by L. P. Maxa
Oooo. Jace was a little bit of a narc. Pen’s gaze darted to Baze and he sent her a small shrug, like what are you going to do? He was standing close to her, but his arms were at his side. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt sad about that. She wanted him to touch her.
“What? Corey left?” Dom started opening drawers; on his third attempt he found a fork and he dug into his lunch. “Who let her leave?” He hung his head, sighing. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. No one else is responsible for my mate but me.”
To Pen, the poor man looked exhausted. Like he was one crisis away from collapsing onto the floor for a five-day snooze. Which made perfect sense because Corey seemed like a bit of a handful.
“Where the hell are Brooks and Grimes? I have that fucking chem test in forty-five minutes.” Jace checked his watch, then lifted his head to the back door when it opened.
Two men walked in, wearing jeans and polo shirts. They looked like two detectives trying too hard to not look like detectives. They were both handsome, one older than the other. The older one had kind eyes; the younger one appeared like he could have been an asshole in high school.
“Brooks, Grimes, this is Penelope Sutton.”
She smiled politely, but when she went to shake their hands, her smile fell. Baze was letting out a low growl behind her. Her hand dropped and so did theirs.
As far as she knew, these guys had no idea they were dealing with a pack of shifters. But if Baze didn’t get his shit together, they’d soon find out. Dom knocked Baze in the gut, cutting off the sound and allowing Pen the distraction she needed to finish her introduction.
“Nice to meet you.”
“We’re sorry that you were brought into all this.” The one named Grimes glanced at Baze and Dom, a clear question in his eye. See? He’d thought a full-grown male growling was odd. “Baze mentioned that maybe there is a connection between your father and Franklin?”
“My father kept his work away from the house when I was growing up, for the most part.” Penelope’s father worked hard, and he worked a lot. He had an office at the house and he’d sometimes be in there for hours at a time. And occasionally there were extra men hanging around, like the night she was taken from Baze. “If there is a connection, I wasn’t aware of it. And I was sent away when I was seventeen. This is my first time back to the states in ten years.”
“We’ll run your father through a few databases, see if anything pops up.” Brooks sent her a tight-lipped smile. “When was the last time you spoke to him?”
“It’s been a few weeks.” Penelope and her father weren’t close, not after he’d banished her to Switzerland and broke her heart into a trillion pieces. But she still let her parents know she was alive every now and then. “In fact, I should probably call him soon.”
“Don’t.” Brooks shook his head. “If there is a connection between Franklin and your father, we want to make sure that he can’t give Franklin any more ammo to use in his favor.”
She nodded. “Okay.” She wasn’t chomping at the bit to talk to him, but did they think her father was a criminal? Like Franklin? Her dad was a controlling asshole at times, but he’d never abused her. Physically or otherwise. He was strict, he wanted what was best (his idea of best), but he wasn’t a monster, not like the way they described Franklin.
“As far as where he held you, is there anything you can tell us?”
“I told Jace—”
She stopped talking when Jace gave her a slight shake of his head. Of course. These two human men would find it strange that she was answering to a child. Whether he was Franklin’s son or not, he was seventeen. And to the two detectives he was nothing more than a son wanting to help them rid the world of his abusive father.
She cleared her throat and started again. “I told Jace that his house was even more opulent than the one I grew up in.” There, bam, nice save, Pen. She high-fived herself mentally.
“The house Penelope described is not one that I recall from my childhood.” Jace shrugged, playing the almost uninterested kid part well. “He must have acquired new properties.”
“And you said that you remember the drive from there to here? Where they left you?” Grimes moved his eyes to the front of the house, referencing the street where she’d been dumped.
“Not the landscape or anything.” Unfortunately she had been lying down trying to not vomit from the pain radiating in her skull. “But the drive wasn’t long. Maybe forty-five minutes or so?”
“We need to start searching the surrounding areas for large plots of land.” Dom was still shoveling food in his mouth and talked around bites. “If Franklin is holed up somewhere close, you can bet it’ll be large.”
“He’ll need the square footage, as well as the acreage.” Baze was standing right behind her. He wasn’t touching her, but she could feel his closeness like it was a second skin waiting to wrap around her body. She shivered, goosebumps breaking out on her arms. Could he seem them? Could he tell that she wanted him, even though the moment was clearly inappropriate? That kiss had lit a spark inside her, and now she wanted more.
“If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” Brooks nodded slowly.
“That’s what we were all thinking,” Baze agreed.
“Okay, we’ll start doing some digging on real estate in the area.” Grimes glanced at her, and then addressed Baze. “And Ox?”
Grimes probably assumed she didn’t know that Baze was currently holding a man hostage at an undisclosed location. Why would she? She was a long-lost friend from high school who had been tossed into a shit situation.
“Nothing yet.” Baze had moved even closer to her; she could feel his clothes brushing against her own when he spoke. She fought the chills that were trying to run through her body. “But we have other things we can try.”
“We’ll be in touch.” The detectives said their good-byes and then left through the back door. The pack was lucky to have the law on their side. And they were even luckier that the law wasn’t asking too many questions the group couldn’t answer. Baze and the others had to be careful. She assumed they were having to toe a fine line between keeping the Feds in the loop and not giving away their supernatural secrets.
“Could you not growl at the detectives?” Dom threw the now empty takeout container in the trash.
Pen looked up at Baze, a smirk on her face. “Not exactly appropriate, Baze Carter.”
He growled, the sound low and against the shell of her ear. “I’m a few seconds away from showing you what else I can do that’s less than appropriate.” He nipped at the space where her neck met her shoulder and started to tickle her ribs. She squirmed out of his reach, laughing, and headed for the front door.
Her pulse was racing and she was feeling a little flushed. Her body wanted the bonding. She was starting to notice every reaction to him. But her brain wasn’t ready, and that was the organ she needed to listen to.
Chapter Twenty-One
Baze
He felt like today had lasted for thirty-six hours already. Between the library, the diner, and the meeting with the Feds, he was ready to crawl into bed with Pen and hold her while they both slept. And speaking of Pen. She’d kissed him. She’d kissed him. At first he’d been shocked, and then he’d been turned the fuck on.
He wanted her; he was perpetually hard. He’d almost jumped her at the library twice and then at Linc’s house he’d been moments away from second base when Dom had walked in.
Baze was doing his damnedest to give her the time she needed to feel good about their relationship. To feel good about him. But man, he fucking wanted to be buried in her tight body more than he wanted his next breath.
It didn’t help that they were trying to reconnect while a violent, dangerous killer stalked his pack. And now? Now he had to meet with an outsider to appease his best friend’s mate.
It was ultimately Baze’s call on whether they heard Matias out. He could tell the moment he and Jace had locked eyes that afternoon back
at the diner. The same way he could tell in that moment that Jace was still wary about it, and would be more than okay if Baze wanted to say no.
At some point over the last week Baze and Jace had learned to communicate without saying anything at all. It wasn’t mind reading; he’d asked Pen. She said it was more like they knew each other well enough that no words were needed.
While everyone was living in the same house, he needed to have Pen teach daily classes. They could call them All the Things We Don’t Know About Our Own Culture 101.
“He’s late.” Jace checked his watch for the second time in as many minutes. “If he can’t be on time to a simple—”
“I think your watch is fast my friend.” Both Jace and Baze looked up to see Matias striding toward them, his large frame taking up the majority of the alleyway to the back entrance of their borrowed warehouse.
Jace unlocked the door and let the three of them inside. “My watch is never wrong.” Making Matias meet them here was Jace’s idea, obviously. Physiological warfare was bred into the kid like a genetic trait.
“Tell us how you can help. Why was Maddi so adamant that we speak with you?” Jace leaned against the small stainless-steel sink along the longest wall. This was the room they used to clean up after they were done working on their prisoner.
Matias talked with his hands, gesturing with almost every word. “My pack and I, we’ve gone against men like your Franklin before.” He moved his head too, leaning it to one side and the other. “In Europe, packs are not a thing of the past. And where there is power, there is corruption.”
Baze almost laughed out loud, remembering his conversation with Penelope last night. Apparently she wasn’t the only one who thought power and corruption went hand in hand. “What did Maddi mean by your set of skills?”
“I am mainly a hacker. I am good with computers. I take money from bad wealthy men and I give it to charity. I take a little at a time so they don’t know it’s missing. Or…I take it all and hide it somewhere they never find to piss them off.”
How did one even come into a job like that? Who paid him? Did he skim off the top? Baze had so many questions for their new maybe ally. But now wasn’t the time; now they needed to focus on Franklin. One criminal enterprise at a fucking time.
Jace scoffed, unimpressed with pretty much anything that came out of Matias’s mouth. “You want to steal Franklin’s money? How will that help us? It’ll only anger him more.”
Matias narrowed his eyes. Not much seemed to faze man-bun, but Baze thought Jace was starting to irritate him a little. “You asked for my skills, not what I think you should do.”
Jace fired back, almost in challenge. “Okay. So what do you think we should do?”
“I think we take his money. Large chunks at a time so he notices. It is good to make him angry. Anger makes men irrational. And then you let him attack you, at your secret compound place. Then, you kill him.” Matias spoke about crime and murder like it was the same thing as running to the grocery store for a carton of milk.
“Why do you think taking his money will make him angry? He kills his crew without blinking, he beats his own sons and never looks back. Why would the money matter?” Baze wasn’t knocking his plan; he was simply needing more information. He also thought they had all underestimated Matias—he was more ruthless than any Robin Hood Baze had ever read about.
“Your Franklin is the most common type of bully. He only craves power, and unfortunately for him, his money is his power. And when he sees his money disappearing, he’ll also see he’s not invincible. We show him we can touch him.”
Baze’s mind immediately went back to Pen, like it seemed to always do these days. But this time it was to her description of the house. The wealth, the way she said it seemed like he was almost flaunting it. She was nothing more than a pawn, a prisoner, and he’d kept her in a room fit for a princess. Maybe Matias was right; maybe money did mean something to Franklin.
“Why the compound, why do you think we should lure him there?” Jace’s tone had changed slightly. He seemed more interested now than he been moments before. Was he drawing the same connections, the same lines that Baze was? Matias was making a lot of sense all of a sudden.
“It’s your playground, no?” Matias pointed to Jace. “It’s the one place Franklin doesn’t have the upper hand. You can wire it, set, what do American say? Booby traps. He can’t beat you on your own turf.”
“We can’t kill him.” Baze couldn’t condone murder, well, he couldn’t endorse it.
“You cannot turn him to law enforcement. Men like that have ways of escaping. In my country, we kill him. It is street justice, no?” Matias shrugged. “He’s a killer, no?”
Baze shook his head. “We don’t have evidence.”
“Exactly. We don’t have evidence, the Feds don’t have evidence. Maybe man-bun is right. Maybe we do need to fucking kill him. Put a stop to all this bullshit once and for all.” Baze was sure that the counselor in Corey would have lots to say about Jace talking about murdering his father so carelessly. But the protective mother in there that wielded a handgun like a second appendage would probably be pretty okay with it.
“Who is man-bun? Is that I?”
Both he and his presumed beta ignored the outsider.
“We aren’t getting anywhere with Ox.” Jace met Baze’s eyes.
“Oh, you have a bull here? Is this a butcher shop?” Matias looked around the space. “Is that why there is stench of death? I was wondering but didn’t want to seem rude.”
“What?” Baze whipped his head around, giving Matias his full attention. “You smell death?” He sniffed the air, getting closer and closer to the door with every inhale. How had he missed it when he’d walked in? Matias was right.
“It is strong, yes?” Matias pointed toward the door that led to their prisoner.
Jace unlocked it and the second the door opened, the smell becoming undeniable and almost unbearable. Ox was dead. He was sitting in the chair they’d left him in last night. His legs had been weak, and he could no longer hold himself up. They had been hopeful that eventually they’d make him talk. So they’d left him seated, giving him a small reprieve.
“You did this.” Jace whirled around and grabbed Matias by the collar, backing him up against a wall.
Matias held his hands up. “You texted me the location fifteen minutes ago. This man has been dead all day, can you not tell by the smell? Are you even shifters?”
His comment only pissed Jace off further. He slammed him against the wall three times before Baze could get to them. “Stop. He’s right.” He shoved Jace back. “Close your eyes and take it all in. He’s right.”
Jace did what he was told, taking a few moments to breathe and listen to the air around him. When he opened them, he was calmer. He moved toward the body, taking in the whole picture. “Maybe he killed himself? Look, he could have slit his own throat. Maybe we left the knife too close or maybe he took it while our backs were turned?”
“No.” Matias shook his head, his voice as calm as if he was discussing their chances of rain. “This man is right-handed, he’d have slit it the opposite way. See?”
Baze got closer, moving Ox’s head back carefully to see the wound in question. “Are you sure you’re a computer hacker?” He turned to Matias, waiting for his response.
“I said mainly a hacker. Mainly.” Matias sighed, pity filling his eyes like he was almost sad for them. “Plus, he would never have been able to write that lovely parting note in his own blood on that wall.” He pointed behind them, making both Baze and Jace turn instantly.
I’ve asked nicely. And now you will pay.
“So, we kill him, yes?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Penelope
She had gotten to spend the day with Baze for the first time in a decade. But after dinner he and Jace had left to meet up with Matias. Dom, Keller, and Linc stayed behind. Baze told her that no one else was allowed to know where they were holding Ox, and
that was where they told Matias to meet them. They wanted to see his reaction. They wanted to get a good gauge for exactly what he could bring to the table.
“Hey, can we come in?”
She looked up from the book she hadn’t actually been reading when Molly knocked on the doorframe to her room. “Sure.” She put the book on the marble-topped nightstand on her side of the bed. Baze was on her mind, constantly. And since the book hadn’t been able to distract her from thinking about the kiss they’d shared earlier, maybe other people could.
“We were thinking of watching a movie, but we can’t find any TVs in this damn house. And Jace left with Baze.” Madden made a sour face. “Gilded cages and such.”
Penelope laughed lightly. “Agreed.” She looked toward the door. “Where’s Corey? She still waddling her way up the stairs?” Corey hadn’t been her favorite the first time they’d hung out. But the more she was around the pregger, the more Pen appreciated Corey’s brand of spunk.
“She’s hanging out with Dom.” Molly shrugged one petite shoulder. “He was pretty upset that she left the house today.”
Madden sighed, shaking her head. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that part of my life. Being mated to a male shifter? Not for the faint of heart.”
“Or the soft of spine.” Molly snorted.
“That’s because none of you understand what it…” Penelope covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“Don’t apologize.” Molly smiled. “You aren’t wrong, we don’t understand. Any of this, really.”
Why would they? They were humans, raised with human ideals and surrounded by human relationships.
“I didn’t know nearly enough about shifters, about my family or this culture. It wasn’t until my dad shipped me off to that school in Switzerland that I began to truly understand what this life was really all about.” She sat up farther in bed, crossing her legs under her. “Now it seems crazy to me that kids don’t learn these things. I mean, sure, the males learn about shifting and all the extra abilities they get. But they don’t know why. They know they’re supposed to find their mate, but they don’t understand the depth of what that entails.”
