Chapter 13
The car was registered to a shell company with an address in Phoenix that didn’t exist. Jonas confirmed it within an hour.
Adding that to what the Wraiths had dug up on Hernandez’s operational patterns was just more confirmation.
Hernandez did everything in a methodical way and this was one more indicator they had identified the right guy.
There had been three prior incidents, all in the Southwest, and all run the same way.
According to the Wraiths’ report, Hernandez first did a lot of surveillance.
He typically scoped out the scene for days or weeks, then he moved his cartel assets into position under the cover of ordinary criminal activity.
Either a drug distribution point or a money-laundering front.
Only when the infrastructure was in place did he move on the actual target.
As far as the Wraiths knew, he’d never moved on a shifter Clan before. If that was the case, he probably had no idea what he was about to step in.
Pax and Ari sat with Rodrigo that evening in the Alpha’s home, a house built into the hillside deep in reservation territory, nearly invisible from the road.
Rodrigo was a compact man of indeterminate age who never raised his voice.
He didn’t need to. He listened to the whole briefing without expression, and when they finished, he asked just a few questions.
“Is the town in danger?” was his first concern, which said a lot about the type of Alpha Rodrigo was. He truly cared about his neighbors in the town.
“The cartel activity puts the human residents at some risk,” Pax said. “According to the intel we have Hernandez will try to establish a footprint here. Distribution, enforcement, the usual. That happens whether we’re involved or not.”
“Then the town is our concern as well.” Rodrigo folded his hands. “And the mage?”
“He’s coming for me.” Pax held the Alpha’s gaze and made himself say the rest. “But if he gets close enough to run a proper assessment, he might discover the Clan. At that point, it’s not just me anymore.”
Rodrigo nodded once. “What do you need from the Clan?”
Pax laid it out. He’d been building the plan in his mind for a while. They could use the Clan’s strength, hopefully, without exposing anyone. Pax hoped to let Hernandez’s own assumptions trip him up, and give Pedro room to do what only Pedro could do.
Rodrigo heard all of it, asked a few more questions, and then said simply, “Do it.”
That was what he almost always said when the twins brought him a plan they believed in. His trust in their judgment sat heavy on Pax’s shoulders, but Pax wouldn’t have traded that weight for anything.
On the way out, Rodrigo stopped him at the door with one hand on his forearm. Pedro had done the same thing, days ago. Apparently, old men with real power didn’t need much of it to make a point.
“The woman,” Rodrigo said, surprising Pax. He waited, suddenly wary. “She has held this Clan’s secret since before half of our young people were born.” The Alpha’s dark gaze met his. “That earns a debt we have never paid.”
“She doesn’t think of it that way,” Pax assured his Alpha.
“That is what makes it a debt.” Rodrigo released his arm. “Do not let her come to harm for our sake.”
“I won’t,” Pax promised, and meant it down to his bones.
They drove back through the dark and Ari was quiet for a few miles before he spoke. “He trusts us.”
“He always has.”
“It’s a lot,” Ari said, sighing heavily. “I’d forgotten.”
“Yeah, it is,” Pax agreed.
He drove, and thought about Bree. He thought about her hand in his across the desk in the back office, and about the way she’d called him the moment the strange car showed up.
She’d shown such courage, opening the store with one of Hernandez’s men sitting in that car, probably fifty yards away.
She was steady as the sunrise. Dependable and unflappable.
She hadn’t given the Clan her silence all these years because anybody had threatened her or bribed her to keep silent. She’d done it because that was who she was. She’d always believed that you protected the people you cared about. Full stop.
The Alpha was right. The Clan owed her for keeping their secret, and so did he.
She was his mate, and he’d have to explain that to her sooner or later.
There was no other woman for him, but he couldn’t screw this up.
He had to break it to her gently and get her to understand just what it meant to be mates.
The last thing he wanted was to make her feel trapped. He wanted her to want to be his as much as he needed to be hers. He was going to make damned sure she never had reason to regret any of it, if she accepted him. He just had to figure out how he was going to tell her.
The cartel showed up in town in earnest, over the next several days, ugly and unsurprising.
A local bar owner was approached about his place becoming a distribution point.
One of the older shop owners on Main Street found an envelope under his door that spoke volumes without saying anything incriminating.
Two men who weren’t fooling anybody took a table at the diner every morning, sat there for two hours, and made the waitresses’ skin crawl.
None of it touched Leeland’s Hardware. Not directly. Hernandez, or his men, were still watching, still circling. He probably knew the store was connected to his target, and no doubt was being careful about it.
Bree ran the store like nothing in the world was wrong.
She greeted customers, wrangled inventory, kept her father on schedule, and called Pax the second anything felt off.
Watching her do it, Pax thought he’d served with hardened operators who had less steel in their spines.
Not that he’d tell her that. She’d probably just shrug, thinking he was exaggerating.
She’d called him about a man who had come in. He wasn’t one of the two from the diner. This was a new guy. A third one. He’d spent twenty minutes walking the aisles without buying anything, and watching her in a manner she hadn’t liked at all.
“He left when Tomás came back from the delivery run,” she told Pax as soon as she could.
She hadn’t been able to call him while the man was in the store, but she’d done so as soon as he’d left. Pax cursed himself for not telling her to text, or set up some other easy signal that she needed him. He’d rectify that at his earliest opportunity.
“Good,” Pax replied, already on his way to town, gravel spitting under his tires. “Tomás is with you now?”
“Yes. He’s in the back.”
“I’m five minutes out. Don’t—”
“I know,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Pax came in through the back door and found her at the counter, chin up, holding it together.
Tomás had stationed himself in the aisle nearest the front, restocking shelves with the studied casualness of a sentry pretending to be a stock boy.
The kid had grown up fast these past weeks.
Nobody had briefed him, but he’d figured out there was trouble all on his own, and appointed himself Bree’s shadow whenever Pax wasn’t there.
Formidable. That was the word for what this young cousin was going to be, and sooner rather than later. Pax was damned proud of the kid.
Bree saw Pax enter, and some of the starch went out of her spine on a long exhale. He met her in front of the counter and took her in his arms for a quick hug.
“You okay now, babe?” he asked, his voice low, for her ears alone.
She nodded, moving back. There might not be that many people in the store, but they were still in public, such as it was.
“Can you tell me more about the guy?” Pax asked gently.
“I didn’t like the way he was looking at me,” she told him immediately.
Something low and dangerous turned over in Pax’s chest. His jaguar hated that, as did his human side. “Describe him for me, honey. With as much detail as you can remember.”
She gave him a clean recitation. Height, build, a tattoo on the left forearm, the way he’d moved.
Pax made note of it all and sent it via text to both Ari and Cole.
Then he decided to stay at the store the rest of the day.
Bree didn’t argue about it. That, more than anything she’d said, told him how badly the man had rattled her.
Closing time came and Tomás went home. Mr. Leeland ascended the stairs sitting in his chair lift. The store went quiet around them, and the setting sun outside the windows cast long shadows amid the familiar smell of sawdust.
Bree came out from behind the counter, walked straight to Pax, and wrapped her arms around his waist. She pressed her face against his chest as he folded her into his embrace and held on while her breathing steadied.
“I’m not scared,” she said into his shirt. “I want that on the record.”
“You can be scared. I promise. It’s okay. You’re not letting it stop you. That’s what counts.”
“Being scared doesn’t help. It doesn’t make sense,” she countered.
“Sure it does. I ran military ops for years, Bree. You can do the job and still feel the fear.”
“He was so calculating,” she said finally, her shoulders shuddering a bit. “That’s the part I can’t shake. He looked at me and I could feel him running options in his mind.”
“I know.” He ran a gentle hand up her spine. “He sounds like a pro. Probably a hireling from the cartel. Muscle meant to intimidate. Don’t let him,” he advised.
She shook her head and looked up at him. “What really scares me is that the mage is going to come for you, Pax.”
“Yep. And when he does, he’s going to get a whole lot more than he bargained for.” He eased her back far enough to see her face. “I need you to trust me on that.”
Her eyes were calm. The fear was in there, but she had it on a leash. “I do trust you. I just need…” She let out a shaky little laugh. “I need tonight to not be about him. Can we do that? Can we just have tonight for us?”
“Yeah, babe.” His voice came out rough. “We can have tonight just for us.”