by Lisa Kessler
CHAPTER 3
Vance
The jaguars I used to work with at Nero were after Kaya.
I gripped the wheel tighter as questions cycled through my head almost faster than I could comprehend them. But I had plenty of time to ponder as I took the long way home on back roads and side streets. My shot-out headlights made me a magnet for traffic cops, and with a body in my trunk, a police officer was the last person I wanted to see.
The gunman hadn’t been a stranger. His name was Rex, a longtime Nero assassin, and while we hadn’t run in the same circles, I had known him. I’d been loyal to Sebastian Severino, Antonio’s firstborn son; Rex swore allegiance to Damian, Sebastian’s younger half brother who had a sadistic streak. Damian’s crowd believed in the underlying mission of Nero: world domination. They wanted to make more and more shifters until there were enough of us to rule over all humans. Sebastian, however, shared my belief that we were better off keeping our existence a secret. I had no taste for ruling over anyone anyway. I had a hard enough time keeping my own life in order.
When I had helped Sebastian take down his father and destroy Nero’s headquarters, I had thought the organization’s hidden agenda and Antonio’s legacy would die with him. Judging by the jaguars working together in Flagstaff, though, my assumption was totally off base, and something new had been created.
I checked the time on my cell. Two in the morning, but I didn’t give a shit. If the jaguars were targeting Kaya, there was a good chance they knew she was a hybrid shifter. It would make her a valuable target. But the only way they could know her secret was if they somehow had accessed the file I had built on her for Nero. A file I thought I destroyed when we blew up the Nero headquarters.
If anything happened to Kaya, I had no one to blame but myself. And I wasn’t about to take any chances. I needed help.
Sebastian Severino was my oldest friend and a member of the Reno Pack now. He’d married a werewolf, Isabelle, and they worked together as bounty hunters. Nero’s destruction had meant freedom for him, too. But he was still Antonio Severino’s eldest son, and no one knew more about Nero’s operations and procedures. It seemed Duane was running the show now, but Sebastian might be able to point me in the right direction to get the target off Kaya’s back.
I pulled up his name in my contacts list and called.
“Vance?” When he picked up, his voice sounded scratchy and tired.
I almost felt bad. Almost.
“Hey, Sebastian. Sorry to wake you,” I said. “But it seems whoever is working out of the Flagstaff satellite facility is back online and after my pack again.” I cleared my throat. “I’ve got Rex Gunner’s body in my trunk and a lot of unanswered questions.”
“Shit. What happened?” The sleepy rasp in his voice vanished. “Do you need me to come down there?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I punched the button on my visor to open the gate to the pack’s ranch. “He was targeting Kaya. I found him armed and hiding in the forest by to her parking lot, maybe a hundred yards from her back door.”
Sebastian knew about his father’s interest in skin walkers, as well as my mission to spy on Kaya and determine her abilities. And like me, he also knew Rex’s specialty at long-distance rifle shooting. “That’s an easy shot for him.” He paused. “Is she dead?”
“No, thank god.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “And I’m going to keep it that way.”
“It’s not like Rex to miss…”
“You think I don’t know that?” I hadn’t meant to raise my voice, but fuck, I didn’t want to be reminded about how close I had come to losing her tonight.
Not that she was, or ever had been, mine.
I drove through the gate and parked. “He did have his rifle and silencer, but he hit the building above her head and the pavement at her feet. Killing her couldn’t have been his mission, or she’d be dead.” I stared into the darkness, dread coiling in my gut. “It was as if he was driving her in a specific direction, maybe toward someone else he was working with, but I didn’t see or smell anyone out there other than us.”
“Have you called your brother? Maybe he can find out if the any of the men who were in the Timberwolves unit with him are on their payroll now. The unit may be defunct, but those who survived are still super soldiers, and whoever hired them has to be backing the Flagstaff crew. With my father and his connections gone, they need to keep the facility running.”
My younger half brother, Micah, had reconnected with me a few months ago. While I’d been born a jaguar shifter, passed down by my father, Micah’s dad was human. When I’d fled Australia without looking back, my brother had set out to find me. But by the time he reached America, he was out of money and joined the military. He worked his way up into an elite squad known as the Timberwolves.
That’s when we had learned Nero hadn’t been the only government contractor chasing after a super soldier serum. A contractor called Evolution Defense had developed a serum, and they had tested it on my brother and his unit, giving them the heightened senses and strength of a werewolf without the actual connection to the wolf—no shifting and no animal instincts. Most of his unit had been lost to madness and suicide as a result. The military quietly gave them honorable discharges and buried the experiments. Micah had been lucky. So far.
I stared into the darkness, watching for any sign of movement. “When they took Naomi, she noticed Nero’s lion’s head logo was gone from the premises and had been replaced with a roman numeral. The number for four, I think it was, with a laurel wreath around the top.”
“‘The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom,’” Sebastian mused. He always had a passion for poetry, but I wasn’t in the mood.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It’s from Hamlet.” He cleared his throat. “After Nero watched Rome burn, they killed him. Except his death gave rise to four new emperors.”
Maybe it was exhaustion, or the aching wound on my shoulder, but my patience was wearing thin. “This isn’t history class, mate. I’m too tired to work through your riddles right now. What’s this got to do with the attack on Kaya?”
“Everything,” Sebastian replied. “What if the new logo represents the union between the four emperors who rose up after Nero’s death? Because whoever is working out of the facility must have teamed up with another leader or organization, maybe even more than one. They would’ve had to. They may have the facility, but ammunition, rations, utilities? Those all cost money, and like I said, my father’s resources are gone.”
“Sebastian, they fucking tried to take Kaya tonight. I don’t give a shit about their funding.”
The smooth timbre of Sebastian’s voice usually invoked calm, but if I could’ve reached through my cell to strangle him, I would have.
“Is Trager still feeding you intel when he can?” he asked.
“Yes. He’s working out of the Flagstaff facility with the group Duane Clarkson is leading.”
After the implosion of Nero, Trager had stuck with the group that followed Duane to Arizona. He had reached out to me a few months ago after he discovered Duane’s plans to work with Brad Newport’s campaign for the Senate. He’d been in too deep to walk away, but he couldn’t look the other way. Instead, he had become my inside man, supporting my efforts to keep our existence from being revealed to all humanity.
I checked my rearview mirror. After being shot at tonight, I was a little punchy. “Tomorrow, Duane’s meeting with the finance manager for Brad Newport,” I added, “the Senate candidate.”
“Duane must be one of the emperors…”
“I’m not following you.” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, struggling to keep a cool head.
“After everything went down when we destroyed Nero, everyone who had been involved scattered. They needed a leader and money to keep up their work. Duane could be the leading the jaguar shifters, and maybe he teamed up with other leaders—emperors, if you will. I would bet Brad Newport is workin
g for the second emperor.”
“You don’t think Newport is the leader Duane’s working with? Because if he is, I could snuff him out and we’d have one less problem.”
Isabelle grumbled in the background, and I cringed. We must have woken her. Sebastian murmured something to her, then said to me, “No, politicians are pawns put in place by powerful people. Someone is propping him up with money and connections. Find that person and you’ll know the second emperor.”
“All I care about is protecting Kaya.”
“Protecting her or your secrets? Does Kaya know you told my father she was a skin walker?”
“Fuck you,” I growled through gritted teeth. “Either help me or hang up the fucking phone.”
“I’m trying to help you. It would just be easier if you weren’t also trying to cover your ass.” Sebastian cursed under his breath. “Reach out to your brother. He’s the one who told you Brad Newport had been commander of the Timberwolves. See if he knows if anyone else from his squad who might be eager to expose shifters to the rest of the world. They could be helping Duane.”
I sighed. He’d already suggested this, but I let it be. I didn’t want to deal with any more conflict.
“Okay, I’ll check with Micah.” Rational thought crept into my adrenaline-addled brain. I looked in the rearview mirror again, half expecting to see Rex staring back at me. “Wait… If one of the Timberwolves was waiting in the shadows for Rex to drive Kaya to him, I might not have noticed. They smell like humans.”
“They are humans. Dangerous humans.” Sebastian cleared his throat. “We’ve been trying to find the mastermind behind Evolution Defense, but we’re still coming up empty. That information is protected behind a powerful board of directors. But if they’ve discovered Kaya’s a hybrid shifter, they’ll want her for their research. And using the old Timberwolves to help achieve their goals definitely wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for them.”
It was more information I already knew but didn’t want to fucking think about.
“Isabelle and I have been investigating some copies of property deeds that my mother sent to her brother for safekeeping before she died in the fire. My father kept them under lock and key. Even I didn’t know the locations or how many he’d built.” Sebastian paused. “The first two were vacant land, but there seems to be activity at a facility in Death Valley. It could be another of Nero’s former satellite facilities. We’ll visit after the new moon, and I’ll let you know what we find. Maybe we can connect that back to Duane and the Flagstaff faction of this new group.”
The depth of Antonio Severino’s appetite for power was only matched by his paranoia. He hadn’t even told his eldest son where all the facilities were. We all knew we’d probably only scratched the surface.
“Thanks. I’ll keep you posted on the, uh, emperors.”
“Call me if you need backup,” he replied.
Then the line went dead. I glanced up as the door to the sprawling ranch house opened. Asher walked toward my car, gun in hand. Our new Alpha was learning the ropes quickly. He had probably caught the scent of blood and jaguars. Better to show up armed and ready.
I got out of the car and put my hands where he could see them. “Just me, mate.”
“Not true.” Asher holstered his gun. “Some other jaguar is—” his gaze snapped over to the trunk of my car as he sniffed the air “—bleeding in your trunk.”
I opened it and lifted the tarp covering Rex’s body. “This guy was hunting Kaya tonight. He missed twice, but Rex…” I shook my head, meeting Asher’s eyes. “Rex never missed. Definitely not twice.”
Asher frowned. “Looks like he hit you.” He glanced at the blood on my shirt and back to my face.
“It barely grazed me.” I didn’t tell him that it hurt like hell. I had bigger problems to deal with. I narrowed my eyes. “He had his rifle, his scope, and a clear shot. But he hit the building and the pavement.”
“You don’t think he was actually trying to hit her?”
“Right. They must want her alive. He could have been trying to make her run into a trap.” I couldn’t tell him my hunch about why without revealing my part in how they would’ve known Kaya was a skin walker in the first place. “We need to get rid of the body, and tomorrow I’ll be on Duane Clarkson’s ass. He’s meeting with the wannabe senator’s people again.”
“The guy who wants to out us to the public?”
“The very same.” I scanned the darkness. “It would be easier just to kill them both.”
Asher gripped my uninjured shoulder until he had my full attention. He was an inch taller than I was, but since he’d ascended to the Alpha, he seemed to have grown another foot. There was a feral magic that surrounded an Alpha that I didn’t fully comprehend. I couldn’t put my finger on it yet, other than to call it a “knowing” when it came to their pack. The pack’s previous Alpha, Allen Caldwell, could sense the location of his pack members, and Adam Sloan, the Alpha of the Reno Pack, could sense the emotions of his. Asher hadn’t told anyone his ability yet. I damned sure hoped it wasn’t mind reading or I was fucked.
“You can’t kill a politician without pointing a spotlight on us, which is the last thing we need.” His gaze weighed on me, heavier than his hand on my shoulder. “I know Kaya is special to you. We all love her, and we’ll protect her. You need to trust the pack. You’re not an assassin anymore.”
Oh, but I felt like one right now. The temptation to wipe out my targets and guarantee Kaya’s safety sang a tantalizing melody in my ear. It would be simple. There wouldn’t be any clues leading back to the pack.
“Vance, this is a line you can’t cross. We only kill when we have to.”
I flinched. Fuck, maybe he could read my mind.
Asher pointed to the body in my trunk. “This guy was shooting at Kaya and grazed both of you with a bullet. You had to protect yourselves. But—”
“How did you know that?” I interrupted. I retraced my steps from the moment I got out of the car. He had noticed my injury from the blood on my shirt, but I hadn’t mentioned Kaya’s.
He hesitated. “Alpha instincts.” Before I could question him further, he went on. “I’m trying to point out, you killed this man in self-defense, but if you go after Brad Newport, you won’t save Kaya. You’ll doom us all.”
His words stung. Because on some level, I knew they were true. Even if it was a clean kill, the Feds would descend on Sedona in herds, and they wouldn’t leave until they had a suspect. A year ago I wouldn’t have cared…
This was why Antonio Severino had always believed werewolves to be weaker than jaguar shifters. Jaguars like me were the lone gunmen, killing on command. No questions and no consciences to slow us down. But werewolves ran in packs, a brotherhood Antonio could never understand. Even I was still struggling. Family was a foreign concept for me.
I knocked Asher’s hand off my shoulder and put some distance between us. “I gave you my allegiance. Hell, I was the one pushing for you to become the Alpha of this pack. But if I find out Brad Newport is planning to hurt Kaya, he’s a dead man.”
Asher cursed under his breath and glared at the stars overhead. “That’s how I felt when those jaguar assassins from Nero, or whatever they’re calling themselves now, took Naomi, and I almost got half my pack killed.” His dark eyes met mine. “Brad Newport knows where I live, and he knows we have children. If something happens to him, you know damned well he’ll pass that information to people who will show up on my doorstep looking for blood.” Asher shook his head. “We can’t kill him. It’s not the answer.” There was a compulsion in his tone that called to the animal inside me and demanded obedience. More of that Alpha magic. “I’ve got your back, Vance. I need to know you’ve got mine.”
I crossed my arms, fighting the animal instinct to obey my Alpha. “Have I ever given you a reason to doubt my loyalty?”
“No.” He narrowed his eyes, lowering his voice. “But this is different. This involves Kaya. I need your word that you w
on’t go after Newport until we understand who all the players are and what the best course of action is. It’s too risky.”
I searched his eyes, wishing I could lie to him. But even though I wasn’t a werewolf, I had sworn my allegiance. I would lay down my life to protect his, and he would do the same for mine. I didn’t have to like it, but I needed to trust his judgment.
“Fine.” I clasped his forearm. “But we have to keep Kaya safe.”
“We will.” Asher’s featured softened as he released me. “Are you ever going to tell Kaya how you feel about her?”
I shook my head. “She deserves a much better man than I am.” Just the thought of her with another man tore at me. I shoved it aside, focusing on the dead body in my trunk. “Besides, she’s a werewolf now, so there’s a mate for life out there someplace for her.” I lifted my gaze to Asher’s face. “But if he ever fucking makes her cry, not even you will stop me from killing that bastard.”
Asher shook his head with a spark in his dark eyes. “Fate paired a few wolves with jaguars up in Reno, you know.”
“Lucky bastards.” I grunted as I hoisted Rex’s dead weight over my good shoulder. “Too bad I’ve never had a good relationship with fate.” Eager to change the subject, I pointed behind the house. “Let’s finish this so I can get some sleep. New moon tomorrow night.”
Asher nodded, then led the way toward the pyre at the back of the property. After Caldwell’s death, we had kept the property under the pack’s secret LLC. We couldn’t risk anyone discovering shifter DNA, so burning the bodies was a must, and we needed a place to do that. Because the ranch was remote and we waited until late at night, we’d managed to keep our fires under the radar.
I dropped the body on the pyre and watched as Asher drenched everything in lighter fluid. He was all-business, but my thoughts kept wandering to Kaya finding her mate. What would I do then? We were packmates. Would I be able to stay and watch her smile affectionately at another man?
Damn. I needed to think about something else.
Asher lit the fire, and we stepped back as the flames danced up into the darkness.
