Roman's Gold (Underground Heat, Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

have to be after dark. She might have a heart attack if she had to run the gauntlet again in broad daylight. Kate pressed her palm to the lock, grateful for the modern electronics she’d installed a few years back. The door opened and she shoved the boxes inside. Kate sank down on one of them, blowing hard. With shaking hands, she unwound her scarf and mopped her face with it.
    Got to check on Tara, Joe, and Mike.
    With their animal senses, they would have either heard or smelled her, probably both. They had to be hungry. There hadn’t been any food since yesterday. She got to her feet and unlocked the door leading to the basement. Then she got one of the boxes and balanced it carefully while she made her way down the steep staircase.
    Her house was over a hundred years old. Built around nineteen-twenty, it was made of wood and stone and glass. She’d blown into town with another new identity a few months before purchasing it. In those days, she’d worked as a schoolteacher. Normally, she’d have moved away long since, but most of the other houses around her had emptied out as the government made it progressively more difficult to own anything. She’d faked her death a few times and ginned up legal documents, leaving the house to a relative. A smattering of magic to alter her appearance with illusion and she was all set for another twenty-five years or so.
    Kate left the lights out, feeling her way from the bottom of the staircase to the hidden wall panel. She used her feline night vision and punched in the code to open it. Joe grabbed the box out of her arms and dropped it on the floor. Mike pried it open with a claw. A bear in his animal form, he was partially shifted. Hunger was easier to tolerate that way. “Wow, Kate. Thanks,” Joe murmured, keeping his voice soft. He pulled a package of crackers and another of processed cheese out and ripped into them.
    Kate glanced around. “Where’s Tara?”
    “Back here.” The woman’s soft voice sounded from a darkened recess. She was a coyote in her animal form.
    “Come eat.” Kate kept her voice neutral. She didn’t want to tell them how bad things were out in the world.
    The slightly built woman with long brown hair crept forward. Her eyes were swollen and her face blotchy. Kate wrapped her arms around her. “You’ve been crying. Are you feeling ill again?” Tara had been badly beaten in prison and sexually assaulted repeatedly.
    Tara’s dark eyes gleamed in the gloom of the basement. “No. I’ve been listening to the vid feed.”
    “What?” Kate drew back, put her hands on Tara’s shoulders, and shook her. Not hard, but enough to get her attention. “You know that’s against the rules. What if someone tracked a net use spike here? Everyone knows I’m gone at work all day. You’ll give yourselves away.”
    “It’s my fault.” Mike set down a can of peaches and wiped the back of his paw/hand across his mouth. “We had to know what was going on. Being down here is almost as bad as being in prison.”
    “So one of you went upstairs and turned on my computer?”
    “I did.” Tara hung her head. “What I heard was so bad I ran away. The guys heard the door, came after me, and dragged me back.”
    “Where the fuck did you think you were going to go?” Anger raked Kate’s nerve endings and made her stomach sour.
    “We’re putting you at risk.” Joe stopped shoveling food into his mouth and looked at her. “It would be safer for you if we did leave.” He shook tawny hair back from his face. A mountain lion like her, he shared her amber eyes and feline features.
    The anger bled out of her. All of them were running scared. What they needed to do was stand and fight, except there weren’t enough of them. Shifters were so long-lived, they produced very few children. They needed an edge and she had no idea what it might be. “There’re a bunch more boxes of food in the woods,” she said slowly. “You might hole up in some of the caves in the