Chapter Seventeen
Taggart
No matter how tired he was, Taggart wasn’t letting Arlo head back to the storage unit without him. He wasn’t the bravest meerkat, but he could get real scrappy when it came to protecting his family.
“You don’t need to come—”
“Daddy, I’m coming,” Taggart insisted, squeezing Soren’s hand when he nodded vigorously.
“We both are. Family sticks together, isn’t that what you said after you spanked me?
” He made sure to add that when he felt Arlo was about to say that they were to stay home.
He didn’t want to go home and have to imagine what was happening.
No, that would be torture after everything they’d been through in the last week. Much worse than the spanking, for sure.
Bash, who was standing next to Arlo, made a kind of choking noise in the back of his throat as Arlo released the most disgruntled sigh.
“He’s got you there,” Bash finally said when he stopped making the weird throat noise.
“Shut up,” Arlo answered with little heat, but his eyes were wary when they met Taggart’s. “It could be dangerous. I need to focus on what I’m doing.”
“Yes, Daddy, and that’s why we should be there,” he explained, giving Arlo begging eyes, having seen how they work when Soren did it.
“Then you’ll know me and Soren are both close by and no one will be able to do a surprise attack on us when you aren’t there to protect us.
” He’d made sure to add that bit when Soren thought it.
“Damnation! Stop looking at me like that.” Arlo actually looked pained, but Taggart sensed the second he caved and did the sensible thing and kept his grin hidden.
“Are we all going?” Bash asked when Arlo said no more, Bash’s gaze moving between them, looking for the answer.
“We are,” Romy answered before anyone else.
This got Bash frowning, but whatever argument he and Romy were having, they did it privately through their link. The way they were staring at each other, Taggart laid bets that Romy would win too.
“We’ll need to take my car, it’ll be big enough for everyone,” Bash stated a minute later, sounding more than a little pissed.
“Right,” Arlo nodded, and followed Bash, who stomped to his vehicle, Romy walking at a pace to match Taggart and Soren.
When they were in the car, strapped in, Arlo got in the front and twisted to look back at them as Bash started the car. “I need you to do exactly what I tell you to when we get to the storage unit. No if’s but’s or maybes. You do not question what I say, do you understand?”
Taggart noticed Romy nodded at the same time as him and Soren, with him being sat in the middle seat so as not to squish the two smaller shifters.
“Good. We don’t know whether the tiger we’ve met is part of what’s happened or if it’s just a co-incidence and despite what Soren reported about the tiger being chained, bleeding and held against their will, they could be involved in this shit up to their necks, so we don’t take any chances.”
More nods got Arlo finally turning to face forward, just not before Taggart witnessed the flash of fear in Arlo’s eyes.
“Daddy, we’ll have your back, we swear it,” Taggart murmured with conviction and took solace from Soren as he threaded their fingers together, clinging on tightly.
He pressed his lips to Soren’s cheek, kissing him, then nuzzling down his jawline under his chin to press his nose against his fluttering pulse.
We’ll be there and help Daddy.
Yes, we will. Taggart kept his thoughts closed off from Arlo. He needed to keep his focus on what he had to do. Taggart had not found Arlo or Soren to let someone take them away from him. He’d learned that lesson already at Arlo’s hand. They were a team, and Taggart would do anything to prove it.
The drive was made in relative silence, with only the occasional comment from Arlo giving Bash directions of which street to turn down.
Taggart was nervous, and that made it hard for him to sit still, not that his overactive thoughts helped.
Soren repeatedly squeezed his fingers, giving him an encouraging smile, while Romy stared out of the car window, making Taggart wonder if the rhino was thinking about what Taggart had discovered.
He had to know that Taggart had watched some of the things they’d done to him, didn’t he?
There was no way he was going to ask. Romy had suffered, and seeing how smiley Romy was around Bash, eased a little of the distress Taggart felt. Romy was brave. Soren had been brave too today.
Do you think so?
Taggart looked at Soren. Yes.
“Looks like our tiger is just coming onto shift,” Arlo muttered, drawing Taggart’s attention out the front window.
The tiger was bigger than he remembered, and he shuddered against his will at having to get anywhere near it again.
There’d been no footage of tigers that he’d seen, but he trusted what Soren said.
“I’ll drive right up to the office.”
“No, go to Taggart’s unit, it’ll make it seem like we’re here on business. Let’s see if the tiger will come to us like last time.”
“Which way?” Bash questioned, looking in the rear view mirror at Taggart.
“It’s on the far side of the compound. If you head straight ahead, then take the second left at the end of this row and keep going until you get to the end of the block of units, you’ll find mine is the last one on the right.”
As he spoke, Bash slowed and did as Taggart instructed.
Taggart kept his gaze on the tiger long enough to notice he had watched their approach, but he couldn’t see his expression with how far away he was.
Just how his huge shoulders seemed to stiffen before the tiger, who had opened the office to enter, changed his mind and shut the door, turning to walk away from the building and in their direction it seemed.
His stomach doing somersaults, he clutched a little tighter to Soren as he lost sight of the tiger. Here we go.
Soren
A second guard stepped from the shadows between two buildings, meeting up with the first several feet away from Taggart’s unit. From the way they pressed their heads together, Soren could tell they didn’t want their conversation to be overheard.
“Let’s go ahead and open the unit,” Arlo suggested while the two guards continued their discussion as they remained in the car. “I want to see if he handles things differently this time.”
Soren nodded and squeezed Taggart’s hand before climbing out. Romy followed and immediately went to stand beside Bash while Taggart headed to unlock his unit.
Soren decided to remain beside Taggart, so he wasn’t in the way if Arlington and Bash needed to head off the tigers.
The hairs on the back of Soren’s neck stood on end when he heard the crunch-scrape of heavy, booted footsteps heading their way, and caught the scent of tigers getting stronger on the breeze. Taggart got the unit open and turned on the light, only for the tiger scent to reach its strongest point.
One of them smells like the tiger from my homeland.
Soren became convinced, sending that bit of information to both Arlington and Taggart when the fear kept the memory fresh. It was less that a second to feel just how much his admission revved up Taggart’s anxiety, even as the scent began to fade without the cat’s saying a word.
“They’re prowling,” Arlo murmured low enough to make them strain to hear, having stepped closer to them. “They made eye contact with Bash and I and kept right on walking. Whether that means they were checking us out to see if they recognized us, or something more remains to be seen.”
“Does that mean they’ll be back?” Soren whispered, eyes darting to the doorway. “I’m sure I recognized one of their scents,” he persisted, pulse hammering in his ears.
“I expect them to wander back around being nosy,” Arlo murmured, stroking a hand down his arm.
“This first pass could have just as easily been about sizing us up as making sure we belong with the unit. Keep your eyes and ears open, it wouldn’t surprise me if they came at us from a different direction. ”
I don’t need anything. Taggart’s hands fidgeted at his sides. I’m going to rummage around for a bit anyway, so it looks like we’re here for a purpose.
Soren remained near him while Taggart examined components and occasionally set one aside, thinking he might need it in the near future, just to fill the time.
Sure enough, the breeze soon carried with it the scent of the tigers again, only this time it smelled like the duo had morphed into a trio. Steady, heavy footfalls came from two, while a third had a slower gait that included a lot more shuffle-drag in the cadence of their footsteps.
Soren scented something else too. The aroma of gun oil.
The scent was one Soren was far too familiar with, as all the strangers who’d swept through his people’s lands had traces of it clinging to their clothing.
Bitter in his nose when he sniffed it, he’d learned to fear it as much as anything.
He hadn’t caught a whiff of it during the first pass.
With the wind smelling like it was about to whip itself into a frenzy of rainwater, it was hard to separate the fresh smells, but it was impossible to miss the fact that at least one of them had come armed.
“You can quit playing games anytime now,” a gruff, grumbly voice declared as the footsteps stopped outside the unit. As soon as they did, Taggart turned towards him, their eyes locking as they turned their focus on watching Arlington’s back.
“What kind of games are you accusing us of playing?” Bash questioned with an icy calm Soren did not feel.
“I see your manners haven’t improved since our last encounter,” Arlo grumbled, keeping his body positioned to the left of the door while Bash kept to the right side, Romy tucked just inside the doorway.
If things get messy, y’all stay on the inside of the unit.