The mating bond was slowly setting into place and it centered her more than any meditation or therapy session could have ever hoped to. She still struggled with her emotions now and then, especially when memories or fears were triggered, but Gray’s quiet strength and no-nonsense way of looking at things centered her and helped her wolf deal with the aggravation instead of just suppressing it.
“A few of us are heading out to Kings territory this morning to meet up with a D.E.A. task force,” Gray explained as he pulled into a parking spot. “Stay smart and don’t go anywhere crazy without letting one of us know. It should all be over soon, okay?”
She nodded and smiled as she leaned over and planted a warm, wet kiss on his lips. It quickly escalated and they had their hands all over each other in no time.
Drawing back with a laugh, Liesel winked at Gray.
“Be safe,” she said. “Don’t do anything stupid or overly heroic.”
He shook his head and waved her off.
Inside at her desk, Liesel couldn’t quite wipe the stupid grin off her face and it was painfully obvious what was going so right in her life.
“Man,” Minda said with a smile as she brought Liesel a coffee. “He must be really good at what he does.” Liesel raised an eyebrow at her.
“What do you mean?” She couldn’t quite get the smile out of her voice, knowing exactly what her friend meant.
“Yeah,” Minda laughed, shaking her head. “He’s good.”
Bella texted her later that morning, too.
How’s mated life? Is Day 9 as good as Day 1? *wink wink*
Liesel snorted and replied.
Better.
Seconds later the response came back.
Jealous!
The morning drifted by in a haze and Liesel thought everything was finally quieting down in Calero County.
By noon, however, the harsh truth came crashing down.
Elaine, a social worker who took emergency cases, came running into the office with tears streaming down her face. Something in her gut told Liesel that Elaine needed her help.
“What?” she asked, ready for the details.
“A 6-year-old,” the older woman said with a shaky breath. “The grandmother thinks she hasn’t eaten in at least two days and that the step-father might have broken the girl’s arm.”
Liesel’s stomach dropped. Shit.
“Do you have an address?”
Elaine handed the paper over and Liesel swore again. The trailer park.
Grabbing her phone, she dialed Gray’s number, only to go straight to voicemail.
Not good.
Thinking fast, she called the station and got Bailey, one of Gray’s human deputies. Liesel explained who she was and that she might need an escort out to the trailer park.
“I’ll meet you guys out there in 20,” he said. “I’ll shoot Gray a message, too. Wait outside the gates for me to arrive.”
Since Gray had driven her to work, she rode to the trailer park with Elaine and they waited a few minutes for the deputy’s SUV to roll up.
“Lead the way,” Bailey said through his lowered window and Elaine directed Liesel to the back of the property. Thankfully, it seemed to be in the opposite direction of Arnie’s trailer, so there was a chance she could get in, get the girl, and get out before her old buddy even realized she and the deputy were on the property.
“You have the court order?” She asked and Elaine handed over both copies, one of which Liesel handed to Bailey.
Without wasting any time, Liesel ran up the steps and pounded on the front door, her wolf’s hackles raised as the animal took a defensive position within her, ready to pounce to the surface if needed.
The little girl in question answered the door.
“Amy?” Liesel asked, and the little girl glanced nervously over her shoulder before nodding at her. Liesel let out a little sigh of relief.
“We’re here to take you to your grandma’s, honey,” Liesel said, pointing to the deputy standing in the yard.
If she’d been expecting the girl to hesitate or cry, she didn’t. She pushed the door open and sprinted out into the yard toward Bailey, who scooped her up and quickly deposited her in the backseat of Elaine’s car.
“Get her out of here,” she heard Bailey tell Elaine. “I’ll give Liesel a ride back to the office. Get the girl out of here before they start raising hell.”
Liesel sighed in relief as Elaine did as she was told and sped out of the trailer park like demons were on her trail.
When the car disappeared around the bend, she turned back to the door and moved to stuff the order into the mail slot. Before she could take her hand off the paper, the screen door flew open, crashing into Liesel and making her fly backwards at the impact.
“Stupid bitch! I knew you’d come out here meddling,” a huge, half-dressed man came flying out of the trailer as Liesel fell backwards onto her ass. Behind her, she heard Bailey make a move to tell the man to stop, but the sound of an impact and a struggle followed.
He’d been jumped by someone they hadn’t heard coming.
Left to face her own assailant alone, Liesel scooted backwards as quickly as she could, but couldn’t completely dodge the blow the man rained down at her head. His huge paw of a hand caught her in the temple and wobbled her, forcing her to fall on to her hands and knees while she continued to scramble away from him.
A huge hand grabbed her ankle and yanked her backwards, scraping her skin against the rocks and trash in the yard.
She rolled again and just as she went to shift to her wolf, the giant of a man cracked her a second time in the same spot and she saw stars. Just as the world started to go dark, she heard the man who’d struck her speak.
“Call Knuckles,” he called into the trailer. “Tell him we have the sheriff’s bitch.”
Somewhere in the distance she heard Bailey let out a loud groan. She hoped he was okay—not having supernatural healing abilities like shifters did made healing take a lot longer for humans.
Tears stung her eyes and she closed them, that helpless feeling back in her stomach and making her nauseous.
With hardly a grasp on consciousness left, Liesel let go and hoped when she woke up, she’d be in better condition to fight.
And Gray. She hoped Gray was safe right now. The mountain lions had somehow expected her. Had they expected him, too?
Chapter Twelve
Grayson
The raid had been less spectacular than Gray had hoped. After following the D.E.A. agents half an hour outside of county lines to a seedy motel out in the middle of nowhere, they’d only ended up netting three Kings, a couple pistols, and a measly bag of pills someone had likely lifted off their grandmother.
He swore aloud for the tenth time as he drove back toward the station. Bailey hadn’t checked in since before lunch and it was unusual that nobody answered the office line.
Because he missed her and hadn’t talked to her since dropping her off, he also called Liesel. Again, nothing.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end and he punched the accelerator of his truck.
Something was wrong and when he settled into and tried to feel for Liesel across their mating bond, he got nothing.
What did that even mean? He was so new to the mating thing that he wasn’t sure if it meant she was blocking him. Was she sleeping?
At a near panic, he phoned Chet and told him to haul ass to the station.
“I feel like something’s wrong,” he said. He did the same to Pax and even called Brody, asking if anyone in his pack had heard from Liesel today.
Brody hadn’t and said he’d try to reach her. He called right back.
“Nothing,” he said. “And her office said she went out on a call with a social worker and your deputy almost two hours ago.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“We’re headed to your station,” Brody said without waiting for Gray to invite him.
“Keep enough sentinels around that your wolv
es are safe,” Gray reminded him, probably unnecessarily.
***
Everyone had assembled within the hour and it hadn’t taken them long to contact the social worker, Elaine, or to use GPS to find the deputy’s Explorer abandoned two miles from the trailer park.
“They told me to go and to not look back,” the crying Elaine wheezed through a tissue. “I took the little girl straight to her grandmother’s house and waited for them back at the office. They never came back.”
Gray, Pax, Brody, and Chet went to the address Elaine gave them and found nothing but the slightest hint of Liesel’s floral, spicy scent on the air.
Gray’s wolf was nearing its limit and each time he tried to speak, his eyes would flash feral. Pax spoke in low, soothing tones to his Alpha.
“We’ll get her back, Boss,” he said, keeping his eyes low as Gray and his wolf struggled for dominance. The wolf wanted nothing more than to rip free and destroy any mountain lion shifter within 30 miles. Gray the man knew that wouldn’t really solve anything and it wouldn’t get him closer to getting Liesel back.
So, he let his Beta talk him down off the edge and back into reality.
They’d no sooner headed toward the vehicles when his phone chirped a text message.
It was from Liesel’s phone and his heart sped up, thinking maybe it’d all been a completely random fluke.
Two words into the message, he knew it wasn’t.
Yeah, we got her tied up real nice and tight, Sheriff. You come out to the Byzen Warehouse district alone at 9 p.m. and we’ll talk terms. Be ready to open up your county jail cells to let a few of our boys out before you even think about getting this bitch back. Come alone or she dies.
“Stay with me, Boss,” Chet’s voice came from behind him as the wolf nearly broke free and went on its rampage.
They were all going to die. Every single one of those motherfuckers was going to die.
There was nothing for them to do but to head back to Canyon territory and wait. Gray called in a favor from a few local sheriffs in nearby counties and they set up far-reaching perimeters around the area he’d been told to head to.
So far, the activity was minimal—a few mountain lion and falcon shifters moving in and out of the area, but it was highly likely they knew they’d be watched and so it was all theater.
Gray relied on his military training to keep him from losing focus at the thought of his mate in danger. He pulled maps of the area out and began to move his limited resources around in his head. If he had to be the face of the operation and make it look like he was showing up to the meeting spot alone, where would his allies be best suited?
It was all a set up. He knew that. The Kings knew that he knew that, but they also had the only bargaining chip that meant anything to Gray. They had him by the balls and unless a miracle happened, he’d have to play by their rules and hope his planning and training could make a difference somehow.
“It’s going to be okay,” Brody said as Gray watched the sun set from his front porch. He could hardly stand to be inside the lodge with Liesel missing.
“Why her?” Gray asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why does someone so pure and so out for the good of everyone find herself victimized twice like this?” Gray said, emotion making his voice rough. “I can’t wrap my head around it, Brody. Why can’t she catch a break and just be happy?”
Brody let out a long sigh and leaned against a post, his eyes following Gray’s to the last remaining strands of light on the horizon.
“I think her finding you is a break,” the other Alpha said. “I think she is happy and this is just another adventure for the two of you to tell your grandchildren about someday.”
Gray shook his head.
“She deserves to be safe, Brody,” Gray bit out. “She deserves more than a life like this. You know as well as I do that living like we do means there’s always going to be another den of bears or pride of mountain lions stirring up trouble. I can’t promise her the safety she deserves after what she’s been through.”
Brody pushed himself up and stood next to Gray, forcing the sheriff to meet his eyes.
“You’re talking about Liesel Gaytan, Anders,” Brody said, his voice stronger and more abrupt. “You’re not talking about some fine porcelain doll that cracks anytime you touch it. Think about the work she does, think about what she volunteers for. Her life is about keeping the people she cares about safe and she wouldn’t stand to hear you talk about her like she didn’t sign up for the same life you did. You’d best start looking at her as an equal and a partner and stop acting like she’s some responsibility of yours to protect.”
Wise words, Gray admitted. And someday, he hoped to heed them. But for now, his mate was in danger and all he could think about was getting to her.
Nobody talked through dinner and Gray didn’t touch his food. His stomach was unsettled and no matter how hard he reached through the mating bond, he couldn’t reach Liesel. He was starting to despair, knowing good and well he was walking into a trap and that good men were likely going to get hurt trying to help him rescue his mate.
His phone rang beside him on the table and he eyed the unknown number.
More games from the Kings?
He answered it curtly.
“This is Anders,” he said, his wolf pacing and already angry again.
“Sheriff, we know what they did to your mate and we don’t agree with it,” a woman’s voice was on the other end. She was older with a scratchy voice that came with years of smoking. “We want you to know that’s why we’re helping you—because she helped our young when even we couldn’t.”
“Who is this?”
“That doesn’t matter,” the woman said, cutting him off. “What matters is that you know they’re holding her in one of the trailers in the park here. Trailer 44 is toward the back and it only has two guards right now because both the woman and the law man are unconscious. Everyone else went to ambush you all.”
Gray’s heart raced, unsure whether or not to believe the woman.
“Hurry, Sheriff,” the woman urged at his hesitance. “She’s braver than anybody I’ve ever met. She doesn’t deserve this.”
The call ended and from the look on his face, the others knew it was big. He froze a moment, unsure whether or not to trust her. What if it were all a huge set up? The entire thing?
Gray settled in and listened to his wolf—one of the best judges of character around. The animal wanted Gray to follow the woman’s advice and go get their mate.
“Okay,” he said to the group. “Change of plans. Pax—you ready to set up a decoy and distract these assholes?”
They settled in and quickly drew up a second plan and a hasty third option if this one went south. Pax and Chet would take a few Boulder wolves with them and circle around the shifters hiding near the warehouse. They’d zip tie the ones they came across and leave them for law enforcement who’d be a few minutes behind them.
Brody and Gray and two Canyon sentinels would go to the trailer park and get Liesel and Bailey before joining the rest of them at the warehouse at the appointed time, Liesel and the deputy safely out of their hands and the majority of their backup incapacitated and well on their way to jail.
“Anything goes wrong, you guys make sure she’s safe.”
Gray said the words and all of the shifters present knew what he meant. To the Alpha, the only thing that mattered was that his mate made it out safe and unharmed.
With a final check of details, the group headed toward their vehicles. As they left the territory border, two cars turned left toward the trailer park and four turned right to go hunting in the woods around the old shipping warehouse.
Gray drew in a long breath and told him and his wolf to hold steady. They’d have their mate soon enough.
Chapter Thirteen
Liesel
The stench of the trailer was what woke her up. How could anyone live in such filth? It slowly dawne
d on Liesel that she was actually in danger and now was not the greatest moment to be judgy-judgy about other people’s living arrangements.
She didn’t know how long she’d been out, only that it was now dark outside the grimy windows above her head. Liesel looked around her, taking in her surroundings.
She was in a trailer, that much was obvious. There was a dirty couch in front of her, a large, unmoving mass on it. Squinting, she saw that it was Bailey. His chest was rising and falling with shallow breaths, so he’d survived whatever happened to them after she blacked out.
They were probably in the same trailer park—a few blocks away at most from where they’d been kidnapped.
“Deputy,” she whispered, not sure where the mountain lions were at the moment. It seemed like they were alone in the trailer, but she wasn’t certain. “Deputy Barnes, wake up!”
Her hands were bound but somehow her legs were free and she kicked at the couch, shaking the sleeping man who snorted.
She watched as he slowly came to, doing much of the same things she did. First, he reacted to the horrible ammonia and urine stench with a face. Then he blinked and looked around quickly.
“You okay?” his voice was gruff and scratchy.
“Fine,” she said. “I just don’t know where our guards are or how many there are. Are you hurt?”
He seemed to check himself.
“No,” he finally said. “Hell of a headache, though.
“Same,” she muttered.
Liesel pushed herself to her knees and crawled in the direction of the couch so she could look out one of the small windows.
In the darkness, she couldn’t make anyone out, but her wolf sensed a mountain lion somewhere out there. Maybe they were hiding in hopes of catching someone in an ambush?
“Do you have your cell phone?” she whispered back to Bailey.
She heard the rustling of fabric as he checked himself.
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