Wild Card (11 page)

“What? Oh, no. I don’t think he wants to.”

I snorted. I’d seen the furtive looks when he thought no one would notice. “He wants to.”

“Ah.” Olivia sat back and went all thoughtful, teasing a spike of her hair down the middle of her forehead.

Since we’d been abandoned, and only because of that, I ordered a chocolate fudge cake dessert with ice cream. Olivia asked for a second spoon.

“Sex on a plate,” she groaned, and I had to spoon-fight to keep her out of my portion. “Which is the only place I’m getting it at the moment.”

“Hey, take the initiative. I would.”

“Hussy. Is that what you did with Alex?”

“I would have, if I’d had a chance.”

She giggled, and then went quiet for second before shocking me. “Well, what if I asked you to kiss me?” She blushed.

Crap. I thought I’d gotten the pheromones under better control.

“No, not for real,” she said when I frowned. “Screen kiss.”

“Why?”

“It works for Alex. I bet it’ll work for Ricky.”

I felt as if I’d missed a vital sentence and lost the thread of the conversation.

“What?”

She leaned in. “They were talking earlier, when I got here. Ricky’s teasing Alex about your other kin.”

“Jen?”

“Yeah. Alex ‘s getting so hot and bothered about the thought of you and her. Girl, you are
not
safe when he’s around.”

I laughed. “Bring it on. What’d Ricky think?”

Olivia looked away and played with her drink. I let her mull it over and when she turned back she edged closer and dropped her voice.

“I’m not in the pack, but I get to meet all of them. I think they’re kinda on Alex’s side. I know Ricky is.”

“Interesting.” I smiled at Ricky across the length of the restaurant, which I reckoned would be almost as effective as kissing Olivia. Nothing like girls talking boys to turn a man’s head. “So why is Felix being so difficult? Is it the Athanate thing?”

“Smelling like vamps doesn’t help, but it’s the pair of you getting together that has him rattled.”

I’d already figured that out. Just not the reason. “But why?”

“Doh! You’re alphas.”

“What?”

“For God’s sake, Amber.” She rolled her eyes. “Alex on his own is as dominant as Felix. There’s barely a girl in the pack who doesn’t want to get her belly on the floor and ass in the air when he’s around. You can turn it on, when you want. The pair of you together would be like werewolf crack. Real alpha pairs make strong packs.”

“Shit.” That explained a lot about Felix’s stress level. “Just what the pack doesn’t need at the moment.”

She leaned in. “Listen, the guys don’t like to talk about dominance, and you didn’t hear this from me. Here’s how it goes. With Alex supporting Felix, it’s like Felix gets all Alex’s dominance added in to his. The pack loves it, and it plays well opposite the Confederation.”

“Okay.”

“Now, if Alex goes, Felix loses his support. Not terrible, but not good either. The Confederation might try and exploit it. But if you stay, the pair of you could challenge. Whatever happens, the pack would be weaker, even if only for a while, and the Confederation would come in like vultures to exploit that.”

I hated the thought of the Confederation coming in. “What if we both support Felix?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know if you can. But obviously, that’s the best result for Felix. It would make his status even higher.”

“Yeah, but—”

Ricky was trotting back toward us, waving at Alex, who’d just come back in.

Hell, all the girl talk worked!

Then I saw the cell in his hand and the look on his face.

“Got a call,” he said. “Silas spotted a group of Matlal. Move.”

Chapter 11

“Leave your car,” Ricky said. “We’ll go in mine.” His shiny Dodge Ram truck had the extra row of seats, enough space for all of us. Girls in the back, of course. He was making the tires squeal before we even got the doors closed.

“Where were they spotted?” Alex asked.

“Swansea, out by Commerce City. A diner called the Oaxaca, near 56
^th
.”

Swansea was an untidy strip, bordered by the South Platte River and Interstates 70 and 270. It was flat, dusty and poor, sandwiched between storage depots and processing plants. The interstates ran by on viaducts and embankments, lifted up as if they were afraid to get their skirts dirty. Railroads ran through, as well as a couple of big roads, the unending Colorado Boulevard for one. It was an easy place to get out of, an easy place to watch. A pretty new Dodge like Ricky’s would stand out.

I tried to bite my tongue. Felix didn’t want me involved in this hunt at all. He definitely wouldn’t want me telling his people what to do.

Never get involved in someone else’s command.
I’d had that ground into me in the army.

“How many?” Olivia said.

“Not sure,” Ricky replied. “Silas is there on his own. There’s a guy outside the diner that he thinks is a lookout. He doesn’t want to get any closer.”

“Have we got enough people to stop them from getting away or to isolate them somewhere?” I asked. Damn. The tongue biting had stopped working.

“Depends on how much time we have and how open we want to be,” Ricky grunted. “We’re spread all over tonight.”

“You’ve got trackers on their cars, right?” I just couldn’t seem to stop myself.

“No.” Ricky hunched his shoulders and turned onto Colfax. Great. Now I’d put him on the defensive.

He’d be taking Colorado Boulevard and that meant our ETA was fifteen minutes.

Alex talked briefly on his cell to another team, down near the University. They’d take the interstates and come into Swansea from the north, closing off the escape there, but it was going to take them half an hour to get in position.

Maybe too long, unless we delayed the Matlal Weres. “Well, you’ve disabled their cars, then?”

“We don’t know which cars are theirs,” Alex said.

“Guys, let the air out of some tires.” I sat forward, gripping Alex’s headrest. My hand sneaked around out of Ricky’s sight and rested against Alex’s shoulder. “If it makes you feel bad, you can always pump them back up afterwards.”

Alex and Ricky glanced at each other.

“We’re not sure we want to take them down there,” Alex said. “It might be better to follow them back to wherever they’re hiding.”

“If you had trackers, I’d agree.” I stopped. They’d survived this long without me—there was no reason to think they’d mess it up if I didn’t take charge.

Try and think constructively. What did I have to help? Oh, yeah.

“There’s a place not far from there they might have a bolt hole,” I said. “Old auto auction house on 64
^th
and Jackson, just across the interstate. It’s one of Hoben’s, so they might know about it. It’s hidden behind a store selling farming machinery. There wasn’t any power usage when we were checking for Hoben last week, but they might go there.”

Ricky raised a brow. Alex hit a speed button on his cell.

“Ursula? Got a spare person?”

Ursula had something to say about that, and Alex held the cell away from his ear.

“Yeah, okay, okay. If you get there in time and can spare a person, have them look over the auto auction house on 64
^th
and Jackson. It’s behind the…hello?”

He looked at the cell. “I guess she heard enough.”

“I like her already,” I said, and Ricky snorted as we turned north on Colorado.

“Are you guys carrying?” I asked. Alex and Ricky nodded. Olivia shook her head. “Remind me why you’re here?” I said to her.

“I don’t have the marque,” she replied, turning away to look out the window. “That might come in handy.”

“Like walking into the diner and counting how many there are?”

Her head dipped. “If it’s what the pack needs.”

Brave woman.

Not having the marque didn’t mean she couldn’t be identified as Were. She still had Were scents all over her. Maybe she could disguise that a bit, if we needed her to do something totally crazy.

“And of course,” Olivia said, “you’re here only as an observer.”

Crap. The scent of adrenaline was making me twitchy. She could see it.

Past Park Hill, and we were suddenly on the wrong side of the tracks. Malls and houses gave way to long, low industrial buildings as we crossed I-70. Colorado Boulevard merged into Vasquez. Streetlights became wider spaced. Off the road, tall security lights appeared in the night, shining down on acres of truck parks and depots. Sites were separated by stretches of chain link fencing, which trapped wind-borne litter. Plastic bags flapped like little white flags in the dark.

Alex nodded to the left. “Diner’s over there.”

He called Silas again. “We’re coming off on 56
^th
,” he said.

“Don’t come in too close. Don’t do a drive-by.” Silas’ voice was tinny. “It’s a dead end.”

“So what ways can they get out?”

“If you stay up that end of the spur, that’s the only way for a car. There’s all sorts of paths, rail tracks and short cuts heading everywhere. We’ve only got a couple of people in position so far.”

“They picked this place deliberately,” I said. “There’ll be a lookout. How do you know he hasn’t made you already?”

As if in answer to my comment, Silas swore. “They’re moving. They must’ve spotted us. Shit! About a dozen. They’re going in all directions.”

“How many cars?” Ricky shouted.

“None. None.” I could hear Silas sprinting across gravel. “Shit,” he said again. “This is a cluster-fuck. Do what you can.”

Ricky skidded us onto the roadside, pebbles spitting out beneath the wheels. He and Alex were out of the truck like they were spring loaded. A group of four men from the diner were running down an open rail track, heading toward the I-270 underpass.

“Olivia, drive around to Commerce,” Ricky shouted back over his shoulder, jabbing his finger to point to the other side of the interstate’s embankment.

I didn’t like this at all. It wasn’t my idea of an efficient operation, but worse, we were just reacting, running blindly into an area we barely knew.

Olivia slid into the driver’s seat and dialed on her cell as she turned the truck around. “Ursula, four guys heading your way, Alex and Ricky behind them.”

She’d turned the Dodge slowly, which gave me enough time to see movement in the waste ground that Alex and Ricky had passed through.

Two figures followed them.

“It’s a trap!” I yelled and jumped out.

I heard Olivia cursing behind me, but I focused on the path ahead. I’d back Alex and Ricky against the four they were chasing. A couple more coming up behind and maybe more lying in wait? That changed the odds.

They had a head start and they were all werewolves. Even in human form, they ran quickly. I couldn’t be sure of overtaking them and I didn’t dare fire at the ones I’d seen chasing Alex and Ricky; it was too dark and all of them were lined up along the track. I didn’t want to risk hitting my pack.

I pulled the HK and fired a shot into the ground off to my right.

One pursuer turned his head at the noise and the flash, and shouted something to his friend. I hoped Ricky or Alex looked behind them as well, or Olivia had managed to call them as they ran.

I was running alongside a processing plant with huge, white silos looming out of the night. The fencing shook. One pursuer had had enough and raced off into the jumble of metal gantries and storage containers. The other redoubled his efforts. I could hear him yelling, but I couldn’t make out what he said. The Matlal Were had a comms system. We had a bunch of cellphones.

Frigging perfect.

The figures ahead of me split.

We were coming up to the bridge over Sand Creek. There was a running track along the creek that I had used before. There were now three directions they were escaping in: straight ahead towards the interstate underpass, left and right onto the track. There were only three of us chasing, and I didn’t want us to follow all of them. If this wasn’t a trap, it was at least a well-prepared escape route and they probably had some nasty surprises lying in wait.

At the bridge I paused, panting.

I could make out figures ahead and others moving in both directions on the running track. My wolf eyes let me see that much, but I couldn’t see who was who. Where was Alex?

Breathe. Close your eyes and breathe.

Hana?

Speaks-to-Wolves, my great-grandmother, had appeared to me in a dream vision and told me that my wolf spirit, Hana, would talk with me. Well, I’d had one word from her so far, and not even directed to me.

Breathe.

Of course I was breathing! I closed my eyes and let the night air slide through my nose. It was full, rich. Amazing! I’d never noticed how full before. Folded layer on layer, till it had all the substance of a river of molasses.

The night had a thousand tales to tell, but I was only interested in one.

Alex had run across the bridge. I followed him, holstering the gun and using my arms to pump for more speed. There was no way I was going to let him be suckered by someone coming up behind him. Ricky and Silas and the rest had to get on with their own battles. And Felix—either he understood I had to act, or he could go straight to hell.

I gained. I hit the underpass and the streetlights showed me the action breaking up again. The first group was down to two and they’d split left and right. Alex had gone after the one running right, which was a good move. Left was probably going to end up at the auction house and whatever welcome Ursula had set up for him there. Behind Alex was one of the guys who’d tried to set up the ambush, now realizing he was the one caught between opponents. His friend out in front didn’t look as if he was going to stop to help him out.

My body had settled down to the rhythm of the chase. I felt I had plenty of reserves. I didn’t care whether that was from my Athanate or Were. My eyes focused on the hot shapes of bodies running in front of me and my ears were alert to the possibility of being suckered myself, with someone trailing me. I kept expecting the Matlal chaser to break off, but he must’ve come to the conclusion this was the best odds for him. Did that mean they expected help up ahead?