by Lisa Ladew
She strode to where she’d felt the gaze on her, past it, then turned around so she could see with the sun at her back. Whoever had been watching her had been inside a large shed off to one side of the parking lot, a small window set in the middle of it.
Just an employee. She got in her car and left, headed toward downtown.
Chapter 17
Mac watched through binoculars as the robot, situated on a platform like painters used, lifted the bomb out of the hole they’d drilled in the concrete wall of the now-empty police station, right into the crawlspace above the duty room. The bomb looked small, barely big enough to do much damage, but what did he know? He wasn’t a bomb expert.
The robot lowered the silver box onto the platform. Mac held his breath when it hit the wood, but nothing exploded. He hurried over to the robot handler and watched what the male saw through the camera, looking over the shoulders of the federal agents in front of him.
Two tense hours later, the thing was unarmed, lying in a messy pile on the platform.
Mac had a dozen questions about how it was placed, who would have done it, and how they found out it was there, but it wasn’t his case, wasn’t his department, and, unless someone assigned him something to do, it wasn’t his business. There were sixteen ATF agents circled around the platform, all of them salivating at the thought of ordering around the Serenity PD for the next few weeks. Fuck that. He was out.
He found a distracted Wade in the crowd of blue talking to an ATF agent. When the agent jogged away, Mac got in Wade’s line of sight. “Anything I should know, Chief?”
Wade sighed and pushed a hand through his graying head of hair. “Yeah. Rex Brenwyn did this.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, shit. That lead in Machesney Park turn up anything?”
Mac looked around at the crowd, measuring who might overhear them, then stepped in close. “They say he’s in Chicago, which we already knew, but they are also saying he suddenly has the ability to disappear into thin air.” He snapped a finger. “Poof.”
Wade considered, then shook his head. “I heard that, too.”
“Right. You think it’s possible? You think a foxen could have the ability to move in and out of the Pravus like Khain?”
Wade rubbed his eyes and looked over at the gaggle of ATF agents. “Might explain how a bomb got in our building.” He looked back at Mac, a hard edge in his eyes. “It’s not good news, if it’s true.”
Mac cocked his head to the side. “Gotta say what you mean, Chief. I told you that. If it’s true, we’re fucked.”
“Yeah,” Wade said, looking down at the ground. “We are.”
Mac nodded, lifting his head, looking for Bruin, who had disappeared when the fire truck had shown up. He spoke to Wade, eyes still searching the crowd for the big male. “So what now?”
“Normal operations, till I say otherwise.”
Mac bobbed his head. “So the rut is on?”
Wade sighed. “Yeah, of course. Just keep your phone on you.” He locked eyes with Mac one more time. “I’m surprised you’re even going, after what you told me about your female. She’s close. Your paths will cross soon… I didn’t expect you to come home from Chicago once you called and said she’d been there.”
Mac shrugged. With nothing to go on but a smell, he could wander around a city the size of Chicago for decades and still not find her. Coming home had felt… right, like fate was bringing them together, and if he didn’t continue his normal routine, he would fuck that up.
Besides, he had his ace in the hole, didn’t he? Bruin had said she would be at the rut. “If I weren’t in charge, I wouldn’t be going. I’ll be around, make sure the males have what they need, but I won’t be partaking.” He wondered for a moment if he should share what Bruin had said about his mate being there, but decided against it. He didn’t think Bruin wanted anyone to know about his… prophetic nature, something that normally only citlali would have. Besides, he had his plan all worked out. He’d segregate the males and the females at first, then as soon as he saw her, he’d be grabbing her by the elbow and getting her out of there. There was no way anyone was getting their hands on her. Bruin could take over. Everyone in the department had accepted Bruin like he was a wolfen, even Wade, so none of them would object to Bruin being in charge, especially once they knew another one true mate had been found.
Mac would leave to spend the night getting to know his female.
He spotted Bruin in the crowd and raised an arm to the guy. “Gotta go, Chief. Rut starts in an hour.”
He didn’t wait around for an answer.
***
Rogue drove past the Watson building, a former warehouse now turned events hall, eyeing the thick hedges that hid eight-foot-tall security fences with barbed wire on top. Everything was open, though, the gate at the front flung wide, the parking lot already filling with cars. There was an event there that evening. Perfect. The other cars and people in and out gave her cover.
She drove in the gate and around to the back. No cars back here. Her notes from Rex had said Smith drove a beat-to-shit dark-colored Camaro, and it wasn’t around. She eyeballed the back of the building, counting six bays where trucks used to drive up to unload cargo. Now the doors themselves were all showing signs of misuse, rusting and collapsing, but she bet the retaining wall they’d built on the inside to cover the open doors looked great. Situated directly above three of the bays on the flat roof, like a square afterthought, was the caretaker’s apartment, probably situated up there since much of his job was clearing snow off the roof in the winter. Rogue leaned forward in her seat, trying to figure out how to get into the apartment. She let the car drift forward twenty feet until she found what she was looking for. A stairwell, winding around the side of the building, straight to the apartment. Perfect. She’d take a look-see, maybe get inside and poke around. Maybe find what she was looking for that evening and be done with the whole mess, and just a little bit closer to that fabled retirement at 30.
She drove around the building again, eyes scanning the security for possible exits if she needed one. She never went in on any sort of a job, even a simple one like this, without multiple points of escape lined up. Which was one reason she’d never been caught yet.
A person-sized gate to the left of the building caught her attention. Good. She glanced up at the apartment on top of the warehouse. No, actually, it wouldn’t do. There was a door out of the warehouse itself that led right to this gate, but nothing from above. She eyed the roofline. Unless she hung from that ledge, swung herself to that window, then dropped the twelve feet to the ground. Easy.
She drove out of the parking lot, eyeballed the building next to the one she would be going into, made her escape plan, then parked her car about a half mile down, hiding it in a restaurant parking lot, heading back on foot.
She felt eyes on her a few times, but nothing threatening. By the time she was back at the warehouse, she was ready for the night to be over. Ready to get to her cozy home and take some actual time off.
She headed past the warehouse, casting an interested eye at the people heading in the front door. Lots of women in skimpy outfits, some of them obvious working girls. Lots of burly men who moved and dressed like cops, but couldn’t possibly be. Maybe it was a Chippendale’s type of thing. A bachelorette party? She kept outside the farthest row of cars, her eyes down, until she heard a low growl. She picked her head up and stared as one of the men cut one of the women off from the pack she’d been traveling in. He lowered his head to her neck and pressed her into a nearby car with his body. Her startled squeak and subsequent laughter turned into a sensual moan as he put his lips on her collarbone, his hips gyrating against her lower half.
Eyes wide, Rogue edged past the car they were writhing against. The man finally pulled away from the woman. “Inside,” he ordered her, smacking her on the ass as she hurried to comply. Her skirt was short enough that Rogue could see her bare flesh jiggle. What in the hell was going on inside th
ere? Curiosity ate at her, but she clamped down on it and hurried to the back of the warehouse. She was here for a job, and nothing more.
She rounded the building, stopping long enough to pop the lock on the gate that led into the next lot, no picks needed still, then started up the stairs, acting like she belonged there. At the top, she had a fantastic view of this portion of the city. She took just a moment to admire it, ignoring more female laughter that drifted up from the front parking lot, then hurried along the walkway to the apartment.
She knocked on the door. For a split second, she felt eyes on her, from inside the building, but it was so short, she almost felt like she must have imagined it. No answer, so she knocked again, peering in the window of the door, but she couldn’t see as much as she would have liked because of the sun glaring behind her. It was almost down, but again the rays were foiling her vision. All she could see was that the inside was an alcove of sorts, leading to the main house, a mud room filled with shelves and tools and all manner of crap stacked everywhere, leaving only a bit of bare floor. No cameras in the high corners. No sounds or signs of life. Rogue slipped on her gloves and put her hand on the knob. It opened easily, and she stepped inside, took a few steps through the junk, then raised her hand to knock on the inner door.
Inside, on the floor of the kitchen area that she could see, was a body. Rogue knew at once it was a body because of the awkward way that it lay and the pool of congealing blood around its head.
Denton Smith? It could be. Of course it was. Great, a fucking set up. She didn’t stop to figure out who was being set up, she was out of there and would figure it out later. She’d call for help anonymously once she was back at her car. She stepped away from the door, when a fiery smell hit her nose. One she recognized.
She whirled around, only a bit surprised to see Rex standing inside the tiny alcove, barring her exit to the door, his messy hair even messier, his blondish-grey beard and moustache sticking every which way. The door hadn’t opened, and he had not been there a moment before. Fuck, that appearing-in-the-smell-of-smoke shit was creepy and she wanted no part of it. Did not want to add it to her list of items that made up her werewolf problem, although she probably should.
She shot him a dirty look. “You’re still paying me, dickhead.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “Such a feisty human. Don’t worry. You won’t need money where you’re going.”
Rogue kept her face a mask of hatred. Human? She shook her head. “Where is that? Jail? Did you really kill this poor guy just to send me to jail? What did I ever do to you?”
Rex shot a look over her shoulder, into the house. “Oh, but I didn’t kill him…”
Rogue looked, too, she couldn’t help it, seeing exactly where this was going all of a sudden. Sure enough, next to the man’s head was a trophy with a wooden base and a boy throwing a pitch on top. A real screamer right to home plate.
The one she’d caught in Soren’s office, putting her fingerprints on it.
“Why?” she spit at him. Bad guys liked to talk about how smart they were. Evil guys downright insisted on it. She pegged Rex as evil and knew he would spill something she could use against him. It wasn’t the first time she’d had to beat a blackmailer at his own game, and the time before that she’d done it, she’d ended up better off than when she started. Life just worked out like that for her.
He shrugged, then eyed the nail beds on his right hand, telling her it was his choice to talk or not. But then he talked. “My brother is taken with you. He won’t do anything he thinks you wouldn’t approve of. You either need to be out of the picture completely, or you need to be something I can bargain with, not something that’s working against me.”
Rogue let boredom play over her face. “Really? This is all a family squabble? You could have just asked me nicely to bow out.”
Rex’s eyes turned hard. “I’m not playing a fucking game here, missy, this shit is for keeps. My brother has made a lot of stupid decisions in his life, but he’s about to make one of the stupidest, and something tells me you are part of the reason. You’ve made him soft.”
Rogue didn’t let her confusion show. Sure, Soren liked her, but he knew there would never be anything between them. But soft? Soren was the exact opposite. Maybe Rex was confusing soft with smart. Smarter than Rex, obvs. Ok, she’d given her last fuck to this asshole, and it was time to let him know he didn’t have her like he thought he did.
She eyed the evil Jeff Bridges, as she was beginning to think of him, running through her options. He crossed his arms over his chest, smiling an-oh, what do you know? An evil smile at her, letting her think, putting on a show like this was all a game and he had it in the bag. Guaranteed Smith was dead, so there was no time element to worry about. If she removed the murder weapon, or at least wiped it off, that would take her away from the scene. Rex was a convicted criminal, she’d never been arrested. She could disappear from the area for a long time, which she’d known it would come to eventually. No one gets away with a life of crime forever.
But then a sound caught her attention.
Rex lifted his head and held a finger up. “Ah, you hear that? That’s the sound of the batter rounding the bases, bringing in all the runs.”
Rogue bit her lip from the inside without moving her face, so he couldn’t see her dismay, because he was right. He had her.
The noise was police sirens.
Chapter 18
Mac counted heads one more time. Forty-two women. He’d smelled every one of them, made them all say something for him.
She wasn’t here.
He ground his teeth together, as someone pounded on the door to the room he had them all sequestered in. Bruin had been wrong.
Or not. More women would show up. He would stand at the front door, examine them as they came in.
“Mac, what the fuck?” came the cry from outside. The males were getting restless, pissed off that the party hadn’t started yet. A particularly heavy slam against the door and it let out a noise like the splintering of wood. Fuck, he wasn’t going to get his deposit back on this place if they broke the damn door down.
“Hold your fucking horses,” Mac snarled over his shoulder. “Break that door and I break your face!”
But the pounding kept coming. Mac nodded at the women. “You’re done, you can go.”
Some looked scared, nervous, the newbies who didn’t know what to expect, but the ones who had been there before? They crowded around the door until someone was able to open it, their scents eager, their murmured words excited.
Lance, a patrol officer, was the first one at the door. “Ladies,” he said, extending his hands like he was asking them to dance. Mac guessed he was. The females filtered out and Mac left, too, heading for the front door, not sparing the room a glance.
He didn’t care what was going on. He only cared about his one true mate. When was she going to show up?
If Bruin had been wrong, Mac was gonna kick his ass up around his ears for him.
***
Rogue curled her hands into fists and bent her knees. She would take Rex on if she had to, but she didn’t want to. Fighting a man was never a guaranteed win, no matter what she knew about joint-manipulation fighting styles and open-hand control tactics. Rex was big, with a bit of a belly starting to protrude from his middle, but the rest of him was all hard muscle.
She shook her head instead, stepping to her right, eying the window in the other direction, even considering going into the house to find a back escape route. “You think I’m caught, but there’s one thing you don’t know about me.”
She pulled on a shelf full of power tools, finding its tipping point, ready to put it between her and Rex, as soon as she decided on her exit point. “I’ve never been caught, and I never will be.”
She was planning to go right through the door behind her, but only if that fucker popped open the way the other ones had. Her new secret weapon. She heaved on the bookshelf and tipped it toward the middle o
f the room, getting her weight behind it to send it on a caddy-wumpus fall onto Rex, when she caught sight of something behind it. Split second decision time. Continue on with the original plan? Or take this one. The waist high, two-feet by two-feet crawl space that probably led to the heating and cooling system for the warehouse would fit her easily. Rex, however? Not so much. His belly would make it a tight squeeze. It would mean she left the murder weapon with her prints on it behind. But it would give her a better chance of actually escaping.
Crawl space. Decision made. Time for a snappy one-liner. “Bases might be loaded,” she said, heaving the shelf one last time. “But the catcher’s got the ball.” Fuck if it was stupid, it was still baseball.
As the heavy shelf fell onto Rex, tools spilling out and booming onto the floor, she didn’t stop to see what he would do about it. She pried her fingers under the white grate that covered the crawl space and pulled it off, adding the noise of it clattering to the floor to the sudden cacophony in the small, closed area, then jumped into the crawl space, head first.
Faith. It was all she had at the moment. Faith, and fearlessness, and she worked them both to her advantage.
The metal tube she was in held her weight easily, the tunnel of sorts leading straight ahead for ten feet, then T-ing. It would have to go down at some point, and she hoped like hell the slope was gradual.
She scrambled on her hands and knees, glad the opening was big enough for that. When she reached the T, she looked back. Empty. She couldn’t even hear the sounds of the sirens anymore.
Which way? The slope to the space on the right was less gradual, so she chose that one. No idea where this would lead, but ending up back on the roof wouldn’t help her. She needed to get down in the warehouse. Hopefully somewhere quiet. A furnace room would be perfect. If she could find the exit that she’d seen earlier, the one that faced the gate she’d popped the lock on, she was golden. If she hurried.