A Bleacke Wind (Bleacke Shifters Book 3) (31 page)

All around them he heard the howls of wolves, mostly in the distance. The eerie sound sent gooseflesh creeping all over his body.

If he pulled back and his men were left waiting for him at the planned meeting point, what would that say about him as a leader?

If they even made it out again.

He had no way of contacting them.

Or what if they hadn’t even made it in?

Now he had men running around in rapidly deteriorating weather, men who weren’t even dressed for it.

I’m an idiot.

He wanted vengeance. His soul screamed for it, especially when he remembered his brother dying in his arms, his mother’s grief-stricken screams before she collapsed.

His promise to her to make this right.

But he couldn’t do anything if he and his men were all dead.

He ran a hand through his hair and leaned in. “Shut the thing off.”

Guillermo did.

Silence fell, nothing but the wind, birds, insects.

No vehicles, no people.

Nothing.

Then, in the distance, the howl of a wolf skipped across the landscape, swirling around him and making him shiver in a way the cold wind hadn’t.

Manuel got back into the car and closed the door, locking it. “Turn around.” He consulted his tablet. “We need to find where we went wrong.”

It wasn’t a capitulation, but at least it was one way to buy him a little time before declaring a full retreat.

* * * *

Figures that the first time I get to see snow I can’t stop to enjoy it. Not even
dressed
to enjoy it.

Light flurries that probably wouldn’t stick, but it made a bad situation even more miserable. Especially if it turned into a misting rain like Ken suspected it might. His fingers felt numb but he refused to let go of the tire iron in his hand. It was his only weapon, the only thing he had to protect Nami and himself with.

Nami was doing her best to limp along, but her ankle was definitely messed up. Ken hoped it was only a really bad sprain and not broken, but they couldn’t stop even though their progress had slowed to almost a literal crawl as she did her best not to cry out with pain at every step.

And holy
crap
, was it cold. He could see his breath, and he and Nami both were shivering. He felt badly for her. In her skirt and casual flats, she wasn’t exactly dressed for a cross-country hike in rugged, mountainous terrain. At least he was in jeans and sneakers.

The wolf had returned, too. In the waning light, Ken caught glimpses of it tracking them every time he looked back. And he
felt
its presence. It was making less of an effort to keep itself hidden now that Ken had spotted it.

“How much longer are we gonna run?” Nami weakly asked.

“We
have
to keep moving,” Ken said. “For as long as we can.”

“But how do you know where we’re going?”

He glanced up at the darkening sky. “Instinct. We’re heading south. When I’m sure it’s safe, we’ll make our way downhill into the valley and follow the river Once we start following it, we’ll keep following it. It’ll eventually lead us to a road, a bridge, something.”

“But
how
do you know that?”

“I just do. It runs to the south. And we’ll need water again.”

She stopped, slumping against a tree. “I need to rest. Cain’t we stop for a while?”

He stood in front of her, scanning the woods behind them. “Nami,” he said, dropping his voice. “We
have
to keep moving. We can’t stop yet.”

She sounded hopeless. “If we keep moving, how will our people find us? Isn’t that what they always say when you get lost, to stay put?”

“
Our
people
will
find us,” he insisted. “Wolves, remember? There were more cartel guys with those ones who came after us. The rest of them probably went on into the compound. We have to trust that Dewi and Beck and the others can and will track us once they take care of the threat and realize we’re missing. Those guys don’t know we’re wolf mates. They’re humans and probably can’t track worth shit. We
have
to keep going, stay ahead of them. We have to stay alive. As long as we can stay alive, I have no doubt that Dewi and Beck and the rest of the pack can quickly find and rescue us. But they can’t rescue us if we’re not alive.”

He held out a hand to her.

Nodding, she took it and let him help her along.

* * * *

Peyton couldn’t get back into the field to search because more shifters raced into the great hall, just for him to turn them around again and send them out. Either to search for the intruders, or to go hunt down packmates out of communication, depending on who they were, their skills, and if they had any family out in the compound.

Web’s guy reported back that he’d made it all the way to I-90 without seeing any sign of Ken or Nami, but each time Peyton tried calling their phones, it went straight to voice mail.

That greatly troubled him. Yes, there were dead cell spots between their compound and Spokane, but not many.

Not enough to keep them out of contact for several hours.

He called Gillian and asked her to make that her focus, to keep trying to call Ken and Nami’s phones from their house phone, trying them every five minutes until either he told her to stop or she got hold of them.

At least an initial sweep of the town revealed none of the strangers had stayed behind there, so that was one worry lifted.

Note to self—we get a cell phone tower installed inside the compound to improve coverage, ASAP.

Too many people who’d traveled in from out of town weren’t within cell range, packmates now in danger because they couldn’t be reached by phone.

That was unacceptable.

He couldn’t even get hold of Trent or Dewi now, and he didn’t want to leave someone else in charge at the great hall in case he was needed there.

Some fucking pack Alpha I am.

* * * *

Dewi grinned at the two men, pleased to see at least one of them had wet himself.

“Aw, you know, some people would be offended by that,” Dewi said. “I mean, some people don’t want to be seen as scary.”

She flicked the tip of her tongue over her canines, which she’d let slide all the way out.

“Now, me, on the other hand, I
absolutely
want you to be completely terrified of me.” She pointed her gun at the guy who’d wet himself. “Because you have every reason to be terrified of me.
Do not lie
to me. Dewi says, are you working for that fuck Manuel Segura?”

Both men nodded.

“Excellent. And Dewi says, are you supposed to be looking for Joaquin Carlomarles?”

The men nodded again.

“Wow. You two are
really
good at this game. Dewi says, how many of you are there, total? You can answer out loud.”

“
Once
. Eleven,” the man quickly clarified in English.

“How many vehicles total?”

“Three.”

Dewi shot him in the left kneecap, grinning as she pulled the trigger. “Uh-uh-uh. I didn’t say Dewi says. Now
shut up
.”

His agonized screams immediately silenced. She swung her gun over to the other guy, ignoring the writhing, wounded man as he clutched at his leg. “Dewi says,
 
how many vehicles total?”

“Three,” the man answered, watching his compadre thrashing next to him. “What the fuck did you do to him? What are you?”

“Oh, now, you didn’t wait for me to say Dewi says. That’s not how we play the game.” She shot him in the left kneecap. “
Shut up
.” His howl of pain cut off in midscream.

She sat back, staring at them. No doubt Beck and the others would hear those two gunshots—and the truncated screams—and come running, so she didn’t have much time.

Part of her wanted to torture them, the way Felicia Escobar had been tortured. Well, not in the same exact way. In principle.

Part of her wanted to torture them to see if her Prime skills held, how far she could push them.

Then again,
technically
, that would be morally wrong.

But so was abducting, raping, and murdering a fifteen-year-old girl, and then hunting down the man who’d extracted blood for it.

She sighed and turned back to the first guy. “Dewi says, tell me how many men and vehicles came into our compound. And how you knew about us.”

* * * *

Beck pulled up short at the gunshot and human howl of pain. “Fuck.” He debated whether or not to follow it when he heard a second shot ring out.

That made up his mind for him. He left the scent trail and ran in the direction of the shots.

“What about the trail?” Joaquin asked as he kept up.

“We can come back and pick it up,” Beck said. “Dewi’s got two of them.”

“How can you tell?”

“Because she’s playing with them,” he grimly said. “And if she kills them, we have to get her to Peyton’s house immediately and get her fed.”

At least he didn’t have to explain that part to Joaquin. “Damn,” the man muttered.

When a Prime Alpha wolf killed, it had to eat, or ugly things could happen and innocent people could get hurt.

They heard a crashing off to their left and pulled up short as Trent and his men emerged from the trees. “Where’s Dewi?” Trent asked.

“That’s the shots we heard,” Beck told him, pointing.

“You find the other guys?”

“We left the trail when we heard the shots.”

Two more regularly spaced shots rang out.

“Go back and track them. I’ll go help Dewi.” He sent one of his men with Beck and Joaquin and took two with him as he bolted toward the sound.

Beck turned around and led the way, following their own scent back to where they’d broken from the original trail. The snow wasn’t getting any heavier, still annoying flurries that made everything wet as it melted upon landing.

Beck tried not to think about Ken and Nami and if they’d made it to Spokane safely or not. He didn’t have any cell coverage right here. Besides, he couldn’t divide his focus like that.

That’s what got people killed.

* * * *

Now the men had bullets in both kneecaps.

Dewi stood and stared down at them, slowly shaking her head. “Well, not like I didn’t warn you guys you were going to lose this game. At least I was honest with you about that from the start.”

So there were two more guys out here in this stretch of woods, if Trent or Beck hadn’t already found them.

But that left three armed men somewhere out in the compound in a car. From the sound of it, they had planned on meeting up near the great hall. They had satellite pics and maps, but Gillian kept up with things and always made sure the data available online was old to throw people off.

If you lived here, or you were of the pack, you could get the most recent information from the pack’s private site.

The biggest problem Dewi now had was that the southern section of the compound was where the most people lived, as well as where three of the largest, most popular campgrounds were located.

And confirming what Web had told Peyton, there were another four armed men in a car sent after Ken and Nami. No telling where the hell they had ended up, if they were still outside the compound or stumbling around in here, too.

So the good news was that Ken and Nami hadn’t turned around and headed for the compound.

The bad news was that Ken and Nami hadn’t turned around and headed for the compound, meaning who knew if they were still safe or if they’d been caught by the other four assholes.

“You know, now I’m wishing I’d shot you guys in the arms,” she said as they silently writhed in misery. “It’s going to be a real bitch dragging your bodies out to the road to the wood chipper.”

She raised her gun when she heard someone coming from behind her. She kept her gun pointed at the men on the ground and turned, relieved to see Trent and two of his guys emerge from the woods.

“You okay?” Trent cautiously asked from a safe distance.

She lowered the gun. “Yeah.” She quickly filled him in.

He grimly nodded and walked over to her, draping his left arm around her shoulders as he stared down at the men. “It’s better this way, you know. It would take too long to get you something to eat. We need you in the field.”

She wearily sighed. “I know.”

Trent raised his gun. “By order of the Targhee pack, as second in command and speaking for the pack Alpha, I hereby find you guilty of intrusion into pack territory for the express purpose of committing murder of our kind. Blood crimes call for blood. By pack edict, I sentence you to death.”

He fired.

Twice.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Saul slid to a stop and froze at the first gunshot, Ricardo almost plowing into him. When the second sounded soon after, Saul knew.

He looked at Ricardo. “They’re dead.”

“How do you know for sure?”

“Because if we’d been firing, there would have been a bunch of shots all at once.”

He started running again when two more shots, deliberate ones, rang out.

Fuck!

He turned to Ricardo. “If we find Manuel, we say we got separated and lost and were heading back for the damn car. I swear to Jesus and the Mother Mary, if you say
anything
other than that, I will kill you myself. If anyone else stops us and they ask what the fuck we’re doing here, we’ll say we’re tourists and we were with friends. We stopped to pee and got separated from them and lost in the woods.”

Ricardo nodded. “I want out of here.”

“Then let’s go.”

They’d started running again when they heard two more shots. Saul wondered if it was an execution, but that was a total of six shots, and there were only five other men besides them out here, unless Jose and his men made it back.

But that would mean three more shots.

He knew he didn’t want to find out.

* * * *

Beck and Joaquin both knelt, sniffing the ground. The scent tracks had crossed, creating a little confusion.

“They’re panicked,” Beck said. “I can smell it. Not to mention they’re lost. They’ve crossed their old trail a couple of times. They have no clue where they are or where they’re going.” It’d been fifteen minutes since the last two shots rang out.