Pack Dynamics (13 page)

Planning. Dammit. He
was
going to fix this.

Chapter Nine

Megan wanted to run away and hide for about a year. This whole situation was hitting way too close to home for her. Instead, she was … ordering rabbits. And ordering dinner. She looked at the clock on her computer when her stomach growled—had she eaten today? While she was at it, she might as well call Alex’s maintenance people to come fix the door, because it was letting in a draft.

“What are we going to do about Ostheim?” she asked, after all that was taken care of.

“Hell if I know,” Alex said. “The legal system’s not exactly set up to deal with incarcerating a werewolf for industrial espionage and attempted murder. Not only that, but I get why he did it. I’d do the same thing for you.”

She twitched violently. “You’d do what?”

“Oh, you know. Steal another company’s secrets, if you were sick and I thought it would help.”

Alex was looking at his computer screen and didn’t see her nonplused stare, didn’t catch the sudden change in her breathing as she thought for the briefest instant that her own secret was blown. But he was so casual about it, as if stealing information would be just another everyday thing, no different from getting her coffee when he was getting one for himself or sending her flowers and some extravagant and inappropriate gift at Christmas.

He really was an impossible, impossible man. Which was why, on a daily basis, she alternated between wanting to kill him and wanting to hug the stuffing out of him. She settled for ordering his favorite Chinese dish from his favorite Chinese restaurant, among an assortment of other meals for everyone else.

“Your rabbits will be here in half an hour. Dinner in an hour.”

“Thank you, Miss Graham,” he said absently, chewing on a pen and not looking up from his desk.

“Oh, crap,” she said, realizing something. She accessed the internet on her phone, and sure enough— “Shit.”

Alex’s head came up at her rather unprofessional language. “What?”

“One of the guys Ben killed? The cattle prod guy?”

“
What
?”

“Was Ostheim’s nephew, Deiter.”

Dead silence greeted this announcement, and Megan wondered if everyone in the room had come down with the same headache pounding behind her eyes.

“I bet Ostheim is unhappy about that,” Alex finally said.

“You think?”

“Well.” He quirked his mouth. “Nothing we can do about it now. Can’t say I’m too upset about it, myself. I mean, really. He was on my property with a damned sniper rifle pointed at my house. It’s not my problem if he underestimated a guy he, you know, tortured nearly to death. Ostheim will just have to deal.”

That was certainly one way of looking at it. Megan didn’t think that Ostheim would agree, though. She sighed and wondered what other sorts of fallout she’d have to clean up.

O O O

Janni had written out her part of the script she’d gotten the callback for, having memorized it days ago, and was alternately poring over it in preparation and poking through Reed’s notes. She looked up when Ben said, “Ha,” and sat back on the sofa in the living room with an actual smile. Her own lips curled up in response to his satisfaction.

“I’m in.” He bumped her with his shoulder. “You know I love to hear you say it.…”

She loved to say it, so she obliged him. “You’re a genius.”

“Thank you.” He moved the mouse around. “Tell me your secrets, little computer. ‘Protocol dot doc.’ That sounds promising.” He clicked on it and started reading.

And heaved a mighty sigh.

“What?” Janni asked.

“This just confirms that, yes, he vamped the rabbits.” The hairs on his arms lengthened and stood on end. “But the real question here is why.”

The door chime startled her, and she hit the intercom to the basement. “Are we expecting anyone?” she asked.

“Be right up,” Alex said. “I’m having a load of rabbits delivered.”

“Rabbits? What for?” She eyed the computer screen, with a sinking feeling. “And do I need to get Ben out of the room?”

“No, I’ll send them around to the basement entrance.” Alex walked into the room. “We’ve figured something out. Be right back.”

A few minutes later, he came back and sat on the loveseat again. “Well. We know more now than we did. Mike’s rabbits weren’t regular bunnies, so I’ve set up a research protocol to see how this stuff affects normal tissue and if we can reverse it.”

Ben popped claws, tilted his hand back and forth, and retracted them. “Pretty sure we know how this stuff affects regular tissue, but okay.”

“Huh,” Alex said. “That’s some fine control.”

Ben shrugged. “Been practicing. I’d rather control it than not, you know?”

“Good point. Anyway. Hans Ostheim has been after me for a while to do something with the nanotech in the supernatural realm. I turned him down, for so many reasons.” Alex didn’t look happy. “So he got Mike to work for him off the books. And this is what he came up with.”

“Are you going to try to duplicate the research?” Janni said. “That seems pretty useless.”

“No, no. He vamped the rabbits—somehow—and then tested the nanotech on them. I’m going to see how it affects normal rabbits and then try to reverse it.” Alex took a deep breath. “And once we’ve figured that out, Ben, we can try it on you.”

“How long will that take?” Ben asked.

“That … is a good question. And I wish I could give you a definite answer.” Alex stood up. “Right now, I’m going to get my protocol in place, and then we’re going to eat some yummy Chinese that Megan was kind enough to order for us. And after that we’re going to watch movies in my home theater, and have a good night’s sleep.”

“What? What about—?” Janni started.

“We’ve worked our asses off and had a really stressful day. We’re going to relax, unwind, and start tomorrow fresh.” Alex grinned. “Besides, I don’t get to share my theater with people that often, and when will you ever get a private screening of a movie that’s not even out yet?” He headed toward the stairs. “Dining room, ten minutes.”

O O O

Ostheim answered the phone on his desk. “Give me some good news.”

The person on the other end paused, and Hans clenched his fist. “I wish I could, sir. But it appears that either Reed ran off with all his research, or someone got here before we did. It’s gone, his computers, his notes, everything. And no one’s seen him all day. A neighbor spotted a panel truck here earlier.”

Ostheim closed his eyes and took very careful control of his temper. It wouldn’t do to fling yet another telephone across the room. “Jarrett,” he muttered. “All right. See if they missed anything and bring it back here if they did. I’m going home.”

He spent the night with his fur sprouted, under extra blankets with Idna, trying unsuccessfully to keep his shivering wife warm. Vowing ugly death to anyone who stood in the way of a cure for her.

She lost consciousness in the middle of the night, and wouldn’t wake up the next morning even with a glass of his own blood held under her nose. All right. Time to get serious, because obviously no one thought he was. He called the man he had on stakeout in front of Jarrett’s house.

“Anyone, anyone at all comes out of there, you find an opportunity and grab them. I don’t care who you have to hurt to do it.”

Chapter Ten

Ben watched with some amusement as Janni paced around the yellow bedroom the next morning. A good night’s sleep was relative. He’d been plagued with nightmares, which he eventually quelled by just staying up and working on Reed’s laptop after the last dream yanked him out of slumber at four. He awoke panting and covered in fur and wrapped in Janni’s arms while she whispered soothing nothings into his ear.

He’d persuaded her to go back to sleep by promising to work in the bedroom, and she had. But she tossed and turned and woke for good at six-thirty, the combined stress of the previous day and her incipient audition preventing her from getting any more rest.

“I am so going to blow this,” she moaned after showering and drying her hair.

“You’ll nail it, honey. Go in there like you own the place and show ’em what you’ve got.”

“I need to go back to the apartment and get clothes and makeup and stuff.”

He frowned a little. “I know Alex had your car brought back here last night, but I’d feel better if you’d let his driver take you.”

“Oh, come on. I’ve got my gun—”

“Which will be useless if they run you off the road. Or knock you out from behind. I had my Eagle with me, you know.” It was his favorite gun, and he hadn’t gotten it back. He felt naked without it. Ben wrapped his arms around himself and shuddered a little. “Your Raspberry won’t figure into it when they’ve got bigger guns and there’s three of them and they bring a stun baton into play.”

Janni tilted her head. “Are you really rattled about me going out alone?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘really rattled.’” This was a blatant lie. Ben fixed his gaze on a spot he pretended was on the spotless wall. “Just … less than comfortable.”

They hadn’t backed off, far from it, and the phrase “Your girlfriend’s next” still made him sweat.
Breathe
, he reminded himself.

“All right, sweetie,” she said slowly. “I’ll see if Alex will lend me Phelps.”

“Good. That’s … good.” He closed his eyes and had to stop himself from hyperventilating.

He heard Janni’s footsteps approach, and the computer left his lap, to be replaced by her. He stuck his nose in her hair. “If anything happened to you—” He left the thought unfinished.

She kissed his chin scruff. “I’ll be careful. Promise.”

O O O

Janni climbed into the back seat of the Bentley, feeling faintly ridiculous.

Phelps put the partition down, smiled, and said, “Just relax and enjoy the ride, Miss Miller. Practice your lines or something.”

Deep breaths. Ben was fine—well, as fine as he ever was—and he’d be disappointed if she screwed up just because she was worried about him. So. Line-practicing was a go.

The ride to their apartment took about an hour, and Phelps jumped out and opened the door for her after he parked in the structure set aside for residents.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

“All part of our friendly service,” he answered, shutting the door and squiring her toward the elevator. His hand was inside his jacket, though, and he was vigilant, scanning the area for threats and giving the lie to his easy words. She clutched her purse a little tighter and looked around too, but the threats were hiding behind pillars and cars—

A red spot bloomed on Phelps’s white shirt, barely to the left of his tie, at the same time a shot echoed through the garage. Realization dawned, and Janni screamed as Phelps dropped to his knees and then braced himself on his hands, gazing up at her.

“Run,” he rasped, and collapsed.

Heart pounding, she sprinted for the street, and witnesses, but didn’t get far. She’d jammed her hand inside her purse and her finger was on the trigger of her .380 before she’d even thought about what she was doing.

Three men caught her from behind, spinning her around, and she screamed again, flailing and kicking, struggling fruitlessly to escape. Her finger convulsed and the gun went off inside her bag, blowing a hole in the bottom of it and sending a bullet into the leg of one of her assailants before the purse went flying to land under the limo.

The other two weren’t fazed, however, and the last thing she saw was a fist heading toward her face.

O O O

Ben eyed the clock in the lower corner of his computer screen with concern. Janni was supposed to call him when she got done with the audition, but his phone had remained silent for far too long, and now he was worried. Especially since she had to be at work by one, but one had come and gone with no word. His chest was tight, and his thumbs worked at the handcuff scars. Back and forth, back and forth.

He’d been relegated to the upstairs living room again, since Alex had deemed it necessary to kill another scary rabbit, and the basement was full of normal rabbits anyway. His wolf was itchy enough just knowing about the bunnies without being in the same room with them. Megan wandered in and out, checking his state of mind, noticing him getting more and more restive with each passing quarter hour.

At one thirty, too nervous to wait any longer, he picked up his phone and dialed Janni’s number. It went straight to voicemail, so he called her boss at the catering company.

“I was just about to call you,” Renee said. “Where’s Janni? It’s not like her to be late without letting me know.”

“She’s not there?” A cold snake of worry curled up in his stomach and commenced rattling its tail.

“No. Is she sick or something?”

“Um, something.” Ben made some excuse or other that he couldn’t remember five minutes later, hung up, and clattered downstairs. “We’ve got a problem.”

Alex was doing who-knew-what to one of the rabbits, but his head snapped up. “What?”

“Have you heard from Phelps?”

Alex looked at his watch and swore. “Megan?”

She pulled her phone out and dialed. “No answer.”

“GPS?”

Megan pushed some buttons. “The car’s at Ben and Janni’s place.”

Hair sprouted on Ben’s back and claws tipped his fingers. “They should have left there hours ago …”

“Megan, get Jeremy over there, please,” Alex said.

She made the call. “He’s on his way, with a team.”

Ben’s phone rang, making them all jump. He looked at the screen before answering with mingled relief and apprehension. “Janni? Where are you?”

“Shut up and listen.” Male voice, not Phelps, damn, damn,
damn
, and Ben turned the speaker on so everyone could hear. “We have something you want, and you have something we want.”

“Ben?” Janni’s voice. “Don’t—!” The sound of someone getting smacked resounded over the line.

“Mother
fucker
,” Ben growled through fangs. “Touch her again and I don’t care what it takes, I’ll hunt you down and kill you so dead they won’t even find all the parts.”

The man ignored the threat and read off an address in the warehouse district. “Bring Mike Reed’s research with you, and we’ll work a trade. Your girl for the data. I’m feeling generous, so you’ve got two hours. Call the police and she dies.”

The connection cut off, and Ben stared at the instrument in his hand before, very carefully, placing it on the desk rather than flinging it across the room like he wanted to. His breath came in short sharp gasps between bared and clenched teeth, a mixture of rage and panic turning his vision black around the edges, and the wolf was close, too close, to coming out. When had his knees hit the floor?

Megan appeared beside him, her nails pricking his shoulder through his T-shirt. “Stop, Ben. We’ll get her back. Control it.”

Easy for her to say; she’d been doing this a lot longer than he had. But she’d knocked him on his ass as easily as if he’d been a toy poodle before, and, in the back recesses of his mind, he had no doubt she could and would do it again. He swallowed, closed his eyes, put his lips and his teeth and the hair on his back down. “If they do anything to her …”

“I’ll help you get even,” Megan assured him, pitched too low for the others to hear. He could smell how pissed off her wolf was. “But for now we just have to get her back.”

“We can’t, we can’t give them the research, who knows what they really want it for—” Ben started.

“I have a pretty good idea,” Alex said. “And I’m not sure I have much of an issue with giving it to them for that reason. The problem is what they’re going to do with it after, if they’ve even gotten that far.”

“Do we have to give them everything we have?” Ben asked.

“I think they’re fishing and have no idea how far along Reed was.” Alex bared his teeth. “We can doctor it appropriately. Let’s get to work; we don’t have much time.”

O O O

As they got the laptop and notes ready, Ben had to argue long and hard to persuade Alex to stay at the mansion instead of coming along as extra firepower.

“We can’t afford to have them grabbing you, Alex,” Ben said with exasperation. “And how much experience do you really have with guns anyway?”

“I have a range right here in the basement,” Alex pointed out. “I can hit what I aim at.”

“That’s not good enough.” Ben crossed his arms. “Have you ever pointed a gun at a human and pulled the trigger?”

“Well. No.” Alex’s cell phone rang. “Tell me something good, Jeremy.” He listened, deflating, and put his face in his hand. “Shit … Yeah. All right, thanks.” He put the receiver down and sat there, uncharacteristically silent.

“Phelps is dead,” he finally said. “Shot in the chest.”

Megan sank into a chair with her hand over her mouth. Speechless.

“That’s it,” Ben said. “You’re staying, Alex, if I have to tie you down.”

“Yeah.” Alex’s voice was hoarse, his eyes haunted. “Fine. I have to talk to Phelps’s wife anyway.”

Ben gathered the notes and the laptop that they’d ginned up into a messenger bag. He’d partitioned the drive of the computer, which wasn’t actually Reed’s, and added all sorts of security measures to it, and he’d tell whoever was at the handoff that they’d had no success breaking into it. By the time the bad guys figured out they’d been snookered, he’d be long gone with Janni.

At least, that was the plan. He stared at his shaking hands and realized he was in no shape to drive. Chambliss, who was apparently an expert at doing exactly what people needed, volunteered. When Ben protested, he said equably, “I’m ex-military as well, Master Ben, and I’m not decrepit yet despite my apparent age.”

As they pulled up in front of the warehouse, Ben’s phone rang. “Come in alone and unarmed,” said the person on the other end. “Any funny stuff, and you can watch your girlfriend die.” The call ended with a click.

He would have felt better going in with a gun, but he was a fully loaded werewolf, so he guessed he didn’t really need a weapon. He gathered his scattered wits and tried to calm himself, falling back on battle training. This was really no different than walking into an enemy neighborhood in Afghanistan.

“Be careful, Master Ben,” Chambliss said, exhibiting a calm Ben had no idea how he accomplished.

“No worries, Chambliss,” he answered, more jauntily than he felt. “We’ll be out in no time.”

“I’ll have the car ready to go. You and Janni just jump into the back seat.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ben pushed the door to the warehouse open, walking into the echoing, empty space with his hands spread at his sides, his thumb hooked through the strap of the messenger bag. His eyes took in the room, the catwalks two stories overhead, an exit at the far end, the broken windows up high, looking for outs in case the front door became blocked somehow.

It wasn’t promising. Two men stood up on the catwalks, one at his ten o’clock, the other at his two, both aiming rifles at him. Thirty feet away at his twelve, two more men, with Janni, arms bound behind her, gagged and blindfolded, between them. One, who was bald and covered with tattoos, held a semi-auto handgun to her head.

Even this far across the room, Ben could smell her terror, see the bruise that marred her face, hear her gasps of fear. Breathe, he reminded himself yet again. Letting the wolf off the chain was so, so tempting, but wouldn’t do any good right now. “I’ve brought Reed’s laptop and his notes. Let her go.”

“Walk halfway here, set the computer in the middle of the floor, and step away from it,” the one with the gun said. It was the same voice he’d heard on the phone, and Ben’s wolf swiveled its ears that way and bared its teeth. “Once we’re sure it’s what we want, you can have her.”

Ben did as he was told, trying to look small and harmless. “I hope you guys have better luck with it than we did,” he said as he stood back. “We weren’t able to break his encryption. I barely got it to boot up.”

The thug not holding the gun came forward and removed the computer from the bag, opened the lid, and pushed the power button. A few minutes later, after pounding ineffectually on the keys, he grunted. “Yeah, it’s like he said. It’s going to take a while to crack.” He shuffled through the papers inside the bag. “Good notes, though. We should be able to do something with this while the techies poke the laptop.” The notes were utter nonsense, but this guy apparently didn’t know enough to know that.

“There. You’ve got what you want,” Ben said. So close. “Let her go.”

The thug with Janni yanked on the rope binding her wrists, freeing them, and pulled the blindfold off, pushing her in the back at the same time. She ran forward and stumbled into Ben’s arms.

He pulled the gag off, kissed her forehead, and spun her around. “Door, now, go. I’m right behind you.”

“Quick, Ben,” she whispered. “That one’s a—”

The tattooed guy had followed her, and Ben went cold when he caught his scent. “
Run
, Janni. Don’t look back.”

“Yeah, I think the boss will want you,” the man, who wasn’t a man, said. Werewolf, and he’d figured out what Ben was. Ben turned to follow Janni out, and made it three steps before one of the rifles on the catwalk hissed. A yellow-feathered dart imbedded itself in his shoulder.

“Ben!” Janni cried, looking back, he’d told her not to do that, dammit.

“
Go
.” He managed to yank the dart out and toss it away as she dashed out the door. But he only made it two more steps before his legs turned to rubber and the tattooed guy tackled him anyway. Tried to Change, failed. A hand fisted in his hair and smacked his head against the concrete.