In Like a Lion

IN LIKE A LION

THE CHIMERA CHRONICLES 1

KARIN SHAH

SOUL MATE PUBLISHING

New York

IN LIKE A LION

Copyright©2012

KARIN SHAH

Cover Design by Rae Monet, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction.  The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.  Any resemblance to actual events, business establishments, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Published in the United States of America by

Soul Mate Publishing

P.O. Box 24

Macedon, New York, 14502

ISBN-13: 978-1-61935-167-7

www.SoulMatePublishing.com

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

To my family, especially Nikhil.

You are my rock.

Acknowledgements

A huge thank you to: Central Ohio Fiction Writers, my beta Readers; Elysa Hendricks, Kathy Boswell, and Sarah Ha, my glamorous friend Linnea Sinclair for her excellent insights, and my friend and editor Debby Gilbert, who is a consummate professional and always knows just what to say. I am more grateful than I can say for all your time and support.

Chapter 1

If she could make it to the stairs, she was home free. Anjali Mehta tiptoed out of her apartment and past her neighbor’s closed door.

Couldn’t be late for her first day at a new job, after all.

A door slammed somewhere else in the building and Anjali froze, but the neighbor’s door behind her stayed shut. The air flooded back into her lungs and, reaching the stairs, she heaved a sigh.
Almost there
.

She trotted down to the landing, but as she stepped onto the concrete pad a twinge of guilt spun her around and propelled her back up the stairs.

The hallway seemed to stretch away from her for a moment and she shook her head. Why did this have to be such a big deal?

She inhaled and marched up to the door, knocking before her nerve could desert her.

A sleek gray head popped out of the open door. “Anjali! Beta! How are you?” Meena Masi’s eyes crinkled into a smile. ‘Masi’ meant ‘Aunt’ in Gujarati, Anjali’s mother tongue. Meena Patel wasn’t really related to her. The title showed respect to the older woman, who’d welcomed her since her arrival in LA last month and had helped her find her current job with the Kincaid Research Group.

Anjali pasted a smile on her face and pressed her hands together in front of her chest. “
Jai Shri Krishna
,
Masi. Kem Cho
?”

“
Majamma! Majamma! Kem Cho
?” Meena Masi hugged her.

An all too familiar drift of incense and spices surrounded the old woman and Anjali steeled herself against the wave of grief the scents inspired. “I’m late, actually.” She blinked, fighting to hide her reaction. “I just stopped by to ask if you need anything from the Indian store. I can pick it up on my way home from work tonight.”

Meena Masi patted her cheek, then laid a hand on her wrist. “You’re so thoughtful, dikri, but I’m all stocked up.” She shuffled into the kitchen, towing Anjali after her, and reached across the counter, yanking over a lacquered wooden box decorated with tiny mirrors. “You remember my daughter was here last week. She’s bugging me to move to Ohio, but after spending forty of my eighty years in California, I’m in no hurry to make friends with snow.” She held out the box and flipped open the hinged top, revealing a dozen or so diamond-shaped sweets. “
Kaju Katri
?”

Anjali bit into the silver-topped offering. The sweet taste of cashews exploded on her tongue, bringing with it a second wave of sorrow. She swallowed and cleared her throat. “I’d better get going. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“I will.” Meena Masi shooed her toward the door. “Away with you. Don’t be late because of me. I have a feeling about today. Maybe you’ll meet someone special.”

Anjali shook her head. “No men for me, Masi.”

The bright blue sky bore down on her as she reached for the handle of her car door. And no more statistical studies of lab tests for her, either. It was time to get her feet wet in the real world.

A shiver of foreboding tickled her spine. She had a feeling, too, but it wasn’t a good one.

Ten minutes later, Anjali presented her shiny new ID badge to the lone guard at the front desk.

Though it was her second time in the building, she’d been too focused on her interview the first time to really notice the appointments of the expansive lobby.

Columns stretched up to the high ceiling. Low, cream-colored leather couches and chairs gathered around glass and metal tables. The whole effect shrieked trendy luxury.
Freakin’ LA
. She misquoted
Die Hard
to herself with a grin.

After a careful perusal of her identification, the guard, lean face set in strict lines under his salt-and-pepper buzz cut, nodded. “Welcome, Dr. Mehta.” The man glanced down at a monitor. “I have you scheduled to meet your subject at 9:30. You have an hour to get settled, and here”—he handed her a form—“Please stop by at RN labs at your convenience and have blood drawn for your physical.”

Anjali nodded. His speech had a clipped precision that seemed out of line for a security guard at a research facility. Ex-military? “Will do.”

“Mr. Kincaid said he’s sorry he’s unable to take you on a tour of the facility, but feel free to look around on your way to your office.”

“Thank you.”

The tapping of her sensible work pumps echoed as she made her way to the elevator. Though Mr. Kincaid hadn’t shown her the whole facility after her interview, she’d seen her office and her lab on the third floor.

The metal doors opened smoothly, revealing wood veneer walls. Anjali entered, sighing. Too bad there wasn’t already someone inside. Canned lights and artwork couldn’t make an elevator anything but a large empty box. Anjali jabbed the button for the third floor, then changed her mind and hit the second floor. Might as well take a peek around. Maybe she would meet some of her new coworkers.

As she stepped out into the corridor, a shout made her freeze.

The exclamation’s guttural force spurred her heartbeat into double time.
What the hell?

She tracked the alarming sound to a door with a glass window and peered inside.

In the center of a large room, a shirtless man moved with fluid grace on exercise mats.
Karate? Or Tae Kwon Do?
That explained the shout. She shrugged.

Before she could slip away, the man turned and came closer. She ducked to the side so he couldn’t catch her watching.

Her breath caught as she saw his lean face.

She swallowed, pulse leaping. God, he was gorgeous.
Staring much, Anjali?
she admonished herself, scraping together the remnants of logic blown away by the sight of him.

This was just a man, his face, just a pleasing arrangement of features.

Papers on the appeal of symmetry to the human mind had been mandatory reading in some of her classes.

His movements took him deeper into the room and she inched closer again, her long exhale fogging the window in front of her. She didn’t need calipers to know when God had handed out facial symmetry, this man had pushed to the front of the line.

Odd shadows lent the suggestion of a tiger’s stripes to the man’s elegant cheekbones and clean jaw. She glanced at the ceiling and noticed metal baskets caging the fluorescent light fixtures, throwing voids into the harsh glare.

Her attention zeroed back to the man.

His hair—raven black with the sheen of a crow’s feather—hung past his chin and fell forward, masking his eyes. She caught herself wishing he would raise his head so she could see them. Her gaze drifted downward, following the delicious curve of his shoulder.

His large body was a work of art, each muscle defined and chiseled, as if Michelangelo had carved him from a piece of granite. The impish light played more tricks, lending his golden skin the sheen of satin as he defended against the attacks of invisible adversaries.

Her mouth dry, she watched him flow through the movement, muscles rippling beneath that flawless skin. Who was he? A guard?

Given his size and superior musculature, if he was a doctor, he was nothing like the doctors and researchers she’d worked with in the past.

Goose flesh pimpled the back of her arms. There was just something about a man that big that called to her most basic instincts.

A disparaging laugh huffed from her chest. She’d been living like a nun for years and now she was drooling over a man so out of her league he might as well have been a movie star.

What sounded like a voice—short and harsh, but indistinct—reverberated through the thick, metal-reinforced glass. The man halted mid-move and glared over his powerful shoulder.

For the first time, Anjali noticed there were other people in the room; uniformed men with sleek, ugly rifles, not only drawn, but leveled at the man as if prepared to shoot him at the slightest misstep.

She gasped as an awful realization washed over her. This man—the first man to draw her interest since her loss—was not a guard or a doctor.

He was Jake Finn, her subject, and a stone-cold killer.

Anjali latched her office door and made her way to the antechamber outside where Finn was housed.

Unlike the lobby, this area was all about security. Except for the warm color on the walls, no attempt had been made to disguise its nature as a glorified cellblock.

The guard behind the laminate desk owned a ruddy face and the build of a television wrestler. His badge read ‘Sanchez.’

Anjali leaned closer to the closed-circuit monitor next to the guards’ station for a better view of her subject, putting away the crazy disappointment that’d dogged her since she’d realized who the man in the exercise room was. In any case, she hadn’t lied to Meena Masi. The last thing she wanted to do was meet someone.

Jake Finn lounged on the narrow cot in his cell reading a book, wearing nothing but a pair of green surgical scrub pants.

She tore her reluctant gaze away from the monitor. “Why isn’t he wearing a shirt?”

“Man’s an escape risk, Dr. Mehta. Don’t want him to have places to hide a shiv or something.”

“Ah.” Anjali pressed her lips together.
Now, I know I’m not at Harvard anymore.
“That makes sense. Very . . . vigilant.” She slid her damp hand down her lab coat and tucked it into her pocket, stealing a deep breath to slow her elevated pulse.

“Are you OK?” Sanchez’s thick eyebrows came together over black coffee eyes.

“I’ll be fine.” Anjali gave a quick bob of her head, and her long, single braid thumped against the middle of her back. “I’ve just never been so close to a—”

“Murderer?” the guard supplied.

Anjali grimaced. Not
exactly
the word she’d been groping for, but . . . “Yes.”

“Just follow guidelines, Doc, and you’ll be fine. You’ll be on my monitor at all times.” His tone was kind.

Anjali offered him a tiny smile. “Thank you.”

Sanchez leaned over and swiped his card through the electronic lock, putting his thumb on the plate. “Don’t you worry. Finn’s cell has the same kind of lock, but it’s even stronger, and the lock doesn’t work on the fingerprint alone. It needs galvanic skin response, so he couldn’t just kill me and put my thumb up there.”

The thought had never occurred to her and the gruesome image filled her mind, making her stomach pitch as he opened the door. She hesitated, letting her lungs empty until her chest ached.

Sanchez gestured her forward with a broad hand.

She clasped the tablet computer containing her notes and Finn’s records against her chest like a shield. Her research into the biological causes of antisocial behavior wasn’t complete without the insight a true killer could provide. Her boss, Gareth Kincaid, was doing her a favor by allowing her on this project.

She focused herself with
Sama Vritti Pranayama
, inhaling and exhaling on a count of four.
Time to beard the lion in his den
.

One fake smile to the guard and she entered, jumping a little when the door clicked with chilling finality.

The pretty color on the walls in the antechamber didn’t extend to the cellblock and the sudden plunge into a sea of stark white was almost as shocking as diving into icy water.

In front of her, a row of empty cells stretched along the white-painted cinderblock wall. To steady her nerves she counted them as she walked.

At the fifth, a frown tugged her forehead. Why did the Kincaid group need so many cells? This was a research facility, not a prison. And there was something odd about the cells. They were much bigger, both in width and height, than the ones she’d seen on T.V., perhaps thirty feet tall and equally wide. The bars were thicker than her forearm.

Finn was in the seventh and last cell in the row.

He looked up when she stopped before him. His hair parted and she could see one of his eyes.

She swallowed. The Group’s records called them brown, but they were closer to golden, almost yellow, like an eagle or a lion, with a dark, nearly black rim. And there was an intensity there, a feeling of leashed menace that rippled through her like a shockwave.

But the expression in his eyes bore no resemblance to the dead emptiness she’d seen in pictures of other killers. Instead they held the raw power of a predator, the impotent rage of a captive animal.

He set his book down and stood, stalking toward her behind the thick bars, head lowered, obscuring those eyes. At five seven, she considered herself tall, but he towered over her.

“Mr. Finn,” she said, hoping her voice sounded professional, though to her hypercritical ears it was not much more than a squeak. She swallowed and dragged in a gulp of air, which unfortunately brought in just a hint of tantalizing masculine scent. He must have showered. He smelled like soap, clean skin, and something a little wild.
Damn it. Why had she noticed?

He wrapped his powerful hands around the bars, nostrils flared. “Dr. Mehta.” His voice held the timbre of a bass drum and echoed in her chest with a similar, almost painful, vibration.

Air exploded from her lungs. “How did you . . .?”

He nodded toward her white lapel, without glancing directly at her. “Your ID.”

Anjali looked down at her badge. “Of course.” A bead of sweat tickled the skin below her temple. She swiped at it with her sleeve and smoothed her lab coat, pulling her normal professionalism around her like a suit of armor.

“Anjali is a beautiful name.” He pronounced her name in the American fashion, making the beginning sound the same as ‘angel.’

“Thank you, but it’s actually ‘Uhnjali’. The ‘A’ at the beginning has more of a short ‘U’ sound.” She hid a grimace. She sounded like one of her old professors.
Get a grip and stop babbling, Anjali.

A compact, laminate-top desk with a metal chair stood against the wall opposite his cell, far enough away he couldn’t reach it. Anjali set her lightweight tablet down on it and shoved her hands into her coat pockets. She tried to appear relaxed, but from the way he watched her—like a leopard on an injured deer—she knew she failed. “Well, since we already know each other’s names, I guess we should get started.”