by Cara Adams
“Right, go and get your clothing now and anything else you’ll need, and I will, too,” he told Jayden.
“You don’t think one of us should stay here until Tegan gets back?”
“I’ll check that there’s still someone watching the gate before I leave.” Hopefully a big strong wolf. He wasn’t sure how Tegan would go on gate duty. What if someone tried to ram-raid the gates? Would she even know what to do? It was all very well for Oscar to say they needed a woman on their team, but really how much use would she be?
Although, she had found the spiders, and she hadn’t run away from them screaming, so perhaps this would work after all.
* * * *
Jayden lived in a tiny apartment above an old lady’s garage. Even thought he wasn’t home a lot, the old lady said she liked having a big young man there, as she felt secure. He always checked her doors and windows were locking properly and cut the grass for her. He also told her when he was going to be away for a few days as he was now. She patted his arm and said, “Don’t worry, dear. I’ll be fine here.”
He wasn’t so sure of that, but he nodded anyway and headed up to his apartment. It didn’t take him long to throw half a dozen sets of underpants and socks into a backpack, add some clean T-shirts and jeans, a waterproof jacket and a couple of sweaters, and he was done.
He spent a few minutes trying to decide whether a laptop or an iPad would be more useful, then shrugged. I’ll take them both. His next thought was to wonder how many electrical outlets were in the room, and whether his cable would reach one to plug in from the table. Again he shrugged. Danny Davies, the carpenter, was sure to have extra cable if he needed it and likely a spare power strip as well.
His packing done, he locked up carefully and drove back to the clinic, filling his tank with gas on the way, just in case he needed to run any errands if he was on duty late at night.
Danny was still on duty at the gate, and Jayden felt guilty. Surely they should take over duty soon. “I can be back here in ten minutes to relieve you,” he said.
“There’s no need for you to come back yet. I’m finding it quite relaxing, actually. Quinn’s coming down to take over in about an hour, so you three can decide what you want to do about the gate after that.”
“Harry said we’d work eight-hour shifts, but I don’t know when we start.”
“Like I said, there’s no need to rush.” Danny waved him through the gate, and Jayden drove around the side of the property to the staff parking lot.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder along with his laptop, then entered the clinic from the rear, climbing the stairs to the third floor.
Tegan was already in their room, sitting at the table facing the door, her head bent over her own laptop. Her hair was blonde, and twisted into a knot sort of thing on top of her head. She was still wearing the black jeans and long-sleeved shirt she’d had on before. Either that or she had several identical sets of clothing.
She glanced up at him, smiled slightly, then kept staring at her computer. Jayden looked around the room. A roll-along suitcase sat against the wall, a black all-weather coat resting over it. Okay, he could follow suit. He shrugged his backpack off and placed it beside her roll-along, then opened his laptop on the table, sitting like her, facing the door and with his back to the wall.
But he didn’t really know where to start. She was evidently following a lead or at least a train of thought, but he couldn’t think of where to begin. How could they link George Thorne to the punk kids apart from the fact that Adam Roth had said George paid him to cause trouble?
Wait a moment. Everyone kept referring to them as kids, or teenagers, or punks. But although they were young, they hadn’t seemed to be juveniles to him. Something was niggling at the corner of his brain, something about age or…
He closed his eyes and focused his thoughts. What was hiding in the back of his brain? That was it. Ellie Roth, the woman Mike had thrown to him and he’d caught, had said her brother was thirty—no wait, turning thirty in January. So, he, their leader, was definitely not a juvenile by a long way. Therefore, if he had their photographs or, even better, the names of the young men they’d caught attacking the property, he could research their history and find out who they worked for in their gang, and what sort of crimes they’d committed in the past. If they’d committed any, that was.
Now, who would have that information? Had Harry found it out for Oscar perhaps? Maybe Harry’d already read through all the data they’d previously gathered and found nothing helpful. Well, they had to begin somewhere even if it was just rereading what had been read before.
“I’ll just be downstairs speaking to Ambrielle,” he told Tegan.
She nodded, not looking up from her screen.
Jayden ran down the stairs and around to the reception desk. No one was there, but he could see Ambrielle in her office. She had one of those fairground-style mirrors that could see around corners, so when anyone entered through the front door, she could see them from her desk. He wondered about going into her office to save her getting up but thought that might be rude. It was her office after all.
“Hi, Jayden.”
“Hi, Ambrielle. Sorry to make you leave your office.”
She just smiled and shrugged, so he went on. “I was thinking about those punk kids. Except, they’re not children. Most of them are old enough to have a criminal record. I wondered who had their real names, or the aliases they use, and their photographs, so I could start looking at each one to see if I could find some leads to George.”
“That’s a good idea. Harry found some information and sent it to Sierra Bond, the attorney. I think she had one of her clerks looking for more details, too. Why don’t you e-mail her and see what files she’s assembled and where the gaps are?”
“Sounds like a plan. Have you got her e-mail address?”
Ambrielle took a notepad from the desk and wrote it down for him. “Thanks, Ambrielle.”
“I’m glad you three are going to help. We really need to take George out of the picture here once and for all.”
Now that was true. The shape-shifter clinic was so badly needed, so vitally important, and George needed to understand that. Jayden walked up the stairs again and stopped in the doorway of the room he was already mentally terming “the office.”
“I told you to buy us food.”
“I did buy food for us. I did exactly what you said. You said I was to buy, and I’m quoting you here, ‘Whatever you plan to cook for us.’ I don’t plan to cook for you. I’m a security guard, not a chef. So I bought food we could all eat raw or put in the microwave oven ourselves. You also told me to keep the receipts. They’re all there, sitting under the box of oatmeal.”
“Oatmeal!”
Jayden thought Harry might explode.
“Yes, oatmeal. I got oatmeal and Cheerios for our breakfasts. There’s bread, and peanut butter and jelly for snacks. And the freezer is full of microwave dinners and instant meals. If you open the refrigerator you’ll see there’s also apples, tomatoes, and watermelon, a gallon of milk and a gallon of orange juice, and a dozen cans of soda. A perfect, balanced diet.”
“I need meat. Steaks.” Harry was thundering now. Everyone in the clinic would be able to hear him. To her credit, Tegan looked him in the eye and didn’t raise her voice at all.
“Well, why don’t you go buy a grill and some steaks and you can have a cookout. I’m pretty sure most of the wolves would join you.”
Harry turned and made a beeline for the doorway. Jayden promptly got out of the way. He was a burly man but not as big as Harry. Especially not as big as an enraged Harry.
Jayden watched Harry stomp down the stairs before he walked into the room. Tegan should have been curled up in a corner, crying and sucking her thumb in fear at having outraged the huge bear. Instead, she was sitting at her computer as if nothing had happened.
Well, the woman sure had balls. Iron balls.
Jayden wasn’t stupid. Harry was goi
ng to explode sooner or later, and there was no way he was going to be here when it happened. He grabbed his laptop and said, “I’ll go down and take over gate duty.”
Hopefully by the time he got back, oh, in say eight hours, Harry would have calmed down. Or at least scrubbed Tegan’s blood off the walls.
* * * *
Tegan was a wolf. She’d been born into the pack and had always lived with wolves. Far more male than female wolves were born, so she was used to being surrounded by big, bossy males. She was also used to refusing to let them intimidate her. She was strong, fit, and five foot nine, but she knew in a fair fight a male shape-shifter would almost always defeat her. Which was why she’d studied martial arts, and when push came to shove she never ever fought fair. She’d learned to evade punches and the standard kind of holds a man might use on her and directed her hands to a man’s nose and eyes, her knees to his balls, and her elbows to whatever they could do the most damage on.
However, Harry was both a bear shape-shifter and a mountain of a man. Even with every dirty trick she knew, it was likely he would flatten her. Therefore she stayed sweet and calm, although firm, and refused to rise to his anger. Besides, she’d been hired as a security guard, equal to Jayden, not as Harry’s personal slave. Asking her to shop was a legitimate request. Expecting her to cook for them or clean up after them was not.
She was deep in a search of stolen items anywhere near this neighborhood. It seemed to her this Adam Roth man didn’t believe in buying the items he needed. Rather he stole them. Or, more likely, had his gang steal them. The spiders had been stolen and their owners located. What about the metal that had been laid on the road as tire shredders a while back? Caltrops were rather unusual. No one with animals would want them around their property. Also, the mattress had looked to be in good condition to her, not like it had been lying outside in the trash. She wondered if it had been stolen from a store. She was also looking for any other stolen items which might give her a clue as to what else George planned to do to the clinic.
Tegan wondered how this job was going to unfold. If Harry was planning to denigrate and belittle her at every turn, or if he simply thought women were inferior, second-class citizens, she was about to have a few very unpleasant days. And so was he, because she wouldn’t tolerate such treatment from anyone. She lived in a masculine environment and was well able to keep up with the men. As a wolf, she was stronger than most human women. As a very fit wolf she was more able to deal with trouble than most female wolves. A bear, however, was different. Were bears inherently misogynistic? Was that the problem? If so, Harry was about to get a crash course in equality awareness.
Deliberately, she wiped him from her mind and went back to reading lists of stolen property. She stopped at a stolen car. Likely the police had already checked that line of thought, but those kids had to have arrived here somehow. So either their car had to be still parked somewhere not too far away, or the police had already found it, or else someone had brought them here and left them.
Wasn’t that what happened last time? Whoever had brought the four young men who laid the ambush with the tire shredders had run off and left them. Had it happened again? Surely they wouldn’t be stupid enough to trust the same person a second time. Or had it been Adam who’d left them to their fate last time?
Tegan closed the browser she was using and locked her laptop so no one else could use it, then headed downstairs. Ambrielle was still in her office, so Tegan tapped on the open door.
“Hi, Tegan. Can I help you?”
“This might sound a fraction weird, but I was wondering if the police had gone looking for the car that dropped Adam Roth and his gang off this morning.”
“Oh, now that’s a good thought. Last time I rode up and down the nearby streets on my motorcycle looking for a car, but there wasn’t one. This time none of our people went looking. We were too busy chasing spiders. Of course the police might have already done that.”
“They’re not likely to have lots of manpower with nothing to do, though, are they? I think I’ll go for a drive.”
“Good idea.”
Tegan left the clinic and walked over to the staff parking lot. She traveled slowly down the long driveway and stopped at the gate. When Jayden came over to her, she said, “I thought I’d drive around a little and see if there are any parked cars nearby. Adam Roth’s gang had to get here somehow, and if I was them, I wouldn’t have trusted someone to bring me here and drive away again, after the person ran off and left them last time.”
“Tegan, that’s a good idea. Although it may have been Adam himself who left them before.”
“Well, perhaps that’s why he was here with them this time. Maybe they don’t trust him. In that case, they might be singing like birds for the police right now, which would be a great help.”
“If they all point the finger at Adam and he implicates George, that’d be really helpful.”
Tegan grinned. “We’ll wrap this job up by tomorrow in that case.”
Jayden opened the gate and she drove through, following the clinic property, driving very slowly, and looking hard to see if a car had been parked under any of the trees. There were a lot of trees and shrubs beside the road, but she didn’t think a vehicle could be totally hidden. She turned down the first side road and followed it for two miles before turning back. She couldn’t imagine the kids wanting to walk any farther than that. She repeated her actions down the next side road, and the next, then came back toward the clinic, passed it, and continued looking hard. About half a mile from the clinic she stopped and reversed, then moved her car right off the road. A tree branch was broken. Carefully she inched her car forward, and there was a white truck almost hidden under the trees. Bingo! She copied the license plate into her cell phone then called Ambrielle.
“I may have found it.”
“Already? Girl, you’re amazing.”
“I haven’t gotten out of my car, you understand, but this’s a white truck pulled off the road, half-hidden under the bushes. Let me give you the license plate.”
“Stay there, and I’ll call the police and Harry and let them know.”
“Thanks, Ambrielle.”
Tegan sat back and waited for the police. Of course the car might belong to one of the young men, and they might have told the police it was there. But in that case, why hadn’t someone driven it to the police station. No, she tended to think it was a car they’d either borrowed or stolen. Either would be an excellent lead. If someone had loaned them a car, did that mean he was interested in forcing Oscar out of the clinic, too? And if it was stolen, it was another weapon to keep these kids in jail. Either would be very good indeed.
Tegan leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes, a happy smile on her face.
A fist slammed on the roof of her car, making the vehicle rock. “What the fucking hell do you think you’re doing here?”
Chapter Three
Harry couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There was Tegan, pulled off to the side of the road taking a nap. They were supposed to be guarding the property, not resting. Okay, she’d found the spiders, but that was hardly a full day’s work.
He was as hungry as hell, having driven into town to buy some steak sandwiches for their dinner. The scent of them was driving him crazy, and he would’ve liked to have eaten a couple, but he was being polite and bringing them all back to share, and there was the stupid bitch sound asleep on the job.
He jumped out of his car and ran across to her, thumping his fist on the roof of her car to wake her up. She stared at him as if he was mad when she was the one at fault.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
She pointed ahead of her. “Waiting for the police to come and see if that’s the vehicle the young men used to bring the spiders here today.”
“What?” He stared at her. She was talking but not making any sense.
“That truck. I’m waiting for the police to come and look at it. I think it might be the geta
way vehicle.”
He turned and looked in the direction she had pointed. Sure enough, hidden under the bushes was a white truck. It was a strange place for someone to park unless they were trying to hide their tracks.
“How did you find it?” Suddenly he was suspicious. She’d found the spiders and now she’d found the getaway vehicle. Was she working with George Thorne? Had a spy or informer been planted among them? That would make George’s work so much easier if Tegan could tell him every little idea they had so George could evade them.
“I’ve been driving up and down the side roads looking. I didn’t think they’d trust someone to drop them off and pick them up this time after they were left to their fate last time.”
That made sense. But her being a spy sent by George Thorne made sense, too. He was going to keep a close eye on this woman. A very close eye. What was that saying? “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Yeah, well, he’d keep her closest of all. He didn’t trust little Miss Tegan one inch.
Just then he heard the police sirens, which was just as well because he couldn’t think of anything polite to say and he was dying to look inside that truck. It’d be too fucking bad if it belonged to one of their neighbors.
He and Tegan had to pull their cars back away from the area so the police could search, but as far as he was concerned it was all answered as soon as one of the officers ran a license plate check and said the vehicle was stolen.
Then they had to wait for the crime scene officers to collect fingerprints. Harry was sure it would have been one of the younger punks driving. Adam was too smart to steal a car or drive it. He struck Harry very much as the kind of punk who made younger, stupider people take all the dangerous or dirty jobs and stayed well back out of trouble. Hiding in the roof space of the clinic was a classic example. If Ellie hadn’t remembered he’d done that before to evade detection, he’d have waited until nighttime, climbed out, and disappeared, driving off in the truck and getting clean away once again.