Raven’s Instinct (A Day Care for Shifters #6)

39. Alan

39

ALAN

A lan felt the moment Kendra went off plan and he was both proud and deeply afraid for her. He could not tell what she was doing, but he could tell roughly where she was going, and he knew that she was taking terrible risks.

He could feel her pounding heart like it was his own, and marveled at her cool resolve. She was utterly determined to do her best, at her own expense if that’s what it took. Alan could only fly his hardest in the direction that she drew him.

His raven thought this was the greatest thing they had ever done in their life. Wheeeeee!

This is not fun, Alan protested, but he would have been grinning with his human face, because however harrowing this was, it was also very thrilling.

He just worried about what Kendra was going to do, and how he was going to protect her when he got there.

And he had reason to worry.

By the time he caught up with her, she had stopped traffic in both directions with a muscle car across the lanes, blinkers on. Cars were honking and trying to creep around on the shoulders, but every time the ambulance tried that trick, the muscle car backed up or revved forward. It was like watching a cat play with a mouse. If the mouse was a complete jerk and the cat was fat and stupid.

Alan felt a flare of worry just before the ambulance revved, clearly planning to use its superior weight to ram the car and brute push it out of the way. Alan swooped down with a scream of rage at the windshield, but he wouldn’t be able to break it as a hollow-boned bird. He did make them flinch, and that gave him time to fly up and shift to human on the top of the cab, kicking with his heel at the window.

It was a tricky move at the best of times, and this was definitely was not the best of times.

Worst of all, he wasn’t wearing boots. He’d been in stocking feet to work a Tiny Paws and hadn’t thought to pull on footwear. His first blow didn’t break out the window completely and as he braced himself to try again, he was relieved to see Kendra bail out of the car, then promptly dismayed when she turned and rushed the ambulance.

She was carrying something that Alan recognized as an automobile emergency tool, the curved head specifically designed to break auto glass. She vaulted up onto the cab step and smashed the window in where Alan had cracked it, turning away her face at the last minute so that the shards wouldn’t hit her.

Alan didn’t wait for her to clean it up with the edge of the tool, but shifted and dived through the shattered window as a raven. A swift shift back to human, and he had the driver by the neck, crowded in the cab with him. “I believe you have a passenger you shouldn’t have,” he growled, digging a thumb into the side of his neck. Usually he’d have a gun or at least a blade on him, but the kids at Tiny Paws were too clever-fingered for even a hidden weapon and he’d stopped carrying altogether, counting on his hand-to-hand skills.

The driver clearly understood those skills. “Not getting paid enough to die for that bi—” He chose silence over finishing his sentence as Alan applied a little more pressure.

Kendra was going to do something stupid and brave if he spent too much time with this guy. “You look like the kind of character who has zip-ties,” he said conversationally. “Where are they?”

The driver gestured at the glove box and, as Alan had expected him to, tried to reach for a weapon when Alan feinted towards it. Alan brought his weight down on the man’s near arm and clocked him in the jaw with one tight, hard hit, using his far hand to drop the glovebox open. That part had not been entirely a ruse, and it only took a moment to zip-tie his hands together to the top of the steering wheel. A quick frisk found a gun and a knife, and Alan was glad to have them at hand. He checked the cartridge and exited the passenger door.

Kendra, blessedly, had not attempted a one-woman assault on the back door with her auto escape tool, but she held it as if she was fully prepared to use it on someone given the slightest excuse.

There were a few people starting to gather in the pool of headlights to stare at the scene, though more were simply driving around on the shoulders, honking as they went.

“These guys kidnapped my friend!” Kendra hollered at the audience, just as Alan wondered if they would be a problem. “And he’s a federal agent!”

It helped that the second EMT made a critical error then and flung open the back door to show them Addison with a gun at her temple.

A very obviously pregnant Addison, who was weeping in rage and clutching her stomach and not doing a very good job at being a hostage at all. “ Get your hands off me, you asshole. You’re not a medic! Help! Someone stop him! Oooooooooh…”

Alan assessed the scene—an unfortunate number of civilian witnesses, an uncooperative hostage in labor, a very overwhelmed mercenary who had expected an easy snatch job with an unquestioned cover, and Kendra, who still had her auto escape tool held like a bludgeon. He stayed back from the ambulance, giving himself enough room to aim the gun, but he didn’t want to fire into a fray. There were far too many innocent bystanders.

Kendra was keyed up and anxious for everyone but herself, which somehow helped Alan keep his own cool.

“If you surrender now, you’ll be given due rights and an attorney,” he called in his calmest voice.

“And if I don’t?” There was a note of panic to the man’s voice. This could go any direction; desperate men did desperate and unpredictable things.

“If you don’t surrender, I’ll end you with a bullet and we’ll have a big ugly mess to clean up with all these witnesses. You would not believe the paperwork that would be, and all the therapy the government would have to pay for, so I’d really rather not do that.”

“You ain’t gunna let me walk,” the mercenary complained, clutching Addison closer and pulling her in front of him.

Alan needed him away from Addison. He was good with guns, but this was close quarters and it wasn’t the same as firing with a scope and having the luxury to wait for the perfect moment. This man knew he was running out of time. Addison was not helping matters, twisting in his grip.

“Maybe I can,” Alan said. “Maybe you can just walk right out into the dark if you leave the woman and don’t look back.”

“You’ll shoot me in the back,” he snarled. Addison kicked him, and he shook her like she was a dog. The bystanders had largely retreated to their cars when it became clear that weapons were in play, but the few that remained, gaping at the drama, gave a theater-worthy hiss.

“Surrender and we’ll do everything in the bright light of the law,” Alan suggested, willing Addison to stop struggling. Surrender really was the best option. He could make a public arrest and no one would get hurt.

Before the mercenary could make that choice, something black streaked out of the darkness. Alan thought it was a wild dog until he felt that telltale tingle as it brushed past. A wolf. A shifter wolf, undoubtedly Addison’s husband, Roderick.

It was on the mercenary before he could react, knocking him back into the ambulance with a deep growl.

“He was just surrendering,” Addison said tartly, doubling over. “Can you hurry up if you’re going to maul him so we can go to a real hospital? Right now, please?”