Twin Wolf Trouble (Shifter Squad Six 2) (16 page)

“My fucking phone. I left it here because I didn’t want to wake her up, but if she saw the messages… dammit.”

After checking under the bed, Thatch sunk down to sit on the edge, grabbing his head. His fingers dug into his neck so hard his knuckles were getting white and Tex sure as hell knew how his brother must have felt right then and there. He was going through a rollercoaster of emotions himself. Scowling, he stepped up to Thatch and put a hand on his shoulder, willing him to speak.

“Come on, tell us. What messages? What could she have seen?”

Thatch looked up, his expression positively ashen. It was like all the blood had drained from him, leaving him a worried, frantic shadow.

After a pause, Thatch finally spoke, his green and golden eyes meeting Tex’s. “You remember Blake Wilby?” he asked, his voice devoid of emotion.

“That asshole from the Seventeenth back in Iraq? Yeah, I do. The fucker was always out to get me. But what does this have to do with anything?” Tex asked, frowning.

“There was an accident after our last mission. An explosion. Blake lost his legs while we were getting air-evac’d to Germany to come home,” Thatch said, closing his eyes as if to gather himself.

“Shit. He was a pain but that’s harsh,” Tex commented, trying to make sense of why Thatch was telling him this.

“Yeah. Thing is, he’s saying it’s your fault. That one of the traps we left behind on that last mission wasn’t set right and when they went to retrieve it after the area was designated safe and under control, it went off and that was what cost him his legs. There was an enquiry into it but it never got very far. That’s why you never heard. But he’s got new evidence now. He’s paid out of pocket to get the whole thing analyzed and it doesn’t look good, man.”

Tex’s fingers gripped Thatch’s shoulder so hard he had to pry loose his grip to keep from crushing bone. He could smell where this was going and he didn’t fucking like it. His eyes flashed gold and a low growl rose in his throat, threatening, alert.

“What are you saying?”

“He’s been blackmailing me for two years now. It started out small enough, nothing I couldn’t handle. But he’s been getting greedy and it’s been going on too long to sweep it under the rug. We were supposed to meet yesterday and I was going to give him the next ‘installment,’ but I couldn’t leave Madeline alone. So I missed it and he’s been blowing up my phone ever since. I think Madeline might have seen the texts and is trying to do something about it? She can be stubborn as a mule. Tex, fucking hell, stop!”

Tex barely heard the last few sentences. He was too busy whipping around and stomping out of the room, steaming mad. He wasn’t sure who he was going to pummel into the ground first, The Arctics or Blake, but they were both going to get what was coming to them. He’d make sure of it.

He was halfway down the corridor when Connor caught up with him, stopping him with a firm hand on his arm.

“Get back in there, soldier,” he commanded.

Tex stiffened, meeting Connor’s calm, authoritative gaze. A very big part of him wanted to deck his commanding officer, and friend, right then and there. But the way Connor didn’t give an inch and how he stared him down while Tex had a million thoughts running through his head finally got Tex to slacken slightly and turn back, taking deep breaths. Thatch was standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest.

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” Tex seethed. “I’m going to find the motherfucker and kill him. There’s
no way
that was my fault. And you shouldn’t have been paying him off. Why did you do something so dumb, Thatch?”

Thatch quirked a brow at him, calm and cool as ice again after his outburst, his face rigid now. “Because of this, Tex. Because I’m pretty sure you would kill him and we don’t need that shit. Not right now. I agree with you, I never should have rolled with that dirtbag’s demands, but it seemed like the easier way out. I should have known that he was a greedy lout and called him out on his bullshit from the first moment. But he’s the least of our problems right now.”

“We need to find Madeline,” Tex finished, feeling a tremor in his chest.

He sat down on the bed heavily now, covering his face with his hands. This day was going to hell in a handbasket and it felt like there was very little they could do about it.

“So you think she has your phone?” Connor asked, looking at Thatch.

“Yeah… Yeah. Shit. She does,” he said, perking right up.

Thatch lunged for his laptop, tearing it out of his duffel and booting it up frantically.

“So what?”

“I can track my phone. No one else can, I’ve made damn sure of that, but I have a chip in there and I can find where she is, if she still has it. It’s going to take a few minutes, though,” Thatch said, pulling up a chair and going at his laptop like it hid the key to lifelong happiness.

Tex looked up, very aware that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up now. He’d never felt true terror before like this. Sure, he’d been in battle plenty of times and he’d worried for his life, the safety of his teammates, and whether or not he’d walk out of it all. But he’d never lost his cool quite so viciously than when he thought of Madeline being in any kind of danger. It chewed him up inside and spat him out on the other side, in a real mess. Adding the whole Blake crap into it made it that much worse.

“Anything else you two want to tell me?” Connor asked, standing in the middle of the room.

Tex glanced at him, nodding. In the confusion and—dare he say—panic, he’d almost forgotten what they were supposed to do. Checking his phone, he saw that they only had a few hours to get ready.

“Yeah. We went to see Spade,” Tex said.

Any other time, the way Connor’s face fell would have been amusing. Now, it simply reflected how both Tex and Thatch felt inside. Tex told Connor the whole story, down to the grittiest details of what Spade wanted from then. Theoretically, he should have maybe kept it a secret, but there were never any lies in Squad Six. With men who had to trust each other implicitly, there couldn’t be. Just like they’d gone to bat for Connor when he was in the thick of things with his wife, Tex knew that Connor and the rest of the squad would be there for them. No questions asked.

By the time Tex was finished, he could hear the heavy-booted steps of Grim, Dutch, and Grant coming up the stairs. When the door was flung open and the rest of the squad piled in, already decked in their urban combat camo and ready to roll, Tex couldn’t help but grin. With Squad Six, he never had to worry about where the loyalties of his team lay.

“Looks like we’re going to have a firefight on our hands, boys,” Connor said thoughtfully, directing his attention to the newcomers.

“Can we take the tank?” Dutch asked, chewing on a toothpick and looking completely unsurprised by the fact that he had seen a tank and that the first news he got when walking into a room was that he’d have to whip out his sniper rifle.

“You thinking about moving over to heavy artillery?” Grim asked, grinning wickedly.

“Hey, whatever gets the job done,” Dutch commented, shrugging.

“Found her,” Thatch spoke up, standing up from the chair.

He turned around, holding the laptop in front of him, and Tex could sense the second his jaw set rigidly and every muscle in his body tensed.

Fuck.

Tex didn’t need to hear the words to know that it was bad.

“She’s at Xavian. Right where they’re going to hit.”

Of course she was there. Because that was exactly how their little love affair had to work—someone had to be in constant mortal danger, or otherwise it simply wasn’t
right.
Tex’s hands balled into fists, his shoulders hunched, and he didn’t swallow the snarl. If anything happened to her, he couldn’t live with himself. And he knew Thatch felt much the same.

“Gear up. I’ll brief the rest of the team. And go kiss your kids goodnight. It might be a long fucking day,” Connor said somberly, clapping Tex on the shoulder.

That shook Tex out of his wallowing thoughts. He jumped up and almost in unison, he and Thatch headed out the door and toward Madeline’s room, where Mary was sitting with Raze and Rhone.

“Are we cool?” Thatch asked, stiffness in his voice.

“Always.”

They kissed and hugged the boys, the seconds they could spend around them driving away an ounce of the dread Tex felt, and launched into action after that. They’d shucked off their civilian clothes in seconds and suited up, throwing on harnesses and pouches for their gear and loading up from their go-bags. Thatch knew that if the rest of the team was here, they’d definitely snagged a few attack vehicles and better gear as well, and he couldn’t wait to get going.

“Lock and load,” he growled as the six of them headed down the corridor and toward the underground garage.

Time to have a little fun.
 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Madeline

Madeline’s stomach had been in knots since she walked out of that door. Every shadow she saw, every person that came too close spelled violence and danger to her and she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. But that was something that had been following her since the day on the train. Now, without her kids around to calm her nerves, she felt it all the more acutely.

She’d made it to a bus stop fast enough and caught a bus downtown. From there, it had been short work to get on the right L train taking her to Xavian. She’d made the trip plenty of times. Still, she couldn’t stop peeking over her shoulder and checking out everyone around her, fretting that something,
anything
, would go wrong and her daring plan to help Tex and Thatch would go up in flames.

When she finally stepped off the train and got down onto the streets, it was already getting dark. The sun didn’t stay up for very long anymore and as she walked to the main building, thumbing her access card in her pocket, she was both horrified by it and thankful for the cover. Anything could happen in the darkness. She would have much preferred to do this all when the sun was shining bright and everything was well lit. Something about darkness made her worries seem all the more… legitimate.

She smiled mildly as she walked past the two security guards at the main entrance to the research side of the hospital also known for its leading cancer wards. Madeline flashed her card to the reader and was allowed easy access, nothing odd about it. The guards barely looked at her. They were used to disheveled-looking scientists coming in and out at every hour of the day, though the working day was coming to a close and most of the people Madeline saw were heading out.

It only dawned on her when she got to the elevator that it was a weekend and there wouldn’t be a lot of people in the offices to begin with. Only the real fanatics, like… well, her. But Charlie was even worse than she was, so the odds were good that he’d be there.

If he isn’t, I’ve made a really big fool of myself,
Madeline thought, taking a deep breath.

She let two chatting middle-aged women out of the elevator, both dressed in their coats and heading out, before she stepped on and showed her card to another reader to get higher upstairs. Madeline thumbed the button that would take her to the seventh floor and counted the numbers anxiously as the elevator scooted upward. By the time the doors opened again, she thought she’d aged a good few years.

She kept her eyes down as she walked through the bright blue corridors, heading directly for Charlie’s lab. One or two people walked past her, but no one recognized her, thankfully enough. She hadn’t been to the office too often since the kids were born though, choosing to work from home instead. When she got to Charlie’s door, she hesitated a moment before finally knocking, praying to any higher spirit that would listen to let Charlie be at work.

When his gruff but cheerful voice answered, a weight was lifted from her shoulders. “Come in!” he called.

Madeline pushed down the door handle and stepped inside, flicking back the hoodie at the same time. When the heavy, explosion-proof door slid shut behind her and she stopped in the big, airy lab, Charlie was looking at her like he’d seen a ghost. He grinned widely though, spreading his arms and looking like a wiry ghost in a lab coat, with his pale skin and watery gray eyes hidden behind safety goggles.

“Adley! What are you doing here? Long time no see! There was no hurry with that last assignment, though. Certainly not enough for you to come see me on a weekend, anyway.”