In the Company of Wolves (SWAT, #3)(69)

Becker slammed on the brakes, screeching to a loud, tire-squawking stop. He was out of the car before it stopped rocking. Jumping the guardrail, he ran to the other SUV. He wanted nothing more than to kill every last son of a bitch in there, but he controlled his rage. There might be more going on than just an attack on the SWAT officer who had taken down their crime family. If there was, he needed to know about it.

The Albanian who’d been driving was already dead, but the other one had gotten out and was dragging himself toward the tree line a good twenty feet away. When he realized Becker was following him, he rolled over onto his back and took a shot at him. Becker avoided the gunfire, then lunged forward and ripped the gun out of the man’s hands.

Becker grabbed the Albanian’s shirt and yanked him off the ground with a snarl. “I’m guessing Kostandin sent you, so you have one chance to tell me where he is.”

The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Kostandin had us watching the SWAT compound, waiting for you to come back. He told us to follow and kill you, no matter what we had to do. The rest of us wanted to get the hell out of Dallas, but Kos said we had things to take care of before we left.”

“That’s not what I asked you.” Becker bared his fangs, making sure the Albanian got a good look at them. “Where the f*ck is he?”

“I don’t know!” The guy swallowed hard. “He and Liam said they were going to some farm near here, that he was going to kill every one of those werewolves who betrayed them. That’s all I know. Please don’t kill me!”

Becker dropped the Albanian to the ground with a growl. As much as he hated to let the guy go, Becker wasn’t a cold-blooded killer, and he didn’t have time to mess with him.

He jumped over the guardrail and ran to the Escalade with the shattered front window. He knocked the remaining pieces of glass out of his way before climbing in and speeding toward the Stones’ house.

Digging his phone out of his pocket with one hand, he hit the speed dial for Gage. As the phone rang, Becker’s gut clenched so tightly he almost couldn’t breathe. He floored the gas pedal, but he still couldn’t make the Escalade go fast enough. Something told him that he wasn’t going to get there in time.

*

Jayna fell to her knees beside Megan, slapping her hand over the bullet hole in her friend’s chest, trying to stop the blood from pouring out. But it was no use. It just kept flowing out between Jayna’s fingers.

It had all happened so fast. One moment, Liam had been pointing a handgun at Jayna, and the next, Megan had been flying in front of her as the gun went off. She was breathing and her heart was beating, but her eyes were closed and she was getting paler by the second. Moe, Chris, and Joseph were at her side in seconds, begging Megan not to die, while Ethan and Kathryn were stunned into silence as they took in the gun-wielding men and the girl lying on the floor of their kitchen slowly bleeding to death.

Jayna glared at Liam. It was hard to see him clearly through the tears in her eyes, but he clearly didn’t even care that he’d just shot a girl who had been like family to him.

“What the hell have you done?” she screamed.

His lips curled in a sneer. “Her fault for getting in the way. If she’d minded her own business and let me deal with you, I might have let her live. The guys too, even though they betrayed me just like you did.”

“Betrayed you?” Jayna wiped the tears from her face with her free hand. “They never betrayed you, and neither did I. You’re the one who sold your pack out to these pieces of crap.” She motioned with her chin toward Kos, who was regarding them with amusement in his hard eyes. “We told you we didn’t want to be part of this.”

“You don’t get to decide what you want to be part of!” Liam shouted. He took a step toward her, eyes flaring as he raised his pistol to point it at her head. “I was trying to give us a better life, something you would have realized if you and your cop boyfriend hadn’t been so busy trying to take over my pack.”

Jayna’s heart began to race. Liam was about to kill her and there wasn’t anything she could do about it—not without taking her hand off the wound in Megan’s chest. And she wasn’t going to do that.

So she knelt there beside the girl who was like a sister to her as Liam’s face twisted into an animal snarl. Ethan and Kathryn were behind him, so they couldn’t see the creature he’d become, but they must have heard the growls and had to know that something bizarre was happening.

“You always thought you were better than me, always looking down your snout at me when I asked you and the others to do the things that were necessary for us to survive,” Liam sneered. “And then, when we get here, when we finally have a chance to be part of something that would let us stop scratching in the dirt for pennies and nickels, you decide you know better what the pack needs. You decide to betray me with that f*cking cop! Well, his ass is dead now, and yours is about to be.”

Jayna’s heart thudded to a stop. Liam was lying. Eric couldn’t be dead. She was so busy convincing herself of that, she didn’t realize Liam had closed the distance between them and put the barrel of the gun against her forehead.

She held her breath, bracing for the bullet that would take her life, when someone shoved Liam aside. She blinked, staring up at Moe standing in front of her and Megan. Joseph quickly moved to stand at Moe’s right, while Chris took up position on Moe’s left. Jayna didn’t have to see the guys’ faces to know that they’d shifted. The look of shock on Ethan’s and Kathryn’s faces told her that. Not that it mattered. The Stones weren’t going to make it out of there to tell anyone what they’d seen.