To Catch A Tiger (Tiger Shifters 7) EXCERPT

Enjoy this excerpt from TO CATCH A TIGER (Tiger Shifters 7)

Chapter One

Dr. Ryan Yin stared at the prone forms of the two tiger shifter females, so stunned he couldn’t speak.

The small, rectangular room Gregory had led him to was only just wide enough to leave a walking space between the two single beds, each bed holding one woman. The one on the left, a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, wore black dress slacks and a cream-colored button up shirt that made her look like she’d just come from work, except her clothes were wrinkled and dirty. The blond-haired woman on the bed to the right wore brightly patterned yoga pants and a light blue tank top. Neither had shoes on, and their hair was mussed and tangled against the pillows.

The room’s plain white walls, the white sheets on the beds, and the lack of any other furniture served as a starkly simple background to the horrific sight of the two captives. Their eyes were wide and they were conscious, but neither moved as he and Gregory stood staring at them, not so much as a muscle twitch or change of expression.

The stench of their fear and anger was so thick in the air, Ryan could almost see it. The flavors of their terror, like spoiled fruit, coated his tongue and made him want to gag.

Over the last three weeks…actually it must be closer to four weeks now, three tiger shifter females had gone missing.

This was not where Ryan expected to find them.

“Make sure they don’t die, doctor,” Gregory said.

He stood just behind Ryan, at his shoulder. His proximity made the fine hairs on the back of Ryan’s neck stand up.

“What…?” Ryan had to swallow and start again. “What are they doing here? What have you given them?”

“Just look after them. Make sure they keep breathing. And everything will be fine.”

Ryan dragged his gaze from the women to stare at Gregory. The tall, young male, with his dark hair and eyes, might have been a handsome shifter if it weren’t for the stench of crazy surrounding him.

A little less than a year ago, Gregory had started gathering young male tiger shifters to him, making promises about mates and new laws. The rhetoric appealed to many males, and Gregory had raised a small army in that period of time. Most of them even ignored the fact that Gregory had very little acquaintance with sanity. He said what they wanted to hear, so they followed him. Even when he started talking rebellion.

Until now, though, Gregory had carefully remained within the rules of tiger shifter society. Ryan had been sent into the group to watch for any breach of the law, any excuse to take Gregory down. Yet for all Gregory’s talk, he hadn’t done anything outright that could get him or his group arrested and locked up.

But this…kidnapping tiger shifter females…this broke so many laws, it guaranteed a death sentence. For Gregory’s entire group.

Ryan took a calming breath. Then he said in as level a tone as he could manage, “What have you given them?”

He forced down all the anger and horror clogging his throat. The women needed him alive. If he pissed Gregory off, he ran a good risk of getting himself killed before he could do anything to help them. And if the crazy bastard had taken all three of the missing females, then there was still one more out there somewhere. She’d need Ryan’s help, too.

Gregory tilted his head to one side and stared for a long moment. The stench of his crazy washed over Ryan, an almost chemical smell mixed with a sickly sweet scent like rotting leaves on a forest floor, but Ryan had gotten used to that smell in the last nine months and ignored it. How the other young tigers could, he didn’t know. The smell had become more pronounced since Ryan had first met Gregory. It was like a dark miasma of fog around the male now, not just an underlying strangeness in his scent signature.

“The drug is new,” Gregory finally said. “There’s no name for it.”

“Where did you get it?”

“You’ll find this ironic, doctor. I got it from that human serial killer who tried to murder your sister all those years ago.”

Ryan blinked very slowly, sure he’d misheard. The serial killer—Bradley Williams—had tortured and murder a tiger shifter female eleven years ago. He’d used a drug on her to keep her contained, immobile but able to feel. The woman, Su-jin Lee-Bennett, had been Ryan’s sister’s best friend, and in her need for revenge, his sister had come close to getting killed, too.

Hiding his emotions was significantly harder as he asked, “Why?”

“Why did I deal with a tiger killer?” Gregory asked.

“That. And why have you used that drug on our own?”

“Williams was a pawn. Convenient. He’s improved his drug, you know. Less is required to keep them from moving.”

“Williams killed one of our people. A female. How could you have anything to do with him?”

“He was the only one with the drug. I couldn’t get access to the lab where that bitch elder Elizaveta keeps the old version.”

“Again, I will ask, why have you drugged and kidnapped tiger shifter females?”

“Do you really have to ask?” Gregory tisked and shook his head. “Doctor, doctor, doctor. What do you think we’ve been aiming for all this time?”

“Mates. Voluntary mates. Not…” He gestured to the two women. “Not kidnapping and rape.”

“They’ll be willing. Eventually. Just make sure they don’t die.”

Gregory walked out of the small room without looking back.

One of the two males standing guard beyond the door closed it after Gregory, and a lock clicked loudly into place.

Ryan felt ill. His stomach rolled in violent waves and for a heartbeat, he thought he might actually throw up. He’d made it all the way through medical school and a tough residency without once losing his lunch. Or control of his tiger nature for that matter. But this…

He knelt by the woman on the bed to his left. Her eyes were open and she tracked his movements with her gaze, but she didn’t so much as twitch a muscle otherwise. She was conscious, but obviously couldn’t move. Since the drug was an improved version from the one used by the serial killer, it likely worked just as it had on Su-jin—which meant that even though this woman was immobile, she could probably feel everything done to her.

“Sonofabitch,” he murmured, too quietly for the tiger guards outside the door to hear. They were loyal to Gregory in every way. If they knew what Ryan was thinking in that moment, even a little bit, they’d drag him out of here and execute him.

“I’m a medical doctor,” he said to the woman, holding his hands up so she could see them. “I need to examine you. Please try to relax. I will be as quick as possible.”

He took her pulse, checked her pupils, did a cursory exam of her limbs and body, making sure his touch was clinical and impersonal. His skin crawled from the vulnerability of the two women, and his tiger’s anger was turning his vision red. His rage spiked when he moved to the second woman. Her eyes were closed now, and her pulse was thready. She was barely breathing.

“Fuck.” He hurried to the closed door and pounded on the steel-covered oak.

One of the guards opened the door and stared at him without comment. Ryan knew the man, but not well. His name was Harlon…something. He’d joined Gregory’s group about three months ago. He was a huge male, strong and fierce in a fight. Gregory had not only taken Harlon into his fold, he’d given him a place of “honor” as one of his closest guards.

“I need my medical gear,” Ryan said, using every ounce of arrogant cockiness expected of a surgeon.

When they’d dragged him from his home in Boston, blindfolded, ears blocked, and a disgusting smelling rag over his nose to keep him from being able to track where they took him, they’d been smart enough to bring his large medical kit. It was the one thing in all this he was grateful for. He had emergency oxygen and, if necessary, a portable defibrillator. Those would help him keep the women alive. He hoped. He had to keep the unconscious woman breathing and her heart going long enough for the fucking drug to wear off.

The door closed in his face, but it wasn’t soundproofed so he heard Harlon order the other male—another relatively new member of the group whose name Ryan couldn’t remember—to get the medical kit. At least that was something.

Ryan returned to the woman who was in the most trouble. He knelt by her bed, held her wrist in one hand to monitor the fluttering of her pulse, and kept an eye on her breathing, preparing to start CPR if necessary.

“What the fuck were they thinking?” he muttered.

The first woman he’d examined twitched, her fingers moving against the mattress. That small movement made his heart thump harder. The drug was wearing off, thank god.

At least he hoped her twitch was a good sign. He had no idea how long the women had been with Gregory, or how much of the drug they’d been given. If these were the same tigresses who’d been taken over the last three or four weeks…

Damn it, how were they even still alive?

In a barely audible whisper, he said, “Keep fighting it. You’re almost free. Of the drug at least.”

He glanced at the locked door. They were seriously outnumbered at the moment. Even if she fully recovered, he didn’t have much hope of getting the women away from here yet.

Especially since he had no idea where here was.

The young males who’d escorted him here had ensured his shifter senses were blocked. They’d driven for what felt like days, based on his hunger and need to sleep and pee. Then they’d shoved him into some sort of aircraft and flown for what had seemed like several hours. From the muted sound he felt through his body more than heard, he was pretty sure they’d been in a helicopter, but he couldn’t be sure of that.

Between the days of driving and the flight, he could literally be anywhere in North or Central America right now. Maybe even South America. He thought they hadn’t crossed any major oceans, but even that was mostly a guess. They’d done too good a job screwing with his tiger senses, and they’d left him disoriented for so long he was still recovering from it. The inside of the building didn’t give him any clues either because they hadn’t removed any of the blocks until he was just outside the door to the small room where the women were being held.

Gregory had never fully trusted him, but he had accepted Ryan as one of his disciples. The fact that he’d gone to so much trouble to ensure Ryan didn’t know where they were couldn’t be a good sign.

He couldn’t worry about that now. First he had to make sure both women survived the drug. He had to find out where the third was. Then he’d have to find a way to get them all out of here. Before anything worse happened.

By the time the guard entered with Ryan’s equipment, the first female was flexing her fist. She stilled the minute the door opened, and Ryan had to hide his smile. Smart. The guard set the heavy box next to Ryan where he knelt on the ground between the two beds, then left again without a word, locking the door behind him.

The first female went back to flexing her fist. Her arm twitched a few times and one foot jerked.

“Keep fighting,” Ryan said under his breath as he opened the large, plastic orange box that held his emergency gear.

He snapped on a pair of gloves, then pulled out the oxygen canister, inspecting it for possible damage before assembling and testing the valves and oxygen stream through the face mask, and then he placed the mask over the unconscious woman’s mouth and nose, ensuring an appropriate flow rate. He got the pulse oximeter out, checked to make sure the woman didn’t have nail polish on her finger or anything else that might inhibit the readings, then gently inserted her first finger into the small clip-like device to monitor the percentage of oxygen saturation in her blood. Tiger hemoglobin levels were different than humans and his pulse oximeter was designed for humans, but it at least gave him an idea of how much oxygen was moving through her veins. Next, he took out his stethoscope and listened to her heartbeat. Slow, but as he counted, he was relieved to discover it was steady.

He turned back to the first woman. Her jaw was tight now, her head tilted back just a little.

He moved so he would be in her line of sight and said, “I’m going to check your heartbeat.”

He held up the stethoscope so she could see it. To his surprise, she gave a slight head nod.

When he was sure her heart wasn’t going to explode, he settled back on his haunches and breathed. “You’ll be okay soon.” I hope. “Try to stay calm as you come out of the drug. I don’t know what kind of after-effects it’ll have.”

As far as Ryan knew, Williams had only ever used the drug on victims he killed so he hadn’t particularly cared about residual after-effects.

Ryan glanced at the door. Then next to the woman’s ear he said, “The longer we keep the guards from realizing you’re recovered, the better.”

She blinked and he took the gesture as a sign that she understood.

Damn Gregory for using something like this on their own people. What the hell had the crazy bastard been thinking? Female tiger shifters were so rare now, every single one was important. Killing one, even accidentally, wasn’t just a horrific crime against the woman, it was a crime against their entire species.

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