Page 69 of Red Boar's Baby

It was true. Diana was walking out of the rocks at gunpoint, head down and fists clenched, looking furious. She was flanked by one of the gunmen and Farley, both holding guns on her. Someone had chivalrously given her a jacket, but she was otherwise naked and limping.

For an instant Costa’s vision turned scarlet with rage. It was all he could do not to let his boar side take over completely, rampaging through the enemy and grinding their bones to a sticky paste beneath his hooves.

But the human side of him knew perfectly well that he would just get himself shot. And worse, Diana.

“Shift and surrender!” the gunman shouted.

Costa looked around at a sudden revving of the airplane’s engine. The pilot had taken advantage of his distraction to get a good run at a takeoff, and Costa didn’t think he could catch him now.

Well, he had given it his best. And there was no way in any universe that he was prepared to let them hurt Diana.

He shifted, and barefoot and naked, walked across the sand toward them.

“Sorry,” Diana said when he was close enough that they could speak without having to shout. “You were magnificent out there, by the way. I didn’t mean to be the weak link.”

“You’re not, and you have nothing to be sorry for.” Costa turned his furious stare on Farley. “Him, on the other hand ...”

Farley winced. “Look, I appreciate that you helped me, and I really am sorry. But I’m not risking my family.” He glanced at Diana. “Just like you’re not going to risk her.”

Costa hated that Farley was right. If he’d been in Farley’s position and Diana’s life was the one at stake .... well, he already knew how he’d handle it, because he had just done it.

The airplane’s high-pitched engine whine turned into the drone of takeoff and it flew over their heads, a couple hundred feet up. Costa looked up at it and, unable to help himself, gave it the finger.

The man who appeared to be the gunmen’s leader, a big guy with sunglasses and a scar across the side of his face, barked a sharp laugh. “Okay, whoever’s got the radio, let him know that they’re under control and it’s safe to land.”

Diana moved closer to Costa until the gunmen stopped her. She wasn’t close enough to touch. But, however precarious their position, having her near at all gave him strength.

“Planning to kill us?” he asked. He wondered how far Diana could get as a roadrunner if he shifted and threw himself at the men. She could survive out here for a long time, and the SCB would send someone eventually—in fact, they were probably already looking. But he had a bad feeling she was no more likely to leave him than he had proven himself willing to leave her.

“No,” Sunglasses said. “You’re a lot more valuable alive than dead. In fact, after seeing you fight an entire airplane out there, I know exactly who would be interested in paying big bucks for you.”

“Paying—” Costa began.

He only glimpsed the gun swinging in from the side as one of the others moved in swiftly and struck him. Sparks exploded in his vision. The last thing he heard was Diana furiously yelling his name, and then darkness swallowed him.

CHAPTER22

Diana was goingto kill someone. She wasn’t sure if it was possible to tear out a man’s throat with a roadrunner’s beak, but she was willing to take a literal stab at it.

With Costa limp and bleeding on the sand, they had ordered her to shift, and she couldn’t think what else to do other than obey. Then she was placed in a cage so small that she couldn’t possibly have shifted human again without badly hurting herself.

That was a few hours ago. She had spent the airplane flight very uncomfortably wedged in the back of the cargo area, unable to see where they were going or what was happening with Costa. She did hear when he woke up, which was a huge relief; there was a scuffle, some yelling and cursing, and she dimly heard them telling Costa to pipe down or they’d throw her cage out of the plane. At this point she almost wished they’d just get it over with; if it came to that, she was willing to at leasttryshifting human to see if she could break the cage. But Costa apparently capitulated, because there was no more fighting that she could hear. After that, they flew on for a long, hard-to-judge while, and then she felt them losing altitude for a landing.

They covered the cage with a canvas tarp, and so, once again, all she had to go on was her other senses. The cage was placed in some kind of motor vehicle and they drove for a time. Diana tried squawking and shrieking, but no one paid any attention, so she decided to save her energy and breath for the next opportunity she got at an escape.

She had absolutely no intention of falling asleep. In fact, if anyone had suggested that she could fall asleep under these circumstances, she would have thought them out of their mind. But it was very dark in the cage, she couldn’t really move much, and she’d had a very stressful twenty-four hours with little sleep the night before ... or the previous night, for that matter. It was hard to wrap her mind around the fact that it had been only two days since her house burned down.

So she dozed in the gently rocking cage. Sudden cessation of movement woke her up. She crouched unhappily in the cage, wishing she could at least see. (And bite.)

The cage moved again. Footsteps, voices. She was being carried somewhere. Then the cover was whipped off the cage and she found herself in a large, too-bright, too-white space.

Diana closed her eyes against the glare. Fortunately, as a desert bird, she was well adapted to bright conditions, and she half-slid her avian third eyelid over her eyes before peering around.

What she saw made her heart rate accelerate. She was very clearly in some sort of lab.

Her cage was sitting on a large stainless steel countertop. All around her, there were metal lab tables, shelves and gurneys of tools, and expensive-looking equipment of various types. Diana had no idea what she was looking at specifically, but the place reminded her a little of her high school science lab except much bigger and with more expensive-looking stuff in it.

I bet an angry roadrunner could do a lot of damage in here.

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