Chapter 12
Pax came down the next morning to find Ari at the kitchen table with a folder of paperwork. Ari looked at him. Looked at the clock. Looked at him again.
“Morning, bro,” Ari said, way too innocent.
“Is that what Cole sent?” Pax poured a cup and sat down, ignoring his twin’s inquisitive grin. Ari held the look for another three seconds, then slid the folder across.
“Info on the mages we ran into in Salt Lake City. Turns out the kid saw a lot more than we did and was able to provide descriptions good enough to trace. Cole’s people identified the possible suspects and had the bears in Grizzly Cove verify a few surveillance photos with Danny.
He identified the male as Alexander Hernandez.
He’s Venezuelan by origin, but has been embedded with a Mexican cartel for years, running their operations up here and using the cartel infrastructure as cover for Venifucus work. ”
Pax flipped through the file. Thin, but useful. The photograph was blurry but he could tell a bit about the target from it. Medium height, slight, well-dressed. The face might’ve been the guy he’d seen around town, but the image was a bit too fuzzy to be sure.
Ari handed over another page. “The woman’s the heavy hitter, magically speaking.
We think she’s a battle mage, and her name is Charity Gomez.
When she’s not working, she spends most of her time at a beach house on the California coast. She’s been there for the past few weeks.
We’ve got somebody keeping an eye on her.
She’s likely the one who nearly took you out. ”
“Yeah, I thought it was a woman,” Pax agreed. “Whatever she hit the truck with was strong and it was the truck coming apart that nearly sliced off my leg.”
“Which might’ve just been a lucky shot on her part, or a calculated strike using her mid-level abilities to their best effect. Either way, she’s dangerous.”
“But she’s not here,” Pax reminded his twin. “It’s the guy we’ve seen around town.”
“Probably. The photo is shit but it could be him.” Ari tilted his head, looking at the photo again.
“I’d lay odds it is him and he’s the one who followed my trail,” Pax stated, feeling the truth of his words down to his bones. The scenario felt right.
“Well, it would make sense. According to the scanty intel, the woman went back to her beach house right after they failed to capture the kid we were escorting. The man disappeared off the radar.”
“And showed up here.” Pax shook his head. “Of course he was off the grid. So was I, and he was following me. Shit.”
“There’s a bit of profile info on the guy. It says the mage is patient and never moves until he has enough information to satisfy himself.”
“Fits with what Pedro said. The mage has been at the edge of the wards for a while now.” Pax set the file down. “He’s been feeling around for the shape of the wards. Probably trying to understand what he’s looking at.”
“I wonder what he thinks he’s looking at?”
“Pedro thought he’d identified our family.
Me, Mom, and Dad. I wonder if he knows about you?
” He paused, then went on when Ari shrugged.
“I bet the store traffic is bothering him. I think he’s starting to recalculate.
A lot of the Clan has been going in and out of Leeland’s lately and if the mage is watching me, he has to have seen the store and noted the comings and goings. ”
Ari was quiet, looking at the table. “If he recalculates past our little family, we could lose the advantage. He might call in reinforcements.”
“Yep.”
“So we need to move before he discovers the existence of more of the Clan. We should move on him first.”
“Or we get Pedro to move first.” Pax thought out loud. “Maybe Pedro can do some sort of controlled reveal. Maybe we let Alex Hernandez see what we want him to see, on our terms, in a situation we’ve set up.”
“A trap.” Ari’s eyes always got a little gleam when the planning turned serious. “But Bree and her dad are sitting ducks. We have to get them clear before we make any kind of move.”
“I know,” Pax replied, his mouth set in a grim line. “I’ll talk to Bree. You know she’s not going to like being sidelined.”
“You’ve got that right,” Ari agreed. “But she’ll accept a role that isn’t in the middle of the potential battleground.” He paused. “She’s practical, too.”
That same morning in town, Bree got dressed and went down to open the store. Her father appeared at eight, moving through the store in his regular morning routine. He sat at his usual spot with the newspaper she’d collected from the doorstep for him.
He surprised her by speaking. “Pax is a good man,” he said, without even looking up from his paper.
She kept her back to him, tidying one of the displays. “Yes, he is,” she agreed.
“I worked with his father on some school events when the twins were younger.” Her father turned a page. “Herman always said those boys would amount to something. Turns out he was right.” He began folding the paper. “Don’t let Paxton be stupid about this.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “What does that mean?”
“It means men like that get in their own way.” Her father fussed over his paper that wouldn’t fold correctly. “They think they’re protecting you by keeping you at arm’s length. You’re too sensible to put up with any of that malarkey.”
She turned and put an item back on the shelf. “I’ve already told him that.”
“Good.” He stood to change the angle of the blinds on the window. “Tell him again if you need to.” He glanced out the window onto the street. “That car is back.”
She was beside him in three steps. A nondescript dark sedan was parked across the street, two doors down. The same one she’d seen twice before. A man sat inside, not clearly visible from this angle, but definitely there. Bree had her phone out before she’d made a conscious decision about it.
Pax answered on the first ring.
“There’s a strange car that Dad’s seen a few times before. I’ve seen it at least three times now. I think whoever is in it is watching the store,” she said. “It’s parked on the east side of Main Street, two doors north of us. There’s a man inside, but we can’t see him clearly.”
“Don’t go outside, and don’t look directly at the car.” His voice was level but conveyed a sense of urgency. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Okay.” She moved back from the window. “I wasn’t sure about calling you about this, but—”
“Bree,” he cut her off. “You did exactly right. Now I’m going to hang up, honey, so I can get on my bike and get over there. Stay away from the window and let me in the back, okay?”
“Okay. See you soon.”
She hung up and gazed at her father, who was watching her with questions in his eyes, but he didn’t ask them. She took a deep breath and sighed.
“There are a few things you need to know.”
Pax made it to town in under eight minutes.
He’d worked on his old motorcycle since his leg had healed, and had it tuned up and ready for anything, thank goodness.
He’d kept the bike in his parents’ garage for years and took it out every time he came home.
In between his dad kept it running and in decent shape, but Pax still enjoyed tinkering with it when he had time.
The fast machine ate up the miles between his folks’ place and town with a lot less hassle than driving his mom’s old car. And he had all sorts of useful stuff packed into his saddlebags, which might come in handy.
Parking a block away so as not to be heard or seen, he went into the hardware store through the back. Bree met him in the hallway. Her father was in his usual spot, sitting near the front window, reading the newspaper.
“I told him,” Bree said.
“How much?”
“Just that trouble might have followed you home.” Her gaze met his. “He needed to know. He alerted me to the car.”
Pax moved closer to Mr. Leeland but out of sight of the window, and did not sugarcoat his words. “I’m sorry about all of this, Mr. Leeland,” Pax said immediately. “I think I might’ve been followed home after my injury.”
“So Briana said,” the old man commented in a calm tone. “Why don’t you tell me about that?”
So Pax told him what he could. The older man listened to Pax’s rundown of events without interruption.
Pax glossed over the mission that had taken himself and his twin through Salt Lake City but provided enough information to give Mr. Leeland a real idea of what had happened.
He didn’t go into detail about his injury or exactly how he’d gotten away.
There really wasn’t time to explain all about the unseen world right now.
Maybe not ever with this man, though Bree would know it all sooner rather than later.
When Pax finished, Mr. Leeland looked directly at him.
“What do you need us to do?” he asked plainly, flooring Pax with his calm willingness to help.
Pax was dealing with a boatload of anger at himself for bringing this trouble home with him. If he’d been thinking more clearly, he never would have been so sloppy. He knew that for a fact. But the situation was what it was, and they all had to deal with it.
Still, he was taken aback that Mr. Leeland spoke not one word of recrimination at him, but only offered support. Pax had not expected that but was glad of Mr. Leeland’s fighting attitude and unfailing courage.
“For now, I need you both to carry on as normally as possible,” Pax answered. “Open the store. Go through your daily routine, but call me immediately if anything feels off.”
“Like a strange car sitting outside my store three times in one week,” Mr. Leeland said knowingly.
“Yes, sir. Exactly like that.”
“All right,” Mr. Leeland said. “That’s what we’ll do.” He stood, smoothed his shirt, and put the folded newspaper on the small side table he kept by his chair. “I assume you and your brother are going to do something about the man in that car.”
“Yes, sir. We’re working on that right now,” Pax told him.
“Good.” Mr. Leeland moved right up to the glass in the front display window, not looking at the car, just casually straightening one of the displayed items. “Don’t drag it out.”
Bree had her arms crossed and her chin up. He could see that she was working to keep the fear out of her expression and mostly succeeding. He moved closer to her, remaining out of sight from the street.
“You did the right thing, calling me,” he said, low.
“I told you I’d be useful.” But her voice was tight.
He put his hand on the back of her neck, under her hair, and she let her forehead drop briefly to his chest. Just briefly. Then she straightened and stepped back.
“Go do what you do,” she said. “I’ll keep things running here.”
He wanted to kiss her, but with her dad sitting right there by the front window, he held himself to a respectful nod instead.
Bree, apparently, had no such reservations. She rose up on her toes and pressed a quick, firm kiss to his mouth, right there in the middle of the store.
“For luck,” she said, her cheeks pink but her chin up.
Across the room, Mr. Leeland’s newspaper rustled as the old man turned a page with great deliberation and said nothing at all.
Pax said his goodbyes to them both and went out the back, grinning the whole way down the alley. His jaguar strutted inside him, insufferably pleased that their female had done the claiming in front of a witness.
Pax went out the back way to find Ari waiting for him. He was wearing one of the changes of clothes Pax had in his saddlebags, which meant he’d run in jaguar form to get here. It was a good thing Pax had parked his bike in a relatively dark alleyway, or the townsfolk would’ve gotten quite a show.
“I got the license plate, make, and model, and already called Jonas to run the car through the police computer,” Ari reported.
Pax and Ari went all the way back to SEAL training with Jonas Faulkner, a friend in Phoenix who had gone into law enforcement after leaving the Navy.
“I doubt we’ll get much off that unless our nasty friend was foolish enough to drive here in his own car.
I’m betting it was stolen, but at least we’ll learn where it came from and that will tell us something about the path Alexander took to get here. ”
“Has he moved at all?” Pax asked.
“He hasn’t gotten out of the car since I arrived. He’s still observing. I’m willing to bet he’s still in the assessment phase.”
“I suppose that’s good. Gives us more time to plan our response. Or, make our decision to go on the offensive,” Pax said with a grim twist to his lips.
“We need to call the Alpha and fill him in on developments.”
“I think we can put that off until tonight.” Pax looked back toward the store and the faint sound of the bell jingling over the front door as someone came in.
Then he heard echoes of Bree’s voice as she greeted the first customer of the day as if nothing was wrong.
“Tonight,” he said again. “After we know more.”