Miranda

by Sherry Foster

  “Yeah what do you want?”

  “Mr. Gammon?” The young voice asked. Gammon heard the quiver in the voice, female from the sound, young or a male whose voice had not yet changed. Not anyone from his pack and he didn’t recognize the accent.

  He sat up on the edge of the bed, and this time when he spoke his voice was softer and less grating, “This is Gammon.”

  “Mr. Gammon, we need help. Please, help us.” The voice was hushed and riddled with fear. Mia climbed over to his side of the bed and flipped on the bedside light. Her eyes were wide as she listened to the conversation.

  “Sweetheart helping is what I do. But where are you and how can I help you? What’s wrong?”

  “Some men came and killed mommy and daddy. Daddy hid me and Sammy in the bathroom under the floor and then he used the bathroom and he didn’t even flush. Gammon heard another young voice in the background, He said his stinky would hide us.

  Gammon saw Mia cover her mouth with her hand to stifle her laughter. Then she sobered as she realized these were very young children.

  “Where are you now baby? Do you know your address?”

  “In the bathroom under the floor. We can’t get out. Daddy is laying on top of the door. He gave us the phone and told me to press g to call Mr. Gammon. And I did. But we can’t get out and…” The child on the other end of the phone started bawling and soon both children were crying.”

  “Shhh it’s okay. I will come and get you. Do you know where you live? What town? What country?”

  Dimitri, Nikita, wake up, we have an emergency.

  “We live here, at our house.” Choking sobs answered him and he knew fear and anguish as the hopelessness he heard on the line.

  “It is okay, shh, now listen stay on the phone with me and I will see if I can track the phone okay?”

  “You will come save us?”

  “Yes little one.” Gammon vowed.

  “Promise?”

  Gammon felt his heart break in two as he reassured the little one over and over that they would get there as soon as they could.

  “They took Niknik.”

  Mia had gone to the front to let the Beta’s in the house while Gammon had gone to the office. When they heard what was going on they started sending the information they had, which was precious little other than the phone number the cell phone showed, to Marcus. Marcus had his team working on tracing the number when Gammon heard scuffling on the other end of the phone.

  “Little one? What is going on? Is someone there?”

  “The bad men came back. They are looking for us. Daddy couldn’t fit Nik Nik in the hole with us. Please help us. They have her and now they are going to take us. Please.” The voice was whispering now.

  Gammon whispered back, “listen to me, be quiet and still and hide the phone in your clothes. If they take you we will find you. Now hide the phone. Wait! How much battery does it have?”

  “It is full because daddy said a dead battery is no good.” The little voice whispered.

  “Good, now listen, do you know if the location is turned on?”

  “I don’t know. NikNik would know but they took her.”

  “It’s okay, we will get her back. Now listen to me, I want you to turn the volume down on the phone and hide it. Can you do that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Gammon listened awhile longer but only heard the sniffles of the children as they tried to cry quietly. After what seemed an eternity he heard scuffling sounds again then the screams of the two children as the searchers found them. He listen helplessly as the children were struck a few times and taken off with the attackers. He listened to their cries as tears tracked down his face. He stood silent witness to the sounds of the abduction and heard the fear as the children screamed in terror. He held the phone until his hand turned numb while he waited for his Betas to tell him whether Marcus’ people were having any luck tracing the phone. He swore vengeance upon the kidnappers and vowed to track them down one by one until no one remained alive. Finally Nikita’s voice rang through his mind.

  Small town in Mexico. The phone has stopped moving. Did they find it on the children yet?

  No, I can still hear their sobs. I don’t know how long the battery will last them. Yet I can’t say anything for fear someone is close enough to hear them. They have someone named Nik Nik with them. Maybe an older sister or something, they said she when referring to her. I know Marcus’ pack just went through a shit storm yesterday and they have a lot of cleaning up to do but can he get a team together to go find these bastards? I want to be with them when they go.

  They are already on it boss man. Looking up satellite images and anything and everything they can find on the village. Looks like it might be a drug lord’s home from what they have found.

  Get a team together. We are going hunting. I want the place razed to the ground by the time we are done. No saving it and looking for clues like we have done in the past. I want it bombed back to the stone age.

  Gammon, we don’t have bombs.

  We will by the time we hit that compound. Make it so.

  Gammon listened until the children fell asleep and still he held the phone to his ear listening for any clue he might hear. Hours later the phone went silent but Gammon had a few new clues he overheard during that time. The children were not the first ones taken by the people, and the kidnappers did not have plans to kill the little boys any time soon. Free slave labor wouldn’t be wasted by killing them. When Gammon finally put his phone down he had an office full of silent watchers. No one had dared to speak for fear their voices would be heard across the phone.

  “I want to hit these people hard and fast. No one lives. No one. I want each of those children and I want them by the end of the week. I don’t give a damn if this starts a war between our country and Mexico. Get hopping. We are running out of time. Slave labor isn’t the only thing they plan for those little boys.” The fury washed out from Gammon in waves and no one misunderstood the use the others planned for the young boys.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Come on Trina, be reasonable.”

  “I am being reasonable. I am telling you I have trained all my life for combat and I want to join the teams.”

  “Marcus will never let that happen. Think about it sweetheart. The entire reason for the teams is to save as many of our females as we can, not let one go tearing off to war.”

  “Look here Fido, pay close attention to what I am about to say, are you telling me that you don’t think I am as good as some of these others you have on the team.”

  “Actually, yeah, I guess I am saying just that. These guys have trained for years to get where they are and…”

  Jaden felt the hand go across his mouth and saw the fury on his mate’s face before she snarled at him. “That is a good try, tell me again how long Jamie has been training to be on the team. How many men has he killed to protect the pack, to protect his family? Tell me again how much training does one need to go on a mission with the team?”

  “It isn’t the same baby. You are comparing apples to oranges and that isn’t fair. Sure you carry a gun or two and I will grant you can out shoot most of the people on the team but often we need to go in quiet and slow and guns are not quiet and not slow. Jamie has killed though so he may be new but that doesn’t mean inexperienced. Baby, you don’t know what it is like to take another’s life. You have to live with that every day for the rest of your life. It doesn’t matter how bad the person was or how much you may think they deserved to die, or hell if they deserved to die, but you will live with that death for the rest of your life and no one wants one of our females to ever know the anguish of having to take a life.”

  “Then I guess you guess should have done a better job of protecting the females. You realize that not all females grow up in protected communities don’t you? I did not grow up protected, or well I did but not the last six years. We were on the run, constantly looking over our shoulders. Never knowing where the danger
lay or who we could trust.” This time it was Jaden who placed a single finger on Trina’s lips.

  “Sweetheart, you had Josh to protect you and keep you safe. I know you trained hard and I know you stay ready to defend yourself, but baby please, it is not the same.”

  Trina reached up and took his hand in hers, lacing their fingers together she shook her head, “Baby, Uncle Josh was not always around. Sometimes he had to take care of things and couldn’t take us with him. Someone had to be prepared to defend me and that person was me. Aunt Cherise is not a fighter and never will be, but baby, I am. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  Jaden lowered his head to rest on top of hers, “Baby, I understand you think you know what you are asking, but I have lived with, I do live the the deaths I have caused. You don’t know what it is like to close your eyes at night and see the faces of the dead. To wonder if you made the right decision. To see the blood rush from their throats and wonder if they had mothers and fathers still alive who would miss them. To wonder if they had a son somewhere who would never see their dad again. Sometimes innocent people get caught up in the war we have going and you never know when you will be the one to take the wrong life. It haunts you, it changes you. I love you more than life itself and I would do anything I could to protect you from what you ask.”

  Trina wrapped her arms around him, her voice muffled as she talked, “I do know Jaden. I know exactly how it feels. But I also know I would not change it if I could. I have killed to protect myself and I would do it again, a hundred times to protect another. I would take a thousand lives if it meant saving one child from the horror of having their parents killed by people who are too selfish to care about the child. I would watch a thousand men bleed out begging for mercy if I knew they would never give mercy. I know what it means to live with the faces but Jaden, I can live with my actions. I must to protect myself. I want to protect others. Rogues are so easy to see, to find, and when you look at them beyond what they are and you see the blackness surrounding them, the inhuman taint to their very surroundings, it is not hard at all to end that. They are suffering and it is something you can almost taste.”

  Trina stopped talking when Jaden pushed her away. He stared at her in disbelief while holding onto her shoulders. His voice hoarse he asked, “What do you mean you can see them, see a blackness to them?”

  “What do you mean? I can see them. I mean, they kinda stick out in a crowd. The blackness that hangs over them like a low cloud of despair. It has a horrible feel and you can almost taste it in the air. I don’t, I can’t regret taking a life like that. They feel diseased.”

  He let go of her and ran one hand through his hair. “You killed someone?”

  “I had to Jaden. I told you, it is like putting an animal out of its misery.”

  “But you never said a word and you lived with this night after night. Is this the reason you have been pulling away from me?”

  “Oh my god Jaden did you hear anything I just said. No, the reason we are having problems is because of your attitude. You think because I am a female I can not know what it is like to have to kill someone. You treat me like I have to be protected because I am female. If I were untrained, if I had never killed to protect myself, if I were innocent then yeah, maybe I would need protecting. And I am not saying I can take every fight or win every battle alone. That is the reason for teams after all. Someone to watch your back and catch the ones who slip past you before they can hurt another. But you treat me like an ignorant school girl who has never seen the world and never had to do anything. That is what is driving me crazy. That is why we are having problems. I don’t want to be above you Jaden, I want to be a partner to you. Oh, maybe not on a team as your partner but I am tired of you thinking being a female makes me less than you.”

  “I don’t think that, I have never thought that. If anything I think it makes you more special than me, more precious.”

  “Dammit Jaden I don’t want to be some treasure you put on a pedestal. I want to be me.”

  Jaden sat down heavily with his head in his hands, “You can see the taint of a rogue?”

  “Yes Jaden. I can see the blackness that surrounds them. Can’t everyone? Why do you keep coming back to that?”

  Jaden looked up then, a slightly shell shocked look on his face, “No Trina, not everyone can see that blackness. In fact damn few can see it. We call them true seekers because they don’t have to look for the extra signs, they don’t have to go through the extra training learning to spot the evidence. It is rare for a wolf to be born a seeker. I have never heard of a female being born a seeker. We try to put a true-seeker to partner with a trained seeker because sometimes we don’t have time to seek out the evidence. Sometime we have to know from the start what we are dealing with. True-seekers never have to live with the question of whether they took the wrong life because they can see the taint. The can feel it and smell it and taste it. They can track it and they have said the same thing you just said, it is like putting a diseased animal down.”

  “Wait, you said they, but aren’t you a seeker?”

  “Yes, Trina, I am a trained seeker. I can’t see this blackness you talk about. I have to look beyond at the actions and evidence. I can’t track them from a distance. I have to get close enough to have their scent. We need to talk to Marcus. Trina, a true-seeker is rarer than a female. So you just upped your rarity. Now can I put you on that pedestal?” Jaden gave a half laugh.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you. But then again maybe if I were you I would have listened to my mate these last few months and we wouldn’t be having these problems.”

  Jaden took a deep breath, “Well come on, let’s get it over with. This is not something you keep from your Alpha. Dammit Trina why did you have to tell me this now?”

  “Because I want to go on that mission to Mexico. I want to help rescue those babies. I want to contribute to this pack. I want, gods Jaden I want to quit feeling like some barnacle hanging onto the edge of the pack feeding off the fact females are rare. I don’t want to be special and unique, I want to be me. It is like a fire inside of me I can’t quench. I have to protect others. Not being able to is slowly driving me insane.”

  Jaden took her hand and laced his fingers through hers, as they headed for the door she heard him mutter, “Fucking seekers.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “I’m sorry say that one more time?” Marcus looked at Jaden in disbelief before he turned to Craig and raised his eyebrows.

  “Don’t look at me man. I didn’t have any idea she was a seeker. It ain’t like we can smell that shit,” he flinched before continuing, “or anything. I mean, you might leave a scent behind when you kill someone but you don’t leave evidence you are a seeker. That is something inside of you, not anything others can see.

  “Hold up, stop. Marcus, my man, why did you look at Craig like he knew a secret and didn’t tell you.” Jaden’s eyes widened, “wait a minute, why didn’t either one of you seem surprised to find my mate had killed someone. You both seemed mighty surprised to find out she is a seeker but neither of you seemed surprised to hear she has killed.” He turned to Trina, fury on his face, “You told them and you didn’t think it important enough to tell me? And you blame me for the problems we are having? You fucking dare put all the blame on me and yet you go telling secrets to others?”

  Trina drew back from his fury before she caught herself, in moments the two were in a screaming match about who was to blame for the problems they were having. They continued back and forth until Jaden took a huge sniff and jerked his head around to see Marcus and Craig watching them while eating popcorn.

  “What? The fires knocked out my dish and I can’t watch television until they come out with another one.” Marcus gave the couple a wounded look so fake that Craig choked on his popcorn and Marcus had to whack his back a few times to dislodge it.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Our mating is in danger of being destroyed and the two of you think it is funn
y?”

  “Yeah, kinda. Tobias said the two of you never let your wolves out to play with each other and until you do you will stay at each others’ throat. We had a bet going how long it would last but the two of you have gone past the last date given so I figured with everything going on we should probably tell you the problem. I will say the rest of the pack thought we should all just pick new dates and start the betting over but I was afraid one of you would end up killing the other so I put a halt to that. You’re welcome. Now, Trina, we have too much going on right now to deal with more problems. I don’t even know how to deal with your problem so give me time to work on it and let me talk with the other true-seekers. You have thrown one more problem on my already full plate. I swear I am going to put a ban on true-matings. Now, go home, let your wolves out, go for a run, fuck, play in the snow, I don’t care what you do but you will go play with each other and get out of my face. Out. Now.”

  Jaden glared at his brother before he grabbed Trina’s arm and pulled her out the door behind him with her swearing at him the entire time. When Marcus was sure they were out of hearing he let go of the laughter he had been struggling to hold in. Soon he and Craig were all but rolling on the floor as they made comments about the pair. It was some time before they calmed down enough to discuss what they had just learned.

  “Marcus man, I know this isn’t what you want to hear but you will have to let her go on missions or something. Seekers have to seek, it is practically in their DNA. They aren’t fighting because they never let their wolves out. I mean sure that is what the old ones told us, and it makes perfect sense, or it did till we learned she is a natural born seeker. Her wolf is going to eat at her until she does something about it and in this case she can’t unless you let her. We have what, five naturals in the entire pack? What happens when they go too long without going out? Fights, fights and more fights. Those guys get fucking,” Craig flinched, “mean.”