Gator's Challenge (2 page)

S
he shot me
!

Wes couldn’t believe it, and yet, at the same time, he couldn’t blame Melanie. How must it look, him showing up on her doorstep, Andrew claiming Wes came to help?

It looks exactly how things are. I work for her husband, and between the pair of us, we’re tied for the asshole of the year award.
The fact that Wes didn’t obey willingly didn’t factor. In Melanie’s eyes, he had just become the enemy.

And she’d acted.

She shot both him and Andrew.

Another man might have lost his shit at that point. Probably retaliated, too. Andrew sure as hell wasn’t happy she had the guts to fire that gun. But Wes? Fuck, he loved that brave side of her.
That Latin fire of hers always was sexy.

What he hated was seeing the look of frustrated realization in her eyes as Andrew chuckled, the harmless blanks she’d fired leaving merely a bruise on the flesh.

“Stupid, stupid Melanie. Did you really think I’d leave a loaded gun around here, knowing you might use it on me?”

Dawning understanding shaped her visage as she glanced at the useless weapon in her hand. “You filled it with duds. You knew this day would come.”

“Of course I did. And it’s past time that you grasped I’m not the teddy bear you thought I was.” Andrew’s malicious smile did not resemble his usual dough-faced demeanor. Beneath the nerd façade lurked a bad man, a man who kept getting worse.

A bad man I have to work for.

Told you we should have eaten him.
His gator never had liked the asshole—and that began before Andrew had hooked up with Melanie. But he hated him twice as much after.

“It’s all true then, isn’t it? You knew about the things happening in our town. The disappearances, the deaths,” Melanie stated, taking a slow step back.

“I knew and helped cover them up. Amazing what a lot of money and a few choice threats can do. Did you know most people have a price?”

“What was yours?” she asked Andrew.

“No one paid me to join in. I immediately saw the potential when my father drew me into the secret a few years ago.”

“You should have said no. Done the right thing.”

“Who are you to say what’s right?” Andrew rocked on his heels and held out his hands wide. “We are doing cutting edge things with gene manipulation. Achieving wonders you can’t even begin to imagine.”

“Wonders like the lizard monster who killed those people? What about Harold? That dog thing you made out of that poor B&B owner’s son.”

“With success comes some bumps.”

“I’d say a psychotic flying lizard who craves human flesh is a little more than a bump.”

And she doesn’t even know the half of it
, Wes thought.

“You are only focusing on the negative. You forgot about the positive.”

“I don’t see how any of this is positive.”

“Because you lack vision. But you’ll understand. Soon everyone will see what we’ve been doing.” A zealous light gleamed in Andrew’s eyes, the scariest illumination of all.

“They’ll see you’re a monster.”

Andrew’s lips tightened. “Enough of the stalling and name calling, dear wife. Gather the boys. We have to go.”

Wes could predict the words before she uttered them with a triumphant smile. “The boys aren’t here.”

With a narrowed gaze, Andrew snapped, “What have you done with them?”

“Kept them safe from you,” she spat.

“Perhaps you should have worried about keeping yourself safe. Grab her.”

The order Wes dreaded had come. For a moment, he thought about telling Andrew to fucking get her himself—and then smacking him when he did.

However, there were lives at stake, lives he cared about.

We care for Melanie.
A warm reminder from the cold part of him. A reminder he ignored as he lunged for her.

But she darted out of reach. She always was fleet of foot, something he counted on.

Turning on her heel, Melanie darted into the bowels of her home, leaving him with a glimpse of hair bouncing and pert ass moving.

Damn, I love that ass.

Loved. He’d lost all rights to that perky butt years ago.

“What the hell are you waiting for?” Andrew yelled. “Go after her. I need her to tell me where the boys are.”

Say no. Say fucking no.
He bit back the words and did as Andrew ordered. He went after Melanie, perhaps not as quickly as he was capable of, perhaps not even as efficiently. This was one hunt he didn’t want to win.

As he turned the corner of the hall, he noted four doors, all shut. Opening door number one, he noted a guest bedroom, done in a soothing pale yellow. The bed bore a flowered comforter and fluffy pillows.

No Melanie.

On to door number two. A pair of matching beds, perfect for twin boys. The beds were empty, the comforters covered in grinning sharks, smooth and untouched. On the walls hung posters of
Transformers
,
Star Wars
, and even one for the
Jungle Book
.

Toys lay scattered on the floor—cars and dinosaurs and building blocks. A room for Melanie and Andrew’s boys, boys that could have been Wes’s if he’d not fucked up and let her go.

Speaking of letting go, he’d spent enough time in the empty room to know she’d not come this way.

Out in the hall, he inhaled. As a shifter, even in his human form, some of his senses remained enhanced. Take his sense of smell, for example. A myriad bouquet of aromas came to him, but the freshest—and most enticing—belonged to Melanie. Even though he knew she didn’t hide behind the next door, he opened it, mostly because he wanted to hear that note of impatience from Andrew as he yelled, “Did you grab her?”

Peeking into the bathroom with its white subway tile, dual sink, and the shower curtain with more sharks on it, he could say with utmost honesty, “Not yet.”

One door left at the end of the hall. Her scent led right to it. He paused a moment before gripping the knob and opening the door to the master bedroom. The room where Melanie slept—and had sex with that fucking a-hole Andrew.

Irrational jealousy burned inside him at the view of the king-sized bed with its red and gold comforter and the stack of fluffy pillows.

Tear it to shreds.
His inner gator knew what it wanted to do. It had no problem admitting jealousy, a jealousy he no longer had a right to.

Stepping farther into the room, he noted the open window. A slight breeze fluttered the curtains covering it.

As he heard an impatient Andrew finally coming to investigate for himself, Wes moved to the window and leaned out for a peek just as his boss entered the room.

“Did you find her?”

Looking out, he spotted Melanie perched atop the fence separating her yard from the next. His eyes met hers and locked for a moment.

I see you.

I hate you and will tear your guts out if you come near me,
hers replied.

He almost grinned.

“No sign of her, boss,” he said, holding her gaze. He gave her a slow wink. “Looks like she got away. Do you want me to go outside and see if I can pick up her trail?”

“No. We need to leave before her brother or one of his friends show up. She’s not that important in the grand scheme of things.”

Maybe not to Andrew, but in Wes’s world, she still meant way too much.

And you let her get away.

P
erched atop the fence
, Melanie heard Wes lie to Andrew, and while it didn’t forgive his many trespasses, she couldn’t help but grudgingly thank him for it. His lie let her escape.

Maybe I’ll kill him quickly instead of slowly.

As her feet hit the ground on the other side of the fence, she paused to listen.

Her ears perked as she heard Andrew tell Wes not to bother going after her. Good thing because, with the mood she was in, she might have gone looking for a sharp tool and turned Wes into a purse. Bloodthirsty?

Yes. And she felt no shame. Some people resorted to yoga when pissed. Others gorged on ice cream or hit the gym. When she felt particularly annoyed with Wes—which was every time she caught sight of him—she tended to hit Bayou Bite for deep-fried gator chunks. The un-evolved kind, of course, but that didn’t stop her from wishing the juicy morsels in that yummy crunch belonged to Wes.
I’d love to bite him.

Now if only the bite wasn’t somewhere naughty below the belt as he held her hair and moaned encouragement.

Sigh.

So many years gone by and she still couldn’t wipe those erotic memories from her mind.

A voice from behind almost made her squeak.

“Are you okay?”

Brother Daryl, here to keep an eye on her while she helped them with the plan.

Oh yes, they had a plan, a plan that had almost gone to hell because of a few factors they’d not imagined.

“Wes is in cahoots with Andrew.”

With his lips pulled tight, Daryl uttered a low growl. “I fucking knew it. Knew there was no way he couldn’t have seen anything more concrete about Bittech’s involvement while he was working there.”

“Yeah, well, he knows, and him showing up to act as a henchman almost screwed the plan. Andrew sent him after me.”

“Fucking bastard! Good thing you were quick.”

“He let me go.” Even now, she still didn’t get it. Why hadn’t he come after her? Wes could have easily caught her, yet he’d winked and lied to Andrew. She didn’t understand it, and the confusion about his actions annoyed her. “Did I stall them long enough for you to get the tracking device put onto the car?”

Daryl grinned, his white teeth gleaming in the darkness. “Fucking right I did. Now we sit back, watch, and see where they go.”

Because watching was the whole purpose in leaving Melanie in her house. Given everyone now knew about the nefarious deeds Bittech was involved in, everyone wanted to know where they’d packed up and gone to. The new Bittech location needed to be found—and taken apart. The plan was to let Andrew lead them right to it.

“What are you guys gonna do when we find out where they’ve gone?”

That remained the question no one had an answer to. Usually, in the cases of shifters behaving badly, the Shifter High Council got involved. And, by involved, Melanie meant they usually terminated the misbehaving culprit. Keeping their secret at all costs was the prime rule they all lived by. Break that rule and pay the price.

But what happened when the ones breaking the rules did so at the behest of a corrupt SHC? What recourse was there when those elected to protect them were guilty? The knowledge that Parker, a councilman, was involved and spearheading the experiments on shifters threw them all for a loop. If they couldn’t trust the SHC, then who did that leave to save them?

The dilemma plagued her as Daryl drove her back to her Aunt Cecilia’s house. Since her aunt had gone west for a few weeks to visit her daughter, it was where Melanie had stashed the boys, along with her mom, to keep them out of harm’s way. It still surprised her Andrew had come back to their house. When they’d hatched the plan, a part of her figured, if he was guilty, he’d just run.

He hadn’t. Andrew had come looking for her and the boys. A good thing she’d sent them away ahead of time. She’d not expected things to get so crazy so quickly, nor for Andrew to have help. Even her ace in the hole, the gun, hadn’t helped since it was loaded with blanks.

He knew this day would come.
He’d proved more prepared than her.

It surprised her that Andrew seemed so interested in taking her and the boys with him. He’d never shown much of an interest in his progeny—achieved after several rounds of fertility at Bittech. Mixed shifter castes did not reproduce easily.

I don’t care if he’s their father. He’s not getting his grubby paws on them.
The boys would stay with her no matter what happened next with Andrew. She’d have to ask around for a good divorce lawyer.

We could save time and annoyance by simply killing him.
Her feline didn’t take to their mate’s betrayal kindly.

The headlights on Daryl’s car lit the small house at the end of the driveway. Not a big place, with weathered green siding, a front yard replete with gnomes and pink flamingoes. Aunt Cecilia loved bright colors and fanciful garden ornaments.

Through the windshield, Melanie could see the aluminum door at the front hanging drunkenly, the thicker wooden one wide open. More terrifying of all was the sight of her mother wailing on the step, a hand held to her head, blood streaking through her fingers.

The hair on Melanie’s body hackled.

“Mama!” No sooner had the car skidded to a stop than both she and Daryl spilled out and ran to their mother. She couldn’t help but smell the lingering trace of something reptilian. Her heart raced a mile a minute, and she couldn’t stop a fluttery panic.

“What happened?” Daryl barked.

“I tried to stop it,” her mother wailed. “But the monster thing batted me aside as if I were nothing. Then he licked me.” A shudder went through her mother as she grimaced. “And I froze. I couldn’t move a muscle as that monster took the bambinos.”

“My boys? He took my boys?” Melanie’s voice pitched as the horror of what happened hit.

“I am so sorry. I couldn’t stop him. The lizard monster came and took them both.”

It took everything Melanie had not to shriek. But she couldn’t help grabbing her hair in two fists and pulling hard. She needed the pain to focus, anything to not think of what might happen to her precious babies.

Daryl knelt before their mother. “This creature, did he fly away with them? Run off? Do you know which way it went? Perhaps I can pick up its trail.”

A shake of her head and their mother explained. “I don’t think he did either. I heard an engine. Someone drove that thing here, and he took the bambinos.” Fresh tears and wails shook her mother’s body, and even though Melanie wanted to shake and curse and scream herself, instead, she wrapped the rotund body in her arms and rocked with her mothers. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

That bastard took my babies.

And she was going to get them back.

She just didn’t know how. No one did.

Daryl put in a call to Caleb, who arrived soon after with Renny and Luke and his mother. Given Constantine was holed up in a motel recuperating from his rescue of Aria, they left him out of the loop.

No point in disturbing him until there was something they could do.

“Where did that monster take them?” Since Melanie had asked this question at least a dozen times, no one bothered to reply. Andrew, Wes, the lizard monster, everyone involved with Bittech had vanished without leaving a clue or trace.

The GPS tracker they’d thought would solve all their problems and lead them to Andrew, and all the other asshats involved in the Bittech madness, proved a bust. Somehow, Andrew, or Wes, had figured it out. When Daryl went speeding after it, Melanie balancing the tablet displaying a map and a blinking icon, they found the tracker less than a mile from town on the side of the road.

Seeing it there, along with Rory’s teddy, brought to her lips a much-needed scream.

On her knees, she wailed to the sky. Screamed in rage. Fear. Anguish.

Yowled until her brother forced her to move.

So much for Daryl’s plan.
My babies are lost.
And she didn’t know how to find them.

After that failure, they’d returned to her mother’s house. They talked in circles, but nothing, nothing goddammit, brought her babies back!

“I need some air,” she mumbled, unable to listen to another word. They could tell her only so many times, “Don’t worry. We’ll find them,” before she got an urge to scream again.

As she went to slip out the front door, her brother grabbed her arm. “You shouldn’t go outside alone.”

“Why not?” She uttered a mournful laugh. “Maybe if I’m out there, they’ll come and take me, too. At least then I’d be with Rory and Tatum.”

“We’ll find them, sis. I promise.”

Except this was one big-brother promise Daryl couldn’t keep.

Melanie stepped out of her house, leaving Daryl, Cynthia, Caleb, and Renny to keep hashing out ideas. The moist air of the bayou filled her lungs, and she could have cried.

How she’d missed the smell of home, this home, the one she grew up in. Her cookie-cutter neighborhood, while nice, didn’t have a familiar feel and welcoming vibe. She hated living in the ‘burbs, even if she did have a three-bedroom house with two and a half baths—a sign, according to her mother, that she’d made it.

She’d have traded her gorgeous ensuite in a heartbeat for a happy marriage.

But at least I have my boys.

Missing boys. Sob.

She sat on the step and drew her knees to her chin. Hugging them, she rocked, the ache inside her hard to bear.

I failed them as a mother.
She’d miscalculated so badly. She should have sent them farther. Should have gone with them.

Instead, because she’d misjudged the depravity of her husband, they were gone. But not dead.
Oh, please no.

Surely she’d know if they’d left this plane of life. And if they had, she might just—

The phone in her back pocket buzzed. Odd for many reasons. One, it was well past midnight. Two, pretty much anyone who would call her this late was in the house at her back.

With shaking hands, she pulled the cell from her pants pocket and, upon seeing the caller ID, answered.

“You bastard, where are the boys?”

“Watch your mouth or you won’t ever see them again,” Andrew threatened.

“I’m sorry.” The apology left a sour taste in her mouth.

“You should be. After all, you were the one who tried to hide them first. Just not very well.”

“I want to see them.”

“You will, but only if you follow my instructions to a tee. Starting with tell no one I’ve called.”

She didn’t, not until she’d managed to slip far away. Then she did a quick call, but only to say, “I’ve gone to find the boys.”

The problem with walking eyes wide open into a trap was not knowing if she’d ever escape.