Wolf Revealed (SWAT: Special Wolf Alpha Team #2)

Chapter one

“What are we dealing with, Wayne?” Senior Corporal Mike Taylor asked, his attention on the warehouse at the far end of the street.

The December air was crisp and cold, but that didn’t stop his werewolf-enhanced nose from picking up the acrid scent of smokeless gun powder.

There’d already been a lot of shooting. Lifting his binoculars to his eyes in case anyone asked why he had no problem seeing details three blocks away, Mike saw several frantic people moving around inside the abandoned structure.

“All they said over the radio is that there are hostages involved.”

Wayne Bowers didn’t answer right away, focused on telling the nearby uniformed officers to hurry and get the barricades set up to keep the gathering crowd of gawkers as far away as possible.

When he finally turned back around, the set of his jaw and grim look in his gray eyes told Mike all he needed to know.

Back before Mike joined SWAT a decade ago, he and Wayne had worked undercover operations in the narcotics division.

Since then, Wayne had worked his way up the ranks to lieutenant in the department’s special operations branch.

He was a good cop and had been in a lot of dangerous situations.

If Wayne thought this one had gone sideways, that wasn’t good.

“We were pulling a surveillance operation on the Hillside Riders gang over near Terrance Grove,” Wayne said.

“They were supposed to meet with a supplier for their crystal meth. Unfortunately for them, the new organized crime ring that’s been wreaking havoc in the city showed up and blew everything to hell. ”

Mike grunted. About a month ago, the Dallas Police Department found itself in the middle of a turf war between local criminal elements and an extremely well-run, aggressive cartel from out of town that started moving against the city’s drug operations, chop shops, and gambling establishments.

Nobody knew who was running the show, but it was clear the cartel was well on its way to taking over.

“How did a cartel raid against the Riders in Terrance Grove end up in a hostage situation all the way across town?” Mike asked, motioning toward the warehouse.

“Because it wasn’t a raid—it was an execution,” Wayne said.

“Five Hillside Riders made it out of the ambush, and the cartel chased them down here. When we showed up, the cartel crew took off, and the Riders holed up in the warehouse with hostages they grabbed from the bus stop on the corner. Three adults and two teens.”

Mike cursed. It was tricky whenever hostages were involved, but kids made it even worse. “From what I just saw, the Riders look antsy as hell in there.”

“Yeah, they’re in full-on panic mode,” Wayne agreed. “Not that I can blame them, especially after seeing what those guys did to the rest of their gang. Let’s just say they weren’t messing around when it came to taking out Riders.”

Mike had heard these cartel goons were vicious, but to actually chase the Hillside Riders halfway across town like they had? Things were clearly escalating.

He glanced at the warehouse again, not bothering to use the binoculars this time. One of the Hillside Riders had a man shoved up against the window in a blatant threat to anyone trying to enter the building.

“Those guys in there are seconds away from losing it,” he said. “Any chance we have some way to communicate with them?”

“We did,” a man’s familiar voice said from behind him. “Right before they smashed the phone to smithereens while I was in the middle of talking to them.”

Mike turned to see Xander Riggs, fellow werewolf and one of his best friends on the SWAT Team, striding over to them with a frustrated look on his face.

Like Mike, Xander was a squad leader, which meant they rarely responded to the same calls.

But over the past month, as the team had been called out repeatedly to deal with the fallout of the cartel violence, the normal squad assignments had pretty much fallen apart.

When a call came in now, whoever was available hit the door running.

“From what I was able to hear, though, it sounded chaotic as hell in there,” Xander said as he stopped in between Mike and Wayne, spreading a big sheet of paper of a floor plan out on the hood of the SWAT SUV.

“Everyone is shouting over each other, trying to take charge. The only thing the guy said before we lost contact was that they’d start shooting hostages if we don’t let them go. ”

Mike cursed again. The worst possible hostage situations were the ones involving panicked, irrational people backed into a corner. The chances of this day ending poorly were going up by the second.

“Connor, Trey, Carter, and Hale are setting up on the north and east sides of the main warehouse,” Xander said, sliding a finger along the map.

“But the place is a maze of rooms, corridors, and blocked doorways. Working their way through all of that is going to take some time. More if they run into something not on the old county drawings.”

Connor Malone, Trey Duncan, Carter Nelson, and Hale Delaney were four other members of their all-werewolf SWAT Team. All of them were capable, ready to do whatever was necessary to get the job done.

If they had the time.

“I’ll go talk with the guy at the door,” Mike said, taking his handgun out of the holster on his hip and locking it in the glove box of the SUV. “If I play this right, I should be able to give the guys enough time to make it through that maze of rooms and corridors.”

Wayne frowned as more angry shouting could be heard from the front part of the old warehouse. “Considering how jumpy those guys are in there, and how they’re probably more likely to shoot than talk to you, don’t you think you should wait for a negotiator to show up first?”

Mike slipped a radio earbud in his left ear. “Normally, I’d be the first to agree with you, but all three of the negotiators on our SWAT Team are at other incident sites right now, and we all know we can’t wait for them to get here. We need to defuse this situation and get those hostages out.”

Wayne didn’t even try to get Mike to change his mind. Because deep down, the other cop knew there was no other way this was going to work. Someone needed to walk in there and take control of the situation before it was too late. And that someone was Mike.

He looked at Xander. “Tell Connor and the other guys to move in the moment I start talking to these people. And be ready to back me up if this goes wrong.”

“Be careful,” Xander said.

Giving them a nod, Mike turned and strode down the street toward the front of the warehouse. Around him, the uniformed cops and detectives murmured among themselves, most of them saying he was crazy even as they moved into position to cover his approach.

Mike was still thirty feet from the house when he was suddenly hit with a scent so powerful he almost stumbled.

Lavender.

And not just any lavender.

The sweetest, most intoxicating lavender he’d ever smelled. It was like he’d just walked past an industrial-sized essential oil diffuser.

He glanced around to see if there were any lavender bushes nearby, but didn’t see any. The scent wasn’t coming from any of the surrounding buildings or anywhere else that he could easily pin down.

Talk about weird.

Mike wasn’t surprised his head was playing tricks on him. He hadn’t been sleeping well lately, thanks to nightmares involving endless images of an exploding home and flames that climbed high into the sky.

He had no idea why he was once again having nightmares about the death of his fiancée and child.

It had been almost a decade since that night.

Those memories were long buried and forgotten.

Or so he’d thought. Regardless, he’d barely managed two hours of sleep a night.

Between that and the extreme workload SWAT had been under lately, no wonder he was smelling things that weren’t there.

Telling himself he’d worry about it later he focused on the building in front of him. Hostage situation first. Sleep deprivation issues later.

“Stop right there!” someone shouted from inside the building.

The warning jerked Mike back to the present, reminding him that if he didn’t get his head screwed on straight, he was going to get it shot off.

“Not a step closer or we start shooting!”

Mike came to a stop a few feet from the building, holding up his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture.

Through the partially open door, he could make out a tall man with disheveled brown hair, along with the barrel of an AK-47 rifle.

Two other men were peeking out the broken windows to either side of the door.

That meant most of the Riders were watching this side of the building.

Xander must have picked up on that as well because his pack mate was already relaying the details to the rest of the team over the radio.

“I’m not armed. I’m just here to talk,” Mike said even as Connor’s voice came through his earpiece saying he and the other guys were moving into the north and east sides of the warehouse.

“There’s nothing to talk about!” the guy at the door insisted, gesturing wildly with the weapon in his hand. “You and your cop buddies need to leave, or people are going to start dying!”

Mike didn’t answer right away, not wanting this to turn into a shouting match. He was trying to de-escalate this, not make it worse.

“You know that’s not going to happen,” he said calmly. “As much as you might want us to leave, we can’t. So, we’re going to have to work something else out.”

“There’s nothing to work out. It’s too late for talking!”

This time, the man’s words were almost drowned out by someone behind him suggesting they shoot a hostage to show the cops they were serious.

Crap, this was going bad really fast.

“It’s not too late,” Mike said quickly. “But it will be if you hurt any of those hostages. What happens next will be out of my control. Don’t make a bad situation worse, okay?”