Risky Bargains

by J. C. Diem

  All five lawmakers jogged across the backyard, lighting the way with their flashlights. They entered the field and headed for the old barn. Their hands hovered near their weapons as they came to a halt. “Agents,” the sheriff said, once again ignoring us females and focusing on Liam and Nick. Yas had removed her hood now that the sun had set.

  “Sheriff,” Liam replied in a solemn tone.

  “That’s the aliens?” one of the deputies asked, shining his light on the charred remains.

  “That’s them,” Nick confirmed.

  “How come there’s so little left of them?” one of the other deputies asked.

  “They aren’t from our world,” Syd reminded them. “Their bodies seem to be more combustible than ours are.”

  “How do we know they’re really the aliens?” a third deputy asked suspiciously. “The bodies could belong to anyone.”

  “A scientist from the Paranormal Investigation Agency will be arriving in the morning,” Liam told them. “He’ll test the remains to determine their origins. Our bosses always send in the scientists for verification when we’re sent out on missions like this.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” the fourth deputy said.

  “Good job, agents,” Sheriff Unwin said. “Will you be staying in Landsby until the remains are verified?”

  “If you don’t have any objections,” Liam confirmed.

  From the way she smiled at him, we all knew she wasn’t going to object at all. “Can I have a word with you in private?” she asked.

  Nick surreptitiously rolled his eyes that his brother was about to be hit on. We all watched as Liam and the sheriff walked away. “How can I help you, Sheriff?” Liam asked, knowing we could all hear him clearly.

  “I was wondering if you would like to join me for dinner at my house,” she replied.

  He hesitated and Nick whispered some advice. “You haven’t been laid in ages, bro. Go for it!”

  Liam cut a look at his twin, then smiled down at Sheriff Unwin. “I’d love to,” he agreed.

  “I can’t believe our boss is going to have sex with a puny human,” Yas said quietly.

  “It’s not like there’s a lot of shifters for us to date,” Sydney whispered back. “We take what we can get and hope we don’t break too many of their bones.” Brynn snickered and I had to fight hard to keep my face straight.

  The pair arranged to meet in an hour. Liam loped over to us wearing a huge grin as the sheriff directed a couple of her deputies to stay and watch the remains. “I’ll have to keep the van, so Emma will need to take you guys back to the base,” he said.

  “Yeah, we figured,” I replied wryly as we headed back across the field to where we’d pretended we’d left the van.

  “I’m a bit disappointed the sheriff didn’t ask Nick to dinner as well,” Yas said.

  “We don’t like to share,” Nick said, making a face at that idea.

  “You’ve never both been with the same woman at the same time?” the vampire asked in genuine surprise.

  “No,” they both said at the same time.

  “It really doesn’t appeal to us,” Liam said.

  “It would be awkward,” Brynn mused. “You’d have to choose who went where and the timing would be difficult.”

  “Can we stop talking about this?” Nick complained.

  “Take us back to the van, Em,” Liam requested before the wereconstrictor could say anything else.

  It was too dark for the officers to see us as we sank into the dirt. The church grounds were deserted, so no one saw us appear from out of nowhere. “I’ll see you guys in the morning,” Liam said, confident that he would be having more than just dinner with the sheriff.

  “Lucky bastard,” Nick muttered in mock envy that probably held some truth.

  “What do you want us to do if the alpha hole causes any trouble?” Syd asked.

  “My vote is to lock him in a cell in the basement,” Crowmon suggested.

  “Agreed,” Liam said, to our surprise. “He can enjoy his own company while he waits for us to finish the mission.”

  “We’ll drive one of the SUVs to the edge of town in the morning and leave it for Charles,” Nick offered. “Then we’ll get Emma to take us back to the remains.”

  Liam would no doubt check in with us later, but he was distracted right now. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, then nodded at Emma.

  The squirrel transported us to the local base where the moody alpha was waiting.

  Instead of furiously working out, Franko was sprawled in Crowmon’s usual seat on the couch. He was watching TV and a bowl of chips rested on the seat beside him. A few empty packets were strewn on the floor. Several empty cans of soda and chocolate wrappers littered the coffee table.

  “See? I told you he should have been born a werepig,” Yas said in vindication as we inspected the mess.

  The rookie flipped her the bird, then burped loudly. As a change of tactics, it was a strange one to choose. He was now even more repulsive, if that was possible.

  Taking in the familiar candy wrappers, a horrible suspicion rose inside me. I headed up to my bedroom to find the door standing open. I could smell Franko’s scent on my duffel bag and items that he’d upended onto my bed. “That creep stole my chocolate!” I said incredulously as Yas ambled into my room.

  “That’s it, we’re lynching him,” she said, then snickered.

  Slow rage began to spiral through me as I headed back down the hallway to the coms room.

  Heath smirked at me when I stopped at the top of the stairs. “Is something wrong, Alex?” he asked sweetly.

  Instead of responding, I vaulted over the railing and landed on the concrete floor.

  “What’s going on?” Nick asked when he saw my face. He and Brynn were preparing dinner, while Syd was making coffee. Crowmon sat on an armchair, scowling at the alpha for stealing his favorite spot.

  I stalked over to the fridge and yanked the door open to see a variety of candy bars inside. None of them had been taken, even though they were meant for everyone.

  “Uh, oh,” Yas said nervously when she felt my rage spike into absolute fury. “I think Alex is about to go nuclear.”

  Emma leaped off my shoulder, unsure what I intended to do. She landed on the island and waited for the fallout.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  “ALEX?” BRYNN ASKED when I closed the fridge door and spun around to stare at the back of Franko’s head. “Is something wrong?” the lamia asked.

  “He stole my chocolate,” I said, voice a couple of octaves deeper than usual from my rage.

  “Who? Franko?” Sydney asked. “Why the hell would you do that?” she asked him.

  He ignored her and shoved a handful of chips into his mouth. Hearing him insolently crunching on the junk food pushed me over the edge. I took over Yasmine’s mind and body, using her as my tool, since I couldn’t do the task myself.

  The alpha hole almost choked on the chips when the vampire was suddenly standing in front of him. She reached down, grabbed him by the throat and lifted him to his feet. “Why did you steal her candy?” she asked in a menacing tone.

  “There’s more in the fridge,” he managed to squeeze out.

  “Why. Did. You. Steal. Her. Candy?” my minion repeated, but it was really me speaking through her.

  “To teach the spoiled little brat a lesson!” he said with a sneer. “She thinks she’s shifter royalty because of who her parents are. She thinks she’s better than me and she needs to learn her place!”

  “Oh, boy,” Brynn said at the thunderous look on my face when the spells were set off again.

  “Open the door to the cell,” I said to Nick without looking at him when the red flare faded from my tattoos, taking the momentary pain with it.

  “You can’t lock me up for this!” the alpha protested, trying in vain to extricate himself from the vampire’s steely grasp.

  “Watch us,” Nick said and headed for the computer table in the coms room.


  I made Yas march over to the door to the hallway. She was still wearing her gloves, so I made her scan Franko’s palm to open the door. Watching through her eyes, I directed her to descend to the basement. One of the cell doors was standing open, so she tossed her prisoner inside, then yanked the door shut.

  Heath’s face appeared in the window, screaming insults and threats that were completely muffled by the soundproofing. I flipped him the bird, wishing I could do this myself, then brought Yas back upstairs.

  When I released her mind, Yas shook her head and looked around. “Is the alpha hole still alive?” she asked, then looked down at herself. “I don’t see any blood.” Her tone was slightly disappointed.

  “He’s alive,” I said, still furious. “I got you to put him in a cell.”

  “I would have done that without you controlling me,” she said in a chiding tone.

  “I had to do it myself,” I said flatly.

  “He deserved it,” Crowmon said as he started cleaning up the mess the rookie had made. “Agent Franko is quite possibly the douchiest douche nozzle I’ve ever met.”

  Everyone except me broke into laughter. I was still fuming over his theft.

  “Why are you so angry?” Syd asked when she saw my expression. “It’s just candy and there’s more in the fridge.”

  “It isn’t the theft of her food that’s the problem,” Yas said. “It was the deliberate invasion of her privacy that pissed her off.”

  “He went through my things knowing I’d smell his scent in my room,” I said, anger rising even more. “He thinks he has the right to control me and no one gets to decide anything for me anymore!”

  “Okay,” Nick said soothingly, holding his hands up peacefully. “We get it. No one steals your candy and gets away with it. I’m sure Franko has learned his lesson.”

  “I’m going for a drive,” I said, knowing none of them really understood why I was so furious. Yas and Emma had some idea, but only because they were linked to me.

  “Go with her,” Nick said to Yas. “It’s not a good idea for you to go anywhere alone,” he reminded me.

  “The curse could strike at any time, lass,” Crowmon said, dumping the alpha’s trash in the bin.

  “Fine,” I said in capitulation. “I’m going to buy more snacks. We’ll be gone for a while.” It was going to take at least a couple of hours for me to cool down. Going for a long drive seemed like the best distraction right now.

  “Pray for me,” Yas said to the team in dread as she followed me out into the hallway. Emma scampered after us and scaled the vampire to sit on her shoulder. My bestie already knew I was going to be worse than usual behind the wheel. I wasn’t going to disappoint her.

  “Try not to wreck the SUV,” Sydney said. I shot a glower at her, once again reminded that no one trusted me to do anything without screwing up somehow. Then the door closed and the concerned team was cut off from my view.

  I let us into the garage and chose one of the SUVs. The keys were inside it and I activated the device to make the door open. “You don’t have to come with me,” I said as Yas slid into the passenger seat. “I can send Emma back to get you when I stop somewhere.”

  “You’re not going anywhere without me,” Yas replied as she buckled herself in. I sensed her nervousness, but I was too enraged to constrain myself. “Do you know where we’re going?” she asked as I backed out of the garage.

  “Nope,” I replied, but a destination was floating around in the back of my head. It rested right where the faint bundle of emotions that belonged to Jax resided. They’d appeared as soon as we’d arrived in Georgia, but I’d been doing my best to ignore them.

  Driving at a relatively sedate pace down the driveway, I waited until I was on the road before gunning it. Emma grabbed hold of Yasmine’s seatbelt. The vampire closed her eyes and muttered a quiet, yet heartfelt prayer.

  Testing the SUV to its limits, I drove at warp speed along the backroads, heading eastward. There wasn’t much traffic to witness my insane speeds. I flashed past the other vehicles so quickly that they didn’t have a hope of reading my plates. To make it harder, I left my headlights off and relied on my night vision instead.

  There was dead silence in the vehicle as I rapidly closed in on the location where Jax now lived. I’d dreamed he was somewhere in Georgia and our bond was leading me directly to him. It should have taken three hours to reach the Shifter Corps base, but I got there in one.

  Flashing past the extensive compound, I veered away from it and headed to a nearby town. Yas opened her eyes when I slowed down. “We’re still alive?” she said in amazement.

  “Your prayers were answered,” I said, feeling calmer now that I’d spent an hour concentrating on not smashing into any obstacles. “Nick, Syd and Brynn probably prayed to Crowmon to ask him to stop me from having a car crash,” I added dourly.

  “Where are we?” she asked, looking around.

  “In a dinky little town in the middle of nowhere,” I told her. Seeing a gas station, I pulled into the lot and parked. “I’ll be back in a minute. Do you want anything?”

  “I’ll have a quart of O negative,” the vampire replied.

  I snickered, which made her grin widely enough to show me her fangs, then I shut the door and ambled over to the building. Buying snacks to replace the ones that had been stolen by the alpha, I gobbled a couple of them down as I headed back to the SUV.

  “I’m guessing we didn’t just come here for candy,” Yas said shrewdly when I tossed the wrappers in a bin and climbed back inside. “What’s really going on?”

  “Jax was transferred to a base nearby,” I confessed.

  “How do you know where he is?” she asked in confusion.

  “I dreamt about it.” She knew I could astral project, but she wasn’t aware of our bond.

  “Did you stage that tantrum so you could get a chance to leave the base and visit him?” she asked in a suspicious tone.

  “My rage was real,” I said with a scowl. “Franko is lucky I didn’t get you to stuff him in the furnace instead of in a cell.”

  “I’d have been fine with it if you’d wanted to use me that way,” she said solemnly. We shared a laugh that released some of our tension, then we just sat there for a while. “Well, are we going to break into the Shifter Corps base and see Jax, or what?” my bestie asked.

  “It would be good to know why he didn’t bother to contact us after he left,” I agreed, nerves kicking up a notch.

  “We should leave the SUV here,” the vampire advised me. “Nick is probably tracking us to see where we are,” she added when I raised my eyebrows.

  “I didn’t think of that,” I confessed. “We’d better leave our cell phones here, too.”

  We placed our phones in the glovebox and climbed out. I locked the SUV, then took Emma from Yas. “Can you take us to that base we passed a few miles from here?” I requested.

  The squirrel had been sitting on Yasmine’s lap and hadn’t seen the compound. She had to glean the destination from my mind. A moment later, we appeared next to the tall barbwire fence that surrounded the base.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  WE STUDIED THE DISTANT buildings and I spied the barracks. “Jax’s room is in there,” I said and pointed at the concrete structure. I couldn’t remember the dream in detail, but I knew I was right about it.

  “The base is being guarded by shifters,” Yas said, eyeing the people on patrol. “We’ll have to be quick, or they’ll know their compound has been infiltrated.”

  “Get us as close as you can to that building, Em,” I requested. The squirrel obeyed me and we were standing at the edge of a path a moment later. I snatched the door to the barracks open as Emma slipped into the backpack I’d brought along.

  We stepped into a hallway with several doors branching off it. I followed Jax’s scent to his door and knocked softly. I couldn’t hear anyone inside, so I tried the handle and the door opened.

  “Hurry up!” Yas whispered when she heard som
eone approaching the hallway from one of the other doors.

  We darted into the small bedroom and I quietly closed the door. Shifters were bustling about in the other rooms. I could hear the rookies in the main bunk area, chatting, laughing and playing cards and board games.

  Someone walked past the door and paused for a moment before continuing on. I exchanged a worried look with my bestie. Her scent was subtle, but detectable. No one raised the alarm, so we relaxed slightly.

  Concentrating on our link, I felt Jax in one of the other buildings. I could sense his confusion and knew it was due to the emotions he could feel coming from me. “He’s coming,” I whispered when I sensed him moving closer. Yas gave me a curious look, but remained silent.

  I wasn’t sure what Jax’s reaction would be when he saw us. My palms grew sweaty and I wiped them on my jeans. His emotions became clearer the closer he came. I sensed he was wary and slightly alarmed. I couldn’t feel any gladness that I was here, although he had to know it was me by now.

  Familiar footsteps sounded, then Jax opened the door. He wasn’t surprised to find us in his room, but there was no recognition in his expression. “Who the hell are you?” he asked us suspiciously.

  “Very funny, Jax,” Yas whispered snidely. “Close the door before someone sees us!”

  Narrowing his eyes, he stepped inside and shut the door, then crossed his arms. I stared at his gorgeous face and scanned his perfect body. He was wearing camouflage cargo pants and a green t-shirt. His tattoos peeked out from beneath his shirt. “I repeat, who the hell are you?” he asked, keeping his voice down.

  My heart fell when I realized my earlier suspicions had come true. Someone had messed with his memory. “Don’t you remember us?” I asked.

  “We’ve never met before,” Jax said, studying us both intently. “I’m pretty sure I’d remember you two.” His lips twitched slightly at Yasmine’s leather outfit.