Tangling with the Tiger: Lone Pine Pride, Book 5 (9 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Grace waited another few minutes to give Rachel time to pull herself together and then slipped down the hall to tap on the door. It swung open beneath her hand.

“I take it our little birdie left.”

Rachel, seated on the bed in the world’s most dejected pose, looked up at the words. Her eyes were hollow with sorrow, but at least they were dry. That was something.

Grace slipped into the room and nudged the door closed behind her. “You okay, Doc?”

“I don’t know what I am anymore,” the doctor whispered.

Grace dropped onto the other bed, facing her. “That sounds like a good start. Like that whole
the wise man knows first that he knows nothing
bullshit.”

A whisper of a smile almost broke through the sadness on her face. “Something like that.”

Grace just waited, letting the silence fold comfortingly around them both until Rachel began to speak, unloading everything that had been building up with her for the last week. Her frustration that even when she’d tried to do the right thing, she’d wound up hurting the man she loved—though Rachel didn’t’ use the “L” word. Her relief at finally getting away from the Organization’s control over her life. Her frustration with Adrian who couldn’t seem to forgive her for the mistakes she’d made for the greater good. It all came pouring out.

Everyone buckles.

Grace frowned internally, remembering Kelly’s words, but kept her focus on Rachel, who was now bemoaning her lack of understanding of the man in her life.

Well, Grace had wanted girl talk, hadn’t she?

“I can’t figure him out,” Rachel complained. “One second he’s angry, the next he’s protective. He touches me so tenderly I just fall apart, then pushes me away and won’t even look at me.”

“He’s a man. He doesn’t know what to do with all the feels,” Grace said. But he loved Rachel. Grace believed that down to her marrow. “If it’s any help, he refused to leave you if I wasn’t personally guarding your cute little ass. So he’s clearly got a hard-on for keeping you safe. That’s something.”

And it was what Kelly had wanted too. Had she been wrong to brush him aside so harshly? He wanted her to be safe. He wanted to be the one she unloaded to. It wasn’t such an unreasonable thing to ask.

“Am I really in danger?” Rachel asked.

“From most of the pride? No.” Most of the pride worshipped her like the second coming. Though some of the rioters, Grace wasn’t so sure about. “But there are one or two who might still want a piece of you.”

Rachel shuddered. “Like Dominec.”

Grace almost defended him. The words were instinctive on her lips, but it was probably best for Rachel to be cautious around the tiger. He had already tried to kill her once and Grace wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t do it again. “Maybe,” she said, hearing the note of uncertainty in her own voice. “None of us really know him.”

“But he’s part of your pride. Your…family.”

“Sort of.” He’d always kept himself apart. Until last night when they’d been very much together. Unless that had all been a ruse to disorient her so he could make an attempt against Rachel. Shit. Who knew with Dominec? “Keeping Dominec around is kind of like having a pet dragon. Some days it makes you powerful and some days it makes you barbeque. Can’t always tell which kind of day it’s gonna be.”

Rachel sighed. “So I should listen to Adrian.”

“In terms of your protection? Not a bad idea. He knows his shit. As far as the rest of it? Hell, what do I know about damaged shifter men with more instinct than brains?” She didn’t have the first idea what to do with Dominec. Kiss him? Kick him? Both? “All I can do is wish you luck, girl, because if you decide you want him, you’re going to need it.” They both were. “Now, you ready to look at some prisoner mug shots?”

Rachel smiled, though it was still shadowed. “Ready.”

It was after dark when Grace left the infirmary that night. Rachel had long since left with Adrian, who seemed to have gotten over his temper tantrum. Grace had handed the information Rachel had given her on the prisoners over to Hugo and Xander, but she still felt like she wasn’t doing enough. Like they were just sitting around, strategizing and planning while the Organization moved with ruthless speed.

She tromped back to her office, intent on diving back into the Organization files. She’d been reading through the dossiers whenever she had a free moment over the last few weeks, but she was still no closer to finding that magic Achilles heel that would bring the entire operation crumbling down.

After last night, her gaze went automatically to the eaves above her office door as she approached the small building. A pair of eyes gleamed back at her from the darkness of the roof, reflecting what little light there was.

Dominec.

Watching her. How often had he been up there when she hadn’t bothered to look up? She couldn’t escape the feeling he’d been watching her for quite a while. He looked awfully at home on her roof.

Grace stopped at the foot of her porch, not speaking, staring him down. He rose to all fours, arching his back in a stretch, and moved to the side of the roof, leaping down and strolling away as if nothing had happened, his tail waving high like a banner. He was all coiled, predatory grace in any form.

And once again she missed the lack of a pack of girlfriends to whom she could moan what does it
mean
?

She couldn’t judge his behavior by normal standards. She needed an enigma machine just to decode the messages he was sending.

She climbed the steps and entered her office, checking for Dominec booby-traps, but everything looked the same as she’d left it that morning. Grace tossed down her pack, withdrew her tablet from it, toed off her boots and sprawled out on her back on the longest of the couches. She’d only just pulled up the Organization files when her cell phone buzzed against her hip.

It wasn’t a normal phone. Mateo had modified a bunch of them for the pride’s elite security personnel. He’d hacked the operating systems and given them a bunch of special security features Grace didn’t pretend to understand. All she knew was she couldn’t access the Internet with it or contact anyone who wasn’t on the closed network. But it made it much easier to pass information between the lieutenants on the hundreds of acres that composed the pride.

She pulled out her phone, reading the two line report.

A pair of shifters approaching the western boundary of the pride lands. Scouts moving to intercept.

Grace pocketed her phone and turned her attention back to the dossiers, but another buzz moments later had her reaching for her phone again.

Three Rocks ambassadors request audience with Alpha
.

Grace sat up so quickly she nearly flung the tablet off her stomach. Catching it with one hand, she dropped it into her bag, already shoving her feet into her boots.

They were here.

For weeks, everyone at Lone Pine had been hearing about the infamous Three Rocks lions who were stirring up shifters in packs and prides across the south, trying to urge everyone to band together and come out to the humans. Everyone knew they would eventually make it up to Lone Pine and whatever the Lone Pine Pride decided would carry significant weight with the rest of the shifter community.

But that wasn’t why Grace was practically tripping over herself in her hurry to get to the Alpha’s mansion.

They’d been working their way across the country, dropping in on packs and prides and making their case. Which meant they had
located
more packs and prides than any other shifters outside the Black Lake Wolves. They would have contacts. And so would Adrian, Grace realized suddenly, kicking herself for not thinking of it sooner.

He’d smuggled shifters out of the Organization labs and placed them with packs and prides. Maybe they didn’t need the Black Lake Wolves and their stupid territorial bullshit to pull off a coup against the Organization.

Grace flipped her pack onto her shoulder and ran toward the Alpha’s mansion. It would be several minutes before the Texas lions were escorted in from the perimeter, but Grace wanted to be there when they arrived.

This was it. The tipping point. Things were finally going to shift in their favor. She knew it.

Chapter Fourteen

The Three Rocks lions were kind of dicks.

There were two of them. A man and a woman, obviously a mated couple from their body language. They both had the fair coloring and muscular builds that were common among lions, but while the man—Tyler Minor—was the strong silent type, the woman was mouthy in the extreme. She acted like
she
was Alpha. From the way she talked, you’d think Zoe King had never been wrong a day in her life.

“I don’t like her,” Grace grumbled, as soon as the Texan pair followed Kye out of the conference room.

Patch snorted. “That’s because she’s
you
.”

Grace gasped in mock horror. “Bite your tongue.”

The Alpha’s mate chuckled and Roman held up a hand to quiet their banter.

Kye would extend Lone Pine hospitality—and post guards on their cabin—before returning to join the confab in progress. Because of the lateness of the hour, only Hugo, Patch, Roman and herself were present from the pride hierarchy, though Adrian and Rachel had also been summoned to provide their expertise on the Organization.

Roman turned to them now. “What do you think?”

Rachel shrugged. “Their information is outdated, but they aren’t wrong. Coming out to the humans would put the Organization in a bad position—but it would also force them to get rid of the evidence of their wrong-doing and that could be very bad for any of the shifters they are holding when you go public.”

Roman nodded, somberly. “Thank you, Dr. Russell. I won’t keep you from your bed any longer.”

Roman clearly didn’t mean to imply anything, but Rachel blushed and Grace barely restrained her snicker. From the smell of them, Rachel and Adrian had come straight from bed—and they hadn’t been sleeping. Hard to keep a thing like that secret in a pride where everyone could smell it on them.

At least they’d kissed and made up after this afternoon. Adrian rested his hand on the small of Rachel’s back as they left the conference room—and the gesture reminded Grace of Kelly. Had she been too hard on him?

The fleeting thought didn’t last as the door closed behind Adrian and Rachel and pride business took priority.

There hadn’t been many surprises from the Three Rocks lions.

They knew less about the Organization than Lone Pine did, though the Organization knew about them. Grace had found an incidence log in the hard drive files that referred to Zoe King and Tyler Minor—and files on their pride mates too. The pair hadn’t taken that as badly as they could have, though they immediately called home to warn their Alpha.

They were pushing to come out to the humans, just as the rumors had claimed, but they clearly hadn’t considered what would happen to the thousand-plus shifter captives the Organization currently held when they did. It would be far too easy for the Organization to cut their losses by killing off the livestock, as they thought of it.

The answer seemed obvious to Grace. The first priority had to be freeing the captive shifters. Which clearly meant a coordinated all-shifter strike against all of the known Organization bases at once.

Now if only she could get Roman to see reason.

“You heard them,” she said. “All the southern shifters are looking to Lone Pine. They’ll follow our lead and we need to lead them against the Organization.”

“All out war?” Roman shifted his muscular bulk in his chair, his face tight. He’d signed on to take care of his pride, not be the king of all shifters everywhere, responsible for all of those lives—only a sociopath wouldn’t be nervous. Patch reached over and rested a hand on the back of his arm, just above his elbow and he calmed.

“I know this is big,” Grace said, less forcefully. “But those Texas lions aren’t wrong. It’s only a matter of time before the truth about shifters comes out. The Internet is working against us. We need to be united when it happens and what better way to unite than against a common enemy.”

“The packs and prides have never played nice with one another before, but we could take volunteers from the entire shifter community,” Roman suggested. “Form a larger strike force.”

Grace shook her head. “We need all shifters to be a part of this. Whether we come out to the humans or not, we need to attack the Organization all at once in a coordinated strike. It is the only thing they won’t suspect. They know we’re fragmented, which is part of their power over us.”

Roman shuffled through a small stack of papers and she glimpsed her own plan to go to Black Lake to enlist their help among them.

“We may not even need to go to Black Lake to do it,” she spoke fast, before he could come up with another argument against her. “The Organization had a location for Three Rocks buried in the files. Mateo might be able to find other pack and pride references in the files, locate some more ‘known locations’. And even if he can’t, the Three Rocks pair has been tromping all over the south, using rumors to track down actual shifter packs. They’ll have contacts among them. And so will Adrian. He placed dozens of escaped shifters for Rachel, not just with us but all over the western U.S.”

The big bear lieutenant stirred himself. “None of the northern wolves will help us without Black Lake. They’re too afraid of them to cross them.”

“I’m really starting to hate Black Lake,” Grace muttered with a snarl.

Roman shot her a look. “So I shouldn’t send you there?”

Grace had been lolling back in her chair, but now she sat forward so sharply she almost fell off the edge. “Seriously?”

Roman’s reply was delayed as the door to the conference room opened. Xander entered, along with two other advisors and the former Alpha and his mate.

“Did I miss all the good stuff?” Xander asked as he strolled into the room and the new arrivals took chairs around the conference table.

“We’re just getting started,” Roman said. “I’ve got the Three Rocks lions on hold until we can decide how to proceed.”

“And how are we proceeding?” the former Alpha, Gregory Fallon, asked softly.

Patch’s hand moved to rest on Roman’s forearm and he seemed to draw himself up straighter in his chair, facing his old mentor. “We’ll never have a better chance against the Organization than we do now. They may not know about the hard drives, but they know we know some of their locations and they’ll already be moving shifters to new bases we can’t find. We need to move quickly and we need to be a united force. The truth is going to come out about shifters eventually and we need to speak with one voice when it does. And before we can do that, we need as many of our people as possible out of Organization hands.”

He pulled her plan out of his pile of papers. “Grace has drawn up a plan to send an emissary to the Black Lake Pack in Canada to enlist their cooperation.”

“I’ll go,” she blurted, before someone else could swoop in and volunteer for her assignment. “I can leave tonight. I don’t even need to pack.”

“I appreciate the enthusiasm, but—”

“You can’t send someone else,” she interrupted. “No one else knows both Lone Pine and the Organization tactics as well as I do—at least no one you can spare.”

“If you’d let me finish,” Roman said pointedly. “As I was saying, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I think tomorrow morning is soon enough. You’ll be on the road by noon.”

Electric adrenaline shot through her limbs. It was happening. She was going. They were really going to take down the Big Bad. “I’d like to take Dominec.”

Every head swiveled toward her, more than one expression shocked.

“He’s walking evidence that the Organization is bad news. He has a vested interest in taking them down
and
if he’s with me, then we don’t have to worry about him starting more riots about the prisoners here or going off on a vigilante tear that tips off the Organization.”

Roman nodded slowly. “He can go. But keep an eye on him.” The Alpha turned to the bear. “Hugo? You know the Black Lake wolves. Will you go as our diplomat—since Dominec and Grace are likely to start a war on their own.”

Hugo scratched his beard, slowly shaking his head. “I’m not sure I’d be any help. The Alpha of Black Lake hates me. Something about feasting on my entrails if I ever set foot in their territory again.”

“Send Kelly,” Patch piped up.

Grace whipped around to glare at the Alpha’s mate. She could
not
actually be matchmaking at a time like this. Though it didn’t surprise Grace to learn Kelly had been spreading it around that he wanted to be Grace’s one and only. Irritation fisted her hands. “I don’t think—”

“Kelly?” Roman asked, with a gratifying degree of skepticism.

“He’s charming, persuasive, naturally diplomatic, and even though he isn’t warlike by nature, he sees the need for this fight. He’s the obvious choice.”

Shit
. Patch was right. Kelly would be perfect. If he wasn’t also a royal pain in her ass.

Roman inclined his head. “We’ll see if he’s willing to go. Grace, would you like to be the one to broach the idea with Kelly and Dominec? I’d like to establish from the start that they’ll be deferring to you on this mission.”

“Absolutely.” She didn’t doubt that Kelly would take orders, but Dominec didn’t seem like he knew what
defer to
meant. “And while we’re gone, you can get with Adrian, Mateo and the Three Rocks lions and start identifying which prides and packs are closest to various Organization facilities and how we can contact them without it getting back to the Organization and—”

“Hey,” Xander interrupted. “We’ve got this. Just do your part, princess.”

She flipped him the bird—too far away to kick him under the table—and stopped trying to run the world as the conversation turned to the logistics of her trip.

They could get most of the way in a car, but after the fifteen-hour drive to get to Meadow Lake in Saskatchewan, the only way to get the last forty kilometers to Black Lake was on foot. At least they were all in good shape. With any luck, the three of them would be in Black Lake by the day after tomorrow.

Two days there, two days back. They should be gone less than a week. And then they would take it to the Organization. Once and for all.