Hungry Like the Wolf (3 page)

Hard Hat looked nervous, but he nodded. “When you say the word.”

Dixon turned his attention to the uniformed officer. “I know you were hoping we wouldn’t have to do this, but I need to get my people in there.”

The man didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. “Do whatever you have to do. Just be careful. There’re a lot of hostages in there.”

Mac wasn’t sure in a case like this who got to make the call as to when SWAT went in. But regardless, Dixon had smoothly put the lieutenant in the decision loop, making sure he didn’t step on any toes he didn’t have to. She’d used that trick herself a few times in the past to keep herself on people’s good side, even when she could have trampled all over them. He was pretty smart for a big, muscle-bound trigger puller.

Dixon threw a glance at Hard Hat. “On my mark. In three…two…one. Now.”

At the SWAT commander’s signal, Hard Hat said a single word into his radio. All at once, every screen on the wall went black. For a moment, Mac thought the SWAT vehicle had lost power. Then she heard screaming over the speakers and realized they’d cut the power to the building.

Half a second later, gunfire erupted.

Mac couldn’t see a damn thing on the monitors except the occasional bright orange flashes that reflected off the walls.

But while she couldn’t see much, she could hear plenty. Women screaming, men cussing, the thud of heavy stuff hitting the floor. And interspersed between all of it, the growls of what sounded like a pissed-off SWAT team. Man, these guys really got fired up when they went in. It sounded as if they were ready to tear the place apart. Maybe that was what Marvin had meant when he said they were on something.

Right now, she couldn’t care less about her story. She only prayed the hostages made it out of this in one piece, although she couldn’t imagine how that would be possible. Not with all that gunfire.

But as fast as the shooting had started, it stopped.

Mac stared at the pitch-black screen, straining her eyes for something—
anything
—that would tell her if the hostages were still alive.

Gage pressed his index finger to the small bud in his right ear as if listening, then he turned to Hard Hat. “Flip on the power.”

The monitors trained on the interior of the building lit up, but not the ones connected to the SWAT officers’ helmet cams.

Mac sagged with relief. The women were huddled together in the center of the room, clearly traumatized but alive. Three men were on the floor nearby. They were still moving, but it didn’t look like they’d be going anywhere. One member of the SWAT team was covering the downed bank robbers, while two others moved among the women checking for injuries. Mac didn’t see the fourth member of the SWAT team. He must be dealing with the other thugs out of the camera’s view.

“Copy that,” Gage said into his mic, then glanced at the lieutenant. “Scene secure. Five suspects down, four WIA, one KIA. No hostages seriously wounded, but a few got trampled in the panic.”

Four bad guys wounded, one dead.

The lieutenant looked as relieved as Mac felt. “I’ll get in there with some uniforms and EMTs, start getting everyone out.”

He brushed past her at a run, slamming the door of the operations vehicle behind him. A few moments later, Hard Hat and the hostage negotiator left as well, leaving her alone with the SWAT team leader.

Curious despite herself, Mac moved closer to the man so she could see the monitors better—or at least that was the excuse she was going with.

She watched in silence as police officers and EMTs rushed into the room to take custody of the bank robbers and give first aid to the hostages. Dixon’s team fell back, disappearing out of the camera’s view.

Only then did Dixon take off his headset and turn to face her. “So, Ms. Stone. Did you get what you were looking for?”

This was the first time Mac had seen Gage Dixon this close up. Saying he was gorgeous didn’t even begin to cover it. With his dark hair, chiseled jaw, and sensuous mouth, he was downright devastating. She was especially captivated by his eyes. They were the color of dark honey. Or maybe fine whiskey. Either way, it was too easy to get lost in their depths.

She gave herself a mental shake and forced herself to look away, if just to catch her breath. “What are you talking about?”

He smiled at her in a way that made her wonder if he knew how off balance he had her. That bothered her—she was used to being the one who put other people off balance.

“It’s obvious you’ve been snooping around for a story,” he said.

“When your man grabbed me, you mean?” She shrugged. “That was a complete accident. I got turned around and ended up back there.”

He chuckled. “Right. Just like it’s a complete accident that your unmarked news van has been parked outside my SWAT compound for the last two days?”

She tried not to let her surprise show, but failed miserably. Mouth twitching, he turned and switched off the monitors.

How the hell had Dixon made her so easily? She and Zak weren’t that sloppy, were they? Dixon turned off the monitors, then picked up a cloth and wiped down the whiteboard.

“Okay, you caught me,” she said. “But I only resorted to that because the department turned down my request for an interview and a ride-along.”

He stopped wiping and turned to her, his brow raised in a way that did interesting things to her tummy. Damn, the man had quite the smolder. “Most reporters would be able to infer from that answer that they should go after a different story.”

Mac knew it was crazy, but if she didn’t know better, she’d think Dixon was teasing her—if not outright flirting. Well, she could play that game, too. But while she wasn’t above using her feminine wiles to get a story, she needed to make sure she was right about him first.

She moved a little closer. If he backed up, she’d assume she read him wrong and would retreat accordingly. If he didn’t, she might be able to work him a little bit.

Dixon did neither. Instead, he took a step toward her so that they were standing even closer together. She hadn’t realized how big the SWAT officer was until that moment. He towered over her by almost a foot, and his shoulders were nearly twice as wide as she was. She decided she suddenly liked really big men.

Damn, it was going to be hard remembering this guy was the target of her next in-depth investigative article.

“I’ve never been very good at picking up subtle hints.” She gave him her best award-winning smile—the one she used on her editor when she wanted a really juicy story—and moved a fraction of an inch closer. He smelled nice. “I was simply waiting outside the compound so I could talk to you and straighten out the obvious misunderstanding the department had.”

“Of course.” He returned her smile with one of the sexiest grins she’d ever seen. “Because it must have been a mistake. After all, what cop wouldn’t want to talk to the ever-insightful Ms. Mackenzie Stone, right?”

“Exactly.”

Mac gave him a real smile this time. It was hard not to. He was one of those rare men who could be charming with a few carefully chosen words. And he seemed attracted to her—at least she was pretty sure he was.

She was just trying to figure out how to use that attraction to weasel an invite for an in-depth interview with the hunky SWAT commander when the door to the operations vehicle opened and two of his men climbed in. They hesitated for a moment when they saw her, as if surprised to find their superior alone with a woman in the back of the operations vehicle. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t as if they could know she was a journalist looking for a story.

One of the men was Senior Corporal Michael Taylor—the man who’d saved her life before. The other wasn’t one of the three she’d ID’d earlier, but she recognized him from the files anyway—Senior Corporal Xander Riggs. He must have been the one who’d slipped into the building before she and Zak got there.

Dixon took a step back, putting some space between them as Taylor closed the door behind him and Riggs.

“This is Mackenzie Stone from the
Dallas
Daily
Star
. Ms. Stone, meet Mike Taylor and Xander Riggs, two of my senior team members.”

Being surrounded by three guys so big and muscular in a confined space like the operations vehicle should have made her feel claustrophobic, but that definitely wasn’t how Mac felt right then. She had to make a serious effort to keep her mind in gear as she shook their hands.

She had a hundred questions about the operation she’d just witnessed, but there was one thing she needed to get straight first. “Sergeant Dixon said that one of the bank robbers was KIA. That means he was killed in action, right?”

Riggs glanced at his boss, his dark eyes questioning. Dixon nodded, signaling it was okay to talk to her. “Yes, one of the suspects was shot and killed by a member of the team. He left us no choice. When the power went out, he grabbed a hostage. We ordered him to drop his weapon, but he pointed it at the woman’s head and was about to pull the trigger. A disabling shot wasn’t an option because he was behind the woman.”

Mac noticed Riggs didn’t say which member of the team had shot the suspect, but based on the level of detail he provided and the way the muscle in his jaw flexed, she guessed it was him.

“That must have been a pretty tough shot, considering how crazy it was in there,” she said. “And in the pitch black, too.”

Xander’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. She thought he would have taken it as a compliment, but instead he looked uncomfortable. Why did men find it necessary to downplay every heroic thing they did?

“We have excellent night vision goggles,” Taylor said. “They help.”

“Of course.” She smiled at him. “By the way, thanks for helping me out back in that alley. It’s possible I might have been in a bit of trouble.”

Taylor’s mouth curved. When he smiled, he seemed a lot less intimidating. “Something tells me you find yourself in trouble like that frequently.”

Mac shrugged. “Every now and then,” she said before turning back to Riggs. “I didn’t see you enter the building with the rest of the team. Did you go in before I got here?”

Riggs threw Dixon a sharp look. Instead of giving the corporal the okay, he answered her question this time.

“We dropped Corporal Riggs off a few blocks out from the scene. He hoofed it in over the rooftops while we were getting into position outside. He went in and set up the remote cameras and microphones while everyone inside was focused on us and the other police officers.”

Riggs and Taylor stared at their commander, clearly shocked by how open he’d been about their tactics to a member of the media. Mac was stunned, too. She’d been fishing when she’d asked the question. She hadn’t expected them to actually answer her.

Dixon chuckled. “You don’t have to look so alarmed. It’s not like I shared state secrets. Besides, Ms. Stone will be coming by the compound later today to take a look around and see how we operate.”

Mac did a double take. “Seriously?”

His amber eyes met hers. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? An in-depth look at a day in the life of a SWAT officer?”

She was more interested in finding out if they were hiding something, but she didn’t tell him that.

“I figured if I didn’t make the offer, you’d only hang around outside the compound for months until I agreed to let you in. Or until you tried to sneak into the middle of the next hostage situation,” he said. “This way we can do our job without worrying about you popping up out of nowhere, and you get to do yours without risking your life.” She opened her mouth to thank him, but he held up a finger. “There’s one condition, though.”

“Name it.”

“You agree not to detail any of our tactical procedures or techniques like the one I just told you about. You print those and you’ll get my team killed.” He lifted a brow. “Do we have an agreement?”

Mac nodded eagerly. “Yes.”

She’d agree to whatever he wanted if it got her in the compound—even if it meant going back on her word later. Although, after today, she wasn’t sure there was a story. She seriously doubted these guys were doing drugs, regardless of what Marvin said. But that didn’t matter. No way was she passing up an opportunity like this.

“I’ll see you at the compound this afternoon then,” Dixon said as he opened the door for her. “Say three o’clock?”

She smiled up at him. “I’ll be there.”

Mac had to resist the urge to do a little happy dance as she hurried back to the news van. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but somehow she’d gotten herself an engraved invitation to get up close and personal with the country’s most elite tactical unit—the Dallas PD SWAT.

Zak was flipping through digital pictures on his laptop when she climbed in the news van. He took a lot of shots of the on-scene lieutenant and the uniformed cops running into the building, then coming out with the hostages and the handcuffed bank robbers. He even had some pictures of the SWAT team coming out. But he wouldn’t send those in. Her boss considered it bad policy to print pictures of cops if it tied them to specific crime scenes. He thought it might lead to retribution against them. Mac wasn’t sure if she always agreed with that, but she abided by it.

He glanced at her, his eyes full of amusement behind his wire-rimmed glasses. “I thought I was going to have to bail you out of jail.”

She made a face at him. “Very funny. I’ll have you know I got an invitation to visit the SWAT compound this afternoon.”

His eyes went wide. “Seriously? You think that invite includes me?”

She considered that. Dixon hadn’t specifically said to come alone, but she didn’t want to press her luck by bringing her photographer. Especially since the SWAT commander wasn’t crazy about cameras. “Probably not right away. Let me work my magic on Dixon first.”

Zak looked bummed at that, but nodded as he went back to surfing through his photos. “So, did you enjoy being carried to the operations vehicle like a sack of potatoes?”

Mac’s face heated at the memory. Damn, she should have known Zak wouldn’t have missed that. She gave him her best I’m-offended-by-that-comment look. “I was not carried like a sack of potatoes. Officer Danner simply escorted me to the operations vehicle to meet with the commander of the SWAT team.”

Zak snorted and spun his laptop around so she could see the screen. There was a picture of Officer Danner running across the street with her in his arms, his hand over her mouth. Her color deepened. He kind of was carrying her like a sack of potatoes. God, that looked bad.

“Maybe you could keep that one off the shared drive?” she asked Zak.

He laughed. “Sure thing. But it’s definitely going on the
Best
of
Mac
Stone
disk.”

Mac stuck her tongue out at him. Zak loved reminding her he had visual evidence of all of her most embarrassing moments—and that she shouldn’t forget it.

He was still flipping through photos when something caught her attention. “Stop. Go back a couple pics.”

Zak didn’t ask why, but just scrolled back a half dozen pictures.

“Stop,” she said. “Go slow from there.”

He clicked one picture at a time, giving her a chance to look at each of them before moving to the next. She studied each SWAT officer’s photo as it filled the screen. Zak had captured them coming out of the brick building. They had their ski masks pulled up, and under their helmets, each man’s handsome face was covered with a light sheen of glistening sweat.

Zak moved from the SWAT guys to random pictures of hostages, EMTs, and bank robbers. When he got to the end, she had him back up and scroll through the same pictures again.

Mac leaned closer, focusing on the photos of Martinez, Delaney, Taylor, and Riggs. She didn’t know what it was, but something was gnawing at her.

Then she had it.

“These were taken the moment the SWAT team first came out of the building, right?”

“Yeah. I was focused on those doors from the moment the cops and EMTs ran in until you came out of the truck. That’s where all the action was.” He frowned at her. “What’s up?”

Mac studied the pictures one more time, just to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. But she hadn’t. None of the men were holding anything other than their weapons. And none of their tactical vests had pouches that could hold what she was looking for.

Zak looked from her to the photo of the four highly trained officers coming out of the warehouse, then back to her. “What is it?”

“They shut down the power to the building before they went in. It was pitch-black in there. I saw it on the monitors in the truck. But the SWAT guys aren’t carrying any night vision goggles.”

Zak glanced at the picture again. “Maybe they left them in the warehouse?”

She shook her head. “No way. Those things cost a fortune.”

“So, what are you saying? That these guys can see in the dark?”

Mac didn’t answer. Thinking the SWAT officers could see in the dark without the aid of night vision goggles would make her sound crazy, especially since she hadn’t told Zak about the drug angle yet. But what if Marvin was right and the SWAT guys were using a performance-enhancing drug that let them see better in the dark? Crap, that was even more outlandish than a drug that made them crazy strong.

She was busy examining the photos for the missing night vision goggles when something else caught her attention.

She pointed at Diego Martinez’s right hand. “What does that look like to you?”

Zak leaned close to the computer screen. “What the hell?” He fiddled with the keyboard, zooming in on Martinez’s hand. “It looks like blood.”

“That’s what I thought.” She turned to look out the window at the big operations vehicle just in time to see Martinez and Delaney climbing into the cab. Was Martinez holding his arm a little funny?

“Did we just see an injured police officer drive off when there are half a dozen EMTs who could have looked at him?” Zak asked.

“I think we did.”

“Why the hell would they do that?”

“I don’t know…yet.”

But she was damn sure going to find out. She had a sneaking suspicion it was because Martinez was worried about whatever drug he was on showing up in his blood. If she was right, then there really was a story here.

***

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“I’m sure,” Gage said. “Martinez was barely scratched by that bullet. He can get patched up at the compound.”

Xander swore. “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”

Gage waited until the news van drove away before he turned to his senior squad leader. He knew Xander wasn’t worried about the minor graze wound Martinez had sustained during the entry. It was almost closed up already and would barely leave a scar if they took care of it right. But Xander definitely wasn’t too thrilled at the idea of having a reporter—a woman reporter at that—sticking her nose in their business. Gage hadn’t expected him to be. Xander didn’t like outsiders in general, and female outsiders in particular. In his opinion, both were bad for the Pack. And if something was bad for the Pack, Xander was never shy about letting him know it.

Gage glanced at his other squad leader. “What do you think, Mike?”

The big man shrugged. “I gotta agree with Xander on this one, Gage. You know Mackenzie Stone has a reputation for digging pretty hard to get the story she’s after, right?”

Gage went out of his way to let his two assistant squad leaders have a say in how the team did things. But when you lead a group of alphas the way he did, it wasn’t possible for everyone to agree on everything all the time. And that’s when he had to pull rank.

“I know all about her reputation,” he said. “She isn’t looking to write a fluff piece on how we do our job. If she’s sniffing, it’s because she thinks there’s a story here. And if she thinks that, she isn’t going to stop looking just because we make it hard on her. If anything, that will only make her dig deeper.”

“So what, we just make it easy for her?” Xander demanded.

“No, we don’t make it easy,” Gage said. “We bring her in and control the flow of information she receives. We show her what we want her to see, when we want her to see it. We make sure she gets the message—and only the message—we want her to get.”

Mike raised his brows. “You honestly think that’ll work? She doesn’t come across as the kind of person you can mislead easily.”

“I’d rather have her where I can keep an eye on her instead of constantly worrying about where she’s going to show up and what she’ll find on her own.”

Mike regarded him thoughtfully. “You sure this is just about keeping an eye on a possible threat?”

Gage pinned him with a hard look. “Meaning?”

Mike didn’t back down. “Meaning, I couldn’t help but notice how nice the inside of the operations truck smelled when we walked in. In fact, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say Ms. Stone has a scent our kind might find irresistible. Sure that doesn’t have something to do with your sudden interest in her?”

Gage did his best to keep his face unreadable and his heartbeat steady, but it was damn tough. Mostly because Mike was right. Gage
had
noticed how good Mackenzie Stone smelled. Her scent was so intoxicating, he’d almost groaned out loud when she stepped into the operations vehicle. It wasn’t some expensive perfume she’d been wearing, either. Just good old-fashioned, feminine pheromones. Luckily, he wasn’t ruled by his nose—or other parts of his anatomy—when it came to making decisions. Especially decisions about the Pack.

He knew the threat Mackenzie Stone presented. He’d been on guard from the moment he’d spotted her at the compound in her undercover news van two days ago. Hell, he’d been on alert ever since the public relations department told him she wanted to do a story on SWAT. He’d turned down her request for an in-depth interview and ride-along, hoping she’d take the hint. He should have known better. After the stunt she pulled today, he figured the only way to get rid of her was to give her the interview she wanted.

“I make decisions about pack affairs with the head above my shoulders, not the one below my belt,” he said to Mike. “If I think it’s a good idea we keep Ms. Stone close, it’s because it’s best for the Pack, not because she smells good.”

Mike shrugged. “Just checking. If you’re not interested in her that way, maybe I’ll look at her Facebook page—see if she’s available.”

Mike might have sounded casual, but he was still testing him. He wanted to know if Mackenzie’s pheromones were making Gage think with his dick instead of his head.

“You could do that,” Gage said. “But I wouldn’t if I were you.”

Mike tensed, as if bracing for a fight. Beside him, Xander did the same.

“Why’s that?” Mike asked.

“Because I don’t think she’s that into you,” Gage told him. “I mean, you’re not very attractive and you sweat…a lot. Women find that gross.”

Mike stared at him, speechless for once.

Xander laughed and slapped Mike on the shoulder. “Dude, I’ve told you that sweating thing was going to ruin your love life. Now even the boss man has noticed. You need to get that looked at.”

Mike scowled at him, his brows drawing together to make his already chiseled features look extra fierce. “I don’t have a sweating problem, you jackass. I’m wearing thirty-five pounds of Kevlar on a hot Texas day. Of course I’m going to sweat.”

“I’m not sweating,” Xander pointed out.

“That’s because you haven’t hit puberty yet,” Mike retorted. “But just wait, in another year or two, it will happen—I promise.”

Gage chuckled as his squad leaders unloaded their weapons and put away their gear. Another tense situation defused—and he didn’t mean the one with the hostages. Keeping his pack of alpha werewolves under control was just as much a part of his job as figuring out when to green-light an operation or determining the best way to enter a building full of armed thugs. In some ways it was the toughest part of the job. Because nobody wanted to have a bunch of out-of-control SWAT types running around town, especially when they also happened to be werewolves.

Yeah, they were a pain in the ass sometimes. But at the end of the day, they were his pack and he wouldn’t want it any other way.

***

“What the hell’s going on, Vince?” Gage asked as the Internal Affairs officer ran down the same list of questions for the third time.

After dropping Mike off at the compound, he and Xander had come to police headquarters for what was supposed to be a quick debriefing on what had obviously been a clean shooting. But they had already been here for almost two hours.

The gray-haired man looked at him over the top of his glasses. “Just being thorough, Gage.”

That was a crock of shit. It was standard procedure in an officer-involved shooting to talk to both the cop who’d done the shooting and his supervisor on the scene, but if this was just about being thorough, Internal Affairs wouldn’t have put him and Xander in separate rooms for questioning.

“You already have a statement from the woman Xander saved,” Gage pointed out. “She corroborated what he said—that the gunman was in the process of pulling the trigger on her. According to the other hostages in the E-Brand building and the employees at the bank they robbed, the guy had been coked up to all hell. Even his own crew admitted he hadn’t been in control. How much more thorough do you need to be?”

“Just work with me on this, okay?” Vince sighed. “Trust me. We have our reasons.”

Trust
and
Internal
Affairs
normally didn’t go together, but it wasn’t as if Gage had much of a choice. Unless he wanted to call in a union rep and really make a mess of this situation. Which he didn’t.

So, Gage leaned back in his chair and answered Vince Coletti’s questions again. God, he hoped Xander was keeping his cool in the other room. His senior squad leader was smart and had been in these shooting reviews before, so he knew what to say—and more importantly, what not to say. If the questioning seemed like it was heading in a bad direction, he was savvy enough to ask for his union rep. But Xander also had a short fuse sometimes. If IA got in his face, he might tell them to pound sand.

“Okay, I think we’re good,” Vince said after the fourth rehash of his story. “We’re going to need to talk to Corporal Riggs for a little while longer, though.”

Gage stared at the man. “Seriously?”

Vince gave him what was probably supposed to be a placating smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll have patrol give him a ride out to the compound.”

Which was IA’s way of saying he didn’t want Gage hanging around because it was going to take a hell of a lot longer than a little while. But getting into it with Coletti wasn’t going to help. While he might be more than ready to rip someone in half right now, Gage reined in his inner wolf. He jerked open the door and stormed out of the interrogation room, almost running over his boss, Deputy Chief Hal Mason. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Hal had been waiting for him.