The Beast Within
Suzanne McMinn
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Prologue
Light blinded him as the lab exploded.
One second, he was performing a routine test procedure with his partner, Phil Bennett, and the next, Kieran Holt’s life blew apart. His hands flew up to shield his face as heat pushed at him, whirling past him in a thunderous roar. A mighty crack tore through his consciousness and he rocked backward.
Suddenly it wasn’t the fire outside his body he felt but within—fever, aching, cramps. An extreme stinging and itching took over his body, then gut-wrenching nausea and cell-ripping pain.
He was dying. He had to be dying. And he’d never see, hold, touch Paige again if he didn’t fight. He opened his eyes to find himself on the floor of the lab, slightly below the thick smoke.
Fire was everywhere, chemicals shattering in violent, changing light. He battled through the strange agony engorging his skin, humming pressure through his blood. He had to escape, and he had to find Phil. Every move he made came with slicing pain somewhere inside his body.
His vision cleared and he saw the booted leg sticking out from behind the work table. He crawled toward it and found his partner’s empty eyes staring up at him in the eerie, swarming inferno. Grief choked him along with noxious fumes.
Kieran struggled to his feet, but balance was impossible. He felt drunk, drugged, barely capable of walking on two legs. He stumbled back onto all fours as grayish ectoplasmic vapor erupted from his own skin.
Time and space lost all meaning. He knew a shifting, excruciating energy as a warm chill rushed through his body, and he stared in horror as a prickling burst out on his arms and legs. With a ferocious will, he forced himself onto his feet and exploded from the lab. Men—security officers—rushed toward him down the corridor. He stumbled past them, rushing from the building in dazed involuntary instinct. Cool night air struck his face, but the heat within didn’t die.
He felt his proportions change—his face stretch, his hips narrow, his shoulders evaporate into his torso. His senses splintered and he could no longer think in words but in emotions and sensations as if his mind had been taken apart and put back together all wrong.
All he knew was panic, and all he could do was run.
Chapter 1
Paige Holt gave an instinctive pat to the inside front pocket of her rain slicker, reassuring herself that the documents were still there. All she needed was one signature, from one man, on one piece of paper.
“Forecasters expect Bernadette to strengthen before making landfall on the barrier islands and eastern seaboard late tonight. More details will be available around eight p.m. when Air Force Reserve hurricane hunters pay Bernadette a return visit—”
She would be long gone by then. Long gone…and free.
The National Hurricane Center broadcast crackled fuzzily in the chartered helicopter. The pilot shifted the controls, taking the craft into its vertical descent. The almost primordial island beach-bound forest of loblolly pines, live oaks and palmetto trees rose up toward her, deceptively quiet. Callula Island.
Was Kieran really here?
They went way back, she and Kieran. Back to their early days at PAX, when she’d actually thought they could do anything as long as they were together. Could she have been more naive? She’d been attracted to him right from the start, with his dark hair a little too long, his hard smile a little too wide, his umber-brown eyes a little too dangerous.
She’d loved the way he watched her, steady and confident and full of some breathtaking energy that had zeroed in on her from the very start. He’d had a way of making her feel special, as if he couldn’t see anyone but her. And that sense of overwhelming rightness had sucked her needy heart into a soul a little too damaged, a spirit a little too dark. She’d thought she could heal him, that all it took was love.
Naive didn’t begin to cut it.
She missed him and hated him and panic welled up inside her at the thought of seeing him again.
The light single-engine helicopter she’d chartered to take her to the drumstick-shaped barrier island bumped down on the wide strip of sand. Her stomach danced and a lump moved into her throat.
“This is it, ma’am,” the pilot said over the dying noise of the rotary motors as he killed the engine. “Callula Island. You’ve got till six p.m., latest. Then I’m out of here.”
He gave her a look that told her he already thought this trip was crazy. She’d paid the Savannah-based charter pilot double to fly her here in the face of an approaching hurricane. No one in their right mind would take off with this kind of weather coming, he’d suggested.
Since when had she been in her right mind?
“You can’t pay me enough to stay past six,” he added for good measure, just in case she was considering that added foolishness.
“I’ll be back by six.”
Calulla Island was four miles long, two miles wide. Paige was in shape, and dressed for hiking. They’d made an exploratory flyover that put the majority of Callula out of the question for a hiding place.
The island was a mix of natural communities—from marshland to forest within a surprisingly short geographic area. The marshes and dunes of the lower portion of the island made it easy to dismiss. The northern end, with its maritime jungle, was the part she would have to hike into on foot.
She had six hours to find a man who didn’t want to be found.
The pilot got out, and Paige pushed open the passenger door of the helicopter. She jumped out, walked around the side. Sand crunched beneath her boots. The late May air felt cool on her face. A light breeze, in no way suggestive of the storm to come, fingered through the blonde hair she’d left hanging loose to her shoulders.
She felt Kieran’s spirit as she gazed into those dark, thick woods. He was here.
He had to be here.
She came around the side of the helicopter. Shells littered the beach. Far across the water, a dolphin broke the still-calm surface. Dolphins meant luck, and she needed some today.
She found the pilot leaning up against the rear cargo door, his ropey build taut as he gazed out at the ocean. He flicked his Bic, lit a cigarette. He leaned his head back as he sucked in, his dark hair teasing the collar of his denim-blue shirt. His hawkish, sharp eyes watched her as he blew out.
Paige hadn’t smoked in five years, but she almost begged him for a hit.
Dammit, she wasn’t going to feel anything. Not anxiety. Not regret. Not grief. Nothing. She was so good at lying to herself, it was almost scary.
She turned her back on the pilot, the helicopter, and any half-baked notion