Page 3 of Tiger on the Prowl

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The huge contraption—which looked like an MRI machine but was something much more dangerous—made a noise like an airplane engine with Jay right in front of it, unable to escape. They’d drugged him and tied him to the gurney, his head in a helmet. He couldn’t move a muscle, not even his pinkie. His entire body was paralyzed, while he drifted in and out of consciousness. Around him, several men in lab coats were busy adjusting this or that, conversing with each other. Medical jargon drifted to him, but he didn’t need to understand the words. He knew what would happen.

He tried to fight it. But he had no strength.

The face of his tormentor hovered over him, goading him, laughing in that insidious way only cartoon villains did. The laugh was like an echo that bounced off the walls of the enormous hall he found himself in. Jay smelled the dust and the musty scent of something rotting. He smelled wood too, and the strong whiff of an expensive cologne. Smith’s cologne.

The gurney Jay was shackled to moved underneath him, and the sound of the machine became even louder, as his head approached the center of the machine. He could only imagine what it would do to him. But he knew he wouldn’t survive it. He felt it the instant the huge circular machine started spinning around his head. It felt like a magnet was trying to suck every last cell from his brain.

He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t. His vocal cords were paralyzed too. But inside his head, he was screaming, screaming for them to let him out, screaming for somebody to free him. But the pain only magnified, until he could take it no longer, and everything exploded.

Jay shot up to sit and realized that he was in a bed. He was bathed in sweat, and it took him a few seconds to remember where he was. Safe. Rescued by his fellow Stargate agents. They’d freed him in the eleventh hour. A moment longer in the machine, and he would have ended up like Thomas, a Stargate agent Smith had captured before Jay: his brain fried, his other organs unable to function any longer. With a trembling hand, Jay stroked over his head. The indentations from the probes they’d attached after shaving his already short hair, were gone now, but the nightmares remained. He hadn’t mentioned them to Ace, Fox, or Yankee, his three rescuers. They couldn’t help him with that part of his recovery, though they’d helped him with everything else.

Ace and his fiancée, Phoebe, had offered him a room in their large mansion on the outskirts of Washington D.C. It had once belonged to Henry Sheppard, the CIA agent, who’d created and overseen the top-secret Stargate program. His own cover as a yoga instructor in a small gym in Alexandria with all likelihood blown, Jay had nowhere else to go, and had accepted the generous offer. Yankee and his girlfriend, Lilly, also lived under Ace’s roof; only Fox and his girlfriend, Michelle, lived in a safe house in D.C., but spent most of their days in the mansion working on setting up surveillance operations and anything else that would help the ex-agents find the people responsible for the destruction of the Stargate program and the murder of their leader.

Jay got out of bed and showered. He felt better after it. But he still hadn’t found his inner peace. The nightmare of what he’d been through had been disturbing his sleep every night since his rescue ten days earlier. He grabbed the yoga mat Michelle had ordered for him and made his way downstairs. He heard voices and the sound of dishes clanging in the kitchen, but turned toward the back of the house instead. He opened the French doors to the terrace and stepped outside. The air was still fresh, but in a few hours, heat and humidity would engulf all of Washington D.C.

Jay spread out his yoga mat on the terrace and stood in mountain pose, his eyes closed, as he collected his thoughts. In the last three years, ever since he’d had to go on the run after Henry Sheppard’s murder so he wouldn’t become the next victim, he’d turned to yoga to help him cope. His training as a CIA agent had helped him with all physical aspects of evading capture for so long, but practicing yoga had helped him mentally. It had centered him, and kept him sane, so much so that he’d taken jobs as a yoga instructor in different cities all over the US, never staying too long in one place.

But in Alexandria, he’d stayed for longer than he’d planned. He should have left after his customary six weeks, but a young woman who’d attended each and every class he taught at the NamasteStudio and Gym, had captivated him more than he’d expected. Olivia Morikawa was a beautiful Japanese woman at least ten years his junior. Too young and too innocent for him. Yet, for the few words they exchanged during each class, he’d risked his life and nearly lost it. He could never allow that to happen again. Next time a pretty woman caught his eye, he would simply fuck her and leave town posthaste. And to think that he’d never even kissed Olivia, yet she’d had such a draw on him that he hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave.

Jay brought his thoughts back to his yoga practice and started with a sun salutation, but he didn’t get far. Before his eyes, everything suddenly blurred. This wasn’t a nightmare, but a premonition, the very reason why he and his fellow Stargate agents were being hunted. They all had a preternatural gift. They had visions of future events. And somebody wanted to exploit this gift.

Before his eyes, a scene played out. He saw the back of a man who entered a small single-story house on a narrow street. The man glanced around the foyer, before stepping through a small archway into the open-plan living and dining area. There, he stopped, and Jay’s field of vision widened, and the angle from which he watched the scene changed, so that he could now see the man’s face. There was no doubt in his mind who he was. He would never forget that face. It was Smith, the man who’d captured him and nearly killed him, though Smith was obviously not his real name.

Was this Smith’s home? Jay focused on the interior of the home, trying to find any clues as to where it was located. The living room was cozy and had a feminine touch. The kitchen was small, but tidy, and didn’t look like anybody used it much. Maybe this was one of Smith’s safehouses? He probably had several of them where he could hide out whenever he needed to.

Smith looked around and disappeared in the hallway that presumably led to the bedroom and bathroom. Smith opened a door, and behind it was an office. He entered and the vision focused on the desk. There was no computer, only a monitor and a keyboard. Next to the monitor, there were several photos. Jay jolted. The photo he now saw showed two young Japanese women laughing at the camera. He recognized one of them instantly. It was Olivia Morikawa, the woman from his yoga class in Alexandria. This was undoubtedly her home. Before Jay could grasp anything else helpful, the vision blurred, and was gone.

“Fuck!” he cursed and lost his balance. He caught himself before he could fall and widened his stance.

Olivia knew Smith. In fact, he’d entered her home as if he’d done so many times before. What was their relationship?

“You want breakfast, Jay?”

At Ace’s voice coming from the open French doors, he turned. “Yeah, I need it.”

Ace met his gaze. “What’s going on? You’re still getting dizzy? Lilly can check you out—”

“No, I’m fine. But I had a premonition just now. And Smith was in it. I think I might have a way of figuring out who and where he is.”