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