Passion's Prey: The Shadow Shifters

by A. C. Arthur

  However, his plans to rule needed to be bigger, their territory expanded. Hence this deal with Kensington and his boys with the guns. Once he made this purchase he’d probably have to get rid of Kensington—that guy definitely knew too much. And he wasn’t above running his nasty mouth about Sabar and his plans and their existence. Not that Sabar was against having the existence of the Rogues known—it would happen in due time anyway—still, everything had to be planned perfectly.

  “We’re almost there,” Black, the huge dark-skinned shifter that now traveled everywhere Darel did, said from the driver’s seat.

  “Good,” Sabar heard himself replying. He shifted in his seat, his clothes feeling more than uncomfortable. It had been like that the last two days: Clothes were too much for him to bear. Each time he’d been awake he’d worn his silk robe and nothing else, the cool softness rubbing against his skin in a soothing manner that turned him on and baffled him at the same time. “When we get inside I’ll do all the talking,” he said.

  Darel nodded.

  “You carry the money and don’t give it to anyone until we see the product.”

  Darel nodded again.

  “And stop acting like a fucking mute!” Sabar screamed, his patience wearing thin.

  When Darel’s head snapped around and he glared at Sabar, not with human eyes, but the dark green-rimmed eyes of his cat, Sabar growled back. He was sick of Darel’s bitch-ass attitude. If he had a problem with Sabar or this operation, the shifter could very well walk out the door. He was tired of giving a damn.

  The corner of Darel’s mouth lifted, his eyes glinting. “Sure thing, boss,” was his reply, his New York accent a little more fluent than Sabar had ever heard it before.

  It was about fifteen minutes to midnight when they pulled up to the eight-foot metal gates that looked like they surrounded the entire premise. When the Hummer drove slowly up to the speaker, everyone was quiet. Black pushed in the code that Sabar had given him, and they drove through without any problems. Kensington had given Sabar a detailed list of things for them to do tonight.

  “Wasn’t the gate supposed to close?” Thunder asked, looking back as the vehicle continued forward.

  “Probably staying open to let us out afterward,” Black said.

  Five minutes later, after they’d parked as close to the door as they could without running up on the sidewalk, the four Rogues were entering the building, using a side door entrance that had also been outlined in Kensington’s notes. Thunder reached for the doorknob. When it turned and the door was open, Black went in first with Darel right behind him. Sabar went in next, and Thunder locked the door before following them.

  It was dark and chilled in the open space. Darel used a penlight from his pocket to illuminate the way to the elevator they’d been told was at the far end of the left hallway. They boarded the elevator without any issues. By the time they stepped off, Black and Thunder were both gripping huge black guns in their hands. Sabar walked ahead of them, empty-handed.

  Darel watched him move with his cocky air of superiority. He was shorter than Darel by a couple of inches, but in his ass-kicking boots no one could tell. He walked in front of them while Darel carried the two briefcases full of money. There was half a million dollars in each bag; they’d counted it for the third time about an hour ago. Sabar was buying two hundred UK79865 rifles. Once the deal was made, Sabar was hopping on a private plane and heading to Albuquerque, where he was setting up another base for his business. There were already ten Rogues there waiting for him and the shipment. Those were details Darel made sure he knew.

  “They should be down here, in the last room,” Sabar said, turning down yet another long hallway.

  This place seemed to be linked by one long-ass hallway after another. Darel felt like they were walking in a maze, even though they were following Kensington’s map. The place was huge and located just far enough down the winding road they’d traveled to be discreet, which he suspected was the reason Robert Slakeman had built the facility that manufactured all of his weapons here.

  Sabar stopped at the door. Behind him Darel also stopped. He figured Sabar was waiting for someone to open the door. He was, after all, the boss. And Darel was so fucking fed up with this particular boss. He nodded and Thunder took a step forward, moving in front of Sabar. He touched the knob, then looked up in question before opening it.

  “Well, open it, goddammit! I don’t have all night to get this done,” Sabar yelled.

  Over Sabar’s head, Thunder met Darel’s gaze. With a smile, Darel nodded and Thunder pushed open the door.

  * * *

  Sidney Pierson was the only son of General Oscar Pierson, who had been forced to retire from the US Marine Corps amid allegations of torturing POWs during his last tour in Iraq three years ago. Sidney, however, had never wanted a career in the armed forces. What he wanted, and what his father had been doing a damn good job of providing despite all his other letdowns, was any- and everything he wanted, when he wanted it. He was used to living a certain lifestyle, one he wasn’t about to lose because his father was no longer a general in the marines.

  General Pierson had lots of sponsors, as he liked to call them. These were people in very high places with very deep pockets, who needed favors only the general could grant. It was his father who had introduced Sidney to Bob Slakeman and it was Sidney who through his father had been brokering international deals for Slakeman. It was Ralph Kensington’s job to keep said dealings off the radar. So far, the overweight senator-elect had held up his end of the bargain.

  But this time, this deal, had Sidney and his father a little shaky.

  “He’s going to show,” Kensington said for the third time since they’d been holed up in this office.

  Sidney was lighting his third cigarette in the last hour. On his left arm was a nicotine patch and in his back pocket were gum chunks that tasted like stale paste. And in his fingers on its way to his lips was a newly lit Newport—bad habit, too damn hard to quit, so he figured to hell with it.

  “He’d better show,” he said after his first puff. “And he’d better have the money. We don’t have room for mistakes. Not tonight.” He was shaking his head, thinking of all that was riding on this deal.

  His father had something else going on, something big with the government—or covertly with the government since anything on the up-and-up, the general couldn’t be involved with. The country was still at war, which meant the Piersons were still in business.

  Standing to Kensington’s left was a new player, one he’d met tonight for the first time. Palmero Greer was from somewhere on the West Coast. He’d been introduced as a regional facilitator, which to Sidney meant he was a mole sent by the bigwig to make sure everything went as planned. Since he knew Bob Slakeman personally, Sidney was more than a little peeved at the man’s need to oversee one of his buys by sending Kensington and this thinly built guy wearing the shiny-ass tight suit.

  He puffed on his cigarette again, long and hard.

  “So where is he?” he asked, shifting from one foot to the other. He’d never liked the waiting game. Besides, most of his buyers seemed anxious to get the deal over with, showing up at least ten to fifteen minutes early, ready to rock and roll. Lifting his arm, he looked at the clear face of his watch and frowned. Five minutes after twelve.

  “He’ll be here,” Kensington said. “I got a text from him about twenty minutes ago saying he was on his way and not far from the building. Just calm down. You look like you’re about to have a fucking baby over there. Sucking on those sticks like a dick.”

  Sidney had been just about to put said stick to his lips. He looked over at Kensington with a fuck-you glare and proceeded with his next puff.

  “We’re too open here,” Greer said quietly. “We should have done this somewhere more secure.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, more secure? We’re in a secluded warehouse, dammit. What’s more secure?” Sidney asked with disgust.

  Gree
r didn’t frown, didn’t do more than give him a tired glance. “A secluded warehouse that belongs to Slakeman. You might as well have put out an APB letting every law official in the city know what’s going down.”

  Sidney felt like he was getting sick. His nose kept running and he’d been swallowing some nasal crap all damn day long. He choked up something, leaning over to cough and spit on the floor. When he returned upright he saw the two bozos sent to watch him both giving him a look of thorough disgust. He almost laughed at how comical their faces were.

  “Nobody cares what we’re doing out here. This is private property; they can’t just come in here whenever they feel like it. So this is the safest place in the city to move the amount of steel we’re moving tonight.”

  Greer shook his head. “Amateur.”

  “Who are you talking to? Man, I’m no stranger to this game. I’ve been doing it for years.” Sidney talked to the back of the guy’s head since Greer had started walking toward one of the large windows on the other side of the office.

  “And that’s why he called me in,” Greer mumbled.

  “Look, Sidney, just calm down,” Kensington said. “We’ll be done with this deal in a few minutes, then you can go get yourself more drugs or more smokes or whatever the hell’s got you so strung out tonight.”

  “I don’t do drugs,” Sidney said adamantly. He was telling the truth. Drugs would hamper his thinking and that would fuck up his money, which was not an option. He’d smoke on these cancer sticks until hell froze over but he wasn’t snorting shit or sticking no goddamn needles in his arm to get high. He didn’t even want to move that shit, which was why he’d become Slakeman’s buyer instead of taking on other financially lucrative ventures through his father’s connections.

  “Whatever you say, just be the fuck quiet and we’ll get this over with.” Kensington had now joined in with the yelling.

  “Shhhhh,” Greer hissed.

  He extended a hand toward them, pointing a finger as if they needed to know he was specifically telling them to shut the hell up.

  “Someone’s coming,” he continued and moved toward the door. He plastered his back to the wall so that when the door swung open he’d be standing right behind it. Digging into the waistband of his pants he pulled out a gun, clicked the safety off.

  “Whoa, wait a minute. This is not how my deals go down,” Sidney was saying, taking a step toward Greer and the door.

  He stopped when Greer lifted his gun hand, pointing the fucker right at him.

  “Get in position,” Greer said, his face twisting in a lethal sneer.

  “Who is this guy, Miami Vice?” Sidney asked.

  Kensington pulled on his arm, saying in a hushed tone, “Just get back here.”

  “No!” Sidney yelled. “This is not how I work. It’s not how Slakeman wants business conducted.”

  His words died in the next instant as the door was nearly kicked off its hinges and Greer—or he should probably call him look-alike Detective Ricardo Tubbs—pointed his gun, finger on the trigger.

  Chapter 28

  Saturday, 12 AM

  “Something’s going down,” Eric said into his cell phone as he drove his Acura through the city streets like a man on a mission. “All available officers have been called down to this warehouse in Woodland.”

  “Drugs?” Dorian asked, already getting out of his bed, grabbing the pants he’d thrown over the chair and stepping into them.

  “Weapons and drugs I hear. SWAT’s even coming in. This is big. You should come down just in case,” he said.

  “Yeah, text me the address and I’ll be there,” Dorian said, disconnecting the call. If SWAT was being called in, it was big. Besides, the only warehouse Dorian knew of in Woodland belonged to Robert Slakeman Enterprises, the arms dealer suspected of making deals with the devil to accommodate his lavish lifestyle. Hell yeah, he was going out there to see what was going on.

  * * *

  The moment their SUV pulled up, X scented Rogues. He looked to his right where Caprise was sitting and frowned.

  “I can do this,” she told him, patting his knee reassuringly.

  In the seat in front of them Nick shook his head and X knew he’d heard Caprise’s words. Nick had already given X the nastiest case of stink eye the moment he saw Caprise heading for the vehicle. She’d told her brother to kick rocks, or something along those lines. Rome had wisely kept his opinions to himself.

  “You stay behind me,” he told her.

  “X—” she started to say.

  He put his hand over her mouth to silence her. “You’d better be on my back like flies on shit, you hear me, Caprise? This is not negotiable or I swear you’ll never see sunlight again.”

  She blinked and blinked, then tilted her head to the side as if to say You can let me go now. He removed his hand from her mouth, and she sat back against the seat.

  “Just because I’m in love with you doesn’t mean I have to listen to everything you say. But since we’re on your turf, I guess I can bow to your infinite wisdom.”

  She’d said all this with the prettiest smile he’d ever seen and X was instantly hard. Damn, he thought with an inward sigh, he was in love with this woman. It hit him just like that in the instant she smiled at him. Sure, he knew now she was his mate and had accepted that, but X had never put too much stock in the word love. Until now.

  Behind them, two black vans filled with shifter guards pulled up. When all the vehicles were parked Rome came to stand in the center of the semicircle the shadows had formed.

  “The gate was open,” he started. “That’s not a good sign. This facility manufactures defense weapons; there should be guards and locks and alarms, the whole nine yards. But we just drove right up.”

  “Setup?” Ezra asked.

  Nick nodded. “That’s exactly the way we’re going to play this. Everybody armed and ready.”

  “Shoot before shifting,” Rome added.

  There were mumbles but when Rome held up his hand they ceased. He pointed to the com link at his ear, signaling they were going quiet, no communication except through their secure com links. Nick and X already knew their jobs and motioned their separate teams accordingly.

  X was followed immediately by ten guards, including his personal guard, Zach. They went around the back of the building to find an entrance. Rome and his team would go through the front door. Nick and his team would make their way to the roof.

  The night air was stuffy; today had been humid with scattered showers. When X put his hand on the doorknob, it was slick but didn’t turn. He hadn’t figured the doors would simply open for him, so he was prepared. Pulling out a device no bigger than a cell phone, he punched in codes that searched the area for connectivity. He’d designed this device to be able to penetrate any security system, as long as said system used streaming data. Red would indicate no and green yes. For a couple of heart-stopping seconds he stared at the device in the palm of his hand. When it finally blinked green he felt partial relief, then a bigger part concern.

  This building wasn’t being monitored at all.

  “Clear,” X whispered in the com link. Rome and Nick were waiting for his go-ahead before they tried to enter.

  If there had been an alarm system, X would have hacked into the computer system to disarm it. But there was nothing. He wondered if he should tell Nick and Rome, but figured they were already going under the assumption this was a setup. Which to X only meant that whoever was in this building and had brought them here under false pretenses was fair game to shoot to kill.

  Slipping his device into his back pocket, X pulled another small metal tool from the utility belt designed specifically for and worn by all the shadow guards. It wasn’t as big as those fanny pack things—he’d been clear, and Nick had agreed, that those were not something the guards would wear—but it held a lot of his tools of the trade. One of those trades being breaking and entering when need be. Of course this conflicted with his job as a federal agent. It also confl
icted with Nick’s and Rome’s human jobs, as well as those of all the guards who functioned in the human world. But they couldn’t deny who they were, and tonight’s mission would be protecting the humans just as much as the shifters. They all understood this and would proceed accordingly.

  When the knob turned in X’s hand, he pulled the door open and took the first few steps inside. He was about to turn around and signal for the others to follow when he bumped right into Caprise. His gaze narrowed on her but he didn’t say anything.

  “What?” she asked. “I’m right behind you.”

  That she was, he acknowledged by signaling the others to follow suit. Once they were inside X knew he was in the basement. On the ride into town, they’d been able to find some very old blueprints of this building, as one of the guards worked for the Department of Public Works and had assigned crews to come out and inspect the plumbing after a water main break two years ago. It could have been redesigned since then, but they figured it probably wasn’t.

  “I’m in,” X said into his com link.

  A few minutes later Rome reported, “I’m in.”

  Jax was with Rome. This shifter’s human half hadn’t always been a law-abiding citizen, so X assumed he’d probably done the actual breaking-and-entering part. Should anything ever be revealed about their existence, Rome, as an FL and the Assembly leader, would be protected at all costs—even if that meant another shadow took the fall for him. One of the new standards implemented and voted on by the Stateside Assembly—which consisted of each of the Faction Leaders and two officers from their Zone—was that the Assembly leader and the First Female were to be protected to the fullest extent.