Galen (2 page)

After three long steps, he grasped the kid’s shoulder and turned him to face him. “Look, I’m sorry.” He paused for a minute searching for the right words. Words that wouldn’t make the young werewolf feel like even more of a child than he already did. “I’m an ass. I know this is exciting. Your first assignment always is. It’s just…”
Shit. What do I say now?

“You don’t want to be saddled with two humans and a kid.” Jackson shrugged. “I get it. Just remember that it’s not my fault that Bastien and Carly are busy with their new baby and Kalen won’t let Ally step a foot out of their house now that he knows she’s pregnant. Dimitri won’t leave Bastien’s or his mate’s side and everyone else is doing intel or remodeling labs by demolishing the cells where that crazy asshole of a doctor kept his prisoners. You’re stuck with us and you don’t like it.”

The kid very conveniently left out the other shifters on his team. They weren’t any better. He didn’t trust them because he didn’t know them. At least he knew Jackson and, as much as he hated to admit it, the MacDonald brothers had honor down to an art form. Nothing would sway them from the course of action they chose to take once they chose it. And they had chosen to protect their sister and the other shifters now that she was a werewolf like her husband, thanks to the serum they found and reverse engineered.

“Come. We’ll sit in the truck while we go over the map.” He gave the kid a half-smile. “Who knows? Maybe if we can tie this up in a hurry, I can give you a day to hit the casinos. Just don’t tell your mother that I let you gamble away all of your money. She’ll kick my ass.”

“Naw. If anything, she’ll thank you. I have card counting down to an art.”

“Card counting is illegal.”

“Only if you get caught, old man. I don’t intend to let that happen.”

“Old man?”

“Well, you
are
older than I am.” Reaching up, he removed his glasses and stuck them in his pocket.

“You look different without the glasses.”

“I don’t look so much like an idiot, you mean.”

“I never said—“

“You didn’t have to.” Jackson grinned. “My mom hates that I wear these glasses, but I’ve found that it quickly distinguishes the assholes from the nice guys with little effort.”

“Now that you know that I’m an asshole you don’t need them anymore.” That was harsh, but the kid was right.

“No.” He grinned. “You’re not as much of an asshole as you think. A
real
asshole would have let me keep walking a minute ago.”

Galen didn’t know why he always felt the need to be an ass. Perhaps it had something to do with finding out that his younger brother, Kalen, had found his mate and hadn’t really even wanted to at the time.

Damned tired of being alone, Galen wanted nothing more than to find a woman, a mate, with whom he could spend the rest of his life. Hell, he didn’t think that was too much to ask.

“Did you confirm the orders to head out to Nevada and eradicate the lab?” The last time one of them forgot to confirm orders, two teams showed up. They had a shootout between them. Each of them lost a few members before they realized that their
real
enemy had fled and they were fighting friends. “We don’t need another damned cluster fuck like that one in Tennessee.”

“Yes, sir.” The boy nodded eagerly. “We have been confirmed. They want us to go, since we’re the closest.”

“I figured we would be.” Turning, Galen headed back to the truck. “Get to your vehicle. The faster we get there, the more likely it is that we’ll find that lunatic doctor in residence.” And the more likely they would be to find that damned doctor’s newest victim unharmed.

The image of the beautiful and feisty red haired woman flashed though this mind. The video he’d seen of her abduction showed her fighting back as five men surrounded her. One of them was Doctor Richard Thornton, asshole extraordinaire. Now
that
was a woman he could see himself taking as a mate. The woman fought against them, her strength and resolve turning him on almost as much as her knowledge of martial arts. And it had been a long, long time since any female stirred his interest.
 

Chapter Three

Silence was the first thing Kendra noticed when she woke. She still wore the seatbelt. She felt it stretching over her shoulder and snaking between her breasts.

Opening her eyes just a crack, she glanced around. She was alone!

Numbness crept up her legs and she moved them to try to get the feeling back. She moved her arms just to make sure they worked. At least she wasn’t restrained. Maybe, if she was careful, she could release her seatbelt, open the door and make a run for it before her captors realized she was awake.

Hand on the door handle, Kendra was just about to push the door open when she heard voices growing closer.

“We’ll lock her in as soon as we get there.” It was the crazy Englishman she heard talking. “By my calculations, she should shift roughly fifteen minutes after we reach the lab.”

Ha! She’s ready to shift herself out of this vehicle right now, you crazy bastard!

Slowly, so as not to draw their attention, she moved her left hand to her seatbelt, keeping her right on the handle, ready to yank it, push the door open and run. She found the latch and pressed the button. The restraint loosened and slid out of the way. In one quick motion, she opened the door, threw herself out of the SUV and ran.

Kendra ran down the side of the road for several hundred feet before she paused, using a few critical seconds get her bearings. Where was she? She bit her lips when she saw nothing but miles of desert in front of her. She turned around and saw the same behind her.

Where could she go? The desert stretched out for miles in both directions. There was no forest, no houses and, more importantly, nowhere to hide. Her shoulders slumped and she turned around. If she ran, they would certainly climb in the SUV and run her down. Maybe the smartest course of action was to get back in the stupid vehicle and hope they took her somewhere where she would have a better chance at escape.

“You aren’t going to run?” the big guy with the scar asked.

He stared at her with that blank expression, his arms crossed over his wide chest. His bored look told her nothing of what he thought, though she had the distinct impression he was shocked by the fact she didn’t try.

“Why?” She shrugged. “I figured there was no use in even trying. I wouldn’t get far. You’d just chase me down and capture me again. Besides,” she added waving her arm in a wide arc. “Where would I go?”

“Right. Where
would
you go? Keep that in mind that there are no cops out here to save you. There isn’t some miraculous superhero who’s going to show up and rescue you. There is just you, me, the doc and his scientists. If you can remember that, you might just live long enough to see another birthday.”

Somehow, Kendra doubted she would get that chance. Men like these didn’t release people who could identify them. She could identify both of these men and they knew it.

“Grab the girl and let’s go, Martin. I want her at the compound to tape her first shift.”

“Shift?” she asked as she walked past Martin. The fight in her was gone. They had taken her out into the middle of the desert. Even if she
did
manage to escape, where would she go? It was dark and there was nothing but sand and tumbleweeds as far as the eye could see.

It wasn’t until she was strapped into the backseat of the vehicle that Kendra realized it was nearly one in the morning. It was dark and she had been able to see down the lonely stretch of desert road as though it was daylight.

Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes with a smile. A dream. This was all a dream. She let out a relieved sigh. She needed to stop reading those scary stories. They always gave her nightmares. She decided to go back to sleep and when she woke up for real, she’d be home again.

Frowning, she covered her stomach with her hand. It was a good thing it was Saturday. She definitely wasn’t feeling well.

Sometime later, Kendra woke to the high-pitched squealing sound of brakes as the SUV came to an abrupt stop.

Her throat ached and she swallowed. It was only then that she realized the annoying droning sound she heard came from her. Had she really been moaning in her sleep? Sure, she didn’t feel well, and her body felt as though it was on fire. To her knowledge, she had never made that kind of noise before.

Pain sliced through her as she unbuckled her safety belt and got out of the SUV. Glancing around, she noticed they were still in the middle of the desert. A tall fence surrounded a compound that looked more like some sort of government complex than anything private. A series of similarly sized brick buildings dotted the landscape within the perimeter of the fence.

She sighed and shifted her gaze to her feet. What now? There would be no chance of escape from this place. She would die of thirst or heat stroke before she ever reached civilization.

Her stomach cramped, doubling her over. Maybe she had the flu. If she did, Kendra hoped she gave it to her captors. It would serve the jerks right.

“Grab the woman and get her into a cell, Martin. I don’t want the cameras to miss one tiny detail of her transformation.”

Transformation? What transformation?
Kendra didn’t have long to think about the lunatic’s choice of words. Another wave of pain hit her and drove her to her knees.

Martin, as big and mean as he appeared, hefted her up and carried her into the building with what appeared to be an odd mixture of irritation and gentleness. “Don’t fight it. It won’t do you any good and it only makes it hurt more.”

Fight what? Being sick? How did one fight being sick?

He must have seen her confusion because he elaborated. “Try not to fight the pain. Reach for it. Breathe through it. It won’t hurt as much if you try to relax and reach for it instead.”

“Why should you give a damn?” She sucked in a breath on a sob. “You and that lunatic who bosses you around did this to me.” Kendra panted as she reached up to swipe the perspiration from her face. “You’re nothing more than a hired thug.”

“Maybe,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “But I’ve been through this already. I’m only trying to keep you from making the same painful mistakes I did.”

“Like I’d trust you,” she scoffed. “I think I’d rather swallow razor blades.”

“You just keep on fighting it, girlie, and it’s going to feel as though you have.”

Chapter Four

It was three-thirty in the morning and Galen had no idea where in the hell they were. The GPS lost connection with the satellite—the piece of shit—and none of them had a maps program on their phones.

If they didn’t haul ass, they’d have to wait twenty-four hours or so before they could storm the compound. No one liked a daylight incursion. They knew they had the advantage at night. Even if that lunatic staffed his entire guard with shifters, they would still have the advantage. They had had years to perfect their night vision. The newly changed shifters wouldn’t have that advantage.

With a sigh, he picked up his phone and called the boss.

“Sinclair here,” Bastien answered the phone with a bark. “Make it snappy. My wife wants ice cream.”

Galen shook his head. “Wow. Did you really just say that to me when you know I’m practically sitting on Richard Thornton’s doorstep?”

“Don’t give me any shit, Tolbert. If you were sitting on that lunatic’s doorstep, you’d be directing an operation. Since you aren’t, I can only assume that you have some sort of SNAFU.”

“Yeah, well the damned piece of shit GPS fucked up again.” He glared at the unit mounted to the windshield. “I’m just about ready to shift and sniff that bastard out.”

“Do it and call me when you find him. Don’t go in until it’s dark again.” Bastien sighed. “We both know you won’t find them until it’s light, now and he’ll have changed her by then.”

“He’s changed her already. They stopped on the side of the road for a bit. Her scent was there, but it wasn’t the same as it was at her home. She’s changing, if she hasn’t done so already.”

“God damn it all!” Bastien sighed again. “We have to stop that bastard before he changes someone important enough to draw attention to this situation.”

Galen didn’t add that sooner or later the idiot was going to change someone who would manage to escape, make it into some public place and shifted shape in front of a crowd—or even worse, a camera.

“How do you want this to go down?” Galen needed to know whether or not his superiors wanted prisoners. He knew that Bastien would want them to bring anyone in a cage back with them. What he really wanted to know was what to do with the guards and those responsible for turning innocent humans into werewolves against their will.

“With extreme prejudice.” Bastien hung up the phone, preventing him from asking the man anything else.

“So?” Jackson asked as he and Anderson approached from the northwest. “What did he say? How does he expect us to proceed?”

“We’re to shift, trail them by scent, then wait until dark. We take the compound with extreme prejudice and take any of their prisoners into custody.”

“For their safety or ours?” Jackson asked dryly.

“Both.”

Galen moved his vehicle off the road, parking it in the desert sand. Quickly he unbuttoned his shirt and removed it. The less clothing he lost on this trip the happier he’d be. If he could shift and leave his clothes here in the truck, all the better. He’d lock the keys inside and use the combination to get back in when he returned. That was at least one good thing about the keypad entry. He just hoped the battery didn’t go dead. If it did, he was screwed.

“If we split up, we’ll cover more ground. The faster we find this place, the faster we can stop that lunatic from injecting more people with that serum.” And the faster he could find that woman that had his balls aching since the moment he saw her kick a man in the head and knock his ass out.