by Paige Tyler
“You couldn’t have known that,” Lacey protested.
“No, but that doesn’t keep me from blaming myself anyway.” His jaw clenched. “If I’d driven a little faster, used my sirens, kicked in the front door right away—done something—Jessica wouldn’t have lost both her parents. Jessica’s life changed forever that night because I didn’t get there in time.”
Lacey hated seeing Alex in pain, and it was clear to her that he was. It was the kind of pain that came when you blamed yourself for not doing enough to save another person’s life, even if there wasn’t anything you could have done. She knew a little something about that kind of pain. It could be a heavy load to carry, making you doubt yourself in almost every way that mattered.
Lacey scooted closer to Alex. “You know that I’m speaking from experience when I tell you that guilt can really mess with your head, right? That it will make you doubt yourself at the worst possible time?”
“Yeah, I know. Maybe after we get your sister back, we can get a reduced rate on therapy sessions. Cooper knows this really great shrink.”
She laughed, amazed she could even do that with everything going wrong in her life. But it felt nice to be this close to Alex again. “That could be fun.”
His mouth quirked. “I don’t think a shrink session is supposed to be fun.”
“But it could be,” she said.
Then she kissed him.
It was sudden, spontaneous, reckless, and probably stupid. But when their lips met, all the silly crap that had been going on between them disappeared.
The kiss deepened, and in a flash, Lacey was transported back to that first date, that first kiss, that first moment when she thought Alex was a guy worth spending time with. Why, exactly, had she been so stupid and let him go?
She was still trying to come up with an answer to that when the phone rang.
* * *
Alex disengaged himself from Lacey with a growl and dug his cell phone out of his pocket before it went to voice mail, even though he would have preferred kissing her to talking to whoever the hell had called him. He wasn’t exactly sure what had just happened, but it seemed as if a small corner of the polar ice caps had warmed up a few degrees.
Brooks’s name showed up on his phone’s screen, and he thumbed the button. “What’s up, Brooks?”
“Is Lacey with you?” The senior corporal’s deep voice vibrated through the phone. “If so, she’s gonna want to hear this.”
Alex glanced at Lacey to see her sitting there with a concerned look on her face. “I’m putting you on speaker now, Brooks.”
“Max and I stopped by Lacey’s apartment earlier to drop off some food and decided to search Kelsey’s room while we were there. We came across something we thought you should know about.”
Lacey’s brows shot up. “Wait a minute. You searched my apartment? Who let you in?”
Brooks hesitated. “No one. Max was on the wrong side of the law before he became a cop. He picked the lock.”
Lacey did a double take. “And Leo didn’t care?”
“Nah,” Brooks said. “He met us last week at the engagement party, so he was cool with it.”
On the floor beside them, Leo opened one eye to look at them, then closed it again.
“What did you and Max find in Kelsey’s room?” Alex asked.
“Birth control pills.”
Lacey’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“Before you get all upset and lose it over the fact that your baby sister had birth control pills, you might want to focus on the real reason I called,” Brooks said. “Becker did some of that hacker crap he does and found out that two of the other missing girls—Nicole Arend and Abigail Elliott—had prescriptions for birth control pills from the same doctor Kelsey used.”
“Shit,” Alex muttered. The odds of three college-age girls being on the pill wasn’t that high. But all three of them getting the pills from the same doctor in a city the size of Dallas couldn’t be a coincidence. This was the break they’d been waiting for. “What do we know about this doctor?”
“His name’s Pettine,” Brooks said. “He’s a surgery specialist, but he also volunteers at a clinic near the RTC campus. The clinic has an ongoing relationship with several of the local colleges, and they refer students there for immunizations, health and wellness exams, and general appointments. It’s entirely possible that the other two missing girls had gone to the clinic as well, but there wasn’t any indication they ever had a prescription for birth control pills.”
“Tell me you have a location on this guy,” Alex said.
“Max is on him now,” Brooks said. “Pettine left Charles Hospital about an hour ago and went straight to some kind of research facility near there. Max says the place has been quiet since Pettine went inside. I’m heading over there now.”
“Text me the address, and I’ll meet you there,” Alex said.
“Shouldn’t we get this information to the councilman and the rest of the task force he’s put together?” Lacey asked as he hung up.
Alex shook his head. “They’ll only want to drag Pettine in for questioning. It’s more important to them that they appear to be on top of the case by talking to people of interest than in accomplishing anything. They bring this doctor in, and he’ll lawyer up in seconds. They’ll never get anything out of him, and our lead will be meaningless. You have to trust me on this.”
Lacey didn’t look convinced, but she nodded. “Okay. Just bring Kelsey home. Please.”
He leaned in and kissed her. “I will.”
* * *
The research facility wasn’t what Alex expected. With the familiar snake and staff symbol of the medical industry attached to the front of it, the three-floor glass building looked like a cross between a high-tech computer firm and a hospital. It definitely didn’t seem like the kind of place a psycho killer would take his victims.
Alex drove past it, pulling up behind Max’s black Camaro a few blocks down the street. Max and Brooks were standing beside the car, waiting for him.
“What the hell kind of place is this?” Alex asked as he got out of his truck and closed the door.
“I don’t know,” Brooks said. “Becker is trying to find out who holds the lease right now. He said he’d call as soon as he has anything.”
“About five minutes before you guys got here, Pettine and everyone else in the place bailed like it was an evacuation drill,” Max told them. “We have the doctor’s license plate info, but the others took off before I could get anything on them. I tried to follow, but they scattered. Something’s not right here, I can feel it.”
Alex’s gut clenched. Max was the youngest werewolf on the team, but he was a good cop. If he thought something was wrong, then it was.
Alex reached down and pulled his off-duty SIG P224 out of its holster. “I have zero probable cause to go into that building, but I’m going anyway. If you two want to hang out here, I’m completely okay with that.”
“Hell no,” they both said in unison.
Brooks and Max followed his lead, pulling out their weapons as they ran for the back side of the building and what Alex hoped would be an easy way in.
They found a metal door along the side of the building that wasn’t facing any of the streets that ran past the facility and wasn’t well lit. Max probably could have picked the lock, but Alex didn’t have the patience for that. Instead, he ripped off the knob, then yanked open the door. Pieces of metal fell to the concrete with a clatter, but he ignored it as he led the way into the dark building.
They’d barely gone twenty feet before Alex picked up Kelsey’s scent coming from somewhere down the hall. He glanced over his shoulder, motioning in that direction. Brooks and Max nodded, spreading out along the corridor and checking each room as they went past.
The air was heavy with antiseptic odors and industrial cleansers, but underneath
them, Alex picked up a myriad of human scents in addition to Kelsey’s. He ignored the rest and focused on hers, following it to a stairwell and down into a dark basement.
He was halfway down the stairs when he realized that the basement was empty. Kelsey had been there but was gone now. They were too late.
Alex continued down the stairs anyway, Brooks and Max at his heels. The girls might be gone, but they needed to check to see if whoever had kidnapped them left any evidence behind. His stomach churned at the thought of what they might find. He didn’t smell any dead bodies, but still… He’d seen what the killer had done to Nicole Arend. The basement was made up of a big main room with five smaller rooms off it. Each held a small cot and not much else. Alex could pick up Kelsey’s scent in one of the rooms, along with that belonging to a man that was oddly familiar, even though he couldn’t place it. Strangely enough, he also smelled fireball. What the hell would that crap be doing here?
Alex walked back into the main room and joined his teammates as they searched the utility cabinets. He’d just opened one and started looking through it when Brooks’s phone vibrated. Brooks pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the screen, then thumbed the green button.
“I have you on speaker,” he said. “Go ahead, Becker.”
“Things just got real weird,” Becker said. “Councilman McDonald owns the building you followed Pettine to. It’s one of his medical research facilities.”
“Shit,” Alex muttered.
No sooner was the word out of his mouth than footsteps echoed upstairs, first in the hallways, then in the stairwell. A moment later, the basement was lit up bright as day as fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling blinked to life.
Double shit.
“Do we fight them?” Max growled, his eyes glowing in a partial shift.
He was seconds away from wolfing out. Alex couldn’t blame him. He was clenching his jaw so hard to keep his inner wolf from coming out that he thought his teeth might shatter.
Alex glanced at Brooks to see the other werewolf regarding him with a questioning look in his blue-gray eyes. Alex shook his head. Kelsey and the other girls weren’t here, and without evidence of a crime, they couldn’t very well justify attacking whoever was getting ready to storm in here. This wasn’t something they could fight their way out of.
Giving him a nod, Brooks walked over to grab Max by the back of the neck and give him a rough shake. The gold immediately faded from Max’s eyes, and they went back to their usual blue.
Just in time too. A split second later, the door to the basement burst open, and three private security guards ran down the steps. The way the idiots stormed into the room, they probably would have shot each other if they actually had to use their weapons.
“Westcott Security!” one of the men shouted. “Drop your weapons and raise your hands!”
“We’re Dallas PD,” Alex called out, but the security guards didn’t seem to care.
“Drop the weapons!” they ordered.
Alex cursed silently. The idiots had probably been waiting their whole lives to say those words. Frig it all to hell. He could have wiped the floor with these guys by himself if he wanted to.
He slowly bent and placed his weapon on the floor and gently pushed it aside, then stood and held up his hands. He’d paid for his off-duty SIG out of his own pocket. He sure as hell wasn’t kicking it anywhere. On either side of him, Brooks and Max did the same.
“If you give us a minute, we can show you our badges,” Alex began, but two of the guards were already cuffing Brooks and Max. When they were done, the shorter of the two men quickly moved to do the same to Alex. He ground his jaw. The embarrassment he, Brooks, and Max were going to have to deal with when the rest of the Pack heard this would be horrible.
But not nearly as horrible as knowing he’d come within minutes of saving Kelsey.
* * *
“You expect me to fucking believe that the three of you were responding to an anonymous tip telling you that the missing girls were at this research facility, and you just happened to find a side door with a broken lock?”
Alex didn’t answer Chief Curtis. He was too busy digging through the old boxes in his mental attic trying to remember where he’d smelled the other scent he’d picked up in the room where Kelsey had been held. It had been the same one he’d smelled on Nicole Arend and the dogs, which meant it belonged to the guy who’d probably dumped the bodies.
Gut instinct told Alex there was a good chance the asshole was also linked to fireball, since everywhere he’d smelled the guy, he’d also picked up the drugs as well.
“Are you even listening to me, Officer Trevino?”
Alex jerked out of his musings to see Chief Curtis standing in front of him, his face so red, Alex thought it might explode. Shit, he’d better answer before Curtis blew a gasket.
“I’m listening, sir.”
Chief Curtis, Detective Asskisser from homicide, and Gage—as well as Councilman McDonald—had shown up at the research facility ten minutes after the private security guards had taken Alex, Brooks, and Max into custody, which was a nice way of saying they’d cuffed them and put them in the back of their spiffy Toyota Camry security cruisers. Alex prayed no one had gotten a picture or video of them in the back of those cars. It wasn’t something he ever wanted to be reminded of.
The security guards let them out of the cars and took off the cuffs the moment the DPD brass got there, then reluctantly left. Gage didn’t look any more pleased than the chief, but he hadn’t intervened as Curtis and Asskisser questioned Alex, Brooks, and Max about why they’d been at the facility. McDonald stood off to the side with a smug expression that Alex would have loved to rip off his face—from the inside.
Alex hadn’t told them anything. He wasn’t sure if he could trust Curtis, but he definitely knew he couldn’t trust McDonald.
“I didn’t expect any better out of you and Corporal Brooks, Officer Trevino, not with that crap you both pulled a couple of months ago with the FBI.” Curtis sneered before turning disapproving eyes on Max. “But I expected much better from you, Officer Lowry. I had you pegged as an up-and-comer. What the hell were you doing out here with these two?”
Max grinned. “I volunteered to help.”
Curtis’s face darkened. “You think this is funny?”
Max tried to look abashed—and failed. “No, sir.”
Curtis drew himself up to glower at each of them. “I know Deputy Chief Mason has always given you SWAT boys a lot of leeway, but I’m here to tell you—that’s over. Starting right now, the three of you are suspended pending a full investigation by IA. If I hear you coming within a mile of this case again, you’ll be out of a job. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Alex nodded.
Curtis gave Gage a nod. “Commander.”
Gage waited until Curtis and McDonald walked away before turning to them. Alex braced himself, sure his boss was going to tear him a new one, but Gage surprised him.
“I’m assuming you had a good reason for breaking in here?” his boss asked.
Alex did a double take. Mac must be a good influence on Gage. It wasn’t too long ago that he would have picked Alex up by the throat first and asked questions later.
Figuring he’d better take advantage of Gage’s good mood, Alex quickly explained why they’d broken into the research facility, saying that he’d not only picked up Kelsey’s scent, but also that of the man who’d dumped the dead dogs and Nicole Arend’s body.
“I got a whiff of fireball in there too,” Alex added. “I don’t think they were making it here, because the smell isn’t strong enough for that, but they were definitely storing it.”
Gage cursed and glanced at Curtis and McDonald, who were standing by the councilman’s car, talking. “A city councilman involved with drugs, dogfighting, and kidnapping. What the hell is going on here?”
All Alex could do was shrug.
“If you’re going to make a move on a man like McDonald, you’d better have some damn good evidence,” Gage said. “He’s as close to bulletproof as you’re going to see in this town.”
Alex couldn’t argue with that. “Now that we know McDonald is involved, it gives us a whole new direction to investigate. I just wish I knew how the hell McDonald’s people knew we were onto him. They bailed right before we got here, like they knew we were coming. No one knew about this lead but us.”
Gage’s mouth tightened. “That’s not true. Lacey knew. I overheard McDonald tell Curtis that’s how he found out you were here.”
Alex frowned. “That can’t be right. She’d never do something that would put her sister at risk.”
His boss shrugged. “All I know is that she told him. If you want to know why she did it, you’re going to have to ask her.”
The only reason he could think she’d tell McDonald was because she simply didn’t trust Alex to find her sister.
* * *
Lacey paced back and forth across the living room while Leo watched from the couch. She’d almost called Alex twice already but hadn’t wanted to bother him. She was close to giving in and finally picking up the phone when he walked in the door—alone.
Her heart seized in her chest at the grim expression on his face. “Oh God. What happened? Is it Kelsey? Please tell me she’s not…”
Alex shook his head. “She’s fine—at least I hope so. We found the place where she and the other girls were being held, but whoever kidnapped them moved them right before we got there.”
Tears stung Lacey’s eyes. Being so close and missing her by minutes was almost worse than not knowing where Kelsey was in the first place. “Why would they move them?”
A muscle in Alex’s jaw flexed. “Because they knew we were coming.”
“What do you mean they knew you were coming? How is that possible?”
“Because you told Councilman McDonald.”
She stared at him, even more confused now. “No, I didn’t.”
“According to him, you did.” Alex muttered a curse. “Dammit, Lacey, I told you to trust me.”