Wolf Born (17 page)

“It’s not important,” Tom snapped in a tone that made it clear he was furious one of the others had used his name.

“Why of course it is,” Kate drawled. “I’d love to get to know you boys better.”

“Huh? You had a change of heart after you tried to scratch our eyes out?” Tom turned to stare at her from his place behind the wheel.

“Hey, honey. I worked as a surrogate for years. You know how we are. We need to get laid—often and regularly. It’s why we pick that line of work. You’re all pretty good looking specimens. But I like to know men’s names before I fuck them.”

Tom’s face reddened; he turned back around. Despite his bold talk in her apartment, Audrey was certain he hadn’t had much experience with women. “Well,” he mumbled, “you already know mine.”

“She’s working us,” back seat blond spat. “This one’s a hot mamma. We know all about her.”

Kate batted her eyes at him. She shimmied across the seat and laid a hand over his crotch. “Want to try me, big guy. Oh, Audrey. This one’s hung. Maybe we could share him.”

Audrey played along. “Sounds like a plan.” She scooted closer. “Let me feel, too.”

Back seat blond turned beet red. He slapped Kate’s hand away. “I like my sex private,” he growled.

“Well,” Kate’s golden gaze bored into his dark eyes. “Looks like you’ll know right where to find me.”

They drove for a long time. Audrey recognized the expressway and understood they were heading for the Bay Area. She wondered why their captors hadn’t blindfolded them. And then she figured it out. These guys were rank amateurs. They didn’t do this sort of thing often. In fact, maybe they’d never done anything like it before.

“Hey.”
She tried mind speech with Kate.

The other woman sidled close, jabbed her, and shook her head almost imperceptibly. A conversation with Max roared to life in Audrey’s head. The three men in the car had to be shifters; it made sense because that was who was after him. Kate somehow knew it; that was why she’d vetoed telepathic speech. The men would be able to hear them, at least as long as they were all together in this car.

Audrey’s head fell back against the softly padded seats. She couldn’t do anything right now. The car’s doors were locked when it was in motion.
I just have to bide my time. We’ll find a way out of this.
She considered talking with her wolf, but if the men could “hear” a conversation with Kate, maybe they could hear one with the wolf, too.
Christ, but I wish I knew more about being a shifter. I don’t know squat. Not even enough to tell if that’s what our captors are.

She reached for Kate’s hand where it sat between their bodies and squeezed it. The answering pressure from Kate heartened her. It was selfish, but Audrey was glad the other woman was there. Being alone with these men, shifters who would stop at nothing to bring Max down, would have paralyzed her.

Guess that old saying about strength in numbers is truer than I ever could have guessed.

Max paced up and down the great room in his mansion. Devon did the same. When Audrey and Kate failed to return to the office and didn’t answer pages on their wrist computers, Max had texted Johannes, Ryan, and Devon. The men had raced to Max’s office; they hadn’t found any clues at the Capitol Rotunda snooping around the cancelled news conference. Because Max and Devon were wild with worry and fear for their mates, the other two men had hustled them down the elevator and driven to Max’s. That was an hour ago.

Ryan and Johannes worked the vid feed with a fury, trying to nail down clues. Max had gone from wolf to human so many times, he’d lost track of what he was now. He opened his mouth to howl; a guttural shriek filled the air. Hands shook his shoulders.

“Goddammit. Stand still,” Johannes shouted. “We need to talk with you. Devon, too.”

“I’m going to kill those bastards who nabbed Kate.” Devon slammed a ham-sized fist into a delicate side table. It crumpled beneath the assault. “Shit! Sorry. I’ll replace it.”

“You can’t,” Max snapped. “It was built in the sixteen hundreds. It doesn’t matter. What does is finding out who took the women. And where they are.” He glanced at the scraps that had been his clothes. “I’m going to find a robe. Want one?” he asked Devon.

“I don’t care. I suppose I’ll need clothes before we leave here.” His, too, lay in a shredded mess on the Oriental rug. He’d shifted nearly as many times as Max, ripping out a line of stitches from a recent injury sustained fighting his way out of the Berkeley Police Station with the rest of the tracker task force. All of them had rebelled against their bosses, going rogue. The ones who’d been turned into full-blown shifters by the serum were furious the brass held their new status against them. After all, they’d had to accept the IV infusions or get fired. The few human members of the task force stood behind the shifters in a show of solidarity.

“Mine should fit,” Johannes said, hazel eyes pinched with compassion. “Do you want them now or later?”

“Now. Once I know whatever you found out, I’m out of here. Goddamn motherfucking sonofabitch.” He slammed his forehead with the heel of one hand. “I can’t believe they’ve got my Kate.”

“Someone’s going to pay,” Max growled. “If they’ve harmed so much as one of Audrey’s hairs, they’re dead meat.”

“Let’s all shift. We can run as a pack and track them down,”
Max’s wolf snarled.

“We need to find out where they are, first,”
Max explained.
“If they’re a long way from here, we’ll need to drive—or fly.”

“I listened in,” Devon said unapologetically. “My mountain cat said the same thing. Do you have a hovercraft big enough for all four of us?”

Max nodded. His gaze raked over Johannes and Ryan. Fury burned a hole inside his chest. “Did you find them?”

“We think so. Go get something on.”

Max raced up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He trusted Johannes would find something for Devon—and patch up his trashed stitches. Feeling crazed, head about to explode from tension, Max pulled on black sweat pants, a black turtleneck, and a black jacket. He found black gloves and a black watch cap to hide his fair hair. Ryan had been a makeup artist before the shit had hit the fan. He could black out their faces. He never went anywhere without his kit.

In less than five minutes, Max strode back into the front room. Johannes was dressing Devon’s side with fresh gauze squares. Though his torso was bare, he had on black jeans. The expression on his face broke Max’s heart. He knew how much Kate meant to the Native American man because he was just as frantic about Audrey.

“Report,” he barked at Ryan. “Do that grease paint thing on my face while you’re talking.”

A corner of Ryan’s mouth twisted. “Somehow, I anticipated you’d want to take advantage of my other skill set.” He picked up clear vinyl case from the floor, set it on a chair, and opened it, withdrawing brushes and small pots.

“Talk.”

“Damn straight,” Devon cut in.

“We hacked into their network,” Johannes said, straightening from his work on Devon’s side. “It was easy, and the kidnapping is all over it. The shifter group that took Audrey and Kate has their base of operations in Tiburon.”

“Is that where they’ve taken Kate?” Devon interrupted. He tugged a dark gray sweater over his head and buckled his shoulder holster into place.

“We’re not sure—” Ryan began.

“What do you mean you’re not sure? What the fuck good is that going to do?” Max shouted. He dropped into a chair and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “I’m sorry. I’ll shut up.”

“Their proposed destination was not on the vid feed,” Johannes clarified.

“We think they’d be stupid to bring the women to their headquarters,” Ryan hurried on.

“Yes,” Johannes said. “We think they’re taking them to the Bay Area somewhere but probably not into their operations center.”

“Is there a way to track them?” Max asked, fighting for some level of rational thought.

“We don’t know.” Ryan’s voice was flat. He smeared makeup on Max’s face. “Because we need to leave this house to try.”

“Yes,” Devon leapt to his feet. “We’ll start with Audrey’s place. It was where the women were going.”

“We could have done that an hour ago if the two of you hadn’t been so rabid,” Johannes muttered. “Put some of that crap on my face, Ryan.”

“Don’t know that I need it,” Devon said. “My skin’s pretty dark.”

Ryan glanced his way. “You do. It only takes a second.”

“I’ll get us some firepower.” Max loped to the far side of the room and clicked the display of his wrist computer. A section of wall slid aside. He grabbed a laser pistol for himself and another for Johannes. Max half turned. “Ryan?”

The shifter snorted. “You’re kidding. I’ve got my own. What kind of head of security would I be if I had to borrow a gun?”

Max pushed a recessed button, and the wall moved back into place.

“Let’s take the hovercraft to Audrey’s,” Devon suggested. “We can leave from there with whatever we find.”

Max shook his head. “Uh-uh. There’s still the rule about no hovercraft within the city limits.”

“But you’re the governor,” Devon protested. “That gives you privileges.”

Max squeezed his eyes shut. They felt hot and gritty. He opened them and looked from one man to the next. “Yes, it gives me privileges. I also do not want our whereabouts broadcasted. I don’t want anyone following us or wondering what the fuck we’re doing.”

“All right.” Devon balled his hands into fists. “What do you propose?”

“We’ll take one of the cars to Audrey’s and find out what we can. I’ll collect my car. It has to be there.”

“No it doesn’t,” Ryan broke in. “The kidnappers might have shanghaied it.”

“I don’t think so,” Max said. “We probably won’t be that lucky. Taking my car would have been incredibly short-sighted. It has a tracking device so the cops always know where it is.”

“Go on.” Devon pounded a fist into his open palm and shifted from foot to foot. The need to get moving poured out of him.

“We’ll return here. By then it will be dark. We’ll leave without filing a flight plan and without electronics so it will be harder to track us.”

“I hope to God we have a solid destination by then.” Johannes’ voice was so low, it took Max’s lupine senses to hear him.

You and me both.
“Come on,” Max said. “Let’s roll.”

* * * *

Audrey sat on a chilly concrete floor in what looked like a bunker left over from times when Americans were scared shitless the Russians were going to bomb them. The eight by ten windowless room was dimly lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. A bucket sat in one corner: her toilet. Other than the bucket, the room was empty. She had no idea where the men had taken Kate.

She scanned the small space again, then got to her feet and walked the length of each wall, hunting for cameras or any electronic surveillance equipment. She wanted to try her wrist computer—but not if someone was watching her. Finally, she huddled in a corner. With her body as a barrier, she dragged the computer out of its pocket, powered it up, and glanced at the signal strength. Zero bars.

I really must be underground. A long way underground.

She hung her head and gritted her teeth together to manage crushing disappointment. She’d been so hopeful. A tear slid down one cheek. She secreted the computer back in its place in her pants and continued her circuit of the room. If anyone were watching, perhaps they wouldn’t think anything of her stint in the corner. After all, she hadn’t been there very long.

A faint scratching came from behind her. Audrey cocked her head and dialed in her lupine senses to listen.
At least I can do that much with my neophyte shifter skills.
Yes, she hadn’t imagined it. There it was again. She moved to where the sound was loudest and sat on the floor so she could make a scratching noise back.

Soon, a pattern emerged. Eleven scratches, a pause, one scratch, a pause…

Kate
. It was Kate spelling out things with scratches. Audrey scratched
I understand
back. It took forever to communicate, but both women hadn’t been harmed—not yet anyway.

“Who cares how long it takes,” Audrey mumbled. “We’ve got nothing but time to kill anyway.” The back and forth messaging took her mind off the desperate nature of her situation. No one knew their location. They were at the mercy of an insane group of shifters who wanted Max dead and the shifter underground disbanded.

She managed to ask Kate about talking to her wolf. Kate scratched back,
don’t
. They were in the middle of a conversation about escape ideas when her door clicked open. Tom stood there. “Get up. You’re coming with me.”

Audrey scrambled to her feet. Terror thickened her throat and burned in her stomach. What were they going to do to her? Would they torture her? “I-I don’t know anything,” she stammered.

“Get moving. I’ll drag you if I have to.”

Maybe he’ll take me higher where I can use the computer.
Audrey hung onto that thought. Hope was all she had. Without it, she’d sink into a writhing mass of hysterical nerves. They walked to the end of a hallway lined with the same concrete blocks that lined her cell. Tom passed his hand over an electronic plate; a door whirred open, and she stepped into an elevator that whisked them upward.

“How deep were we?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

“Doesn’t matter. We ask the questions around here.”

She raised her chin. “Too bad. My next one was where are you taking me?”

He didn’t answer. She tried another gambit. Maybe if she could shock him, or piss him off, he’d spill something important she could use to escape. “I know you’re a shifter.”

He rounded on her, dark eyes on fire. “You damn betcha. A real one. Not some phony whore like you. Fucking serum. Made a whole bunch of you into what you should never have been.”

Anger kindled. It felt good and gave her courage. “Really? Your priorities are skewed. You need every single one of us to throw off the government’s yoke. I’d think you’d be grateful. I took a hell of a chance with the black market. I could have poisoned myself.”