At least her boss was on the same page as her. They might have to share information, but Abilene knew how to work around another agency butting into her business. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. I expect to hear from you tonight.”
He hung up before she could respond. Slowly she set her cell back down before glancing back at Cody and Jamie. Cody looked sympathetic while Jamie continued to smirk at her. She didn’t know why the bear shifter was such an ass but she couldn’t wait for him to meet Luca. If there was one thing her partner was good at, it was irritating people who annoyed him.
Oh yes, Luca and Jamie were going to get along like oil and water.
“Let’s get started,” she told them as she returned to her seat.
Cody nodded at Jamie, who reached behind his back and pulled out a file. Abilene was surprised. She hadn’t even suspected he’d been hiding anything. Their weapons were at their hips in holsters. She grabbed the folder, curious of what they would show her. When she opened it, the first thing she saw was a picture of Zak Lewis.
“Zak’s been under for several months. We were able to extract a couple of the younger members and get them to roll over. Zak has also been ordered to carry out several illegal activities,” Cody explained.
“Why haven’t you busted them yet?” she asked.
“The same damn reason you haven’t,” Jamie retorted. “We want bigger.”
“Do you know what their plan is? What has Zak been able to tell you?” she asked, while ignoring Jamie.
“We have a name. Mike Timmons. He’s the money behind the group,” Cody said.
That was more than she had. Shuffling through pages, she finally came to Zak’s last report. She read through it quickly, knowing she’d take more time after the two agents had left.
“Now it’s your turn,” Jamie demanded.
She rolled her eyes but she had to give them something. “Okay, I met with Luca earlier tonight—”
A loud pounding at the door before it swung open startled her into jumping out of her chair.
Jamie lurched forward, catching the falling man as Cody drew his weapon.
Abilene rushed to cover him before she recognized her partner. “Luca?”
“Hey.” He sputtered a cough while clutching at his bleeding shoulder. “Didn’t think I was going to make it.”
Dropping to her knees in front of him, she pulled his hand away from his wound. “What happened?”
“My cover was blown and Zak shot me,” he whispered.
“What?” she cried.
“Is he all right?” Jamie demanded.
“Zak shot you?” Cody exclaimed.
Luca lifted his head. “Fuck…” Then her partner passed out.
* * * *
“He needs a hospital,” Abilene argued with Jamie.
“He’s a shifter. He’ll be fine,” Jamie replied right back.
She knew that Luca would be okay. The bullet had gone into the fleshy part of his arm—in and out without hitting any major arteries or causing life-threatening injuries, but that wasn’t really making her feel any better when he was passed out on her bed. “What the hell is wrong with your guy?” she yelled. “He shot Luca.”
Cody, remaining as calm as before, stood from where he’d been sitting beside Luca on Abilene’s bed. “As soon as Luca wakes up, he can tell us what happened. Zak is an expert marksman. He missed killing Luca on purpose.”
Abilene didn’t care if Zak was the best sniper in the entire world. He’d shot her partner! When she got a hold of him, she was going to do some serious damage.
“Zak had to have had a reason,” Jamie said, coming up behind her.
She whirled around, but he was already holding his hands up. “I’ve enjoyed messing with you but we need to call a truce. This has gotten a lot more serious.”
Knowing he was right didn’t make it any easier to swallow her anger down. “Okay.” She rubbed her hands roughly over her face. “Okay.”
“Got any more coffee?” Cody asked.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure. I think maybe enough for one last pot.” She’d been meaning to get more groceries but had kept putting it off. She hated shopping—any kind of shopping—and never went into a store unless she was out of the essentials. Coffee was one of the things she couldn’t live without, though.
“Why don’t I run into town and pick up some supplies?” Jamie offered.
“Good idea. Call the commander and update him. I think we need to stay until Luca is awake and we know what’s going on. Come up with a plan if we have to get Zak out,” Cody said.
“I’m not leaving him there,” Jamie declared.
Abilene backed off as Cody stood and walked to Jamie. For the first time she could see the big guys’ emotions close to the surface. There was more to Jamie, Cody and Zak’s relationship than just working for the Coalition. They were friends and Jamie was worried.
“We’re not gonna leave him,” Cody assured Jamie.
Jamie nodded. “I’ll grab some food, drinks and coffee. Maybe see if there’s a pizza place still open. Hopefully Luca will be awake by the time I get back.”
Abilene sat next to Luca on the bed as Jamie and Cody moved farther away, lowering their voices. She wasn’t too worried about it, though. With her shifter senses, she could have easily concentrated enough to overhear them but she just wasn’t that interested. Brushing Luca’s dark hair off his forehead, she was relieved that he didn’t have a fever. He’d lost a good amount of blood, though. Even with being a shifter, that wasn’t something he could recover from instantly. Luca didn’t move at her soft touch. As long as she’d been partnered with him, she didn’t think she’d ever seen him so still.
The hotel door closed, and it was only a moment before she felt Cody’s presence behind her.
“I don’t know what happened, but the only way Zak would have shot Luca was if he was saving his life. He would have blown his cover wide open before hurting someone else.”
Nodding, she showed Cody she was listening. She needed answers and until her partner could tell her what had happened she couldn’t say one way or another if she trusted the Coalition. There were times when undercover agents got turned—so deep into the personality that they’d created that they lost sight of what their objective had been. She had personally never been involved in a case like that and prayed that wasn’t the case this time. Along with his gunshot wound Luca ran the risk of an infection. His healing could be affected if Luca picked up anything. The bruise under his right eye showed that he’d been in some kind of fight, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been Zak who had done that damage as well.
Bending forward, she sniffed Luca’s neck. Along with the blood and dirt, she could smell Zak’s strong scent mixed with Luca’s. If Zak had just aimed his gun from a distance, there shouldn’t have been so much of Zak lingering behind.
She’d bet a month’s salary that Zak had also been the one to hit Luca. Fisting her hands, she tried to remain calm. She wouldn’t help matters by starting something with the shifter in the room with her.
“So what’s your animal?” she asked to distract herself.
“Falcon,” Cody said while he dragged a chair closer to her. “I know you’re a feline. My bird wants to remain as far from you as possible.”
“Yeah, you smell like dinner,” she teased. It wasn’t true, though.
Cody laughed. “Don’t let a human hear you say that. They’d probably freak out.”
“I know,” she agreed. One of the hardest issues for humans to get past was the fact that shifters had animal traits. Yes, she could call on her cheetah for superior qualities but she wasn’t all human or all shifter. The combination of what she was continued to be hard to explain to people. Actually, even different shifter species looked at their transformation differently to one another. So it was difficult to get humans to understand.
Abilene had been brought up by her human aunt. She hadn’t really started to explore her shifter side until she’d gotten into college. She’d always known that she wanted a career in law enforcement. She’d kept her nose clean and on the right path. That was how she’d found herself with the ATF, eventually.
During her time getting her degree in criminal justice and then in the police academy, Abilene had embraced her cheetah. The more time she spent in her other form, the more her connection to it seemed to strengthen. Even her abilities had grown. As she got older and learned how to balance her two parts, she grew in knowledge of how to use her cheetah traits in human form. Her eyesight was sharper. She moved quicker than others. Her cheetah was a part of her—like the other half of her soul.
That’s how she saw it anyway.
“Just don’t eat me. I don’t think my mate would be happy about that,” Cody joked.
“My cheetah is well behaved.”
“I haven’t actually met a cheetah before. A couple cougars, a jaguar and of course Zak.”
“Tiger, right?”
“Yes, how’d you know that? He always tells me it’s difficult to pin his animal,” Cody said, surprise evident.
“He told me,” she admitted. “I knew it was some kind of strong predator but not exactly what species.”
“Huh.” Cody continued to stare at her.
“What?”
“He just doesn’t usually tell people.”
She laughed quietly. Yeah, she got that impression. “I think I surprised him by asking him directly.” She wasn’t about to share the heat and attraction that had passed between the two of them.
Abilene had enough guilt when she remembered she’d been pleasuring herself just thinking about Zak when he was apparently trying to kill her partner.
At that moment Luca groaned softly.
“Hey, Luca.” She bent forward. “You’re okay. Everything is going to be fine.”
He blinked his eyes open. “Zak?”
Cody rushed to the bed. “Luca, my name is Cody Johnson. I’m an agent with the Shifter Coalition.”
“He told me to find the Coalition,” Luca whispered.
Cody visibly relaxed. “We found your partner instead.”
Luca tried to sit up.
Abilene jumped up from the bed to push on his good shoulder. “Stay down,” she ordered. “You lost a lot of blood.”
“I’m okay,” he assured her.
“Let me help,” Cody offered. “Your partner is right that you need to take it easy.”
Luca nodded. As Cody helped Luca scoot up, Abilene grabbed the pillows to put them against the headboard. Once she had the bed set, she hurried to the kitchenette for a bottle of water.
“I knew what I was doing,” Luca told her as she handed him the drink.
“What are you talking about?” she questioned.
“I told Zak to shoot me. He didn’t want to but I knew it was our only choice. He had a new guy with him—one I’d never seen before. He was inside the inner circle.”
“You told Zak to shoot you?” Cody asked.
“Yes. I knew what we needed to do.”
Abilene was shocked. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Her voice rose. “What were you thinking?”
“I was doing my job,” Luca told her. He held out a hand. “I was already busted, and Zak still has a chance.”
“How’d they find out about you?”
“We have a leak with the local sheriff’s department.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No way! We’ve worked with them in the past.”
“Logan—that’s the big guy that was ordering Zak around—told me that himself.”
Abilene exchanged a brief look with Cody before grabbing her phone.
“Let your office know,” Cody said. “I’ll call Jamie and warn him to be careful. Anyone could have seen us drive up.”
She paced away from the men in the room, mentally going through the list of who could have given them up. Her boss answered on the third ring.
She glanced at the clock. It was later than she’d thought. As she started to fill her boss in, Cody motioned to the door. A second later Jamie pushed it open, carrying two bags, three pizza boxes and a large bottle of Coke.
She turned away to listen to her boss. Otto was not happy about a leak. “How helpful is the Coalition being?” he asked.
“More than I expected,” she confessed.
“I know their commander. I wouldn’t put you with them if I didn’t truly believe they could help. With Luca injured, I want someone to have your back.”
“Understood, sir,” she said.
“Good. Now who the hell broke rank at the sheriff’s office?” Otto demanded.
“I wish I knew,” she said. “I’ve worked with them before. I can’t believe they would turn on us.”
“Look at shifter’s first. You think one of the Coalition could help with that?” Otto asked.
Abilene peered over at Jamie. He was big and scary looking. “Oh yeah,” she admitted.
“Use them. Report back to me ASAP. I want to know what is happening at all times. I’ll talk with Commander Green but I suspect we’ll be going in very soon.”
“Will do. I’ll let you know what else we come up with,” she promised.
Jamie introduced himself to Luca. Her partner’s eyes were huge as Jamie towered over him. Jamie was only offering him some pizza, but Abilene could see how in awe Luca was in Jamie’s presence.
“Everything go okay with your boss?” Cody questioned.
“He suggested a field trip,” she said. Turning to Jamie, she grinned. “Feel up to scaring a confession out of whoever gave up Luca?”
Jamie cracked his knuckles. “I’d love to.”
She nodded in agreement.
“Dinner first,” Cody told them.
Abilene settled next to Luca to help him eat. Her partner had regained some of his color. It really was unbelievable how well he was doing. They didn’t have magical healing powers like the movies alluded to but with his wound bandaged, he
was
going to be okay.
“What did the commander say?” Cody asked Jamie as he sat in the chair he’d brought over and Jamie settled on the carpet.
“We’re to set up the bust for first thing in the morning. The Coalition will provide a couple of teams but rely on the ATF for the majority of the muscle. All the suspects will be taken to the Coalition. Commander Green will orchestrate everything and we need to meet with him at the office at six tomorrow morning,” Jamie answered.
“What about Zak?” Luca questioned.
They all looked at Luca.
“He has a chance to get deeper inside,” Luca told them.
“We don’t need it if they ordered Zak to kill you. We have conspiracy, attempted murder, gunrunning and more. Add our intel with yours and we’ll put these guys away for a long time,” Cody answered.