Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)(72)

Tamsin slid her hand into his, and Angus squeezed it.

“We should check,” he said after a time. “See if it’s still there. If not, we go on and hope Shifter Bureau forgets about it. They will, in time, if nothing is ever found.”

“And if all the stuff is still there?” Tamsin asked.

Angus looked grim. “We destroy it.”

Tamsin raised her brows. “How? Blow it up? Because, sure, no one will notice that.”

“I don’t know how.” Angus gave her an impatient look. “Break down the pieces, hide them, bury them. I don’t know. How do humans get rid of excess weapons?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I’d say melt them, but same problem. How do you melt explosives? I don’t know anything about stuff like that. I’d kill myself trying.”

“You’re going nowhere near it,” Angus said firmly. “You point the way, and I do the rest.”

Tamsin jerked her hand from his. “Nothing doing. I’m not going to lead you to a bunker and let you go try to disarm grenades. I’d like my mate to be in one piece, thank you very much. I think Ciaran would agree.”

Angus didn’t argue. He only stood still, looking unhappy. “We’ll have to have help.”

Tamsin shook her head until her hair danced. “That means telling people. Who are you going to trust? Dylan?”

“No. Not Dylan. Or his sons—they’d feel obligated to report to their father, or he’d pry it out of them somehow. But I know a lot of Shifters. Let me think about who we can bring in.”

“What about Reg? Your friend who gave you his SUV without question?”

“Mmm. I’d say yes, if he wasn’t second to Spence. Spence might get such a secret out of him, and I don’t trust Spence. He likes his power. But there are others. Ben.”

“He’s not Shifter.”

“Exactly. He’s ancient, smart, and as far as I know doesn’t crave power. He’s a place to start.”

Tamsin relaxed. She’d sensed good things about Ben, but ambiguous things as well. “How are you going to get hold of him?”

“I was thinking of using my phone.”

“Which might be tapped. Or traced.”

Angus shook his head. “It’s old, and I went through it when I got it and made sure there were no trackers, bugs, or any kind of doodad on it.”

“But phone records are searchable. Shifter Bureau is probably monitoring yours by now.”

Tamsin hadn’t seen Angus use his phone since they’d fled the motel and Dylan. Now he pulled it from his pocket, looked at it, and then tucked it away again. “I’ll think of something.”

Tamsin twined her fingers through his once more and grew alarmed at how much heat that simple act sped through her body. “Sorry to dump my baggage on you.”

Angus shrugged. “Everyone has baggage. It’s just a matter of what kind and how heavy it is.”

Tamsin leaned into him. “How did I get so lucky to be hunted and captured by a guy like you?”

“Because of your baggage.” Angus slid his arm around her. “Haider sent me after you for it.”

“Haider was stupid. He should have known you were kind and sweet and mushy inside.”

Angus made a face, very much like Ciaran did when an adult tried to make him eat vegetables. “Yuck. What happened to big bad wolf?”

“Oh, he’s in there.” Tamsin rubbed Angus’s chest, then leaned forward and kissed it. “Very much so.”

A growl confirmed it. Angus pulled her close and tilted her face to his for a long, commanding kiss.

Tamsin had learned how to kiss him by now, the way their mouths fit together, how the burn of his whiskers felt on her skin, how he liked to lick across her tongue.

The field around them rolled away to meet the sky, green and blue to the line of the horizon. The fairgrounds were behind them, the dusty earth Angus took her down to warmed by the sun.

It was a long time before they returned to the carnival, their clothes wrinkled and dirt-streaked from being turned into makeshift blankets on the ground. Tamsin’s hair was studded with dried bits of grass, and Angus’s hands were scraped raw.

When Dante spied them, he laughed uproariously, as though he had never seen anything so funny. Smart-ass bear.

That night Tamsin drowsed with Angus, the lights of the carnival glowing on the curtains above the bed. She wished they could stay in this bubble of calm forever, ignoring the outside world and its problems. The arsenal probably didn’t exist anymore. They’d go to Shreveport, look, find nothing, and move on with their lives.

Angus had already contacted Ben, he’d told her as they wound down from making love, and things were in motion. Tamsin asked him how, if he didn’t use his cell phone—had he found a ley line to connect to the sentient house outside New Orleans? She’d toyed with the idea of using Psychic Lorraine’s crystal ball, but Tamsin wouldn’t know how to tap a ley line, and she’d have to trust Lorraine, a plump, middle-aged woman who was a pretty good psychic, with the private message.

Angus had said, “I went into town and found a phone booth with a working phone still in it,” and then dropped off to sleep.

She’d have to wait for him to wake up to tell her what he and Ben decided, which could be a while. Angus’s snores filled the trailer, sonorous and slow.