Turning Payne Read Online Free PDF

over his shoulder. She looked so vulnerable that he had to stop himself from taking her in his arms and comforting her. He shook his head and pushed the unwanted thoughts out of his mind. "I'll be back around eight."
     

Chapter 6
    Turner winced as he entered the Therian Agency control center. The buzzing of monitors and incessant clicking of multiple keyboards made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He breathed in the stuffy air and cringed at the scents that permeated the room. Stale coffee, overheated plastic, combined with the body odor of multiple metamorphs, he grimaced. He'd never understand why anyone, especially a metamorph, would choose a job that required one to be caged in a cement prison, day in and day out.
    Jacob Oliver turned from the young woman he'd been speaking with, and trained his gaze on Turner.
    Fifteen minutes late. It wasn't unusual, but he knew it drove Jacob bat shit crazy. If the man wasn't more like a brother than a boss, Turner might be nervous by the dark, dominant look the man gave him as he crossed the room.
    "Where the hell have you been?"
    He shrugged and handed him the file he carried. "Got caught up on the I-80."
    Jacob flipped open the case report. His eyes widened as he scanned the pictures Turner and his team had taken of the scene.
    "Everything's been taken care of." He sat on the edge of a desk and winked at a petite brunette who walked by. She was attractive, but nothing compared to Riley's exotic beauty. He wiped his hands on his pants and looked back at Jacob. "We ran into a bit of resistance with the local police, but I handled it."
    Jacob shut the folder, sighed and dragged a hand over his face. The man was in his early thirties, but already his black hair was streaked with silver, and there were lines around his eyes and mouth that hadn't been there a year before.
    Turner glanced at the monitors across the room, one of which broadcasted a live news report from Central Park. "Any word on the New York case? I heard about it this morning on the radio. Did you already send a team?"
    Jacob stared vacantly at the closed file. He shook his head and glanced back at Turner. "It's out of my hands. If we attempt to acquire the animal, it would raise too much suspicion."
    Turner frowned. "They'll end up putting him in a zoo, or worse, euthanize him. There has to be something we can—"
    "The media's all over it." He exhaled roughly. "There's nothing we can do."
    "Agent Oliver." Reece Maverick, werebear, and investigative supervisor approached, his face red from the exertion of walking across the room. His large belly pressed against the white fabric of his shirt, straining the buttons.
    The stench of onion and bacon tickled Turner's nose. God, he hated it in this dungeon. The smells alone would make him insane.
    "What is it?" Jacob asked.
    Maverick glared at Turner, then looked back at Jacob before responding. He clutched a manila folder in his meaty fingers. "The progress report, sir."
    "Tell me you've got good news."
    Maverick gave a sharp nod. "Our geneticists believe they've found a correlation between the victims. According to the DNA analysis, they were all carriers of"—the man paused as if for effect and puffed out his chest—"a recessive metamorph gene."
    "Holy shit." Turner grasped the folder Maverick carried, but the man's beefy fingers clamped down. With another insistent tug he pulled it free. He flipped it open and thumbed through the report. The document could have been written in Chinese for all the sense it made to him, but he understood the significance of Maverick's words. The morphings weren't as random as they originally thought.
    Jacob cleared his throat. "Why are we just learning about this now?"
    Maverick's face molted red and pink. He reached for the file and Turner let it go, and put his hands up in surrender.
    "They've only just identified the gene." Maverick turned his attention back to Jacob. "But from what I understand it's a mutation that only