Chapter 8
SEAN
Spriggans Arena & Training Facility.
“Hey!” Sean called out, spotting Lukas Bakken up ahead.
Lukas turned at the sound of Sean’s call, then lifted his chin in greeting. “Yo, Murph”
Sean jogged down the hall to catch up, already reconsidering his plan to involve Lukas in Kiera’s predicament.
He’d admired Lukas Bakken, the berserker wolf and all-star forward, for years, but they were relatively new teammates, and he still didn’t know him that well. But out of all the Spriggans, Lukas was the most obvious choice.
There were two reasons for this: first, Lukas had seen Elli out of some danger a couple of months ago. Second, he and Rogue had practically grown up together. If anyone could help Sean untangle the events of the last twelve hours, it was Lukas.
“Can I talk to you?” Sean asked when he reached him. “Before we head in there?”
Lukas checked his phone. “Meeting’s starting in ten.”
“Yeah, I know,” Sean said, and he glanced nervously at the door. “This won’t take long.”
“Okay,” Lukas said. “Shoot.”
Another door, this one to the parking lot, opened behind Sean. He glanced over his shoulder as three of their teammates arrived.
Returning his focus to Lukas, Sean tipped his head in the direction of a different hallway that branched off the main corridor and toward a spot where they could talk privately.
Lukas gave Sean a quick nod, then greeted their teammates.
Bjorn Eliason, their starting goalie, slapped his big berserker-bear hand down on Lukas’s shoulder as he lumbered past. “Good to see you.”
Lukas smiled. “You too, old man.”
Bjorn shook his head in feigned irritation at the nickname.
Then, once their teammates had gone into the meeting room, Sean led Lukas to the other hall and quickly turned to face him.
“I assume this about Kiera,” Lukas said.
“What?” Sean asked confused by why Lukas would assume anything, about Kiera or otherwise.
“Kiera Jones,” Lukas explained.
Sean blew out an exasperated pfff noise. “I know which Kiera you meant. But why would you assume that?”
“Because you’re the one who brought Kiera to our apartment. Because you took off like a shot as soon as Elli had her under her wing. Because she seemed pretty disappointed when she came back from the guest room and saw that you were gone.”
That didn’t sound right. Lukas must have misread her. Still, Sean asked, “Disappointed how?”
Lukas shrugged. “Like she hadn’t expected you to leave without saying goodbye.”
Sean almost laughed because that was definitely a misread. She hadn’t even wanted him to escort her up to the apartment.
“She was probably glad I was gone. She’s pissed at me.”
“For what?” Lukas asked.
“Nothing really.” Sean wasn’t going to confess to tilting into Kiera’s apartment and reading her private papers, even if his concerns had been warranted. There was no need to repeat the ethical debate with a berserker wolf.
“But whatever.” He pressed on. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Okay...” Lukas said, drawing out the word in a tone of confused skepticism.
“Three questions. One: why doesn’t Kiera know about Elli being abducted?”
The corners of Lukas’s mouth got tight, pulling on the scar that ran down his cheek. “Elli didn’t want her friends to worry.”
“Hmmm.” That wasn’t the way Sean would have handled it. Maybe it came from years of playing sports, or maybe it came from being a dryad and one with the trees. In his experience, when life’s storms came at you, you stood stronger as a group.
He didn’t understand anyone who chose to live as an island. His life was what it was only because he hadn’t been given a say. But at least he had his team, even if he was the only dryad on it.
“What’s the second question?” Lukas asked.
“Have Elli or Rogue ever mentioned the name Braden Jones?”
Lukas’s dark eyebrows lowered over his ice-blue eyes. “I don’t think so.”
“And you don’t know him, right?” Sean asked, thinking he probably knew the answer to that already.
“No,” Lukas said, sounding impatient. “Should I?”
“Maybe not. Third question: how confident are you that Rogue has his trouble sorted?”
To that, Lukas pressed his lips together tight, so tight they went white, which was a definite answer, though not the one Sean had been hoping for.
“What’s the point of all these questions, Murph?”
Sean drew in a breath. Time to lay it all out there. “Braden Jones is Kiera’s brother,” Sean explained. “He’s in custody, awaiting trial. Yesterday, he roped her into receiving what I can only assume was stolen property.”
“And you know this how?” Lukas asked.
“I was with her when it was delivered to her apartment.”
Lukas gave a short nod because he knew how hard Sean had been trying to get in with Kiera. The fact he’d been at her apartment apparently wasn’t coming as a surprise. Still, Lukas wasn’t grasping the point.
“Lukas,” Sean said, “they know where she lives.”
“Ah,” he said. “The broken water pipes?”
“Sorry, man. Elli and Kiera are cut from the same cloth. She insisted that Elli not know anything about this.”
A wry smile pulled at Lukas’s mouth, and he shook his head.
“But it gets worse,” Sean said.
Lukas’s smile vanished. “Worse how?”
Sean checked the time on his phone. The meeting would start in three minutes. “I followed Kiera to the handoff. Some asshole pulled a gun on her.”
“Shit.” Lukas raked a hand through his hair.
Sean spoke quickly. “I tilted her out.”
Lukas’s hand dropped to his side, and his eyes widened. “She’s okay?”
“You saw her,” Sean said. “She’s fine.” This was not the time to get into those nearly twelve hours of unconsciousness.
Lukas gave him another quick nod.
“After I left your place,” Sean said, picking up where he’d left off, “I went back to the handoff spot, this shady bodega on Caspian.”
A few seconds of silence passed as if Lukas needed more time to process this bit of news, or maybe to get a lock on his reaction before he set it loose on Sean.
Finally, Lukas spoke, sounding like a fatigued and disappointed parent. “Maybe now’s the time for me to remind you that you’re a hockey player. You’re not law enforcement. Not even a P.I.”
“I’m sorry,” Sean said, hopefully making it clear he wasn’t the least bit sorry. “Weren’t you the one who ran into a warehouse, commando style, to take out Elli’s abductors?”
Lukas’s expression darkened. “Elli was mine to protect. Kiera isn’t yours.”
“She is,” Sean said, and he surprised himself by how strongly he felt that.
Lukas’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline. “Is that so?”
Sean frowned. Maybe it was more like he wanted her to be his. Something she never would be if he allowed her to walk into the path of a bullet. And that had been the same for Lukas, so he should have totally understood where he was coming from.
“If I recall,” Sean said, “Elli hadn’t been yours when that all went down either.”
“Elli and I had history,” Lukas countered. “Years of it. You should think twice before taking such a huge risk for a woman you barely know.”
“I did think twice.”
In fact, he’d stewed for hours over all the lies Kiera had fed him (and herself) to force him to leave her apartment. Even though he knew what she was doing, it still pissed him off.
“And after all that thinking,” Sean continued, “I still thought I better check things out.”
Another stretch of silence. Then Lukas seemed to surrender.
This, Sean knew, was no small feat for a berserker, especially one who’d been groomed to be an alpha. That role was no longer Lukas’s, but that didn’t mean the alpha tendencies weren’t still there.
“Did you learn anything?” Lukas asked on a sigh.
“Rogue was there. At the bodega.”
Now, that scored him a point. He had Lukas’s attention. Big Time.
“What the fuck?!” Lukas exclaimed, and his wolf shone through his ice-blue eyes.
“He was there,” Sean said, dropping his voice to a whisper. “And he was pissed because whoever he was supposed to meet hadn’t shown, and this person owed him money.”
“Did Rogue see you?” Lukas asked.
“More than that. We talked.”
“Wait.” Lukas blinked. “You talked? And he voluntarily told you all of this?”
“No.” Sean grinned. “We shot the shit, then I sort of left. I got all those details from what Rogue said to the clerk once they thought I was gone.”
“Jesus,” Lukas muttered, apparently needing no further explanation of Sean’s tactics.
“Yeah.” Sean still couldn’t believe he’d gotten away with it.
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” Sean repeated. “So, now what?”
Lukas shook his head while drawing in a breath, then let it out noisily. “We keep an eye on Rogue.”
“I just don’t get it,” Sean said, rubbing his palm across his forehead. “Elli’s trouble came about because Rogue owed someone money. Now, Rogue’s pissed that someone owes him money? And is it a coincidence that his money guy and Kiera’s money guy are associated with the same bodega?”
“Did it feel like a coincidence?” Lukas asked, and there was a double hint of doubt and sarcasm underlying his question.
“No,” Sean said on an exasperated exhale. “It didn’t. But I still can’t see the connection.”
Sean heard the meeting door open from around the corner, then a voice called down the main hall. “Rogue? Bakken? Murph? You guys out there? Meeting’s about to start.”
“Coming!” Sean called.
“Let’s keep this to ourselves for now,” Lukas said.
“Well, yeah,” Sean said. He’d been reluctant to share any of this with Lukas. He wasn’t about to make it public knowledge.
They headed back toward the main corridor and got there just as the door to the parking lot flew open. Rogue rushed in.
“Hey!” Sean said in a forced friendly greeting. He was a master of camouflage, and in more ways than one. He could do fake friendly with the best of them. “Just in time.”
“Rogue,” Lukas said in a cooler tone.
Rogue didn’t seem to notice Sean’s forced smile or Lukas’s tone. Just said, “Traffic was shit.”
Sean and Lukas followed him into the meeting room, which had five rows of theater-style seating and comfortable, leather chairs that both swiveled and rocked.