Tropical Wounded Wolf: BBW Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance (Shifting Sands Resort Book 2)

by Zoe Chant

  Neal rushed forward, realizing that this chance wouldn’t last forever, and Bastian and Travis followed him into action.

  Taking the weapons from the men was laughably easy; they didn’t even startle until the shoulder straps were released and the gazelle was leaping away in her deer form again. They blinked stupidly at Neal and Travis, but it didn’t take a lot of time to convince them they were beaten. They gradually shook their heads and put their hands up, scowling.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Mary looked from Lewis to Scarlet as they walked into the courtyard that opened onto Scarlet’s office and personal quarters, glanced at Benedict and the men with the guns, and then turned her attention back to the most important two.

  Scarlet’s face was a perfect mask, utterly impenetrable, but Mary could feel the anger sparking off of her, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the woman had no actual intention of turning her resort over to these men. Neal’s revelation that Lewis was a criminal had changed the transaction for her, turning it from something inevitable that she would have to accept to a battle she was bracing herself to fight.

  Lewis must have sensed the same thing Mary did.

  “There’s no reason to make any of this unpleasant,” he said, voice silky, but threatening. “You know that you don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s all quite legal and above board, and no one needs to get hurt if we do it the easy way.”

  Mary bit back a squeak as one of the mercenaries pointed his rifle more obviously at her.

  “Take only what you need, I will have my men pack the rest to ship to you on the mainland within a week’s time. I assure you I pay them well enough that they won’t be interested in your belongings.”

  “You aren’t going to just let us leave,” Scarlet said, her own voice chilly and skeptical.

  Lewis chuckled. “You may, lady, and any of your staff that chooses to go. It’s quite true that I can’t leave Neal free to tell tales.”

  Mary startled, and sudden terror for Neal overwhelmed her own fears.

  “But you owe him nothing,” Lewis continued smoothly to Scarlet. “Our history is none of your concern, and you can preserve the remainder of your staff and take advantage of our very generous monetary offer simply by using a little good judgment.”

  Scarlet’s face betrayed nothing as she turned to walk into her office, but Lewis stopped her anyway.

  “No, I think you should not go into there yourself,” Lewis suggested, and he looked to the closest and burliest of the mercenaries with a question on his brow.

  He got a surprisingly toothy smile in return, and a nod. “This is one of the strong places, one of the places of power,” the man said.

  His words crystallized something that had been bothering at the back of Mary’s mind. Scarlet’s office had always left her feeling unsettled, but the mercenary’s words made her recognize that it wasn’t Scarlet herself, but something deeper and older, something asleep beneath the resort. She felt like a more powerful shifter here, and she suddenly wondered how much of a role that power had played in Neal’s swift recovery.

  “No surprises,” Lewis warned, and all of the mercenaries felt so tightly wound that Mary expected them to snap.

  “It’s not a power that can be controlled,” Scarlet said, her voice full of warning.

  “You mean you can’t control it,” Lewis scoffed.

  “I mean it doesn’t like to be controlled,” Scarlet said softly. “If you wake it, I don’t think it will appreciate either you or your actions.”

  “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  Mary felt adrift, like a child listening to a conversation that adults were having, understanding their words, but not their meaning. Benedict looked nervous, and Mary caught him crossing his fingers superstitiously.

  Scarlet went into her office with the bodyguard and carefully gathered a few things—a handful of files and a laptop were tucked into a rolling bag, and she picked up a unadorned wooden box, all under the scrutiny of the watchful bodyguard and Lewis, who stood with his arms crossed, watching through the door.

  “Let’s see you off in the car then,” Lewis said, almost merrily. He seemed to think that Scarlet’s quiet was a sign of her defeat, but Mary strongly suspected otherwise. “Our plane is waiting at the airport to take you back to the mainland.”

  They walked through the courtyard, two mercenaries in the front, and two trailing. Lewis, still holding Mary’s hand at his elbow walked behind Scarlet and Benedict.

  Benedict was babbling something like an apology to Scarlet. “I’m sure you understand. The offer was just too good. I couldn’t turn it down…”

  No one paid him any mind.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Neal left the mercenaries well-wrapped in duct tape, disarming them of an array of knives and small weapons first.

  “We’re outnumbered,” Neal said as the shifters climbed the steps to the bar deck. “We’ve only got these two guns against five of them.” He automatically discounted Benedict Beehag as a combatant, but he was not foolish enough to think that Lewis was not still in prime fighting form, whether he had traded his fatigues for suits or not.

  “And a dragon,” Bastian reminded him, flexing his shoulders but not shifting. “Two guns and a dragon. That counts for something.”

  “Beehag had a tranquilizer that changed shifters back to human,” Neal cautioned. “We have to assume that Benedict has given that formula to Lewis.”

  Bastian scowled, but nodded.

  “Hey Tex,” Travis called into the bar. “Want to join a reckless, doomed rescue mission?”

  “What are we rescuing?” Tex asked with a lazy drawl, not putting down the towel he was drying glasses with.

  “His mate,” Travis answered, jerking a thumb at Neal.

  “Scarlet,” Bastian added.

  “Shifting Sands,” Neal finished gravely.

  “You had me at reckless and doomed,” Tex said, grinning. He put the glass away carefully and came up from behind the bar.

  “Would Graham…?” Neal started.

  As if summoned, the landscaper materialized from the back entrance to the bar, a wicked machete in one hand. He didn’t offer an explanation, but Neal had to guess that he had spotted the strange party headed for Scarlet’s office and recognized that something was afoot.

  At his heels, was Breck, still in his uniform, but looking uncharacteristically grim-faced.

  “These are starting to feel like better odds,” Travis said confidently. “I can get Magnolia, she’s a polar bear who’s good to have in a fight, and where she goes, Chef goes.”

  “I can keep them from being able to leave,” Breck offered. “It wouldn't take much to disable the Jeep.” At Neal's nod, he trotted away with the grace and speed of his leopard.

  “They still have more ranged weapons,” Neal cautioned. “And hostages. We need a plan. And a backup plan.” He set his jaw. “I’ll need your phone, Tex.”

  The list in his pocket had long since dissolved to unreadable, but Neal didn’t need it. He dialed Major Washburn's number as if he’d always known it.

  “This had better be good,” Judy answered, her voice painfully familiar even after ten years.

  Neal could hear the whine of engines in the background, and guessed she was at an airport.

  “Judes,” he said roughly, and he walked across the bar for whatever privacy he could get.

  There was a moment of silence at the other end of the line. “Who the hell is this? How did you get this number?”

  Neal recognized the deep thrum that underlay the airplane engines. A carrier. The team was somewhere on the flight deck of a carrier. But what ocean? Were they close enough?

  “Judes,” he said again. “Listen up, I need a support team at the coordinates of this phone. I’ve got Lewis, but don’t have the resources to hold him myself. There are civilians at stake.” My mate, he didn't say.

  “Lewis? What the – Neal, is that you?”

  �
�It’s me,” Neal assured her, and it was odd to realize that he meant it. He felt more like himself than he had in ten years. He was alive again, and on the hunt. His feet were on solid ground, his wolf was in alignment with him, and he had purpose.

  “Where the hell have you been? It’s been ten fucking years, you jack—”

  “It’s a long story,” Neal cut her off. “A really long story. And I promise I’ll split a bottle and tell you the whole damn thing, but not now. I need the team. Lewis has at least four bodyguards, moderately armed, and two hostages …”

  Without waiting for her agreement, he detailed the basic lay of the resort and Lewis’ resources.

  “I don’t know how fast we can get there,” Judy said when he was finally done. “These things need approval from upstairs.”

  “Damn,” Neal laughed. “It’s been longer than I thought if you’re waiting for approval these days. Aren’t you a general yet?”

  “When you hit colonel they start making you write your own fucking reports,” Judy groused.

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” Neal laughed. He sobered quickly. “Come as fast as you can. I have to go.”

  He knew that Lewis wouldn’t wait docilely for the team to arrive, and his mate was at stake.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  They were standing by the car, waiting as the driver poked under the hood, cursing and casting nervous glances at Lewis.

  Scarlet was so tightly coiled that Mary didn’t feel safe standing next to her, but a quick glance showed the red-headed woman looking utterly serene, her laptop case in one easy hand, the box tucked under the other arm. Every strand of her hair was in place.

  Her crimson hair reminded Mary of Neal’s and she shifted on her feet, worried sick. They hadn’t heard any shots, and surely she would know if her mate had been unceremoniously dispatched.

  As if in response to the idea, she heard Neal’s voice in her head.

  Mary…?

  She looked down, letting the curtain of her dirty hair cover her face.

  Neal? Are you all right? Lewis says he’s going to… She stopped herself, trying to rein in the hysteria that came with even the idea.

  We’re free, he replied quickly, with a rush of comfort like a caress. We’re fine. Can you make a diversion?

  “Oh!” she said out loud, and that got her the attention of the two guards.

  “Is there a problem?” Lewis asked sharply.

  Mary squirmed, realizing that as diversions went, this wasn’t well thought out. “I, ah, just realized that my flight is in just a few hours. I’m probably going to miss it, and I won’t be able to rebook unless I call in advance.”

  Lewis looked disgusted.

  Mary set her jaw. “Maybe an airline flight doesn’t mean that much to you,” she said with pepper. “But I’m a math teacher, and I saved up a seriously long time for those airline miles.”

  She had their attention, but not all of it.

  “You may be some big-shot millionaire jungle gigolo, but some of us work for a living!” Exhaustion and adrenaline made her feel jittery and hollow, but Mary dredged down to try to recall the worst of her students’ dramatic fits. “This isn’t fair!” she wailed, and she stomped her foot and set her hands on her hips.

  “I saved all my money for years to come to this place, and all I got was marooned in the wilderness and kidnapped! This was supposed to be a lush vacation, and it's been horrible and it's not fair!”

  The effect must have been ridiculous, with her unwashed hair, crusty from saltwater, and her ripped, blood-stained clothing, but it had the desired result: she had the attention of all of the guards, and even Scarlet was staring at her as if she’d lost her mind.

  “I need to make a phone call,” she whined. “You have to let me call the airline, right now.”

  When they glanced at each other, clearly not sure what to do with her, Mary stomped her foot again. “It’s not fair!” she shrieked, and burst into noisy tears.

  “Oh, give her a phone,” Lewis said in disgust, and after a moment, Benedict dug out a shiny modern smartphone, unlocked it with his thumbprint, and handed it to her.

  Mary sniffed, and made a great show of wiping her tears away. “Can anyone get the phone number for Costa Rican Air?” she whined after a moment of fiddling with it, waving the phone around. “I can’t seem to get data on this one.”

  One of the mercenaries pulled out his own smartphone. “I’m detecting wireless on this, but I need the passcode.”

  Scarlet, still inscrutable, shrugged. “I'd have to check my log—I change it every week.”

  Another guard pulled out his own smartphone. “I’ve got a bar of data, wait, no, I’ve lost it.”

  “You could just call information,” a third suggested.

  “I’ve let this fall asleep,” Mary said sweetly, handing the phone back to Benedict. “You’ll have to unlock it again.”

  The timer she had discretely set to a ringtone went off just as he took it, and he almost dropped it, then fumbled trying to figure out how to answer it. “What the hell?!”

  “I don’t know!” Mary said defensively, using her very best clueless student voice. “It’s your phone!”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Lewis snarled. “Is the goddamn car fixed yet?”

  They all looked towards the driver, to find him slumped on the ground. Tex stood beside the Jeep, a baseball bat in his hands. A leopard was crouched beside him.

  “You know you shouldn’t drive and use your phone at the same time,” Neal chided from behind them.

  Mary’s heart lifted to see him, holding a gun in steady hands, training it on Lewis. Travis was to one side with another large gun, and Graham was flanking the guards on the other, a machete held grimly in one hand; one of the guards was lying at his feet. Behind him, a massive pair of white polar bears were growling.

  The remaining bodyguards reacted quickly, re-pocketing their phones smoothly and regaining their grips on their weapons. But Lewis was faster than any of them, and before Mary could react, she was being held against him by her wrists, a handgun at her forehead. Beside her, one of the guards did the same with Scarlet.

  “You didn’t think this out well,” Lewis sneered, and Mary wanted to agree.

  A giant, dark shape passed overhead and landed with a deep thump on their far side, green wings like vast sails folding into jeweled sides. A dragon. Mary could only see it in her peripheral vision, but she could see the reaction in the mercenaries: fear and uncertainty.

  Well, she could relate.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  It was a standoff, at best. The two forces were evenly matched, in Neal’s estimation, and Lewis had hostages. He was smart about it, too—holding Mary where Neal couldn’t get a shot at him without risking her too. It did, however, mean that his back was to a dragon. Neal was sure that was worth something. He kept his sights trained on Lewis, and knew that he just needed to keep him talking until an opportunity presented itself, or backup arrived.

  Patience, he reminded himself. He concentrated on keeping his breath steady, and his shot clean.

  A week ago, he wouldn’t have been able to hold the gun without shaking, he realized. He wouldn’t have been centered enough to get this far. He’d probably have done something stupid and suicidal already, and risked Mary’s life as well.

  A week ago, he’d been a different man.

  “You’re getting sloppy, Lewis,” he said gravely. If Lewis was talking, he wasn’t shooting, and Neal had backup on the way. “Last time we tried this, you had a tranq dart waiting for me.”

  “I didn’t think you’d survived Beehag’s cage,” Lewis scoffed. “I’m surprised you’re alive. Your team doesn’t think you are. I’m sorry, that’s your ex-team, of course. The funeral was lovely, according to my man on the inside.”

  Neal set his teeth. Lewis had someone on the team? Cold fire ran through his veins. Was it Judy? Was the backup he had planned in vain?

  He couldn’t let any of tha
t show in his voice. “Might have known you had someone from the team in your pocket. Is it Remmy? Gobber?” He didn’t add Judy to the list.

  Lewis seemed confident that he had the upper hand. “It’s amazing what power money has. Especially when family is involved. Especially family who’s sick and needs the kind of care only money can buy.”

  Neal dredged into his memory. Remmy’s sister had gone through cancer treatment, not long before their fateful last mission together. She hadn’t had insurance that would cover it, and Remmy had been worried... and then strangely unconcerned not long after.

  “So, it’s Remmy.” Neal shrugged. “That’s not much of an infiltration.”

  “You’ve been out of the loop,” Lewis reminded him. “Remmy’s not just the comms guy now, he’s second in command.”

  They’d given a traitor his position? Neal had to rein in his temper, and wondered suddenly if Lewis was playing him. Whatever else Lewis was, he was clever.

  The idea steadied him. “You know much about your boss?” he asked, raising his voice to carry further to the bodyguards standing around them. “You’re new hires, don’t you wish you knew what kind of circus he was planning to drag you into? And did you ever wonder what happened to his last crew?”

  Though he kept his gaze through the sight of his gun on Lewis, he could feel the barb hit home. A few of the younger mercenaries shifted their feet and Neal knew they were listening.

  “Lewis offers a lot of money for loyalty,” Neal continued derisively. “You’re probably thinking that it’s worth what he’s paying for a little danger. But Lewis really hates to pay his bills, and since he’s a traitor himself, he doesn’t trust anyone else either. It’s funny, what a mortality rate his mercenaries have. Usually after the danger has past.”

  They were all listening to him now, and Lewis was scowling. He shifted Mary in his grasp, effectively keeping her between Neal and himself.

  Lewis’ phone gave a sudden blurble, and he carefully reached down to check it. A toothy smile spread across his face. “Speaking of turncoats,” he said cheerfully. “I guess your team is on its way now. Cleverly done, Byrne. Too bad that they won’t get here in time.”