Hungry Like the Wolf (26 page)

“Keep an eye out for Mr. Hardy,” Patterson ordered the man, grabbing Mac’s arm and pulling her toward a metal building. “We’ll be leaving as soon as he takes care of her.”

Mac fought Patterson, trying to jerk out of his grasp, but it was no good. Even with the soft cast on his arm, Patterson easily overpowered her and dragged her toward the door that another man was holding open for them.

“Stay out on the gate, and make sure no one followed us.”

Before Patterson shoved her through the door, she got a chance to see the man alternating looks between the ripped-up car and the darkness beyond the gate. He didn’t seem like he wanted to be out there, either.

Patterson dragged her across the hangar and around the big, sleek jet in the middle of it until they reached a door on the far side. Without a word, he opened the door and shoved her inside, slamming it behind her.

The room was almost completely dark except for an orange glow leaking through the row of small windows near the top of the outer wall. She looked around, but couldn’t see much more than some shelves and a lot of boxes.

Mac ran her hand along the door for the knob, but it was locked. She jerked on it a few times, but it didn’t give. She felt her way around the room, looking for another way out, but there weren’t any other doors, and the only windows were nearly fifteen feet off the floor. There was no way she could get up there.

She didn’t like thinking about what Walter Hardy had in mind for her. He was a vicious man with nothing left to lose. As Patterson had said, Hardy blamed Gage for everything that had happened to him, from the death of his son to the cops being on his trail. The powerful man had tried to take his anger out on the commander of the SWAT team, and failed. Mac could only assume that he’d decided to go after an easier target—her. Somehow Hardy knew she and Gage were together. He figured that if he couldn’t hurt Gage directly, he’d do the next best thing and hurt someone who was important to him.

That thought terrified her so much it made her tremble, but one thing helped her keep it together. Gage and his pack would come for her—no matter how many of Hardy’s men stood in their way.

***

Gage had been pissed as hell to find out Hardy wasn’t home. He’d really wanted to serve the man the warrants personally. But the search of the Southlake residence had still gone well. Not only had they connected Hardy to the men who’d come after him and Mackenzie, but they’d also gotten enough to put the guy away for years on racketeering charges, tax evasion, money laundering, illegal drugs—just to name a few. Gage couldn’t believe Hardy had been so sloppy as to keep records of all his dealings. It was like he didn’t think the cops would dare come after him.

He was still worried no one had seen Hardy yet, though. Gage was just about to go check to see if the deputy chief had heard anything when his cell phone rang.

“Dixon.”

“Hardy’s men grabbed Mac,” Brooks said simply.

Gage’s heart stopped. “What? When?”

“About ten minutes ago. The bastards beat up Zak to lure Mac to the hospital. We chased them for a couple miles, but they got away.”

Shit
.

“I’m on my way. Where are you?”

After Brooks gave him the location, Gage shoved his phone in his pocket, then shouted for Delaney and Lowry to get in the vehicle. He saw Mason glance his way. Gage pretended not to see him. They didn’t need SWAT on the scene now anyway.

Brooks had obviously alerted the whole team, because there were several SWAT SUVs parked along the side of the road where the senior corporal had said to meet him.

The road had been blocked off around what looked like a traffic accident. A dark sedan was lying in the ditch with the driver’s side door smashed in and the windows missing. Bullet holes riddled the car, and there were four dead bodies lying in the grass, automatic weapons alongside them. Hundreds of shell casings were scattered around the area.

Gage’s whole pack was clustered around the first SUV in the line. Well, not all of them. Becker and Xander were missing. Cooper was sitting on the hood of the car with his shirt off, a stoic look on his face while Trevino dug a bullet out of his shoulder. The team medic dropped it to the asphalt to join the others he’d already taken out. Shit, there were a lot of bloody bullets lying there.

Brooks turned. There was a dark purple and black bruise running down the big man’s neck and into his collar that probably stretched across his shoulder and chest. It looked like he’d been hit by a freaking car.

“Any idea where they took Mackenzie?” Gage asked.

“We don’t know for sure. All we know is that she was taken by Roscoe Patterson.”

Brooks briefly outlined the call Mac had gotten from the hospital, the ambush they’d walked right into, and the subsequent chase.

“You rammed a car off the road?” Gage asked.

Werewolves were strong, and Brooks was stronger than most. But tackling a car? That was extreme.

“Yeah, I thought it was the car Mac was in.” His jaw tightened. “It wasn’t until I started yanking people out that I realized I’d hit the wrong one.”

“That’s when I ripped the door off the other car, but one of Hardy’s thugs got in the way,” Cooper said. “They sped off before I could pull Mac out. I tried to keep up with them, but I couldn’t. Sorry, boss.”

Gage appreciated the effort they’d gone to get her back. He knew there was nothing more they could have done. “And no one here has any idea where the car was heading?”

“No one who’s alive,” Cooper said. “We’re hoping Becker gets lucky.”

Gage frowned. “Where is Becker?”

“Trying to get in to talk to Zak,” Brooks answered. “According to the nurse at the hospital, a couple of tourists brought Zak in. We assume those tourists were actually some of Hardy’s men, and that Zak might have overheard something—either while they were beating the hell out of him, or while they were taking him to the hospital to be bait.”

Gage wasn’t sure what they could expect out of Zak. The guy didn’t exactly seem like the kind of man who could pay attention to details while in the middle of an ass whooping. “And Xander?”

“He’s there to make sure the doctors don’t try to drag Becker in for surgery,” Cooper supplied. “He got hit a few times, too. Not as many times as I was, but I think that’s because he was using me as a shield.”

There wasn’t much they could do until Xander and Becker got some information, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t search the car and the men who had been in it. Maybe they’d get lucky.

Gage was digging through some suitcases in the trunk of the sedan when three police cruisers and an unmarked car pulled up beside them.

He spotted Deputy Chief Mason’s salt-and-pepper hair in the front seat. Mike came over to stand next to Gage as Mason got out of the car. Shit, this was all he needed.

Mason’s jaw was tight as he took in the bodies on the ground, the automatic weapons, and the bullet holes in the car. His eyes narrowed when he saw Cooper sitting on the hood of the SUV with blood covering half his chest and a SWAT medic leaning over him with a pair of forceps.

“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded, his gaze snapping to Gage and Mike. “First, I find out there was a shootout in front of Mercy General involving three of my SWAT officers. Then I learn you’ve ordered your entire team here. Have you lost your mind, Sergeant?”

Mason walked over and looked down at the first body he came to—a body that didn’t have any obvious bullet wounds but had clearly been killed in an extremely brutal fashion. He made a face, then turned to Gage again.

“As if that isn’t enough, I got a call on the way here that one of Hardy’s enforcers is dead in a ditch about a mile up the road. The patrolman said it looked like someone threw the man out of a moving vehicle. What’s left of him, anyway. They still haven’t found his arm.” The deputy chief strode over to Gage. “Maybe you can explain it to me.”

Gage wasn’t going to pull any punches with his superior. He didn’t have the time, and neither did Mackenzie.

“Hardy’s men abducted Mackenzie Stone about forty minutes ago and have taken her who the hell knows where. My guess is that they’re delivering her to Hardy as we sit here on our thumbs.”

Mason looked at him sharply. “The reporter? What would Hardy want with her?”

“Payback,” Gage said simply. “I took away someone who was important to him, so he wants to take away someone who’s important to me.”

Mason’s brows rose. “You and Stone?” He swore under his breath. “Fuck, you should have told me. You don’t have a clue where she was taken?”

Gage shook his head. “Not yet, but I hope to soon.”

Mason regarded him thoughtfully. “What do you plan to do once you figure out where Hardy took her?”

Gage didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to get her back.”

“By yourself?” his boss asked drily. “Without telling anyone else in the department?”

Gage didn’t answer. He didn’t give a shit about proper police procedure in a case like this. There was nothing that’d keep him from going after Mackenzie.

Mason sighed. “I’ll get a BOLO out on Ms. Stone. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone saw where they took her. Then I’ll get a team out here to take care of this mess.”

The deputy chief walked away, leaving Gage to wonder if the man was really going to look the other way on something like this. Then his boss stopped and turned back to glare at him. “And get Cooper to the hospital before he bleeds to death.”

Gage nodded as the deputy chief reached in the car for the radio. A few minutes later, Xander called.

“Tell me you talked to Zak,” Gage said as he put the phone on speaker.

“We did,” Xander replied. “Hardy’s men really beat the shit out of him. Probably figured he’d die from it, but he’s tougher than he looks. The doctors didn’t think he’d even come to for a couple of days, but he was already awake and shouting to talk to someone from the SWAT team when we walked in.”

“Does he know where Hardy’s men took Mackenzie?”

“Maybe. After kicking in his door and doing a number on him, they tossed him in the trunk of their car for the drive to the hospital. Through the backseat, he heard them talking about a private hangar where Hardy keeps a jet. Zak thinks that’s where they’d take Mac—so Hardy can kill her before he leaves the country.”

That last part made Gage flinch, but he forced the image aside. He had to stay focused on the fact that he was going to get Mackenzie back safely. Zak’s information wasn’t as concrete and definitive as he would have preferred, but it was the best intel he was going to get at this point.

“Okay. I’m heading to the airport,” he said. “Is Becker in good enough shape to do that computer thing he does and figure out where Hardy keeps his plane? There has to be some record somewhere that’ll give us a clue where that hangar is.”

“Don’t worry, Sarg.” Becker’s voice came on the line. “I’m already on it. If it’s a private hangar, it’ll be on the north side of the airport. Riggs and I will meet you outside the airport on the expressway. I’ll have something specific before you get there.”

Gage hadn’t been asking them to join him, but he appreciated it anyway.

“Gage.” Xander’s voice came back on. “You know Hardy is bound to have a lot of his men around the place. Who else is going in with us?”

Gage didn’t answer. He turned to look around the blocked section of highway and was surprised to see that his pack had stopped digging for clues and come to stand in front of him, their faces set and determined. His gaze lingered on Brooks and Cooper, still torn and bloody from their last encounter with Hardy’s men. Their faces were no less determined than the others.

He couldn’t ask any of them to do this with him. Hardy was going to have an army of thugs around him, and whether Mason looked the other way or not, this operation wasn’t likely to go down well with Internal Affairs and the politicians down at police headquarters. They were going to figure out that Gage had broken every rule in the book because his girlfriend was involved. He didn’t care what they did to him, but if any of his men went in there with him, they’d be risking their futures in the department as well. He couldn’t ask them to do that.

But as he looked at each of their faces, he realized he didn’t have to ask them.

“We’re all going,” he told Xander.

Maybe she’d heard wrong. Pushing the heavy shelving unit under the window had made a lot of noise. But no. She’d heard just fine. A car had pulled into the hangar. That squeal of tires had to be Hardy. She was out of time.

Heart racing, Mac glanced over at the door to make sure the pieces of the ruler she’d broken and wedged underneath it were in place. They wouldn’t keep Hardy and his men out, but they would slow them down long enough for her to escape. She hoped.

Of course, she would have been out of here fifteen minutes ago if the shelf hadn’t been so damn heavy to move. She was probably taking her life in her hands climbing up on the precariously balanced boxes she’d put on the top shelf so she could reach the window, but she didn’t have a choice. She couldn’t wait around for Gage and his pack to show up and save her. Oh, she knew they’d come—she was just worried she’d be dead by the time they got here. She hated to think about it, but there was a real possibility that Brooks, Cooper, and Becker had succumbed to their injuries after trying to rescue her. Gage might not even know what happened to her.

Mac swallowed hard at that painful thought and reached for another box just as footsteps sounded outside the door. She froze, holding her breath.
Go
away
, she prayed silently.
Just
give
me
one
more
minute
.

The doorknob jiggled. Muttering a curse, she hefted another case of paper to the top shelf, then scrambled up after it. The boxes of paper made the unit top-heavy as hell, and it wobbled wildly under her weight.

Just
stay
together
long
enough
to
let
me
reach
the
window
.

It would be just her luck to have the shelf collapse. Hardy wouldn’t have to kill her. She’d break her neck all on her own.

The door shuddered as someone big slammed against it, but her wedges held. She quickly finished stacking the two cases of paper, then climbed on top of them. The shelf swayed dangerously, but she kept herself balanced in the center of her makeshift ladder and kept going.

“I don’t know what you think you’re gaining by this, Ms. Stone,” Hardy shouted over the whir of a nearby jet engine. “I was only going to shoot you in the head, but if you make me work for it, I’m going to make it so much more painful for you.”

Not exactly a great motivational speaker, was he? Unless he was trying to get her to hurry even more.

Mac grabbed the windowsill as a gunshot rang out. The bullet went clean through the door and smacked into the wall near the shelf she was standing on. If she wasn’t so focused on keeping herself from tumbling off her precarious perch, she would have screamed for sure.

She grabbed the handle and levered it upward, then pushed open the window. It only tilted out about a foot, but that was more than she needed. She yanked herself up to the window frame and shimmied through the narrow gap as more bullets tore through the door. If Gage and the Pack were anywhere nearby, they had to have heard the gunshots, right?

Mac didn’t exactly climb through the window as much as she fell through it. She tried to hold on to the edge of the frame so she could hang down then drop to the ground, but she ended up tumbling out the window in a nearly horizontal position. The asphalt came up to smack her faster than she expected, and for a moment, everything sparked, then went dark as pain engulfed the entire right side of her body.

But the sound of shooting coupled with Hardy’s furious shouts jarred her out of the blackness. She winced and crawled to her feet. Crap, it felt like she’d broken everything important in her body.

“Get outside and find that bitch!” Hardy ordered.

Damn it. They were already in the room. It wouldn’t take them long to figure out where she went.

In the darkness, Mac looked from the open runways and planes on her right to the long continuous row of hangars on her left. She’d never make it very far if she tried to run in a straight line across the open airfield. Hardy’s men would see her and shoot her down before she went a hundred feet. So she turned left and stumbled along the hangars as fast as her beat-up body would allow. She needed to find someplace to hide until Gage and his pack could find her.

Hurry
up, Gage.
If
you
were
planning
to
make
a
dramatic
entrance, please do it now.

***

“South Salinas Air,” Becker called out from the backseat of Xander’s SUV. “North Twenty-Fourth Avenue.”

“Are you sure?” Gage had to fight to keep from snarling as he glanced over his shoulder. Finding Hardy’s hangar had turned out to be harder than the IT guru had thought.

They were all parked on the side of the expressway waiting on Becker to give them a location. For about the thousandth time, Gage questioned the intelligence of putting all his eggs in one basket and bringing the whole team out here based on a muffled conversation a beaten man had heard while locked in a trunk. He glanced at his watch again and this time, he didn’t even try to hold in the growl that escaped his lips. It was after midnight already. Hardy’s men had taken Mackenzie over an hour ago. This was taking too damn long.

“I’m sure,” Becker said. “I gave up trying to find a connection between Hardy and one of the general aviation operations out here. Instead, I tapped into the security feed for the cameras that surround the airport. I found the car that brought Mac here and followed it camera to camera until it stopped at a small charter service called South Salinas.”

Gage wanted to believe Becker, but this was Mackenzie’s life here. “How do you know it’s the car she was in?”

Becker spun his laptop around so Gage could see it. “Not many dark sedans driving around at this time of night with the rear passenger-side door ripped off.”

Gage grabbed the radio and thumbed the button. “Northeast quadrant of the airport,” he ordered. “East Sixteenth to North Twenty-Fourth. Stop three blocks short and follow the plan.”

Xander floored it and shot onto the expressway, heading to the general aviation side of Dallas/Fort Worth.

Gage glanced at his watch again, then looked down at the map of the airport spread out on his lap. He locked on to the spot where the hangar for South Salinas Air was located. He’d been staring at the map so long over the past hour that he’d practically memorized it. He wished he knew exactly where in that building Mackenzie was being held.

It didn’t matter. He’d be able to pinpoint her location the second he got within a couple hundred feet of her; then he’d get Mackenzie back. Assuming she was still alive, a part of his mind whispered darkly.

He swore, refusing to even consider the possibility.

“We’ll find her in time,” Xander said quietly as he took the off-ramp that led onto airport property.

Gage didn’t say anything.

“Mac’s smart. And she’s spunky as hell.” Xander shook his head. “I tried to scare her the other night when she came to the compound to see you, but she didn’t back down. My eyes were yellow, my claws were out, and I showed her my fangs. Even growled. But she didn’t flinch.”

Gage smiled. That sounded like Mackenzie. If anyone could keep herself alive in a situation like this, it would be her.

He forced himself not to look at his watch again. They’d be outside the hangar in minutes; then it would be up to him and his pack to get Mackenzie out safely. That was what they did for a living—they got hostages out alive.

And that was what they were going to do. They were going to get Mackenzie out alive, and if Hardy or his men had harmed a single hair on her head, Gage was going to shred the fucking lot of them.

***

Mac half walked, half ran for as long as she could, praying the whole time she’d find someone willing to help her. But all the open hangars she passed were dark and empty. Her knee and ankle throbbed so badly she thought she was going to drop to the ground at any moment. Not that she could keep running out in the open like this for much longer. One of Hardy’s men was bound to see her sooner or later. Time to stop trying to find help and fall back on her original plan—hiding.

She staggered past the next three empty hangars before settling on a big aluminum building filled with half a dozen small planes, rolling toolboxes, and wall lockers. There had to be a place to hide in here.

Mac hobbled as far back in the hangar as she could, then slumped to the floor behind a big toolbox. Just bending her knee that much made her want to yelp in pain, but she bit her lip and tried to make herself as small as possible.

She wasn’t a moment too soon. Within twenty seconds of slipping to the floor, she heard footsteps thudding against the pavement.
Keep
going
.
Please
don’t look in here
.

She’d been beyond lucky so far, but this time, her prayers weren’t answered. She didn’t know how many people were out there, but they’d stopped in front of the hangar she was in.

“I’ve got this one. Check the next,” Patterson shouted. “She couldn’t have gotten very far.”

Mac tried to crawl underneath the toolbox, but the space wasn’t big enough. Damn it. If Patterson walked around behind this line of toolboxes, he was going to see her, even in the darkened interior.

She looked around for another hiding place, but as badly as her leg hurt, she wasn’t sure how well she’d be able to get to it even if she found one.

“If she gets away, I’m going to kill you in her place, you know that, right?”

The sound of Hardy’s voice made her jump. Hardy and Patterson were both searching the hangar. Her luck was getting worse by the second.

She heard a clicking sound that she recognized from her shooting lessons with Gage. One of the men had thumbed the hammer back on a pistol.

“Unless I shoot you first,” Patterson answered his boss.

Oh
please, shoot each other
.

Hardy laughed. “Find her and I’ll let you bring her with us to Mexico. You can do anything you want with her until we get there. Then I’ll shoot her and mail the parts back to Dixon in a box.”

Crap.

“Deal,” Patterson said. “But we need to get out of here soon. All that shooting is going to bring the cops out here.”

“Carlos and the others will keep them busy.” Hardy snorted. “What, did you think I was going to bring them down to Mexico with us?”

Patterson blew out a breath. “Damn. You can be a bastard sometimes, you know that?”

“When we find Stone, I’ll show you what kind of bastard I really am.”

Footsteps came into view on the other side of the toolbox Mac was hiding behind. She cringed and quickly looked at the shelves to her right. Could she make it there without being seen?

She was about to risk it when a long, low wolf howl filled the air.

Gage.

“What the hell is that?” Hardy asked.

The howl came again, closer this time. It was followed by another, then another, and another, each from different directions, each bouncing and echoing off the metal buildings until it was impossible to figure out where the eerie sounds were coming from.

“We need to get the hell out of here,” Patterson said. Footsteps headed away from her. “Let’s forget about Stone and get on the plane.”

Mac grinned.
That’s right. You’d better run
. It wasn’t just Gage out there; it was his whole pack. For the first time since Hardy’s men had grabbed her, she started thinking that maybe this was going to end okay.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Hardy shouted. “It’s just a bunch of coyotes howling at the moon.”

“I don’t think so.” Patterson’s voice was farther away now. “Something attacked us when we grabbed the reporter. It took out Don’s sedan and everyone in it. Then it ripped Jasper right out of the backseat of my car, taking the door with it. I tried to stop it, but it was too fast.”

The howls sounded like they were getting closer. Mac took a quick peek around the side of the toolbox. Patterson was standing all the way out by the big roll-up door at the hangar’s entrance, looking back toward the building she’d escaped from. He shifted from foot to foot, like he was about to take off running at any second.

Hardy laughed. “What, do you think the big, bad boogeyman is out there coming to get us?”

Shouts came from somewhere outside, followed immediately by the sound of gunfire.

“I don’t know,” Patterson murmured. “But I’m not hanging around to find out. Something tells me you’re not making that plane to Mexico.”

Mac held her breath, waiting for Hardy to say something snide in reply, but instead loud gunshots filled the building. She covered her ears with her hands and hunkered down. What the hell was that?

“Come back here, you fucking coward, so I can shoot you like the piece of shit you are!”

Hands still over her ears, she peeked out from behind the toolbox again and saw Hardy standing in the open doorway, a huge automatic pistol in his hand that dwarfed the ones she’d fired at the SWAT compound. She couldn’t believe he’d shot at Patterson. Now she just had to wait for Hardy to leave and she’d be home free.

She knelt down behind the toolbox again, listening for the sounds of Hardy’s retreating footsteps. When she didn’t hear anything, she leaned close to the floor and looked under the rolling toolbox. Hardy was nowhere in sight. She frowned. Why hadn’t she heard him leave?

He was gone. That was all that mattered.

Mac slowly started to get up, only to scream when a hand grabbed her hair from behind and yanked her to her feet.

“Looks like I’ll be making that plane after all,” Hardy whispered in her ear as he shoved that big cannon of a gun to her head.

***

Gage slipped quietly through the narrow alley between the two hangars, soundlessly making his way along the metal wall on one side while Xander and Brooks moved along the other. He inhaled deeply, sifting through the barrage of scents on the night breeze that moved across the airfield. He couldn’t smell Mackenzie yet, but he hadn’t expected to—not this far from where she was being held.