In the Crossfire (Bloodhaven) (2 page)

The lack of free time was the main reason Isobel let him live in the cabin on the northwest side of her fifteen acres of land. Liam saw to the property’s upkeep in exchange for a break in the rent. Not that the rent itself was very much, but then again, neither was the cabin. The arrangement worked out well for both of them.

And if he lusted after her in private, well, that was his business and no one else’s.

By the time Liam emerged outside with his coffee, the glass of milk, as well as the box of cheese crackers tucked under his arm, a young girl—now in human form—was leaning against his workbench. She wore the T-shirt and boxers he’d left for her, along with a sheepish expression.

Naley Saba had grown taller and more coltish since the last time he’d seen her. Her hair was a mass of riotous curls, haloing her head like an ebony cloud. Her skin was two tones darker than Isobel’s, and she shared her aunt’s hazel eyes, tilted up at the corners, though hers were much more expressive. Less guarded.

Liam set the items down on the workbench, then used his foot to push a stool in her direction. Naley waited for him to take the opposite stool before sliding onto the proffered seat.

“You’re not mad, are you?” she asked.

Apparently she, too, expected him to be close to a raging rampage.

Liam could feel Naley’s stare. He kept his own gaze steadfastly averted. Instead, he just sipped his coffee and peered at the woods beyond.

He didn’t say a word. He had a hard enough time knowing what to say to adults without having to deal with cubs and juveniles.

After a minute, Naley reached for the box of crackers. As she stuffed her hand inside, Liam contemplated going inside again to get her a paper towel. Her fingers were already turning bright orange as she crammed the cheese crackers into her mouth.

She was obviously hungry, he noted. He eyed the incomplete cabinet doors still waiting by the power sander, resigning himself to the fact that they would just have to wait a little longer for completion.

“Where’re your clothes?” he asked gruffly. It occurred to him that he’d better retrieve her belongings from where she’d stashed them.

She gulped down a swig of milk. “At school.”

Liam frowned. He was pretty sure Naley went to school in Bloodhaven. And since Isobel’s home was located an hour’s commute from the city, and there were no public transit routes that came this way. . . .

Liam set down his mug. “Did you run here all the way from your school?”

Naley said nothing. She shot him a guilty look.

Liam was on his feet again, cursing silently as he returned to the cabin. It didn’t matter that Naley was a cheetah; by all accounts, she was still a juvenile. Running for over an hour would’ve expanded more energy than her young frame was capable of, and seeing that it was late afternoon now, she’d done so on an empty stomach.

Come to think of it, cheetahs weren’t built for prolonged runs. They simply didn’t have the stamina.
Jesus, she has to be exhausted.

Liam hadn’t gone for groceries this week, and so had very little in his fridge. He ended up piling several slices of bread, a bowl of leftover shredded chicken, and mayo on a piece of plywood. He checked for anything resembling vegetables, but the one tomato lingering in the crisper was beginning to develop its own terrain, so that was a lost cause.

It wasn’t going to be the most appetizing sandwich. She’d deal.

He used the plywood as a tray to carry the items out, remembering at the last minute to grab a butter knife and tear off a paper towel as well. He set them all down in front of Naley.

She blinked at the selection before her, then glanced up at Liam.

He folded his arms and glared. “Eat.”

Naley looked like she wanted to say something, then evidently decided against it as she picked up a slice of bread and began slathering it with mayo and then the chicken. She took a bite and grimaced, but continued to chew.

Liam reclaimed his seat. He drummed his fingers on the workbench, thinking. He really had to get more food.

“You know your aunt’s access code?” he asked abruptly, remembering Isobel’s words earlier.

Naley hesitated, then nodded.

He stared. “So why didn’t you go directly to your aunt’s house?”

She shrugged.

Liam studied the girl, perplexed. He knew she couldn’t be afraid of Isobel. Anybody who’d seen the two of them together could instantly tell how much Isobel doted on her niece, so whatever Naley was feeling right now, it wasn’t fear. Nor could she be shy; she’d visited her aunt often enough in the past. Isobel’s house was essentially her second home.

Naley toyed with her sandwich. This time it was she who avoided his stare.

“You want me to leave?” she asked in a voice brimming with feigned indifference.

Liam frowned.

Naley sneaked a glance at him, then narrowed her eyes. Liam didn’t know how to respond, so he narrowed his right back at her.

The corner of her mouth twitched, but she quickly composed herself. She pondered for a moment.

“I wanna hang out here,” she rephrased. “Please,” she added, suddenly remembering her manners. Or maybe she was remembering what grown-ups preferred to hear when dealing with requests.

Liam picked up his mug and took a sip. He waited until Naley began fidgeting, then slipped his hand into his jeans pocket to pull out his phone. He slid it across the scuffed-up surface of the workbench toward her.

“Only if you call your aunt.”

“But you’ve already talked to Aunt Iz.”

He raised an eyebrow. Naley sighed and reached for the phone. Then she studied the plate before her.

“Y’ know,” she said, “you really need to get better food around here.”

“Your aunt has a kitchen.”

“I know. I can bring you back something to eat. Show you how to make a better sandwich.”

Liam gave her a hard look. Naley obligingly took another bite of mayo-slathered bread.

* * *

Isobel Saba glared as she listened to the voicemail greeting playing over her earpiece.

“You’re out of luck!” trilled Kaya’s sing-song voice. “I’m either out soaking up the Sri Lankan sun or photographing elephants in Thailand. Depends what day of the week it is. Leave a message and
maybe
I’ll get back to you.”

“Kaya,” Isobel barked. “Naley’s turned up at my place, alone. Explain yourself. Call me
now.
”

She hung up, seething. She’d just emerged fresh from battle and already her fists were itching to punch something—or someone—all over again. Isobel usually prided herself on keeping her cool, but her sister was the only person in the world who could get her blood boiling.

The other agents caught sight of her expression and gave her a wide berth as they rounded up the last of the captives. They moved the apprehended faction members into the handful of retrieval units surrounding the swale where the raid had taken place.

Isobel scrubbed a hand over her face, smothering a litany of curses. It had already been a hell of a day. They’d managed to capture the remaining members of a faction that had been terrorizing Bloodhaven for months, but the faction leader himself, Rupert Ogden, had managed to escape during the melee, along with his son.

Ogden was leading them on a merry chase, Isobel thought darkly. For the past few weeks, Council agents had tracked him down to each and every one of his hideouts in and outside Bloodhaven. Every time they’d conducted a raid, they’d capture other faction members who’d been hiding there, but narrowly miss Ogden himself, sometimes by a mere ten minutes.

Then two days ago, they’d observed him and his son Pierry seeking refuge at a shanty located at the base of a shale on the east outskirts of the city. After extensive reconnaissance and planning, Isobel had been dispatched this morning with a team of agents to conduct the raid against the Ogdens and the remaining faction members holed up with them.

The team hit the ground hard and fast, taking their targets by surprise. The mission very nearly went without a hitch. Then Tony “Lewski” Ponalewski had screwed it up.

Isobel could’ve throttled the rookie. They’d had the final few faction members,
including
both Ogdens, within their grasp. After snapping suppression collars around the captives’ necks to prevent them from shifting, Isobel had assigned Lewski and Jamal the task of putting restraints on them while other agents consulted her on processing the rest of the scene.

Jamal Mousenn, the next senior agent on site after Isobel, had seen to his half of the detainees effectively. Lewski, however, hadn’t secured the restraints properly, and as a result, his half of the captives had broken free.

It’d been a hell of a free-for-all. In the end, the agents had managed to corral the escapees, but Rupert and Pierry Ogden got away in the confusion.

The only positive to be found, Isobel thought balefully, was that the Ogdens couldn’t remove their suppression collars. The collars only responded to the prints of senior-level agents. Without either Isobel’s or Jamal’s prints to release the locking mechanism, the Ogdens couldn’t escape the collars to shift into their tiger forms.

Father and son could only remain in hiding for now. Anyone who spotted them in their collars would instantly know they’d escaped from the Council.

The Council could also track down the collars via GPS, so it was only a matter of time before the agents found the two escapees and threw them into the cells to rot. Once somebody wound up in the Council cells, there was no leaving. Ever.

Bloodhaven’s Council was ruthless when it came to factions and rogue shifters, and with good reason. It was only within the last handful of years that shifters had finally achieved equal rights to humans. That piece of legislation had followed a series of very bloody human-shifter wars, and nobody wanted to return to such darkness again.

Tensions still bubbled at the surface, and shifter Councils across the country knew they couldn’t afford to become complacent. Humans were a skittish lot as a rule; they tended to feel threatened whenever anybody turned fur. Tasked with maintaining order among the shifter community, the Councils knew they couldn’t give humans a reason to go back to the old days. They subsequently meted out harsh sentences to make sure their fellow shifters toed the line. A rogue could potentially be rehabilitated, after first enduring brutal punishment. A convicted faction member, however, never saw the light of day.

The factions—radical anti-human groups bent on obliterating human-shifter co-existence—were convinced that humans deserved to suffer for oppressing them over the years. Their hate had spread like a putrefying disease, so intent were they on inflicting vengeance. Left unchecked, such resentment would lead to war all over again, and no Council was willing to let that come to pass.

Each Council had their own way of dealing with their jurisdiction. Bloodhaven’s chose to be merciless. Any faction members who had exhausted their uses and could no longer provide information were executed at Council HQ, in the wing morbidly nicknamed by the agents as “the slaughterhouse.”

Isobel had no problem with that. The last faction she’d taken down had conducted sick, unimaginable experiments on live human beings. Moreover, it had threatened the life of her friend’s mate. Since his mate was human, that in turn had turned him into a growly pain in the ass.

Wolves,
Isobel thought dryly.
Always so overboard with the protective instinct.

That reminded her. Isobel texted Grayson to cancel their get-together later that evening. Things had been tense between them ever since she’d tried to bring his mate in for questioning, and tonight’s dinner was supposed to have been the first step in reestablishing their previously close friendship.

This cancellation would only prolong the strain between them, but it couldn’t be helped. She had to get back home to Naley.

The
ping
alerted her to his texted reply, a terse one-word acknowledgment. Isobel shook her head and pocketed her phone.

Today was supposed to have been a coup. The agents had been so close to capturing Ogden and all his pathetic underlings. Instead of victory, however, they were faced with the fact that Ogden and son had managed to give them the slip.

Brilliant.

Isobel glimpsed Lewski out of the corner of her eye. She barely refrained from emitting a snarl.

“Hey, Saba.”

Isobel turned to see Malcolm Rhodes approaching her, hand raised in greeting. Her fellow agent looked impeccable, not a hair out of place, as if he hadn’t just taken down a bear-shifter fifteen minutes ago.

“Heard you didn’t go with Jamal,” he commented conversationally. “Hanging around to make sure Lewski doesn’t fuck up again?”

Isobel grimaced. Jamal had departed not too long ago, taking a team of agents with him to track down the Ogdens. Normally Isobel would’ve gone with them—hell, she would’ve headed the team herself—but learning about Naley had drastically altered her plans. She couldn’t very well embark on a mission now, not if it meant leaving Naley on her own while Isobel disappeared and wound up incommunicado for several days in a row. Unlike her sister, Isobel refused to leave her family in the lurch.