Targeted By Love (Between the Greys #1)

18. Maynard

18

MAYNARD

I need to see you now!

After hitting send, I tossed the phone on the couch and made Thiago a sandwich. But he took a bite and pushed it away, preferring to chug a bottle of water.

“My mouth is so dry, and I feel like crap, as though someone jumped on my chest. Is this what humans go through when they have a cold? Gods, it sucks.”

He dozed off while I waited for Ezra. I needed someone more familiar with tech than me so we could figure out where Rhodes was being held.

The door opened, and I spun around, grabbing a vase, ready to pitch it at the intruder’s head before my wolf tore whoever it was to shreds.

Ezra strolled in, with Lake and Riggs at his heels.

“What the fuck? That lock recognizes my fingerprint. How’d you get in?”

“Did you or did you not ask me here to hack into something?” Ezra was smart enough to understand this wasn’t a social call.

“Yeah, so?”

He held up his laptop. “I hacked your password and added my fingerprint.” He whistled, an annoying habit he had whenever he got one over me or any of our siblings.

“Remind me to add a retina scanner.”

“And I’ll hack into that too.” He somersaulted over the back of the couch, the hand with the computer held high. Even with his shifter abilities I’d admired how he did that and didn’t break the device.

“Rhodes has been kidnapped.”

“What? Again? Does he make a habit of that?” Lake was in the kitchen scouring the pantry.

“What happened to you?” Riggs bent over Thiago. “Did you sleep with those triplets again?”

“Triplets?” Lake pulled his head out of the pantry. “Dude, I need to hear everything.”

“Baby brother, concentrate on the food and not what your older brother has been doing with his cock.” Riggs pushed Thiago’s feet aside and sat beside him.

“Shut up, everyone. Did you not hear what I said? My mate has been taken prisoner.”

“Wasn’t us this time.” Lake stuffed his face with a handful of chips.

“The bears, or specifically one bear, instructed his underlings.”

“Which den? Not Germaine’s?” Ezra was tapping at the computer, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

“Yeah.” I went over what I’d observed in the meeting.

“But why would the bear den want to kill a human and his brother?” Thiago had his eyes open and propped his head on a pillow.

“Don’t pretend you haven’t heard the rumors.” Thiago enjoyed smoking weed, even though the effect on shifters wasn’t as intense as humans.

“Doesn’t mean there’s anything to back it up,” he huffed.

Germaine’s den dealt weed.

They grew it on their land, acres and acres of it. I didn’t touch the stuff, but the gossip was that they’d branched out into harder stuff. The local police left the mafia gangs alone and they were well compensated, so no one searched the den land in the middle of the forest that had been cleared to grow weed but now had a factory plonked down, surrounded by trees.

Word on the street was that humans had been hired to sell the hard drugs so the shifters could distance themselves from the business. My guess was Rhodes’s brother had been one of those humans. He’d stolen a few grams, or more than that. Or he owed money because Rhodes mentioned he liked to gamble, but either way, the hit and the bombing were payback.

“What do you know about the den, Thiago?”

“Not much.” He’d never been inside but had followed a dirt road around the perimeter, about five miles from the den entrance. There was a gate and a small cabin where people bought their weed.

“Unlikely they’d keep Rhodes there,” Riggs observed.

I agreed with Riggs, and Ezra showed me an aerial view of the cabin. But though it was hidden amongst trees, if people were buying their weed there, it was too public to hide Rhodes.

The den land stretched for miles over hundreds of acres. My mate could be anywhere.

“I’ve found a house that’s registered not under the den but Germaine’s mother’s name.” Ezra named an area in the middle of the city. “And the bracelet matched their family symbology.”

Bears were very much into their family symbols and crests. It was a pride thing.

“But wouldn’t he stash Rhodes somewhere more isolated?” Lake asked. He was finally paying attention and had put the chip bag on the coffee table.

“Maybe. But that might be what he wanted us to think,” Riggs offered.

Germaine wasn’t stupid; he was a wily guy who’d survived attempts to overthrow him, and he had the scars to prove it.

“I say we scout out that house.” Thiago staggered to his feet.

“Not you.” He’d be no use to us if he wasn’t fully recovered.

He protested, saying he was the knife expert. But I suspected knives were of no use. It was the Glock or nothing.

With Boaz at pack headquarters and Thiago at my place, the four of us would drive to the house. Two would keep watch behind in the alley while the other two would attempt to gain entry from the front.

I sat in the car opposite the house next door to Germaine’s mom’s. There were no lights visible from the front. The house was long and narrow and hemmed in on both sides by its neighbors. There were two stories and an attic and I guessed a basement because the houses in this area were built seventy years ago and they all had basements.

Lake was with me, not because he was the most inexperienced. He knew how to handle a gun, but he was the baby of the family and I was the big brother. Boaz wasn’t here or he would have given me a hard time for treating Lake differently and always looking out for our youngest brother.

Though he did the same, he was just more gruff and shouty!

I texted Ezra and asked if he and Riggs had detected any movement. My techie brother had sent up a drone—a gods damn drone that used thermal imaging to detect if people were inside.

Four, but because of the insulation and depth of the basement, I don’t know if anyone is down there.

That would be where they were keeping Rhodes. Or where I’d keep him if I were them, not that I’d ever captured anyone.

No, you shoot them dead.

My wolf never let an opportunity pass by without reminding me of my reality.

Exiting the car, Lake and I, dressed in black, snuck across the street before vaulting over the fence. We crouched beside the house, and I picked up the faint creaking of a floorboard. Not even a shifter could prevent that.

I nodded at Lake and texted Ezra who would jam their wifi and 4G signals. Despite being on guard duty, I’d bet those guys inside were on their phones, watching videos or messaging friends. They’d question each other, checking if it was just them who’d lost the signal. They might suspect something and peer out the window, readying their weapons.

Ezra and Riggs would break a window, and the guys inside would be drawn to the back of the house while Lake and I charged in the front, taking them by surprise.

My youngest brother and I waited, and I counted the seconds until the glass shattered. Inside, the scuffles and shouts indicated these guys were not professionals; just bodies that the person in charge, Germaine or someone higher up, put there to keep Rhodes quiet. If me and my brothers had a captive, instinct would tell us the window breaking was a diversion.

Lake rammed the door with his shoulder. He might’ve been my littlest brother but little he wasn’t, and the door was no match for his strength. It splintered, and while I’d instructed him to let me in first, he charged in, me at his heels.

I wished Thiago were here, and worried Lake would be injured, along with Ezra and Riggs. But Lake shifted and his silver wolf took down one guard in human form so three remained. My other brothers shattered the back door and their wolves pounced while I scoured the rooms for my mate.

Of the three guards, one took his fur: a bear as I suspected, and Riggs’s beast attacked. His wolf was huge, almost as big as mine, and while he didn’t kill the bear, blood spurted from the grizzly’s neck and he collapsed, shifting as he did. He lay moaning and panting, and Riggs’s wolf leaped over him and helped Ezra fighting with another guard in human form.

The last guard shifted, his bear towering over Lake’s wolf, and he swiped my little bro’s beast, his massive paw sending the wolf flying across the room and smashing onto a coffee table.

He snarled as if sensing a kill, but as he lumbered toward Lake’s wolf who lay bleeding, I grabbed my Glock and pulled the trigger. He crumpled in a puddle of blood, and I raced to Lake, who took his skin. Though his wolf had broken some bones, shifting healed most of his injuries, leaving him just bruised and bloodied.

Lake waved me away, whispering to find Rhodes. While we’d dealt with the guys in the main part of the house, I feared there might be more in the basement, if that was where my mate was. With the screams and thumps above them, they might have instructions to harm Rhodes if we attempted a rescue.

A screech behind me had me flipping around as Ezra’s wolf dealt the last guard a fatal blow by striking at the guy’s throat, possibly collapsing his trachea. He slumped to the floor.

Opening one door after another, I found the one leading to the basement and clattered down the old wooden stairs. The door was locked, but with one kick it opened, with a shattered hole in the middle.

My fears were borne out. My shifter eyesight picked out another guy in here, and he had a knife to Rhodes’s throat. Fool. With a gun, he could have splattered my mate’s brains over the wall.

“Put it down or I’ll shoot.”

His hand moved maybe a millimeter and a trickle of blood dribbled over Rhodes’s throat. My stomach clenched as I imagined a future without my mate, mourning him and asking the universe why.

But the knife slipped from the guy’s hand because he was dead, a bullet to the forehead. He never felt a thing, just like one of my targets.

I grabbed Rhodes before he hit the ground, his head resting on my chest, the blood soaking into my shirt as a reminder of what we’d almost lost.

His fingers clawed my jacket as he said, in a voice barely above a whisper, “I overheard them talking about him. My brother, Seb. He’s one of them.”