Deadly Pack (Deadly Trilogy Book 3) (14 page)

“Yeah,” I said, but I wasn’t.  I felt sick.  A little light-headed and nauseated and really, really tense, which I totally blamed on worrying about what was going to happen as the day progressed.  And it didn’t help that I was starting to get a hunger headache.  Maybe Mom was on to something with the frantic breakfast cooking.

Mark gave me one of those
I know you’re lying
looks, but thankfully he didn’t call me on it.  “Aidan just called,” he said.  “He’s on his way.”  He looked around our little group and smiled wickedly, if not conspiratorially, and right then I had a sinking feeling that he’d overheard at least part of our conversation.  He then confirmed it.  “Just so you know, your idea is the best one I’ve heard yet.”  There was a mix of amusement and awe in his voice.  “If you’re sure about it, I’ll back you.”

“Mark,” I snapped.  I really wasn’t sure that I wanted to encourage them in this plan.  “They could get hurt.”

“Yep, but they could get hurt when we attack whether or not they act as a distraction,” Mark said, and turned back to the house.

No one noticed the sound of the footsteps clomping on the deck until it was too late.

~ AIDAN ~

“This doesn’t feel like a good idea,” Dominic muttered again, looking out over the parking lot.

Looking back on it, I thought I probably should have known that Dominic wouldn’t be fully onboard with my plan.  I’d admit it; there were a few problems with the whole thing.  The main one, and the one that I thought Dominic was probably having the biggest problem with, was that I planned on bringing the entire pack with us. That would leave Dog Mountain and the humans within it completely unprotected while we were gone, which might not be the best idea since Jeff had sent cougars into town twice within the last twenty-four hours.  But I was taking precautions against another attack — sort of.

The second one was returning the two cougars from the diner still breathing.  I knew that was a risk.  It would give us two more to fight against, but really, it was the only idea I had to gain access to their location without starting an immediate war.  We needed to get the kids safe first and my hope was that returning the dead with the living, would make us look like we were trying to achieve some sort of peace.

“Dom, Jeff sounded really off,” I said, looking over at him.  “We need to act now.” 
Off
didn’t really describe the desperation I’d heard in Jeff’s voice, but I was trying a different approach, one that I seriously hoped Dominic would get, because flat out telling him that Jeff was desperate hadn’t work.

Dominic shook his head in disagreement, and said nothing.

It had been about fifteen minutes since we’d made the calls for the pack to gather, and we were still waiting for a handful to arrive.  Beck stood a good ten feet away from us, with Craig to his left.  Pack members huddled around them, and Beck was talking to them; a pep talk of sorts, except, it really wasn’t all that peppy.  It sounded more like a crash course on how to take someone down quickly.  To him, efficiency seemed to be the key to killing, and the pack was eating it up, nodding and asking questions, seeking clarification on tactics.  It was impressive and more than a little weird to see an enforcer dishing out the trade secrets, but damn, I was glad for it.  Anything that could help prepare them, even if it might be a risk giving out those secrets, was worth it in my mind.

“What exactly is it that you don’t like about it?”  The question came out more annoyed than I’d meant, but what Dominic didn’t seem to be getting was that I was also worried, really worried.  Things could go wrong and I wasn’t naive enough to think that we could just charge in there, kill them all, and come out unscathed.  Knowing that didn’t leave me with a good feeling and having him doubt my plan made it even worse.  In fact, I was feeling pretty low.

“I don’t like any of it.”  He made a harsh buzzer kind of sound, and his eyes drifted back to the pack.  “Tell me you’ve at least run this by Jade and she’s all in on it.”

I drew in a deep breath and kicked at a random pebble.  “Not yet,” I said, and yeah, I sounded just as guilty as I felt.  “But she’ll be onboard.”
Or at least I hoped she would be.

Dominic sighed and gave me a look.  “Hope you’re right,” he said, and
then he walked away.

I frowned and ran both hands through my hair, watching Dominic make his way over to Landon.  He was off to the right, gathered under a large oak tree with two other pack members.  They were huddled closely, listening intently as Landon prepped them on what they needed to accomplish.

As soon as the last few arrived, a scouting team, headed up by Landon, would take off, and the rest of us would head to my place to wait for their confirmation that all the cougars, or at least most of them, were at the hunting camp.  I hated to waste the time, but I couldn’t take the entire pack away without making sure they were all there.  It would be risky and way too reckless with Jeff acting so unstable.  I’d figured he’d make a move once Jade and I were mated; I just never thought it would be something like this, something so erratic and unplanned.  He’d never struck me as the desperate type.  Clearly, I’d read him wrong.  But then, with Jade’s freak-out yesterday, I guessed that was enough to push him over the edge.  It was surely enough to make him aware that we’d never been playing into his game.

I took my phone out of my pocket and woke the screen.  10:05.
It felt like it should have been a hell of a lot later.  Only two hours ago we’d been sitting at the diner about to have breakfast and trying to figure out what to do with the team.  Those two hours felt like a lifetime ago.

This is going to work,
I thought. 
It has to work.

Fall in Dog Mountain really was beautiful.  Even with most of the leaves fallen from the trees and scattered on the ground, the area was full of browns and greens, oranges and reds. 
Nature at its finest moment
, I thought.  The air was chilly, but warmer than first thing this morning.  There was a good fall breeze pushing through the parking lot, and the sun was out full force, bringing out a shine in the thawing asphalt.

I looked back at my phone and scrolled through my contacts, looking for Mark’s number.  When I found it, I thumbed the screen and brought it to my ear.  He answered on the second ring and said, “Tell me you’re on your way here.”

I laughed once.  “That doesn’t sound encouraging, Mark,” I said.  “I was really hoping that it would be safe to show my face there by now.”

Mark made an exasperated sound.  “Depends on what you mean by safe.  Jade told Pam everything, and Pam deals with stress by cooking.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”  And it didn’t, mainly because I was starving.  Food would definitely be a good thing right now, and Pam’s cooking was amazing.  Actually, hearing she was working out her issues by cooking was probably the best news I’d gotten all day.

“Dude, you’re going to need to buy another freezer for all the leftovers and you won’t have to cook for months.”

That made me laugh.  Hard.  “It can’t be that bad.”

“I’m not joking,” Mark said.  “I just had to send the two guys that came with us to the store for more food.  She’s cooked everything you had.  And that’s not all.  Erika showed up with five other females demanding to talk to Jade.  She’s out back with them now.”

“Erika’s at my house with Jade.”  It wasn’t really a question, more of a stunned statement.

“Yep, and those women are all hyped up about something.”

That scared me a little bit.  Erika and hyped up wasn’t a good combination.  Add Jade and Marcy and Pam, all totally stressed out, and then another five women to the mix, well, that sounded like a disaster just waiting to happen.  And it was with that thought that I remembered that I never did ask Dominic about the way he’d been watching Erika at the funeral home yesterday.

“Who’s supposed to be watching her today?” I asked him, surprised that my voice sounded calm because I sure as hell wasn’t feeling it.

“Not sure,” Mark said.  “Beck dropped her off at the headquarters this morning before going to meet you.”

My jaw clenched, and I felt a bud of anger bloom within me.  “Let Jade know I’m leaving in a few, and Mark, the rest of the pack’s coming with me.”

“It’s happening now, then,” Mark said, in a frighteningly steady tone, not at all unnerved with the possibility of killing or being killed.  But then, that was the enforcer mentality, protect the pack at all costs.

“Yep, I’ve got to go,” I said hastily, and hung up, because Landon was walking toward me and he didn’t look happy.

I studied Landon for a beat, trying and failing to get a read on exactly how unhappy he was, then I pushed off the wall and went to meet him.  When we were a few feet apart, I jerked my chin and asked, “What’s up?”

In the next second, though, it became clear that he wasn’t unhappy — he was focused.  “We’ve got to get moving,” he said, with false patience.  “Where are the other
pack members?”

“Seems Beck didn’t bother to make sure someone was here to take over the Erika watch before dropping her off this morning,” I said very quietly. 
Shit
, I was already restless, so was my inner-wolf, and whatever crap Erika was pulling with running to my mate made it so, so much worse.  I felt a growl building inside me, the beast clawing at my chest.  Jade had enough on her plate dealing with her mom; she didn’t need Erika adding to it.  “Erika brought them to see Jade.”

Landon considered my words and nodded, as if my house seemed like a perfectly reasonable place for them to be, and if Erika hadn’t been with them, it probably would have been.  “What about Tommy?”

“Nothing yet,” I said and sighed.  “Can’t keep waiting for him.”

“No, we can’t,” Landon agreed, but he sounded less than enthusiastic about it.  “Would have been good to have
him, though.  Another trained enforcer ...” He shrugged.  “He would have come in handy.”

He was right. 
He would have.  I didn’t doubt that for a moment, but we couldn’t keep waiting.  Jeff had already sent two groups of cougars into Dog Mountain since yesterday, and I doubted he’d stop until we’d killed his entire pack, or they killed us.

I was aware of Dominic coming up behind me, and by the anger I caught in his scent, I figured he was most likely glaring and shaking his head.  Landon’s eyes slid past me to focus on him, and his fierce, focused expression faltered.

“You ready for this?” I asked him, drawing his attention away from Dominic.

Landon’s grin was tight and predatory, when he looked back at me.  “Always,” he said, and I had no doubt he meant it.

~ JADE ~

Mark was halfway across the backyard when the creaky front door opened.  He seemed to hesitate in his step for a second, as if the sound caught him off guard, and it struck me as odd.  We were expecting Aidan, and Mark had just sent someone to the store.  People on the deck and the door opening didn’t seem odd to me, but his reaction to the sound had my inner-wolf doing backflips in my belly and the hair along my neck prickling my skin.

And that was when I realized that I hadn’t heard a vehicle, and it was at that moment that Mark started to run.

Things fell together.

It had only been minutes, five at the most, since whoever was sent to the store left. Nowhere near enough time to get there and back. And Aidan, he was coming from the pack headquarters and he’d only just left.  Even speeding, it would take ten minutes to get home.

It took me less than a second to put it together, but by then Mom was already screaming, and so was Marcy, and I couldn’t breathe.  A chill took hold of me.  All my training, all my skills were suddenly just ... gone.  Terror wound around me, washing over me, and my legs; they just wouldn’t work.

Until ... they did.

And I was moving, running for the back door, and my breath was pushing in and out of my lungs in harsh pants.

“No!” Erika got in my way fast.  “No, you can’t just run in there.”  She grabbed me, her hand squeezing tightly around my forearm, and she began yanking me backwards, further away from Mom and Marcy and the house.

“I have to,” I
shrieked, digging my feet into the ground, and pulling against her hold. Panic gripped me.  Mark was already gone.  Vanished inside the house, but the screaming was still screeching through my ears.

Wolves surrounded Erika and me.  Closing in, circling.  There were five of them and it took me a second to realize through my panic
induced haze that they were the women I’d just been speaking to.

My wolves.

They were growling.  Lips curled, razor sharp teeth bared.  Their heads were turned, watching the house as they positioned themselves around me. 
Protecting me
, I thought, but as I listened to the screaming, protection was the last thing I wanted.  Marcy and Mom, they were the ones who needed protecting, not me.

“Go help, Mark!”  There was no mistaking the command in my tone.  The wolves didn’t hesitate, not even a little.  All five of them lunged forward as a unit, tearing across the grass toward the house.