But still, this man before him was no better; he was as slippery as a fucking eel and there was no real reason to believe Martinez, no reason at all.
For a second, Mars gawked at Martinez, then, praying the son of a bitch was pulling some kind of scam, spat, “You’re lying.”
It was the only thing that made sense. The only thing Mars wanted to believe, because Jackson couldn't have betrayed them like that, could he?
Martinez slashed a hand through the air. “I do not lie.”
“You’re human trafficking scum,” Mars snarled, rearing up off his bike. “Why the fuck should I believe you over our Prez?”
“Apparently your Prez wasn’t all that popular if he’s been demoted.” The cold words dripped ice.
“He’s dead,” Mars snapped. “He didn’t have much say in the demotion process.”
“I wonder by whose hand,” Martinez retorted, curiosity glinting in his black eyes. He sliced a hand through the air again, as though bringing an end to that subject, before he continued, “I make deals, lucrative ones. Jackson didn’t just want cash, he wanted my help. And to have his cooperation, I was more than willing to be of service.”
Mars narrowed his eyes. “Why are you telling me this? What’s in it for you?”
“Out of good faith.” Martinez spread his hands wide. “I do not want to stop dealing with your MC. Your…” He pondered his words a second. “Efficiency is most appreciated. Business has been very—” He pursed his lips. “Lucrative, since we got together. And that’s what matters in this business. The dollars. We’re both raking it in. Why mess up a good thing?”
Mars winced at that. Great. They were good at shifting human livestock from one place to another. What a fucking compliment.
Goddamn that bastard Jackson.
“What kind of help did Jackson want from you?” Mars asked softly, ignoring Martinez’s statement, more intent on discovering how deeply Jackson had been involved with this piece of shit before him.
“The tasks were varied.”
The simple answer had Mars tensing up. “What like?”
“An assassination here, a shooting there. As well as cash, of course.”
Mars scraped a hand over his jaw, contemplating just who could have been assassinated. When he put one and one together, the only thing that made sense was: “Cub.”
Martinez cocked a brow. “Excuse me?”
“Did Jackson have you take out a man named Cub?”
Martinez clicked his fingers and a guy scurried out of a Hummer with a tablet in his hand. The dude bowed his head over the PDA, then whispered something to his boss. “Si. We handled that particular transaction.”
Mars turned to face his brothers, saw the shock, horror, and disgust in their expressions. It took a lot to surprise any of his men. They were old, had seen a lot of shit in their time, and had come to expect the worst from humanity but for their piece of shit ex-Prez to have had Cub killed…?
Mars just wished he’d made Jackson suffer more during the challenge. Hell, he wished he could go back and make sure Jackson’s life ended in the most painful of ways imaginable.
“What else?” he demanded, his voice a low growl.
Martinez’s shrewd eyes narrowed. “Are you intending on continuing to work with my people?”
Mars shook his head. “No.”
“Then why should I tell you anything?” Another click of his fingers and the guns that had been aimed their way earlier, returned to that position.
Only this time, the passengers in the still-running Hummers also leapt out.
With that amount of metal aimed his way, Mars had a hard time keeping his bear contained, and he knew that if he felt that way, his brothers would too.
Shrugging his shoulders to ease the tension flooding him, he murmured, “You don’t want to do that.” And as prearranged, Mars clicked his own fingers and right at the back of the formation, Dickie shifted.
Seeing the shrewd calculation on Martinez’s face turn to horror had Mars biting back a chuckle.
It was a calculated risk having Dickie shift. He made a larger target than he did as a man, and that put him at risk of being shot. However, and his educated guess had been right, Mars had thought the sight of a Grizzly bear popping up out of nowhere would have made any of the soldiers present freeze rather than get trigger happy.
“Whe-Where the fuck did the oso come from?” Martinez babbled, backing away from Mars and over toward his Hummer again.
“There are plenty more in the warehouse, Martinez. And even more back at my clubhouse.”
“Are you fucking breeding them?” he shrieked, his spurs jangling as he backed up, the air suddenly perfumed with his terror. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me. You’re the sick shits trading in human flesh.” His top lip curled in disgust. “The Nomads are terminating their business with you, and you should be grateful that’s all we’re doing.”
“You think you can threaten me?” Martinez roared even as he carried on backing up, trying to get closer to the bulletproof SUVs…stupid shit didn’t realize they might protect him from bullets but not fucking bears.
“I know I can threaten you,” Mars retorted easily, knowing full well he had the upper hand. “Today, we part ways, and you should be grateful I’m not making you pay for your part in the murder of our President or the attempted murder of my mate.” He gritted his teeth as his bear growled its fury at being denied the taste of the blood of the man who had harmed Annette, but Mars wanted as little violence as possible this day.
He wanted the cartel to be so scared, they’d leave them the fuck alone without any blood having to be spilled. The instant Mars’s bear got involved, that shot out the fucking window, and that was the last thing he needed.
“It was business!” Martinez snapped.
“Well, this is business too. Get the fuck out of here, and never involve yourself with The Nomads again.” To punctuate his demand, Dickie roared. The sound echoed through the empty warehouse, and though it worked, one of the soldiers, in his fear, shot off a round of bullets.
“Fuck!” Mars yelled as three of his men shifted at his back. He didn’t have to turn around to know he had bears behind him; he could sense the magic in the air.
As bikes slammed into the ground when bears ran and leapt toward the cartel, Mars held his breath, waiting to see if more rounds would be shot. But thankfully, the sight of more bears seemed to have caused one reaction: terror.
The nearly thirty strong posse ran back to their Hummers, rammed themselves inside and reversed out the back of the warehouse. Some spun around inside the building, rubber burning as they drove off, tires squealing, each trundling away before they could be bear kibble.
“Is anyone hurt?” Mars called out as the Hummers drove off at full pelt.
“No. I got a glancing hit, but I’m okay,” Kiko snarled, and Mars turned to see his second in command glower down at his arm. Blood, shiny red, oozed from a skin wound, but Mars nodded in relief at the relatively tiny graze.
He looked around to make sure his men were okay, and when he saw they were, exhaled deeply. They’d been lucky. Once he made the admission to himself, he turned back to look at the bears who were lumbering around the warehouse. He wasn’t sure what they were looking for, had no clue why the men hadn’t shifted back, but as the men he’d brought along were ones he trusted, he let them have free reign to snoop around.
Staying on the back of his bike, he watched as one did a running jump, Mundo by the looks of it, and landed on an upper floor like it was a foot away rather than twenty feet up in the air. Knowing that was Mundo’s trademark leap, he rolled his eyes at the show off, then waited to see what his brothers had to report. It was curiosity more than anything. Plus, if they could snag something that belonged to the cartel, then all the better.
It took less than five minutes all in all, then Mundo called out, “Shit, Mars, you want to come and see this crap.”
“What is it?” he hollered back, not particularly wanting to get off his bike unless it was worth it. He wanted to get back to the clubhouse ASAP. Annette was alone there for the first time, and only fuck knew what was going down.
If she got into a fight with an old lady or a bunny, Mars knew he’d be the one up shit creek, and considering the bunnies were all a bunch of bitches, most of whom he’d fucked, and the old ladies weren’t much better, Mars highly doubted it would be hard for Annette to find trouble.
Hell, it was easier to think that than admit to himself he wanted to breathe her in, to load himself up with her scent.
“People.”
Mars blinked at Mundo’s simple retort, then frowned when he looked up at the landing his brother had jumped on, and saw his naked ass gawking down at him.
“What?”
Mundo nodded in earnest. “People. About fifty of them. Well, I say people but they’re all women.”
“What the fuck?” Mars snarled, climbing off his bike and striding over to that side of the warehouse. He looked inside smaller rooms that were nothing more than shoddy pieces of dry wall cubed together to form enclosed spaces as he sought out a staircase.
When he found one, Kiko and some of the other bears were at his back as he ran up the steps. “Where are they?” he demanded from Mundo, who immediately strode on ahead to where he’d been sniffing.
Hell, the scent of a mass congregation of humans wasn’t all that difficult to smell even in this form. Unwashed bodies, waste… the air was rife with the pungent odors. He wasn’t the only one to hold up a hand to his nose as the stench grew stronger the closer they went to where the group was being held.
Mundo opened the door easily, and Mars saw he’d ripped through the chains that had kept it locked up. When he opened it, he saw why they needed so little security. The women were in a pit. They looked up at the door; dozens of terrified, filthy faces gawking up at him as he gawked down at them.
“We mean you no harm,” he hollered down, then translated into Spanish, figuring the women were from South America. But as he listened to their tremulous whispers, he heard more Slavic sounds than Hispanic ones and turned back to his brothers. “Get Dickie, we need him to translate.” Dickie had a Russian grandmother and a Ukrainian grandfather—an unusual combination, considering both countries considered the other natural enemies. But when a mate bond struck, it didn’t care about patriotism.
They were on a landing that was borderline mezzanine as it allowed them to peer down to the warehouse floor. Kiko ran over and yelled, “Dickie, get your ass up here.”
Apparently, he was still in bear form because the sounds of his running reverberated around the warehouse making the women cry out and shriek at the noise.
Mars grimaced, then, grimaced harder as he knew what Dickie was about to do… When he did a running jump onto the landing, the wood underfoot seemed to quiver with his weight and the momentum of his bounding leap. The women cried out again, this time their garbled words were filled with fear—he didn’t have to speak their language to sense their terror—as dust showered around them thanks to Dickie.
Said pain in his ass shifted back and jerking his chin up, asked, “What’s up, boss?”
“Need you to translate, Dickie.”
“Sure.” Dickie shrugged. He prowled over to the door where Mars was standing and pulled a face when he recognized the stench of human filth, then peered over into the pit. “What the hell?” he asked no one in particular, gawking at the pitiful group below.
“Must be the next load the cartel wanted us to transport.”
Dickie eyed him askance. “We’re not going to, are we?”
“Do I look like Jackson?” he asked, scowling at his brother, angry that his good word was being questioned.
“No, but I just wanted to make sure.”
Mars rolled his eyes, shrugging off his irritation. He was new to leadership; his men didn’t know him all that well as Prez. That was worth bearing in mind. “Tell them we mean them no harm.”
Dickie nodded and did as bade. When he spoke, the cries from below seemed to quiet a little and then a low wail appeared in its place.
“They think we’re police.”
Mars snorted. “What gave them that idea?”
“The fact we don’t want to sell them and are saying we don’t mean them any harm?”
“Shit.” He scraped a hand over his jaw. “What the fuck do we do with them? We can’t leave them here. Martinez will come back at some point, and even if he doesn’t, one of his cronies will be here to feed them. They can live in shit, but they’ll die without some food or water. Ask when the last time they ate was.”
Dickie called down to the women and a single voice replied. It was quiet, deep. A beautiful husky sound. Dickie nodded at whatever the woman said, then told him, “Five days ago.”
“Fuck,” Mars snarled. “What the hell kind of shit did Jackson get us involved in?” He ran a hand through his hair, wishing like fuck he could pull out a few tufts from the roots. Either that or shift and run off his fury.
He’d never involved himself in the trafficking, hadn’t dirtied himself with it, but turning a blind eye to the shit going on made him equally as guilty and shame choked him at the visual proof of Martinez and Jackson’s shitty deal.
“We need to call the police,” Kiko replied. “We can’t do anything to help them.”
“They’ll get sent back to wherever they came from.”
“Kiev, in the Ukraine,” Dickie replied to that after hollering down to the group. That same voice rebounded up, and Mars knew they’d found themselves a ringleader.
“Tell them we’re not the police but that we want to help still. Ask them if they want us to call the cops.”
Dickie obeyed, got a reply, and said, “They ask to be let free, to go on their own path.”
Mars blinked. “Do any of them speak English?”
Dickie shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“How the fuck do they expect to survive here then? They have no papers, have no language skills. Martinez obviously intended them to earn their pay on their backs…” Mars shook his head. “If we don’t involve the police, us letting them go is as bad as transporting them on.”
“Please. Let us go.” The words were thick, loaded with that Slavic accent, and drenched in a plea.
Mars sighed. “Tell them we want to help them but we don’t know how. Tell them if we let them go, they won’t be safe.”
Dickie nodded and translated. “They prefer to be given the chance to run and be free than to go with the police. They paid a lot to come to America… they’re penniless and they expected to be given papers and the like.”
“What a surprise, Martinez lied to them.” Mars growled under his breath, then peered down through the door trying, in the relative gloom, to see how they got in and out of the pit. There were metal rungs fixed into the walls for the women to climb and when he saw them, he growled again. “Goddammit. They treated them like fucking cattle.” As he rubbed the back of his neck, the tension gathering there was enough to give him a splitting headache, and he grumbled, “Tell them they can start coming up here. But to be careful. If they fall, getting them to a doctor won’t be easy. Major’s good with basic ER, but not setting broken fucking legs.”
As Dickie called down, once again translating Mars’s words, steps sounded on the staircase behind them and Major appeared. “Liam just pulled a recon: no one else is on site.”
MARS (BBW Bear Shifter MC Romance) (MC Bear Mates Book 1) Page 12
