“Yes, I’m a chicken shifter, and my so-called friends were eating my family.”
Noah rolled his eyes when Skylar’s back was to him. “They were just chickens and nothing but chickens. They weren’t shifters, and they’re not really related to you.”
“Would you say the same if I was eating a lion?” he challenged, spinning around with a glare.
Noah rubbed the back of his neck, his expression pained. “No, but there’s a difference—”
“Oh, of course you’d think so. Top of the food chain and all that. But chickens aren’t cocky enough to think we’re the kings of the animal world.”
Tarun rolled her eyes, and Lily glanced over at her. Dick reference number one, Tarun mouthed.
She furrowed her brow, trying to piece it all together. Dick and cocky were too different words, with different meanings—ohhh. She thought she understood. Roosters. Cocks. Cocky. It all tied together. She put her hand over her mouth, trying to cover her amusement.
Skylar was worked up, and it wasn’t that part that was funny to her. It was the thought of the cocky references when he was literally a rooster. Lord.
Honestly, she was fascinated by all this, but she thought maybe it was a conversation best had without her shamelessly listening in. Standing, she paused and smiled hesitantly as everyone looked at her.
“I have some work to get done,” she said softly, pointing to her laptop. “I’d better get started on it.”
Tarun stood as well, grabbing the discarded plates. “I’ll just, uh, get these out of here and do the dishes.”
They both turned to walk away, and Lily stopped at the bar to pick up the other devices. She looked over at Noah, smiling as he winked at her while Skylar’s back was turned. Unable to resist, she mouthed, Have fun with the cock, smiling even wider as she walked to the archway.
She got where Skylar was coming from now. Cock jokes as a double entendre were fun.
Noah silently snorted with amusement over Lily’s parting comment as he watched her disappear from sight, and then suppressed a sigh as he turned back to Skylar. The Enforcers all kind of tolerated the chicken shifter. It wasn’t that he was a bad guy. He wasn’t—although they could all do without the cock jokes.
It was just that he wanted to be an Enforcer, and none of them thought he was cut out for it. But nothing they said could dissuade him, and he constantly tried to get them to let him into the crew.
“Is the work your mate’s doing Enforcer related?” Skylar asked, his eyes narrowed on the archway.
Fuck. He couldn’t lie, because Skylar would know immediately, but damned if he wanted to admit the truth. “Come have a drink with me, Skylar. Tequila’s your drink of choice, right?”
Skylar regarded him suspiciously but followed him to the bar, where Noah started pouring them shots. Shifters couldn’t get drunk, unless they drank a shit ton of alcohol—like seven or eight bottles within minutes—but, for the most part, they enjoyed the taste.
And Noah wasn’t sure how it was for other shifters because he’d never asked, but the burn of liquor always seemed to calm him in a weird way. Maybe it was a placebo affect or whatever. He didn’t know, but he hoped it did the same for Skylar.
They clinked their glasses together and downed their shots. Noah shuddered—tequila wasn’t his favorite by far, and he wasn’t used to it—and then looked at Skylar.
“The truth is, Lily showed up out of nowhere last week. I hadn’t seen or talked to her in years, not since I left the Marines. She was the wife of one of my friends who died on my last deployment. She came to check on me and got suspicious, and she followed us down to the meeting room and listened in.
“When she was caught, she volunteered to do some hacking for us. She heard us discussing how we needed someone with that skill. Blake agreed to let her do it, and he sent her with me to try to get some intel on the group we’re trying to take down.”
Skylar held up his hand. “Wait, wait, wait. Your mate is your dead Marine buddy’s widow? This is the kind of shit you see in a soap opera.”
Noah cocked an eyebrow. “You watch soap operas, Skylar?”
“What? N-no. Okay, maybe Days of Their Lives. But only when nothing else is on.”
He’s been joking, but okay. Skylar watched soaps. Who would have guessed? “Yeah, that’s the gist of it. I didn’t want to take her on the mission, but she refused to be left behind. And we needed her skills.”
Skylar looked at him with a serious expression. “I could contribute too, you know.”
“What’s your gift, Skylar?”
“It’s nothing important.”
“That’s why you can’t help. An Enforcer’s biggest contribution is their gift. Not to mention fighting skills.”
“I can fight.”
“Maybe, but without knowing what your gift is, we can’t accept you into the crew.”
Skylar exhaled, shoulders slumping for a moment before he straightened with a nod. “Fine. But one day you guys are gonna need my help, and I’m going to expect an apology from each one of you for eating chicken before I agree.”
Noah nodded back at him. “When that day comes, you’ll get one.”
“I have just one more question,” Skylar said as he stood up and opened his arms. “Does this outfit make my cock look big?”
He groaned, dropping his head to the bar. “And you’ll have to stop with the cock jokes.”
Skylar slapped a hand to his back. “Never. You know you all secretly love them.”
Noah’s phone rang and he glanced at the screen, immediately answering it when he saw Liam’s number. “What’s up?”
“The auction’s over,” Liam replied in his thick Irish accent.
Eyebrows raising, he looked at his watch. “Already? It didn’t last long.”
“It started earlier than the website advertised, but even then, it only lasted an hour. Now everyone’s leaving, Fernandez included. They came for Damara and are taking her with them.”
He frowned. “How is she?”
“She’s fine. They tied her up and injected her with shit so she couldn’t shift, but they didn’t hurt her. Yet. Her telepathic link to us is still open, so we’re hearing her thoughts, and we put a tracking device in her shoe before she left for the festival. Hopefully they’ll let her keep her shoes so we can follow.”
“Did the buyers leave with the women?”
“That’s just it,” Liam replied, and he could hear the frown in his voice. “They all left as alone as they arrived. And Damara hasn’t seen any of the women. We’re not sure what’s going on.”
Skylar stood, getting his attention as he pointed to the door. Noah nodded and waved, getting up to follow him to the door so he could lock it behind him, but his thoughts were on the dragon puzzle.
“Have you called Blake yet?”
“Just before you. Our orders are to let them leave and then follow. He’s hoping Fernandez and Damara will lead us to the girls.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he exhaled heavily. “Keep me updated too, okay?”
“You got it.”
They hung up and Noah stared at his phone, lost in thought. He didn’t like this—the Enforcers were too broken up, too separated. He understood it was what the mission called for, but he didn’t like it at all. It felt too dangerous, and Damara would be in serious trouble if they found out she wasn’t a dragon.
Something else was going on, too. The auction attendees leaving without any of the women was off. But he wasn’t sure they’d be able to figure it out unless Damara learned something.
Standing, he shoved his phone in his pocket and made his way upstairs. He hoped Lily thought to look in his room for her luggage—he’d forgotten to tell her he put it in there when she went upstairs earlier.
He passed the room she’d used before, satisfied she’d made it to the right room when he saw the door was open, the room dark and empty. He opened his door and there she was, sitting on his bed with her laptop and the one
she snatched both open in front of her.
Looking up, she smiled at him as he came in and kicked the door shut. “So… a chicken shifter, huh?”
“Weird, right,” he replied with a half-smile. “Skylar’s the only one I’ve ever heard of. He’s an odd one—in animal and personality.”
“He wants to be an Enforcer?”
Exhaling, he sat on the bed to take his shoes off. “Yeah, but none of us think he’s a good fit. We have to be good fighters, in human and animal form. He might be a good human fighter, but can you imagine a chicken battling a tiger or grizzly? Not just that, but the main requirement is having a good gift, something that will help on missions. He won’t even tell us what his is.”
“I feel bad for him. He seemed to really want to be one of you.”
“I feel bad for him, too, I really do. Cock jokes aside, he’s a good guy. But our job is important, and it’s dangerous. We can’t be screwing up because we’re too focused on making sure he doesn’t get hurt.”
“I get it. Too bad there’s not another way you can use him, to make him feel like a part of you. I was just about to come find you, so good timing.”
Turning to look at her, he met her unique blue eyes. “Did you find something on their stuff?”
“Not yet. The phones were burners with zero information except for one phone number each—which was for the other phone. And the laptop’s files are encrypted, so it might take me a while to break into them.”
“So what’s up?”
“I traced each ticket buyer’s info back to their prospective banks. I set up an alert for each account whenever large sums are withdrawn.”
Frowning, he cocked his head as he studied her. “Was that safe? You won’t be caught by the banks, will you?”
She waved her hand as she shook her head. “Nope. Getting into banks is fairly easy. I could be a millionaire if I didn’t mind being a criminal,” she said with a laugh. “Getting into the website was harder than the banks, actually. But I’ve been alerted that four of the attendees withdrew large sums of money at the exact same time tonight. More might make purchases later, but I know four have now.”
“Liam called just a few minutes ago. He said the auction’s over and all the attendees left—alone. And Fernandez and his crew are in the process of leaving. They got Damara ready to leave, too.”
Her brow twitched. “That was fast.”
Nodding, he adjusted his ballcap, uneasiness filling him as he thought about the mission. “He said it started earlier than expected and only lasted about an hour.”
“They must have changed the times,” she mused, biting her bottom lip as she thought, her eyes far away. “Maybe they kept the women at a different location. Men who run the kind of organization Fernandez does would be expecting someone to try to steal the merchandise. Especially when they were auctioned off for the prices the girls went for. One of them was just under a million.”
His eyebrows rose. “A million dollars?”
She nodded, the look in her eyes grim. “Yep. Based on what was paid, I can possibly work up guesses on which women were bought. Some of them sold for less than others’ starting bids.”
“Yeah, see if you can work up possible matches, that way we can try to narrow it down. I’ll call Blake and let him know what you found. And you should probably have those laptops put up by the time I’m done.”
Her eyebrow arched. “Why is that?”
“Because I’m about to have my way with you, and I’d hate to damage one of them in the process.”
Chapter Fourteen
Lily glanced up as the door to the clubhouse opened the next morning and Blake and Luke walked in. They were rumpled and looked like they hadn’t gotten much sleep, and her eyebrows twitched with concern as she looked at them.
The dragon case was wearing on each of the Enforcers, in different ways. Damara was undercover, in the hands of the enemy. According to Liam, Dmitri was about to lose his mind with his sister in danger, and Noah said Liam didn’t sound all that stable at the moment, either.
Noah was stuck at the clubhouse doing pretty much nothing except making sure Lily had what she needed, because he wouldn’t leave her alone, and she wouldn’t be any help anywhere else, anyway. The most she could do to help was work on getting into the files on the stolen laptop. And she could see how much it bothered him to not be actively participating, but nothing she said would make him leave.
He said what she was doing was dangerous, and he wasn’t leaving her alone because Fernandez could find out and come for her. She assured him the stolen laptop couldn’t be traced, but he wasn’t willing to take the risk.
She understood, though. She wouldn’t be able to, either, if it was the other way around.
Tarun was the only one not actively involved, but the longer she was away from her husband, the more anxious she became. And now Blake and Luke were walking in, looking like they hadn’t slept, their faces lined with worry.
Lily needed to work faster. She wasn’t sure what secrets the laptop held, but if she could just get into the files, they might be able to end this that much sooner.
Tarun ran into the room from the hallway in the back, jumping into Luke’s arms. He closed them around her, holding her tightly, and Lily felt her eyes mist with tears. They’d been separated for less than a day, but they were holding onto each other like it’d been a year.
She’d had a version of that with Brandon and then thought she’d never experience it again. And now there she was, with Noah, and she got to feel all those things again.
It wasn’t the same as it used to be, but that was okay. It wasn’t better, it wasn’t worse—it was just different, and that was okay, too. Because Brandon and Noah were completely different men. It made sense that nothing felt the same, and she was glad it didn’t.
She could be blissfully happy with Noah, and she thought they were on track for that. But, as much as she was ready to move on and was ready for Noah, as much as she wanted to remember Brandon with fondness—she didn’t want every aspect of her relationship with Noah to remind her of her life with Brandon.
That didn’t mean she wanted to forget Brandon altogether, of course. She never wanted that.
But she wanted to enjoy her time with Noah—not be reminded of her late husband every moment of the day.
And it was fitting, she thought. She was beginning a brand-new life, and she loved that everything felt new, too. New experiences with the Enforcers, new location, new love.
She slanted a look at Noah as he nodded to Blake. As long as he wanted her around, that was. They hadn’t discussed the future much yet, but she wasn’t worried, and she didn’t feel an urgency to get everything settled. She was fairly sure he felt the same way she did, and she was enjoying the ride for the time being.
Blake sat at the table with them, rubbing his hands over his face tiredly. Lily studied him, feeling concern well up inside her. She could see how much pressure and worry he felt when she looked into his dark blue eyes. Being the leader of the Enforcers must be a heavy weight to carry at the best of times, and it was far from the best in that moment.
Noah explained the dragon’s history to her that morning over breakfast. She’d been puzzling over the prices the four women had gone for, and he explained about their past, along with how rare and valued female dragons were. As well as how ruthless and entitled the men were.
It made finding those seven women—and getting Damara home—all the more imperative. And other than the info Damara was able to give them, and what Lily had been able to find so far, they were mostly doing it blind.
“So what did you find out from the human?” Noah asked. “You were pretty vague about it on the phone.”
Blake exhaled heavily. “Nothing of any use.”
Noah scowled. “How is that even possible?”
Blake caught her puzzled look. “My gift makes it virtually impossible to not tell me what I want to know.”
“And your gift is what?”<
br />
“Causing pain with a look.”
“Shit hurts too,” Noah muttered. “I was curious and asked him to use it on me. He said it was on a low setting, but I don’t think I believe him.”
Blake smiled crookedly for a moment. “It was. I used a higher setting on him, but he swore he didn’t know anything. He’s a computer tech like Lily, and he was hired by Fernandez, but he worked mostly under Don—the panther. When he found the breach, he went to Don, and, wanting to be the one who found you two, Don immediately set out after you. Don wanted to go back to Fernandez and tell him he’d solved the problem. Try to score some brownie points.
“Vance—the human—didn’t even know shifters existed until Don turned into a panther. I think it was partly your hit, Noah, and partly the stress and shock of the moment that put him under for so long. He knew he was working for bad people, but he thought they were humans. He had no idea they were shifters or that the women were dragons.”
“You believe what he told you?” she asked, her frown still in place.
Noah tapped his temple. “We can hear lies, remember? Blake would have heard it if he lied.”
“What will happen to him?”
Blake shrugged. “That’s up to a human court. I know someone in the system and they created a pretty big list of crimes for him and locked him up.”
“You don’t think he’ll tell people the truth of what you are?”
“I told him I’d find out and come back for him,” Blake replied with a shrug. “Trust me, after feeling my gift like he did, he won’t risk that. And he’s been pinned with some pretty bad, questionable shit. No one would believe him, and he’d get locked up in a mental ward. He’s also under a no contact order—so he won’t be able to let anyone in Fernandez’s camp know. Even if he did, he doesn’t know our names or where we are. We’re covered.”
“It must be his laptop we have, if he was a tech. I’ve unlocked a lot of the files, but what I’ve found doesn’t make much sense. It’s mostly combinations of numbers, dates, and weird names. But I’m determined to figure it out.”
“Anything you find has the potential to help. It might help us paint a bigger picture, if nothing else. I don’t know if I’ve thanked you yet, and if not, I need to. We wouldn’t know much at all if it weren’t for you.”
Thief (Blood & Bone Enforcers MC Book 2) Page 16