Tangling with the Tiger: Lone Pine Pride, Book 5 (7 page)

Chapter Nine

The mob had less than a minute’s head start before she got there, but death didn’t take long. Several of the prisoners were already motionless on the dirt floor of the barn in pools of blood, entrails exposed, when Grace burst into the barn. The surviving prisoners screamed shrilly, barricaded in a stall in the back of the barn, surrounded by shifters in various stages of a shift.

“Anyone who touches them answers to me,” Grace roared, her voice thundering up to the rafters in an attempt to shock the rioters out of their frenzy. One or two stumbled back, turning toward her in instinctive submission to the dominance in her voice, but most of them were too far gone to bloodlust.

Focusing on the most feral, she emptied her tranq gun into the crowd, then tossed it aside and dove into the fray to knock heads, dimly aware of reinforcements charging into the barn behind her. She only hoped they were
her
reinforcements and not more rioters.

The next few minutes were all reaction, her mind going quiet as countless hours of training took over and controlled her limbs. Bodies flew until the last of the rioters finally hit the ground and stayed down. Plaster dust floated in the air where one shifter had gone through a wall—with Grace’s help. Around the room, shifters groaned and Grace took in the carnage.

It couldn’t have been more than five minutes—battles never lasted as long as it felt like they lasted.

She panted, breathing through the adrenaline that made her heart race and her muscles feel supercharged. It was a crazy high, but she couldn’t enjoy it with the stench of blood and feces thick in the air. The remains of at least half a dozen of the prisoners had been flung around the barn—body parts separated in a way that made it hard to figure out exactly how many they’d lost.

And it was a loss. A loss of information, even if they were all sadistic bastards who deserved what they got. At this point, Lone Pine needed all the advantages they could get against the Organization and the wanton slaughter of their prisoners didn’t help with that.

“Fucking mess,” she growled, pushing the words around the fangs that still filled her mouth. No sense crying over spilled blood. There was work to do. “Kye,” she snapped, looking to the other security staff who had come to her aid, Kye and Adrian among them. “Get Brandt and Roman down here. Gather up the uninjured idiots and put them somewhere—I don’t care where as long as it’s far away from here.”

Her gaze raked over the groaning rioters—the walking wounded. She pitched her voice to carry so the power in it echoed off the walls. “If you don’t require immediate medical assistance, go with Kye and be good little shifters. Don’t try to sneak off. We have surveillance, you dumbasses, and I have personally memorized each and every one of your stupid faces. Anyone tries to sneak off gets punished twice. Once by the Alpha—because you all fucking deserve it—and once by me, because I’m pissed. And anyone who even
looks
at the prisoners on their way out gets an express pass to the infirmary, courtesy of yours truly. Got it?”

The rumblings were vaguely affirmative. She’d take it. She flicked a claw at Adrian. “Come here. Help me triage this shit. You have any medical training?”

He moved toward her, stepping carefully around the places slick with blood. “Battlefield minimum.”

It would have to do. “Look for anyone who’s bleeding to death. Try to stop the bleeding. Brandt’ll be here soon. Then just do whatever the hell he tells you.”

Then her brain went quiet again, a different kind of training taking over as she began to triage the same dipshits she’d just given their injuries. A lieutenant’s work was never done.

They moved those who were just unconscious—due to tranquilizers or knock-outs—out on stretchers and bandaged up claw and fang gashes that the shifters would heal within a matter of days. None of the rioters were injured beyond recovery.

The prisoners weren’t in such good shape. The thirteen who had barricaded themselves in the back stall—which had to be their latrine by the smell of it—had survived with only a few scratches. The nine who hadn’t made it into the stall decorated the walls like disturbing expressionist art.

She spoke to Parker—who had fought through the worst of it, the brave, dumb kid—and a few of the other guards, getting the full story. Apparently one of the prisoners had snapped and started screaming insults through the walls of the barn. The guards had already been planning to take a “smoke break” and decided that was a convenient time to abandon their posts.

Since no shifter Grace had ever met could stand the taste and smell of cigarettes, the smoke break excuse wasn’t even trying to be believable. The delinquent guards would be disciplined by Roman himself—but that didn’t solve the root problem. No one wanted to be assigned to protect the bastards who had kidnapped, experimented on and killed so many of their own.

Grace understood that. She’d love to be able to kill them all too. But Rachel had proved that not all of the Organization people were there voluntarily and they still
needed
them. At least until they could slay the giant.

She finished cleaning up the fucking mess, Xander arriving with a few of the senior security members to take charge of the prisoners. Thank God. She had other shit on her plate at the moment.

Once she had dropped the last stretcher full of unconscious dipshit at the Pride Hall, where Dr. Brandt and Moira were tending the wounded and stupid, she fell into step beside the Hawk, heading out into the night where snow had begun to drift lazily down from the sky.

It was entirely too lovely a night for a massacre.

“We’ll have to screen the guards more carefully,” she muttered, more thinking aloud than talking to Adrian, but he was a good listener and knew more than most about security. “And find someplace else to keep the survivors. The barn was never supposed to be a long-term solution anyway. Just the only place we could think of on short notice that would fit them all that didn’t have windows the bastards could crawl out of. What a fucking mess.”

“What’ll happen to that lot?” he asked, indicating the group at the Pride Hall with a jerk of his head.

“Roman’ll come up with a fitting punishment. The hell of it is, I don’t even blame them.” She shoved her hands into her pockets, moving faster, driven by irritation. “I wish I could, but most of the rioters are from the most recent batch of shifters released in our Organization raids. They’re the ones who still wake up screaming every night. Who are we to tell them they can’t kill their persecutors? Even if they weren’t persecuted by these particular Organization doctors. All the same breed, right?” Grace remembered who she was talking to and quickly retracted. “Except yours. She’s a different kind entirely, isn’t she?”

Adrian said nothing and Grace tipped her face to the breeze, inhaling deeply of air that wasn’t tainted by death—and catching a nose full of Dominec’s scent. She slammed to a halt, head turning sharply toward the shadows along the side of the path. Nothing. Where the hell was he? She could smell him. He was close.

Probably watching his handiwork. She didn’t doubt he’d had a hand in what happened today. Somehow.

“Fucking Dominec.”

She forced her body to relax. Her nose must be playing tricks on her.

Adrian frowned, searching the shadows as well. “I’m surprised he wasn’t right in the thick of it, goading the shifters on.”

You and me both.
“If he had been, I would have taken great pleasure in kicking his ass into next week. That’s a lesson long overdue.”

And one he might be getting tonight if she found out he had anything to do with the riots.

She forced herself to keep walking, to keep chatting with Adrian about his doctor and the pride as if she wasn’t mentally planning how she would take Dominec down. When the Hawk realized that the insane tiger hadn’t been at the riots and raced off to check to make sure Rachel was all right, Grace turned back toward where she’d scented Dominec.

It was time for a reckoning.

Chapter Ten

Dominec rubbed the fur of his chin against the shingles at the edge of the roof, watching as Grace and Adrian continued down the path. They hadn’t looked up. Even the hawk-man, who should know that danger could come from above, had scanned the shadows down low and completely failed to lift his gaze.

Idiots.

She thought she would teach him a lesson, did she?

He should be insulted that she thought he would be so easy to take down, but instead he felt…he felt…
excited
. Eager. Fucking
thrilled
at the idea that she might try to take him on. His blood ran hot just thinking of her. She’d fight like the cat she was.

Footsteps on the path, crunching in the snow.

Dominec shifted farther back onto the roof, the falling snow and night shadows making his pale yellow-and-midnight striped fur the perfect camouflage. He held himself still as a figure appeared on the path. Grace. Coming back.

Excitement spiked hard and he nearly purred.

She stopped at the exact spot where she’d paused before, tipping her face back, drawing in his scent. He didn’t even dare breathe, waiting to see if she would look up this time. Not that he was hiding from her, but it would ruin the game if he made it too easy for her. The stalk was a vital part of the hunt.

He wasn’t entirely sure which of them was stalking the other.

She’d made only the most cursory attempt to clean the blood off. There were still streaks of it along her neck and dark places where her pale hair was matted with it. She looked good, fresh from battle. It suited her. Or maybe it just suited him.

Grace’s gaze lifted, her expression darkening in a way that told him without a single word that he’d been spotted. Then she snarled, “Dominec.”

Now he did purr.

He pushed himself up onto all fours, taking time to stretch every muscle and shake the snowflakes off his whiskers.

He saw the exact moment she realized she wouldn’t be able to tear into him to her satisfaction while he was in animal form—and that he would be nude if she insisted he shift to talk to her.

“My office. Five minutes,” she snapped. She pivoted on her heel and stalked away into the night, and he watched her go, admiring the tension anger had put into her stride.

Only when she passed out of sight did he leap to the ground and pad quickly through the snow to his nearest bolt hole.

Fatigues. Shirt. Boots.

He shivered as the snow melted on his shoulders. Montana winters weren’t forgiving. His tiger form was built for cold winters, his fur thickening with each passing month, but even though shifters weren’t as susceptible to cold as humans, it still affected them. He would have to start stashing jackets with the rest of his clothes. Provided he stayed.

The door to Grace’s office was closed to keep the cold out, but light shone through the windows and he could see her pacing inside as he climbed the steps to the porch. Since she’d demanded his presence, he didn’t bother knocking.

She turned to face him when he walked in and shut the door behind him, but didn’t retreat behind her desk as he’d half expected. She planted her feet, standing amid the clusters of couches, and folded her arms across her chest, glaring at him.

“I suppose you’re pleased with yourself.”

He kept his smile entirely internal—it wouldn’t do to let her know how much he was enjoying himself—and arched his eyebrows in an expression of insultingly fake innocence. “Oh? Did I do something impressive?”

She answered the question with one of her own. “Did you have a good view of the massacre from up there?”

“Actually I couldn’t see much. It was disappointing, really, that I missed out on the slaughter because I’m being such a good boy.”

“How did you orchestrate it? What did you do?”

“Nothing that can be proven.” He did smile then.

“But you don’t deny it. I know you played a role.”

“Would I do that? When I’m on probation and trying so hard to stay in your good graces?”

Her blue-on-blue eyes narrowed. “The innocent act doesn’t suit you.”

That didn’t surprise him. He hadn’t been innocent in a very long time. If ever.

But whatever rebuttal he would have made was delayed by a shout and a rush of movement outside.

“Grace!”

The panicked voice accompanied a storm of footsteps up the stairs and then the door burst open again, only missing smacking Dominec because he had stepped out of the way, sliding over beside Grace’s desk to make room.

The lion was missing his cowboy hat, but it was undeniably Kelly, his golden curls and the shoulders of his tan leather jacket dusted with snow as he rushed in.

“
Grace
. Thank God you’re all right.” He closed the distance between them, his large, tanned hands framing her face as he bent to kiss her. When he lifted his head, he kept his face close to hers. “Dear God, look at you. You’re covered in blood.”

Her eyebrows drew down in a sharp V over her eyes. “Kelly, what are you doing here?”

“I just heard about the riots.” His thumbs stroked her cheekbones. “I was so worried about you.
Grace
, my God.”

She brushed away his hands, stepping back. “I’m fine. I’m a lieutenant of this pride, Kelly. I can take care of myself.”

“I know that, but I—”

“The day I need a big strong lion to rush to my rescue is the day I give up my position,” she snapped, arms re-folding as she moved farther away, taking up a position to the left of her desk.

“I wasn’t trying to imply…” Kelly trailed off, his gaze shifting to where Dominec stood. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were working.”

Something about the way he said it made Dominec’s hackles rise, but he simply looked to Grace, his expression impassive.

She could have used him as an excuse to throw Kelly out—but as he watched her thoughts pass transparently behind her eyes, he knew the precise moment she decided she wasn’t going to get anything useful out of Dominec if she continued to harangue him about the riot. He never would have given up so easily—but then he’d never been particularly good at picking his battles. Grace was more strategic.

She met his gaze. “Dominec was just leaving.”

Such an interesting way to phrase it. As if it was his choice.

He could refuse. He could dig in his heels and insist on staying. He wasn’t sure why the idea of doing just that was so appealing. To piss off Kelly? To piss off Grace? To chaperone them?

He went. Without a fuss or a fight. But he didn’t go far.

The roof of the bungalow opposite had a convenient gutter—easy to jump up and hook his fingers over, pulling himself up until he could hook an elbow onto the roof and swing his lower body up. It wasn’t as smooth as when he was in his feline form—but nothing in life was as smooth as it was in his feline form.

He lay, belly down, on the roof and watched through the windows of Grace’s office. The lion was trying to touch her, his voice low and soothing, though Dominec couldn’t make out the words. Grace’s tone was sharper, her body-language definitive as she shoved Kelly away.

What sort of fool was Kelly? Couldn’t he see that Grace was uninjured? Did he really think she couldn’t handle a little riot? Had he
met
her?

Dominec watched until the cold seeped into his skin and made his teeth chatter. Then he stripped out of his clothes, shifted and lay down to watch some more.

He didn’t like this. Seeing her with him. It was wrong. And not just because Kelly didn’t seem to know who he was talking to. Grace needed someone strong. Someone who recognized her strength.

The sight of her with Kelly
offended
him on an intrinsic level.

Dominec lurked on the rooftop, watching. They didn’t stay in her office long. Grace grabbed her jacket and the two of them headed in the direction of the cowboy’s bungalow. They weren’t touching—which was the only thing that made the sight bearable.

It was wrong for her to be with Kelly.
Wrong
.

Dominec lay on the roof with his fur inexplicably ruffled, and growled.