Chapter Eighteen
Taggart
His mind was a mess, he’d picked up Arlo’s worries but acted like he hadn’t. Years Taggart had been working his way through the murky depths of the internet. Into the black sites, retrieving all kinds of information for people who hired him and just because he could.
It was the ‘just because he could’ part that was making him worry.
The hard drives he had brought home with him initially had been random picks.
Yet now behind the closed office door as he sat at his rebuilt computer away from the conversation Bash, Arlo and some of the other enforcers were having while Soren was in the kitchen baking, he considered maybe a part of him had known he needed to remove them from the storage unit.
The tigers, relaying what they thought the targeted break-ins were after, sent tiny shivers of alarm through him.
Were those targeting the storage units looking for something he had?
The fluttering in his gut said yes. It had been maybe a year, possibly more, since he’d looked at the hard drives he used to store additional data on.
He never worried someone would find them and crack the coding that protected the data. No, he hadn’t.
Until now.
There were things going on that no one suspected could or ever would happen. To hear that they were trapping fated mates sent all kinds of alarm bells through Taggart. He couldn’t imagine someone using his mates against him. Was this connected to the mutant pairs?
His heart bounced against his ribs at the possibilities as he took a ragged breath.
Taggart couldn’t recall anything he’d stored on the hard drives that connected to the council.
However, he didn’t know then what he knew now.
Hadn’t he read somewhere that one of the drug manufacturing companies was developing something to allow the scent of true mates to become enhanced, increasing the chance of finding them quicker?
He’d felt a little excited about it when he’d mined that nugget, except he didn’t enjoy being injected, so he’d not given it any more thought.
Fresh eyes might reveal something he’d not been looking for prior.
His squirrel brain fired off like an electrical storm showering him with possibilities.
Only one stood out after everything that they’d learned about the abominations they’d created—in pairs.
Fated pairs. Had they made fated pairs? Created mates that weren’t fated at all?
Or was it they’d harnessed the mating scent of certain animals to draw their mates and make them…
His eyes widened as he stared at the black boxes he held, his pulse joining in the electrical storm as it bounded harder in his veins.
His habit was to put his secondary finds on the internet routing the information through several countries using multiple VPNs so as not to be traced.
It wasn’t often, but when his mind wouldn’t settle after an awful discovery, he’d go on a mini crusade with outing the bad guys.
He just told no one because it was his little secret, and part of the reason he’d said yes to Cosmo when he’d asked to help.
Taggart could freely admit he enjoyed feeling as if he were a secret superhero of sorts.
Fuck.
Fuckkkkk.
His gaze roamed his office searching for hidden dangers.
The space, though nearly back the way he had it before, still contained broken parts of the computer he’d salvaged.
He was careful. But someone had to know it was him who could find answers in the dark places people liked to hide?
Is that why they’d come to his house—because they couldn’t figure out what storage unit Taggart used?
How did they know he had a storage unit?
Was he jumping to conclusions?
He didn’t think so. That gave him an icy feeling in his gut. He thought they were just getting somewhere, now there was this. He released a shuddering breath, then inhaled trying to stop the feeling of his chest being crushed.
Taggart dropped the drives and pressed the palms of his hands to his burning eyes, all the while holding on to his thoughts and feelings to prevent them from spilling out to Arlo and Soren.
Chugging in some air, Taggart shoved back his seat, lowering his head between his knees, closing his eyes.
He willed his body to behave. Having a panic attack right then, after everything, wasn’t on the cards. Stop it.
Get control of yourself.
You don’t want to disappoint Daddy.
The last one seemed to help the most, and he managed to take a decent breath, keeping that on repeat in his mind. You don’t want to disappoint Daddy. You don’t want to disappoint Daddy. You don’t want to disappoint Daddy.
He took several deeper breaths before finally lifting his head to stare at what lay in front of him.
Think. Come on, think.
He reached out with trembling fingers and ran them over the cold plastic case and considered what he should do next.
Not telling Arlo was out of the question, mates were truthful with each other.
But right then he didn’t have anything to actually share, and he didn’t want to throw fuel on the fire only for it to splutter out with a dousing from an unpredictable storm he’d created with something he’d said.
That wouldn’t do.
He brought his chair closer to the desk and, not overthinking it, connected the two hard drives to his computer, splitting the data between four screens.
The one thing he took solace in was that both smokey things were dead, and both owls were dead.
That left the polar bears and the rhinos—as long as they’d not created something else.
The odds of that were high when he considered Raul.
So he did what he always did, and looked at the information he had sorted, because if there was an answer in it, then he’d find it.
Soren
The scent of the tiger had brought back memories from his homeland that he’d repressed since the day he’d hidden in the hole in the wallow.
It was easier not to remember, only he was beginning to understand that it was dangerous too.
Learning that what had happened to his people and the black rhinos wasn’t an isolated incident had terrified him because it meant that it could happen anywhere, even here.
With Taggart in his office and Arlington meticulously doing research into the widely spread-out Ambushes of tigers spaced out across the country, Soren was hesitant to interrupt either of them or think too hard about the things that had been nagging him since the encounter with the tigers at the storage yard, though one thing still nagged at the back of his mind.
The tigers had reclaimed one of their missing mates.
Could that mean that there were other mates being held somewhere waiting for someone to come for them?
The thought brought tears to his eyes as he bustled around the house, dusting in an attempt to settle his thoughts.
How many more would come to Cookietown seeking a safe haven, haunted by the things they’d seen and the friends and family members they’d been unable to save?
It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t right. He felt useless to both his mates and the community, just as he’d felt useless the day his family’s lands had been invaded.
He was growing tired of that feeling. Taggart’s technological skills were an asset.
Arlington was a badass enforcer. What was he besides a little oxpecker with a bunch of domestic skills?
If he was going to have any chance at all of living out a long, happy life with his mates here in the place that they called home, he was going to have to find out.
The problem was where to get started. His life before his people’s lands had been invaded was one of peacefulness, playfulness, and to some extent indulgence.
Not in the way some people thought about indulgence, where it was all about monetary things and lavish vacations.
Out on their sprawling, remote lands, they’d grown up being able to dabble in all the things that interested them and been given the confidence to try and fail knowing someone would be there to pick them up, dust them off, and offer words of comfort and encouragement.
He'd never been afraid of messing up. Never been afraid of not being enough, either. Hiding, burrowing as deeply in the hole as he could and wrapping himself in his wings—that’s what led to him questioning his worth and ability to contribute to the new family he’d found.
What good would it have been, dying like the rest of his friends and family had done?
It would have benefited no one.
Worse, if Arlo and Taggart had ever felt or sensed that there should have been another mate with them and begun to search for them, his death would have condemned them to a long, fruitless waste of time and energy when they could not turn up any sign of him.
Not only that, but he’d have been unable to share what he knew of the events that had taken place, though deep down, he knew that he still hadn’t been able to convey all of his memories to them.
There were things that had happened early on, things that, to his shame, he and his people had dismissed and ignored, content to go about their carefree ways confident that their larger, stronger neighbors would always protect them.
In the end, their cavalier attitudes had contributed to the downfall of their way of life and the destruction of everything they’d known and loved.
It had all started with the construction of the new clinic.