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Hawk’s Challenge
Linda O. Johnston
Hawk shifter Lt. Autumn Katers is proud to be a member of the Alpha Force, a highly covert military unit made up of shapeshifters like her. Her latest assignment: get close to bestselling thriller author Logan Valliere. His latest book’s plot features a special ops team suspiciously similar to the Alpha Force, and Autumn has to find out who’s been helping him with his research.
Flirting with Logan is a natural part of the job…but she never imagined she’d feel so attracted to her sexy subject. Giving into the temptation to go him with him can’t hurt her mission—but will it ruin her potential future with Logan if he finds out how she’s deceived him?
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
PROLOGUE
The hawk soared over the woodlands, reveling in her mastery of the air currents. With human awareness, she recognized her surroundings. She spread her wings wide and rode the wind, watching all below her with the enhanced vision of her alternative form.
In the twilight, the town’s clustered roofs peeked out from beneath thick green foliage and roadways twined between them. To her left, one of the myriad of narrow creeks in the area flowed into a larger river that would eventually empty into Chesapeake Bay.
She scanned the landscape and spotted a variety of other avian wildlife—ducks, egrets, herons, a few seagulls, even some swans.
But her quarry was one human. She circled his house, knowing that he was inside. She had followed him here.
She needed to decide how to proceed.
Mere months earlier, Lieutenant Autumn Katers had joined the highly covert military unit of Alpha Force, and she was proud of their work. At the unit’s core were a group of shape-shifters—humans like her who could transform into animal forms, although she was the only one who changed into a hawk.
Members of Alpha Force who were shifters were recruited in similar proportions to those existing in the wild. Hawks were few indeed.
That meant her assignments were unique, different from those given to the wolves and felines in the unit.
Like this one.
She continued to circle the area as twilight gave way to darkness, riding an updraft as a surfer rode the ocean waves. Would she finally catch sight of her prey tonight, or would she end the night in failure once again, changing back to her human form under the watchful eye of her aide, then rest until tomorrow?
There! She spotted the man leaving his house and heading toward his car.
After two days of watching him, she believed she knew where he was going at this hour. It was time to put her plan into effect. She would meet him, talk to him and learn what Alpha Force needed her to find out—quickly.
It was time to seek out her aide and shift back into human form.
CHAPTER 1
She spotted him right away.
Never mind that GlenB Brews, the microbrewery Autumn had just walked into, was dimly lit and filled wall-to-wall with people this Friday night. She had no trouble zeroing in on Logan Valliere.
She had to talk to him. Now. Sure, she had enough information about who he was and the places he frequented to have confronted him at his home, or the grocery store or a nearby gas station. But a place like this popular local hangout was much better for meeting someone without arousing their suspicions. Men went to bars expecting—hoping—to meet women.
She stood at the door for a moment, then quickly moved away from a couple of guys who smiled at her suggestively, obviously on the prowl for fast, no-strings sex.
With effort, she resisted making an obscene gesture at them. Under other circumstances she might have showed them just how uninterested she was. But tonight she had a role to play.
She was good at that. For one thing, on assignments like this she had to pretend that she was a “normal” person. And she’d spent enough years observing human nature, to get every detail, every hair flip and twinkling eye just right.
She ignored the dull roar of the crowd and the tinny music from a beat-up jukebox as she walked farther into the bar. She didn’t head immediately toward Logan. She needed to seem like a choosy woman looking for someone interesting to flirt with—not one who’d consider the cheesy, desperate group buzzing around the door.
The place smelled of alcohol and hormones. All of the tables around the sides of the room were filled, and crowds of drinkers gathered in the spaces between them.
Autumn’s quarry sat at the long, gleaming wooden bar at the room’s center. All of the stools around him were filled.
Good. She knew just how to approach him.
She had known what Logan looked like even before arriving in Glen Burnie, Maryland. Prior to getting this assignment she had read—and enjoyed—some of his sexy thrillers, and his photo was invariably on the back covers.
Once she’d learned what she had to do, she had researched him further, which wasn’t hard. The bestselling author’s picture was also all over the internet.
There were also interviews on TV, and on book sites and blogs—including the ones that had gotten the attention of her commanding officers in Alpha Force.
Most recently, she’d observed him from the sky and trees surrounding his home.
He’d had no clue that the red-tailed hawk that sometimes soared above his space had human intelligence—and was following him.
Autumn turned sideways to wriggle her way toward the bar. She pretended to try to squeeze past seated patrons to order a drink, but no one was polite enough to let her succeed. Normally that might have peeved her, but not tonight.
She finally elbowed her way to stand behind Logan. He studied the bartender, who had turned his back to pour draft beer into a couple of glasses from kegs in the bar’s center. Conscious of the way Logan’s long, muscular body looked clad in a snug T-shirt and jeans, Autumn made an overt attempt to lean past him. That’s when he seemed to notice her, glancing down with curious blue eyes.
“Want something from the bar?” he asked, as if there was any question about it.
“Definitely,” she said, her voice raised, like his, to be heard over the crowd. She moved closer. “If you get the bartender’s attention, I’d love a glass of the amber ale. Is that what you’re drinking?” She gestured toward the glass mug in his hand.
“I’m into the darker stuff.” He lifted his straight, dark eyebrows, amused at his own joke.
Autumn kept her face blank. She couldn’t tell him that she knew he wrote some nasty but extremely well-plotted thrillers. “Tell you what,” she said. “If you get me a beer, I’ll buy another one for you, too.”
His slow smile sent an unanticipated—and unwanted—thrill of sexual awareness through her. Logan Valliere had a long face. A hint of stubble emphasized its angles. His brown hair covered a high forehead. It was longish and unkempt in a style that suggested wildness and, oh yes, unrestrained sexiness. Even in the dim bar, the navy color of his shirt emphasized the brilliant shade of the piercing blue eyes that remained locked on hers.
He leaned in close. “It’ll be a treat just serving you,” he said in a low, sexy rumble that she didn’t have to strain to hear. “I’ll be glad to pay. You want to sit here?” He gestured toward the tall stool on which his firm butt rested.
Autumn didn’t bother to pretend not to look. When she raised her eyes, she saw heated awareness in his returned gaze.
“No, thanks,” she said slowly. “I’m fine standing.”
He nodded. “You sure are.”
A tacky comment, but nevertheless, it charred her insides. The flirtatious part of this assignment just might backfire on her if she wasn’t careful.
The bartender turned then, and Logan lifted his arm to get the guy’s attention.
“Be with you in a second, Logan.” The beefy bartender motioned to show that his hands were occupied by the beer steins.
“Thanks, Evan.”
So he knew the bartender, and vice versa. Not surprising. Could Autumn use that somehow?
Soon Evan was back, holding out his hand for the empty stein that Logan proffered toward him. “You want a refill?”
“That’s right. And an amber ale for the lady.” He nodded at Autumn.
The bartender grinned. “I thought you were here looking for Beer Guy.”
“You seen him?”
“Not tonight. I’ll get your drinks.” The bartender took the mug from Logan and turned his back again.
Who was Beer Guy? Autumn wondered. And why was Logan looking for him?
Autumn would add that to the list of questions she’d make sure Logan answered before they parted ways tonight.
Was the gorgeous and flirtatious babe another groupie? Logan hoped not. Maybe she wasn’t, considering the way she’d come up to him.
He’d noticed her before her near-fruitless efforts to squeeze in at the bar had brought her to his side. And he’d been glad to help such a great-looking woman get her drink, especially once she’d wriggled her way beside him. Fortunately, it hadn’t seemed like she was zeroing in on him, just trying to find a way to get to the bar.
His writing, and the promotion it required, put him in the public eye a lot. Too often, women recognized him and came on to him just for the challenge of being able to say they’d sex with a famous author. Not that he’d screwed even a fraction of the ladies who claimed they’d gotten together. He was turned off by women like that and kept his distance.
But that was a price of fame. And fame helped to sell his books.
This woman didn’t act like she recognized him. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe for once he could just relax and enjoy her lovely presence while he accomplished what he’d come here for this evening.
He watched as Evan handed her a filled stein, then took the one that the bartender held out toward him. “Put them on my tab,” Logan said.
She shot him an amused look. “Thanks, but that wasn’t necessary. I suppose now you’ll want to find a place to sit down so we can get to know each other better.”
“Sounds good to me,” he acknowledged.
She laughed. “Why not? Although I can’t stay long.”
Good. That suggested she wasn’t here just to come on to him. Otherwise, why toss out an excuse to leave if she decided he was a miserable conversationalist, someone she didn’t want to get to know better?
He’d make sure that didn’t happen.
She flung a smile at him before turning to ease her way through the crowd. It made his vital body parts spring to attention. She seemed to know it as she looked back and cocked her head, causing the reddish highlights in her short brown hair to glimmer in the bar’s low light.
She wasn’t very tall, and her facial features weren’t perfect, but her slightly elongated nose fit well with her full lips. Then there were her eyes, dark and challenging and damned sexy. Gorgeous? Yes, he wasn’t about to amend his initial perception. Not with the way everything fit together so perfectly.
He followed as she slipped through the thick crowd. She wore a short black skirt beneath a shimmering green blouse, and he liked watching her curves move beneath her tight clothing.
Surprisingly, she found an empty table on the far side of the main room. She set her glass on the table and sat down, motioning for him to join her. Intrigued by her charismatic attitude, he obeyed.
“This is quite a place,” she shouted over the din. “My first time here. How about you?”
“I come here often. Are you from around here?”
“No. You?”
This wasn’t enough. He realized that he wanted to know more about her. A lot more. And yelling across the loud bar wasn’t going to get him what he craved.
On the other hand, he was reluctant to leave this place too quickly. The last time he had seen Beer Guy here, it had been on another Friday night, about a month ago.
Talking with Beer Guy again was the main reason he’d started coming back to this microbrewery. Logan was working on the sequel to a thriller that was just about to come out. He’d already started letting his imagination run with possibilities, of course, and had some great ideas of his own. But Beer Guy had suggested the concept in the first place—he’d been tipsy, half-sloshed really, and had said he was a member of a clearly fictional military force Logan had never heard of. Logan had been intrigued by the man’s crazy ramblings, and now he wanted to run his latest scenario past Beer Guy, even brainstorm with him, to get his offbeat perspective.
His mystery date took a sip of her beer, then leveled what appeared to be a quizzical glance at him. “You know, I don’t mean this like some kind of line, but you look familiar. Do I know you?”
“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” he countered, “but I’d enjoy getting to know you better now.”
She gave a small shrug of one shoulder beneath her silky blouse. “Maybe,” she said carefully. She continued to study him, then said, “Have I seen you on TV? Or… You’re a writer, aren’t you? If not, you really look like the guy I’ve seen lately on talk shows. What’s his name?” Her eyes scrunched up as she appeared to ponder the question.
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