But as it turned out, I didn’t need to find Texas. Texas found me.
I heard the sound of a gun cocking and felt the cold metal of a muzzle placed against the nape of my neck.
“Stand up slowly, Miss Philips. Your luck just ran out.”
Chapter 18
I stood slowly and turned as my gun was stripped from my hand.
“I haven’t been lucky to this point, Texas,” I said as coolly as I could. “What I have is something else, they’re called brains, and I’m not surprised you don’t recognize them.”
Texas was, as advertised, a very good-looking werewolf in the pretty boy mold. It was a type I didn’t find particularly attractive – he’d have been right at home in Twilight but any of my guys could have broken him in half with their pinky finger.
He gestured about the room expansively. “You think someone without brains could have achieved all this?”
“The fact that you’re hosting the annual meeting of the Society of Little Pussy Werewolves Who Need a Gun to Make them Feel Big – SLPWWNGMFB, for short – doesn’t impress me.”
Texas remained smiling but I could see a flicker of anger in his eyes – I had pushed some buttons. Here was a man who had spent his life being told he wasn’t a real werewolf, and in other circumstances, I might have sympathized, because the measure of a man is the size of his heart, not his biceps – although, I could hardly talk given the company I had been keeping. But nothing is an excuse for murder and armed uprising. If you have an inferiority complex, get a flashy car.
“You’re trying to make me angry,” said Texas, accurately. “It won’t work.”
“Yeah, well,” I shrugged, “in my situation, I have relatively few options. And in your situation, wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to just shove a sock down there?”
Texas backhanded me across the face hard enough to spin my head around, which meant I didn’t even see the butt of his gun coming.
When I came around, with a splitting headache, I was in a small cage in a small, badly lit room. And I was not alone.
“You’re awake?” said the woman in the cage opposite.
Even in my stunned state, and even though the woman had clearly been a prisoner for a little while and was somewhat the worse for wear, I could not help noticing that she was astonishingly, breathtakingly, briefly consider playing for the other teamily beautiful.
“Lovely?” This was the face that had captivated Dog and so many others. But this was the last place I had expected to find it.
“How do you know my name?” Lovely asked.
“I know your other one, too.”
I was pleased to see the color blanch from her face even as she said, “No, you don’t.”
“Wanna bet Macken…?”
“Don’t!”
I shrugged. “Why not? Doesn’t everyone here know? Isn’t it kind of integral to the plan?”
“How do you know all this?”
“My name is Marley Philips, and it’s my business to know things that other people don’t.” That was a near quote from a Sherlock Holmes story. I’d been waiting my whole life for the opportunity to say that and it was damn near worth getting locked up in a cage for the opportunity.
“You’re with the police?”
“Used to be.”
“Are they on their way?”
Boy, I wished they were. I shook my head and Lovely slumped.
“How come they got you locked up down here?” I asked. “I thought this was all about you.” I was sure that the plan had been Texas’s, but I had assumed that she was onboard with it and I hadn’t expected him to betray her until she had succeeded her father. That would have been easier.
Lovely looked up at me. “They’re going to kill my dad.”
I nodded. “Wasn’t that always the plan? How else could you take over?”
“We were just going to sideline him,” Lovely pleaded. “We were going to get him to step aside for someone younger and with more support and…” She subsided. “That was never going to happen, was it?”
“No.”
“He just told me that because he knew I wouldn’t stand by while my father was killed.”
“Yep.” She was prepared to stand by while taking his power from him, but I didn’t mention that.
“I’m a fucking idiot, aren’t I?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t want to rule that out.”
Lovely shook her head. “That’s why I didn’t want you to say… To say my other name. I don’t deserve it. I can’t hear it. I’m not that anymore, I’m just Lovely. An average singer, an occasional dancer and a gangster’s moll.”
She was going to be more than that if her boyfriend wasn’t stopped; she was going to be Pack Leader of the MacKenzie. But for my money, she was going to hold that title pretty briefly. Then, she was going to die in a freak accident and her consort would rule solely.
“How did you catch on?” I asked. “When did this cease to be your plan and become just his?”
Lovely sat back on the floor of her cage and stared at her pretty toes – everything about Lovely was pretty. “After Dog, I guess.”
“After your testimony sent him to jail or after Texas had him killed?”
She pulled a rueful half-smile. “You really do have it all figured out, don’t you?”
“Everything but you. You remain a bit of a mystery to me.”
“I’m not so complex.” She shook her head, her long hair tumbling like a shampoo advert. “I’m exactly what you think I am. A spoiled kid who rebelled against her daddy and took it way too far. A girl who sacrificed her soul and her body for money and power just because a handsome male told her to.”
“Texas.”
She didn’t look up. “When we met, he was so wild and free. My parents hated him and that just made it better. I rode on the back of his motorcycle along the sea cliffs at night and we fucked in the waves as the sun came up. Hell, we fucked everywhere; the back of a bus, the movie theater, the Pack Lodge, my dad’s bed, my dad’s office, my dad’s car, my dad’s…”
“I get the picture.”
“He was everything that my life at home wasn’t and represented everything I felt I was missing.”
“And an easy source of bane?” I suggested.
Lovely nodded. “I’m clean now, but back then… I’m not even sure what happened in those months. Maybe all that fucking is in my head. I adored him. I worshipped him. I’d have done anything for him.”
“Even running away from home.”
Lovely dismissed this. “That was no biggie. I’d have probably done that anyway. Then, he started talking about this plan to really get back at my parents for how they’d treated me.”
“How they’d treated you?” I wondered.
“Look, I was young, stupid and rebellious,” snapped Lovely, defensively. “A lot of it doesn’t stack up when I explain it now but that’s what happens when you grow up. I bet you hated your parents and did some dumb things as a kid, too.”
That was fair. “He suggested the plan to take over the pack on your twenty-first birthday.”
Lovely nodded. “The way he told it, nobody would get hurt. Maybe I wanted to believe it. Maybe I trusted him too much. Maybe I was so strung out on bane that it actually made sense. I don’t know.”
“Tell me about Dog.” That was where I’d come into this story.
Lovely looked at the floor. “If I could take back one thing in my life… He was a sweetie. He worshipped me as much as I worshipped Texas. So when Texas told me to go with him for a few months so we could get the money we needed, I believed Texas was on the level and Dog believed I was on the level.” Her eyes never left the floor as she spoke. “They weren’t a bad two months. I still saw Texas regularly, and Dog was… surprisingly gentle, not rough like I’d thought he would be.”
I let it sit at that. Some details were best left where they were.
“And then you framed him?”
Lovely looked up at me sudde
nly. “That’s where I know you from, isn’t it? You were on that case. You interviewed me before the trial.”
I nodded.
Lovely gave a humorless laugh. “You must feel almost as guilty as I do.”
“Yeah.” Now I knew how she felt, now I had seen her, I was willing to make another educated guess about how this had played out. “You’re the one who got him out, aren’t you? You’re the anonymous tip-off.”
The waterfall of copper hair bounced up and down in acknowledgement, though her gaze had returned to the floor. “He had been so kind to me. And when we had been together, I really hadn’t treated him very well. Because I didn’t love him. I just wanted to be back with Texas. But that wasn’t his fault and I’d just… used him. Then sent him to jail. I thought the guilt would go away eventually and when it didn’t, I sent the evidence along.” She buried her face in her hands. “And that’s what got him killed.”
“A lot of things got him killed.” She was tied to most of them but making her feel worse didn’t make matters any better. “I think Dog would have liked the fact that you were the one who got him out of jail. His Lovely came through for him.”
Lovely raised a tear-stained face full of hope. “You think?”
“I do.” I actually did. That sort of small gesture would have meant the world to the simple Dog; loyal to death.
“Didn’t help him in the long run. Texas still killed him.”
I frowned. “Texas actually did it?”
She laughed. “Hell, no. He paid someone to do it. He wouldn’t have the courage to stand up to anyone, let alone someone like Dog.”
“How did Dog find out about all this?” I asked.
“One of Texas’s employees was at the Fox, and Dog had a way of asking questions.”
That didn’t need any further explaining. People around the district were scared enough of Texas not to say anything to me or even to the guys, but to Dog? That was another matter.
“That was when I got mad,” Lovely went on. “That was when I finally started to see straight and see all the things that I should have seen from the start if I hadn’t been so blinded by bane and lust and my own fucking teenage stupidity. I wanted to rebel against my dad so badly that I believed everything Texas told me, ‘cause he was like the anti-dad. If I’d thought about it, I’d have realized what that meant; Dad might have been a pain in my ass but he cared about me. Texas didn’t give a shit, he just wanted to take over the pack.”
“What happened?”
“When I found out about Dog, I lost my shit. I yelled at him, called him every name I could think of and said I was leaving and that I was going back to my daddy.” She sighed. “Probably should have just left without making a big deal, ‘cause that’s when he stuck me down here.” I saw tears well up in her big beautiful eyes. “Now, he’s going to kill my daddy.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.”
That seemed like the thing to say. Something to comfort her and make her believe that there might still be some hope. But I would be damned if I could see where that hope might come from. I wanted to stay optimistic for her sake, as well as my own, but how the hell was I supposed to get out of this?
Molly looked at her watch. “There’s not long now.”
“What’s the timetable?” I asked.
“They’re going in as part of the People’s Assembly.”
Another of the werewolf traditions that MacKenzie Sean kept up while other Pack Leaders let it slide was that of the leader holding a weekly assembly when problems could be brought to him by any wolf in his territory. These problems were usually of the ‘so and so scratched my car/knocked up my daughter/stole my newspaper’ variety rather than the land disputes and blood feuds of the past, but, as ever, the MacKenzie did not let these things go. From Texas’s point of view, it was a chance for an almost unlimited number of people to be allowed into a room with the Pack Leader. Sean would be guarded, of course, but that hardly mattered when Texas’s men had hidden weapons. There were no metal detectors at the Pack Lodge and no one was searched because werewolves don’t carry weapons, and any humans coming in would be smelled. Texas wouldn’t use silver bullets, which might have been sensed, but he didn’t need to – ordinary bullets might not kill a wolf, but they still hurt, and the number of ordinary bullets that would be flying would comfortably take down the Pack Leader’s protection detail when the element of surprise was on their side.
“What time does it start?” I asked.
“Doors open at two in the afternoon.”
I checked my watch. One thirty. Seriously running out of time. Texas’s men would already be outside the Pack Lodge, lining up alongside petitioners.
Lovely looked at me expectantly. “What’s your plan?”
There was the six-hundred-million-dollar question; what was my fucking plan?
As the question passed through my mind, there was a crash from the far end of the room and a werewolf passed through the door, head first, rolling across the ground and coming to an undignified stop in a crumpled heap, groaning with pain.
He was followed through the broken door by Reed, who strode in and grabbed the man by the collar, hoisting him up into the air.
“You see,” he pointed at me and addressed the semi-conscious and bleeding man in his grasp, “what did I tell you? There she is. Next time someone asks where the prisoners are, maybe you should tell them. Then they won’t hurl you through four different doors looking.”
“Some people insist on doing things the hard way,” observed Kessler, following Reed into the room with Talbot right behind him. His face lit up on seeing me, though not, I imagined, as much as mine lit up on seeing the three of them.
The guys practically tripped over themselves in their haste to cross the room and let me out of my cage.
“Locked,” snarled Talbot.
Reed grabbed his reluctant battering ram up off the floor again. “Where are the keys? And before the words ‘I don’t know’ pass your lips, I would remind you that I am all out of reasons to keep you alive.”
The werewolf guard wordlessly, and extremely quickly, unhooked a key from his belt and held it up. Reed took it and tutted to himself.
“Tch. Coward.”
“Get me out of here, quick.” I was delighted to see them, and in other circumstances would have happily spent long minutes saying hello, but time was of the essence. “And Lovely, too.”
“Love…” The guys spun on their axes to see the woman they knew as MacKenzie Molly in her cage, their mouths hanging open. It was clearly all they could do to stop themselves from kneeling to their Pack Leader’s offspring.
“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped. “Let me out. Let her out. And then we need to move.”
“Aren’t you wondering why we’re here and not on our way to Vale?” asked Talbot.
“We decided you were right,” said Reed.
“We tracked you here,” added Kessler.
Which was flattering and wonderful and something I would really have liked to take time over but, again, there was no time.
As Reed let Lovely out of her cage, I laid out the bare bones.
“Texas is planning a coup. He’s got armed men on their way into the Pack Lodge now for the People’s Assembly.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Kessler.
“You really want the whole story?”
Kessler shrugged. “I guess it’ll keep till later.”
“Come on.” Talbot led the way as we ran like hell out of the warehouse towards the Pack Lodge.
Chapter 19
Going in the front door of the Pack Lodge was out of the question. If Texas saw us coming then he could panic, and the last thing we wanted was his people firing randomly in the crowd, especially outside where there were humans who might actually end up dead.
“You’re saying we’re going to let them get inside?” asked Talbot as he led our little party to a side door.
“It’s the only way,” I assur
ed him. “He’s relying on having the element of surprise – we take that away from him and he’s got nothing.”
“But we’re risking the Pack Leader,” pointed out Reed, still the loyal lieutenant.
“They don’t have silver bullets,” I said.
But Lovely spoke up. “Texas does. The others are just there to take down the guards. He’s going to kill my father. He’s got the gun wrapped in something so they can’t sense it.”
“We can’t risk it,” said Reed, sharply.
“Marley says it’s the only way,” Talbot took charge. “I think that’s good enough for all of us, isn’t it?”
Kessler nodded without hesitation and Reed followed after a beat of thought. I saw Lovely cast me an impressed glance as she saw the three wolves fall in under my instruction.
“Marley?” Talbot left the operation in my hands.
“We need Texas to think it’s all going according to plan. Let him get into the Great Hall but try to spread word to the guards so they know what’s about to happen.”
“There may not be time for that,” said Talbot as we entered the building.
“Then it’s up to us.”
Reed turned to Lovely. “You need to stay back here, where it’s safe.”
Lovely fixed him with a look in which I suddenly saw her Pack Leader ancestry. “Like hell, I will. It’s my father who’s in danger.”
We hurried through the building as fast as we could, but by the time we arrived at the Great Hall, the Assembly was already underway.
Talbot looked to me; what now?
It was an unspoken question but it was a good one. How did we pick out Texas’s minions from all the assembled people? We didn’t want anyone to get hurt, and we needed to take down Texas himself – the one real danger to the Pack Leader – before he had a chance to pull the trigger. I thought for a second – which was really more time than we had.
“He was planning to take us by surprise. I say we turn the tables on him and make him reveal himself.”
“How?” asked Kessler.
Her Guardian Harem: Paranormal Reverse Harem Romance Page 14