Taming Her Mate

by Kathy Lyon

  Ryan took a single step forward. He was ready to rip the guy’s face off for that snarl, but Frankie was there going nose to nose with the bigger man.

  “Do you think this is a game?” she snapped. “You shot the man twice, and he hasn’t killed you. And do you know why?”

  A rumble started low in Brady’s chest, but Frankie cut it off with a hand to the man’s throat. Ryan couldn’t believe it. What man or wolf would let a smaller female do that to him? But Brady allowed it, though the fire in the man’s eyes said how much he hated it.

  “Answer me!” Frankie snapped.

  “Why?” said Brady, the word more like a low bark than spoken language.

  “Because I told him not to.”

  That wasn’t true. He wasn’t killing the man because they needed the guy and because he didn’t kill people unless he had to. What was true was that he wasn’t arresting Brady. That’s what he did to men who shot him, and the only reason he was holding off was because Frankie wanted to do this her way. And for the moment, he was letting her. If she failed, then the guy would show them the serum while in handcuffs.

  Meanwhile, Frankie wasn’t done. She had her hand on Brady’s throat while she asked her last question. “Who do you follow?”

  His answer was gratifyingly quick. “You,” he said, and again the word came out as a bark.

  Frankie eased back on his throat. “Do you know what you have to do now?” she asked.

  He ducked his head, and when he lifted it, he turned to Ryan. “I’m sorry I shot you. I was under orders, but I’m not now.” He lifted his chin. “As long as Frankie’s okay with you, then I’m okay.”

  Huh. Pack leadership handled with finesse. Bears didn’t mix it up often, but when they did it was big and bloody. Frankie had just established dominance over the very big werewolf without so much as sharpening a fingernail. She used logic and force of personality. And it worked. Ryan relaxed his shoulders. “Will you show us where the serum is being kept? And how it gets into the water system?”

  Brady nodded. “Soon as you’re ready. It’s best if we go there. It’s hard to find on a map.”

  “Anybody defending it?”

  He nodded, and his gaze cut to Frankie. “Jer and Paul, but they shouldn’t be there now.”

  She blew out a breath. “If they are, I’ll take care of them.”

  Like hell she would. The cops would take care of them, but that was a fight for a later moment. Especially as Noelle stuck her head out of the boys’ bedroom. “All good out here?”

  Frankie spun on her heel with a grin. “Yup. All good.” She headed back to the kitchen, and with her back to Brady she waggled her eyebrows at Ryan. “It’s all under control.”

  He snorted. She was way too happy with how easily Brady had bowed to her wishes. Especially since the guy had come over here with his decision already made. What was she going to do with someone who wasn’t already on her side? Did she really think they’d all submit from just her tone of voice?

  He opened his mouth to ask her that very question. Something to temper her cockiness, but she cut him off.

  “You going to call your cop buddies in on this or not?” she asked.

  “I am. Stupid to go in without backup.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She glanced at Brady. “Give Ryan the details. We roll as soon as the coffeemaker finishes.”

  Chapter 15

  Frankie had all sorts of guesses about where the storage place would be. Abandoned warehouse, secluded self-storage pod, high-tech bunker. Never in a million years would she have guessed it was the back of a Chinese restaurant deep in bear territory. But on closer inspection, she saw the logic. The sewer access was close and in a dark alley. Two very smelly dumpsters hid the entrance and the immigrant owners of the franchise were not ones to ask questions. And most important, if the location was discovered, it could all be blamed on the bears.

  “It’s just a small room with shelving units,” Brady was saying as he tugged on his Kevlar vest on the way to the alley. “We have a key to the back of the restaurant and then a code to punch into the pad that unlocks the side door.”

  “And the restaurant owners?” Ryan asked.

  “Never seen ’em. We go during off-hours.”

  Frankie wrinkled her nose at the ripe smells coming from the dumpsters, her own vest feeling hot and tight. Ryan hadn’t wanted her here for this part, but she pulled the alpha card. It was her right to be here with her pack mate and so Ryan had given in with a tight-lipped nod.

  “Where are the guards?” she asked.

  “If we’re moving the stuff, they’re just behind the dumpsters. But the restaurant’s open. Shouldn’t be anybody around.”

  Ryan nodded, then spoke into a walkie-talkie. He’d been coordinating with the police during the entire ride over. Right now, he was telling them to hang back while they went in with Brady. Twenty minutes ago, he’d been dancing word circles as he tried to explain to his boss why he’d been secretly searching for the serum when he was supposedly out on sick leave.

  Frankie knew the answer: He’d been following up on shifter leads, but that wasn’t exactly something he could say to his captain. Easier to claim he’d been home hunched over a toilet like half of the police force. He even dredged up a realistic-sounding cough to support it. But then a tip had come in from one of his gang contacts, he’d told his captain, and so he was following up.

  Fortunately, his captain had bought it. Or maybe he was too grateful for a lead to question things more deeply. And so now the three of them were walking cautiously down the alleyway while Ryan thumbed off his phone.

  “We’ve got an audience, so no shifter stuff,” he said in a low voice.

  Frankie nodded. She’d been fighting as a normal human against wolves her entire life. Fortunately, Brady was right and there weren’t any guards. Better still, it was early for the lunch crowd, so Ryan had been able to quietly usher the staff out the front door to talk with a grim-faced officer. And now they were slipping in the back while Brady indicated a keypad beside a door.

  “Time to go in?” Brady asked.

  “Yeah,” Frankie said right as Ryan called out, “Wait!”

  Both froze while Ryan stepped back outside. She heard him rooting around in the dumpster before he came back with a busted selfie stick, which he extended with a quick pull.

  “There’s no facial recognition or anything, right?”

  Brady nodded. “Just the code.”

  “Then stand back. I’ll do it.”

  Brady shrugged and backed away. Ryan hadn’t even let Frankie come fully into the building. She stood outside, holding open the door while he used the selfie stick to key in the numbers Brady gave him.

  “Paranoid much?” Frankie muttered. She didn’t see any reason to expect a trap. Brady had been going in and out of here for weeks.

  “I’m a cop, and I’m alive. So yeah, I’m paranoid.”

  She knew better than to argue with the experienced professional, so she held the door while Ryan carefully punched in numbers.

  Time seemed to slow as he awkwardly maneuvered the selfie stick, and Frankie couldn’t shake a sense of unreality. It was midmorning on a beautiful day, and she was about bust into a serum stash with the cops. She felt like she was on a TV show complete with a hot cop in a Kevlar vest right in front of her. Ryan was everything a TV hero ought to be: confident, alert, and sexy as hell with his bulging biceps and quiet authority. If she weren’t about to betray her brother and her pack, then this would be really exciting. Instead, she gnawed on her lower lip and tried not to be sick from nerves and the smells from the nearest dumpster.

  Fortunately, it would be over soon. A few more seconds and—

  Boom!

  She was looking right at the keypad as the explosion happened. She saw the burst of color, but it didn’t register in her brain. Neither did the fact that she was thrown backward, off the door. It wasn’t powerful enough to land her in the dumpster, but she’d def
initely been knocked back. Brady, too, as he stumbled beside her. But what about Ryan?

  Ryan!

  The sound hit her brain next. The boom and the muffled silence afterward. It had happened simultaneous with the explosion, of course, but her mind was just now processing it. And her vision was stabilizing as the dust started to clear.

  “Ryan!” she screamed.

  Then she saw him, plastered against the side of the hallway, his face red but not bloody. He was staring at her, his gaze wide and his mouth open in shock. She straightened, as much as her rubbery legs allowed her to and headed for him.

  He acknowledged her with a relieved breath, then abruptly started bellowing into the walkie-talkie. Her ears were still ringing, but she could process his words.

  “We’re fine! Stand down!” His gaze shifted then, cutting hard to the blown doorway. She saw the same gaping hole and—much worse—the charred remains of the selfie stick. She didn’t know a whole lot about explosives, but she could see that the blast had centered behind the keypad and had been designed to blow up whoever was entering a code.

  Score one for paranoia. If Ryan hadn’t been using a selfie stick, he would’ve been the charred mark against the wall. Or Brady would have been.

  She looked over to her pack mate who was standing with openmouthed shock. She reached out to touch his arm and he flinched away from her, but then steadied. His expression told her everything he was thinking. That Ryan had just saved his life. That Raoul had tried to kill him. And that this whole situation was getting incredibly real.

  Meanwhile, she watched as Ryan squared his shoulders and moved through the busted door. Damn it, she couldn’t let him go in there alone. No matter what her asshole brother had put in there, she was not going to let Ryan face it by himself. So she pushed her shaky legs to move and made it to his side in a few nervous steps. But then she stopped right next to Ryan as she took in the space.

  Just as Brady had said, there were racks of jugs containing the serum. Enough to poison the city for years to come, and she shuddered at the thought. Then she turned to a small table with a corkboard above it and a sign-in sheet below. On the corkboard was a map with a big red line showing the pathway to where they were dumping the serum into the water supply. But it was the sign-in sheet that caught and held her attention.

  On it were names along with a place to log cases put in storage and cases emptied into the water. But a quick scan told her none of her pack mates’ names was on it. Instead, she saw neat rows of names she recognized as members of the Griz.

  Nanook—the former Griz alpha—was in a bold scrawl. Simon’s name came later, along with a date that tracked to when he’d become the new head. She saw the names Vic and Hank and had only a vague idea who they were. But a final name popped up as if it were highlighted.

  Ryan Kennedy.

  She reached out and grabbed the clipboard, pulling off the loose pages. She was about to fold them into her vest when Ryan grabbed her elbow.

  “What are you doing?”

  “This is bullshit.”

  He nodded. “I know that.”

  “Your cops are coming in.” She lifted up the pages. “These are a distraction. The Griz didn’t do this, but if they see this, you’re in for a shitload of trouble.” She could hear people coming and so she quickly shoved them into her jacket. But he just as quickly dragged them out of her hand.

  “Do you seriously think we’re that stupid?” he demanded as he dropped the pages back on the table. “That’s a plant.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, duh. But it’s also going to wrap you up in bullshit for days.” She reached for the pages again, but he stopped her.

  “It’s evidence, Frankie. And you don’t get to hide it.”

  She blew out a breath. “I’m trying to help.”

  “I know. But this isn’t the way.”

  “It’s a lie—” she began, but he cut her off.

  “I haven’t checked for more bombs,” he said loudly as he looked over her shoulder. “But I think it was just on the door.”

  She turned to see the same officer who had handed her the Kevlar vest. He had a hard jaw, cold eyes, and a square face that was grim as he looked at the jugs on the shelves.

  “I’ve already called the bomb squad.”

  A little late, but she understood the need. Meanwhile, the guy studied the map on the corkboard. “Fuckers,” he grumbled. And then he saw the pages she pulled off the clipboard. It took two seconds for his eyes to leap back to Ryan. “You’ve got an enemy.”

  Ryan nodded grimly.

  “And a friend,” she said firmly. She needed him to know that she was on his side no matter what. Wolf or bear made no difference. This was a lie and she would not have him pay the price for her brother’s machinations.

  Ryan’s expression softened as he looked at her. He opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off as his walkie-talkie blared. Something about the bomb squad coming in and that they were all idiots for standing inside the room before it had been cleared. He grimaced, and he gestured for her to go out the door. She went, but she longed to reach back and nab the pages. Even though the other cop obviously knew it was a forgery, it would still taint Ryan’s investigation. He’d be thrown off the case and unable to arrest Raoul. Which put that much more pressure on her to deal with the situation herself.

  She stepped out into the sunshine, her gaze quickly scanning the area for Brady. She had some questions she wanted to ask him, starting with why hadn’t he told them about the map and sign-in sheet. Except that when she got all the way out into the alley, he wasn’t there.

  Hell. He’d run, probably terrified since the bomb had been meant for him. She hadn’t ordered him to stick around, and that was her mistake. And worse, part of her worried that he’d been playing her and was now off to report to Raoul that he’d managed to wrap Ryan up in hours of red tape. She didn’t want to think that of Brady, but she’d be a fool not to consider the possibility. Either way, Brady was not going to help her anymore.

  Her allies were dwindling by the second. Hazel was trapped at the community center, Noelle had done what she could, Brady had skipped, and now Ryan was going to be caught in police procedure for who knew how long. Which put her right back where she always knew she’d be.

  The cops had the serum, so Detroit was safe. Now it was her turn to settle things among the wolves. She’d wanted Raoul out of the picture while she confronted her father, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. At least not anytime soon. And every minute she waited was time for her brother to gain more control. She had to act now even though her brother was still free to cause trouble. Not a fun scenario, but she didn’t see any other options. She didn’t want to abandon Ryan, but if she stayed here, she’d get caught up in the police investigation and who knew how many hours of interrogation. She had to go now.

  She chose her moment carefully. She waited until the bomb squad came out of the room and there was maximum confusion with some people reporting, others heading in to gather evidence. It helped that the ambulance they’d called had arrived. Paramedics pulled her out of the main throng to check her out. She followed them until she was out of Ryan’s line of sight, and then she ducked away.

  Chapter 16

  Ryan drained the last of his stale coffee and tried not to wish it was something else. The serum in his blood had burned off sometime during the last four hours of interrogation, and now he was fighting the shakes as the addiction kicked in. His mouth was dry, his head was pounding, and he wanted, wanted, wanted anything that would make it end.

  Damn the woman for injecting that shit into his veins. And yet he couldn’t really blame her if the other option had been death. Still, the need was stripping him raw just when he needed to keep it together.

  He was sitting in the interrogation room of the precinct that covered the grizzly territory. He knew most of the guys here, but those weren’t the ones who had grilled him for the last four hours. No, he’d been u
nder the spotlight of the stars of the Detroit PD, the ones handpicked to catch the villains who had poisoned the city. They didn’t know him from the lowest drug dealer on the street, and they’d treated him with equal disdain.

  In their defense, they didn’t seem to think he’d been the one who’d poisoned the city. But he was named on that damned sign-in page, so he was involved somehow, and they wanted to know why. He gave them everything he could, including Raoul Wolf. He just didn’t speak about people changing into animals. Or that he’d slept with one of the lead suspects.

  Then the door opened, and his captain walked in. Ah, shit. Ryan had watched the man talk to suspects. He had a way of cutting a person open so that his or her secrets were exposed. He did not relish being on the receiving end of one of Captain Abraham’s interrogations.

  He sighed and looked up. “Ready to cut me loose?” he asked. It was a vain hope, but he had to give it a shot.

  The older man smiled as if Ryan had just made a joke and then passed him a water bottle. “You look like shit.”

  “It’s the coffee.”

  “Don’t think so.” His eyes narrowed as he studied Ryan. He’d been Ryan’s mentor since the day he’d stepped into the gang department, and Ryan hated lying to the man who had taught him the ropes and showed him just how to gain people’s trust. It was by talking honestly, heart to heart with people. And that’s what he did now. “You on something?”

  Ryan nodded. “Drank the water. It’s made me…” He shrugged. “Reckless, I think.”

  “You were the one warning us about the water. How’d you forget?”

  He sighed. He’d gone over this with the other guys. “I figured out about the water afterwards.” He wiped his hand across his forehead and was ashamed at the sweat that had beaded there. “This is withdrawal.”

  “Are you in a relationship with Frankie Wolf?”

  Hell if he knew. Had last night been a one-time moment of playing house? Or a prelude to something more? “What does she say?”