Walk on the Striped Side (16 page)

CHAPTER-SEVENTEEN

Elena

Sitting in a plane worth a few
million dollars to the Army and still handcuffed to Gage was not where she
expected to be right now. No, Elena had thought she’d be sitting back in her room
at her Aunt’s house right about this time. Let free by a man who was
overprotective on a good day and a damn Neanderthal on his worst days. She’d
honestly thought that Gage wouldn’t want her on this mission for the very
reasons his brother had protested it a couple of hours earlier.

The joke was on her. Not only had
Gage not let her free, but after making a few calls to his team, and some
arrangements with Pack Master Davies, he’d taken her to her Aunts’ house and
flaunted his keeping her hostage like it was no big deal. The man apparently
had no qualms about walking into her families’ house, without knocking, and
then asking her which way led to her bedroom.

Did he care that her entire family
was sitting in the living room watching them?

No.

Did he listen to her when she said
she refused to tell him which room was hers?

No.

Did her two sisters or two aunts
bother to get up off their lazy asses to help her get free of the crazy tiger?

NO.

All four of those bitches had sat
there, quietly watching her and Gage as if they were some kind of fascinating
documentary about animals mating in the wild, and hadn’t lifted not one fucking
finger to come help her. What was worse? When all four of them started cackling
like hyenas after Gage ignored her protests, scooped her up in his arms, and
then headed up the stairs to where the bedrooms were located. That was about
the time Elena decided it was time to disown her family. Treacherous bitches!

She was so mad at them, she didn’t
bother to say a hi, bye or go fuck yourself on her way out the door with Gage
and a duffel bag of her clothes fifteen minutes later. They better not ask her
for Christmas presents this year. Because if they did, all of them were going
to get a dose of Nair in their shampoo bottles and blue die in their
toothpaste.

Now here she sat, still dressed in
that stupid red ‘I would cuddle you so hard’ shirt she’d bought Gage two years
ago and regretting ever buying it for the bastard. The passenger area of the
plane, where she sat with their rag tag group. Everyone who had been at their
meeting was here minus Grandmother Ivanov. Plus some chick named Minna who
apparently was from the very pack they were going to attack, and five members
of Gage’s unit had joined them on the plane. Since the plane had taken off the
group had turned into a ball of nervous energy. Feet tapped, legs bounced and
fingers drummed on top of the arm rests as adrenaline and instincts revved up.
There were only two other people on this plane besides herself who weren’t
twitching like crack heads in need of a good fix, and that was Jenna and her
SWAT partner Kent. Elena was ready to start shooting people because of all the
damn fidgeting!

When she had asked Gage a few
minutes ago in a whisper what was up with everyone and the non-stop squirming
he had mock whispered back that shifters didn’t do well in enclosed spaces.
Then he had informed her that there was no point in whispering because everyone
there with them could hear everything she’d said. Leaning her head back against
the headrest, she closed her eyes and tried to tune all of them out. Maybe if
she just sat here quietly, she could block all of their incessant restlessness
out and find her inner happy place.

Gage placed his hand on her thigh
and started rubbing his thumb in circles over her pants. He seemed to be doing
that particular gesture as often as he could now, and it was starting to bug
the shit out of her. She wasn’t sure if the action was supposed to comfort her
or turn her on, but either way, it was making him harder and harder to resist.
How was she supposed to keep the infuriating man at arm’s length if he was
always touching her? She didn’t need the constant reminders from him about how
quickly or easily he could get her wound up with just a few simple strokes of
his thumb.

That thumb was dangerous dammit!

“How long will the flight to
Germany take?” One of the guy’s in Gage’s unit suddenly asked.

Elena sighed in resignation. So
much for peace and quiet.

“Nine hours.” Mumbled Alec
sullenly.

Elena’s eyes snapped open at his
tone and she glanced at Alec. “Is nine hours going to kill
ya
there big guy? Because you sound like you’d rather have your nuts nailed to a
wall than be on this airplane for that long.”

Alec’s mouth opened to respond, but
Jenna cut him off. “Just be glad that we’re here on Gage’s plane with his unit.
The last time I went to Germany with Mr. Freaky here, well, let’s just say that
his testicles weren’t the thing getting nailed on that flight.”

This time Elena’s eyebrows shot
clear up to the top of her forehead. “Mr. Freaky?” She asked Jenna.

The other woman snorted. “We are
talking about Alec, right? Have you looked at him lately?”

Elena was kind of surprised at the
woman’s response. Looking back to find Alec glaring at Jenna, she took in his
appearance. He had on a charcoal t-shirt that showed off his bright and
colorful full sleeve tattoos. He was wearing some of Gage’s camouflage pants
and a pair of combat boots that she’d seen him in more than once. Scanning back
up she took in his unusual artic blue eyes that were still pinned on Jenna and
his white blond hair that was shaped into his normal Mohawk. Unless the woman
was talking about Alec’s hair and tattoos, Elena didn’t see anything about the
man’s appearance that she would label him a freak. She couldn’t help but feel
kind of disappointed that Jenna might be prejudiced somehow. So far the woman
had seemed rather friendly with her, even if she was abrupt at times. It would
be a shame if Elena had to kick her ass because she was being a racist bitch
towards Alec because of his hair and ink choices.

Turning back to Elena somewhat
disgusted she snapped. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t see
anything wrong with him.”

Jenna held her hands up in the air
in a surrender motion. “Whoa… calm down there. I wasn’t trying to piss you off.
All I’m saying is, how many white tigers have you seen in the world? If the
real wild white tigers are rare, don’t you think that an
Other
white tiger would be just a tad unique?”

Elena unclenched all of the muscles
in her body that she hadn’t quite realized she’d tightened in the first place.
Without even a conscious thought, she’d placed herself on the edge of her seat,
ready to fly across the aisle of the plan and deck the woman for insulting
Gage’s brother. Damn, this emotional shit was getting heavy for her. She hadn’t
even accepted her feelings for Gage yet, and here she was, ready to rumble over
his brother’s honor. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so stoked to come on this
mission. A little distance from Gage and the rest of his family might have been
a better idea.

She felt a tug on her handcuffs, so
she looked to the other side of her where the pest in question was sitting. Of
course he was sitting there, smiling all smugly at her display of defending his
brother. He probably thought the next thing she would do was fall on her knees
and declare her undying love for him. Not.

Elena was trying to think of the
perfect thing to say that would wipe that smug smile right off his face when she
felt a tug on her hair from Alec’s side. Just what she needed, another Ivanov
man poking and prodding her. Which was damn annoying! She was not the Ivanov’s
personal human rope to be yanking on in some twisted version of tug-of-war.
Turning back to Alec, she snapped. “What!”

The hulking white tiger gave her a
cheesy grin and said in a smarmy voice two octaves above his normal range. “
Awwww
, I
lubs
you too Sis! Does
this mean I can have a hug now that we’re family and all?” He held his arms out
wide like he was waiting for her to actually hug him.

Elena’s upper lip lifted in a snarl
of irritation. She must have been out of her ever loving mind to defend this
annoying piece of dick lint! “Don’t get all mushy with me idiot! I only got
defensive because I thought she was being a bigot about your tattoos and
general appearance. I don’t like racism of any kind. But now that I think about
what she’s said, Jenna has a point. If the white tiger is a rare thing in the
wild, that’s got to be the equivalent of you being a one nut wonder or
something at a side show. Can my sisters and I put you on display and let the
paying customers pet you?”

Gage dropped his arms back to his
sides and then tapped his lips with one finger like he was considering her
proposition. “Will they be petting my very large and awesome two nuts?” He
suddenly asked.

Jenna barked a laugh as Elena told
him no.

“If there’s no nut petting than
I’ll have to pass. Sorry Sis, I can’t expose my boys to the world if they’re
not going to be appreciated properly.”

A sudden loud banging sound came
from the front of the passenger area. Elena and everyone else swiveled their
heads to see what the noise was. What they found was Pack Master Davies with
his head tilted back and repeatedly banging it against the wall of the plane
behind him.

“What the hell are you doing that
for Uncle Owen?” Jenna asked him.

He stopped banging his head, then
pulled his eyes from the ceiling to look at her. “I would rather beat my head
against the wall until my brains are leaking out of my ears than listen to one
more second about Alec and nut petting. So can you all please stop before I’m
traumatized by mental images of that for the rest of my hopefully very long,
immortal life?” By the end of his rant the man was snarling, and Elena wasn’t
one hundred percent sure, but she thought that might be foam on the corner of
his mouth. Just what she needed, a rabid old guy who could shift into a wolf
and rip them to shreds on an airplane ten thousand feet in the air.

Alec leaned forward in his chair to
say something to the Pack Master with a teasing glint in his eyes, but Elena
stopped him by slapping a hand over his mouth.

“We’re good. No more nut jokes for
the window licking white tiger.” She felt Alec growl against her hand. “Is
there something we can do to pass the time until you receive your
intel
from your friend? For instance, does that
tv
over there work? Because this
sitting around and waiting is killing me.”

The Pack Master didn’t answer her,
but Gage nodded and then picked up a remote and turned on the television that
hung on the plane’s interior wall. “We’ll have to put on a
dvd
. It’s not like the Army pays for the premium
channels.”

The younger man, Logan, who Gage
had explained was Jenna’s younger brother spoke for the first time in Elena’s
presence. “Do you have Mission Impossible?”

Before anyone could answer him
Jenna snarled in his direction and pulled her pistol out of her holster.
“Anyone puts on Mission Impossible and they get a bullet in the ass!”

Jenna’s mate Adam chuckled and
Elena sighed in disgust. This was going to a long, long flight.

CHAPTER-EIGHTEEN

Gage

His sensitive ears picked up the
chime of a phone just seconds before Pack Master Davies said, “Baines came
through with the video.”

Thank God. They were only three
hours outside of Germany and Gage wasn’t sure how much more sitting around and
doing nothing he could take. He was so bored he felt like popping his claws out
and starting to shred the seat cushions just for the hell of it. The group had
watched a two movies, which hadn’t been so bad, but the arguing about what
movie to watch? He’d wanted to start throwing them off the plane just to stop
the damn arguing!

Looking over to Tyson, he gave him
a chin lift and said “Hook his phone up to the television so we can see the
video.”

While Tyson was linking Davies
phone up to a laptop, which would then stream the video to the
tv
, Gage looked over to Minna, the
former Corvus Pack member. The blond submissive wolf had thrived in Adam
McPhee’s Pack. He’d heard through the grape vine that she was dating one of
Adam’s wolves, which had surprised him because Gage had thought maybe she had a
romantic tie with the Corvus Alpha. The German woman had begged them almost
daily to rescue Corvus, but it seemed all of that begging wasn’t for a lover,
but perhaps a friend. Hopefully, in a little more than a couple of hours, the
woman would get her wish. All they had to do was go into the Corvus Pack
compound, grab the hostage Alpha and kill any hostile wolves that got in their
way.

Gage called
Minna’s
name and when she turned her head to look at him, he gestured with his hand to
the
tv
. “We need you to
point out anything and everything you know about the compound while we go
through this video, okay?”

She nodded and then went to stand
beside the television. Tyson gave her a remote with some quick instructions on
how to pause or re-start the video and then sat back down in his seat. Minna
pushed a button on the remote, and a dark grainy image of the ground came on
the screen as the video started. The view shifted upwards until a large brick
mansion came into view. There was no fence or barrier around the house, only
trees. That would work into their favor because they wouldn’t have to scale a
wall to get in or out.

That fast, Minna paused. In her
thickly German accented English, she spoke. “This is the front of the house.”
It was a good clear shot. He quickly analyzed what he could see of the
structure. There were a lot of windows, they would have to be careful about
moving about in the yard because of it. Windows meant exposure if anyone in the
house happened to look outside and see them. Or shoot at them. It looked like a
double door for an entrance. That could come in handy if the group had to exit
quickly. More bodies could fit through two doors instead of one. Gage scanned
what he could see of the two level structure and wondered, was there more that
they couldn’t see?

“Is there a basement?” He asked
Minna.

She nodded. “Yes. It runs almost the
entire length of the house, so it is very big.”

That interested Gage. A mansion
that size, the basement alone could probably house a small army of wolves in
case of an emergency. They probably had their hostage down there
too
.“
So
is that where they’re holding
Alpha Corvus?”

“No.” Minna pointed to the second
floor of the house on the screen. “I last saw him up here, in a room on the
backside of the house. Well, maybe I shouldn’t call it a room. They put a cot
in a large walk in closet, and that became the Alpha’s makeshift prison.”

“Why the closet?” Jenna asked. “Why
not lock him down in the basement?”

Minna shrugged her shoulders.
“That’s a good question. I get the impression that there’s something down in
the basement that they don’t want most of the Pack to stumble upon. Not that
most of us spent our time down there anyways. That the enforcers quarters. You
don’t go down there unless you’re one of Beta Lars enforcers for the Pack or
someone who’s managed to get in good with them. I avoided anything about the
basement.”

The tone of her voice had been
fearful. Whatever went on down in that basement had the submissive wolf scared.
“Why?” Gage asked. He needed clarification of the possible dangers. They
couldn’t walk into this situation completely blind. Whatever information they
could get from her now could be the difference between life
or
death later.

Minna shuddered subtly, before
going a little pale in the face. Licking her bottom lip in nervousness, she
finally croaked out, “The men are allowed to do whatever they want down there.
Think about what that could mean for a submissive wolf like me. A basement full
of dominant male wolves with little to no scruples… I’d be lucky to get out
alive, nonetheless intact.”

Damn. The more Gage heard about
this Pack, the less he liked them. It didn’t take much more than the stiffening
of his mate’s back as she still sat beside him for Gage to know that
MInna’s
insinuation was not lost on Elena. The Corvus males
had obviously been given free reign by Lars to whatever the fuck they wanted to
do. A small, weak wolf like Minna would never survive that kind of abuse.

That scenario also explained a lot
to Gage about why the members of the Pack were letting the Alpha be held in
such a dishonorable manner. When the Beta was giving you everything you wanted,
and letting you do whatever you want, why change that? But this information led
them to a new problem.

“Minna,” Gage murmured gently. “Do
you think there are women trapped down in the basement? Being held against
their will?”

She shook her head. “Most of the
weaker women who couldn’t stand that kind of behavior silently slipped off
after the Alpha was locked up.”

Jenna softly asked. “Most? What
happened to the other women then?”

“They disappeared.”
Minna’s
voice cracked on the last word. Tears spilled over
her eyelashes and then a small whine escaped her. “I was the last of the women
who didn’t like that kind of attention from the men. The remaining women who
chose to stay, let’s just say that they enjoy certain kinds of rough or violent
tendencies. And some of the men do prefer it when their partners are willing.”

Gage closed his eyes against the
unwelcome visualizations of what had probably been going on in the Corvus Pack
for such a long period of time. The women whom had ‘disappeared’, yeah, they
were dead. The women who had escaped, they were the lucky ones. But that made
him wonder, “Why did you stay Minna? Why didn’t you leave with the other
women?”

She wiped a hand across her face to
dry her tears. “I couldn’t leave him you see. Although I respect Alpha McPhee
for giving me a place to stay, and a new Pack that welcomes me, Alpha Corvus is
my master. He saved my life when I was too young to be living on the streets to
survive. Then he let me go off to a nursing school away from the Pack and he
paid for it. He has helped me when I could not help myself. For that, he has my
undying loyalty. I will always follow him, even if it is into death itself.”

And with that honest, somber
statement, the picture of Minna became a bit clearer for Gage. He’d guessed for
so long that her interest in Corvus had been a love interest, and in a way he
had been right. It was love, just not the romantic kind he had assumed. Minna
loved Corvus as a child loved a father. As a victim loved their rescuer. With a
pure innocent loyalty that could never be killed. The kind of loyalty a sick,
twisted wolf like Lars would kill for.

Minna sniffled as if she might cry
any second. “I finished nursing school about a year and a half ago and came
home to my Pack. A few months after that is when Lars took over. I don’t know
what the Beta originally gave Alpha Corvus to incapacitate him, but the Alpha
had a bad reaction to whatever it was. It almost killed him. Lars had me
dragged out of my bed in the middle of the night and told me that if the Alpha
died, I died with him. After that Lars ordered me to keep Alpha Corvus alive
and in a coma with the same stipulation, if the Alpha died, I was dead too. The
fact that I was the only pack member with medical knowledge is what saved me
from being dragged to that basement. Lars told all of his enforcers that I
wasn’t to be touched.”

Minna dragged in a ragged breath.
“I kept Alpha Corvus alive those six months I was with him, but he was starting
to deteriorate and I couldn’t figure out why. I’m worried about what state
he’ll be in now since I haven’t been there for the past three months to take
care of him.”

The tone of the plane was somber
now. He imagined that every man on that plane was now filled with the same
unbridled fury that he was feeling himself. Who knew what his mate and Jenna
were feeling. Sympathy. Pity. A need for vengeance for the small, sensitive
blond wolf. But they didn’t have time to dwell on what hells Minna had lived
through, or the women who were now buried and dead somewhere. They had a
mission to plan, an Alpha to rescue, and a bunch of depraved, shameless wolves
that Gage planned to rip apart with his own two hands.

Pack Master Davies must have been
thinking along the same lines he was, because he thanked Minna for what she
told them and asked her if she could tell them anymore. Minna pushed the play
button and for the next hour the group stopped, started and rewound the
surveillance video a dozen times. Asking Minna questions. Pointing out possible
entrances and exits to the building. Plotting the best way for the lot of them
to go in and wipe out a bunch of bastards who deserved anything but an easy
death.