by Alisa Woods
“It’s not all sunshine and sparkly granite,” Daniel said, with a grimace. “Working in the same building as your father has drawbacks.”
“So, what’s the deal with Piper and the Colonel?” Jace didn’t want to pry, and he really shouldn’t care… but he did. Piper was definitely a full-blooded Wilding—wild and sexy and feisty. Not entirely bad qualities, except for that wild part, but the way she’d blown up like a hair-trigger IED when the topic of her father came up made Jace more than a little curious. Yet it was the sad look in her eyes that really drew him in. She’d locked down emotionally there at the end as if she was dead certain she couldn’t depend on anyone but herself.
Just Piper against the world.
That gnawed at him. And it kept drawing his wolf uncomfortably close to the surface. No one, but especially a shifter, should ever be that alone in the world. That’s what family and pack were all about.
Jace’s father had died a long time ago from an early heart attack, but family was everything in the River pack. And not just blood relatives—the River pack wolves were like brothers. And his mother was a momma wolf to every stray shifter that came through the area. She’d practically adopted several who had taken up residence at the safehouse—they helped keep it running in return for having a family and a home to call their own. As for Jace’s actual brothers… Jared and Jaxson were like his own flesh. He couldn’t imagine not trusting them, the way Piper obviously didn’t trust Daniel or even her own father.
Jace’s question still hung in the air, unanswered, as they walked toward the two-story entrance to the Joint Base’s command center. He waited until they were past the two heavily-armed honor guards and just inside the glass door.
“Hey, man, I don’t want to pry into your family,” Jace said, quietly. “It’s really none of my business. I just think it’s somewhat relevant to our mission here.”
“You’re right.” Daniel tossed a cold look his way. “It’s none of your business.”
Okay, then. Jace arched an eyebrow. “Do not trespass sign duly noted.”
Daniel growled, but it seemed more in frustration than anger. He stopped before they got much further into the two-story reception area. “Look, I don’t mean to be an ass. There’s just a lot of private family stuff that went down a long time ago. All you need to know is that Piper’s erratic. My sister’s been making shit up since she was a kid. She ran away from home more times than I can count. And she’s always done exactly whatever she wants to, no matter how difficult that makes life for the rest of us. If she’s here on base, we need to find her before my father does. Before she digs herself a hole deeper than I can get her out of.”
Daniel’s worried look was the first hint Jace had seen of the kind of brotherly concern he expected. So… maybe it was in there, just buried under a mountain of bad history.
“Understood.” Jace wanted to know more, but they needed to keep their eyes on the prize—making sure Piper wasn’t getting sucked into a mess she couldn’t handle and finding the truth about Noah’s disappearance.
Daniel led the way up to the second floor and a small office with the door that he quickly closed behind him. He logged into his computer and scanned his messages.
“Give me a minute,” he said, “and I’ll see if there’s any hint of on-base unusual activity. Then I’ll see what I can do about finding out what happened to Noah.”
While Daniel worked his computer, Jace stared out the window at the sprawling campus. Where would Piper have gone? She had to already be on base. Which meant she must’ve used Daniel’s ID. The question was… why hadn’t the guards at the gate mentioned anything about that? It should have come up during their security check, at the least. Piper was counterintelligence—did she just waltz in with false ID? Probably. If what Daniel said was correct—and there was no doubt Piper was unpredictable—then maybe she didn’t do the logical thing. Maybe she was holding off, laying low until she came up with a better way to access the Joint Base’s resources. Then again, the girl who grabbed him and kissed him in his own kitchen, after breaking into his house, didn’t seem like the type to hesitate to action.
A knock on the door interrupted his thoughts.
A short brown-haired woman popped her head in the door. “Sir? Your father would like to see you in his office.” She ducked her head and closed the door behind her, as if she knew she was delivering bad news and needed to escape quickly.
Jace threw a fast look at Daniel, eyebrows quirked up. “Does that happen often?”
Daniel’s face was clouded, a deep scowl immediately setting in. “Never.” He had already risen up from his chair, but then he hesitated and shut down his computer.
Before he could reach the door, Jace caught up to him and asked, “Do you think your searches about Noah tipped him off?”
Daniel shook his head. “I barely got through my email.”
They didn’t speak on the walk up to the Colonel’s office, which was apparently on the third floor in the far corner overlooking a manicured and spectacularly green lawn.
Daniel paused before knocking on the door. “Let me do the talking. We don’t want to give anything away if we don’t have to.”
Jace just nodded. Whatever the family dynamics were, he was certain Daniel knew them better than he did.
Daniel knocked on the door but didn’t wait for permission—he just strode in, full of sudden confidence, as if he was marching into a gladiator ring and needed to wear all of his courage in his bristled-out stance. It telegraphed his alpha-ness in a very obvious way. Daniel was younger than him by at least five years, but any shifter with military training had their alpha nature fully emerged by the time they graduated boot camp. The River pack was filled with military wolves, each of whom could easily have their own pack. It was part of what made the River pack strong, the willingness of so many alpha males to submit to the one pack alpha, his brother, Jaxson. It was also the reason why so many of the local packs came to them when they had some kind of problem with the shifter world. Or even the non-shifter world.
Daniel approached his father’s huge oak desk with his shoulders thrown back and his head held high. “You wished to see me, sir?”
Daniel’s father didn’t look up from his phone, ignoring their entrance, a move clearly meant to put Daniel in his place. The Colonel’s desk was lined with several crystalline-etched awards, each prominently displaying his name—Lt. Col. Astor Wilding. The metals decorating the Colonel’s chest were likewise prominent. Which was even more obnoxious, given the dress code throughout the building was regulation desert camouflage, as far as Jace could tell.
The Colonel looked like he was ready for a parade of one.
Jace disliked him immediately. And not just a casual dislike, either. It was a visceral sort of thing, deep in his gut—his wolf was reacting to a presence it had identified as the enemy. Not just another alpha wolf—that wouldn’t raise this kind of instinctual wariness. Somehow his wolf knew the Colonel was a destructive force, like a hurricane—inherently uncontrolled and dangerous, with the power to destroy everything in its path.
Astor Wilding finally looked up from his phone. He stayed seated. “I hear you lost your identification, Daniel.”
“Temporarily misplaced it.” Daniel stood rigidly under the patronizing smirk from his father. “I’m sure it’ll turn up soon. Just needed some temporary ID to get on base and back to work.”
Colonel Wilding eased up from his chair, slowly and casually, as if this little meeting hadn’t been called by him. He strolled around to the front of his desk with the coiled strength of a shifter, but somehow it was more predatory than Jace had seen most wolves display. He’d known a few dark wolves in his time—men who let their dark human natures corrupt the wolf inside—but even they didn’t have this sort of controlled menace built into their every move. It reminded Jace of the sinuous way that witches moved—not the sweet and innocent kind, like Olivia, but more like her coven sisters. The ones who liked to eat wol
f hearts for breakfast. Or other body parts.
The Colonel trailed his fingers along his desk as if inspecting his many awards for dust and came to rest at the front. He leaned against it, regarding Daniel with a look that made Jace’s stomach clench. It boggled his mind that this was Daniel’s father—and Colonel Wilding was looking at his son as if he was an enemy he’d like to torture, piece by bloody piece.
“Would you like to know where your identification turned up, Daniel?” the Colonel asked. “You might find it amusing.”
“Yes, sir.” Daniel’s flat voice gave nothing away.
Jace felt like he was watching a chess match in operation.
“Turns out your security codes were swiped at 0600 this morning. By a young woman named Daniela Wuldinger.” Astor folded his arms across his substantially-decorated chest and waited for a response.
“Guards the gate getting a little lax, are they?” Daniel’s voice seemed uncertain, even to Jace, but his father rose to the weakness like a lion sensing the weakest member of the herd.
“Are you really going to stand there and tell me you had no idea your sister took your ID?” The laugh in the Colonel’s voice said that punishment was guaranteed, but the severity of it was riding on Daniel’s answer.
He hesitated.
Jace had to bite back the words on the tip of his tongue. No, asshole, he knew. He was trying to protect her from you. A cold trickle through Jace’s belly told him something was very off about this—like Astor Wilding knew far more about this than they did.
Daniel’s lack of an answer dragged on. He was obviously struggling for words that would thread him through the landmines his father had laid.
Jace cringed on Daniel’s behalf, and it was all he could do to keep quiet.
Finally, Daniel said, “I knew she had the ID.” His shoulders dropped a little. Those words were some kind of defeat.
His father nodded, a cruel smirk creeping onto his face. “I’ll deal with you in a moment, son.” The Colonel turned to Jace. “And you… exactly why has one of the River brothers decided to pay a visit to my base?”
To tell you to fuck off in person? Jace was surprised how violent his feelings were in such a short period of time around this man. His wolf may be locked away, but his instincts still ran strong.
Jace stepped forward, so that he was now standing slightly in front of Daniel. “Your son was an instrumental part of a rescue mission my brothers and I were involved in,” he said, holding the Colonel’s narrow-eyed glare without flinching. Daniel was having convulsions of body language, trying to tell Jace to shut up. Jace ignored him and took a step closer to the Colonel, moving into his space. “Those were civilian shifters, snatched off the street. One was a little girl from your own pack, in case you hadn’t heard.” His wolf was climbing up with his anger, so he tried to cool it down. “And now I hear military shifters are going missing.”
If the Colonel’s expression was menacing before, his look now sharpened to outright deadly, but his voice was cool and even. “Speaking of rumors… you used to be Army, didn’t you? Medical Specialist Jace River, honorably discharged. At least, that’s the official report. I hear there are rumors of something much less… honorable that happened in Afghanistan. But we wouldn’t want to believe all the rumors we hear, now would we, Mr. River?”
Shit. That long delay at processing suddenly made sense—this guy researched the hell out of him since he walked in the gate. “What exactly are you threatening me with, Col. Wilding?” Jace’s throat was so tight he had to growl the words out. The official tribunal had ruled the incident an accident, but Jace and his wolf knew the truth. Did the Colonel?
The man smirked, falling back into the ease he had before. “Not threatening a thing, Mr. River. Just saying, one shouldn’t always believe the tall tales one might hear. Especially from my daughter.”
Jace’s mouth dropped open, but he snapped it shut again. “You have Piper.”
The Colonel leaned back, tapped his phone, and said, “Bring her in.”
Jace just blinked at the smirking satisfaction on the man’s face. He had Piper all this time but played these games with them instead. It would be one thing if it were just Jace, but he wasn’t even the primary target for the Colonel’s aggression… that would be his son, Daniel, who seemed to have lost all the blood in his face.
The door swung open, and Piper stumbled in with two Military Police right behind her. The MPs were either shifters or bulked up like ones… and they had clearly been holding her tightly by the arm in the hallway. Jace could still see the imprint of their meaty hands on her wrinkled, white blouse. She defiantly glared at the Colonel and pursed her lips when her gaze fell on Daniel, but when her eyes finally found Jace… her expression went blank with surprise.
Jace wanted to go to her side, but she wasn’t free yet. He swung back to the Colonel. Daniel was standing next to him, mute and blinking. He was waiting for the Colonel to mete out whatever his punishment was going to be… for all of them.
Fuck that. “On what grounds are you holding her?” Jace demanded. He needed more information to find a way to get her out of her father’s clutches.
“Holding her?” Colonel Wilding asked with amusement in his eyes. “I was about to have her escorted from the base. Is there some reason why I should keep her in custody, Mr. River?”
Jace narrowed his eyes at the man. What games was he playing? “So… she’s free to go?”
The Colonel ignored him and flicked a dismissive hand at Daniel, who jumped with the motion. “Get her out of here. If I see her on my base again, she’ll do time. And I’ll hold you personally responsible, Daniel.”
Daniel visibly swallowed, gritted his teeth, and strode toward the door. Piper’s expression of burning hatred was back and aimed at her father, who was busy returning his attention to his phone on the other side of his desk and completely ignoring her.
Daniel grabbed her by the upper arm and leaned close. “Let’s go,” he hissed.
She let out something like a growl, then allowed Daniel to haul her into the hallway outside her father’s office. The MPs followed, clearly intent on escorting them out with their hulking presence. Jace hurried after them.
Daniel and Piper kept an angry silence on the way downstairs and toward the front of the building, no doubt because the MPs would overhear, but Piper flicked a couple looks back to Jace, trailing behind, with something like amazement in her eyes. He wasn’t quite sure what that was about, but he really wanted to ask her what went down before she got caught. They would have time for that later. Besides, there was an undeniable relief coursing through his system at seeing her unharmed and knowing she was on her way to freedom. Although, he really had no idea how that had happened.
Just as they were about to exit the building, Jace felt a hot sensation on the back of his neck—it was the prickling feeling you got when someone was watching you. He whipped his gaze around the two-story entranceway they were striding through… and just barely caught a glimpse of someone ducking back inside one of the offices at the perimeter of the white-granite-lined open space. A hot surge of anger froze him in his tracks.
Agent Smith.
Jace could have sworn it was him, but he was gone now. Jace started to trot toward the office, intent on catching whoever it was and seeing if it was really the asshole who had been capturing and torturing shifters, including little girls, but a voice stopped him cold.
“Hold it right there, sir!” One of the MPs had his weapon out, pointed at Jace’s head.
He put up his hands and turned to face the MP. “Just had to use the restroom before we left.”
“No, sir.” His aim was unwavering. “My orders are to escort all three of you off the base.”
Jace grimaced, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it. They were on the Colonel’s turf, and they were lucky to be staying out of the brig.
“All right, fine. No need to get excited.” He lowered his hands and took his time strollin
g over to where Daniel and Piper waited with the second MP at the entrance door. Daniel looked like he was barely keeping from shifting, with the livid anger on his face, and Piper was working hard, too… to keep a smirk contained.
“Bathroom break?” she asked quietly as they trotted down the steps to the parking lot below.
“Hey, when nature calls, a guy’s gotta go.” He gave her a small smile.
She chuckled under her breath, then gave the MPs a final glare before climbing into the back of Daniel’s car.
The MPs followed them in a military police car all the way to the entrance of the base.
To Piper’s utter amazement, she was riding in the back of Daniel’s car, free as a bird, leaving the Joint Base instead of heading to the brig. Or FBI custody. Even more amazingly, Jace River sat in the passenger seat, giving her an occasional smirk over his shoulder. By unspoken agreement—probably because all three of them were holding their breath—they waited until they were through the gate and off base, leaving the MPs behind, before speaking.
“You really know how to screw things up, don’t you, Piper?” Daniel’s voice was tight.
At least his opinion was no surprise. “It wasn’t exactly part of my plan to get caught.”
“Oh, I guess that makes it better.” Daniel’s scowl reached across the seat and smothered her words of indignation before they could fly out of her mouth. “At least now we know there are no missing soldiers.”
“Um… you do realize that was complete bullshit, right?” Jace looked at Daniel like he couldn’t quite believe he would be that naïve. But he didn’t know her brother like Piper did. Daniel only saw what he wanted to.
Daniel flicked his scowl between Piper and Jace.
She fought to wipe the grin from her face. It was amazing that Jace was here at all, much less defending her against Daniel—it brought a delightfully unfamiliar feeling of having someone actually in her corner. Add on top that Jace was helping her get off base without being arrested or held for questioning, and he was officially her favorite shifter at the moment. But something wasn’t right about all of this—in fact, she had no idea why her father let her go.