Cry Wolf (Wolves of Angels Rest #7)(32)
“I don’t either,” Betsy said instantly. “That’s why I called you. I know you need to focus, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Yes.” His heart thudded uneasily. “When we get over the hill, we’re going to lose our signal. Can you—?”
“I’ll see if I can track down her management company.”
“Call the casino where she played last. You have the contact for the financials we procured? He might be able to help. Find her.”
The line went dead.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“Told you she was trouble,” Malachi said from the front seat.
“Not now,” Diesel snarled.
“Exactly,” Mal growled back. “We’re about to go into the deep end, and we need your mind on the op.”
“It is,” Diesel said. But he felt the weight of LT’s stare in the rearview mirror.
Willow was safely away. He had to believe that. There were shifters who needed him too badly for him to f*ck up now.
He slammed his fist into the roof of the SUV, denting the metal.
Mal huffed, and LT put his eyes on the road.
They left the SUV on the far side of the hill and backed the ATV down from the hitched trailer. They’d needed extra hours to cross the rough, winding, unmarked roads that paralleled the highway, and now they were on the far side of the original property markers for the old base. The rest of their ragtag team was closing in from other directions.
They’d have the Kingdom Guard surrounded.
Whether it would be enough…
When two werewolves had inadvertently found a young bear shifter who reported his brother had been taken by the Guard, they’d gotten away apparently unnoticed despite all being rank amateurs in the subtlety department. Which meant the Guard outpost didn’t have the highest security. But they were well-equipped enough to keep shifters captive—including one bear—so they had their tricks.
Hopefully nothing a rocket launcher couldn’t fix.
Even if their trio was spotted, this time of year the back roads were crawling with hunters in trucks and four-wheelers. This area wasn’t exactly prime hunting ground—too exposed—but with any luck if they were seen they’d just be pegged as really bad hunters.
The Guard would learn the error of their ways soon enough.
Mal drove the ATV with LT in the seat beside him while Diesel perched backward on the platform behind. A couple soft rifle cases disguised the outline of the rocket launcher mounted to the roll bar. If anyone saw the rocket launcher—hey, they were really, really bad hunters. The plan called for Mal to stay with the ATV, sights trained on the compound, while LT in his upright shape and Diesel as wolf joined Kane and select volunteers in infiltrating and attacking the depot.
They had to free any prisoners and destroy everything they found, hopefully hamstringing the Kingdom Guard research in weaponizing werewolves and other shifters.
Success hinged on the theory that because the Guard seemed to exist as much in secret as the shifters they hunted, they wouldn’t have the resources or the backups to relaunch their heinous program, at least no time soon.
One of the stickiest points of debate at the Villalobos house had been whether to authorize lethal force in their attack. Kane had listened to arguments on both sides. The two strongest points in favor of killing: it was easier and safer for the shifters to kill than to incapacitate, and it was more permanent for the Kingdom Guard bastards to die. But Kane decided against fatalities, except as a last resort.
“This is a last resort,” said Zane who was the only shifter they knew to escape the Kingdom Guard.
Diesel figured Zane had the right to be unforgiving. He’d lost everything to the Kingdom Guard—control of his wolf, his memories, his mate. He’d even had to be renamed by the Villalobos pack. Despite the torture and brainwashing he’d endured under the orders of the Guard’s mad scientist, Professor Kurtz, Zane had insisted on leading the strike team into the main building. Even if his recovered memories were still partly hazed from the drugs used to control him, he was the only one of them who’d ever been inside.
Zane, his alpha namesake Kane, and the Angels Rest roadhouse bartender Gypsy—who was allegedly a bad-ass with a sawed-off shotgun—would be first in when darkness fell. LT and Diesel would be following right behind. Two more teams were in position to move quickly, on two feet and four. And Thunder, their literal wingman, was prepared to rain unholy fire down upon the compound once the prisoners were rescued and Malachi blew it open.
Kane’s call for no fatalities among the Guard was probably unrealistic, although Diesel understood the urge not to escalate the confrontations.
But the Guard had shown they weren’t interested in mercy, so none could be shown to them.
Clouds had been thickening through the day, and now the late afternoon light was fading. The western horizon still gleamed a sullen pewter, but the autumn night was darkening the eastern sky.
Staying below the crest of the hill, Malachi maneuvered the ATV into position. When full dark came, he’d be able to top the last few feet and sight the compound. With the rocket launcher mounted, he could drive and fire and, if necessary, retrieve any wounded shifters.
The three of them belly-crawled to the edge of an outcropping to scan the plain below.
“The blue van they used to kidnap Zane is there,” LT noted. “Still marked Omega Pool Service.”