Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Blaze sat on the edge of the bed. It was early evening, and he and Ryder had been searching for Stella all day. They’d come back to the hotel room half an hour ago empty-handed.
Ryder had gone back to his room, leaving Blaze alone with his loss and pain. Axel had sent a text an hour ago. Still nothing. Sorry.
His inner wolf was still on high alert, and he couldn’t calm it down.
His mate had been taken, and he felt like he should still be out there, tearing the city apart until he found her.
His cracked ribs were screaming. His left eye was a slit.
His knuckles were a mess. None of that pain could compare to the pain of knowing his mate had been taken.
Outside the window, the evening light was darkening to night, and the streetlights were coming on. The room was silent, except for his thoughts. When he first heard the bright trill of a bird song, he thought he was imagining it.
When it came again, Blaze’s head came up.
He’d heard that sound before from the wren video Axel had pulled off Nell’s phone.
The wolf inside him surged, listening more intently.
Blaze stood and crossed to the window. On the narrow sill was a tiny brown bird with a striped face.
It kept singing, and it took a beat for Blaze to realize what he was seeing.
Nell.
Blaze fumbled with the latch and slid the window up.
Cold air came in and the wren hopped from the sill into the room.
She landed on the carpet, and Blaze closed the window behind her.
Her wings were trembling and the small feathers at her throat were puffed out from the cold of the flight. Blaze crouched beside her.
“Nell?”
The wren tipped her head and looked up at him.
Her eyes were dark and bright. One second, she was a wren on the carpet at his feet and the next she was a young woman folded on the floor in front of him with her arms wrapped around her knees and her hair down around her shoulders.
Blaze stood, grabbed a comforter off the bed and laid it over her shoulders. He then turned up the heater.
“Nell? I’m Blaze. Stella’s mate.”
“Stella’s mate?”
“Yes. Are you hurt?”
“I’m cold and tired. But I’m okay.”
He went to Stella’s suitcase and pulled out a sweatsuit. He brought the pile back to Nell and set it on the floor in front of her.
“Stella’s clothes. You can change in the bathroom. Take a shower if you want.”
“Thank you.”
She stood with the comforter wrapped around her shoulders and picked up the pile of clothes.
She then disappeared into the bathroom. Blaze sat down at the table, his inner wolf howling inside him.
His mind was running a million miles a minute.
He could hear the shower running as he tried to gather his thoughts.
After taking several deep breaths, he picked up his phone and texted Axel.
Nell is here. Stand by.
Axel’s reply came back. Copy. Informing Dom and Siren.
Nell came back out of the bathroom with damp hair, dressed in the sweatsuit. She sat on the end of the bed.
“Thank you for this,” she said, her voice still hoarse.
He went to the mini-fridge and grabbed a bottle of water. He cracked the seal and handed it to her. She took it and drank half of it without stopping. Blaze watched her from the table.
“How did you get here? Have you seen Stella?”
She nodded.
“They brought her in. She tried to shift, and they got distracted trying to contain a grizzly.
I took the opportunity to escape. Stella gave me the hotel address, so I flew straight here.
When I first got out of the building, I flew up pretty high to get my bearings.
I recognized the brick chimney sticking up from a factory that I could see from the warehouse where they hold the fights.
I followed the river to the warehouse and then found the hotel three blocks past that.
“Did you see any street names near the building where they’re holding Stella?”
“It’s on Rail Yard Road.”
Blaze dialed Axel and quickly relayed what he’d learned from Nell.
“I have it. The old Westgate Cold Storage. I’m sending the address to Dom now.”
The raid staging point was a fenced lot behind a closed auto-body shop three blocks east of the Westgate building.
Dom’s Suburban was already parked along the back wall when Blaze arrived.
Ryder had stayed back at the hotel with Nell.
A panel van sat at the rear of the lot with its back doors open and the pack’s gear lay out across the floor of it.
Two unmarked sedans were tucked against the chain link.
Dom started to fill him in as soon as he joined the team gathering near the back of the van. “Detective Reynolds and Officer Holt drove down from Fate Mountain. They got here twenty minutes ago. Holt's on the breach with us; Reynolds takes the perimeter.”
“Two grizzlies on the team is good. We have heavy if we need it,” Blaze said.
“PD will come in once the building is secure.”
Siren was pulling a tactical vest on over a long-sleeve compression shirt. Hunter was beside her tightening the straps of his own vest.
Valeria’s brother, Gabriel Reynolds, was the taller of the two, with thick dark hair and brown eyes. Andre Holt was a few inches shorter and broader in the shoulders. He’d taken the missing person’s report from Stella and had been waiting for something to move on all this time.
Dom pulled the team in close at the back of the van.
There was a schematic of the Westgate building taped to the inside of one of the open doors.
The building was a long rectangle with a corridor that ran the length of it.
There were doors on both sides. Nell had said they were the holding rooms. There was a reinforced room at the back where Nell had said they’d taken Stella.
The plan was short. Pack through the south door in human form. Hunter on point. Blaze would split off to find Stella. Siren would take the holding room. Reynolds would stay on the perimeter, ready to come in once the building was secure for arrests and victim transport.
“Any questions?”
Nobody had any.
Blaze sat in the back of Dom’s Suburban with Hunter on one side and Siren on the other. The wolf was right under his skin. Stella was in the building somewhere ahead of him, and he didn’t know what state he’d find her in.
The Suburban stopped at the corner and Dom killed the engine. Axel’s voice came through the comms. “South door clear. Reynolds is in position on the perimeter.”
“South stack on me,” Dom said.
They went out fast, up the sidewalk on the south side of the building. The wall was cinderblock and windowless. The pedestrian door was forty feet ahead. Dom looked at Blaze once.
“Let’s bring her home.”
Blaze didn’t answer.
Andre and Dom swung a battering ram on the south entrance, and the door hit the concrete inside.
Hunter went through first. A guard twenty feet down was reaching for his radio when Hunter closed the distance and tackled him.
The guard’s head bounced off the concrete.
Hunter came down with a knee on his chest and a hand on his throat. Siren stepped past with her sidearm up.
Blaze picked up Stella’s scent and followed it deeper into the building. He moved fast. Weapon up. A guard came around the corner, and Blaze put him on the floor before the man got his hands up. He zip tied the guard and kept moving. Stella’s scent was growing stronger with each step.
Blaze approached an open door and caught movement out of the corner of his eye.
He stopped and looked inside. It was a small office.
Vincent Pierce, the event organizer, stood behind the desk, loading cash into a leather satchel.
Pierce looked up, saw Blaze in the doorway, and ran out of the second exit.
Blaze’s wolf came up with such force, he couldn’t hold it back.
The shift tore through him, and he ripped out of his clothes.
He followed Pierce out the back door of the office on all fours.
Pierce turned into a second corridor as Blaze’s jaws closed on the man’s thigh, his teeth biting through flesh and hitting bone.
Pierce screamed as he fell.
Another guard came around the corner with his weapon up and stopped when he saw Blaze in wolf form on top of Pierce. Dom and Andre came up behind the guard and put him on the ground.
Dom crossed to where Blaze had Pierce pinned and crouched beside him on the concrete.
He pulled Pierce’s arms behind his back.
The zip ties clicked. Pierce was breathing in short hard pulls, blood spreading through his thigh.
Blaze let go, turned, and was running before Dom finished standing up. He had to find Stella.
The corridor stretched ahead of him. Stella’s maple and brown sugar scent pulled him toward the reinforced room at the end of the corridor. Then he heard a roar that shook the walls.
His mate.