“How much longer are we gonna run?” Nami weakly asked.
“We have to keep moving,” Ken said. “For as long as we can.”
“But how do you know where we’re going?”
He glanced up at the darkening sky. “Instinct. We’re heading south. When I’m sure it’s safe, we’ll make our way downhill into the valley and follow the river Once we start following it, we’ll keep following it. It’ll eventually lead us to a road, a bridge, something.”
“But how do you know that?”
“I just do. It runs to the south. And we’ll need water again.”
She stopped, slumping against a tree. “I need to rest. Cain’t we stop for a while?”
He stood in front of her, scanning the woods behind them. “Nami,” he said, dropping his voice. “We have to keep moving. We can’t stop yet.”
She sounded hopeless. “If we keep moving, how will our people find us? Isn’t that what they always say when you get lost, to stay put?”
“Our people will find us,” he insisted. “Wolves, remember? There were more cartel guys with those ones who came after us. The rest of them probably went on into the compound. We have to trust that Dewi and Beck and the others can and will track us once they take care of the threat and realize we’re missing. Those guys don’t know we’re wolf mates. They’re humans and probably can’t track worth shit. We have to keep going, stay ahead of them. We have to stay alive. As long as we can stay alive, I have no doubt that Dewi and Beck and the rest of the pack can quickly find and rescue us. But they can’t rescue us if we’re not alive.”
He held out a hand to her.
Nodding, she took it and let him help her along.
* * * *
Peyton couldn’t get back into the field to search because more shifters raced into the great hall, just for him to turn them around again and send them out. Either to search for the intruders, or to go hunt down packmates out of communication, depending on who they were, their skills, and if they had any family out in the compound.
Web’s guy reported back that he’d made it all the way to I-90 without seeing any sign of Ken or Nami, but each time Peyton tried calling their phones, it went straight to voice mail.
That greatly troubled him. Yes, there were dead cell spots between their compound and Spokane, but not many.
Not enough to keep them out of contact for several hours.
He called Gillian and asked her to make that her focus, to keep trying to call Ken and Nami’s phones from their house phone, trying them every five minutes until either he told her to stop or she got hold of them.
At least an initial sweep of the town revealed none of the strangers had stayed behind there, so that was one worry lifted.
Note to self—we get a cell phone tower installed inside the compound to improve coverage, ASAP.
Too many people who’d traveled in from out of town weren’t within cell range, packmates now in danger because they couldn’t be reached by phone.
That was unacceptable.
He couldn’t even get hold of Trent or Dewi now, and he didn’t want to leave someone else in charge at the great hall in case he was needed there.
Some fucking pack Alpha I am.
* * * *
Dewi grinned at the two men, pleased to see at least one of them had wet himself.
“Aw, you know, some people would be offended by that,” Dewi said. “I mean, some people don’t want to be seen as scary.”
She flicked the tip of her tongue over her canines, which she’d let slide all the way out.
“Now, me, on the other hand, I absolutely want you to be completely terrified of me.” She pointed her gun at the guy who’d wet himself. “Because you have every reason to be terrified of me. Do not lie to me. Dewi says, are you working for that fuck Manuel Segura?”
Both men nodded.
“Excellent. And Dewi says, are you supposed to be looking for Joaquin Carlomarles?”
The men nodded again.
“Wow. You two are really good at this game. Dewi says, how many of you are there, total? You can answer out loud.”
“Once. Eleven,” the man quickly clarified in English.
“How many vehicles total?”
“Three.”
Dewi shot him in the left kneecap, grinning as she pulled the trigger. “Uh-uh-uh. I didn’t say Dewi says. Now shut up.”
His agonized screams immediately silenced. She swung her gun over to the other guy, ignoring the writhing, wounded man as he clutched at his leg. “Dewi says, how many vehicles total?”
“Three,” the man answered, watching his compadre thrashing next to him. “What the fuck did you do to him? What are you?”
“Oh, now, you didn’t wait for me to say Dewi says. That’s not how we play the game.” She shot him in the left kneecap. “Shut up.” His howl of pain cut off in midscream.
She sat back, staring at them. No doubt Beck and the others would hear those two gunshots—and the truncated screams—and come running, so she didn’t have much time.
Part of her wanted to torture them, the way Felicia Escobar had been tortured. Well, not in the same exact way. In principle.
Part of her wanted to torture them to see if her Prime skills held, how far she could push them.
Then again, technically, that would be morally wrong.
But so was abducting, raping, and murdering a fifteen-year-old girl, and then hunting down the man who’d extracted blood for it.
She sighed and turned back to the first guy. “Dewi says, tell me how many men and vehicles came into our compound. And how you knew about us.”
* * * *
Beck pulled up short at the gunshot and human howl of pain. “Fuck.” He debated whether or not to follow it when he heard a second shot ring out.
That made up his mind for him. He left the scent trail and ran in the direction of the shots.
“What about the trail?” Joaquin asked as he kept up.
“We can come back and pick it up,” Beck said. “Dewi’s got two of them.”
“How can you tell?”
“Because she’s playing with them,” he grimly said. “And if she kills them, we have to get her to Peyton’s house immediately and get her fed.”
At least he didn’t have to explain that part to Joaquin. “Damn,” the man muttered.
When a Prime Alpha wolf killed, it had to eat, or ugly things could happen and innocent people could get hurt.
They heard a crashing off to their left and pulled up short as Trent and his men emerged from the trees. “Where’s Dewi?” Trent asked.
“That’s the shots we heard,” Beck told him, pointing.
“You find the other guys?”
“We left the trail when we heard the shots.”
Two more regularly spaced shots rang out.
“Go back and track them. I’ll go help Dewi.” He sent one of his men with Beck and Joaquin and took two with him as he bolted toward the sound.
Beck turned around and led the way, following their own scent back to where they’d broken from the original trail. The snow wasn’t getting any heavier, still annoying flurries that made everything wet as it melted upon landing.
Beck tried not to think about Ken and Nami and if they’d made it to Spokane safely or not. He didn’t have any cell coverage right here. Besides, he couldn’t divide his focus like that.
That’s what got people killed.
* * * *
Now the men had bullets in both kneecaps.
Dewi stood and stared down at them, slowly shaking her head. “Well, not like I didn’t warn you guys you were going to lose this game. At least I was honest with you about that from the start.”
So there were two more guys out here in this stretch of woods, if Trent or Beck hadn’t already found them.
But that left three armed men somewhere out in the compound in a car. From the sound of it, they had planned on meeting up near the great hall. They had satellite pics and maps, but Gi
llian kept up with things and always made sure the data available online was old to throw people off.
If you lived here, or you were of the pack, you could get the most recent information from the pack’s private site.
The biggest problem Dewi now had was that the southern section of the compound was where the most people lived, as well as where three of the largest, most popular campgrounds were located.
And confirming what Web had told Peyton, there were another four armed men in a car sent after Ken and Nami. No telling where the hell they had ended up, if they were still outside the compound or stumbling around in here, too.
So the good news was that Ken and Nami hadn’t turned around and headed for the compound.
The bad news was that Ken and Nami hadn’t turned around and headed for the compound, meaning who knew if they were still safe or if they’d been caught by the other four assholes.
“You know, now I’m wishing I’d shot you guys in the arms,” she said as they silently writhed in misery. “It’s going to be a real bitch dragging your bodies out to the road to the wood chipper.”
She raised her gun when she heard someone coming from behind her. She kept her gun pointed at the men on the ground and turned, relieved to see Trent and two of his guys emerge from the woods.
“You okay?” Trent cautiously asked from a safe distance.
She lowered the gun. “Yeah.” She quickly filled him in.
He grimly nodded and walked over to her, draping his left arm around her shoulders as he stared down at the men. “It’s better this way, you know. It would take too long to get you something to eat. We need you in the field.”
She wearily sighed. “I know.”
Trent raised his gun. “By order of the Targhee pack, as second in command and speaking for the pack Alpha, I hereby find you guilty of intrusion into pack territory for the express purpose of committing murder of our kind. Blood crimes call for blood. By pack edict, I sentence you to death.”
He fired.
Twice.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Saul slid to a stop and froze at the first gunshot, Ricardo almost plowing into him. When the second sounded soon after, Saul knew.
He looked at Ricardo. “They’re dead.”
“How do you know for sure?”
“Because if we’d been firing, there would have been a bunch of shots all at once.”
He started running again when two more shots, deliberate ones, rang out.
Fuck!
He turned to Ricardo. “If we find Manuel, we say we got separated and lost and were heading back for the damn car. I swear to Jesus and the Mother Mary, if you say anything other than that, I will kill you myself. If anyone else stops us and they ask what the fuck we’re doing here, we’ll say we’re tourists and we were with friends. We stopped to pee and got separated from them and lost in the woods.”
Ricardo nodded. “I want out of here.”
“Then let’s go.”
They’d started running again when they heard two more shots. Saul wondered if it was an execution, but that was a total of six shots, and there were only five other men besides them out here, unless Jose and his men made it back.
But that would mean three more shots.
He knew he didn’t want to find out.
* * * *
Beck and Joaquin both knelt, sniffing the ground. The scent tracks had crossed, creating a little confusion.
“They’re panicked,” Beck said. “I can smell it. Not to mention they’re lost. They’ve crossed their old trail a couple of times. They have no clue where they are or where they’re going.” It’d been fifteen minutes since the last two shots rang out.
Beck hoped it’d been Trent who’d done it so Dewi could stay out in the field and help them hunt these guys down.
Beck was seriously considering stripping down and shifting. He could run faster on four legs than two, and it’d be a boost to his sniffer.
It also meant he’d have to put down his gun, and he wasn’t looking forward to that prospect.
“This way,” Joaquin said, pointing.
Beck nodded. Like this, it was easy to put aside any differences he’d once had with the man. They had to work together.
And once he had a chance to sit Nami down and talk to her, calmly, hopefully she’d change her mind about wanting to kill or castrate Joaquin.
He wouldn’t let himself think in any terms other than when he sat down with her.
Not if.
If nothing else, he had faith in Ken when others might not. He’d seen the immediate aftermath of Ken being able to oppose a Prime order, saving himself and Dewi in the process.
If Beck couldn’t be with Nami, he was glad Ken was.
The weather grew colder, the breeze picking up even more, the afternoon dim and grey, dismal. It didn’t take long for Beck to hear the clumsy sounds of humans running not too far ahead of them, their frantic footfalls and labored breathing, not even trying to be quiet the way they pushed through the woods.
Beck signaled for silence from the other two men as they closed in on their prey, guns at the ready. Once they had them in sight, Beck yelled, “Freeze!”
The two men whirled around, the larger one tripping and going down on his back.
The other man, seeing three guns pointing at him, dropped his and held up his hands. His English was rolled with a thick Spanish accent. “We’re lost! We heard lots of wolves!”
Beck felt his canines wanting to slide out, his jaw aching from the strain of it. “There are a lot of wolves out here. This is private land. How’d you get here?”
The bigger man stayed down, hands up. Beck smelled their fear—and their lies.
“A friend of ours. They have the car keys. We got separated. We drove over from Spokane for sightseeing, I swear. I don’t even know where the hell I am.”
“You got that right,” Joaquin said, smirking. “You fuckers wouldn’t be here if you knew where the hell you were. Where’s Manuel Segura?”
The standing man’s hesitation was all the proof Beck needed. He took a page from Dewi’s usual playbook and shot the guy on the ground in the arm before pointing his gun at the first guy again.
“Man asked you a question. Next one goes in your balls.”
The first man stared down in terror at his screaming partner. “I-I swear, we’re lost! I don’t know where he is!”
“But you are with Manuel Segura?” Joaquin asked.
The man swallowed hard and, finally, nodded.
“Fair enough,” Beck said.
“Please, we don’t want to be here! We’ll leave! We were trying to get out of here when we got lost, seriously.” Beck didn’t even have to question him, he started spilling his guts.
It was almost enough to make Beck feel sorry for him.
Almost.
Because four of the guys were somewhere out on the road south of town and going after Ken and Nami. He knew damn well they would have little to no mercy for his friend and his mate.
Beck rolled his head back and forth, cracking his neck. He really wanted to kill this guy.
In good conscious, he couldn’t.
Yet.
Not without a pack edict. Yes, they’d come into the compound looking for Joaquin. But these guys had bolted. They were, right now, guilty of nothing more than terminal cowardice and a crisis of conscience.
“Strip,” Beck ordered. “Down to your underwear.”
It took the man on the ground a moment to get up and start doing it, cradling his injured left arm as he did.
Once they were in nothing but their underwear, and Beck was sure they were unarmed, they started marching them north, toward the main road. A howl rolled across the woods.
Trent.
Beck howled in reply, making both prisoners turn, expressions of wide-eyed fear on their face.
“What the fuck?” the first man said.
Beck grinned, but it held no humor. “These woods are full of wolves.”
/>
* * * *
Nami finally spotted the wolf during one of their increasingly frequent breaks.
She clutched Ken in fear. “Is that one of…ours?” she whispered.
The wolf was obviously done trying to hide from them. It no longer darted for cover when Ken turned to look for him. It never came closer than about twenty yards, close enough to keep them in view.
“I don’t know, but I didn’t want to say anything to you earlier and freak you out. He’s been following us for hours.”
“News flash, I was already freaked out, even before that. If he hasn’t attacked us yet that’s good, right?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. Both times we heard the gunshots, he disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
He looked down at her stunned tone. “I meant it ran off. Not literally vanished.”
“Oh.” She weakly laughed. “Wouldn’t that be a magic trick?”
The wolf stared at them. It didn’t act afraid of them. Ken got the feeling it was more curious than anything. Like they were being studied by their lupine stalker.
“Yeah,” Ken said. “It would. Funny thing is, it came back both times. Why would it do that?”
“Maybe he’s waitin’ for us to die from exposure and get hisself a free meal.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I wasn’t kiddin’.”
She held onto the small tree she was leaning against and tried to reposition herself so she could keep her weight off her bad foot for a few minutes. It had swelled even more and her brown skin looked much darker, bruised, around it. Ken wasn’t a doctor. She could wiggle her toes, but he didn’t know if that meant anything was broken or not.
“I really want to sit down,” she said.
“Sweetie, you can’t. If you do…” He hated to admit it. “If you get down and can’t get up, I might not be strong enough to help you get up.”
A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) Page 25
