Pretty Baby [Wolf Creek Pack 7] (23 page)

Elliot stroked his finger of the tribal tattoo around Tommy’s right bicep. “Would you let me get a tattoo like yours?”

“Elliot, you don’t need my permission to get a tattoo. You’re an adult. You get to make your decisions. If you want a tattoo, get a tattoo.”

“Yeah, but how would you feel about it?”

“I think it would be sexy as hell, pretty baby.” Tommy’s chuckle was low and sexy, making his chest rumble and curling Elliot’s toes. “Maybe I’ll get another one as well, one that says Pretty Baby right over my heart, so everyone knows you’re mine.”

Elliot frowned. “If you wanted everyone to know I was yours, wouldn’t it make more sense to get your name tattooed on me?”

Elliot’s breath caught in his throat when the corners of Tommy’s lips began to tilt up. Tommy looked like Elliot had just offered him the crown jewels. He nipped at the finger Tommy rubbed across his lips, arching an eyebrow when Tommy inhaled sharply.

“You’d do that for me?” Tommy whispered.

“I’d do anything for you.” Elliot smiled. “You’re my mate.”

Chapter 15

Tommy held Elliot close to his side as he watched his father lay out the plan to raid Philip Spencer’s different facilities and home. He could feel the tension in the air crawling over his skin like a million tiny ants. Everyone was as apprehensive as he felt.

The idea Daniel Nash came up with was one that had to have perfect timing in order for it to be successful. Tommy personally felt that there were too many possibilities of something going wrong and everything blowing up in their faces, thus, putting Elliot in danger. But he couldn’t seem to talk anyone out of it, not even Elliot.

“So, does everyone understand what they are supposed to do?”

Tommy looked up to find his father’s eyes pinned on him. He could see the question in Daniel’s eyes, wondering if Tommy would go along with the plan. Against his better judgment, Tommy nodded his head.

He hated the plan!

“Just so we’re clear, Elliot is our first priority. If this thing starts to go south, I want everyone to converge on Elliot’s location.” Daniel pointed to the small, thin, black devices the leader of each team held in their hands. “The tracking device on Elliot is dialed in to each of your GPS trackers. If Elliot feels he’s in danger, he will hit his panic button. A red light will flash indicating that you should follow the tracker and save him. Understood?”

Tommy looked around the room, grateful to see everyone nodding as if they had no problem putting Elliot’s safety above the mission objectives. As far as he was concerned, there was no mission other than keeping Elliot safe.

“Okay, we have five targets in all,” Daniel continued. “Three private medical research facilities, one business complex, and Philip Spencer’s personal residence. Each team is to go in at the agreed upon time, retrieve whatever information they can, and destroy what they can’t. Stealth is the strategy here, people.”

“This isn’t exactly a government sanctioned mission,” Chase snorted. “We get caught, our goose is cooked.”

“Exactly,” Daniel said. “Capture isn’t an option, killing of civilian personnel even less so. Almost all of us have abilities that make it easier for us to stay clear of humans. Use it. The less casualties, the better.”

“And if we do come face-to-face with humans?”

Tommy glanced over at Bishop Kane, his boss. He’d been surprised that the man had been invited along for this mission, but his father insisted that the man had hidden skills that would be of great use to them.

“Try and incapacitate them if you can.”

“And if we can’t?”

“Do what you must to evade capture and detection.” Daniel tossed his pencil down onto the table they all stood around then thrust his fingers into his hair. “Look, people, this mission is real simple. We need to hit all these targets at the same time so that they won’t know what hit them. Retrieval of data is important because we need to know what they know about shifters.”

“Freeing Summer and Tereza should also be a high priority,” Andre added.

“It is, Andre. Chase is taking on that mission himself. If there’s a way to free your wife and daughter, Chase will see that it’s done. But you have to understand, we need to know how much they know about us. Having this information out there doesn’t just endanger a few of us. It could potentially endanger all of us, shifter, vampire, psychic, everyone. These people have to be stopped.”

“I understand. I do. I just want my wife and daughter back.”

“We all do, Andre,” Tommy said before his father could say anything else. “No one should have to go through what you’ve been through. I couldn’t imagine being separated from Elliot, knowing he was out there and that there wasn’t anything I could do to save him. I think I would have lost my mind if I were in your shoes.”

“Pray that you never are.” Andre drew in a long breath as if it were the first one he had taken in years, the slowly let it out. “Never take for granted what you have been given. You never know when you might not have it anymore.”

“I wish things could have been different,” Elliot said, the softness of his voice surprising Tommy. His mate had yet to really talk to Andre, and Tommy thought he might be having problems adjusting to someone besides Philip Spencer being his father. “But at least you knew she was alive.”

“Sometimes I wondered if it would have been better knowing she was dead, Elliot.”

“How can you say that?” Elliot cried out. “You have no idea what it was like thinking my mother was dead all these years and knowing my father hated me. I had no one, no family, no friends, nothing until Tommy came into my life. How could that be any worse?”

“I knew Summer was out there. I knew she was alive. I didn’t have the luxury of grieving for her as you did, as Chase, Devlin, and Donovan did. I had to pretend that she was dead, pretend that Sophia was my wife, all the while knowing that at any moment, they could kill Summer and Tereza. Each time I left them, I never knew if I was going to see them again.”

“I’m sorry,” Elliot whispered. “I guess we each have gone through our own ideas of hell.”

“Well,” Tommy said, “hopefully not much longer. If this plan of my father’s works, everyone will be reunited and Philip Spencer will be out of business.”

Tommy glanced down at his mate in concern when Elliot stepped closer to the table. “I have a quick question. I understand that we’re going to raid these places and all, rescue Summer and Tereza, and get back as much information as possible. We’re even going to destroy whatever we can’t get back. What I don’t understand is how we’re going to explain this to everyone.”

“What do you mean, Elliot?” Daniel asked.

“We’re talking about blowing up buildings here. Won’t there be an investigation or something? Won’t the police and maybe the federal government get involved?”

Daniel grinned. “That’s the best part. One of Chase’s friends did a little research into Spence Corp. It seems that they use animals in their medical research, and they have received several threats from animal rights organizations, specifically, ones on the fringe of organized protesters.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Several of these fringe groups have been linked with terrorism throughout the world.” Daniel reached under the table and came up with a can of red spray paint. “A few slogans painted on the walls and no one will know the difference.”

“And a few well placed emails by an anonymous, but reliable, source to certain government agencies,” Chase said, “and the federal government will be so busy looking into Philip Spencer’s financial dealings that they will forget all about who did what to what building.”

“Philip Spencer has not made a lot of friends over the years, Elliot,” Daniel explained. “His greed and bid for power have made him quite a few enemies, some of them in very high places. I don’t think they will care who takes him down, as long as he goes down.”

“God, you make him sound like an evil monster.”

“He is an evil monster, Elliot,” Chase snapped. “Look what he’s done to our family.”

“I just…I never saw him that way. Sure, he was mean and cruel at times, but until a couple of days ago, he was my family. It’s hard to think otherwise.”

“You have a real family now, Elliot, your family.” Tommy smiled at the small shudder that racked Elliot’s body at his words. He wondered if Elliot would ever get used to having a real family. “You have your father, mother, sister, and brothers and the entire Wolf Creek Pack. That’s got to be better than Philip Spencer.”

“Damn, my Christmas list just got a whole hell of a lot longer.”

* * * *

Tommy was so nervous he felt like his stomach was doing loop-d-loops. He was supposed to act casual as he followed Elliot’s progress into Philip Spencer’s house from his vantage point in the trees surrounding the Spencer estate.

Elliot was going to pretend to be coming home for his normal monthly medical exam. If things got bad, he would signal Tommy through their mental bond and the troops would come running in to save him.

Tommy still didn’t like the plan. There were too many things that could go wrong, too many things that could put Elliot’s life in danger. Every protective instinct Tommy had was screaming at him not to let his mate go.

Besides the fact that Elliot was basically walking right into the heart of danger, no one had been able to find Carl Douglas since he had attacked Tommy in the alley. If he were inside the house, there was no telling what kind of damage the man could do to Elliot before Tommy could reach him.

Tommy glanced down at his watch, tensing when he saw that ten minutes had gone by since Elliot entered the house. It felt like ten years. He looked over at Bishop and nodded his head toward the building. Bishop just shook his head and held up five fingers.

Great, five more minutes. Tommy rolled his eyes. He didn’t want to wait five more minutes. He wanted to go in now.

“Chill, dude,” Bishop whispered. “He’ll let you know when we need to come in. Give him a chance to handle this on his own. I think Elliot needs to confront Philip Spencer and gain back a little of what that man has taken from him.”

“I don’t like it. He’s been in there way too long.”

Bishop rolled his eyes. “So, contact him. You said you could.”

If Tommy had a gun in his hand, he probably would have shot himself in the foot. He couldn’t believe he had been sitting there agonizing while he waited for Elliot to contact him when he could have contacted Elliot. The mating bond mental thing they had going on between them was so unusual, Tommy sometimes forgot that it went both ways.

“Elliot, is everything going okay?”

Elliot’s response was almost instantaneous, bringing Tommy’s level of tension down several notches.
“Yes, everything is fine. Philip is just chewing me out over that whole mess with you and Carl.”

“Carl?”
Tommy’s anxiety went right back up.
“Is Carl there?”

“Yep. He’s sitting in the corner smirking as we speak.”

“Shit, Elliot, I think Carl knows that you can shift.”

“Tommy, if Carl knows I can shift, then—”

“Philip knows as well.”
Tommy nudged Bishop with his foot then nodded toward the house when the man glanced over at him.
“We’re on our way in, pretty baby. Just keep them busy until we get past the guards.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Just be careful, Elliot. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“You be careful,”
Elliot snorted silently.
“I’m sitting in a nice, comfy chair inside the house. You’re the one that has to sneak past the guards.”

“We’re on our way, pretty baby,”
Tommy said mentally as he followed Bishop and Prince Zacarius out of the tree they had been sitting in.

It had been decided that the prince would accompany Tommy and Bishop because of his vampiric abilities. Except for his mate, Devlin, he could control someone’s mind with just a bite. That knowledge kind of gave Tommy a creepy feeling. He didn’t want anyone but Elliot biting anything on him.

Elliot could bite whatever he wanted.

Tommy had a hard time staying behind Bishop while they snuck their way into the Spencer Estate and past the guards. He wanted to run, to reach his mate as fast as possible. He didn’t want to creep through the underbrush.