Chapter 22
Everyone was in position before dawn. A number of Clan members were staged across the town, each in a carefully chosen spot.
Two of the Clan’s best fighters were in the loading bay two doors down from the store, exactly where Bree had marked the map.
Three senior Clan members were at the east end of Main Street where the road curved on its way out of town.
Ari and two others were near the bar, covering the western approach, and Pax was at the back of the store with Tomás, who had refused to stay out of this.
Tomás really was too young for this, but he’d argued that he was already known to work in the store and he was a target because of that alone.
He wanted to be part of the take down and Pax found he couldn’t really deny the young man the right to see this through to the end.
If they failed today, Tomás was already in danger.
If they succeeded, Pax could arrange it so that Tomás was present, but not engaged in actual fighting.
He would be there, but hopefully in no more danger than he was already.
Pedro was on the roof of the building across the alleyway from the hardware store.
That had required a conversation with the building’s owner, but since the hair salon didn’t open until after lunch today, the owner, Cindi had been happy to let Bree’s surveyor up there to get a view of the hardware store’s silhouette.
It was a bogus story, but Cindi didn’t know that and she was happy to do a favor for her neighbor.
In living memory, Pedro had never taken an exposed position in any Clan action.
But his presence here, in line of sight of the mage, able to deploy the magical working he’d built from Hernandez’s own signature, was the thing that made the whole plan possible.
In the end, they’d had little choice but to accept the risk to one of the Clan’s most precious treasures.
Pax had checked his position twice. Pedro sat on that rooftop like he’d been born there. Bree was inside the store at her chosen observation post.
Pax hadn’t been happy about having her present but it was necessary.
The store was her domain and Bree wanted to do her part.
Pax’s plan needed someone inside the store who could watch the street from the window above the display shelves without being visible from outside, and relay what they saw through the two-way earpiece from Ari’s supply bag.
Nobody was better qualified than Bree to do that, since she knew every millimeter of this town better than anyone from the Clan.
At least her father was at the Rojas house. He’d gone without argument, which meant he understood more than they’d told him and had decided to trust Pax and his family.
Pax stood in the dark at the back of the store and listened to the town wake up.
At six forty-eight, Bree’s voice came through his ear. “Two cars. Coming south on Main. They’re not stopping at the light.”
He touched the earpiece. “How many?”
“Two in the first car. Can’t see the second clearly.”
He relayed that information to Ari. Ari confirmed two more cars coming in from the west. Hernandez would be somewhere in the mix, probably in one of those vehicles, protected and directing the movements of the cartel soldiers.
Pax noted that Tomás was composed and focused. He nodded once.
“Stay behind me,” Pax said.
“With respect,” Tomás said quietly, “no.”
There was no time to argue it. Pax went to the back door.
The next twelve minutes did not go cleanly. They never did when plans met reality and turned into something else. What separated people who’d done this before from people who hadn’t was how fast they adapted when things changed.
Hernandez’s foot soldiers fanned out along the street with professional discipline, taking positions that covered the store’s entrances and the surrounding block. They knew how to move. Two of them went for the alley, but the Clan’s men were waiting in the abandoned loading bay.
What followed was brief, loud enough to carry to the street, and then very quiet. Pax didn’t look. He had his own problem.
The problem was that Hernandez hadn’t come in with his men. He’d stayed in the car.
Pax stood in the open back doorway and looked at the black sedan parked crosswise at the mouth of the alley, engine running, and understood at once.
Hernandez had positioned himself to observe and command.
He was letting his soldiers act before he put himself in the line of fire.
The move was tactically sound, but it meant the approach Pax had planned, drawing Hernandez into the open for Pedro to work at range, wasn’t going to happen the way they’d drawn it.
He touched the earpiece. “Pedro.”
“I see him.” Pedro’s voice was perfectly level. “I can’t reach him from here. The car is warded.”
Of course it was. Pax breathed through his recalculation.
Out on the street in front of the store, Ari was leading Clan members in engaging Hernandez’s other soldiers. Controlled and efficient, the fight was going the right way but wasn’t finished. Ari’s voice came through his earpiece.
“Two down. Coming to you shortly.”
Pax knew he had three minutes. Maybe four.
The car’s windows were tinted, but he could feel Hernandez inside, his malevolent attention aimed in Pax’s direction. The mage was waiting for Pax to come to him.
So Pax went. If showing his face would get the mage to leave the warded vehicle, Pax had to make that move. He had to give Pedro a clear shot to do his thing or this whole operation would be for naught.
Pax stepped into the alley and the car door opened. So far, so good. Hernandez stepped out and wasted no time sending a bolt of magic right at him.
A wall of pressure slammed into Pax’s left side and went straight for his knee. The bad knee. The one that had only just been painstakingly rebuilt. Pax grimaced. Hernandez had done his homework and knew exactly where to hit him.
Pax dropped to one knee. He’d planned for this, so he stayed down, hoping to lure the mage closer.
Hernandez stepped forward to press his advantage, three steps closer, and from the rooftop across the alley Pedro let loose. Streams of white magic came down from above that Pax felt as a sudden wave in the otherwise still air. Hernandez stopped mid-stride.
The mage stood in the alley with his hands half-raised and an expression Pax recognized. Hernandez was realizing he’d been outplayed. He wasn’t panicking. He was recalculating. Hunting for an exit, but there wasn’t one.
Pedro’s magic was keyed into Hernandez’s personal magical signature, and it bound him in the streamers of white light.
They wrapped around him so tightly that Hernandez could barely move, much less struggle.
He remained on his feet but was otherwise completely incapacitated by Pedro’s magical binding.
Pax stood up. His knee held. The rebuilt tissue had taken the hit, but his inner jaguar was already flooding the joint with everything it had, and he was standing.
“The shaman,” Hernandez spat. It wasn’t a question.
“The shaman,” Pax agreed, nodding as he moved closer to the trapped mage.
From the street came the sounds of the fight winding down, the losing side working out how to accept it. Ari’s voice reported in his ear.
“Street’s clear. Coming to you now.”
Hernandez looked toward the loading dock, where two of his soldiers were down and not moving. The shifters had retreated within and couldn’t be seen. Then Hernandez looked back at Pax and Tomás who had come up beside him.
“How many of you are there?”
“Enough,” Pax said with quiet dignity.
Bree’s voice came through the earpiece at that moment. “Pax. There’s a man at the front door.”
He glanced at Tomás, who had heard and was already moving.
“I’ve got it,” Tomás said, and went.
Hernandez watched the coordination, the calm even in one so young, and the recalculation finished behind his eyes. Pax saw the instant he realized once and for all how badly he’d underestimated his opponent.
“You’re going to have a conversation,” Pax told him, feeling almost cheerful, now that the trap had worked.
Hernandez took a long moment. Then, choosing the best of his remaining bad options, he asked, “With whom?”
“With someone who’s been doing this longer than either of us has been alive,” Pax said. “And who already knows more about you than you’d like.”
He held the mage’s gaze until Hernandez’s hands lowered. Then he touched his earpiece. “Pedro. We’re ready.”
The old shaman emerged from the salon’s side door, having come down from the roof.
He crossed the alley, unhurried, in the full light of early morning.
Everything had happened well before the town was fully awake, which was a small blessing that might help conceal everything that had happened from the general population.
The man at the front door was one of Hernandez’s soldiers who’d been felled by a blow to the head. Bree had watched it happen and seen the man fall to the ground. She’d thought he was out of action, but somehow, he’d regained his feet and come straight for the front door of her store.
She’d told Pax over the radio, but it was Tomás who came back inside to deal with the threat. She heard a brief commotion after Tomás opened the front door, then nothing, then Tomás’s voice drifted up to her.
“He’s not going anywhere.”
She stayed in her awkward position, lying atop a wide bookcase looking out the very top of the tall front window, because Pax had told her to stay right there until he gave the all-clear.
She wasn’t ashamed to admit how scared she’d been during all of the action, but she wouldn’t go against Pax’s wishes unless it was absolutely necessary.
For now, that meant she would stay up here until Pax told her it was safe.
The street had gone silent. All of Hernandez’s men were on the ground. She’d watched two of them go down right in front of the store, fast and without ceremony, at the hands of Clan members she’d known for years. She hadn’t realized how fast even the older shifters could move.
Early morning light lay across the street the same as any other day. The diner would open in an hour, and people would be up and around, going about their business, and none of them would ever know what had happened this morning.
She stayed at the window until Pax’s voice came through the earpiece again.
“It’s over,” he said. “You can come out. All clear.”
She climbed down from her perch on the bookcase, and dusted herself off as she went to the back door.
Pax was standing in the alley, looking scrumptious and all in one piece.
She crossed the distance and put her arms around him.
He wrapped her up and held her tight, and for a moment neither of them said a word.
“How’s your leg?” she asked.
“It’s fine.”
“Good.” She pressed her face against his neck, breathed him in, and let herself feel, briefly and completely, just how frightened she’d been.
Then she stepped back, looked him over, and said, “Where’s Hernandez?”
“With Pedro.” His gaze was steady on hers. “He’s going to take it from here.”
She nodded, then looked around at the alley. It was back to being just an ordinary alley behind her ordinary store, where the things that had happened this morning never occurred. Then she looked back at her mate.
“The shop doesn’t open for two hours,” she said. “Let’s go upstairs.” She went inside and he followed after making a few radio transmissions to Ari and the others, thanking them for their work.
They all let him off the hook, even though he’d been the leader of this little operation. Nobody argued. The mated men, in particular, seemed to understand that a mate’s happiness came first in all things.
Upstairs, the apartment was empty, her father still safely tucked away at the Rojas place across the desert. Pax barely got the door closed before Bree turned on him, her hands moving over his chest, his arms, his ribs, quick and searching.
“I’m checking you for damage,” she informed him, in the same tone she used for inventory. “Hold still.”
“Babe, I’m fine.”
“You took a blast to that knee this morning. You’ll be fine when I say you’re fine.” Her palms slid down over his left knee and pressed gently, and only when he didn’t flinch did the rigid set of her shoulders finally ease.
He caught her wrists, drew her up, and kissed her, and her careful inventory turned into a different kind of urgency altogether.
All the fear she’d been holding down since dawn came pouring out through her hands and her mouth, and he met it with his own.
He’d kept his head all morning because the job required it, but the job was done now, and the man could finally feel the full size of what he’d stood to lose.
He walked her backward down the hall while they undressed each other with far more speed than finesse.
They landed on her bed in a tangle of limbs, but neither of them seemed to mind.
There was no slow build this time and no need for it.
She was every bit as ready as he was, pulling him over her, wrapping her legs around his hips, demanding with her whole body that he close the last of the distance between them.
He surged into her, and the relief of it rolled through him, fierce and total.
They were alive, they were together, and nothing on this earth was going to take her from him.
He loved her hard and fast, exactly the way she was begging for.
She cried out her first climax against his shoulder with her nails scoring lines down his back that he would wear with pride for the few hours his healing allowed.
He slowed then, gentling, drawing a second orgasm out of her by slow degrees until she was pleading with him in ragged whispers. When she peaked that time, he went with her, her name torn out of him as pleasure emptied his mind of everything but his mate.
Afterward, they lay sprawled across the covers with their hearts pounding while the morning sun stretched slowly across her floorboards. His jaguar purred, loud and shameless, and he made no attempt to hush it.
She laughed, low and breathless, and pressed her palm flat to his chest to feel the rumble. “I heard that.”
“This once, I’m not going to argue about it.” He gathered her closer, supremely satisfied with his morning’s work on every front.
They had almost two hours before the store opened. He intended to spend every minute exactly where he was, with his mate safe in his arms and the ordinary sounds of the town waking up beyond her window. The fight was over. The good part could finally begin.