Page 86 of What a Wolf Wants
“Yeah,” Adam said. “You think Ethan’s this tough DEAagent who eats drug dealers for lunch, but he has got a heart. At least Sierra always says he does.”
“Me too,” Tori said, winking at Adam.
Ethan felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment.
Noah was smiling. “That’s pretty great that the people you work with feel that way about you, truthfully.”
Ethan had thought Noah would believe he had been too soft on the job. Ethan also knew his friends were giving him a hard time because they figured this would be the last job he did.
Ty brought them the blueprints on the warehouse. Ethan and the others looked them over. There were six rooms, and the rest was an open space, no second story, no basement.
Ethan knew that all his wolf friends had their tactical backpack harnesses if they had to turn wolf. They were tucked away in their gear so that humans wouldn’t ask what that was for. He didn’t believe they would need them, but if they did, they would be prepared to run as wolves.
But for now, they were stuck playing the game as humans, armed to the teeth with guns.
Chapter 24
When Ethan texted Charlene that they had found the men that they were looking for, she was both thrilled and apprehensive. She hoped they got all the bad guys, and no one was injured in the process.
She wasn’t sleeping in any event until this was all over. Then she heard someone walking on the deck. The four men staying with her immediately rose from the couches as soon as they heard the deck creak. Then they heard some rustling in the shrubs near the master bedroom window.
How many were there? This wasn’t good. Maybe Josh Wilding should have stayed with them instead of going with Noah!
Maverick stripped off his clothes and shifted into his wolf, then rushed through the wolf door and around the house to see what he could see. Charlene wanted to go with him. She didn’t like being locked up in the house where she couldn’t observe what was going on.
She said to Brad, “I’m going with Maverick.” She stripped off her clothes and turned into her wolf and raced out the door. She smelled Maverick’s scent going around the back way. She figured it was better to stay together as part of a team and hurried to join him. When he heard her come up quietly behind him, he looked back and inclined his head, telling her he was glad to see her. He probably would ratherthat she was with him instead of going it alone and having no one watching out for her.
In the meantime, Brad had his gun readied, and he slipped out through the front door to make his way around to the deck where they’d heard someone walking.
But then the shooting began out front, and Maverick and Charlene ran around the front of the house to help Brad. When they came around the side of the house, they saw a tall, muscular man hiding behind the shrubs next to it. Maverick jumped at the man, startling her. He leapt onto the gunman’s back, knocking him over. But she recognized the man’s scent right away. He was Agent Pete Cohen! The agent who had bullied her at the convenience store.
Agent Cohen cried out in terror as Quincy and Pierre ran out of the house and grabbed his gun. Both Maverick and Charlene growled at the man, telling him in no uncertain terms to not even think of trying to get away.
As soon as Quincy tied Agent Cohen’s wrists, Quincy and Pierce ran off to check for any more intruders. Charlene woofed at Maverick to go with them. She had Agent Cohen under her paw. She couldn’t bite him, but she would keep him pinned down.
Then she heard movement in the woods. It sounded like someone was trying to flee. A shot was fired, and then she heard a thud. Agent Cohen tried to roll over onto his back, but she put her mouth on his neck, warning him that she would bite him and end his life if he so much as thought about trying to get up and run. Yet she couldn’t really bite him, not without dire consequences. She could end upturning him, and he would be a danger to their kind. She smelled him pee his pants and knew he was terrified of her and rightly so. Thankfully, he stayed put after that.
After a few minutes, Quincy and Pierre were hauling two men up to the house through the woods, both of their hands zip-tied behind their backs. Luckily, no one had been injured during the shootout. Charlene figured the shooters couldn’t see what they were shooting at all that well in the dark woods. She still couldn’t believe one of Ethan’s own coworkers would come here to kill him, or her. Then again, money meant more than anything to some people. And anyone who got in their way would be dead.
Maverick and Charlene went in through the wolf door while Brad got on his phone and called Ethan. “Hey, we got one of your DEA buddies, Pete Cohen.” He glanced at Charlene still wearing her fur coat and he smiled. “Yeah, she’s safe. We also have two other men, no ID, both armed, both firing shots at us. They’ll go down big time.”
She noted Brad didn’t tell Ethan she’d been outside in her fur coat, helping to take down one of the men. Which she appreciated. She would tell Ethan all about it herself later.
Charlene went outside and listened for a few minutes. Then she went around the house and didn’t smell any other men in the vicinity that would indicate someone else had been there and gotten away. With her homicide detective training, she wondered how the men had gotten there. They had to have a vehicle out here somewhere nearby. She wanted to disable it before anyone could come for it and take it away.
She started tracking their scents to learn where they’d come from, and a half mile away, she saw a black car sitting on the shoulder of the road next to the woods. Like a wolf on the prowl, she slipped behind the car and saw a blond-haired man sitting in the driver’s seat. It had to be the getaway vehicle! They had to take this guy down too. She just hoped she wasn’t making a mistake, and he was just some innocent driver, taking a break from driving, lost, or something.
First, she bit the right two passenger side tires and then she went around to the rear passenger tire and bit it. She did it so quickly that the driver didn’t have time to see what was going on or react. She dashed into the dark woods and howled to let the others know they needed to grab this guy too.
The car door opened, and the guy got out, looked the car over, and cursed up a storm. He got on his phone and tried to call someone, but no one was picking up the call. And then he tried again, or maybe he called someone else. The guys who were zip-tied up in the house maybe?
She heard someone coming through the woods, headed straight for her. It was Maverick and he was coming to take this guy down. “Drop your gun and put your hands up,” Maverick shouted, pointing his gun at the driver.
The guy couldn’t see Maverick for the dark woods, but Maverick could see him perfectly well. Maverick immediately moved from the spot he’d called out from. When the guy raised his gun to shoot Maverick or at least in the direction his voice had been, Maverick shot the gun right out of his hand. The driver screamed out in shock.
“The next one goes through your head. It’ll be self-defense. I have other men here with me who will testify to it,” Maverick said.
She knew Maverick was trying to make out like there were more men with him to scare the driver into giving up peaceably. The others were watching the men incarcerated at the house. She would definitely be his witness—minus her fur coat—in a court of law if it came to that.
