by Anya Nowlan
“So, we’re going?” Tex asked, pulling out his own phone as Thatch tossed his on the bed, Madeline stirring a little in time to hide it under the covers.
“Yeah. Let me get my fucking shirt. You calling someone from the squad?”
“Already on it. I won’t have her being here alone,” Tex said, grabbing his black T-shirt from a chair while Dutch’s number blinked on the screen. “Hey man. The mission hasn’t come through yet, right? Can you tell Connor we need eyes on our girl as soon as possible? We need to make a run. Yeah, it’s important. Thanks.”
Tex shut down the call and hiked on his jacket after he put on a shoulder holster and put one of his sidearms in there, checking it beforehand for ammo. “Connor will be here in twenty, or he’ll send Grant or Dutch. We’re good. I’ll tell Barkley as we head out to keep an eye on her and the tykes until then. Good?”
“Works for me,” Thatch said, zipping up his own jacket.
He looked for his phone on the bed but he couldn’t find it without moving Madeline. Last thing he wanted was for her to wake up and open herself up to a window of time when one of Squad Six wasn’t with her. Gritting his teeth, he left the phone somewhere hidden in the covers and pecked Madeline’s forehead lightly, with Tex doing the same. Then, they both straightened up and practically ran out of the room.
They each grabbed one of Barkley’s bikes, and rode through midday Chicago in relative obscurity, their identities hidden behind helmets. It was surreal how everything felt different now that Thatch knew he was a father. Any intersection he drove over looked like it was waiting to screw him over, every kid walking with their parents made his heart swell. It was making him softer. He loved it, despite having assumed that he wouldn’t.
They made it to the bakery with two minutes left to spare and parked fast. Thatch took his helmet off only when he was already inside, scanning the place for the distasteful but familiar form of Spade. He was sitting in one of the back booths, sipping on something aromatic that could be loosely called coffee. Two steaming cups of black tar sat across from him. Thatch slid in first into the booth and Tex followed him.
“I was beginning to think you’d stand me up on our little date,” Spade said with a pout that looked ridiculous on his chiseled, sharp features.
Slicked-back jet-black hair, piercing green eyes, and high cheekbones begging to get mashed into the dirt, he was the epitome of a ruthless dirtbag. Standing about half an inch taller than the wolves, he carried himself with the kind of poise that Thatch could only see as detestably pretentious.
Though Thatch didn’t have much personal contact with him, he knew that Spade and Connor had a sort of tense truce between them. As big of an asshole as Spade was, he was always right on the money with his information. And that unnerved Thatch. Couldn’t trust a man he couldn’t get a clear read on.
“Cut the bull crap, man. What’s going on?” Tex asked first, pushing the coffee away from himself like it was laced with poison.
“I hear we can be mutually beneficial to each other, boys,” Spade said, leaning back in his seat like a big cat stretching out.
It was the first time that Thatch realized that he had no idea what kind of a shifter the intel officer was. He took a quick whiff but even that was ambiguous. Could be a wolf, could be a fucking tiger for all he knew. But he looked like a snake if anyone were to ask Thatch. One of those types that sticks its fangs in you and then slithers away to watch you die.
“How?”
“I hear the mother of your pups has some unwanted attention,” Spade said casually, twirling a spoon in his cappuccino. “Shame if she ends up getting killed.”
“Is that a threat?” Tex growled, Thatch’s shoulders growing tense at the same time.
“No, an observation. I have no reason to kill her. Though I find it interesting how you Squad Six boys keep knocking up your marks. Did someone make a bet?” Spade asked, quirking his brow.
“Watch it, Spade. We’re in no mood to play. I don’t think you could take both of us in this little fucking booth,” Thatch warned, clutching the table so hard his knuckles were turning white.
He could reach out and rip the man’s throat out before Spade knew what hit him. Or he was pretty sure he could. The dark smirk that spread over Spade’s lips made him wonder for a moment. Intel guys didn’t get where they were just by sneaking around. Most of them were worse hard-asses than the spec-ops boys who thought so highly of themselves. But Spade was cruising for a bruising and the last few days had not left Thatch in a forgiving mood.
“All right. Simmer down, mutts. I assume you know that it’s The Arctics that are after your girl, yes?”
Thatch leaned back slightly. Figured. “I wasn’t sure, but the fucker we capped on the train was a wolf, so it was a decent enough guess.”
The Arctics were one of the more vocal, and definitely one of the best prepared and funded werewolf terrorist groups loose in the world now. They had training, they had strength, and the kind of half-witted, possessed belief in their own truth that made them dangerous as hell. The Arctics were convinced that the only way the world could keep revolving and evolving was if werewolves were given full power over, well, everything. And they weren’t shy in their attempts to grab that power.
“Well, I’m confirming it. They’re planning a hit on Xavian Technologies Limited. We don’t know when, though.”
“So that’s why this place is teeming with fucking commandos,” Tex said, his hand rolling into a fist. “And why they let rats like you skitter around Chicago. I thought you were the warmer climate kind of guy,” Tex spat, obviously not completely giving up on the chance of picking a fight with Spade.
Spade grinned, pulling a hand through his hair. He was dressed in a suit, looking like he was minutes away from going to shake hands with the mayor. Always a sleaze, if anyone were to ask Thatch.
“I come and slum up in the north if I have to. Yes, this is why your squad was here to begin with. Happy little coincidence, all of it. Your girl would have been found anyway once they got around to scoping out the employees, seeing as she works there. I’ll consider it good luck that you two made such a mess out of extracting her, though. It brought us to this table, after all.”
“Spit it out already, Spade. We don’t have all day,” Thatch muttered, clenching his jaw. He was beginning to understand why Connor hated dealing with Spade so much.
“I have a job for you two. I don’t tell Hemingway where you’re hiding your girl and I’ll grease the wheels for you when you and the rest of your little friends stop The Arctics from blowing up Xavian headquarters. You know, keep your woman and your pups from being sent to South Africa or something. They’re going to be hitting the main research building and the cancer clinic on the eastern side of town. Tonight,” Spade said, raising his hand to check the time on his expensive-looking watch. “In a few hours, actually. I won’t tell you when. Preserve the mystery and all that.”
Tex flashed a look at Thatch and they both frowned, staring at Spade. Unless the man was fucking with them then that sounded like a good deal. So what was the catch?
“And what do you want?”
“I want the armaments,” Spade said simply.
“The fucking bombs they took from the train? The hell are we supposed to get those?” Tex barked, catching himself midway through and lowering his voice.
“I hear they’re planning to blow up the hospital with them. The arms they stole are specially made for Marine use. No one else has those puppies yet. And Xavian does a lot of shifter-related research. Viruses, treatments, genetic enhancements… my guess is they want something from the research labs, and they want the explosion that wipes the hospital from the map to look like some grand government conspiracy against shifters. You know how it goes. A little drama makes the world go around.”
Spade twirled his finger around lazily, rolling his eyes.
Thatch paused. Shifters were not hidden in the world anymore, not by a longshot. But they weren’t
exactly welcomed with open arms either. Plenty of cultures and religions saw them as harbingers of hell, or simply unnatural. There was constant talk about regulating shifters, marking and tracking them. It wouldn’t have been an impossible stretch of the imagination to find some government plot directed against a company that was known to do a lot of good for the shifter community.
“Wait. You want the bombs? You mean The Firm?” Thatch asked, mulling it over.
“No. I want the bombs. The Firm can never know. You can say they didn’t have them at the scene at all, or they went missing in the scuffle. I don’t care. You’ll transport the whole load to me and me alone at a location I will text you.”
“And what if we don’t?” Thatch asked, catching Tex by the arm when he was about to stand up and probably shout something about how they’d never work with a sleaze like Spade.
“Then I’ll push this button,” Spade said, raising his phone so both Thatch and Tex could see it, “And let Hemingway know where Madeline and your pups are. I will guarantee that he’ll have men there before you two can get back and I can also guarantee that you’ll never see them again. I keep my word. Just ask Connor.”
“You’re a bastard,” Tex growled through clamped teeth.
“I’ve been called worse,” Spade said, taking another sip of his coffee. “So, we have a deal?”
Thatch locked gazes with Tex and they had one of their silent conversations. Thatch could pretty much imagine every argument that was going through Tex’s head and his counter to it, and vice versa. At the end of the day, Madeline, Raze, and Rhone came first now. Spade might have been a psycho, but he was no terrorist, not like The Arctics. Finally, Tex’s expression softened slightly and he nodded with grim unhappiness.
“Fine, we’ll do it. Text Tex the details,” Thatch said with a note of resignation, standing up. “Is that all?” he asked as Tex stood up as well.
“That’s it,” Spade confirmed, grinning his cold smile as he shook hands with both of them.
Thatch and Tex slipped out of the booth and were making their way out of the bakery when Spade called after them, still standing.
“Just one more thing. You have ten hours to sort this out. Or I’ll be seeing you in the railway district.”
Thatch’s posture tensed again as he put his helmet on and slammed the door shut behind him. Fucking intel spooks. There always had to be a catch.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Madeline
Madeline woke up when the door to the room shut behind the twins. She saw a flash of blue jeans as Thatch disappeared, almost in time with his phone buzzing somewhere in the covers again. Yawning, Madeline tossed through the covers, looking for the phone to shut it off. When she found it, sleep blurring her vision, she was about to hit the off button and lock the screen, which was still unlocked for now, when she automatically read the message.
“You better get me my fucking money tonight or everything I have on Tex is going to Criminal Appeals.”
Madeline blinked a few times, reading and re-reading the message until she was sure she was seeing it right.
Criminal Appeals? What the hell?
“Thatch? Tex?” she called out hesitantly, pausing for a moment to listen if someone was answering back.
Silence. Her finger hovered above the screen, wondering when it would lock on her and hide the message.
What if they’re in trouble somehow? she wondered.
A second more and she committed to it. She could always apologize later, but she’d hate herself if she allowed something to happen to either of the two men she was growing so attached to because they were busy trying to save her. Madeline opened the messages and read a dozen similar ones, confirming drop-off locations and dates for exorbitant amounts of money. The amounts were so big that she couldn’t believe that Thatch could obtain it all very easily.
Then the breadcrumbs took her to his e-mails, and she found one from the same person, a Blake Wilby, detailing his so-called proof. Every line that Madeline read filled her with dread. Apparently, Blake Wilby had worked on an explosives disposal unit after Tex’s last official mission in Iraq as part of the Navy SEALs. During what was supposed to be a routine sweep, Blake had found an unexploded bomb left behind by Tex as a trap.
During the dismantling process, the bomb had gone off, costing Blake a leg and his left arm. He claimed that it was because the explosive was put together in a faulty manner. Though the official inquiry into the matter had found nothing, never even reaching Tex by the looks of it, Blake was adamant that it was Tex’s fault and he had the paperwork to prove it.
Madeline paged through stacks of lab reports, burn patterns, and explosion descriptions, and dread slowly took hold of her. She was sitting up now, staring at the phone as she read through all of it as quickly as she could. While she never really worked with explosives herself, she knew plenty of people at Xavian that did. She’d even helped out a few times doing spectro analysis work for them. As she flipped through the virtual stacks of data, one thing kept catching her eye.
The chemical composition of the explosion didn’t seem right. There had been several samples taken from the area of the explosion that left Blake wounded, but when she looked at the compounds involved, they didn’t make sense. One of the chemicals, SEH-985, was not something usually seen in common mixtures and she couldn’t think of a reason why a highly volatile, very unstable compound like that would be involved in official SEAL armaments.
Chewing her lower lip, Madeline thumbed the settings on the phone and set the screen to allow her access without Thatch’s pass code. It wasn’t a big stretch to imagine that whoever had done this work for Blake’s case had simply missed the mostly insignificant, small dose of an unregulated chemical present at the site. She would have missed it too, had she not heard her supervisor, Charlie, discussing it once when she’d popped by the office after having Raze and Rhone.
You shouldn’t be snooping, Madeline, she told herself, pushing the blankets off and slowly getting dressed.
Still, she kept sneaking glances at the phone and when it buzzed again with another threatening message, she jumped up a little in fright.
“I mean it, you son of a bitch. Today or I fucking end your brother. Get me my money.”
Guilt pooled in the pit of her stomach. Madeline didn’t need to guess why Thatch had been ignoring this guy. It was all because of her. She could see that they’d agreed on an exchange that was supposed to take place the previous day, but he’d missed it because he was babysitting her. And now it could mean that Tex’s record could be put in danger. Even the appeal going under review with the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals could spell trouble for him. That was the last thing she wanted.
Madeline paced back and forth, looking at the phone over and over again. What could she do? If she didn’t say anything, she knew Thatch would just let it go and he and Tex would try to sort it out later. Did Tex even know? Probably not.
This is screwing everything up… I should have never gone to Chicago that day, she thought desperately, knowing very well that feeling sorry for herself wouldn’t help anyone, but she did it for a minute anyway.
Finally, she grabbed the phone and tucked it in her back pocket, walking into the bathroom to clean up a little. She combed her hair and took a good look at herself in the mirror, giving a small grimace seeing her messed-up makeup. But her skin was positively glowing and despite the worried frown she was wearing, she looked younger than she had in a good long while. The things two hot ex-SEALs could do to a girl.
Resting her hands on the sink, she took a deep breath, giving herself a moment to talk things over with the arguing sides residing in her head.
You can do nothing and trust that they will get this fixed. Or you can try to help… those chemical patterns make no sense. But they probably would to Charlie. Could I just call him? Ask him about it? He’d never answer a question so potentially delicate over the phone, so… I’d have to go see him. But I can’t leave
here. Could I?
An idea sparked and Madeline straightened up. Thatch and Tex were not around. She knew it wasn’t very safe sneaking out of the protective folds of the Bear Den, but her kids would be safe here. Maybe she could duck out for an hour or so, talk to Charlie and be back before anyone even knew what happened? In any case, didn’t she owe that much to Thatch and Tex—to at least try and help them while they were doing so much for her?
Taking a deep breath, Madeline pulled on her shoes and walked out of the bedroom. She went to her room and found Mary there, playing with Raze and Rhone. Both of the boys immediately looked up and reached out their hands for her, smiling brightly. She grinned, crouching down and giving both of her boys big hugs.
“Are you two having a good morning? I’m so sorry I left them with you, Mary! I, um…”
“No apologies necessary,” Mary laughed, sitting in the middle of the floor and building what looked like a castle made out of building blocks. “I’ve been having a fine time with the young gents and I think their mommy needed a little R & R… or is it T & T?” Mary asked with a tittering giggle.
Madeline blushed madly, standing back up.
“Do you know where Thatch and Tex went?”
“They said they had an errand to run and that Connor would be here any minute to keep an eye on us. They seem to think I can’t drive that damn tank if I need to,” Mary snorted, looking almost defiant for a moment. Madeline had to admit, if she had to pick a force not to mess with in this household, it would probably be Mary over both the retired Colonel and the twins! “They’ll be back soon enough. But you should go have some breakfast and read a book or something. I don’t intend to give you your boys back today and I think you can use a bit of time for yourself, hmm?”
