Bad Cat Baby Blues (Shifter Squad Six 3) Page 3

  “He’s clearing out the side buildings, just in case. You know how those two are. If Grant goes steaming mad and Grim picks up on it, we might have to sedate Grim before we punch out Grant,” Connor noted, his eyes clouded.

  “This whole thing went to shit, huh,” Dutch commented dryly, finally looking down at the woman.

  The breath was kicked out of him when he looked at her face up close; so serene, yet so full of determination.

  “You could say that again,” Connor agreed. “Did you see what happened with Grant?”

  “He got stuck between the Jeep and the warehouse crew. I took out one of them,” Dutch said, looking to the left to see the lifeless body of a big man, half through his shift into a wolf.

  Sometimes, when shifters got mortally wounded, they’d let the animal take over in the hopes that they could make it out before their strength gave out. A predator running on adrenaline could do a lot more than a human could. This guy hadn’t been so lucky. Dutch’s nose scrunched. A wolf. No surprise.

  “But it was her who saved Grant.”

  “Yeah?” Connor asked, frowning as he looked up to scan the area around them.

  “She tackled the guy who had a shot on him, took him out. She’s no random druggie, lieutenant. She has training.”

  “You think she’s one of us?” Connor asked, cocking a brow.

  “She’s not one of them, that’s for sure,” Dutch muttered.

  Connor seemed to ponder this for a second, before giving a curt nod. Dutch knew what the protocol was. They were supposed to put a bullet in her head and forget about the fact she ever existed if she was caught in a scene like this. But she’d saved a brother of theirs and that had to warrant at least a quick interrogation.

  “Fine. Bag her and tag her. Seeing as we didn’t exactly get a clean sweep, I think we need someone to question.”

  “Aye, lieutenant,” Dutch agreed, adjusting the strap on the heavy sniper bag.

  Connor got up and checked his ammo before emitting a low whistle that was met with a similar one somewhere behind them. Grim had to be there. Connor took off at a light jog and Dutch was left alone with his sleeping beauty for a second. He hesitated, considering calling for the Crawleys so someone would come with a stretcher, but the thought of having another man near her again made his skin crawl.

  Instead, he looped his arms underneath her shoulders and her knees and picked her up gently, cradling her to his chest. His whole body felt electrified. Her head lolled against his shoulder and Dutch sucked in a breath, his jaguar letting out the fiercest, darkest snarl he’d ever felt.

  She was his. The big cat had decided that much.

  Now it only needed to get the human on board.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Ariadne

  Great. This was what was missing in my evening.

  Ari groaned lowly as she was rattled awake, tumbling back and forth on a seat with her head pounding in pain and her wrists zipped together in front of her. At least they’d done her the courtesy of buckling her up.

  “Morning, sunshine. Enjoy the view, I hear it’s the best drug country has to offer,” someone cracked from the front seat, blue and gold eyes flicking a look at her in the rearview mirror.

  “Fuck you,” she mumbled groggily, resting her head against the headrest and regretting it immediately.

  The soft bounce of the armored vehicle as it crawled through the jungle floor made her nauseous, though the splitting head wound and the low end of her adrenaline rush probably helped with that. It took her a second to get her bearings and wipe the first tendrils of hysteria out of her head.

  These weren’t the Silk Slayers. These were warriors. It didn’t take more than a cursory glance to recognize that. They were decked out in jungle camo gear, slick with sweat, filling the small space with masculine scents that made her jaguar whiff at the air hungrily.

  Shifters. Big, strong shifters. Shit.

  So it was going to be tough getting herself out of this situation. Her mind raced quickly and she tried her wrists in the binds, wriggling them slightly. Tight, but not too tight. They didn’t want to cut off her circulation. Chivalry must not have been dead yet. Something hummed in the air, something she couldn’t quite hear, but could clearly sense. Something that made the space around her almost crackle.

  When she opened her eyes again and met the deep, almost freakishly golden gaze of the man next to her, she understood immediately. He blinked once and the gold left his eyes in a split second, replaced with a gray and blue that was as appealing as the swirling depths before them. He averted his gaze, looking outside the window like she didn’t exist, but she could feel the fact that he was hyperaware of her presence, the hairs on the back of his arm alert.

  Another jaguar, she realized. A part of her perked up with uncanny interest.

  They weren’t common shifters, especially not in the armed forces. Loners, they preferred to work by themselves and group dynamics didn’t appeal to them quite as much as they did to lions, for example. But when they did become part of a team, Ari knew they were ferocious, unstoppable. It was odd seeing one of her kind smushed into a small car with her though, considering the circumstances.

  “You want to tell us who you are or is that one of those need-to-know things?” the driver quipped, his eyes sparkling with mirth that didn’t seem to be shared by anyone else in the car.

  She took a moment to scan the situation. The driver was finding a convoluted path through the jungle, and the sun was already up. Not too high, but she recognized that she had to have been out for at least an hour. The parts of the jungle they were treading through weren’t familiar to her either. Maybe if the window had been down and she could have taken the scent she would have realized what direction they were traveling in, but for now she had no idea.

  There was a widely built, arrestingly calm guy sitting in the passenger seat, seemingly filling out a log of the events. She could spy comm devices in their right ears, nondescript, revealing nothing. There were no badges on their uniforms, no specific markings she could use to figure out who they were. But she did see dog tags underneath their shirts, bulging against the fabric and off their built chests.

  The fact that the driver had a slight Creole accent set them firmly as Americans, too. At least that was a relief, even though Ari wasn’t yet sure whether she was being driven to her death or just taken for a joyride. Either or, she was cursing herself for her dumb decisions.

  You could have gotten in that car. You would have been closer to the truth. Now you’ve blown the whole operation.

  There was a lot of truth to it, but deep down inside, she knew she couldn’t really curse herself out too bad. It was automatic, a reaction. Tro had pulled his gun to his shoulder and he was going to shoot that guy in the face, Ari had no doubt about it. As much as she didn’t know who the men were, digital jungle camo and their guns left her little doubt that they were at least better men than the twerps she was running with. Even if they weren’t the good guys, she didn’t want blood on her hands that didn’t have to be there.

  So she’d done what she had to do. Taken out Tro, if only for a minute, and gotten whacked in the face by Jola for it. It was all fair; she’d deserved it. No part of her had actually expected to live through it and that, perhaps, was the scariest part of all. Wasn’t survival supposed to be the end-goal here?

  “I think it’s more fun if you guys guess,” Ari finally responded, painting the most girlish grin on her face that she could.

  The driver chuckled and the guy next to him gave her a look that could have been interpreted as amused, were she so inclined. But the man next to her said nothing, didn’t even look at her. From the periphery of her vision, she could see his fingers thrum on his knee, a nervous tick, steady and constant. She frowned slightly. Nothing about him struck him as the antsy type, but that little tell told her more than she perhaps needed to know.

  “How about you show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” she continued, batting her lashes, though the odds of using her feminine wiles when there was blood oozing out of her forehead was probably not something she could really bank on.

  “I think you’re mistaking who caught whom here, Miss,” the driver noted.

  Chatty, isn’t he.

  No one tried to get anything else out of her and Ari settled for silence, looking out of the window. They hadn’t put anything over her eyes and she wasn’t stuffed in a trunk somewhere, so they must not have cared about what she saw. That meant that they were planning to either kill her or put her somewhere later where she couldn’t cause any trouble. In any case, it left her somewhat complacent with her situation, as she chewed her lip thoughtfully and tried to figure out if she had any play here at all.

  It was another half an hour before the car screeched to a halt, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The men piled out and Ari could hear rustling and gear getting lugged out from the back at the back of the big armored vehicle. Then, a door was pulled open and the man who wouldn’t meet her gaze leaned over her, undoing her seat belt.

  She couldn’t help but heave in a breath when their bodies touched as his hand slid over her leg to ease the buckle off. It was like someone had tased her, the jolt running like a ball of electricity from her leg to her toes and then to the top of her head, warming her all over. Her green eyes shot wide and she looked at him, both of them freezing for a second.

  Fuck, he was cute.

  All rugged lines and darkness, brooding and beautiful. Square, massive shoulders digging against his sweat-stained dark gray shirt, his dog tags hanging out for a second as he paused over her, his lips impossibly close. They were narrow, but with a deep Cupid’s bow, and his jaw was set rigid, like he was clenching his teeth. Dark brows, a strong Roman nose, and a look
in his eyes that for the first time in her life made her feel like she was the hunted, not the hunter.

  “Come on,” he said finally, pulling back and opening the car door wide, giving her some room. “We need to go.”

  Even his voice was perfect. Growly, raspy, like he’d smoked too much, but it only made it better. He smelled like a real man, which was saying something considering Ari had spent much of her adult life around every macho male stereotype she could think of. But this guy? He was the real deal. Quiet, reserved, oozing sex and strength. Had she met him in a bar, she was sure they would be fucking by the time the clock struck twelve.

  Shaking her head, she slipped out of the seat, waiting a moment for him to slam the door and shove her forward. A voice in her head told her to run, but it seemed to be more curious about how long it would take this massive wall of a man to catch her, rather than if she’d actually manage to get away.

  He walked her to a covered door, little more than a hatch on the jungle floor. Looking over her shoulder, she could see the other two men covering the vehicle. About a hundred feet to the right, she could see another mound that to the untrained eye looked like thick foliage, but she could guess that there was a similar car underneath.

  He pulled the door open and showed her down a dark, winding staircase, taking her into the belly of darkness. When she stepped off the last step, keenly aware of his presence behind her the whole way, the lights flickered on, making sparks dance in her vision.

  They were in a bunker, not too big, but spacious. She could see doors leading to several adjoining rooms. It smelled old and musty, like it had been there for a while, but only recently put into use again. Ari was about to twirl around and ask the guy with her a smartass comment about whether this was his play on first dates, but a gurgled snarl from somewhere in the back silenced her.

  “That way,” he said, nodding in the direction of the sound.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ariadne

  His eyes were mesmerizing.

  Wordlessly, Ari did as she was told, feeling an intense tingle in her shoulders as she walked forward, his presence making her squirm a bit. She stopped at the door and she almost bumped into him. Having him so close to her made her knees a little weak. It felt ridiculous, really. She was so not the kind of girl who would gush over any man, no matter how goddamn smoking hot and dangerous he was.

  Yet, here you are, she thought with a fleeting sense of irony.

  The sight before her wasn’t too happy, though. She recognized the guy on the cot immediately as the lucky motherfucker who hadn’t gotten a bullet to the forehead a few hours ago. His side and arm were ragged and torn, blood still seeping through as two men worked on him, one looking a lot tenser than the other.

  “I brought a guest,” the guy behind her said stiffly, and his voice was like honey in her ears.

  “Oh hey, look Grant, it’s your knight in shining armor,” one of the men said, glancing up and giving her a nod.

  “Great. First she has to save me and then she has to witness my humiliation,” the man rasped, his body spasming.

  Ari frowned, stepping closer. She could see the jagged edges of the wound, where the bullet had torn through his hand and through his side. It had gone clean through, it seemed, and at least that was good. His lung hadn’t collapsed, so even better, but the men working on him clearly were not medics. Being out in the field long enough, any soldier got passing training at what they were supposed to do in cases of extreme injuries, but that only took them so far.

  “Don’t you guys have a medic?” she asked, spying the SEAL eagle, trident, gun and anchor tattooed on Grant’s ribs, slightly above the entrance wound.

  “I am the medic,” he hissed, eyes flashing with pain.

  “Ah,” she noted dully, trying to swallow the grin. “You planned this well, I see.”

  “Oh fuck you. Could you just keep with the holier-than-thou attitude and leave your wit at the door? I’m in pain here and I can’t punch girls.”

  “You couldn’t punch anyone, man. You jokers want to cut these ties around my wrists so I can help your friend here or are we going to stand by as he loses dexterity in his right hand?”

  Ari cocked a brow, looking around at the four men, huddled close. There was doubt in their eyes, but as far as she was concerned, if that was all there was, she was in good standings.

  “Cut them off,” a deep voice resounded from behind them.

  Ari whipped around to see the guy who’d been in the passenger seat staring at her, his arms crossed over his chest. He had to be the squad leader. Ari nodded thankfully as the guy who looked like he was about to go on a fucking rampage got up, took a knife from his belt, and cut the binds around her wrists. She rubbed them quickly, before motioning for the tide of men to part so she could get a better look at the wounded man.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled as she kneeled down, pulling the medkit to her.

  She wasn’t a certified medic either, but after seeing two of her squad mates bleed out in a situation where the medic hadn’t been available, she’d made a point of learning as much as she could. The guys had cleaned the side wound out well enough, but the hand was so delicate they hadn’t known what to do with it other than debriding it. Her nose scrunched as she saw the exposed tendons and bones, blood coagulating around it.

  “Can you make a fist?” she asked quietly, seeing that Grant was in a hell of a lot of pain but controlling himself damn well.

  She could sense they were all shifters here, which made things both easier and harder at the same time. But at least no one had a gun to her head and she still felt the very strong, looming presence of the guy with the gray-blue eyes. Somehow, it made her feel at ease and a lot calmer than she probably should have been.

  “You worried I’m going to punch you?” Grant asked, a wry attempt at a joke.

  She gave him a look and he rolled the hand into a fist anyway, hissing with pain. The tense-looking guy fidgeted obviously.

  “Easy, Grim,” the guy in charge said, putting a hand on the man’s shoulder and pulling him back. “You’re no help here. Take Tex and Thatch and go clean out the equipment, will you?”

  Tex, the driver, and Thatch, the other guy who had been working on Grant, stood up with a solemn nod. They shared a look with Grant and he waved them off with his good hand, his expression pained but holding it together well enough. The trio stalked off, leaving the guy in charge, Ari, Grant, and her mystery favorite together in the bunker.

  The upper hatch had closed with a resounding thud before any of them spoke.

  “It’s good that you can move the hand. You’re a shifter, right? That your twin?” Ari asked, motioning with her chin in the general direction where the other guy had left.

  “That cheery motherfucker? Sure is,” Grant agreed, chuckling. “Don’t mind him, he doesn’t like it when either of us attempts to die. I think he’s holding it against me.”

  “That’ll help with the healing then,” she noted idly. Twins always had that going for them, bouncing back from any injury faster when their other half was around.

  “Thank you, by the way. For what you did back there,” Grant said, all the joking out of his voice.

  “No problem,” Ari said, shrugging it off.

  The temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees as she worked on Grant’s hand and side, making sure the side wound hadn’t punctured anything important and patching it up. She had Grant keep his hand in a fist as she picked out shrapnel from the wound, knowing that a shifter’s heightened healing might do a lot of damage if there were still foreign objects in the site. She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, but apparently no one wanted to question her much when she had her hands in the flesh of one of their brothers-in-arms.

  They’re SEALs… or at least they used to be. What the hell are they doing in the goddamn jungle?

  A thought crossed her mind but she didn’t dare voice it, the realization shaking her too hard. It wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility that these men were from The Firm and when she’d thought “losing patience” meant “getting fired,” it could have also meant “being collateral damage during a raid.” She finished up her work in silence and then picked up a syringe, holding up a bottle of mild sedative for Grant to see.