Chapter 35
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
GARRETT
“Idon’t understand,” Damien says as he paces his living room while the entire retrieval team, Hayden, Frank, Callen, Blade, and I, remain seated around the dining table that doubles as a conference table.
We’re still healing from the ambush. Frank has a bullet wound in his left shoulder, a through and through that should be examined, even though his wolf has already stopped the bleeding and began closing the wound.
The rest of us have superficial cuts and bruises.
No one will admit it, but this one cuts deep—it’s the second time in a row we’ve botched a rescue.
“How do my top shifters nearly get gunned down in an open forest? Not a dead-end canyon, ravine, or other area you could get boxed in. Open ground.”
Frank and I trade looks. “We’re still trying to make sense of it.”.
Damien shifts his glare to Hayden. “You let your team get surrounded, Hayden.” Damien’s pissed, and I can’t blame him. We only escaped because the sudden snow squall gave us much-needed cover. Sheer luck. We should all be dead, or captured.
Hayden’s jaw, already tight, moves enough for him to grind out what we’re all thinking.
“We went in as always. Followed Blade’s intel precisely as he’d detailed.
Garrett went in first, followed by Frank.
No one picked up any human scent, tracks, or other sign that they were there. There was nothing out of the usual.”
“That bullet hole in Frank’s shoulder says otherwise.” He lifts the bandage Frank’s holding to his shoulder. “Go get that looked at. Mila, not Pryce. He’s in town on a supply run with Angel.”
My ears perk up and I can’t help but grin. She took the job!
Damien slams both fists down on the table opposite me, snapping my focus back to him and our op. “Why are you grinning? You figure out what went wrong?”
“Not sure how we screwed up. As Hayden said, we followed protocol.”
“Then stop daydreaming about your female and figure it out!” He scrubs his face and walks over to a window, staring out at the falling snow. “How far from the facility was this?”
“Four miles. Two miles off the service road. It’s possible Blade missed cameras, but they’ve never had any that deep in the woods before.”
Blade slams his water down. “I didn’t miss any cameras. I detected no electrical currents or EMF fields. No batteries, plastics, or petrochemicals—nothing synthetic. One of you must have disturbed a marker or tripped some old-fashioned type of tripwire.”
“You really think we wouldn’t notice if we tripped over a hemp wire? These weren’t weekend hunters looking to bag a deer,” Callen says. “They’re well-funded, using military-grade tech and gear.”
“But we would have smelled anything made from plastics or metals.” Blade drums his fingers against the table.
Silence. No one has an answer.
“I should have returned with you,” Blade adds. “Maybe I would have noticed a change. Unless nothing changed and they detected me earlier, let me go, hoping I’d bring back the entire team.”
Damien quirks a brow. “That’s highly possible. Except when the team first encountered Angelina, she warned you all off. That would have been an opportune time to capture the team.”
“Maybe they weren’t prepared then, to take on four shifters,” Frank speaks up.
“Or the two situations aren’t connected,” Damien says.
Hayden shakes his head. “Something felt different about this one. Nothing explains how they got there so fast and undetected. Twenty humans, Damien. Not two guards, like Angelina reported aiming their guns on her and us. This was flat ground, with numerous escape routes, not a canyon. We heard no movement, caught no scent until they were on us. Fully surrounded us. It’s as if they appeared out of thin air. ”
“Deer blinds,” Damien suggests.
I shake my head. “The wind was chaotic, whipping every direction, including downward. We would have scented them.”
Damien’s jaw tightens. “We need to understand what happened before we attempt any other rescues or raids on their facilities. I think we should—”
A howl sounds in the distance.
We all fall silent, listening. The howl repeats, more desperate this time.
Damien races out of the house, and we all follow.
We hear the clanking of the pack’s truck barreling toward camp before we see it. The truck halts and Pryce jumps out without shutting the engine. He shifts mid-run and bound into the woods, disappearing under the cover of trees as he heads toward our compound.
Two border guards surround the truck, shut the engine, then walk away. I can’t see Angel. I’m not sure why she’d stay in the truck if Pryce is racing toward us. My stomach knots. She’s hurt. That’s why she’s not getting out of the truck.
No, the guards wouldn’t have walked off.
Pryce races into the center of camp and shifts to human form before reaching us. “Angel’s gone. Taken.”
All breath is ripped from me. I charge at Pryce with a surge of raw power. “Where? When?” I shout.
Two sets of arms hold me back. “Easy,” Callen says. “Let Pryce catch his breath and report in.”
A growl erupts from deep down. My wolf’s not happy with anyone right now, including me. Adding chaos to a bad situation will only slow down a search and rescue operation, so I shut up.
“When I returned to the general store, she was gone, but all the supplies she’d been gathering were still there. Checked the truck. Empty. I returned to the store. Her scent led out the back, and down an alley. Then it ended.”
“Explain that,” Damien says.
“It just ended. And it wasn’t the only scent I caught. She… they… had to have left in a car.”
“She didn’t leave voluntarily,” I say. “She wouldn’t disappear like that.”
“Could have been pre-planned. She could have taken the supply job just to get to town,” Hayden says, then stares at me in a way that reminds me it’s his job to consider all angles.
“No,” Pryce and I say in unison.
“She wouldn’t use us like that,” I continue. “Angel was free to leave anytime, could have asked for a ride to town anytime if that’s what she wanted. No need for subterfuge.”
“Agreed,” Damien says. “That means someone took her.”
“WSSO,” Hayden offers. “We took her from them, now they want her back.”
“Why her, when they could grab any female shifter.”
“Not many female shifters leave the safety of their packs,” Callen speaks up.
“How would they know she was in Devil’s Peak?” Frank asks.
“Another good question.” Damien again.
“We’re fucking wasting time talking as if this is another op that we can spend weeks planning, Damien. The longer we stand here, the farther away her kidnappers are taking her.”
“And where would you like to mount a rescue, Garrett, if we don’t know who took her or where?”
“Fuck!” I yank free of Frank and Callen’s grip and pace in a circle, trying to think this through.
“Pryce, tell us about the other scent?” Damien asks.
“Two, actually. One in the alley, overlaying Angel’s.”
“Carrying her,” Hayden surmises.
“Yes, could be. The other was at the end of the alley. All three converged, then disappeared. No discernable tire tracks, but I picked up the scent of motor oil, gas, rubber, and mud.”
“Like every other fucking car on the road.”
Pryce doesn’t meet my eyes. “They weren’t human, Damien. Shifter.”
“Fucking big detail to forget.”
“I was so focused on following her scent… Damn it, I should have been working backwards.”
“Frank, take Pryce, return to Devil’s Peak. Work your way from the hardware store out, see where else you can pick up the scent, then start talking to the locals. See if you can get a description.”
“She doesn’t know any shifters outside our pack, Damien,” I point out.
“We’re not the only pack that goes to Devil’s Peak for supplies.”
My eyes snap to Hayden.
“You can say it.” Hayden folds his arms over his chest. “Males from the Novak pack could have been in town, caught her scent. She has a very unique and…” He halts himself, uncrosses his arms. “…Alright, I’ll just say it, but don’t tell my mate…
Your female has a very tantalizing scent, that’s what made her such good shifter bait for the WSSO.
This kidnapping might be as simple as two shifters coming across her scent and seeing an opportunity to… to take a female.”
I charge at Hayden, but Damien slams me to the ground. “That’s Hayden you’re attacking. My second, heir to this pack. Responsible for every shifter here, including Angelina. Do you really want to spend the next few weeks locked up under guard, Garrett, or do you want to help find your female?”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to find her.”
“Good, because you’re going with Hayden and heading south to Drake’s pack.”
“I have no interest in your female, Garrett, other than retrieving her. Safely. I know my former pack, what some of the males are capable of, but I’m not them.”
“I know.” It takes everything I have to say those two damn words, because Hayden’s one of us. Has been for a long time. I need to harness my rage, focus on Angel’s kidnappers.
“Garrett, I’m trying to piece this together like everyone else which is why you need to understand all the possibilities and keep a level head. If you can’t do that, then you’re staying here. Getting us killed won’t help anyone, certainly not your female.” Hayden lowers his hand to help me up.
“Understood.” I slam my hand in his and accept the help up. He’s not the enemy, and he’s thinking clearly… unlike me. I need that, or I’ll miss something crucial.
And I won’t risk Angel.