Promising Peter (Bad Boy Alphas) (Shrew & Company Book 6)

by Holley Trent

  “What were they lacing the drugs with?” Soren asked.

  “We don’t know,” Dana said. “We haven’t had the chance to test any samples yet, but we do still have some from that last seize Bryan did a few months ago. Dustin helped Drea figure all this out. He told her that one of the suppliers was a man in a truck with a particular sticker, and she did a reverse search on that image and found the exact drug company the logo belonged to.”

  “Why do I get a sinking feeling?” Bryan asked.

  “Because you’re smart,” Tam said. “We know a lot about that drug company. It was the same drug company that killed so many women in that fucking SHREW study and that nearly killed us.”

  The rumble coming from Bryan’s chest was pitched so low that it tickled Peter’s inner ears and made the hairs on his arms stand up. He rubbed them down.

  “What we don’t know,” Maria said, “is how long they’ve been at this. They could have started this experiment at around the same time they were running the SHREW study.”

  “To what end?” Eric asked.

  “This is just my paranoia talking,” Dana said, “but I believe the two studies were supposed to complement. One meant for shifters and other people with supernatural abilities, and one meant for humans. I believe now that the end goal of the SHREW study was to actually create artificial shifters using drugs, but obviously that’s not what happened. You can’t make a shifter like that.”

  “And I think Gene knew that,” Maria said. “Drea was able to get some folks at the company to talk, especially once she set Astrid on them. Astrid can get anyone so tongue-tied that they can’t remember what they weren’t supposed to be saying. Drea and Astrid couldn’t get much info, but just enough to find out that Gene did work for that company in the time leading up to his takeover of the Ridge Bear group.”

  “So you’re thinking he identified us as a likely subject group to run a study out of, but how does that account for all the other shit he did?” Bryan asked.

  Tam shrugged. “Things got muddy. This is all speculation. We haven’t had time to put all the pieces together, but my opinion is that he wasn’t supposed to be so conspicuous. He was likely just supposed to join up with the group, like others in his position at the company did in other shifter groups. We’ve already identified who that person was in the local wolf group, and their alpha and his lieutenants are trying to squeeze information out of him now. They owe us a favor. Yay.”

  Peter folded his arms over his chest and ground his teeth for a bit. “He got greedy. Gene, I mean.”

  “That’s what we think,” Dana said. “He saw an opportunity in the Ridge Bears because they were so laid-back. He wasn’t supposed to be running a horrific little dynasty out of the mountains. He just saw an opportunity and ran with it. The people at the drug company claim they haven’t had any contact with him in months, but we don’t buy that. With ethics as questionable as theirs, I can’t believe they were completely in the dark about his activities. I think they knew what he was doing and just didn’t care.”

  “I changed my mind,” Soren said flatly. “I don’t want to get law enforcement involved.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dana said. “They know we’re here. I have a habit of filling folks in when I think shit’s gonna hit the fan. I have a network of contacts. They all know that there are people like us who exist and that sometimes, we have to handle situations using means that aren’t officially sanctioned by the law. There’s a fine balance we have to strike. Morality and legality don’t always intersect.”

  “We’ve got paramedics nearby and on standby in case we need them,” Maria said. “The most important thing for us to consider right now is getting those kids out of there with as little trauma as possible. Explaining to them what happened is going to be hard enough, and we’d like to avoid having to put a supernatural spin on the story.”

  “Understood,” Peter said. “So…what’s the plan?”

  “It’s Drea’s plan, actually.” Dana loaded two of those odd new bullets into the rifle and pocketed the silver ones, probably “just in case” some shifter lost his shit.

  Peter was certainly feeling like he would. He was even more convinced that life was a gift far too good for Gene.

  “I should pay her more,” Dana mused.

  “What is the plan?”

  “She’s repeatedly calling the farm’s main line right now and, of course, the lady of the house isn’t going to answer. So, it makes sense that someone would just take a chance and drop in.”

  They all went still at the approaching rumble of a truck engine.

  “I believe that’s the sound of your conveyance, folks.”

  The truck idled at the road in front of the stand.

  Peter peeked out the window and found a rig parked in the roadway. He moved to the door and opened it a crack. The truck had a flatbed trailer with some tarps covering huge lumps on the back.

  The guy who jumped down from the driver’s seat was none other than the New York State Coyote pack’s alpha, Jim West.

  He jogged over in comically bright farmer’s attire—plaid shirt, trucker hat and all—that probably hadn’t even been broken in. “Got down here as fast as I could.”

  “We’re just getting here ourselves,” Dana said.

  “Ready to do this? I’m happy to go to the door. Gene will probably follow her, or at least be nearby so he can hear the conversation.”

  “While he’s distracted,” Tamara said, “we’ll try to get in through a different door. Soren can pick a lock faster than anyone I’ve ever seen, and Maria has a freakish knack for calming kids. We’ll send those two together, and the rest of us can cover the other sides. We’ll break windows if we have to, but if Gene is the punk we think he is, we probably won’t have to do that. If we’re right, he’s just going to fluff up his ruffle like a frilled-neck lizard and make himself look big, but he’s only going to be able to hurt one person at a time. Let’s make sure his next victim isn’t one of those kids.”

  “So this comes down to us acting before he does,” Peter said. “And being mindful that he’s not the sort of man who plays by the rules.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Maria said. “He’s a psychopath. If there were a stronger chain of evidence in this mess, there’d be huge grounds for yet another class-action lawsuit against the drug company, but what’s been happening here isn’t anything a reasonable officer of the court would believe. We can’t expose what they’ve been doing without exposing what we are to the public.”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t get them to pay up.”

  Tamara squinted at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Behave.”

  “I am. I was just making the point that we don’t need courts to enforce a retribution scheme. I happen to know certain individuals who could ensure CarrHealth issues fair compensation to all wounded parties.”

  Especially Andrea. By the time Peter was done with them, they were going to have to sell everything that wasn’t nailed down to prove just how sorry they were.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Peter went into a sort of trance whenever he was about to pull off a job, and that had been a matter of necessity. Early on, he’d had to learn to detach himself from the morality question or else he’d never be able to act. Contrary to what Tamara might have thought, he did have ethics. Very rarely did lines blur for him. He knew the difference between good and bad, and the only times he hesitated were when his victims were equal parts of both.

  At the moment, no lines were blurring. Gene was an honest to goodness piece of shit, and the fact he’d been working under the sanction of some larger organization made his actions that much worse.

  Not killing the man was going to be the hardest thing Peter had ever done, but he knew people were counting on his restraint so they could have justice—so they could have their questions answered. They deserved that, and more than anything, he wanted Andrea to understand that nothing that happened
had been her fault. Good things had come out of her ordeal, though it had taken them a while to catch up to her.

  Jim crept the truck down the farm’s long driveway and said through his walkie-talkie, “I see him at the window. He’s watching us drive up.”

  Peter squatted, ready near the back of the bed. As soon as Jim stopped, Soren and Maria were going to use the trailer for cover and run around to the back of the house before anyone in the house went to the front door.

  Jim was going to go to the front door, and the rest of them would run along to the sides to watch windows and any other alternate exits.

  They needed to make sure that Gene didn’t figure out the scheme too quickly or he’d wedge himself into some small sliver of the house and not come out without a fight. For the sake of those kids and Gene’s hapless ex, the little extraction crew needed to avoid that. Gene’s ex had already been traumatized enough.

  “Just be cool,” Dana—still in the farm stand—returned to Jim via walkie-talkie. “Say exactly what you rehearsed. Don’t look around too much. Don’t act like you’re casing the place when you go to the door. Just talk to her, okay?”

  “Got it.”

  Jim stopped the truck, and said low into the walkie, “Here we go, folks. Good luck and be careful and all that shit.”

  “Going now,” Soren said into the walkie they shared in the back.

  He and Maria quietly lifted the edge of the tarp and slipped down from the back of the bed.

  Peter nodded to Tamara and Eric. “Ready?”

  Tamara looked to Bryan, who was set to cover Jim at the front door. “Be careful.”

  “I will. You do the same. I know how you are.”

  Tamara sighed, leaned to give her husband a kiss, and then hopped down from the gate with Peter and Eric following.

  They padded past the truck, which Jim was disembarking, and ducked low, each picking a side of the house to monitor.

  Peter ended up on the side facing the distant farm stand. Dana was supposed to be out there somewhere, probably on her belly in the high grass with her guns at the ready, and poised to move as soon as Gene did.

  They weren’t going to let him get far.

  Never again.

  The window Peter crouched beneath was open a couple of inches, and he could hear the voices from the front room, and the nervous whispers from the back of the house. He could hear the footsteps against the wood floor, and Gene spitting, “You shut up. All of you. You make a peep and you’re gonna get it, you understand me?”

  There was no response.

  “Do you understand me?” he hissed.

  “Yes,” came the chorus of young voices.

  Footsteps again.

  Peter straightened and peeked through the window just in time to see Gene pass.

  Too late to get him.

  I’ll be ready next time, though.

  Peter pushed the window up a little more and steadied the gun with the tranq bullets on the sill.

  “You brought me what?” Gene’s ex asked Jim.

  “I’ve been calling you all day, Cal!” Jim said in an exasperated tone. “I need to return this truck tonight. I borrowed it over the weekend from the guy I gave the rest of the hay to. I thought you could use these few bales. I figured while I was here, I’d see if you were interested in some goats.”

  “Uh, goats?”

  Jim grunted. “We’ve got too many. Bred like crazy last year. If you ever thought about keeping them for milk and cheese, I could cut you a deal. Maybe they could be a little project for your kid. Why don’t you send him on over to look at them? I’ll drive him back.”

  “I—um…”

  Peter caught the movement of the shadow in the hall coming from the room Gene had left, and then the lanky teen appeared in the room’s doorway.

  He started at Peter in window.

  Peter shook his head and held a finger up to his lips. He mouthed slowly, “Go to the back door if you can.”

  The kid shook his head, and pointed to his eyes.

  “He can see the door from where he is?”

  The kid nodded, and then held up a hand in a “wait right there” gesture. He padded away, and returned through what must have been a connecting bathroom, with two girls small enough to squeeze through the window.

  “Careful,” he whispered to the first as she put her head through the gap.

  Peter was standing next to a prickly rose bush—damn near trampling it, really—but the lady of the house would just have to forgive him for the mess.

  He helped the girl down, and then the other. Bending toward their ears, he whispered, “Run toward the back a few hundred yards, and then cut across the fields toward the farm stand. We’ll get you home.”

  “My brother’s in there,” one of the girls said.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get him out. We’ve got folks on all four sides. Now go.”

  Both girls paused, and then ran when Gene’s son said, “Go!”

  “Kevin!” the lady called out.

  He hurried away from the window, back to where he had been probably. “Uh. Yeah, Ma?”

  “D-do you want to go take a look at a couple of goats?”

  “Right now?”

  She cleared her throat. “You don’t have them with you?” She was probably talking to Jim.

  “Nah. Truck’s not equipped for livestock. I do need some help getting that hay off, though. And where do you want me to put it? Got a barn or something?”

  “Anywhere! Um, I mean…you can…put the hay’s wherever’s easiest. Kevin and I will move it later if we need to. We’re used to doing things on our own.”

  The floorboards creaked and Kevin appeared in that doorway again.

  He met Peter’s gaze, and dragged his tongue across his lips.

  Peter heard the snick of a lock toward the back of the house. Soren was probably getting that door open—the door that Gene could see.

  Kevin closed his eyes, let out a ragged breath, and then hurried through the bathroom again. “I’m coming!” he called loudly. “We can just leave the bales next to the driveway and hope they doesn’t get stolen tonight.”

  “Folks’ll steal anything nowadays,” Jim said flatly.

  A moment later, Maria moved silently into the room, and went to Peter at the window. “Where are the other kids?”

  “I pulled them out from here. Is the other boy out?”

  Maria nodded. “I’ll go back around and see what I can do to get Kevin out of the way. Gene’s paying more attention to Jim than the back of the house right now.”

  “We just need to worry about the lady now. Cal.”

  Peter had to trust that Bryan was ready to pounce. All that was left of their plan was to make a quick grab of Cal before Gene could try to stab, choke, or shoot her. Gene might or might not have truly been a Bear, but even if he weren’t, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t still behave like a wild animal. When wild animals got cornered, they weren’t predictable. Peter was counting on that unpredictability. It was the reason he was glad he had two bullets and not just one.

  Maria headed in the direction from which she’d come, and Peter heard the truck’s gate being dropped. “L-lots of…lots of hay,” Kevin called out, likely for the sake of his mother at the door. Bryan had probably frightened him into stuttering. He was a big man and a stranger.

  “The kids are clear. Don’t do anything stupid, mama,” Peter murmured. There was no way in hell Peter could fit through that tiny window, though he wished he could. He didn’t like the idea of sneaking up on an opponent and shooting him in the back, but if doing so meant there’d be less collateral damage all around, he’d suck it up and cry into his coffee about what had gone down later.

  He couldn’t get in from there, and he didn’t want to give up his post at the window to use the back door, so he waited. Eventually, Gene would pass, and if he didn’t, there were other good guys waiting to grab him.

  Peter chuckled low and shook his head. “When’d I become a
good guy?”

  He had to admit being firmly on the do-gooder side for once didn’t feel so bad. In fact, he thought he could get used to his new affiliation.

  “See, Andrea. I can learn new tricks. Just be patient with me, sweetheart.”

  So patient.

  He was a fucking mess, and she was so young and naive. But, she was his mate. The Bear goddess forged that link, and he wasn’t going to ignore it thinking someone more suitable would come along for her. He seriously doubted that there could be anyone more suitable for him.

  Shouldn’t we both get to be happy?

  “You’ve got to let me give you a little something for the hay,” Cal said. “I know how much it’s worth with the weather being so dry last year. I won’t be able to sleep well tonight if I don’t try to make it up to you. You’re a good friend.”

  A perfect stranger.

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Jim said, “but if you insist…”

  “I do.”

  Footsteps—light ones—toward the rear of the house. Toward Peter.

  She appeared in the room, and Gene zipped in right behind her, hissing.

  “You stupid bi—”

  Time seemed to slow, and Peter’s reflexes were cranked up as always. But Gene moved suddenly. Peter’s first shot grazed his cheek. He’d started to bend as Peter pulled the trigger.

  Cal screamed at the noise of the gun—at the shock of Peter being in the window with the weapon, but she couldn’t have known why he was there, only that he was.

  She recoiled, pulling away from Gene, who’d finally noticed Peter in the window. Gene yanked her by the arm and tried to put her in front of him, but then Bryan stepped into the room.

  Gene was trying so hard not to get shot that he didn’t do anything to guard himself from other harm. Like Bryan’s fist sailing toward his head.

  At the impact, Gene let go of Cal, and stumbled backward.

  Before he fell, Peter fired, and the bullet hit Gene right in the face.

  Peter hadn’t had to shoot him in the face. He’d just wanted to, and he hoped it hurt. He’d ask for repentance from whichever god cared later and would tell Andrea he was sorry for not doing better—for not aiming lower when he could have.