Warning bells went off in the back of my mind, but I tried to ignore them. Davis was scorching hot, and I’d win even if I lost. But the little voice in the back of my head tried to warn me again. The danger was that these were a group of guys that I could respect. After respect came trust, and after trust came affection. That was the dangerous part. Could I play with fire and not get burned?
Chapter 7
It was a week later when I found myself packed and ready to go to Charleston. My entire body ached from all of the training I had been doing with the team, but my leg was back to normal, and the scar barely visible.
“You ready?” Davis called to me from outside.
I grabbed my pack sitting by the door and followed the sound of his voice out to the front of the house. Davis was leaning up against his bike and looking extra delicious. I licked my lips at the sight of him in his dark jeans, motorcycle boots, and leather jacket and tried not to drool. He looked hot, and the smirk on his face told me that he knew it.
I put a hand on my hip to emphasize my sass. “You realize that I’m supposed to be injured and unable to walk, right?” I asked. “Do you think a human in my condition would be able to ride a bike across several states?”
Davis blinked at me. “Well…”
“And let’s not forget that you’re not the only one going with her,” Mike said as he came out with a bag over his shoulder. “Unless you have room for three on there?” Davis rolled his eyes.
“And don’t forget the wheelchair,” Rich said as he carried the folded chair out.
I heaved a sigh. “I feel like I’m disrespecting actual disabled people by using that,” I complained. “Can’t I just use crutches?”
“Anna said that you wouldn’t be able to remain upright for any length of time at this point in your recovery,” Rich said as he slammed the door to the trunk of Trevor’s SUV closed.
“And while the rest of your platoon is still deployed, there will probably be other marines there who are familiar with your situation. Word travels fast, and marines have a tight-knit community,” Mike added.
Rich cleared his throat. “Don’t forget that Hart’s full story was published to the local newspaper and shared on social media.”
My shoulders slumped in defeat. “Yeah.”
It was usually kept quiet when military members were killed or injured in combat overseas. Grieving families needed privacy to lay their loved ones to rest, and not everyone wanted attention to be brought to the number of service members who were brought home less than whole. But the Hart family was apparently big news in Charleston, and Hart’s unique story had brought an outpouring of love and support from all over the country. She wouldn’t be buried alone in a quiet ceremony, ready to be forgotten. She would be celebrated, and her memory kept alive – just the way she would have liked it.
I was surprised when Trevor and Quinn joined us outside. “When you said ‘the guys’ were going with me, I didn’t think you meant the whole crew,” I told Trevor.
He shrugged. “We have things to discuss as a team.” He turned to Davis. “That means we ride together.”
Davis scowled, but Trevor must have told him something through the pack bond that changed his outlook because he rolled his bike back in the garage.
“Load up!” Trevor shouted.
I grumbled a little as all six of us crammed into the SUV with duffel bags piled around us. This vehicle might have been marketed as having enough seating for seven, but I think they meant children, not oversized wolf shifters. The vehicle was quiet until we were on the highway.
“Can we turn on some music or something?” I asked.
“Don’t like to be alone with your thoughts?” Mike asked with a small smile. His tone was teasing, but I could see a glint of sadness lurking in those ocean blue depths.
“Who does?” I replied with a casual shrug. Mike and I had bonded with a few heart-to-heart talks about loss, but I wasn’t comfortable talking about deep stuff in a group. I preferred one-on-one in the darkness, where I could pretend no one could see my face.
Trevor cleared his throat. “Sam, we’ve decided it’s time to take the next step in your training.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me the last week has been all about me?” We had been spending over twelve hours a day training every day this week. I had run on the beach until I collapsed in the sand, swam in a freezing cold ocean until I thought I would drown, been in countless hand-to-hand combat matches, and done weapons training under the light of the sun and the darkness of night. We started before the sun rose in the morning and didn’t stop until well after darkness had set. To say I was exhausted and sore would be an understatement.
Davis smirked. “It’s been about seeing how far we can push you. You’ve gone past the limits where most guys stop and give up.” “You’re relentless,” Quinn added.
“But now it’s time to see you perform in the real world,” Rich said quietly, his eyes oddly intense.
“I’m not willing to miss Hart’s service,” I said bluntly.
“Not a problem,” Mike assured me. “We devised a little side mission for afterward.”
I gave him an irritated look. “And it has to be on the day I say my final goodbyes to my best friend?”
Trevor shrugged. “Yeah, you should have noticed we’re assholes by now.”
Davis leaned back and watched me with his stormy grey eyes. “We need to see how you react under pressure and stress.”
“And if I say no?” I asked curiously.
“Are you?” Quinn asked with a smirk. “If you decline now, you’ll never know what it was we wanted you to do.”
My curiosity overwhelmed my ability to think rationally. “What’s the mission?”
Quinn smiled broadly, knowing he had me, and the other guys chuckled. Yeah, curiosity got the cat this time. Haha.
“Retrieve something from a rival pack,” Mike told me.
“Hmmm,” I said thoughtfully. “Something well-protected and important?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the most formidable part of the task,” Quinn said with a smile. “You need to remain completely undetected and make sure they never know you were there.”
I should have been furious that they had come with me today, only to devise some kind of FuckFuck games. But instead, I was looking forward to a distraction and a good challenge. I needed something to keep me out of the dark thoughts that lingered around the memory of Hart’s death. What better way to do that than to risk my life on a dare? Yeah, I realized that was all kinds of messed up, but that was me.
“Alright,” I agreed. “I’m in.”
“Then let’s talk about the mission,” Quinn said with a grin.
Trevor drove while Quinn and Davis told me the specifics of what I was going to have to do. Rich provided me schematics of the building I was going to have to get into, and Mike detailed the security measures in place that I was going to have to bypass.
“But what is it that I’m actually stealing?” I asked in curiosity. Whatever it was, it was being kept in a safe in the pack master’s basement. There weren’t security guards devoted specifically to the safe, more like just general pack safety. That indicated it had some value, but that it wasn’t a priceless artifact.
“A small silver statue of a wolf,” Trevor grumbled from the front.
Quinn smiled. “But legend has it that it’s good luck for the pack that holds it.”
I nodded. I knew more than anyone else here how useful certain artifacts from the past could be. After all, the jaguar community was responsible for guarding a number of those artifacts – and keeping the buried treasure a secret from the rest of the world. No one else knew what we kept in the heart of our territory, deep in the rainforest of Colombia.
“Is this going to get me killed if I get caught?”
“Nah,” Mike told me. “This is more of a prank than serious thievery. They stole it from one of the other packs a while back, and someone else won it in a p
oker game before that. It’s more like a trophy than anything else.”
“So, get the statue, get out,” I summarized.
“And don’t get caught,” Davis added.
“Are you going to provide me with a brief tutorial on safecracking?” I asked sarcastically.
“That’s not a part of standard marine training.”
The guys laughed, and Rich gave me a grin. “You’re lucky that the pack master there doesn’t watch Myth Busters.”
I raised an eyebrow in question.
“Otherwise, he would know that the crappy biometric fingerprint scanners on low-level gun safes are easily tricked,” he explained.
“Really?” I asked incredulously.
“Really,” Rich assured me with a confident smile. “Consider this your first test in trusting the expertise of your team.”
I bowed my head. I knew this mission could go horribly wrong in just a minute, but I also knew I was going to do it. And I was probably going to have fun with it up until the moment I got caught. Let’s hope cats really did get nine lives, because I was about to use one up.
Chapter 8
Sam could be hard to read at times, and I suspected there was a lot more under her confident swagger than she let anyone else see. But at this moment, her thoughts were evident on her face. She was dressed in her marine dress blues but sitting in the wheelchair that Rich had found for her. Her face was held in a mask of politeness, but her eyes showed the depth of her loss. Hart had clearly been a close friend.
“Corporal Clive!” a young woman called out to us from the front of the crowd at the cemetery.
The funeral itself had been private and by invitation only, but the service at the gravesite was open to everyone. And there was quite a crowd here to see Hart laid to rest. When word had gotten out about a fallen marine receiving her final honors today, both veterans and active-duty service members from the surrounding states had come to pay their respects.
I met Mike’s eyes from across the crowd before pushing Sam towards the woman I didn’t recognize. We had decided it was best to remain separated throughout the crowd while I stayed with Sam in the hope of attracting less attention that way.
The woman who had waved us forward was tall and graceful with ebony hair styled elegantly. Her dress was black and obviously expensive, but as we got closer, I saw her resemblance to Hart. This must be one of her family members.
“Corporal Clive,” she greeted us with a smile. “I’m Shauna Hart.”
“Please, call me Sam,” Sam said in return. “This is my friend and designated handicap assistant, Davis.”
I gave her a respectful nod, but still watched her warily. Sam had told us that Hart hadn’t been on good terms with her family, and I was ready to pull Sam out of here if needed.
Shauna smiled at both of us. “I’m so glad you could make it here today, I heard you were injured in the same incident that took Isabel from us?”
Sam cleared her throat. “Yes, I’m going to be stateside until I’m back in fighting shape.”
Shauna glanced down at Sam’s leg with a frown. “Yes, well, I was hoping you might be able to talk to some of the reporters that are here today. Mother is making a run for Mayor this year, and good press would really help with the campaign.”
Sam’s jaw dropped in shock at the callousness of her request, but I wasn’t as surprised. I’d seen the ugliness of human nature before. “I thought your mother wanted the service kept private?”
Shauna shrugged. “That’s expected, to ask for privacy to grieve. Otherwise, it might look like she was using her daughter’s death to gain sympathy votes.” “Isn’t that want she’s doing?” Sam asked angrily.
Shauna laughed uncomfortably. “Not at all. We just want to make sure that Isabel’s sacrifice is appreciated by the community.”
I could feel the anger radiating off her, and I saw her muscles tense as if she was going to leap from the wheelchair for this girl’s throat. “Sam is still recovering from a serious injury,” I interrupted. “And she’s not authorized to speak about the mission by her chain of command.”
Sam let out a breath, but I could still feel her anger simmering below the surface. “I’m just here for Hart,” she spat out.
“Thank you, Shauna,” another woman said as she elegantly strode up to us. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Mrs. Hart,” Sam said with a vicious smile. “I heard you want me to drum up some positive press for your mayoral campaign.”
Mrs. Hart looked down her nose at us. “Not at all. I don’t want Isabel’s memory to be tainted by her sordid relationship with you.”
Sam inhaled a sharp breath. “Not that it’s any of your concern, but Hart and I weren’t dating. She was like a sister to me.”
I saw a flash of surprise on Mrs. Hart’s face before it went back to a wooden mask. “Well, from the way she spoke of you-”
Sam snorted. “I’m here to honor Hart’s sacrifice, not be used as a political talking point. And Hart wouldn’t want me to lie about the type of relationship she had with the rest of the family, so I suggest you keep the reporters away from me if you don’t want to be a part of a scandal.”
Mrs. Hart’s eyes hardened as she looked down at Sam. “You want to be careful of who you threaten while you’re in my town.”
Sam laughed out loud. “That wasn’t a threat, it was a promise.”
The two women faced each other down, but it was Sam that won. After all, how would it look for Mrs. Hart’s campaign if she had a public fight with a marine in a wheelchair? A marine who had been injured in the same blast that took her daughter’s life.
Mrs. Hart gave Sam one last cool look before striding over to the rest of her family. The family took their seats, and the crowd quieted as Hart was brought to the cemetery in a horsedrawn caisson. Uniformed pallbearers carried her coffin to a raised platform beside the grave with a solemn air.
Two men were standing to the left side, slightly apart from the rest of the crowd. I frowned in their direction when I realized their attention wasn’t on the chaplain in front of us, their eyes were focused on Sam.
“Mike, you see those two off to the left?” I asked with the pack bond.
“On it,” he replied, quickly picking up on their attention towards Sam.
I stayed with Sam while Trevor and Mike discreetly tried to maneuver through the crowd and towards the strangers. The two men must have realized they had caught our attention when the taller man nudged his buddy, and they both turned to walk back to where all of the cars were parked. Trevor and Mike followed, but I lost sight of them through the thick crowd.
I kept my eyes on Sam while the chaplain said his prayers and select friends and family were asked to speak. It wasn’t a surprise to me that there was not one military member who was called to the front. Mrs. Hart dabbed at fake tears at the corners of her eyes, but I didn’t miss how she posed perfectly for the photographers to capture her grieving for her slain daughter.
“Lost them,” Mike sent to me, his disappointment obvious.
“I don’t like the way they were focused on Sam when there’s an abundance of highprofile people here.”
“Wounded marines attract attention,” Trevor told me through the bond. “Especially marines that look like Sam.”
“What are you trying to say?” I teased him.
“I knew you were into her,” Mike added.
“Keep your attention on the crowd,” Trevor growled at both of us.
I hid the small smile that threatened to come out because a funeral wasn’t the place to laugh at one of your buddies. This was a serious matter, and I needed to stay respectful and solemn for Sam’s fallen comrade. Although, it was interesting that Trevor was willing to admit he liked the gorgeous spitfire.
Sam stayed quiet throughout the service, and when the chaplain asked if there was anyone else who would like to say a few words, I expected her to speak up. “Do you want to go up?” I murmured to her quietly.
&n
bsp; Sam shook her head. “If I go up there, I’m going to get myself in trouble. As much as Hart would have loved to watch her mother die of embarrassment, I don’t have it in me to torment a mother who lost her child.”
“She seems devastated,” I said sarcastically.
“You never know what’s underneath the mask that a person wears,” Sam said quietly. “She might be holding herself together now, but I want to believe that she truly loved her daughter.”
I made a sound of agreement, but I was surprised at the maturity that Sam showed. I had half-expected her to get fired up and make an impassioned speech on behalf of her fallen friend. I couldn’t help but think that she understood a little too well about what people hide underneath the face that they show the world.
The sharp crack of the rifles firing the three-round salute caused a number of people in the crowd to jolt. But as the bugler played taps, I couldn’t help but wonder what Sam was hiding from the rest of us. Who was she beneath her mask?
Chapter 9
I crept through the darkness in my panther form, fully cloaked to hide my presence from the pack of wolves I was currently infiltrating. I had gotten lucky that the wolves had decided to go on a pack run earlier and left just two of the younger wolves behind to guard their pack master’s house.
Both of those wolves were currently in the back of the house, and I could hear the television blaring, so they clearly weren’t too worried. After all, who would be crazy enough to break into this house?
I was doubly lucky when I saw that the door opened with a lever instead of a knob, so I didn’t even have to shift back to human to open it. I used my paw to push down and then gently nudged the door with my shoulder, carefully listening for any sign that the two wolves had heard me. I snuck inside the door and froze when I heard the sharp click as it closed behind me. But once again, that sound had gone unnoticed.
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