by Cara Adams
Diego lay awake for hours, memorizing every moment of the amazing time they’d spent with Zoe. He was overwhelmed at the gift of being given her virginity. It’d never occurred to him that their mate might be an innocent. That just didn’t happen these days. Hell, if he believed half the stuff he saw on TV, there likely weren’t too many eighteen-year-old virgins left, never mind one in her thirties. But he supposed he could see her problem with a preacher as her dad. That would scare away a lot of boys. It wouldn’t keep him away. John-Paul was a good man helping needy people. He didn’t thrust his beliefs down anyone’s throat, although there was always a brief blessing of the food before they ate. But that was only polite. People donated the meal. It was only good manners to say thank you for it.
It only seemed like minutes later when his cell phone rang. Diego picked it up, glad he’d put it on his nightstand and not left it in the pocket of his jeans as frequently happened.
Then he sat up fast and swiped the phone open. “Yes, sir.”
“My office. Ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” But the Alpha had already ended the call.
Diego scrambled out of bed and over to the closet, opening drawers and pulling out clean underwear and socks then dragging his jeans on. He stared at his boots and his shoes, not knowing which to choose, and ended up putting his boots on. He was running out of time here and hadn’t combed his hair or cleaned his teeth yet.
He ran down the stairs, arriving at the Alpha’s office with about ten seconds to spare, only to see both his brothers inside already.
“Shut the door, Diego.”
He did so and remained standing until he was waved to a straight-backed chair.
“There’s a new gang in town, recruiting stupid boys from the high school by having them commit senseless robberies and video tape the burglaries to prove their manhood.”
“The café?” asked Diego.
“Exactly.”
“The boys think they’re safe because they don’t steal anything of great value. They just make a hell of a mess. But that’s where they’re wrong. The insurance companies don’t find this amusing at all. The police have a reasonable idea of one of the ringleaders but no evidence, which is where we’ve been asked to help.”
“Asked to help.” That translates as burgle someone’s house to get it. Sure enough, the Alpha told them what the police were reasonably sure of, but had no way to prove their suspicions.
“We need hard evidence. A cell phone with a video of one of the crimes. Maybe the kids have uploaded it to YouTube or Facebook. Find it and copy it and make sure it’s in a format the police can use to get a warrant and use the evidence in court.”
“Yes, sir. When do you want us to start our investigation?” asked Vallen.
“There’s no investigation. I have two homes for you to visit today. This morning is a special sporting event at the high school. These boys obviously don’t bother to attend all their classes, but my informant is certain they’ll be at the baseball game. It runs from nine to noon, so that’s how long you have to thoroughly investigate their two homes.”
Burgle two homes inside three hours with no preparation? Riiiight.
“These are the addresses. You’d better get moving. It’s after eight already.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Diego followed his brothers outside, and his belly rumbled with hunger. “Let’s discuss it over breakfast.”
“I’ve already eaten,” said Vallen.
“I haven’t, and a second coffee won’t hurt you,” said Diego.
“Coffee sounds good,” agreed Monty.
There was a small café on the first floor. It didn’t make a huge range of food, and it didn’t specialize in breakfast, but right now, Diego didn’t care. He needed to eat fast, and they had to plan how they’d retrieve their evidence without getting themselves arrested.
He ordered a burger and fries, plus three coffees, and then sat down.
“What are we looking for exactly?” he asked.
“Evidence,” said Vallen.
“Very funny. We can’t sit there all day looking through their computers hoping they’ve helpfully labeled a video as, ‘Me smashing up George’s Café,’ can we?”
“Probably not. The lack of time is going to be the killer,” agreed Monty.
Diego’s breakfast arrived, and he started eating, not even bothering to complain when both his brothers stole some of his fries. However, within about fifteen minutes, they’d hammered out a plan, drunk their coffee, and he was almost finished with his burger.
“Google Maps has these kids living only a block and a half away from each other. Likely they’ve known each other all their lives,” said Vallen.
“I think we should split up. Realistically we won’t get inside until nine fifteen or so, and we need to be out by eleven thirty in case the game finishes early or is dead boring and they decide to leave early. That means it’s going to be impossible to do two properly. The only logical solution is to split up and do them both at the same time,” said Monty.
“No way. That means one of us won’t have someone to watch his back. That’s too risky,” said Vallen.
“Bwmym Wmynd.” Diego swallowed his mouthful of food and tried again. “Brayden Willard.”
“What about Brayden?”
“We’ll ask him to help us. To act as our backup. The Alpha’s been giving his brothers more responsibilities lately. Brayden is just what we need. An extra set of eyes and ears and maybe he’ll have time to look for uploads as well.”
“Maybe.” Vallen looked thoughtful, and Diego wiped his mouth and pushed his empty plate away. He liked both the Alpha’s younger brothers, Favian and Brayden. Those two were only thirteen months apart in age, so they hung around together a lot. But they were four or five years younger than the Alpha, so he was very much the head of their family as well as their Alpha.
“Okay. Diego, you go get Brayden. Monty, you get us an inconspicuous car, and I’ll get a few tools. Meet by the basement elevator in fifteen minutes and bring gloves and balaclavas in case of CCTVs.”
“Gotcha.”
* * * *
Monty remained sitting at the café table, scrolled into the panther’s calendar on his cell phone, and looked at the available vehicles. The brown Ford was unused, so he booked it. He liked that car. It was dusty and dented. It was never washed, and the license plate was encrusted in dirt, making the likelihood of anyone reading it accurately very slender. But the engine was tuned, and the motor worked perfectly in case they needed to hurry away from a job.
He went back to the apartment, not seeing either of his brothers there, and changed his white T-shirt for a nondescript navy blue one and his shoes for dirty black boots with steel toecaps. He grabbed his favorite thin leather gloves, a balaclava, which he hated wearing unless it was actually snowing, and a black ball cap. Then he raced down the stairs to the offices, collected the keys to the Ford, and finished his journey in the basement.
He leaned against the concrete wall and switched his cell phone to vibrate, noting that he was three minutes early, a minor miracle considering everything he’d had to do in such a short timeframe.
Just then Brayden and Favian Willard arrived. Brayden was dressed much like him in boots, jeans, and a plain black T-shirt with a blue ball cap on sideways, but Favian was wearing bright red cargo pants, which were at least two sizes too big, dangled half off his hips, and showed four inches of lurid yellow Calvin Klein boxers. Favian was also wearing the most repulsive white T-shirt Monty had ever seen, featuring an ax dripping with blood, and the biggest sunglasses ever, which covered half his face.
“Um, Favian?”
“Yo, bro?”
“No one will ever forget seeing that outfit.”
“Exactly, my man. They’ll remember the clothing and have no clue at all about the person inside it. The police aren’t going to search the underwear drawers of every male in the city looking for
yellow Calvin Kleins.”
He grinned. Favian had a point there.
The elevator door opened, so he beeped the car unlocked and headed across to it, taking the driver’s seat. “Do you want to do a little reconnaissance first, or shall I drive more or less straight there?” he asked Vallen.
“We don’t have a lot of time. Maybe just check a couple of blocks around the houses.”
“Let me off before we get to the first one so I won’t look too obvious walking past them several times,” said Favian.
“Not too obvious? Riiiight,” said Diego, snorting with laughter.
Monty grinned. Favian’s logic was good, though. He couldn’t imagine anyone paying attention to the face hidden behind the enormous sunglasses when half his ass was hanging out of his pants.
He drove up the road behind the first house and a block past the correct area then circled the two houses, staying a block outside them. No one appeared to be hanging around watching anyone. It was a good neighborhood, full of families, with bikes lying on lawns and against trees and basketball hoops on the garage walls.
“Why do kids from good neighborhoods like this want to be in a gang? I can understand poor kids. It’s the only way to make some money and get some street cred. But I don’t understand these kids at all,” said Brayden.
“For the excitement. Rich kids long for excitement. They like to pretend they’re oh-so-very-bad,” said Vallen.
Monty was concentrating on driving, but he added, “It’s more than that though. I don’t think they understand how very privileged they really are. They’ve never had it tough, and they want more and more and more, without realizing basically everything they could ever need is pretty much within their reach already, if they just did a little work.”
“Let me out when you turn this corner,” said Favian.
Monty did, stopping for the shortest possible time before driving slowly to the block in the middle of the two houses and parking behind two or three other cars. “It’s not much of a disguise,” he sighed. They were all station wagons and minivans, but it’d have to do.
He and Vallen headed toward the house of the boy considered to be the likely ringleader of the group while Diego and Brayden went in the other direction to the house of the boy who might have been involved in the destruction of the café.
Monty did what he always did before a job, stretched and wiggled his muscles group by group starting with his head, his neck, his right shoulder, and working his way down to the toes on his left foot. He finished just as they arrived at the house and boldly walked up to the front door. They’d been promised no one would be home at either residence, all the parents working full-time jobs and the boys supposedly at school.
They’d both pulled on ball caps before they left the car, tugging them low over their faces to hide as much as possible. No one had noticed any CCTV cameras in the area, so balaclavas were considered to be unnecessary. Vallen rang the doorbell and quickly unlocked the door with his lock picks.
A friendly locksmith had taught all the panthers in this business how to unlock doors, windows, handcuffs, and other basic locks. It had been very useful knowledge on several occasions, including once when he’d been caught in a burglary but, fortunately, had escaped before the police arrived.
Vallen pointed up the stairs, and Monty took the stairs two at a time, keeping his head down just in case there were any cameras in the house. The boy’s room was easy to recognize. The door had the biggest, most obvious lock on it Monty had ever seen. He pulled out his own lock picks and got to work. A few seconds later, the simple lock opened easily for him. He rather thought a kid with a hairclip could have unlocked it, so presumably the lock was there more as a statement than for genuine security.
The computer wasn’t even turned off. It was displaying advertisements for computer games in an ever-changing dizzying array.
The chair hadn’t been pushed into the desk properly, so Monty left it where it was and sat down, noting the position of the keyboard and mouse before waggling the mouse and looking for the kid’s favorite websites.
Unfortunately he couldn’t find any trace of the things the kid had uploaded. If he had uploaded anything. His favorite YouTube videos were mostly music videos, so that didn’t help either.
Monty scrolled through his file folders. Schoolwork didn’t seem to play much of a role in his life. There were music files, some porno movies, and some links to terrorist sites that the government might be interested in. Monty carefully photographed the file folders without clicking on any of the links.
That gave him the idea of checking things by the date the file was made. He counted back the days to the date George’s café was vandalized and looked for files that day. And there it was. This time he not only photographed the files, making sure the dates were visible. He also clicked the links and watched the videos. The kid had mostly photographed two other people destroying the window and the equipment in the store, but he was sufficiently stupid to have taken some selfies of himself in action as well.
Got you!
Monty checked the time. He had another twenty minutes yet so clicked some of the other links, finding two other videos of vandalism, which he recorded on his cell phone. He was halfway through the last one when his cell vibrated in his hand.
Oops. Time to go.
He clicked out of the links, leaving everything the way it had been, taking a few quick pictures of the room before he left and locking the door behind himself. His cell phone vibrated again as he got to the foot of the stairs, and Vallen pointed to the back door, leading the way. He peeked out through the kitchen window but saw no one, so they slipped out, locking the door behind them.
Monty mentally groaned at the thought of having to jump over innumerable back fences, but the back fence had a gate in it. One that didn’t even lock. Vallen looked into the other backyard and gave Monty a thumbs-up. They slipped through, closing the gate behind them, and walked though the garden and up someone’s driveway. This house didn’t have a car in the driveway or any children’s bicycles lying around, so he supposed they must have either much younger or much older children. Either way, they didn’t appear to be home. Monty breathed properly again once they were walking back toward the car. The others were already there, and he jumped into the backseat where Favian was slouched down below the window level. As soon as they were inside, Diego started the engine and drove away, not hurrying, but not moving slowly either.
“Why did you call us?” Monty asked.
“It was just a precaution. A carload of kids drove past tooting their horn and yelling. I figured the ball game might have finished.”
“Good call. I expect it had.”
Just then Vallen’s cell phone beeped.
Monty looked at him as Vallen typed an answer. “That was the Alpha saying the ball game ended early, so I told him we were already out. Did you get anything?” he asked.
“I did,” said Brayden.
“I did, too,” said Monty.
“Awesome,” said Favian, sitting back up on the seat. “Tell me all about it.”
Chapter Four
Zoe smiled at Maia. She’d asked Zoe and Leah to sing her the same song Zoe and Maia had sung for Leah’s wedding. That was fine by Zoe. She’d be singing the same part as last time. The three of them had sung it as a trio several times, with Leah singing the soprano. For Leah’s wedding, Maia had sung the high notes. She’d been very nervous about it but done brilliantly. This time Leah would do the part she’d done before and so would Zoe, which meant they’d only needed to practice together a few times to get the balance of their voices right.
Zoe thought it was a nice tradition Maia had created and wondered if Maia and Leah would sing it at her wedding. One of them would have to learn Zoe’s part, of course, which might be a challenge.
What am I thinking of? I’m not getting married. I am not a lemming.
She glanced at her sisters. Maia looked lovely in the pale pink dress she’d wo
rn as Leah’s bridesmaid. Zoe was wearing the pale lilac one she’d worn that day as well, and Leah was in pale blue today. They were beautiful outfits, perfectly suited to a wedding.
Her father conducted the ceremony with a big smile on his face, and Chase and Maia were pronounced man and wife. In half an hour, the three men, Chase, Theron, and Draven would mate Maia in the panther warehouse. Zoe felt a little shiver of anticipation roll down her spine. She knew Vallen, Monty, and Diego would take her aside there and maybe kiss her. Maybe even more than that. She didn’t think there’d be much of an opportunity for anything to happen. Although there’d be the cake to cut, and a light meal served in the community room at the panther headquarters, she thought her time there would be pretty fully committed.
Maia had been quite adamant about keeping her human wedding very small. “It’s too soon after Leah’s wedding to make a fuss,” she’d insisted. But she’d wanted the song, and Zoe was determined to do her best for her sister.
Her father stepped to the back of the platform, her mother played a chord on the piano, and Zoe focused on Maia as she sang. She did most sincerely wish her sister all the happiness in the world with her three husbands.
After everyone had congratulated Maia and Chase and taken pictures, they drove to the panther warehouse for the next part of the ceremony. Zoe was beginning to know her way around here now, not just because Vallen, Monty, and Diego had shown her around but because the layout was very logical, centered around the dogleg in the corridor that housed the elevator and the stairwell.
In the community room, the panthers were all gathered, and they clapped and cheered as the three men led Maia to the front of the room.
The words spoken were almost exactly the same as in the church, except that this time all three men promised to love and cherish Maia while she promised the same to them.
Champagne corks popped, the toasts were drunk, and platters of food were handed around.
Vallen appeared at Zoe’s side. “We’d like to feed you more than just canapés. Would you like that?”