Pack Dynamics (5 page)

“Pretty sure it’s Ostheim,” her boss said. “We have to check some more, make sure the evidence is solid before we run with it.”

“You’re not going after them yourselves, are you?” Her gut roiled at the thought, and her fingers curved into claws as the wolf decided she didn’t like the thought too much either. She jammed her hands behind her back.

Alex, keeping his eyes on the computer screen, made a noncommittal noise. She knew that noise; it was the one that meant he was thinking about it but didn’t want to upset her.

“At least tell me
before
you do it,” she said. “I don’t need what I think is a quiet evening interrupted by another phone call like I got tonight. Please. Alex.”

His head came up at her use of his first name in front of other people, and he scanned her face with a little frown. She hoped her eyes were still the right color. “All right, Megan,” he said slowly. “I’ll at least do that much.”

And that might give her a chance to talk him out of it. “That’s all I ask. I think I’m going to nap on the couch for an hour or so. Yell if you need anything.”

He tilted his head. “You okay?”

“Sure.” She tried for a bland expression, wasn’t sure if she achieved it. “Just tired. I think I’m allowed.”

One side of his mouth quirked. “Don’t make a habit of it, Miss Graham.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Jarrett,” she said, and made her escape from the room.

She didn’t like lying to Alex, but if she didn’t get out of the house, with its overpowering scents and emotions, she’d wolf out in front of him and everyone else, and that was on her list of “things to do never.”

Alex’s house sat on fifty acres of land bordering the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and they often heard coyotes howling up there during late work-nights. She figured it was remote enough that no one would see her or bother her. She went outside, found a dry spot under a bush to drop her clothes, and stripped. The wolf was eager, trying to shift before Megan was ready, but she made it wait a few extra seconds before dropping to a crouch and letting the Change take her. Bones lengthened, organs moved around, fur sprouted. The process was stretchy and weird, but not actively painful unless she tried to stop it during a full moon, which she counted as a small favor.

The wolf leaped away through the sage and the rain. Her senses, already preternaturally acute, sharpened even more. Rain still slashed down in torrents, but she didn’t mind. She ranged across Alex’s property, knowing the boundaries better than he did, marking it, checking to make sure everything was as it should be.

It wasn’t.

She stopped, nose questing, crouching down behind a clump of brush that had trouble hiding a wolf the size of a pony. There, a stranger up on the hill. Watching the house. Her hackles rose—she knew everyone in Alex’s security force, and this person didn’t belong. The man hadn’t seen her, though, and she slunk closer, teeth bared.

Scent of gunpowder and steel. Rifle. Not silver, because she’d both smell and sense that, so no danger to her. She could kill him here and now, no one would know, in a remote enough area of the property that his body might never be found …

The human part of her recoiled.
No. No killing. We don’t do that
. Megan had never killed anyone in her life and wasn’t about to start.

The wolf whined softly and rubbed her muzzle with a paw.
Danger
.

Not the way
. The human was beginning to wonder if she was going to have to take control back, and the wolf subsided with ill grace.

She needed to get back and let Alex know. However, human and wolf made a joint decision to sweep the rest of the property first, just to make sure no one else had invaded.

O O O

Alex ensconced himself in the yellow bedroom’s easy chair, his stocking feet propped on the side table. Ben sat against the headboard of the bed with Janni sleeping curled beside him.

“Ha,” Ben said, poking a finger at his screen.

Alex looked up. “Got something?”

“They’re not covering their tracks as well as they ought to.” He sent it over to Alex’s computer.

Alex lifted his eyebrows; this email had come into his company server from someone on the outside, into a dummy inbox. “Interesting. How far can you track this through anonymizers? Can you tell who received it?”

“It’ll take me awhile.” Ben tapped furiously on the keys.

“Question is,” Alex said, “what can we do with the info once we have it?”

“They weren’t shy about hurting any of us.” Ben shoved his glasses up his nose. “I vote we return the favor. Maybe I’m not active military anymore, but I haven’t forgotten how.”

“What was the whole point of them taking you, anyway?” Alex still couldn’t wrap his brain around it.

“‘You people had better back off,’” Ben quoted, trembling a little with either anger or reaction—Alex couldn’t tell which—and rubbing at the healing marks around his wrists. “‘Or your girlfriend is next.’” His fingers tightened around Janni’s shoulder, and his lips tightened into a white line. Alex could see the visible effort he was making to keep himself together, and wondered a little at it.

“Bastards,” Alex said.

Ben clicked a link with a little more emphasis than he needed. “Yeah, well, they caught me unaware. It won’t happen again. They have no idea.” He frowned. “Wait …” Then tilted his head. “Okay, this is weird.”

Alex craned his neck. “What’ve you got?”

“An internal memo about lupus. Except Janni’s aunt has that, and this doesn’t scan. And there’s something about … bats?”

“Send it over,” Alex said.

A few clicks, and he was reading it. “Oh. Um.” He wasn’t sure how much he should say about this to someone who wasn’t an industry insider. Lycanthropy and vampirism weren’t something anyone talked about much, and it was usually hidden in code references like this. An idea nibbled at the back of his brain …

And was interrupted by Megan bursting into the room before it could come to fruition. Her hair was wet and so were her clothes.

“What the—?” Alex started. His feet hit the floor as he sat straight up.

“There’s a man with a rifle up on the hill. Not one of your security guys.”

“You went out in the thunderstorm? Megan!” Not that it was about the storm, it was about her safety, he was supposed to keep her safe, what the hell had she been thinking, and wasn’t she going to take a nap?

“I can’t believe you didn’t have someone do a perimeter sweep. Preferably with a helicopter and a great big spotlight.” Her hands fisted on her hips.

“I wouldn’t send a chopper out in this weather. I wouldn’t send you out in this weather either. What the hell, Megan?” He nearly hyperventilated, which was a bad idea, considering the fact that his lung still wasn’t quite right. The blood sang in his ears, and he missed the first part of her next sentence.

“ … to take a walk. I like the rain. And apparently it’s a good thing I did.”

He stared at her in disbelief. “Did it not occur to you that a man on the hill with a rifle could, I don’t know, shoot you?”

“It didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t have people looking for a man on the hill with a rifle after what happened tonight! I stayed hidden, and he didn’t see me.” She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you think we should do something about him?”

“Well, yes, obviously.” He picked up the phone on the table beside the bed, dialed his Chief of Security Jeremy Hasgrave, and spoke a few words. “Should be taken care of.”

“You’re welcome,” she said.

“Megan …” Alex closed his eyes and brought his emotions under control, reminding himself to breathe evenly because passing out in front of people who worked for him was embarrassing. “Please don’t do that again. If anything happened to you—” He swallowed. “It would be terrible. Very terrible. Okay?”

She crossed her arms and gave him her patented you’re-such-an-idiot look, which he was used to. It didn’t faze him. “Please, Megan?”

She sighed. “Yes, Mr. Jarrett. Do you need anything else?”

Yep, he’d pissed her off. Excuse him for being worried about her. “No, Miss Graham.”

She spun on her heels and stalked out.

“That went well,” Ben commented. He had wisely stayed out of the conversation, keeping his eyes glued to the laptop in front of him while they had their discussion. “How long have you been in love with her?”

“What?” Alex was rarely at a loss for words, but he sputtered for a few moments. “She’s my personal assistant. Falling in love with her would be incredibly inappropriate, not to mention incredibly stupid on my part. If I fell in love with Megan, she’d leave. And then who’d tie my tie and remind me incessantly about appointments I have no intention of keeping?”

“Because you’re always so worried about what’s appropriate.” Ben snorted out a laugh. “Alex, you made a pass at
Pam
when you hired us, and she’s got twenty years and thirty pounds on you. You’re telling me you never tried anything with Megan?”

“Once.” Now it was his turn to glue his eyes to his computer screen. “She shot me down so fast and so completely I’ve never quite recovered.”

“Yeah, you ‘never quite recovered’ enough to be hitting on my girlfriend at a party,” Ben said with a grin. “Everyone knows your reputation, Alex.”

“Janni never said she was taken. But we didn’t really have time to get to the whole ‘do you have a significant other’ conversation before she got that phone call.” Alex eyed Janni’s sleeping form. “Was she serious about hiding in the bathroom? Is that what I do to women these days?”

“Maybe,” Ben said. His tone said “definitely,” and his mouth curled up at one corner.

“I don’t believe this. My own employees are ganging up on me.”

“I’m an independent contractor, not an employee,” Ben said smugly. “Good grief, I can’t imagine working for you …”

“Hey! I take very good care of my employees.”

Ben laughed. “Oh, I know. I just like twitting you.”

“Well, stop it. My fragile ego can’t take much more.” Alex’s phone rang, and he looked at the number displayed on the screen and picked it up. “Yeah, Jeremy?”

“I’ve got a guy in custody. He was armed with an H&K PSG-1 sniper rifle and sitting on the hill overlooking the rear garage, about five hundred yards out. What do you want me to do with him?”

“Tie him to a chair in the kitchen by the scary knives. You know how.” Alex bared his teeth in an expression that wasn’t a smile. “We’ll be down directly.”

He stretched, and his lung sent a stab of pain through him, reminding him not to do that. He turned back to Ben. “Want a look at one of them?”

“Damn right I do,” Ben said.

Chapter Four

Ben’s breathing and heartbeat accelerated as soon as he saw the man Jeremy had zip-tied to the chair, Megan noticed. She watched the hacker out of the corner of her eye.

“Ben?” Janni said, putting a hand gently on his arm. “Are you okay?”

“Other than the fact that this is the guy who used a cattle prod on me, and then ducked my head into a bucket of freezing water when I wouldn’t tell him anything? Yeah, I’m fine, honey.” Ben swallowed, and Megan smelled sweat and adrenaline as he made an effort to keep his fight-or-flight reflexes in check.

He put the island of Alex’s gourmet kitchen between himself and their prisoner and eyed the sniper rifle on the counter between the fridge and the double oven. “‘Unseemly glee,’ I think the term is.” A light tremor shook his entire body, and that tic she’d spotted where he rubbed the scars on his wrists was back.

“Is that so?” Janni said—and launched herself at the guy, nails foremost.

Jeremy caught her in midair and swung her around, setting her down next to Ben behind the island. “Whoa, Miss Miller,” he said. “That won’t get us anywhere.”

“It’ll make
me
feel better,” she snarled, panting between her teeth.

“Claws in, Hermia,” Ben said. He stroked her hair, but she didn’t act like she wanted to be soothed much, and the tension radiating off him in almost visible waves probably wasn’t helping matters. Janni yanked a stool around and sat down, sulking, with her arms crossed, and Ben snuggled his face into her hair.

Megan parked Alex’s chair beside Jeremy and stood next to them in front of the island, brow lowered, presenting a united front. “Well?” she said.

“I’m not telling you anything, so you can just call the police now and get it over with,” the man said.

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re calling the cops,” Alex said. “How much of you is left when they come and get you—”

The man scoffed. “Like you pansy-asses would do anything to me.”

“Give me five minutes with him, boss,” Jeremy said, balancing a knifepoint on the palm of his hand. “I’ll make him sing.”

“Give me two,” Janni countered.

Megan bet she could get him to tell them anything they wanted after thirty seconds, but that would involve showing him the wolf, so she stayed silent. For now.

“Why don’t we start with what you’re doing on my property with a sniper rifle?” Alex said, gesturing to where it lay on the back granite counter. “It’s a nice gun, by the way. You’re not getting it back.”

Megan thought the guy looked awfully confident for someone tied to a chair surrounded by people who would cheerfully cut his balls off. “Your security is for shit, man,” he said. “How is it I was even able to get on your property?”

“It’s a big place and it backs up to a National Recreation Area.” Alex shrugged. “You’d have had a lot harder time getting in the house.”

“Try me.”

That was a piece of bravado that Megan wasn’t ready to let him get away with. He hadn’t been in the house; she’d have smelled it if he had. Alex had no idea about the extra layer of security her nose afforded him—or that she could smell that the rifle had been recently fired, and could guess when and where. She managed to keep her wolf from actually emerging, but her rage had to come out somehow. Whirling, she lashed out with a foot to the intruder’s chest, knocking him over, chair and all. Alex and Jeremy both looked shocked before grins tugged at their mouths.

Sharpening vision meant her eyes had gone amber. She leaned over the guy, who inhaled with dawning comprehension when she bared her (thankfully still-human) teeth. “Just because you can breach the perimeter of a fifty-acre piece of land doesn’t mean you can get into the actual house,” she said, inwardly cursing herself for nearly letting the wolf out in a moment of weakness. She shoved herself upright and leaned against the island again, glaring, eyes back to blue.

“How well is the industrial espionage business paying these days?” Alex asked, eyeing Megan with surprised admiration. “Because whatever it is, it’s not enough for the world of hurt you’re in.”

Jeremy immediately pulled the intruder and his chair back upright, smiling at Megan. “I guess that self-defense training we’ve been doing together paid off, huh?” he noted.

“Are you going to start the torture anytime soon? Because right now it just looks like you’re going to talk me to death,” the man said, smirking, his eyes locked on Megan’s.

“Ah, screw it, he’s right,” Alex said to the room at large. “I guess we’ll just call his werewolf boss and let him know how sloppy he was, letting himself get caught like this.”

The man’s swagger slipped, just a little, and Megan thought they might have him. “You don’t know who I work for,” he said.

“You’re wearing a shirt with an Ostheim Industries logo, man. We know exactly who you work for.” Alex shook his head with a bemused smile, and Megan knew that smile. It was the one he used when he knew he had someone right where he wanted them. “I’m making a phone call. Jeremy, keep our guest entertained. Maybe you can find an old cattle prod lying around.” He waved his hand. “Miss Graham, if you wouldn’t mind taking me into the other room …”

She took charge of the wheelchair, pushing him into the library, which was floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with books on all kinds of esoteric subjects, most of which she knew he’d actually read. “What are we really going to do with him?” she asked as she set him up in front of one of the comfortable chairs and sank into it, pinching her nose.

“I’m tending toward calling the cops and having him charged with assault on Ben, myself.” He rubbed his beard, and his eyelids drooped. “I’m not real big on torturing people, no matter how much they deserve it. Might be nice if he told us for sure who he works for, but I don’t think he would.”

If Alex was big on torturing people, Megan would have quit long ago. “Well, then. Call the cops.”

“Yeah.” He didn’t make a move toward the phone.

She frowned. “Alex?”

“I’m fine.” He flicked his fingers, slouching, eyes closed. “Could you…?”

“Of course.” She realized that he wasn’t just tired; he was worn out. “As long as you promise to go to bed after they leave. Or maybe—now. Now would be good. You’re still recovering from being shot in the
lung
, Alex.”

“Yeah.” The fact that he didn’t argue with her, at all, made her knit her brow with worry. She resisted the urge to put a hand on his forehead. The wolf wanted to lick his face and nuzzle his chin. “Do I need to wake Doc Allen?”

“No … nothing like that. Just call Reed at a reasonable hour, okay?”

“Okay. Are you sure—” She stopped when he opened his eyes and lifted a sardonic brow, along with the corner of his mouth on the same side. This was the Alex she knew and alternately loved (in a completely platonic manner, of course) and loathed, and she relaxed. She hadn’t even realized she’d been holding her breath.

“I’m sure.”

O O O

The effort of reassuring Megan that he really was all right had nearly finished him. Alex had been told, many times by many people, that he had a tendency to overdo, and for once he believed it. Not that he would change his behavior in any way whatsoever, but his own limitations were something he was always pushing, and it helped to know what they were.

He sat there while Megan called the police, watching through slitted eyes. When she was done she grabbed the handles of the chair and started wheeling him toward the elevator rather than back to the kitchen.

“Hey, the cops will want me to sign stuff—”

“Bed, now,” she said firmly. “You can sign it when you’ve rested.”

She put him in the elevator, turned the chair to face the door, and stood in front of him, arms crossed, as it began its ascent. “If you think I’m going to stand here and watch while you run yourself into an early grave, you’re sadly mistaken.”

“Why, Miss Graham. I didn’t know you cared.” He slouched down again with a somewhat predatory smile, lacing his fingers over his stomach. “But if I knew that all it would take to get you to tuck me in was getting shot in the back, I’d have done it sooner.”

She choked. “When you get better, I am so going to kill you. Slowly.”

He closed his eyes and let out a breath. “After watching what you did to our intruder, I’m actually a little afraid you might.”

The elevator stopped and the door opened, and she wheeled him out with a little more force than she needed to, and stopped with a jerk next to his bed.

Alex opened his eyes in time to see her yank the covers back, her eyes smoldering. Had they changed color? He was too tired to tell. He tried to lever himself out of the chair, failed, and she was there, helping him onto the mattress, pulling the blanket over his shoulders, tending him like she always did.

“Take a memo, Miss Graham.” His voice slurred. “Note to self: Give Megan a raise. I don’t pay her enough for this shit.”

Right before he dropped off, he thought he felt her hand on his cheek and heard her say, “You idiot.”

O O O

Megan’s legs were too tired to hold her up anymore, and she sank into the wheelchair, watching Alex sleep. She wanted nothing more than to fall into bed herself, but …

She sighed and rubbed her forehead. She was doing that a lot tonight. Bed would have to wait until she’d squared their unwanted guest away with the police. Then she’d have to see if Ben and Janni needed anything else. By the time that was all done, the hour might be reasonable enough to give Mike Reed a call. Not to mention the fact that she hadn’t gone through Alex’s schedule for the day and cancelled all his appointments yet.

Well. Her tasks wouldn’t complete themselves. She pushed herself out of the chair, checked Alex’s breathing one last time, and went to find her phone before joining the others in the kitchen. “Police are on their way,” she told them.

Someone had given Ben a stool. He was nearly asleep at the counter.

Janni watched him, her brow creased with worry. “Should he be this tired? I thought the nanotech was just supposed to make him heal faster, not knock him on his ass.”

Megan nodded. “It uses the body’s own resources to do it, so it takes a lot out of you. Alex crashed and burned a few minutes ago.”

The bad guy in the chair tested his bonds, but Jeremy knew his business, and he wasn’t getting loose until they wanted him to. “You called the cops on me?”

“Well, yes.” Megan looked at him like he was stupid. Which he was. “What else would we do? We’re not, well, you. And there they are now,” she said unnecessarily, as someone knocked on the door.

She checked through the peephole just to make sure it was really the police. She was reassured by their appearance—a dark-haired man and a blond woman in a ponytail, wearing familiar uniforms, standing on the porch.

Opening the door, she gestured for them to come in. “Right this way, officers.” She led them into the kitchen.

Ben took one look at them and his sleepiness disappeared like a switch had been thrown. The barstool clanged into the dishwasher as he swore and shoved himself up off it, backing into the corner the kitchen counter made between the stove and the sink and pushing Janni behind him, all in one motion. The sharp scent of his panic filled the room, and Megan’s hackles rose before she could stop them.

“Ben?” Megan asked carefully.

“Not cops,” he said, panting, eyes wide and terrified behind his glasses. Shit.

That was enough to have Jeremy drawing his sidearm, and Megan found a gun pointing straight at her own head, wielded by the male “cop.”

“Drop it,” he said to Jeremy, not realizing his danger came from the woman he had his weapon aimed at.

Megan fought back the wolf, barely getting control before fangs erupted, displaying an outward calm she didn’t feel. “Jeremy, I’m thinking our security is completely and totally screwed,” she said.

“I’ll be looking into that forthwith, Miss Graham,” he answered, placing his gun on the counter and raising his hands. “What’s your play?” he asked the fake cops.

“Where’s Jarrett?” the woman asked, waving her gun.

“Oh, we’re
not
telling you that,” Megan said. She was fully prepared to show everyone the damn wolf if it would prevent these people from grabbing Alex. “Take your man and get out. Seriously, you have no idea.”

“Big words, little girl,” the sniper said.

“You’re outnumbered and we have more to lose than you,” she said, trying to be reasonable. “Take what you can get and go.”

Her fingers found the panic button under the counter, which would summon the real police, and she noted to herself that Jeremy hadn’t actually put his gun out of his reach. She exchanged a glance with him and nodded her chin a bare fraction. Not that he needed her permission, but she was sure he’d like to know that she’d back any move he made.

“That one’s hurt, and none of you are armed.” The woman cut the sniper’s bonds, freeing him to stand up, rubbing his wrists and looking smug. “I think we’ve got a pretty good hand here. So where’s Jarrett?”

O O O

No one had noticed that Ben had jammed himself against the counter where they’d put the sniper rifle. The threat “Your girlfriend’s next” kept looping through his frazzled memory.

Over his dead body. He pushed Janni to the floor, and his hand closed with robotic precision over the stock of the rifle, bringing it around, steadying it with his other hand, his index finger finding and disengaging the safety and wrapping around the trigger, on complete autopilot. He couldn’t miss at this distance, they were less than eight feet away …

“Don’t—” Center of mass. One shot, one man down. Shockingly loud in the enclosed space. Swearing, shouting, Megan and Jeremy diving out of the way. He shifted aim to the woman and hesitated a second, because he had a thing about not hurting women, hard-wired into him by insurgents who’d hurt a woman in front of him and laughed while they did it. But her 9mm spat fire, and Ben’s gun was bigger, his Ranger training even more ingrained.

Something punched him in the chest as he pulled the trigger again. Two shots, two down. Third enemy retreating, backing away, hands up. Hands that had held a cattle prod, mouth that had threatened Janni begging him to stop, to not—