Boarlander Silverback (Boarlander Bears #3)(56)

Audrey was shaking her head, her eyes rimmed with tears, swallowing over and over like she was trying not to retch.

Hissing at the pain in her foot, Alison scrambled down the stairs, leaning heavily on the railing. “Do you want to do something big instead?”

Emerson turned, the wind whipping her black curls. She dragged her wide-eyed attention down Alison’s body like she hadn’t seen her before now. Her clothes were singed, and her face probably had a dozen cuts from the glass. “Ally, you look awful.”

Alison snorted. “Thank you. So…what do you say?”

“To what?”

“Do you want to do something big? Something that will make a difference for our people.” Our people. Alison would do anything for them.

“What did you have in mind?” Audrey asked.

“An interview. You can ask me questions about tonight.” Alison jerked her chin toward the smoke. “IESA thinks I’m dead. I can blow their operation wide open with what I know.”

“But Ally,” Emerson said, her cheeks pale in the dim evening light. “If they think you’re dead, you could escape. Go underground, change your appearance. Live. You can’t go on television. You’re the Ghost.”

Alison stared at the billowing black that was polluting the sky. Something irreplaceable was being taken from these people, and the world should see what was really happening. They should know why the shifters were having their rights stripped, why she’d been sent here. She had never been a peacekeeper as she’d thought. She’d been a war machine.

The country had revolted about IESA when Cora Keller had exposed them the first time, proof that there was more good than bad in this world. They would rally again if they had the facts. If they knew IESA was rebuilding.

Here was where Alison was going to make her stand. These people deserved to stop taking blows at the whim of a scared government.

She would stop running for Kirk. For the people here. For herself.

With fire in her soul, Alison locked eyes on Emerson and murmured, “I’m not a ghost anymore.”





Chapter Twenty-Two


Today had been the most hellish day of his life, and that was saying something. Kirk tossed an exhausted glance to the back seat where Bash was stretched out and dozing in and out with his face against the window. He was covered in soot, just like Mason and Clinton, who sat in the bed of Harrison’s truck, staring off into the woods with haunted looks in their eyes.

“You want to talk about it?” Harrison asked in a hoarse voice. Yelling orders and breathing thick smoke all night did that.

“Talk about what?”

“About what happened to Ally.”

Kirk winced against the vision of her being choked by that * partner of hers. He’d barely resisted the urge to rip that f*cker limb from limb. “Won’t help.”

Bash stirred and gripped Kirk’s shoulder too rough. “Talking always helps. Harrison and me both learned that.”

Kirk sighed an irritated sound and said, “Fine. She called me when I was up on the landing. You saw that.”

“Saw you blur out of there in Clinton’s new truck,” Harrison muttered. “I thought he was going to bleed us all he was so pissed. And you screamed for us to call Damon, but I didn’t know what to tell him. I just knew Ally was in trouble.”

“I could hear her,” Kirk whispered, shaking his head just to get a grip on the pain in his middle the memory caused. “I had my phone sitting on the seat, and I could hear her fighting for her life, trying to give me hints about what was happening, and I thought I wasn’t going to get to her in time.” He ripped his attention away from the road illuminated in soft, early dawn light. “I thought I was going to lose her. And she fought, Harrison. She was still fighting when I got to her.”

“You got yourself a badass mate,” Bash murmured. “That Ally girl, she’s a fighter.”

Kirk swallowed hard and nodded. “Brackeen had turned the gas on in the house, and someone had dumped fire accelerant in a straight line over the cabins, like they were trying to make it look like a scorch mark from dragon’s fire. It was all a setup, and Ally was the one supposed to take the fall.” Kirk clenched his hands and closed his eyes tightly against the urge to Change and rip up the forest just to quell the red rage inside of him. “Finn had an IESA kill switch for her, and when she fought that off, they were gonna burn her alive, Harrison. Imagine how you would feel if someone tried to do that to Audrey.” He gave Bash a glance over his shoulder. “Imagine if they tried to do it to Emerson and your baby. You are my crew. Ally is my family group. I want to kill all those mother f*ckers.”

Harrison’s cell phone rang. He answered it and put it on speaker phone as he pulled under the Boarland Mobile Park sign. “Cora, you’re on speaker.”

“Hey boys.”

“Hey Cora,” they all said in unison, even Clinton and Mason in the back. Shifter hearing didn’t suck.

“Are you guys around a television?”

“About to be,” Harrison said. “Why?”

“Because Kirk’s mate has a massive set of lady balls, and she’s about to shake up the damned world.”

Kirk frowned and leaned forward. “What do you mean?”