“No one can help me.” The words were matter-of-fact.

“Where’s your Collar?” Iona asked.

The yellow eyes narrowed. “What collar?”

Interesting answer. “How long have you been in there?”

Surprise flickered in his eyes, as though he’d never considered it. “Always.”

“Who captured you?”

“I was never captured,” the tiger said. “I have always been here.”

The chill in Iona’s blood grew. “Where are the humans who run this place? They took a cub. I need to find her.”

“A cub.” The voice became sharp, more alert, more enraged. “Don’t let them have the cub.”

“I’m trying not to. Tell me how to find them.”

The tiger went silent a moment, claws scratching the floor. “Let me out. I’ll show you.”

“How about you just tell me? I’ll find the cub, and my mate, and he’ll help you. Promise.”

“No promises. Promises are lies.”

Iona took one bold step toward the cage. She couldn’t show fear. She had to calm him, to make him understand.

The dominance game, she understood with sudden clarity, wasn’t about fighting. It was about making the challenger know what would happen if things came to a fight. Iona might be smaller than the tiger, but she had to prove that she was fast and strong, and smart enough to win.

“I’m not one of the humans who put you in here. I’ll find the cub, with or without your help, and I’ll come back for you. That’s how it will be.”

The tiger fixed her gaze with his crazed red one. Iona didn’t flinch.

Staring him down was harder than staring down Shane or even Graham. But not tougher than facing Eric.

Eric, as calm and laid-back as he pretended to be, had dominance down to an art form. He didn’t need to challenge anyone, because he knew he’d already won before the game even started.

Defiance in the face of Eric’s will was almost impossible, but Iona had managed it. And she knew that if she could withstand Eric, she could withstand Tiger Man.

The battle took a long time though. Whoever this Shifter was, wherever he’d come from, he was a dominant.

The tiger didn’t lower his gaze or turn away, but finally Iona sensed a minute change in his stance.

“They do experiments on the top floor,” he said. “When they don’t do them down here. But they wouldn’t bring a cub down here with me.”

Top floor it was, then. Iona hoped he wasn’t sending her into a trap, but he didn’t smell of lies.

“I’ll make sure you get out too,” Iona said. “What’s your name?”

He hesitated for a long time, then finally said, “Twenty-three.”

“That’s not a name.” Iona glanced back down the row of empty cages. “What happened to numbers one through twenty-two?”

“They died. Now it’s just me.”

Iona met his gaze again, her fear of him changing to sympathy. “I’ll come back for you,” she repeated.

As though the conversation had become too much for him, the tiger shifted back into his huge wildcat, snarling breathily in his throat.

Iona became her panther again, finding it easier this time, and slunk back into the darkness.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Tell me you’ve got a fix,” Eric said for about the tenth time.

Xavier tapped keys on the keyboard in the offices of DX Security. “Getting there. A little quiet would help.”

Diego was pacing the long room, his fingers fondling the handle of his Glock. He paced, Eric knew, to keep himself from ripping the computer out of Xavier’s hands and trying to pull up the GPS data from Iona’s cell phone himself.

Eric contented himself with standing over Xavier and breathing down his neck.

Shane had summoned Eric back to the clinic in a state of panic. Iona and Cassidy had disappeared, Shane said, little Amanda with them. Shane and Brody had scoured the clinic and bullied the staff, but the three were nowhere to be found. Jace had already headed out to the compound in the desert to search for them there.

Eric had been about to call Diego and break the news, when he and Xavier had returned from a restaurant near the clinic, where the brothers had celebrated Amanda’s birth with beers and burgers.

Shane had been about to shit himself. He’d always had a thing for Cassidy, and now he blamed himself for losing her, her baby, and Iona. He should have checked on them more often, he said. He’d let them down. He deserved to have Eric and Diego kick his grizzly ass.

Eric had interrupted this self-flagellation by saying in clipped tones that if Iona had her phone with her, they could track her through its GPS chip. Even if Iona couldn’t use the phone, they could still find her, and Xavier knew how to get to that data.

“Won’t help if they threw her phone away,” Xavier had said glumly.

Eric answered, “Even finding out where they threw it away gives us a place to start.”

“Here we go,” Xavier said now from his computer. “Iona’s phone is at these coordinates, which is roughly…” He brought up a map and entered the data. “Here.” A red dot blossomed on the map in the middle of nothing.

Eric leaned to look and felt Diego crowding behind him. The dot was in empty desert, not at the compound they’d found, but farther north and west.

“That’s Area Fifty-one,” Diego said. “What the hell are they doing in Area Fifty-one?”

“Experiments,” Eric said, his rage burning cold. “That’s where they did the experiments on Shifters twenty years ago.”

“The f**k they’re going to experiment on Cassidy and my daughter.”

“Or my mate,” Eric said.

Xav broke in. “Diego, you can’t take a posse up there. There’s gates and guards and people with guns to shoot your ass as soon as they see it.”

“They can’t take my daughter hostage. I’ll get every law enforcement official in the state of Nevada to make them let us in.”

“No,” Eric said, his eyes on the map. “I’ll go in myself.”

“To a top secret government facility?” Xavier asked, incredulous. “They have security cameras and guards happy to shoot you as soon as they see you. What does authorized use of deadly force mean to you? Trust me, I’ve studied their security—I study everyone’s security. It’s my job.”