ROMANCE: SHIFTER: Shifter to the Max Collection (Dragon, Bear, Wolf and Panther Shifter Romances) (Paranormal Fantasy Romance Collection) (20 page)

The seven-hour flight to Morocco was the tensest flight of my life. At every security checkpoint, every stop, every point of downtime, I would look around me at all of the regular people feeling normal emotions like excitement for their upcoming trip or melancholy at the fact that they were leaving a much-loved place. Could they tell when they looked at me that I was being dragged half way across the world to watch my boyfriend die because he was a thief tied up with the mob?

By the time we were landing, I was disoriented and tired of being in my own thoughts. I was ready for the change of scenery. When we stepped outside of the airport, waiting for the motorcade of cars that were dedicated to taking us every place we could possible need to go, Morocco practically slapped me in the face. The sun was so bright it almost hurt to look around. Luckily, Markus had packed me a pair of ray bans (of course), but once I put them on, the sun was dimmed but not the colors around me. Everything was so vibrant. Even the bright clays of the ground, the sandy cabs peeling off the curb, the men and women wandering down the arrivals terminal, the wildfires growing in the little Venetian gardens. The sounds of chattering, car horns, wind and sand whirling around us. All of this stimulation and sunshine might have been enough to raise my mood if Markus hadn’t shoved me into the back of a Mercedes before I could protest.

After about thirty minutes in the back of that car, tanning from the sheer force of the sun, growing tired just from looking at so many new sights, the driver pulled up to an expensive-looking hotel with aging, Renaissance architecture and a steady stream of people coming and going. They were dressed in attire that was undoubtedly composed of brands so expensive and obscure someone like me wouldn’t even have heard of them.

The inside of the room I shared with Markus did not disappoint. It was smaller than I would expect from a Four Seasons but it was well-lit with sunlight streaming in from the large bay windows on the back walls. I followed the rays of sunlight until I found myself looking out into a vast garden, dotted with pools and fountains and covered in grass that was either expensively well-maintained or not even real. If I squinted my eyes, I could just see Don sitting beside a large pool in a bright linen suit with a newspaper in hand. An older woman who must have been his wife accompanied him. I could feel a smile forming on the edges of my lips as Markus came up behind me and put his arms around me. It was like a terrible dream, a terribly beautiful dream. “This is…”

“I know,” He whispered.

When I looked up at him, I wished that nothing else existed. We didn’t work in the grand scheme of things. Out in the real world where he was a mobster and I was a writer, this could never go anywhere, but in between the walls of that room, when there was just the driving desire of a shifter and his mate, everything made just as much sense as it needed to.

He kissed me like he could read my mind.

Then, he pulled away. He walked back around our bed, going straight for the closet. Out of the secret compartment, he pulled out a black duffel bag. I watched as he laid out the weapons; a hand gun, rifle, hunting knife, rounds and a holster. After the twenty minutes it took for him to arm himself, he turned to me with another gun, holding it out with his brow furrowed as if he were still trying to decide something. “Hmm… Better not.”

“What?”

He stuffed it into the now-empty duffel and gestured for me to follow him out of the door. “I can’t give you a weapon. Eliseo would go mad again and this is too… sensitive. I can’t have that.”

My heart pounded the entire car ride, it throbbed in my chest and rang in my ears as we assembled in front of the building their intel had determined to be the apartment Cody was renting for the month. Four men stayed in their cars, two others guarded the doors while Eliseo and Markus dragged me to the second, side entrance.

Eliseo faced me, his eyes daring me to defy him. “You know why you are here?”

I started to nod before I realized I actually had no idea. “Maybe?”

He rolled his eyes, then pressed me against the stucco. I gulped, watching Markus clench his fist out of the corner of my eye. “He is in room 304. You go up there. You tell him you’ve been looking for him. You lead him down here.”

My eyes widened, my face frozen in shock. They wanted to use me as bait, to lead Cody to his death. “Do I have to?” I whimpered like a child.

Eliseo nodded.

I turned my head up to the sky. “Please don’t make me do this.”

I felt Markus grab my hand before I watched him nudge Eliseo away.

Eliseo grunted, but gave us the space anyway.

“I’ll be right here,” He whispered into my ear. Then, as he kissed my forehead, I felt him slip something hard and cold into my palm. He had slipped me a knife in secret. I furrowed my brow at him but all I got was an aggressively even face back.

I slipped the knife into the waist of my denim shorts as I turned and entered the side of the building. Everything from the chipping white walls, the weak doors, and the gold handles, the red numbers screamed mundane. Who would have thought Cody would run away to this place? That hidden behind one of these doors was a man about to face a world of pain.

I reached the end of the hallway and started up the stairs, walked down the next hallway. Again, stairs. The third floor. I started reading the numbers but when I got to 304, I had to hesitate. After everything that had transpired the past few days, only a door separated me from him. I pressed my ear against it, listening for signs of life because I still couldn’t believe it.

I knocked.

In the next few seconds, I heard footsteps on the other side. When there was a pause, I looked up at the eye-hole, putting on the nicest face I could muster. He yanked the door open and stood before me wearing nothing but wrinkled pants, his skin a shade darker than the last time I had seen him, his eyes bearing dark circles, his blond hair disheveled. “What is this?”

I gulped. I hadn’t exactly thought of what to say, which was less than advisable because in times of extreme stress and minimal planning a person can say anything. I mean it, anything and everything can be running through a woman’s mind, including, “I wanna break up.” I huffed out a breath. There, it was out. I had done it. albeit, at the worst time ever.

He cocked his head to the side. “You tracked me down and flew to a different country to tell me you wanted to break up with me?”

I nodded, brushing past him into the room, fully aware of the fact that I was doing exactly the opposite of what Markus and Eliseo said to do, but this was going to keep Cody alive. I couldn’t bring myself to lie about my feelings for him for a second longer, especially in this situation. “Yes,” I said, my voice catching. “I did it just so that you would see that I could.” I glanced around him room, bare except for a bed slammed against the wall, a small window, a little suitcase and his MacBook sitting, open on his bed.

He stood watching me, his arms crossed. “You were never good at lying.”

I scoffed. It bothered me that he assumed I was lying about how I felt, like there was no way I could actually want out of this whole thing. I gestured around me. “Well, apparently, you were.”

He rolled his eyes.

I narrowed mine, reminding myself that I promised myself I wouldn’t get into this. But here we were. It was happening. “Honestly, Cody. How could you keep this from me? What even is this?”

He set his jaw. “I was in the weeds, alright? So I borrowed money.”

My eyes went wide. “I have money!” Ever since my first published book, I’ve had money, more than I’ve known how to spend. “You could have taken some of mine.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself…”

“To be weak in front of me? To make mistakes? To act like a real fucking person?”

He grimaced. “God, Emily. Tell me how you really feel.”

I huffed. “This isn’t the time.” I glanced at my watch. We had been up there for far too long. Would they come up after me?

“Who gave you that watch?”

I took another look at it. Tom Ford. I pursed my lips.

He was already catching on. “How did you find me?”

“You used my credit card remember? I just looked at my statement.”

“But this is the middle of nowhere.”

I was starting to feel cornered, the way he kept pressing me. “I asked around…” I was the worst at this. Can you imagine that? A writer with no operational imagination…

“They got to you didn’t they?”

“What?”

“They picked you up and sent you up here to trick me.”

That’s exactly what happened. “No.”

We were running out of time.

He took my face in both of his hands. “Tell me the truth.”

I swatted his hands away. “You first, asshole!”

He shook his head, glowering at me. “I can’t believe you would sell me out.”

My jaw dropped, anger coursing through my body “Excuse me? You left me to die!”

“So you admit it.”

How could I have lived with this monster for months? How long would it have taken before I saw this side of him? “They tortured me, Cody! They would have killed me if—“

His eyes flashed wide. “If?”

I glanced at my watch again, my heart throbbing, my whole body shaking. “There’s no time.” But I barely got the words out of my mouth before Eliseo and Markus barged through the door.

“I can explain!” I shouted the words like they were a Hail Mary pass in the last seconds of a game.

“Fuck you.” Eliseo stormed across the room. Before I knew it, he was shoving me across the floor. My eyes shut defensively as he slammed me into the wall. I swear I could feel my heart pounded against the front of my chest. A ripple of pain shot through my entire body.

“Oh…” I muttered as he pressed the cold barrel of a gun against my temple.

“You had one job.” Eliseo said. “You were going to try to escape, weren’t you?”

My eyes started to water. “You can’t believe that.”

“Drop it.”

I looked up just in time to watch Markus rip a badge from the side of his holster. A stream of sirens flooded all around us. There was the sound of boots slamming concrete and gunshots going off. Markus pointed the gun at Eliseo, but he might as well have been pointing it at me.

I felt him tighten his grip, the barrel dug farther into my temple. My eyes slipped from Cody’s to Markus’s.

“You can let her go now or you can let twelve feds pry her from your dead arms.”

I gulped.

“I’ll shoot you first, wolf,” Eliseo said.

I couldn’t stand the thought of yet another thing happening to label me as a victim. I wouldn’t let myself get caught in the crossfire, helpless in the middle of a quarrel between two men who wanted each other dead. “No.” I hissed as I slipped the knife from my belt. I held my breath as I shoved it into his stomach. I felt his body push back at me as I broke the skin and the muscle and whatever was underneath. I wasn’t expecting the blood. There was so much of it.

He hunched over, a grunt of pain slipping from his lips. But no sooner had he recovered than he lifted his gun and pointed it right at Markus. “I told my father you were a goddamn snake. He wouldn’t believe me. As soon as he saw your fucking fur… he wanted you… instead…”

The knife slipped from my hands. “No!”

But Markus was faster. He shot Eliseo without hesitation.

The thumping of Feds storming up the staircase drowned out his fall.

Medics were at the apartment within minutes. I stood around in the street in front of the apartment building, taking in the scene unfolding around me. There were dozens of cop cars (Moroccan) and black cars that probably belonged to the feds. Cody had gotten lost in the rush of people, but when I turned around, I saw Markus pushing him into a black car. He got one, long look at me, his face was drained, his whole person defeated. I knew, in that moment, I should have felt sorry for him…

But I didn’t.

A couple of minutes later, Markus found me in the back of an ambulance. A medic had motioned me over and was checking me up and down. His chest inflated with his breath. “So…”

I nodded. “So… You work for the FBI.” It was such a relief.

He pursed his lips. “I wanted to tell you.”

I nodded. “I know. You must have.” I furrowed my brow as I remembered some of my words to him. “I said such shitty stuff. God I’m so sorry.”

He sat down next to me, motioning the medic to give us a minute. “I made it impossible for you to build trust in me and I’m sorry. Because I truly want you to trust me.”

I let out a dry laugh. “My ex-boyfriend borrowed money from the mob, stole my credit card and almost got me killed. The trust thing is gonna take a while.”

He wrapped his arms around me pulling me against his firm chest. “I’m willing to wait.”

We sat there watching the scene a little while longer. The sun had begun to set and the street was slowly clearing up. The residents, who had come out to see what it was all about had now retreated back to own homes, settling in for the evening.

I hugged him back, gazing up at him. “It’s getting late.”

He returned the look. “This story is done now,” He said.

I furrowed my brow, but it made sense. He had been on this case for who knows how long and now the Don along with a dozen of his most trusted men were headed to prison… and it was all because of him. This wasn’t just a bizarre two-day respite from real life for him. This nightmare had been his reality for God knows how long. And yet, I wasn’t really ready to reset just yet.

Now the street was just about empty except for one remaining ambulance. I hesitated before I said it, bracing myself for the answer. “Could we stay for just a little while longer?”

“In Morocco?”

I nodded.

A slow smile spread across his face. He kissed my forehead. “For my mate… anything.”

THE END