by Kimber White
“You’re damn right!” I shouted.
Meg had a hand on my arm. Her touch calmed me enough to keep my wolf in check.
“Leo,” she said. “We’re a team. You and I. You said as much and I agree with you. I trust you. I know you won’t let anything bad happen to me. I want to do this. I need to do this. I can’t stand sitting back and letting things happen outside my control anymore. It’s going to be okay.”
“It really is,” Milo agreed. “We’ve got this, Leo. You know you can trust me.”
I started pacing. I wanted to punch a hole through every wall in this house. Meg had picked up my phone. She wore a wry smile as she talked softly to Milo.
“It’ll be nice to finally get to meet you in person,” she said.
“Likewise.” I could tell Milo was almost laughing as he answered. A protective growl ripped through me.
“I’ve got this,” she said.
“You sure you can handle him?” Milo asked.
I curled my fist. Meg made a downward gesture than put a finger to her lips.
“I know just want to do,” she said. She shot me a wink that melted my heart. Then, she said goodbye to Milo.
“Come here,” she said.
Heat raced through me. I went to her.
Chapter Nineteen
Leo
Two hours later, I pulled into the parking garage kitty-corner to the drop off point. Milo had sent me a text message just a few minutes before to tell me he was on his way. I expected Payne to call in next. Milo hadn’t given me the names of the other Wolfguard agents assigned to the job.
There should be five of us, total. I’d stay closest to Meg. The others would take the four corners surrounding the outdoor cafe she was instructed to go to.
“Simple,” I muttered. “Nothing feels simple about this.”
Meg sat in the passenger seat. It amazed me how calm she stayed.
“Leo, this isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this. I told you, my father has lived a colorful life.”
“What, you’ve had to ransom his ass before?”
“Not exactly ransom,” she said. “My grandfather and I have been wiring him money and whatever get-out-of-jail-free cards he’s needed over the years. I’ll admit, this caper is a little more...er...caper-ish than his usual. But, I know the drill.”
“This is the last time,” I said, my voice going dark.
“I know,” she said. “With Grandpa gone...and now the business too...it has to be. It’ll take some time for my dad to realize that. No doubt he thinks Grandpa was hiding millions somewhere or that there’s a huge life insurance payout.”
“There’s not?” I asked. “Insurance, I mean.”
Meg shook her head. “Nope. He had term life that he cashed out about four years ago. To get my dad out of his last pickle. I was furious about it.”
Once again, that protective fury came over me. I wanted to ask why we were even here. This man had done nothing but steal from Meg and her grandfather her whole life. No wonder her mother hadn’t wanted to stick around.
I got out of the car and went to the ledge, overlooking the street two stories down. I saw the bistro with its round tables with red umbrellas. But, there was still no word from Milo. I didn’t see anyone else from Wolfguard.
I pulled my phone out of my jacket pocket as Meg exited the car and came beside me.
“Milo should be here by now,” I said. I punched in his number. The phone went straight to voicemail.
“The hell?”
“Do you think whoever these people are, they’ve gotten wise to your plan?” Meg asked.
“No,” I said. “Milo would have told me.”
I turned to Meg and put a reassuring arm around her shoulders. “It’s going to be okay. These people aren’t interested in really hurting your dad. Not permanently anyway. They just want the diamond they think they’re getting.”
“I know,” she said. “And I know how important it is that this thing goes well today. You don’t think I haven’t figured out Wolfguard’s real interest in it, do you?”
I reared back.
“Come on, Leo. Why in the world would your colleagues care at all about my father? He’s a two-bit, human conman. He brings nothing of value to them except for who he might be connected to. This is a win-win for everyone. I get to help my dad...again. Your people get a lead on who boobytrapped Alonzo Fry.”
She amazed me. I couldn’t help but smile.
“I know Grandpa was the one who hired you, but you don’t think I didn’t do my own research into Wolfguard, do you?”
“Oh, really?” I said, tweaking her nose. “Payne Fallon doesn’t just make his money babysitting precious gemstones and bodyguarding. I do know a little about what went on in Kentucky. We got a lot of inquiries about dark magic items during that time. They were all coming from Kentucky. I started asking around.”
“You’re full of surprises,” I said. I held her in my arms. “What other secrets do you have hidden in that wonderful brain of yours?”
“I don’t claim to know what Payne and his friends went through down south. But if he’s the man you say he is, someone you trust with your life, well, then I know he’s someone special. And I’d wager he’d want to keep his ear to the ground about any new rumblings of a Tyrannous Alpha. Am I right? Better to nip that kind of power in the bud than let it grow.”
I smoothed a hair away from her face. “Is that why you agreed to get yourself in the middle of this?”
“No,” she said. “I’m here to bail my deadbeat dad out one more time. The rest is just a bonus.”
My phone buzzed just as I was about to lean in for a kiss. It was Milo. He texted a single word that sent ice through my veins.
“Abort!”
I froze.
“Leo?”
I scanned the street. It was a sunny Saturday. Foot traffic was light. I only saw two couples seated at the red umbrella tables. I heard tires screech behind me.
“Meg,” I said, my voice mostly a growl. “Get in the car! Lay on the floor!”
“What?” she asked. Her jaw dropped. She too stood frozen. Then she felt the adrenaline rushing through me.
I pushed her toward the open car door.
Stupid, I thought. So stupid. I should have brought the Kingsblood. We thought it was too risky.
A black SUV pulled up. I took a ready stance, letting my fangs drop. Meg was a few yards from the car. I dove in front of her.
They came from everywhere. Another van rocketed around the corner. The side door slid open and I saw the outline of an assault rifle.
I threw myself forward, shifting in midair. My paws hit the concrete as Meg screamed. She kept scrambling for the car door.
I heard the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire. Black hail rained down.
Meg was still moving. I rounded on the source of the shooting.
I didn’t feel anything. Bullets bounced off me. Then, one struck home.
My front leg burned. Blood ran down, making my paws bright red. Then, the fire came.
Dragonsteel. God. My vision went cloudy. Meg screamed my name.
I felt as though my brain separated from my body at that moment. I could see my wolf, staggering sideways.
The first SUV pulled up and screeched to a halt sideways. Two men came out and ran toward Meg.
She fought. I bled.
Then, a second bullet caught me in the left flank. Fire exploded behind my eyes. The last thing I saw was Meg kicking and screaming as they threw her in the back of the SUV and sped away.
Chapter Twenty
Meg
It all happened so fast. One second, I was running toward Leo’s car. I felt the alarm race through his blood. His wolf tore out of him. The bullet felt like fire as it hit his front leg. For a moment, I thought I was the one who had been hit.
The next second, I was facedown in the back of the van. A knee pinned me down, digging into the center of my back.
I tried to
scream. I could barely even breathe. My stomach lurched as the van spend up and took each corner at nearly top speed.
He was so strong. A shifter. Something had changed in me since I’d been with Leo. I knew another shifter when I got close to him. But this one had a fetid stench that made every part of me recoil.
I don’t know how long we drove. Five minutes? An hour? Adrenaline pumped through me. I tried to reach out to Leo. With each mile, my sense of him faded.
I should have let him mark me.
The thought burst into my brain. It was true. My bond with Leo would have intensified a hundredfold if I bore his mark on my neck. No sooner had I thought that than the foul-smelling shifter with his knee in my back grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked it to the side.
“Stop!” I cried.
“She’s clean,” he shouted to the driver.
Someone in the front seat got on a walkie. I could hear it squawk as he reported back to someone else.
“We’ve got the Crossley woman,” he said. “She hasn’t been marked.”
Rage thundered through me. I felt like chattel. Violated. They were talking about me like I was some thing.
I couldn’t make out the response the man got on his radio. Were they happy I hadn’t been marked?
A new dread crept through me. If Leo had claimed me as his mate, would they use that against him somehow? Or worse yet, would one of them try to mark me now against my will to use me in some other way?
I felt nauseous. I struggled against the man pinning me down. He might as well have been made of marble. He held me firm. The car made a wide circle.
Then, it was over. We screeched to a halt. It was dark as night. A garage, or maybe an underground tunnel.
My captor hauled me to my feet, keeping a tight grip on my arm. Another man came behind him. They were all dressed in black from head to toe and wearing black ski masks. I could only see their cold, glinting shifter eyes.
Two of them were wolves. I knew that instinctively. The one holding my arms back, the stinky one, I couldn’t get a broader sense of him, but I knew in my gut he was no wolf.
Someone secured my wrists with zip ties then I was pushed forward. It was dark inside, but it felt big, cavernous. As my eyes adjusted to the light, it looked like a warehouse.
They took me to a single door. I didn’t beg for my life. I didn’t ask them to let me go. I stayed silent, refusing to give them any kind of reaction from me.
“Take her into the office,” one of the wolves said.
It was a small, dank office with one empty desk in the corner and a few mismatched chairs. They forced me into one and tied me to it. I tried not to struggle, realizing if I tipped over, I’d be stuck there.
Then, all three of them left. An overhead fluorescent light flickered. It was quiet. Musty. Where the hell was I? I didn’t have time to contemplate it further when an inner door opened. My breath caught as my father walked in.
He wasn’t wounded or dirty or even sweating with fear. No. He was confident, clean-shaven, wearing his best suit. He smiled when he saw me and my heart shredded.
“You son of a bitch,” I whispered. “This whole thing was you?”
He came to me and put a kiss on my cheek. I did the only thing I could. I tried to spit at him. My father pulled away. He kept that infuriating smile on his face and sat on the edge of the desk.
“You’re okay? They didn’t hurt you?”
“What? Did they hurt me? Look at me! I was just thrown into a van and manhandled. This is called kidnapping. They shot my...friend.”
My father nodded. “Your friend heals quickly. I doubt he’s even suffering from a scratch at the moment.”
“What the hell is going on? What is this?”
My father looked over his shoulder. For the first time, I saw a bit of fear in his eyes.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’ve got it all arranged.”
“What are you talking about?” I grew lightheaded. The circulation in my hands was pretty much gone.
“Meg, you didn’t think we could actually acquire something like the Kingsblood without attracting attention. I tried to tell my father how to handle it. He wouldn’t listen. He was too trusting. This thing, it’s powerful. Or at least, the shifters I work with think it is.”
My head spun. He was saying my grandfather had told him his suspicions about his lead on the diamond long ago? He had sworn the opposite was true to me.
“The shifters you work with,” I said. “You sure about that? Let me guess: it’s more of the shifters you owe money to. Did you tell them you’d bring that stone to them? In exchange for what? And...you didn’t think having them kidnap your daughter was crossing a line? You’re mentally ill, Dad.”
He looked over his shoulder then back at me. “Don’t be so dramatic. You’re not hurt.”
“I’m tied to a damn chair!” I yelled.
“They don’t know you like I do. They're just cautious. I’ll talk to them.”
“What do you want from me?” I said.
“Look,” he said his eyes going dark. “Don’t sit there and pretend you weren’t trying to cut me out of this sale. You think I’m the greedy one. Crossley Antiquities is my family business. It’s my birthright.”
“I’m your daughter.” I couldn’t believe I needed to remind him.
“You and my father have been trying to screw me over for years, Meg. I know all about the power of attorney he signed. I know you were working on trying to get him to change the terms of his trust. I’ve put more time into that business than you have. You have no idea the kind of sacrifices I’ve made for my father and my uncles over the years. You just know the fairytales my dad told you.”
He was out of his mind. I was in some kind of bizarro world.
“The sale of that diamond...Grandpa wanted to use the money to bail both you and the business out. Now, it’s gone. All of it. You’ve seen what happened to the shop. Did your new friends do that?”
The moment I asked the question, I knew it was true. The air felt chalky in my lungs.
Oh, God.
“Alonzo,” I said. Of course my father would have known I’d call Alonzo Fry as soon as I acquired the diamond.
“That creep had been trying to rip off the family for a long time,” he said. “He succeeded at it more than once. And that wasn’t my call, anyway.”
“Did he know?” I asked. I tasted bile in my mouth. I couldn’t get the image of Alonzo’s contorted face out of my mind, the agony I read in it as he lay dying on the floor of the vault.
My father didn’t answer. And that told me enough.
“What did you have over him?” I asked.
“That wasn’t my business,” he said. “I just told my associates Fry was someone they might want to talk to.”
“I was in the shop, Dad. I was standing a few feet from him. If I hadn’t gotten out in time, I’d be dead right now too. And you endorsed it. You facilitated it.”
“You had your bodyguard,” my father said. “Did you think I’d do anything to put you in harm’s way like that? Your man from Wolfguard was there. I knew you’d never be in danger for long.”
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to scratch his eyes out. Instead, I couldn’t. I was strapped to that stupid chair and it wouldn’t have done me any good anyway. My father had no soul. I’d suspected it all my life, but as I sat across from him, looked into his eyes and heard him give me his ridiculous justifications for what he’d done, I knew once and for all it was true.
For the first time since I found him lifeless in his bed, I was glad my grandfather wasn’t alive right now to know any of this. Then, a new revelation unfurled inside me like some black-winged demon.
“Grandpa,” I said. “Did you...that was you too, wasn’t it? My God. He’s your father.”
I struggled against the bindings, rage blasting through me.
“Calm down,” he said. “My father was old and he had a bad heart. Stop trying to blame every
thing on me. You’re being short-sighted. Everything that’s happened will benefit you just as much as it will me. You were going to sell that diamond anyway. What difference does it make to you?”
I froze. I caught myself just before I yelled at him. It occurred to me that other than Leo, I might have been the only other person on the planet who knew how powerful that diamond really was. I’d seen it in action; my father hadn’t.
“None of this makes any sense,” I said.
“It makes perfect sense. I knew you weren’t going to listen to anything I had to say. And you have yet to deny you were trying to get Grandpa to change his trust to cut me out.”
“He wasn’t going to cut you out. He was trying to figure out a way to save you from yourself so you’d have some financial security for the rest of your life,” I said.
“What, a spendthrift clause? Yeah. He told me all that. And I know you were pushing it. It was all your idea. I know you were the one who took him to see that new lawyer. Well, I’m not having it. I’m not having my own spoiled kid trying to control my life.”
“Spoiled kid,” I said. Again, the urge to argue with him came and went. My father was a sociopath, a narcissist. No matter what I said he’d spin it into some attack against him. I just needed to bide my time and keep from saying too much about the Kingsblood. And if I were lucky and smart enough, I’d figure out a way to get the hell out of here.
“Meg, listen,” he said. “You were going about it the wrong way. I should have been involved at every stage. I knew you were trying to cut me out when Dad wouldn’t tell me who the seller was. If he had just let me deal with them directly, none of this would have been necessary. You two were going to auction off that diamond to the highest bidder, weren’t you?”
I let out a sigh. “It’s kind of what we do, Dad.” God. Grandpa had never told my father about Dorothea Davies. He’d kept that secret for over twenty years. I wondered now if that had saved her life.
“Not for this. This thing is special. Our buyer needs to be someone who knows what it’s really worth.”
