Wolf Born

by Ann Gimpel

  Kate clapped her hands together. “Aw, I adore love stories. Even better, you had feelings for him and knew him quite well before. After all,” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “secretaries know men much better than their wives. Just look at all the time you spent with him.”

  “Ready, ladies?” Max came through the stairwell door. He walked to Kate and kissed her cheek. “You’re looking ravishing my dear, as always.”

  Kate quirked a brow and gestured toward Audrey, “What about your—?”

  Audrey shook her head. “Uh-uh. His secretary is just fine.”

  “Sorry.” Kate colored. “Wasn’t thinking. This is a pretty public place.”

  “Car’s waiting downstairs,” Max said. “Loren will follow us, but we’ll drive ourselves today.”

  * * * *

  They ate at a little Mediterranean place not far from the office. After lunch, Max returned with Loren as planned. Audrey thought she’d be alone for a bit but welcomed Kate’s company as she ferried the car to her midtown flat to retrieve enough clothes and personal effects to last a few days. Even though they’d only spent a couple of hours together, Kate already felt like an old friend.

  Audrey parked as close to the door as she could and led Kate up the stairs to her apartment.

  “I just love these old places,” Kate trilled. “Berkeley is full of them. You’ll have to come visit Devon and me. The cops ransacked my home, but we’ve got it looking decent again. We spent a lot of time at the shifter safe house while we were cleaning it up, and we’re still there a few nights a week. Eventually we’ll stay at my place full time. Thought it would be safer living there than at his house since I’m up in the hills—”

  The door popped open before Audrey had a chance to retrieve her wrist computer from her suit jacket pocket and key in the code.

  “Hey, we got lucky,” a masculine voice boomed. Three men dove at her and Kate, grabbed their arms, and dragged them inside the apartment. Someone slammed the door.

  “I’ll say, two for the price of one.”

  “Hell of a bargaining chip.”

  Kate shrieked and clawed. Her clothes ripped as she shifted into a sleek mountain cat. The men had been ready for just such a move. All three of them dropped a net over her. The harder Kate clawed, the tighter the net clenched around her.

  Fear turned Audrey’s blood to ice. Her stomach curdled, and she wondered if she’d puke up her lunch. She would have made a dash for freedom. No one had actually harmed her yet, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave Kate. Besides, she was pretty sure the second she cut and ran, one of the men would follow her. They were tall and heavily muscled; it looked like they spent a lot of time at a gym. If she made a break for it and one of them jumped her, he’d drive her face down into the pavement outside. It wouldn’t be pretty. Two of the men had short blond hair, the other dark, speckled with gray. Hard, flat, dark eyes stared at her.

  “Let me out!” To Audrey’s horror, her hands shimmered into paws with shiny, curved claws.

  “Stop that! Shifting didn’t work for Kate. They trapped her.” Her hands stabilized in their human form. Audrey’s wolf retreated, snarling imprecations at the men.

  “How about it, sweetie,” one of the men leered. “You gonna shift, too?”

  “I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Like hell,” a second man snorted.

  The light flickered when she shifted, and Kate was human again, panting and disheveled. “Let her go.” Audrey was so intimidated, she could barely articulate the words. “She’s naked.”

  “It’s her own fucking fault,” the man with dark hair said.

  Audrey shoved her fear to a back burner and stormed up to him, hands on her hips. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. There are three of you. It’s not like we have any chance to escape. Let me take her into the bedroom and find something to cover her.”

  “I agree.” One of the blonds said as he untangled his side of the webbing. “If someone saw us hauling a naked woman out of this building, they’d call the law.” Kate snaked out a hand for her wrist computer, which had fallen on the floor. “I don’t think so, darlin’.” The blond man snapped it up and pocketed it.

  If anyone sees us leave here, I’ll scream like a banshee. Audrey helped Kate to her feet once the net had loosened enough to let her go. “Come on.” She draped an arm around Kate’s shoulders.

  The men trooped after them. Kate spun and sneered. “I don’t need an audience.”

  “We’ve already seen everything, doll.” A blond whistled appreciatively. “If you ever get tired of Devon, I could find a spot for you in my bed.”

  Kate spit at him. Her aim was good; a glob of spittle hit his cheek. “Bitch.” He lunged forward, hand open to slap her.

  “Stop.” The dark haired man barked. “No damage unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  Hmph. So they don’t plan to hurt us. Audrey’s courage edged up a degree. She tugged open drawers and handed Kate a set of sweats and some panties.

  “You should put on something more like this, too,” Kate murmured, getting into the offered clothing. “High heels and silk probably won’t be very useful where they’re taking us.”

  Audrey swallowed revulsion. She did not want to undress in front of the smirking group of men.

  “Fine idea,” one of the blond men chortled. “Love to see what this one’s got.”

  “Yeah,” the other blond muttered. “I’ve always been partial to strawberry blondes.”

  “Just go for it,” Kate urged.

  Teeth set together so hard they hurt, Audrey got another set of sweats from the drawer and some socks. She snagged tennis shoes from the closet and looked at Kate’s bare feet.

  “My shoes should be fine,” Kate said, obviously reading Audrey’s thoughts. “They’ll be on the floor in your front room.”

  Better get this over fast. Audrey turned her back to the men and took off her suit jacket and blouse. Kate handed her the sweat top and helped her get it over her head. Audrey kicked off her shoes and reached beneath her skirt to move her nylons out of the way. When her fingers touched nothing but bare skin, she remembered her lack of underwear and got another pair of panties from the drawer, pulling them on under her skirt once she’d gotten her panty hose off.

  “Hey, doll,” one of the men trilled. “You go bare bottom.”

  Someone whistled. She didn’t know who since they were behind her.

  “Yee-haw. My kind of woman.”

  “Shut the fuck up,” she spat and tugged her sweat bottoms on beneath her skirt. Once she was covered, she undid the skirt and slid it to the floor.

  “Not much of a show,” one of the men complained.

  “More than you deserved,” Kate growled. “Here, hon.” She handed Audrey’s shoes and socks to her. “I’m going to go find mine. Thanks for the clothes.”

  “No problem.” Audrey sat on the edge of the bed and put on her shoes and socks. Her wrist computer was in a pocket of her suit jacket. Damn! She wished she’d thought of it before she’d agreed to change clothes. Maybe there’d be a way she could rescue it and slip it beneath her sweats. She got up and went to her clothing piled on the floor. Thank God, she always kept the wrist computer on silent mode.

  “What are you doing?” the dark-haired man asked, voice sharp. The others had followed Kate to the living room.

  She smiled sweetly. “Hanging them up. My work clothes cost a fortune. So does dry cleaning.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re making a whole lot of assumptions. Like that you’ll ever see the inside of this place again. Be quick about it.”

  She draped everything over her arm and walked briskly to the closet. Using her body as a shield, she hung things, taking her time arranging them.

  “Tom,” one of the men called from the living room.

  “Yeah.”

  Audrey took advantage of what she hoped was a moment of inattention to slide the computer out of the s
uit pocket and into one she’d sewn into her sweat pants for just that purpose. She held her breath; adrenaline coursed, making her scalp tingle unpleasantly.

  “We need to get out of here,” the living room voice continued.

  “Hey.” Tom clumped to her and grabbed her arm. “We’re leaving. You did a good enough job.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Exultant she’d pulled it off, Audrey went with him. Now if she could just grab a second alone to use the computer, maybe she could call in the cavalry to free them.

  “No funny stuff.” One of the blonds brandished a laser pistol. The men herded them through the door. Blondie number two took off down the stairs.

  “I heard you say you weren’t supposed to hurt us,” Kate said, chin high.

  Tom grinned nastily. “That’s not to say one of you might not meet with an unpleasant accident.”

  “All clear. Come now,” floated up to them.

  There wasn’t a soul in sight when the men prodded her and Kate into the back of a large luxury car. “It’s just like mine.” Kate’s gaze roamed the inside of the vehicle. “Not many people kept these older ones.” One of the blonds sat in the back seat with them next to a door, presumably to block one of the sources of egress. The car took off at a sedate pace. Audrey tried to see what the dark-haired man tapped into the onboard nav system, but he shielded his activity with a hand.

  She squeezed her eyes shut. Max would be frantic when he didn’t hear from her. She was supposed to pick up a few clothes, drop them at his house, and come back to the office. One thing at a time. If I get too far ahead of myself, I’ll be so scared I won’t be able to do anything. She smiled grimly. Max had said something very similar the previous night, leaving out the scared part. She suspected very little frightened him.

  “So.” She straightened in her seat. “I know Tom’s name. Who are the rest of you?”

  “It’s not important,” Tom snapped in a tone that made it clear he was furious one of the others had used his name.

  “Why of course it is,” Kate drawled. “I’d love to get to know you boys better.”

  “Huh? You had a change of heart after you tried to scratch our eyes out?” Tom turned to stare at her from his place behind the wheel.

  “Hey, honey. I worked as a surrogate for years. You know how we are. We need to get laid—often and regularly. It’s why we pick that line of work. You’re all pretty good looking specimens. But I like to know men’s names before I fuck them.”

  Tom’s face reddened; he turned back around. Despite his bold talk in her apartment, Audrey was certain he hadn’t had much experience with women. “Well,” he mumbled, “you already know mine.”

  “She’s working us,” back seat blond spat. “This one’s a hot mamma. We know all about her.”

  Kate batted her eyes at him. She shimmied across the seat and laid a hand over his crotch. “Want to try me, big guy. Oh, Audrey. This one’s hung. Maybe we could share him.”

  Audrey played along. “Sounds like a plan.” She scooted closer. “Let me feel, too.”

  Back seat blond turned beet red. He slapped Kate’s hand away. “I like my sex private,” he growled.

  “Well,” Kate’s golden gaze bored into his dark eyes. “Looks like you’ll know right where to find me.”

  They drove for a long time. Audrey recognized the expressway and understood they were heading for the Bay Area. She wondered why their captors hadn’t blindfolded them. And then she figured it out. These guys were rank amateurs. They didn’t do this sort of thing often. In fact, maybe they’d never done anything like it before.

  “Hey.” She tried mind speech with Kate.

  The other woman sidled close, jabbed her, and shook her head almost imperceptibly. A conversation with Max roared to life in Audrey’s head. The three men in the car had to be shifters; it made sense because that was who was after him. Kate somehow knew it; that was why she’d vetoed telepathic speech. The men would be able to hear them, at least as long as they were all together in this car.

  Audrey’s head fell back against the softly padded seats. She couldn’t do anything right now. The car’s doors were locked when it was in motion. I just have to bide my time. We’ll find a way out of this. She considered talking with her wolf, but if the men could “hear” a conversation with Kate, maybe they could hear one with the wolf, too. Christ, but I wish I knew more about being a shifter. I don’t know squat. Not even enough to tell if that’s what our captors are.

  She reached for Kate’s hand where it sat between their bodies and squeezed it. The answering pressure from Kate heartened her. It was selfish, but Audrey was glad the other woman was there. Being alone with these men, shifters who would stop at nothing to bring Max down, would have paralyzed her.

  Guess that old saying about strength in numbers is truer than I ever could have guessed.

  Chapter 14

  Max paced up and down the great room in his mansion. Devon did the same. When Audrey and Kate failed to return to the office and didn’t answer pages on their wrist computers, Max had texted Johannes, Ryan, and Devon. The men had raced to Max’s office; they hadn’t found any clues at the Capitol Rotunda snooping around the cancelled news conference. Because Max and Devon were wild with worry and fear for their mates, the other two men had hustled them down the elevator and driven to Max’s. That was an hour ago.

  Ryan and Johannes worked the vid feed with a fury, trying to nail down clues. Max had gone from wolf to human so many times, he’d lost track of what he was now. He opened his mouth to howl; a guttural shriek filled the air. Hands shook his shoulders.

  “Goddammit. Stand still,” Johannes shouted. “We need to talk with you. Devon, too.”

  “I’m going to kill those bastards who nabbed Kate.” Devon slammed a ham-sized fist into a delicate side table. It crumpled beneath the assault. “Shit! Sorry. I’ll replace it.”

  “You can’t,” Max snapped. “It was built in the sixteen hundreds. It doesn’t matter. What does is finding out who took the women. And where they are.” He glanced at the scraps that had been his clothes. “I’m going to find a robe. Want one?” he asked Devon.

  “I don’t care. I suppose I’ll need clothes before we leave here.” His, too, lay in a shredded mess on the Oriental rug. He’d shifted nearly as many times as Max, ripping out a line of stitches from a recent injury sustained fighting his way out of the Berkeley Police Station with the rest of the tracker task force. All of them had rebelled against their bosses, going rogue. The ones who’d been turned into full-blown shifters by the serum were furious the brass held their new status against them. After all, they’d had to accept the IV infusions or get fired. The few human members of the task force stood behind the shifters in a show of solidarity.

  “Mine should fit,” Johannes said, hazel eyes pinched with compassion. “Do you want them now or later?”

  “Now. Once I know whatever you found out, I’m out of here. Goddamn motherfucking sonofabitch.” He slammed his forehead with the heel of one hand. “I can’t believe they’ve got my Kate.”

  “Someone’s going to pay,” Max growled. “If they’ve harmed so much as one of Audrey’s hairs, they’re dead meat.”

  “Let’s all shift. We can run as a pack and track them down,” Max’s wolf snarled.

  “We need to find out where they are, first,” Max explained. “If they’re a long way from here, we’ll need to drive—or fly.”

  “I listened in,” Devon said unapologetically. “My mountain cat said the same thing. Do you have a hovercraft big enough for all four of us?”

  Max nodded. His gaze raked over Johannes and Ryan. Fury burned a hole inside his chest. “Did you find them?”

  “We think so. Go get something on.”

  Max raced up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He trusted Johannes would find something for Devon—and patch up his trashed stitches. Feeling crazed, head about to explode from tension, Max pulled on black sweat pants, a black turtleneck, and a black jacket. H
e found black gloves and a black watch cap to hide his fair hair. Ryan had been a makeup artist before the shit had hit the fan. He could black out their faces. He never went anywhere without his kit.

  In less than five minutes, Max strode back into the front room. Johannes was dressing Devon’s side with fresh gauze squares. Though his torso was bare, he had on black jeans. The expression on his face broke Max’s heart. He knew how much Kate meant to the Native American man because he was just as frantic about Audrey.

  “Report,” he barked at Ryan. “Do that grease paint thing on my face while you’re talking.”

  A corner of Ryan’s mouth twisted. “Somehow, I anticipated you’d want to take advantage of my other skill set.” He picked up clear vinyl case from the floor, set it on a chair, and opened it, withdrawing brushes and small pots.

  “Talk.”

  “Damn straight,” Devon cut in.

  “We hacked into their network,” Johannes said, straightening from his work on Devon’s side. “It was easy, and the kidnapping is all over it. The shifter group that took Audrey and Kate has their base of operations in Tiburon.”

  “Is that where they’ve taken Kate?” Devon interrupted. He tugged a dark gray sweater over his head and buckled his shoulder holster into place.

  “We’re not sure—” Ryan began.

  “What do you mean you’re not sure? What the fuck good is that going to do?” Max shouted. He dropped into a chair and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “I’m sorry. I’ll shut up.”

  “Their proposed destination was not on the vid feed,” Johannes clarified.

  “We think they’d be stupid to bring the women to their headquarters,” Ryan hurried on.

  “Yes,” Johannes said. “We think they’re taking them to the Bay Area somewhere but probably not into their operations center.”