Passion's Prey: The Shadow Shifters (32 page)

He puffed on his cigarette again, long and hard.

“So where is he?” he asked, shifting from one foot to the other. He’d never liked the waiting game. Besides, most of his buyers seemed anxious to get the deal over with, showing up at least ten to fifteen minutes early, ready to rock and roll. Lifting his arm, he looked at the clear face of his watch and frowned. Five minutes after twelve.

“He’ll be here,” Kensington said. “I got a text from him about twenty minutes ago saying he was on his way and not far from the building. Just calm down. You look like you’re about to have a fucking baby over there. Sucking on those sticks like a dick.”

Sidney had been just about to put said stick to his lips. He looked over at Kensington with a fuck-you glare and proceeded with his next puff.

“We’re too open here,” Greer said quietly. “We should have done this somewhere more secure.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, more secure? We’re in a secluded warehouse, dammit. What’s more secure?” Sidney asked with disgust.

Greer didn’t frown, didn’t do more than give him a tired glance. “A secluded warehouse that belongs to Slakeman. You might as well have put out an APB letting every law official in the city know what’s going down.”

Sidney felt like he was getting sick. His nose kept running and he’d been swallowing some nasal crap all damn day long. He choked up something, leaning over to cough and spit on the floor. When he returned upright he saw the two bozos sent to watch him both giving him a look of thorough disgust. He almost laughed at how comical their faces were.

“Nobody cares what we’re doing out here. This is private property; they can’t just come in here whenever they feel like it. So this is the safest place in the city to move the amount of steel we’re moving tonight.”

Greer shook his head. “Amateur.”

“Who are you talking to? Man, I’m no stranger to this game. I’ve been doing it for years.” Sidney talked to the back of the guy’s head since Greer had started walking toward one of the large windows on the other side of the office.

“And that’s why he called me in,” Greer mumbled.

“Look, Sidney, just calm down,” Kensington said. “We’ll be done with this deal in a few minutes, then you can go get yourself more drugs or more smokes or whatever the hell’s got you so strung out tonight.”

“I don’t do drugs,” Sidney said adamantly. He was telling the truth. Drugs would hamper his thinking and that would fuck up his money, which was not an option. He’d smoke on these cancer sticks until hell froze over but he wasn’t snorting shit or sticking no goddamn needles in his arm to get high. He didn’t even want to move that shit, which was why he’d become Slakeman’s buyer instead of taking on other financially lucrative ventures through his father’s connections.

“Whatever you say, just be the fuck quiet and we’ll get this over with.” Kensington had now joined in with the yelling.

“Shhhhh,” Greer hissed.

He extended a hand toward them, pointing a finger as if they needed to know he was specifically telling them to shut the hell up.

“Someone’s coming,” he continued and moved toward the door. He plastered his back to the wall so that when the door swung open he’d be standing right behind it. Digging into the waistband of his pants he pulled out a gun, clicked the safety off.

“Whoa, wait a minute. This is not how my deals go down,” Sidney was saying, taking a step toward Greer and the door.

He stopped when Greer lifted his gun hand, pointing the fucker right at him.

“Get in position,” Greer said, his face twisting in a lethal sneer.

“Who is this guy, Miami Vice?” Sidney asked.

Kensington pulled on his arm, saying in a hushed tone, “Just get back here.”

“No!” Sidney yelled. “This is not how I work. It’s not how Slakeman wants business conducted.”

His words died in the next instant as the door was nearly kicked off its hinges and Greer—or he should probably call him look-alike Detective Ricardo Tubbs—pointed his gun, finger on the trigger.

Chapter 28

Saturday, 12
AM

“Something’s going down,” Eric said into his cell phone as he drove his Acura through the city streets like a man on a mission. “All available officers have been called down to this warehouse in Woodland.”

“Drugs?” Dorian asked, already getting out of his bed, grabbing the pants he’d thrown over the chair and stepping into them.

“Weapons and drugs I hear. SWAT’s even coming in. This is big. You should come down just in case,” he said.

“Yeah, text me the address and I’ll be there,” Dorian said, disconnecting the call. If SWAT was being called in, it was big. Besides, the only warehouse Dorian knew of in Woodland belonged to Robert Slakeman Enterprises, the arms dealer suspected of making deals with the devil to accommodate his lavish lifestyle. Hell yeah, he was going out there to see what was going on.

*   *   *

The moment their SUV pulled up, X scented Rogues. He looked to his right where Caprise was sitting and frowned.

“I can do this,” she told him, patting his knee reassuringly.

In the seat in front of them Nick shook his head and X knew he’d heard Caprise’s words. Nick had already given X the nastiest case of stink eye the moment he saw Caprise heading for the vehicle. She’d told her brother to kick rocks, or something along those lines. Rome had wisely kept his opinions to himself.

“You stay behind me,” he told her.

“X—” she started to say.

He put his hand over her mouth to silence her. “You’d better be on my back like flies on shit, you hear me, Caprise? This is not negotiable or I swear you’ll never see sunlight again.”

She blinked and blinked, then tilted her head to the side as if to say
You can let me go now
. He removed his hand from her mouth, and she sat back against the seat.

“Just because I’m in love with you doesn’t mean I have to listen to everything you say. But since we’re on your turf, I guess I can bow to your infinite wisdom.”

She’d said all this with the prettiest smile he’d ever seen and X was instantly hard. Damn, he thought with an inward sigh, he was in love with this woman. It hit him just like that in the instant she smiled at him. Sure, he knew now she was his mate and had accepted that, but X had never put too much stock in the word
love.
Until now.

Behind them, two black vans filled with shifter guards pulled up. When all the vehicles were parked Rome came to stand in the center of the semicircle the shadows had formed.

“The gate was open,” he started. “That’s not a good sign. This facility manufactures defense weapons; there should be guards and locks and alarms, the whole nine yards. But we just drove right up.”

“Setup?” Ezra asked.

Nick nodded. “That’s exactly the way we’re going to play this. Everybody armed and ready.”

“Shoot before shifting,” Rome added.

There were mumbles but when Rome held up his hand they ceased. He pointed to the com link at his ear, signaling they were going quiet, no communication except through their secure com links. Nick and X already knew their jobs and motioned their separate teams accordingly.

X was followed immediately by ten guards, including his personal guard, Zach. They went around the back of the building to find an entrance. Rome and his team would go through the front door. Nick and his team would make their way to the roof.

The night air was stuffy; today had been humid with scattered showers. When X put his hand on the doorknob, it was slick but didn’t turn. He hadn’t figured the doors would simply open for him, so he was prepared. Pulling out a device no bigger than a cell phone, he punched in codes that searched the area for connectivity. He’d designed this device to be able to penetrate any security system, as long as said system used streaming data. Red would indicate no and green yes. For a couple of heart-stopping seconds he stared at the device in the palm of his hand. When it finally blinked green he felt partial relief, then a bigger part concern.

This building wasn’t being monitored at all.

“Clear,” X whispered in the com link. Rome and Nick were waiting for his go-ahead before they tried to enter.

If there had been an alarm system, X would have hacked into the computer system to disarm it. But there was nothing. He wondered if he should tell Nick and Rome, but figured they were already going under the assumption this was a setup. Which to X only meant that whoever was in this building and had brought them here under false pretenses was fair game to shoot to kill.

Slipping his device into his back pocket, X pulled another small metal tool from the utility belt designed specifically for and worn by all the shadow guards. It wasn’t as big as those fanny pack things—he’d been clear, and Nick had agreed, that those were not something the guards would wear—but it held a lot of his tools of the trade. One of those trades being breaking and entering when need be. Of course this conflicted with his job as a federal agent. It also conflicted with Nick’s and Rome’s human jobs, as well as those of all the guards who functioned in the human world. But they couldn’t deny who they were, and tonight’s mission would be protecting the humans just as much as the shifters. They all understood this and would proceed accordingly.

When the knob turned in X’s hand, he pulled the door open and took the first few steps inside. He was about to turn around and signal for the others to follow when he bumped right into Caprise. His gaze narrowed on her but he didn’t say anything.

“What?” she asked. “I’m right behind you.”

That she was, he acknowledged by signaling the others to follow suit. Once they were inside X knew he was in the basement. On the ride into town, they’d been able to find some very old blueprints of this building, as one of the guards worked for the Department of Public Works and had assigned crews to come out and inspect the plumbing after a water main break two years ago. It could have been redesigned since then, but they figured it probably wasn’t.

“I’m in,” X said into his com link.

A few minutes later Rome reported, “I’m in.”

Jax was with Rome. This shifter’s human half hadn’t always been a law-abiding citizen, so X assumed he’d probably done the actual breaking-and-entering part. Should anything ever be revealed about their existence, Rome, as an FL and the Assembly leader, would be protected at all costs—even if that meant another shadow took the fall for him. One of the new standards implemented and voted on by the Stateside Assembly—which consisted of each of the Faction Leaders and two officers from their Zone—was that the Assembly leader and the First Female were to be protected to the fullest extent.

X, Zach, and two of the other guards all used the penlights from their utility belts to search their surroundings while X waited to hear from Nick.

“We’re in,” Nick finally reported.

With that, X motioned for his team to follow him through two large areas that looked like they were used for storage. They were taking the stairs up to the next level when loud popping sounds ripped through the com link. X and the others all stopped on the stairs the moment they heard it.

“Shots fired!” Jax yelled through the link. “Second floor! Second floor!”

*   *   *

Thunder had kicked the door in on Sabar’s orders.

“I want these fuckers to know who they’re dealing with,” he’d said.

Darel knew exactly who they were dealing with and where this deal was heading. He’d shrugged, letting Thunder know from this point on it was his call.

Thunder, who didn’t mind making noise and getting things started, had lifted his size-twelve foot and kicked the door with the entire force of his three-hundred-pound body behind it. The wood squealed with displeasure as it cracked under the pressure and swung open, dangling off its hinges.

They walked in like characters from one of those old mobster movies, four big-ass shifters, two strapped and one drugged almost out of his mind. The other moved with a slow swagger because he knew exactly how this episode would end.

“Took you long enough,” Kensington said. He was the first to move toward the center of the room where Sabar had stopped walking.

“I’m here, now where’s my shit?” Sabar asked, his voice slurring on that last word.

Kensington’s head tilted as if he, too, were questioning Sabar’s stability. Darel knew Sabar was wondering what the hell was going on, had been for the last few days. He’d found a good bit of humor in the turn of circumstances himself.

“You okay?” was Kensington’s question.

Sabar went to take a step forward, probably thinking to get in Kensington’s face, maybe threaten the guy again, possibly scare him a little.

Not.

Tonight was definitely not Sabar’s night. Inside Darel there was a flicker of regret for what he knew was about to come. On the outside there was a smile, like a dying ember in Darel’s dark cavernous form.

“I’m fuckin’ … fuck … I’m fine. Where’s my shit?” This time when Sabar went to take a step his legs gave out.

Before he could hit the ground, Palermo was behind him, catching Sabar in his arms. When Sabar looked up it was into Palermo’s face. Darel knew the moment recognition hit Sabar.

“This guy’s a joke, man. Get him out of here,” Sidney said. “I’m not doing business with no druggie.”

“You’re doing this deal,” Kensington said, using both his hands to push Sidney back as the younger man had already started for the door. “Part of that money’s mine and I’m not letting it walk away just because this fool decided to get high before he got here. You got the money?” he asked Darel over his shoulder.

Darel put down the briefcases he carried. He lay them both flat on the floor, flicking the clips that held them closed and pushing the tops open one at a time.

“What the fuck?” Kensington said the moment he saw what was inside.

“I told you! I told you!” Sidney yelled, breaking away from Kensington and rushing toward the door.

“Let him go. I’ll need him later,” Darel said with a look to Palermo.

“Crates are already in the truck,” Palermo, the Rogue shifter, told him.