To him that meant cop, military ... or hunter.
He didn’t know how many times he watched the loop of video, his mind forming multiple potential conclusions, but he let out a yelp of surprise when a hand fell on his shoulder.
In a flash, he was out of his seat with his fists raised, only to find Dean’s surprised face staring back at him. “Dude, chill. I thought I was supposed to be the one on edge this week.”
“Sorry,” Coop replied, embarrassed.
“Something good on TV? I haven’t been able to sneak up on you like that since...”
“That first week in rehab?”
Dean shrugged uncomfortably. “Yeah.”
“Don’t worry, man. No relapse.”
“That’s good.”
“But it might be worse news.” He showed Dean the security footage.
He was hoping that perhaps his friend would offer some reason why he was wrong to feel paranoid about this, but Dean simply replied, “He moves like she does.” He said the words softly, as if he didn’t realize he was speaking out loud.
“What?”
Dean took a breath, then clarified in a louder voice, “Like Ro. She had ... has this ... I don’t know ... way about her. Like she’s a cat, perpetually stalking a mouse. That she’s ready to pounce at any given time. This guy moves the same way.”
That did little to assuage Coop’s concern, although he couldn’t help but ask, “You memorized the way she moves? That’s only slightly creepy.”
“Bite me.”
“I think that’s your deal ... in another four days, anyway.” Before Dean could snipe back at him, Coop steered them back to the topic at hand. “Anyway, I agree. Whoever this guy is, he wasn’t looking to sell us Girl Scout cookies.”
“Okay, so keep an eye out. See if he returns.”
“Listen, I don’t think you’re understanding me here. If that guy comes back, it’s not going to be good for us. It’s going to be even worse if he brings friends. You just said it yourself, he moves like her. If so, that means he’s a hunter, probably that one she was telling us about.”
Dean folded his arms and waited, as if he knew what Coop was going to say next. He looked exhausted, dark circles rimming his eyes, and he had lost weight since the last full moon. Coop suspected a lot of his issues had to do with the absence of a certain redheaded hunter.
Fortunately for them both, he was still thinking straight, and right then his thoughts were telling him they couldn’t stay at the mansion much longer, not with weird strangers sniffing around. Coop stood to his full height, as if that would help persuade Dean. “I know you’re going to say I’m being paranoid, but I think it’s time for us to get out of here.”
“And go where?”
“Somewhere else. Somewhere nobody else knows about.”
“Ro wouldn’t sell us out.”
“I’m not saying she did, man. What I’m saying is that, careful as we are, we might not have been careful enough. It’s possible this is nothing. But we can’t take that chance.”
“The full moon is only a few days away. Where else am I going to go? I can’t risk changing some place that isn’t secure.”
“If I’m right, then this place isn’t secure anymore.”
“And if you’re wrong? You said it yourself. This might be nothing. Besides, where else is there?”
Coop didn’t have an answer to that. Had their finances not been so tight, that might not have been an issue. As it stood, they didn’t have an immediate backup. There were other places they could potentially go to ground, but nowhere that could hold Dean once he changed, at least not without weeks of prep.
“And there’s my research, too,” Dean continued. “I’m close, Coop. I can feel it. I can’t stop now.”
“This isn’t smart.”
“I know,” Dean replied. “Trust me. I know. But letting me run wild is even less smart. What if I hurt someone?”
“I could keep you tranqed.”
“Knocking me out for an hour or two is one thing, but all night? You know that won’t work.”
Coop nodded. They’d been through all of this before in months past. “So what do you want to do?”
“I don’t know, but running isn’t an option, at least not until the moon passes.” He was silent for several seconds, but then looked Coop in the eye. “Do you think she’ll help us?”
“Ro?”
“Who else?”
Coop was torn between wanting to see what she knew versus running the risk, on the off chance she had sold them out. In the end, though, he decided to trust his instincts about her. “I can reach out and ask. She still has that burner, assuming she didn’t toss it after you showed up at her stoop like a lost puppy.”
Dean looked away, embarrassment etched onto his face. “Don’t start. I know that was a mistake.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we have a first. Dean Mason admitting he was an idiot.”
“Gloat later,” Dean replied with a scowl. “Anyway, do you have any other ideas?”
“Besides run?” Coop began to pace. After a minute or two, he stopped and turned back to Dean. “I hate to say it, but Ro throwing them off our trail is probably our best bet. In the meantime, we can do a few things from our end to help our cause.”
“Like?”
“Half the first floor already looks abandoned. Let’s do what we can to make the rest of it look that way. Make it seem like even if we were here, we aren’t anymore. We move what we can, trash the rest.”
“Go on.”
“There’s only the one set of stairs down to your lab and the cage. It’s already soundproofed, so we’re good there. We can rig it so that it looks like a wall collapsed upstairs, completely block the stairwell, maybe even hide the fact that the stairs are there at all. Hopefully they’ll think this place is being held together with spit and bale wire, give up, and move on.”
“Okay, that could work. What’s the catch?”
“The catch is we’ll need to make sure we have the tools to dig ourselves out afterwards...”
“And?”
“And ... if they are hunters, and it doesn’t fool them, we’ll be cornered, trapped.”
“Which means we’ll have to fight our way out.”
Coop held up a hand. “No. Which means I’ll have to fight them off. Possible with a choke point and if they only show up with guns and knives. They bring anything bigger, though...” He let the implication hang in the air.
Dean finally nodded. “Let’s hope we’re wrong about this guy, but until then, it sounds like we have a lot of work to do.”
“Yes, we do. But first things first. Time to notify the cavalry and see if they can do anything about this.” Coop stood, grabbed his keys and phone, and prepared to head out.
He had a message to send, and it couldn’t wait.
29
When John heard the buzzing, he first thought it was Kane with news about the upcoming raid. Then he realized the noise was coming from Ro’s phone. It was tucked into the pocket of her hunting jacket, which she’d neglected to bring to work that day in favor of a rain coat.
He fished it out then realized it wasn’t her normal cell phone. It was an older model, similar to the one he owned – with none of those fancy bells and whistles the younger kids favored.
On the screen was a text message from an unknown number. We need to talk. There’s potential trouble. When can we meet?
John stared disbelievingly at the message.
At first he wondered if this was the mysterious contact she’d refused to divulge to him. But then darker thoughts began to settle into his mind. Why bother with the extra phone? The Guild wouldn’t care either way, so long as the info was good. But then, what if the Guild wasn’t meant to see this?
John had long ago learned to listen to his instincts. So, rather than try and rationalize this, he simply typed a message back. No point in beating around the bu
sh when it was simple enough to confirm his suspicions.
Dean, is that you?
He waited for the reply, hoping against hope that when it came, it would ask who the hell this Dean fella was.
It’s Coop. Dean ... well, he’s busy.
Coop. It was that whelp’s buddy, the one who’d taken care of him. That didn’t absolve the man, though. Associating with a wolf was nearly as bad as being one. The bastard was a traitor to the human race.
John knew his daughter had gone soft, but was she actually helping a whelp now? It didn’t seem possible, but the proof was right there in front of him. At the very least, she was still in contact with it. He thought he’d raised her better, taught her that these monsters were not to be trusted at any cost, but this message, it told him he hadn’t done his job well enough.
A deep sadness filled him followed by pure, seething rage and he kicked out, toppling a nearby snack stand and shattering the glass atop it to pieces. No, this was not his fault. She had her mother’s soft heart. He should have known she would end up like this. All that talk of becoming a nurse, helping people, of finding a purpose other than killing. He should have known then that she was losing her edge. Despite everything he’d taught her, she didn’t have the stomach for this line of work. Her blood was every bit as thin as her mother’s.
He knew then exactly what needed to be done, knew he couldn’t wait until the full moon. He needed to act now, finish this before he lost his daughter forever.
His fingers fumbled on the keys in his rage, but he managed to reply, Meet me at my father’s office. He texted the downtown address.
Do you think that’s safe? What about your dad?
Don’t worry about him. Two hours.
John turned off the phone and began to prepare.
♦ ♦ ♦
The office of John Sinclair, Private Investigator, was little more than a hole in the wall near Chinatown. Before he’d been laid up, he’d handled cases mostly involving missing persons who owed money. For a while, it had been steady work, but with the rise of the Internet, his caseload became more and more sporadic.
An eviction notice hung on the door, a result of his two month absence. John promptly crumpled it up and tossed it away. It was an empty threat by the building owner anyway, nothing more. The place was a dump, everyone knew it, but he was the only person who seemed to not care.
Still, it was out of the way and the neighbors never blinked twice no matter what type of clientele visited. Over the years, it had given him a secure place to work, to train, and to conduct Guild business.
Now it would serve him well again.
When two hours passed since the last text message, John finally turned the phone back on, saw another message waiting. Running late. Had to find parking.
He didn’t mind at all.
When the knock finally sounded on the door, he waited a beat, then flung it open. At some point during his absence the power had been turned off, but that only served to further help with the element of surprise, his eyes having had plenty of time to adjust to the darkness inside.
The figure standing in the doorway didn’t have a chance to even say a word before John was upon him. He slammed his gun against the newcomer’s chin, staggering him, then pushed him to the floor and shoved his weapon into the man’s midsection.
“So much as twitch the wrong way and I’ll gut shoot you. Understand?”
The man gave a weak nod while John reached behind him and pushed the door closed. “Wouldn’t do no good to scream anyway. Soundproofed this place years ago. Not that anyone is listening.”
Even though the light was dim, he could still make out Coop’s features and actually found himself hesitating for the barest of seconds, remembering the care this man had given to him when he’d been sick.
He swallowed it down quickly, though. This fella wasn’t a friend. He was a filthy whelp lover. John was a hunter and this man, however he may have helped him in the past, had colluded with a wolf. Therefore, he was as much an enemy as they were.
“Where’s Ro?” The wolf lover’s voice was slurred, courtesy of a few newly cracked teeth. He sounded nervous but, then again, he had good reason to be.
“Don’t you worry about her. You’ve got some questions to answer, and I guarantee I’m all the company you’ll need.”
♦ ♦ ♦
When Ro returned home that evening, she was surprised to find the apartment empty. She’d grown accustomed to seeing her father there and wondered where he’d gone. Then she saw the note on the counter.
Caught a big case. Won’t be back til full moon.
Worry niggled at the base of her skull, but she ignored it. Her father was a grown man, and he’d proven himself recovered from his ordeal.
If he’d found some work, maybe that meant he’d finally moved on from his obsession with killing Dean and was using his time in a positive way. Maybe his near-death experience had changed him somehow, though she knew her hopes were probably unfounded. She knew her father well and thus understood the likelihood of a life-altering transformation was about the same as him declaring himself an advocate for werewolf equality.
She refused to let his adherence to his ways bother her, though. He’d always been a hard man – difficult to please but affectionate in his own way. She’d reasoned that living with him had made her a better hunter, had taught her that nothing was to be trusted, and that knowledge and preparation were what kept her alive during a hunt. But after last month, she couldn’t help but feel that she’d become a disappointment to him, that no matter what she did from now on, it would never be enough to make up for the fact that she’d let a wolf go free.
Growing up, she’d felt isolated from other children by virtue of her birthright. Now, she felt even more so without his support. Being back at work had helped, the easy camaraderie offered by Kam and her other co-workers. They’d all been supportive when she’d returned, inquiring about her father, about her well-being in general. A part of her wished she could stop telling them lies.
She could understand why hunters sought out other hunters for relationships. Other than to preserve the bloodlines, they were the only ones who understood: the pull of the moon, the need to hunt, and the thrill of the kill. Try as she might, however, the idea of spending a lifetime with Kane, or any of the others she’d met, repulsed her. They were of the same type: arrogant, cold-blooded, and lacking compassion.
Not that she craved romance. She’d seen enough movies on TV to find the traditional concept a bit saccharine for her tastes. She wanted something in between, a relationship that didn’t require the intricate dance of courtship, but at the same time wasn’t all about the physical. She wanted companionship, to be understood – and if sex happened to be involved, so much the better.
The thought that she might have had that connection with Dean had been on her mind too much as of late. They had sexual chemistry, she’d resigned herself to that fact, but there was an innate understanding between them also, one that went beyond hunter and prey. Despite the fact that he was a wolf, she could sense there was something innately good within him, something that rejected the notion of a life spent hunting and killing. She didn’t know what kind of person he was before he became a werewolf, but the person he was now...
All the same, she also couldn’t deny she resented that Dean had come into her life. That part of her blamed him for biting her father, nearly killing him, and then turning her life upside-down. Before then, everything had made much more sense. She didn’t have all of these conflicting emotions. She’d never doubted her life or family. It had been so much ... simpler.
She also knew it wasn’t his fault, that the curse had been thrust upon him by Strike and his pack.
He hadn’t asked for this life and neither had she, so perhaps it was time for both of them to stop pretending to be victims and take fate into their own hands.
With renewed resolve, she knew that Los Colmillos had t
o be taken down once and for all. The planned raid during the coming full moon was her best chance at doing so. That was the only way either of them could ever move forward. Strike’s wolves were going to pay for everything they’d done, and the price would be their lives.
30
Everything hurts.
Coop tried to will the pain away, a losing proposition. He’d lost track of how long he’d been in the dark, dank room of a rat trap John Sinclair called an office. The only thing he knew was the pain.
He should’ve known that Ro hadn’t been the one to respond to his message. He’d been so eager to seek her help that he hadn’t bothered to consider the strange nature of her request.
He’d thought he’d endured torture during his stint in the military, but John Sinclair had made that seem like a vacation at a luxury spa. The man seethed hatred in a way he’d seen in only a handful of militants.
He was pretty sure he had a broken jaw and more than a few cracked ribs. The old bastard had ripped out his fingernails one by one, then had broken each of his toes. The questions he’d asked as he’d committed each act of torture were always the same: “Where is the wolf den? Why did you have me and my daughter? What was your purpose in helping me?”
Coop had hoped that by answering the last two, he could assuage some of the old man’s madness.
“He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He’s trying to find a cure!” he’d screamed over and over again, but each time Sinclair would declare him a liar, that there was no cure. Then he’d start all over again.
He’d held fast, though, refusing to give up the location of the mansion, which was seemingly what the hunter wanted most. He wouldn’t break, couldn’t break, not with the faces of the Mason family haunting him, not with Tasha’s voice still fresh in his heart. If he broke, and Dean died as a result, that meant his sister’s death would have meant nothing, that she would have died for no purpose. If he could save Dean, there was a chance for him to save others from a similar fate.
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