Brazen (5 page)

Nine

Nick

Nick circled the room as Vanessa made her call. There was no reason to give Tina that slow death if no one would witness it. Had Malcolm known her backup was coming? She must have talked enough to let him know she was an operative. Having been one himself, he’d know that the phone call he’d interrupted would have triggered backup, possibly even from someone already in the city.

So why wasn’t Malcolm here? Nick was quite certain he’d left—the trail he found was cold, and when he followed it as far as he dared, it continued on toward the back of the building. There was no trace of Malcolm’s scent in the surrounding rooms to suggest he’d lain in wait. Nor had there been any on the upper level, near the hole.

This was, admittedly, the point where he’d normally turn to Elena or Clay and say, “What do you make of this?” That would be the extent of his responsibility—noting something out of place. Hell, most times they’d be two steps ahead of him already.

He circled the room one last time. Then he stopped short.

“We need to go,” he said, turning to Vanessa.

She was still on the phone and raised a finger, telling him to hold on.

He strode over. “No, we need to leave. It’s a trap. We’re in a building with at least three dead bodies and—”

As if on cue, he picked up the distant creak of a floorboard.

“Now,”
he said.

She signed off. “We need to move Tina—”

“Too late. Someone’s coming.”

“We should wait,” she said. “Hide and see what’s going on.”

“I know. But not here. Come on.”

•••

Nick and Vanessa watched as three people stood around Tina’s body. Three men dressed in dark clothing, two holding guns, the third a knife. Big guns—.45 caliber, he’d guess. The knife wasn’t small either, and from the bulge under the guy’s jacket, he had a gun there too.

They weren’t werewolves. Nick could tell that from his hiding spot, their scent drifting far enough to pick up. They looked like…Well, that was the thing. To the untrained eye, they looked like commandos or mercenaries, like guys who’d work for someone like Rhys. Except, having met people who worked for Rhys, Nick knew that real mercenaries sure as hell didn’t advertise their occupation with their outfits and equipment. They dressed and acted like ordinary people. Blending in. Invisible.

These guys looked like they were in the middle of a role-playing game. Pretending to be mercenaries. They were physically suited to the role, at least the stereotype of it. All three were younger than forty. None under six feet. All square-jawed and bristle-haired. It’d be an amusing spectacle, actually, if they weren’t standing over the corpse of a woman he’d known.

It’d also be more amusing if those guns weren’t so damned big.

One dropped to his knee beside Tina.

“Looks different than the others,” one of his companions said. 

“Different but the same. Still a werewolf kill. Seems as if he got interrupted here. Started tearing out her throat and something stopped him.”

“Think he heard us coming?”

The kneeling guy, who seemed to be the leader, touched the blood trail. “Nah. It’s dry.”

“She’s different, too.” That was the third guy, his hair so short he might have been bald. “Definitely no hobo. Are we sure it’s our target’s handiwork?”

“No,” the leader said. “It’s some random dude who just happened to slit her throat in the same building that two people had their throats ripped out by our target. Of course it’s him. Weres have two kinds of victims—those who won’t be missed and pretty women.”

He was actually right. For man-eaters at least, those were their favored victims. The disenfranchised satisfied the urge to hunt and kill with little fear of the authorities noticing. Women satisfied another kind of hunting urge. If that was the case, though, there’d be signs that Tina had been raped or, at least, had sex recently. They didn’t check for that. Nick suspected they didn’t care. They knew the type of prey their target favored, and that was enough.

The leader rose. “Okay, let’s fan out. See if this bastard left any clues.”

•••

This was, one could argue, the point at which Nick should get the hell out of Dodge. He was a werewolf, and these guys were looking for a werewolf. Bounty hunters of some type, he guessed, on Malcolm’s trail.
That
was the trap. Let Tina die slowly, knowing these guys were coming. Either they’d find her alive and slow down to help her—or, if her handler had dispatched backup, the arrival of three armed bounty hunters would throw a wrench into the works. Either way, it let Malcolm slip off scot-free.

So Nick should go after Malcolm. And he did. He followed the trail out of the building, over two blocks, where it disappeared at the roadside, meaning Malcolm had hopped into a car and escaped. There was no tracking him after that. 

“I want to know who those guys are,” he said to Vanessa as they walked. “If they’ve separated, I can grab one. Question him.”

“That’s what I’d suggest,” she said. “Except for the part where
you
question him. We don’t want him seeing you.”

“We’ll work something out.”

•••

As the leader said, the men had split up. Vanessa left Nick in charge of tracking. He knew which one he wanted. The nearly-bald guy. More brawn than brains. He’d fight the most, but he’d break first, too. That’s what Clay always said, which is why, in a fight, he often left the biggest guy to Nick.

Now he was tracking his target, with Vanessa as backup. It didn’t take long before he could hear the guy, who made no effort to hide his footfalls. Nick veered left, taking Vanessa down another hall. Soon she could hear the guy too, in the parallel hall. They continued on to the next adjoining corridor. Nick turned to intercept and Vanessa carried on.

Nick came out behind the guy. He moved cautiously, rolling his footfalls, and Nick closed the gap until he was a few feet behind his target. Then he slowed and listened. After a moment, he heard Vanessa’s footsteps. The guy heard them, too, a few seconds later. 

The guy stopped. Nick halted behind him, barely breathing. The target raised his gun and dropped his free hand to his side, brushing his radio. He must know he should notify his team, but he couldn’t bring himself to call in backup. He straightened and strode forward.

Vanessa turned the corner. She seemed to see their target at the last second and wheeled, her eyes going wide. Vanessa wasn’t what the man expected, and he stopped short.

That’s when Nick lunged. His pounce was silent, he was sure of that. But the guy must have sensed something behind him. He spun, gun rising. Nick slammed a backfist into the side of his head. The guy flew off his feet and hit the ground.

“Nice,” Vanessa murmured as she knelt, confirming the man was out cold.

He let Vanessa bind the man’s hands with plastic cuffs, blindfold and gag him, then Nick loaded the limp body over his shoulder and carried him out of the building.

Ten

Nick

Before they had returned to take a hostage, Nick had detoured to a building next door. It was much smaller, but equally empty. Perfect for an interrogation. Now Vanessa stood watch as he carried the man across the gap. Halfway there the guy began stirring. Nick picked up his pace. By the time he was inside, the man was kicking and grunting against his gag. Nick got him into the first room and dumped him on the filthy floor.

Vanessa warned the man that she was going to remove his gag, and there was no sense calling for help—lying that they’d driven him far from his companions. The moment the gag came off, though, he started to yell. He got one note out before Vanessa pistol-whipped him in the exact spot where Nick had punched him. Even Nick winced. The man started to yowl, but Nick was already yanking the gag back into place.

Vanessa repeated the warning. This time, he seemed to decide he ought to listen. Also, he now realized Vanessa wasn’t alone.

“Who’s your partner?” he said, whipping his head about, as if he could peer through the blindfold.

“An associate.”

“I saw him inside. I’ve seen him before, too.”

Nick tensed. 

“And where have you seen him?” she asked.

“I…I dunno. But I got a look at him right before he decked me.”

“Describe him, then.”

The guy stammered and blustered, saying Nick had dark hair and he was “huge, bigger than me.” Nick had to smile at the second part. Obviously that line-drive to the head had colored the man’s recollection of his size. It also seemed to have scrambled any memory of what he actually had seen, which couldn’t have been more than a fleeting glimpse.

Vanessa quickly moved on to the interrogation. Nick let her handle it. 

Nick had some knowledge of interrogation techniques. Well, the kind Clay used, at least, which usually involved his fists. Clay would prefer something more intellectual—the guy was a PhD, after all—but as he’d said many times, that wasn’t the language mutts spoke. You had to beat answers out of them.

It was different with this guy. Or it was, following a second pistol-blow to the same spot. After that, Vanessa eased into a completely different form of questioning. The kind where she claimed she was only doing her job, regretted it even, and sounded as if she genuinely did.

“Look, I overheard you guys in there,” she said. “You’re hunting a werewolf. I have no issue with that. Filthy, murdering scum. Did you see what they did to my colleague?”

It took a moment for him to realize she meant Tina. “She was with you?”

“Yes. I have a feeling you and I are after the same guy. But you aren’t authorized to take him out. I checked with my superiors. There’s no record of an alternate license being issued.”

“License…?”

“For hunting him.”

Silence as the guy’s brain whirred. “Since when do we need a license to hunt vermin?”

“Since when
don’t
you? The Cabals regulate the hunting of all werewolves and vampires. You do know that, right? And if you pretend you don’t know what a Cabal is…”

“Of course I do. But I don’t know nothing about them regulating hunting.”

“Then I’d suggest you look into it, because if you’re caught? The penalty is stiff, as you might imagine.”

He paled, likely imagining a fate worse than any Cabal would actually impose…if they did regulate “hunting.” 

Nick mouthed a question to Vanessa, who nodded.

“So that’s what you’re doing then,” she said. “Hunting vermin? Or is it a bounty?”

“Both.”

“Hunting
vermin
for a bounty? On just this particular werewolf?”

The man shrugged. “Nah, any werewolf would do. The guy just wants them exterminated, and he’s willing to pay to see it happen. Win-win.”

“Exterminated?” Vanessa said.

“Well, controlled. You can’t just wipe them out, right? Not that I’d argue if you could. World would be a better place without those brutes.”

Nick stiffened. This was something he would never get used to. When he’d grown up, the Pack had kept itself separate from the greater supernatural world, and he’d never had cause to wonder what others thought of them, because as far as he knew, no one believed in them. 

Then the Pack rejoined the interracial council, and he’d found out exactly what they thought of him. Namely that he was a brutish killing machine, liable to rip their throats out for kicks. 

“So someone’s putting out bounties on werewolves,” Vanessa said. “Besides general cleanup, what’s his motivation?”

The guy was still blindfolded, so they couldn’t see his eyes, but his face screwed up in confusion. “Motivation?”

“Did this guy lose someone to a werewolf?”

“Not that I know of. He just doesn’t like them. He considers it his…what’s it called? Civic duty. As a supernatural.”

Nick mouthed another question.

“Let me step back then,” Vanessa said. “Do you know who you’re hunting?”

“It’s not a who. It’s a what. They aren’t human. You can’t think of them that way.”

Nick rocked on the balls of his feet.

“Let’s pretend it’s a who,” Vanessa said. “For simplicity’s sake, since you already know
what
it is. Do you know the identity of the one you’re hunting now?”

A pause. A long one. Then, “Pete does.”

“Pete?”

“The team captain. He gets all that intel. We’re not supposed to ask.”

“Okay, so Pete knows who he’s tracking. How was he tipped off?”

Another pause. “Pete handles all that.”

“And do you know anything about it? When he found out? Who told him?”

More silence. Then, defensively, “That’s not how it works. The team doesn’t get details.”

Vanessa prodded some more, but after that it was obvious that whatever more he knew wasn’t worth prying out of him. The facts seemed clear enough. Someone was putting out bounties on werewolves and had set these guys on Malcolm’s tail. Then Malcolm discovered he had two groups to contend with—the bounty hunters and Rhys’s mercenaries—and used one to distract the other while he fled.

When they were certain they could get no more from their captive, Vanessa refastened his cuffs with another, looser pair that he’d be able to wriggle out of…after they were long gone.

Eleven

Vanessa

Tina was dead. Murdered horribly. Vanessa kept thinking “What if we’d been a few minutes quicker? What if we hadn’t been so careful?” It wouldn’t have made a difference. She knew that. Yet logic didn’t help, because she’d seen Tina alive, seen her moving, and there was part of her that insisted her operative could have been saved. That she’d failed.

Dwelling on that was self-indulgent, though. There was a job to do—stopping Tina’s killer. Grief would come later.

It wasn’t just Malcolm they needed to worry about now. She was with a werewolf and there were three idiots in town on a werewolf hunt.

Vanessa could tell that conversation had upset Nick. No one wants to think another person would hunt them down as “vermin.” But she hadn’t expected him to seem quite so shocked. Because she wasn’t. That’s when she realized that no matter how liberal she considered her own views she still, in a way, supported the stereotypes by not being shocked, not being outraged. 

As they walked out of the building, she wanted to tell him she’d never heard of such bounties, that these men were clearly thugs of the lowest order. Except she’d be lying. Not about the thugs part. They obviously were. But supernaturals
did
hunt werewolves and vampires. Not often, and they usually weren’t successful. Given that there were only a few dozen of each on the continent, more than the very rare death would be noticed, and the werewolves and vampires would retaliate.

They
should
retaliate and put an end to it. It wasn’t as if the hunters would fight back. They were like humans going after big game. They knew if their prey got within ten feet of them, they’d be dead. So why didn’t werewolves and vampires put a scare into hunters? Because they didn’t know about them. Because people like the Cabals and Rhys’s teams didn’t bother to warn them. Didn’t want to stir them up because that was just inconvenient.

As they neared their rented car, Vanessa said, “It does happen.”

Nick looked over, his dark brows gathering.

“Hunting werewolves. And vampires. I’ve heard of it.”

She braced for him to stiffen. To ask why they didn’t tell the Pack. But he only nodded.

“I’ve heard of it, too,” he said. “But not in North America. It’s a big problem in areas without a Pack, and there are plenty of those. Supernaturals go there to hunt. Elena even found an encrypted website offering tours.” His lip curled. “Come and hunt the werewolves. We’d never heard of it here, though. I’ll have to let Elena know.”

And that was it. No blame. No accusation. He didn’t complain because it was exactly what he’d come to expect. This was how werewolves were treated. 

“You should have been told,” Vanessa said. “Your Pack, that is.”

Nick shrugged and opened the rental car door. “We’ll handle it.”

They got into the car.

“It shouldn’t happen in the first place,” she said. “They’re red-neck idiots. If they were human, they’d be out hunting illegal immigrants or small-time crooks. They just need an excuse.”

“Oh, I know. It’s not like werewolves have never done that themselves.” He started the car. “Historically, we hunted mutts—outside werewolves. They’d say it was to keep them in line, but really, they were like these guys. They wanted to hunt, so they came up with an excuse.”

Nick drove out of the parking spot. “We have a Pack member now whose dad was killed in a mutt hunt when he was fifteen. They knew his father had a kid. Didn’t care. They wanted to kill him, too. He’s lucky he escaped.” He glanced over. “Want to guess who was in charge of that hunt?”

“Malcolm.”

“Yep. So that’s another Pack wolf we aren’t telling about his return. Too many folks lined up to kill the bastard already.” He reached the road and turned left. “Speaking of Malcolm, that’s my target here. If Elena wants to come out and handle these losers, fine, but I’m guessing she’ll see it as a wild goose chase. Easier to get to the root of it and work from there.”

“Find out who’s laying the bounties instead of hunting down three knuckleheads taking them.” Vanessa nodded. “She’s smart.”

“That’s why she’s Alpha. Give that choice to some of the guys and they’d hunt the bastards down. That’s the instinct. But these days? There are other ways. The point, though, is that my goal is Malcolm, and his trail is warm. I’m going to pay a visit to his contact in Detroit. You don’t need to come along. It’s been a long night and after Tina…” He shrugged. “I can drop you at a hotel and check back with an update in the morning.”

“I’ll give you the guy’s address,” she said. “But I should go along, as backup.”

He said nothing.

She continued, “I won’t interfere. As far as I’m concerned, after what happened to Tina, you’re in charge. You’re the one who understands what we’re dealing with. While I’m not a field agent these days, I can still watch your back and provide whatever other support services you need.”

“All right. Pull up the address and tell me where to go.”