Jared (River Pack Wolves 3) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (17 page)

He was back in his bed at the safehouse.

Jace and Jaxson were both in his room, along with their mother. All three of them wore faces fit for a funeral. Jared tried to struggle up to sitting, but he was crazy weak. Jace saw him first and jumped out of his chair next to the bed to push Jared back down.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Jace said. “I mean, more than you usually are. You lost a lot of blood. You need to rest.” But he looked relieved to see Jared awake.

His mother and Jaxson gathered around the bed as well, worried looks on their faces.

“I’m good,” Jared said, but he could feel the weakness in it.
Shit.
He was a mess. And Grace was still… he didn’t know. “Where’s Grace?”

They exchanged looks. Jace spoke first. “We don’t know.”

“How long have I been out?” Jared asked. It usually only took him a few hours to recover once he got stitched up.

“About ten hours,” Jaxson said quietly, frowning.

Damn,
Jared thought. He’d been out ten hours and still felt like shit? He must have been close to punching out. And for once… he was really glad that he didn’t.

“I’ll get him something to eat,” his mom said, then scurried toward the door.

Jared wanted to sit up, but Jace was still looming over him. He had that
I’m an Army Shifter Medic, don’t mess with me
look. He’d probably dose Jared with something to keep him down if he had to.

Jared managed to keep him back with a scowl. “I need to go after Grace.”

“You’re in no shape to go after anyone.” Jaxson exchanged a look with Jace, who nodded. “But if you tell us what’s going on, then we can do what needs to be done.”

Jared sucked in a breath. Some of his strength was returning, but it was still pretty bad. “Grace was going to tell the Senator she was a shifter, but before she could, Agent Smith showed up.”

Jaxson’s eyebrows flew up.
“Holy shit.”

“Those would’ve been my exact words,” Jared said with a nod, “but I was too busy trying to kill him. He shot me and dumped me at some motel, trying to get rid of me, I think, while keeping all of it away from the Senator. But all this could’ve blown back on Grace. I need to know if she got out of that room okay. Agent Smith tranqed me—I don’t know what happened to her.”

“Okay, okay,” Jace said, holding his hands up to placate Jared. “We’ll find out what we can about Grace.”

“We don’t have time to mess around.” Jared struggled to sit up again, and this time he batted away his brother’s hands as Jace tried to stop him. “You’re not going to stop me from going after her.”

Jace gave an elaborate sigh, and Jaxson just shook his head.

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re just stubborn and not doing something stupid that might result in your death.” Jaxson gave him a hard look.

Jace pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll just check in with Garrison Allied—”

“No!” Jared said, making a swipe for the phone but missing so awkwardly it was clear he was in no shape to do anything. But he had to keep his brothers from screwing things up… worse than they already were. “Garrison Allied’s already in deep shit the Senator. I was undercover, remember? He’s probably already reamed them a new one. They’re not going to help us.” He rested his head in his hands. It was throbbing, but at least it wasn’t spinning like he remembered before the surgery. “The key is Agent Smith. He’s obviously still here in Seattle, and we know he’s working with the Senator. There has to be some way to track him. And you should call the campaign office and ask for Grace. If she’s okay, she’d be going about her normal business, and that’s where she would be.”

Jaxson frowned, but he didn’t disagree. “All right, here’s the deal: you stay here, get some rest, and Jace and I will track down these leads. If you’re not resting, then we have to sit here and babysit you to make sure you heal up the rest of the way and can be worth a damn in helping us rescue her. If that’s even necessary.”

Jared couldn’t deny the weakness that was still running through his body. He wouldn’t be any good to Grace if he just collapsed while trying to rescue her. Still… it was killing him not to crawl out of the bed and go after her. With great reluctance, he gave Jaxson a small nod of agreement and leaned back against the pillows of his bed.

Jace was heading for the bedroom door, but turned back to ask, “Do you still have that facial recognition software program running?”

“Yeah. That’s good thinking.” It was a testament to how messed up he was that he hadn’t thought of it first. “If Agent Smith’s in Seattle, we should be able to line up some of those traces. And, Jace, he’s using an alias—at least in his dealings with the Senator. Name is Robert Sanders. You might get some hits on that.”

“I’m on it.” Jace disappeared out the door. Jaxson hurried after him.

Jared sunk into the softness of the pillows. He would just take a short nap, then call his brothers back up. Or go hunt them down. If Jace had done his job sewing him up, it shouldn’t take long for Jared to get back to full strength. The fact that he’d only just now woken up was a bad sign… but a little more rest should do it. His body felt like it weighed ten times normal as he let himself relax. Sleep grabbed him and threw him down a deep, dark well.

When Jared awoke this time, the sun had gone down and moonlight was already shining through his bedroom window. But when he sat up, his headache was gone and a new sense of energy flushed through his body. He tested it out by swinging his legs over the side the bed, and when they felt steady, he got up. He stretched out the aches and pains—and noticed he had several new scars—but he felt pretty good. Probably about eighty percent.

Which was plenty good enough to go after Grace.

With any luck, she would have spent the day doing campaign activities. He kind of hoped she worried about him, just a little… and that hope was a strange sensation inside his chest. Not that he really wanted her to worry. But he did. Along with the urgent desire to believe the connection between them wasn’t just in his imagination.

He quickly washed up and threw on some fresh clothes, then trotted down the stairs. Even that jostling didn’t hurt him. He was feeling better with each step.

A war room had been set up in the dining room just outside the kitchen. Jaxson, Jace, Piper, and even Olivia, along with Owen and a couple of the other pack members, were crowded around the table. Maps and printouts and tablets scrolling information crowded the surface.

“Sleeping beauty has arisen,” Jace said with a smirk.

That must mean Jared was off the medical watch list.

“Whatever you guys are doing, I’m ready to do my part.” Jared gestured to the table. “What do you have?”

“We’re just working out a plan of action,” Jaxson said. “So your timing for getting back in the game is pretty good. How do you feel?”

Jared frowned. He was standing, wasn’t he? “I’m good. Did you find Grace?”

“Well, sort of.” Jace picked up an image of an office building and held it up for Jared. “We think she’s in here.”

Piper tapped the image. “You’re never going to guess what this is.”

“Agent Smith’s day job as a middle manager?” Jared was surprised he had any sense of humor at all in him. He shut that down pretty quick and chalked it up to the heady recovery.

“Supposedly it’s the headquarters for an import-export logistics company,” Piper said with a smirk. “It’s an open secret in intelligence circles, however, that it’s the local NSA office.”

National Security Agency—the feds. “
Shit.”
Jared humor faded quickly. “Why is Grace there?”

Jaxson gathered up several more images. “We’ve been tracing Agent Smith’s pings on your facial recognition software. This morning, about the time you were at the Senator’s estate, we found several hits tracking him through cameras on street surveillance and local banks. Then he went off grid. The last image has him pulling into the parking lot of the NSA’s secret HQ. We didn’t know what it was until Piper clued us in.”

“So you know Agent Smith is there, but not Grace?” Jared frowned again. “Did you check her office?”

Jaxson nodded. “The party line at the campaign headquarters is that she’s home with the flu.”

Jared ground his teeth. “So the Senator’s got a cover story already. One that will keep her out for a while.” This was getting worse and worse.

Piper nodded and gave him a knowing look. “We know Grace was in the car with Agent Smith as he pulled into the parking lot. We’ve got seven red light camera images just before he arrived—all with a man fitting Agent Smith’s description, and a woman with long brown hair like Grace. Although she looked like she was sleeping.”

Jared momentarily squeezed his eyes shut.
Smith had her.
Jared had waited too long.

“And he’s still in there,” Jaxson added. “We’ve had surveillance on him from the moment we knew he was inside.”

Piper gave Jared a concerned look, like she was reading his thoughts. “We can’t just storm in there,” she chastised him, then glanced at Jaxson and Jace. “We’ve been debating the options, and we figure the best is falsified ID. I can get you clearance through my office. I was going to go in myself, but I can hook you up. Unless you’re not feeling up to it…”

“No. I’m doing this.” It came out harsher than he meant.

Piper just nodded, like she expected that answer. Jared narrowed his eyes at his brothers, daring them to stop him.

Jace just held up his hands. “Hey, I was voting for waiting until you woke up. No way I wanted to answer to you for having sent my mate after yours.”

His mate.
Jared’s throat closed up. Because inside, deep where his wolf lived, he already knew she was. If she would have him.

He cleared throat, and the sound carried in the silence that had suddenly dropped across the room. “Right. I’m going after my mate.”

When Grace awoke, slowly swimming out of the haze the tranquilizer, she was inside a cage.

It was the kind of cage you would put a dog in—a very large dog, but still nowhere near large enough for a human. She was lying down, but when she sat up, her head almost grazed the top of the fine steel mesh. She rubbed at the blurriness in her eyes, not quite believing she was caged like an animal. As she blinked and focused beyond the thin metal bars, she jerked with surprise.

Agent Smith sat outside her cage in a swivel chair. It was an ordinary office chair—black, cushioned—and he was slowly rotating it, back and forth.

“Nice to see you awake, Ms. Krepky.” His eyes glittered, a small smile tugging at his lips.

A shudder ran through her, but she didn’t answer, just whipped her gaze around the room to see where she was. It looked like a lab—stainless steel countertops and cabinets and a gurney at one end. The smell of steel and antiseptic tinged sour on her tongue and competed with the sickness rising at the back of her throat. Whatever this place was, her father knew about it… and sent her here. He had turned her over to Agent Smith, casting her aside like yesterday’s trash as soon as he knew she wasn’t his biological daughter.

And Jared…
God,
Agent Smith shot him
three times.
Was he dead? She knew from personal experience how fast shifters could heal, but there was a limit… even a tough Marine would have a hard time surviving being shot at point-blank range. The horror of that—of losing him, of it being her fault—ripped through her, gutting her out. Her wolf howled a mournful cry.

“If you’re thinking of screaming,” Agent Smith said, “don’t bother. We’re in a basement that I long ago outfitted with the best in noise suppression. No one comes down here, and you aren’t the first visitor I’ve had.”

Fear for herself pushed through her agony about Jared and seized hold of her chest. But she wasn’t going to let her father just dispose of her. Or let this Agent Smith person experiment on her. She was determined to find a way out, and for that she needed more information.

“What have you done with Jared?” She edged forward, up on her knees, and grasped onto the cage door. The construction was pretty flimsy. Maybe she could wrench the door off its hinges once Agent Smith left her alone.

His smile grew. “I’m sure he’s bled out by now. Although I’m kind of hoping he caught a couple extra bullets before that happened. A little more pain for one of the River brothers would make my day.”