Wesley (23 page)

Wes turned then and ogled Armando hungrily. Dressed in black from his boots to his midnight hair, Armando was walking, breathing sex. Wes cleared his throat and willed himself not to sprout wood as he focused on Armando’s face. “You look like you’ll be listening to depressing songs and writing bad poetry any minute now.”

“Shut up,” Sue laughed. “Not all of us teens are emo.”

Wes cocked a brow at her. “Yeah, you are. Drama, drama, drama. It keeps teens fuelled like coffee does for us adults.”

“And you’re so far past being a teen,” she scoffed.

Wes didn’t have a great comeback for that one so he turned his nose up at Sue and gave his best impression of being offended. She laughed and whacked him on the arm. “Goofball.”

“Well, he’s the emo one,” Alisa said as she tipped her chin towards Wes. “All pouting.”

“I’m joking, not pouting,” Wes began, only to cross his eyes at Alisa when she pointed at him and said, “Gotcha!”

“Stress relief.” Armando walked over to him and nudged his shoulder. “Alisa believes in it even during times of peace.”

“Of course I do. If I don’t get to pick on someone, I get bitchy, and that never ends well.” Alisa gestured to the rest area’s ladies’ room. “Come on, Sue. You know we have to go together or we break the sacred chick code.”

“I’m not even going to ask.” Wes looked Armando over and bent to whisper in his ear. “You look like your dick should be up my ass.”

Armando groaned and pressed a hand to his groin. “Don’t say stuff like that when I can’t do anything about it!”

“Are you nervous?” he asked Armando.

“No, not yet.” Armando glanced around them then continued. “And anyway, this isn’t the most illegal thing I’ve done, I don’t think. Actually, I’m getting kind of excited. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything dangerous—” Armando smirked, “Other than you.”

“I’m not dangerous.” Wes kind of wished he was the dark, brooding hero type, but that just wasn’t him. “Although I can be clumsy, which I suppose counts as dangerous.”

“Well, try not to be clumsy tonight. I’ve never seen you less than graceful.”

Wes puffed up with pride at that, but quickly deflated. “Give it time, Armando. Give it time.”

“Can we go now?” Sue asked from several feet away.

Wes looked at Armando, who nodded. “Yeah, let’s load up.”

The plan was simple. The Change for Christ Retreat was set approximately two miles into a heavily wooded area that was on privately owned property. A little digging had shown the land belonged to a well-known right-wing religious extremist. As far as they could discern, there were no residences on the property, and no cattle or other livestock. It wasn’t ranch land, or a farm, so they hoped not to have any run-ins with other people.

Wes’ major concern in that direction was the thugs who’d beaten Sue up. Maybe they’d only been hired to kidnap Dyan—or maybe they were seriously crazy zealots, dangerous ones.

“Turn off here,” Armando said, pointing to a dirt road. “Go down about a quarter a mile then just park off the shoulder in the grass.”

“There’s a shoulder to this road?” Alisa grumbled as they bounced along in the SUV.

“Wuss.” Armando ducked Alisa’s slap at his arm. “Hey, save the violence for the bad guys!”

Wes pulled the vehicle over as far off the dirt road as he could. “Everyone remember the plan. We get out, hike in, observe, and if all is as we were led to believe, at nine we’ll go in through the side door and hopefully find Dyan there in the new ‘patient’ rooms.” He didn’t know what they’d do if they found more people wanting to get the hell away from the place, but they’d deal with that if it happened.

After everyone had made sure they had their binoculars and phones, they set off in the direction the building was supposed to be in. About halfway in, Wes felt an itch down his spine, as if he were being watched. He held up a hand to signal everyone to stop. One look at Armando, and Wes pushed with their mind-link, sharing his concern that they were being watched and possibly followed.

Armando sidled up next to him. Wes didn’t know how well their bond worked yet, and didn’t want to depend on it more than he had to. Quietly, he told Armando what he wanted to do and, while Armando didn’t seem pleased, he did grunt in agreement.

Another signal had them all starting forward again. A hundred yards further, and Wes veered off in a particularly thick copse of trees. He wished he could shift fast, like Bobby, but he couldn’t. Dressed as he was, shifting would be time-consuming, and Wes didn’t have time to spare. He’d have to depend on his human skills and his still-enhanced senses for now.

He kept perfectly still, waiting, watching. That sense of being observed didn’t fade, although it seemed to be coming from his right. Wes turned quietly, his gaze keen. Moonlight flowed through some of the treetops, lighting parts of the ground and plants with a silvery sheen. The silence of the wooded area was only broken by his friends’ movements. Wes recognised them.

But something, or someone, was following them. Wes squatted and moved over several feet, careful to not make any noise. He moved then to his left, and further still—and always, he felt eyes on him. Either someone had night vision goggles or binoculars, or there was another shifter out there.

Wes sniffed at the air and moved again until he had the wind at his front. His stalker wasn’t dumb, though. Wes didn’t catch any of the other’s scent, but he still felt him or her watching.

Now would be a great time to have some of Bobby’s alpha power.
Wes knew, whoever it was, they weren’t Bobby or Sully. Either of those two would have come forward. An unknown entity following them was very worrisome.

And so was Dyan’s safety. Wes didn’t have the luxury of calling off tonight’s attempt. The longer he waited, the more convinced he became that there was another shifter in the woods. His leopard was all but yowling it inside of him, but Wes couldn’t tell if that meant that the other was friend or foe.

“Come on, come on,” he whispered as loudly as he dared. “Stop being a coward.”

All his taunt got him was another round of nothing. Wes finally had to give up, aware that Armando and the others had to be waiting for him close to the edge of the facility property. He stood up and glared his best glare, keeping his spine straight and his shoulders out. Hopefully, if the other shifter was a foe, he’d see Wes’ stance and take it for the challenge it was meant to be.

Wes turned and made his way towards Armando, Alisa and Sue. The women were on their bellies halfway under some shrubs, their binoculars trained on the building. Armando was watching for him, gnawing on his bottom lip.

Wes wanted to gnaw on that lip himself. He gave the barest shake of his head, letting Armando know he’d found nothing.
“Except I think there’s another shifter trailing us. Not anyone we know, either.”

Armando’s eyes went wide.
“Shit. The link works like this now?”

“Armando, you’re missing the other part, the one about there being a strange shifter following us!”

“I’m not missing it, I just was blown away by this—”
Armando flapped a hand between them.
“Telepathy-thing. Not all mates have it.”

“All the ones I know do,”
Wes thought.
“But I only know the ones in my family.”

“Well, I’ve heard—”

“They’re turning the lights off,” Alisa whispered. “We can’t see in the windows because of the blinds, but we can tell that much at least.”

Wes and Armando stopped their mental chat to pay attention to their current situation. “Did you see any shadows that might have been Dyan?” Wes asked.

Sue rolled onto her side as she came out from under the bush. “No. I don’t think she’d be sitting passively like the people inside whose shadows we could see.”

“Probably not,” Armando agreed.

“This just makes me so angry,” Sue seethed, glaring at the building. “Both Dyan and I never stopped believing in God even when our families, our churches, turned us away. The God we believe in isn’t the monster these jerks try to make Him out to be just so they can spew their hatred.”

“They’ll get their due,” Alisa vowed. “Somehow, someway, I believe it’ll happen.”

Wes didn’t want to get into a philosophical discussion so he pointed towards the front of the building. “See anyone go in or out?”

“Nope,” Sue and Alisa both replied.

Armando lifted his binoculars and looked the place over. “I’m not sure, but I would swear I just saw movement back to the left side there,” he murmured.

Wes didn’t need binoculars, but Alisa and Sue raised theirs and all four of them stood watching as two burly men came around the side of the building.

Sue sucked in a sharp breath and fear radiated off her, followed quickly by fury. “That’s two of the assholes who took her!”

“Shhh,” Armando hissed. The two men didn’t seem to have heard them and continued walking.

“They’re patrolling the grounds,” Wes said a few minutes later.

“I wonder where the third one is,” Sue said.

Wes had a premonition an instant before a voice behind them startled them all with, “Right here.”

Fuck!

Sue shouted and Alisa cursed. Wes lunged for the man just as something glinted in his beefy hand. It was only thanks to Wes’ leopard side that he was able to twist and avoid getting disembowelled or at least stabbed. He stumbled aside and immediately shot up, spinning behind the man as Armando yelled.

He didn’t know where the other two men were, if they’d heard the commotion or not. Wes had to assume they had, and he prayed they’d run inside instead of towards them.

Wes was able to get his arm around the man’s thick neck from behind while Armando dodged that knife. Wes wanted to rip the man’s throat out. His fingers ached and black claws came out, almost distracting Wes since that had only ever happened when he’d shifted or been aroused by Armando. He hadn’t known anger and the need to protect his mate could do it, too.

Whether or not he could really kill a man, Wes wasn’t sure. He jerked the man back, grunting as the massive weight of his body threatened to send them both sprawling.

Then all hell broke loose. Wes heard growling, a loud, vicious snarling. Screams and curses from men he didn’t know, and one he did, Armando, tangled in the night. Alisa and Sue were shouting and grunting, and Wes could only assume an all-out fight was going on.

The man he had a hold of threw his elbow back. Wes darted aside and got clocked with the other elbow hard enough that he gasped as he saw stars. He jerked his arm back harder, and turned, managing to slam the bigger man face first into a tree trunk. A sickening crunching sound immediately accompanied the impact, and the big man dropped to the ground.

Wes only looked to see that he was unconscious before turning to see what was happening. He was moving, too, needing to help his mate and their friends. The two other thugs were there, and Sue was bleeding from her mouth. Her stitches looked to be busted, but she smashed her binoculars into one man’s face. Alisa kicked him in the nuts hard enough to knock them into his throat, and he went down wailing.

The third man, like the one Wes had fought, held a knife in one hand and something that looked like brass knuckles on the other. Armando was breathing heavily, and he was squinting out of his left eye.

Because he’d been hit, Wes realised. He growled and forgot about the fact that he had claws instead of nails, something Alisa and Sue would question him on if they noticed. The man didn’t even glance at him, instead grinning menacingly at Armando.

Wes lunged and found out that, for a big man, the guy was agile. He struck out with his knuckled fist and caught Wes on the cheek. It hurt like fuck, and he smelt blood as pain burst over his face.

Armando yelled, then Sue and Alisa both did the same as Wes twirled and fell to his knees. He tried to keep his eye on the attacker, but his vision wavered.

“Armando!” Alisa screamed, and the fear, the utter terror in her voice scared Wes to his soul.

He shoved to his feet, regardless of his lack of clear vision, depending on his sense of smell and his feline instincts to guide him. Snarling, fear for his mate’s safety spurring him on, Wes leapt, throwing his arms in front of him so his sharp claws could do their worst on whatever he touched. Armando wasn’t in his way, Wes knew that. He felt pain, bright and hot on his side, and he knew it wasn’t his body hurting.