13. Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Gage
Abigail was asleep, her fist framing her face as she curled into herself to keep warm. My throat bobbed, fingers twitching with the unbearable need to slide them through her smooth hair. She’d taken it down from her usual bun, brown tendrils spilling across the leather beneath her.
Whisper quiet, I crouched beside my office couch, gingerly tugging the tablet out from under her head and setting it on my desk.
It was four—no, almost five in the morning. We’d spent the better half of the night drilling Mason and Cargill, moving Cargill to a safe house, and rearranging client schedules to make sure there were always two of us on watch until we had more information.
For now, he was safe from striking distance. Levi owned the building where our team lived—an expensive part of being an alpha in the city and needing his own territory—and he kept the top floor free from renters. That was where Cargill would stay until we got a pulse on who was after him, and if it really was Manchini. So far, I hadn’t found any evidence of the Manchini pack in Seattle.
Levi wasn’t the only alpha in Seattle that kept territory. There were two others. They didn’t care for unaffiliated shifters or the idea of neutral territory, but they appreciated that Levi kept wandering shifters away from their packs. If he reached out and asked for signs of shifter extremists setting up shop, they would be forthcoming.
No one asked Abby to stay when the rest of us returned to the office at midnight. No one had to. Without a word she hurried into the break room, brewing extra strong coffee, and bringing a pitcher of lemon water to make sure everyone was sober and sharp. She actually cut fresh lemons in the middle of the night because, “I read lemon water helps balance electrolytes.”
She didn’t complain after two hours of taking notes at Levi’s side as he captured every tiny detail from Cargill. She didn’t so much as stifle a yawn. Later, when I called her into my office under the guise of continuing our investigation, she was swift and professional.
“Just tell me what you need.”
I need to get you home, I wanted to say, before remembering that home for her was the trunk of her car. I could see sleep collecting in dark circles under her eyes.
It wasn’t long after she settled on the couch before she slumped over, breathing softly.
I kneeled beside her again. She was pretty when she slept, lips sealed, expression soft. The bond tugged and writhed when I was this close to her, begging me to touch her. Climb behind her on the couch and keep her warm. Nuzzle into her neck and find the perfect place for my mark.
With a sigh I gave in to the simplest urge, trailing my finger down her arm and shuddering at the contact. I lifted a strand of her hair to my face, inhaling the scent of her until it coated my lungs.
It didn’t take the chastising ping of the bond for me to realize I was being unfair. Abby didn’t ask for this any more than I did. She didn’t even know this was happening.
But I was punishing her for it, anyway, being spiteful toward her because of my past and my problems. She’d done nothing to me.
That didn’t mean I could accept this. She was human, and that wouldn’t change. She would never experience the bond the way I did, and so we would never have a true mating.
Still, I should be nicer to her. I hurt her tonight just to be petty, and it put her in danger.
My phone beeped in my pocket, and I pulled it out, reading through a text from Ezra. He and Mason were waiting for me to visit Cargill’s temporary home. Mason would give us a play-by-play and I would check the security system locally.
I quickly scribbled out an address and a note, setting it on the arm of the couch next to Abby’s head, along with a set of keys. I’d already called to grant her access to the building.
Go get cleaned up. Drop the keys at the front desk when you leave.
She wouldn’t understand what a big deal it was to invite her into my private space. To say my wolf was territorial was an understatement. I nearly lost my shit when I had to let the building maintenance crew in to update the fire alarm.
I’d known Abigail for six weeks, and I was giving her my keys. Damn this mate bond compulsion. Damn the painful boner I had at the thought of her slick and soaped up in my shower.
Nope. Not going there. There was a solution to the Abigail problem. I hadn’t found it yet but, in the meantime, I would do what it took to keep my wolf off my back. I couldn’t work with that fucker throwing a hissy fit whenever I didn’t bend over backwards to make her happy.
She had a nap. She could take a hot shower and even sleep in my bed if she wanted to. She wouldn’t be driving into the wilderness, at least until the sun was up. That was enough.
Nestled in the woods near Tiger Mountain, Cargill’s rental looked straight out of a real estate magazine. The front of the A-frame cedar cabin—if you could call a house that large a cabin—was more window than wood, letting in beautiful streams of rare autumn sunlight. It was those windows that almost got him killed.
Thankfully, Cargill was happy to avoid informing law enforcement. At best, they would get in our way. More likely, they would decide harassing us for existing as shifters would be more valuable than learning who did this.
I kicked at a pile of glass, sending shards sliding across the hardwood floors. Mount Rainier peeked shyly over the treetops through the windows. On the other side, from the grassy lawn, the stupid-ass windows gave a perfect view of the open concept living room. You could see all the way through the living room to the kitchen.
I could appreciate a nice view as much as the next guy, but at least I had the sense to buy bulletproof glass.
I was already skeptical of Cargill’s entire story. This was the nail in the coffin for me.
Someone that genuinely feared for their lives wouldn’t rent a house on acreage and expect a single security guard to keep the perimeter safe. Not to mention, the M.O. was completely different. I was no detective, but why would someone firebomb his house in New York only to show up in Washington and start spraying bullets?
Cargill was wildly unhelpful when we grilled him last night, barely saying anything beyond a smug, “I told you who did this.”
I studied the broken windows, lifting my hand to judge the trajectory.
“They were shooting up,” I realized out loud. “Where did you say Cargill was?”
“Right here,” Mason pointed to a burgundy couch. Crystals of glass sparkled on the leather.
“Only an idiot would miss a shot that easy.”
“Could be a hired gun. They’re not always well trained.”
I shook my head. “No, this doesn’t make sense. Walk me through the rest.”
Mason started from the beginning, explaining how he’d been checking the perimeter of the house when he got an alert from the camera. They were motion sensitive, which was posing a big problem for us out here in the country. I set up a dozen cameras at varying angles around the house, and each of them alerted us constantly due to the occasional squirrel, and even large insects. Most days I spent over an hour reviewing that footage on double speed.
“At first I thought it was more wildlife,” he explained, flipping through the security app on his phone and pulling up the footage from the midnight alert. “Then the system went crazy, alerting me from every camera angle one after another. Like someone was circling the house.”
That would have been an immediate red flag for me, had I actually had my phone. In my haste to find Abby last night, I left it on the table with my drink. It wasn’t just a rookie move. Under other circumstances, it could have cost us our client’s life, and put Mason at risk too.
The only reasonable solution I saw to this distraction right now was the most obvious, the one I’d been avoiding. I needed to stop pushing Abigail away. The closer she was to me, the less likely I was to let my mind wander thinking about her.
The problem? The closer I was to her, the more time I spent with her, the stronger the bond became. It was significantly more insistent than it had been on that first day, and sooner or later I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to resist.
I had to call Arlo ASAP.
I had to finish up here first.
“That was when I used the panic button for the security system.” Levi and the guys received that alert only moments before the attack. “My instinct was to follow the movement around the house and pin down whoever was out there, but I figured that’s what they wanted. I was on my way to the living room to let Cargill know we were getting the hell out of here when the shooting started.”
Ezra came into the room, holding up one of the control panels for the security system, wires hanging out the back. “That’s the last of them.”
There were four panels. One for each door, including the garage door, and one for Cargill’s bedroom. If something happened to Mason or Cargill feared for his life, there was a panic button that would alert every member of the team instantly.
“How many were there?” I asked Mason.
“I only clocked one on the camera, but they were shifted. Some kind of big cat.”
“Like Manchini’s pack,” I muttered bitterly.
“No way a single shifter made it around the property, shifted, and then started firing that quickly. There were at least two.”
“Okay, you’re up,” I said to Ezra. “I need prints and scents. I want to know every single step those bastards took.”
“You got it, boss.” Ezra started for the back door, unbuttoning his shirt as he went.
No one was better at following a scent than a bear. If there was a trail, he would find it.
“You left through the garage?” I asked Mason, following the hallway in that direction.
“Took Cargill’s SUV.”
“And you weren’t pursued?”
“Like I said, they shot and ran. Didn’t see a vehicle or a single body in the shadows.”
“The shooting makes sense if they’re trying to get their hands on Cargill,” I thought out loud. “The obvious move would be for you to move Cargill, giving them the perfect opportunity to waylay you.”
“But they didn’t.”
“So, let me get this straight.” I rubbed at my temples, mentally organizing the data I had. “Two attackers show up, presumably shifters. One tries to lure you outside while the other does a drive-by of the living room and misses Cargill by a mile. Why? ”
That was the first and only question I needed to answer. There was no solution without that why.
I growled. “Cargill isn’t telling the full story.”
“Levi spent hours with him last night.”
“Levi wasn’t asking the right questions.”
Mason sighed. “Well, that’s all you, baby doll. I’m due for some beauty sleep.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. I barely felt it, already busy opening my laptop. Cargill was lying, and I was going to prove it.
Mason was long gone. Ezra was pacing through the trees, pretending to find a scent trail for the fiftieth time while actually just letting his bear roam and enjoy the fresh air. That man needed to let loose more.
I snorted. Look who’s talking.
We’d gone over the property dozens of times. There was one kind of animal print—feline.
The prints matched up to what I saw on the camera. Big cat, maybe panther. They circled the house three or more times, hitting every camera at just the right angle to alert it without giving me a full shot. A tail here, a hindquarter there.
My cameras were motion detecting and heat sensitive. In the dark it registered the heat signal, but it was nearly impossible to make out any identifying marks. The bastard might as well have been a ghost.
I grumbled at my laptop screen, clicking the keyboard irritably as I skipped through footage.
At 11:57 PM the panther made a final appearance on the east side of the house. Three minutes later the first bullet shattered the glass on the south side of the house.
Shifting was a fast process, but it wasn’t that fast. I’d never known a shifter be able to go from one form to another with that kind of speed and still be agile and levelheaded enough to pick up a gun, aim for the window, and fire perfectly over Cargill’s head.
Shifters that spent more time in their animal form handled the shift better but even they had a few moments of grogginess. Suddenly having two less feet under you and big dopey human hands was jarring.
And yet, I couldn’t find a single sign of movement on the cameras until the moment before the shots began.
It was impossible for the same shifter to make that shot. It was also impossible for someone else to have situated themselves in the foliage and prepared to fire without my camera registering the heat signal.
Manchini and his pack were infamous for being violent, well-trained fighters. They were soldiers for their cause. If they were that good , we had a serious problem. I was pretty fucking confident in our pack, but even we couldn’t move like that.
I skipped through the footage again, my eyes bleary. Shifters could go longer than humans without sleep, but we had our limits too. Maybe it was time to put a pause on this.
I was about to close the computer when it hit me. How had I not seen it?
This shifter knew where every camera was without scouting. He circled the perimeter with expert precision, never once moving headfirst toward the camera.
If you were looking for them, you might notice some of the cameras. I could only make them so small. But in the dark, without hours of recon?
No one knew where the cameras were except me and my team.
To even consider that one of my team members was betraying us was ludicrous. I wouldn’t entertain the thought. I trusted them with my life.
So, how the fuck—
Holy shit. Abigail.
Abigail started working at Silver Bullet within six weeks of Cargill’s contract. Abigail was talking to a scent-less shifter last night, and she barely seemed fazed. Abigail had been working inches from my laptop for weeks, watching over my shoulder, following every keystroke I made.
Was it possible?
My gut immediately said no.
But that wasn’t my gut talking, was it? It was the mate bond, insisting that she was innocent because she had to be. She was mine and mine would never betray me.
She didn’t know she was mine.
My fists clenched, and I jerked away from the table before I did something as stupid as punching my computer.
Abigail was selling out Cargill. It was the only explanation that made sense and yet, I felt sick even thinking the accusation. Sweet, helpful Abigail. Perfectly innocent Abigail.
It couldn’t be. I didn’t want to believe it.
I needed to tell Levi.
The last time I saw Abigail she was alone in the office. Alone with access to sensitive information about every client we’d ever taken.
And I gave her access to my fucking apartment, only three floors down from where Kai and Levi were guarding Cargill.
My fingers shook as they hovered over the keypad on my phone, indecision gnawing at me. I punched in the name on my contacts and dialed. It only rang once before there was an answer on the other line.
“Hey, I need you out at Cargill’s house. Now.”