snarled in unison.
    “As soon as we get in the stairwell, you need to change back into a
jaguar,” Hunter said in a tone that brooked no argument. “Soon our guys will be
down below helping us look for captives and mining information. If we get
separated, there’s a good chance they might attack you without realizing who
you are if they smell lion.”
    Once through the door and they were descending a narrow set of
industrial, metal steps, Kylie dug out her bracelet and began fumbling with the
charms in the poor lighting.
    “We’ll go down three levels first,” Maxim said. “That’s the only place
we know for sure other than the lowest level labs that they were holding the
captives. Hopefully they won’t have moved your brother somewhere else as a
precaution after Jack’s escape. Then we’ll search the other floors one by one,
room by fucking room, until we find everyone. With the locks in the whole
building disengaged, some of them may even be trying to escape on their own.”
    Kylie completely expected to hear the sound of the door crashing open
above, bracing herself for the exchange of bullets that were sure to follow,
but before she knew it, the door to the third basement level was before them
without a single shot being fired just as she finally managed to find the right
charm and pop it open. Then she nearly dropped the bracelet with her finger
still pressed against the hollow inside one of the halves when a crash sounded
above them and Hunter yanked her hard through the door.
    A young man in a lab coat stood frozen in the brightly illuminated
hallway lined with closed doors they found themselves in, his chest heaving,
and staring at them as if they were some type of hideous monsters birthed by
the stairwell. Maxim was on him before Kylie could even gasp in alarm, punching
him square in the face. The guy’s head snapped back with a cringe-inducing
crack, and he instantly crumbled to the ground.
    “You two take the doors on the right,” Maxim said and immediately
hurried over to the first one on the left.
    The first room was completely empty except for a couple of suspicious
dark stains along one of the walls. The second appeared to be jammed. Hunter
kicked it open, but this one, too, was empty. The fact that they were empty
really didn’t surprise her. If these rooms were where they locked up their
captives when they weren’t being tortured, then she didn’t think those types of
monsters would bother to provide their victims with a blanket, much less a bed.
    Then Maxim let out a startled noise, and Hunter and she were
immediately at his back where he was looking into a darkened room with an
expression of pure horror. Kylie nearly gagged at the smell coming out of that
room, an unholy mixture of animal waste, death, and something she had never
smelled before. Certain she didn’t want to see what lay within that