Enforcer (Cascadia Wolves) (4 page)

“Obviously one of you people. He said it was one of you. That he didn’t know if he could trust you. Now let me go or I’m going to scream my head off. It might be close to midnight but there are plenty of people around.” She said it in a flat voice but it was backed up by steel.

Cade held back a grim smile of approval. She’d just lost her brother and didn’t trust them at all. Despite that, he liked her style. She wasn’t going to give in without a fight. He gave a long look at the legs and ass encased in the jeans she was wearing. She was certainly no spinster librarian that he could tell. Sure, her hair was back tight from her face and her glasses were thick but the way she looked in jeans wasn’t something to overlook. Then again, he had a thing for librarians—he thought they were all sexy.

“We aren’t going to hurt you. We’re on your side.” Cade was straightforward, he saw no need to speak softly. She wanted to know what was going on.

She shook her head. “You’re here, aren’t you? With them. You expect me to believe it’s just a coincidence that you showed up at the same time as werewolf hit men?”

Lex gave a frustrated sigh. “We aren’t here
with
them. We came here looking for you and saved you from them.” He jammed his hands into his pockets, the failure of letting one of his own die washing over him. Two of his people in a month, the bitter taste of it was metallic in his mouth. “Look, we suspect that some of our own are up to something but we don’t know what. One of the wolves we had looking into it is the one who got killed.”

“Oh, you’re a fucking genius. I can see now why you’re in charge,” she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes at him. “If you aren’t with them, how did you find me?” she asked, suspicious.

Lex leaned over and pulled a tracking device from the wheel well of her car. She cursed quietly.

“Why don’t you come back to the house with us? We can protect you. You can’t go home. Your house,” he hesitated, “your house was on fire when I doubled back after you ditched me.” He got a sour look. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t do anything. The fire department was pulling down the street when I drove past. By the time I got there it was already too far gone. They used an accelerant of some type, I could smell it. The guy who shot Rey, he has the scent on him.”

Suddenly she surfaced, remembering what had just happened. Spinning, she saw her brother’s body was gone. She surged forward and grabbed Cade’s shirt and heard growling in the background.

“Stand down,” Cade growled back at the men who’d stood forward to protect him. He gently but firmly took her upper arms and looked into her eyes.

“You have Gabriel’s body? Where is he?” she demanded.

He slid his hands gently down her arms and took hers, reading the grief in her eyes. “One of my lieutenants has him. We needed to take him away from the scene. We can’t deal with the cops until we figure out what’s going on. We’ll give him a proper burial, I promise,” he said softly. “He was one of ours, he’ll be buried as Pack.”

Lex felt the need to rip his brother away from Nina. To shield her from all other men. Damn it, but he had to admit it to himself before he went crazy. He’d been feeling that way since that day in her shop when the other man had touched her, kissed her, and it had only worsened when he smelled her room. He’d stopped by the Pack house several times, meaning to find some female company—god knew that there were plenty of females who wanted to share his bed. He’d really tried but not a single one appealed to him.

He knew that if he got close enough to bury his face in her neck, scenting the glands there, that he’d find the scent of his woman. He didn’t want to, he liked being a bachelor, and yet, he yearned for her with every fiber of his being. His cock hardened in response to the thought. Pheromones didn’t lie, not to his wolf. She was the one for him. Her genes called out to his, she was his ideal mate, end of story. He sighed, resigned to it at last.

He stepped forward and put himself between her and Cade. “Let’s get out of the open. You’re bleeding, I can smell it. We need to get that taken care of. Which one was Rey’s room?” Lex asked gently.

She pointed listlessly and Lex put an arm about her shoulders and led her inside. Taking care of her like that, protecting her, felt so right that he realized just how wrong everything had been until that moment. Lex sat her down on the bed and stood back, frowning as he took in the split lip and the beginnings of a bruise on her neck. If he hadn’t already killed the wolf who’d done that to her, he’d be out there right now tracking him. Lex’s wolf paced inside of his body, anxious to lash out and hurt anyone who’d harm his woman.

He got a wet washcloth and she held still while he dabbed at her lip, looking carefully at the marks on her neck to be sure the skin hadn’t broken. Satisfied, he moved to toss the cloth into the sink while Cade rustled around.

Nina took the glass of water Cade offered, grateful to have something to do with her hands. Drinking, she closed her eyes, trying to hold herself together. She had to fight against the numbness that threatened. At the same time, all she wanted to do was bury her face in Lex Warden’s neck and hold on until he made everything all right. That freaked her out almost as much as losing Gabriel did.

Oh, Gabriel, it shouldn’t have been this way! All her life she’d been the strong one. She’d taken care of Gabriel from the time she was twelve and he was eight. Their parents had died in a hotel fire and they’d gone to live with distant cousins who couldn’t have cared less about either one of them. They’d let Gabriel run wild and he’d gotten in with the wrong crowd. Soon they’d gotten kicked out of the house and Nina’d had to hustle to make sure they were able to survive. She learned and ran all manner of street cons to pay rent while she made sure that Gabriel got an education.

She discovered hacking accidentally while taking a computer programming class in the local adult education program. She’d had an innate skill and knowledge of computers and programming, and started hacking for fun when she was working for a woman who’d helped them out and taken them in. She’d realized that she could make money more safely and quickly through hacking than out on the street dodging not only the cops, but the pimps and drug dealers too.

Over the next several years she’d become one of the best. She developed a reputation for quick, clean jobs that were high risk. She had to be good, Gabriel was constantly in trouble and she had to bail him out. They’d moved dozens of times, staying one step ahead of the law. She’d promised Gabriel the day they walked away from their cousins’ house that there was no way she was going to let the authorities break them up.

Her reputation grew to be legendary, as such things go anyway. Shiningstarr was a name revered by fellow hackers and tech geeks. It was also a name that attracted the attention of the authorities.

As her skills grew, she got to the point where she worked on spec for a few people and made enough money to save. Nina wasn’t greedy but she’d wanted money in case she needed it. She took the jobs until it became too risky to continue. She also got tired of being on the run and feeling guilty over breaking the law. When the offer came for a big and very risky job, she took it. It was a big payoff, enough to give them both a new start, and she’d promised herself and Gabriel that she’d go straight when it was over.

She’d taken her money and she and Gabriel had fled Ohio for Seattle. It had been too big a risk to choose a path that had anything to do with computers. She had gotten close to getting caught a few times and hadn’t wanted to chance it. She’d been so tired of running and living on the margins. She’d wanted a normal life, a real job. Security. So she’d enrolled in a floral design program and some business courses at the local community college and then she’d taken part of her nest egg and opened her florist shop. She discovered that working with flowers and plants was something she not only loved, but was good at. It wasn’t the big money game that hacking had been but it wasn’t illegal either. She could relax finally, for the first time since she’d been twelve. While she tinkered around as a hobby with her computer skills, she’d ruthlessly tamped down any use of the internet for anything other than her business.

Things had been going really well until Gabriel had gotten infected with the lycanthropy virus during a bar fight. He’d hit on some guy’s girlfriend and the guy, being a total jerk, had infected him on purpose in the fight. Gabriel very nearly didn’t make it then. Instead of pressing charges against the wolf for intentionally infecting him, instead of turning his life around, he joined the local Pack and became a runner, a man-of-all-work essentially, and had dropped off her radar.

She was so tired. She’d given up running years ago. She had built a life for herself in Seattle. She had friends and her business. Granted she hadn’t had a date in four years, but there never seemed to be much time for that anyway.

Her house was gone, her stuff was gone and her brother, the last bit of family she had any feelings for, was gone. She wasn’t going to leave town, damn it! Her business was her life—the only thing she had left. She wasn’t going to allow some punks to run her off.

“You really can trust me,” Lex said, pushing his brother out of the way. “Me and Cade. If we were planning on hurting you, we could have done so already. Not that you’re not a tough customer, I know you can handle yourself,” he added quickly when her eyes narrowed.

“I’m going to have one of my men take your car and hide it. You can come back with us, our house is safe.”

“Of course it isn’t safe! Someone high up in your Pack hierarchy is the one who shot what’s-his-face,” she hissed, leaning back from Lex Warden’s body. She had this awful compulsion to rub her cheek along his chest, to tug his bottom lip between her teeth. His cologne was obviously doing something to her.

“Did Rey tell you who, Nina?” Cade asked.

She shook her head. “He said it was someone big, that what’s-his-face told him it was someone high up. Gabriel didn’t see anyone’s face, though. God, they killed him for no reason! He didn’t know anything.”

“Damn it! I told you, Cade,” Lex said, and as he moved she saw the big gun in the shoulder holster and she stiffened.

Oblivious, Lex brushed his hands through his hair again. It made Nina’s body tighten just to watch. Oh jeez, perfect timing to get horny, right after your brother is killed and you might be next. Truthfully, she knew that Lex was right. If they’d wanted to hurt her, they could have quite easily. But damn it, she didn’t know up from down and she felt totally off balance.

“I just didn’t want to believe it. Thank god you pulled all clearance but yours and mine.” Cade turned back to Nina. “No one is allowed at the house but me and Lex and my personal guard. All of us are Wardens, absolutely trustworthy. We have a Pack house here in town for everyone else, but my house is a safe haven. You’ll be safe there. We’ve got to get out of here in case reinforcements show up.”

Safe from the killer sure—but not from Lex. And Nina had a feeling that Lex Warden posed a way bigger threat to her than any scary werewolves who wanted to kill her. Still, she wasn’t going to let go until the guy who killed her brother was taken care of.

She took a deep breath and tried to relax. “Okay, for now. But I need to deal with the cops about my house and call my assistant to deal with my business.”

Lex nodded and stifled a predatory smile as they grabbed her stuff from the room and her car and headed to Lex’s Mercedes. When he got into the back with her and let his brother drive, Cade raised a brow in the rearview mirror but said nothing.

“What were you doing here, anyway?” Lex asked her as they drove away, heading east.

“I was going to check out the laptop my brother said belonged to the guy who got shot.”

Lex looked at her sharply for a moment and then down at the computer case she held. “You what? I’ve been watching you for weeks now. Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“I just did.”

He barely held his annoyance in check. Mate or not, the woman was a pain in the ass. “Earlier,” he ground out through clenched teeth.

“I had to be sure I could trust you.” She wasn’t going to apologize!

“What’s on it?”

“Dunno. Gabriel said that he couldn’t get in. He came to me for help.” Her voice broke on the last word and Lex reached out, took her hand in his own and squeezed it. He’d been angry at her for not telling them about the laptop, but seeing how upset she was pushed all of that aside. He just wanted to make it better for her.

“How? How were you going to help? Do you know a computer expert?” Cade asked and she chuckled wearily.

“I
am
a computer expert. I’ve never met a program that can lock me out. It may take me a while to get in, but I will. I haven’t even booted it yet.” She shrugged as she looked out the window at nothing. “I didn’t want to open it up until I got somewhere where I could hook it up to my own laptop with some security protocols. Gabriel should have been smart enough not to trigger any defensive viral programs but we’ll see. I went out to my car to get my kit, I forgot it. Gabriel came out to see if I needed help…” she choked out, unable to say anything else.