Wolf Under Fire, page 11
“Stay behind me,” Jake ordered.
Jes pulled her Sig, more than ready to tell him what he could do with his misplaced chivalry, that she was a federal agent the same as he was, but before she could get a word out, Jake was already heading toward the sounds of a struggle.
“Damien is here,” he said calmly over his shoulder, as if he were simply pointing out the air outside was a bit nippy. “Remember—he’s hard as hell to kill.”
Jes wasn’t likely to forget that.
She and Forrest followed Jake through the hallway and into the living room. A middle-aged man lay sprawled on the floor unconscious, blood pouring from a nasty gash on his head while a red-haired woman who couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds dripping wet fought ferociously to protect him even as she tried to hold on to the little boy Damien cruelly dragged away from her.
At their entrance, Damien shoved the boy into the waiting arms of one of the men with him, then aimed a large-caliber gun at Jake, pulling the trigger as the guy with the boy ran through the living room, into the kitchen, toward the back door. The second man stayed to back up Damien, turning his weapon on them too.
Jake spun around faster than Jes thought possible, shoving Forrest to one side of the room at the same time he scooped her up and dived to the other. Before Jes had a chance to take a breath, she was flying through the air, hitting the floor once before Jake rolled both of them behind a heavy, upholstered couch. He lay on top of her, protecting her with his body as bullets ripped through the couch and chewed up the hardwood floor.
As fast as it started, the shooting stopped. Jes heard the thud of booted feet as Damien and his buddy made their escape.
Jake was up and running after them in a flash. Jes followed, racing past where Evie was huddled over Henry, crying, through the kitchen, and out the back door. As she leaped off the back step onto the well-manicured yard, she heard Forrest tell the Robinsons they were Metro Police and to stay where they were.
Jes was a fast runner, but Jake easily outpaced her, reaching the wrought-iron gate leading out of the garden a good ten strides before her just as the roar of an engine filled the alley behind the row houses. Her heart sank when she sped out of the gate and saw Jake standing there staring at a dark gray SUV barreling away from them, a little boy’s panic-stricken face pleading with them from one of the side windows. A part of her wanted to shoot at the fleeing vehicle and try to take out a tire, but with the boy in there, she couldn’t take the chance.
She wanted to scream in frustration. By the time they got back to their car, the SUV would be long gone. And so would that poor little boy.
Knowing they had to try, Jes shoved her pistol in its holster. She was about to race back to the Robinsons’ when she heard the purr of another engine somewhere farther down the alley. It was immediately followed by a thud and a yelp of complaint. She stopped and turned to see Jake climbing on a motorcycle that was already running, the man who’d apparently been riding it a moment earlier standing there beside him, his mouth hanging open in shock.
“I’ll bring this right back—promise!” Jake shouted over his shoulder at the guy as he pulled the bike up beside Jes and slowed to a stop. “Hop on.”
Jes barely had time to wrap her arms around his waist before he was gunning it, speeding down the alley so fast the cars parked along the side of it were nothing more than a blur.
“You know how to drive this, right?” she shouted over the roar of the bike’s engine.
“We’re going to find out,” he shouted back, pulling out onto the main road and racing off after the rapidly disappearing rear lights of the SUV.
Chapter 8
It took a few seconds for Jake to figure out the Triumph motorcycle’s gear shift pattern, but once he had it down, he was able to really put on the speed. The cars around them honked their horns and more than a few people leaned out their windows to shout obscenities at him, but he didn’t give a damn. Catching up with that SUV and the little boy those assholes had kidnapped was the only thing that mattered.
“How are we going to find them in all this traffic?” Jes yelled from behind him, squeezing him so tightly he could hardly breathe. “They could have gone anywhere.”
Every time she moved her body with his as they zipped from lane to lane, he felt her muscles flex and tighten. He’d be lying if he didn’t say it was distracting as hell, but he forced himself to focus.
“Every car has a unique scent, based on age, what kind of fuel it uses, how well maintained it is, and what kinds of fluids are leaking out and how much. As long as they don’t get too far ahead of me, I should be able to track them.”
“Seriously?” she asked, the amazement obvious in her voice.
Jake chuckled and twisted the accelerator, steering the motorcycle down the middle of two lanes of traffic that had come to a near standstill. As he followed the vehicle’s scent almost directly south, it occurred to him that they were heading back toward the Blackwall Tunnel. Good. The traffic in there would slow down the SUV for sure, giving him and Jes a chance to catch up.
As they sped along the A12, Jake replayed the shootout at the Robinsons’ in his mind. The way Damien and that other jackass had sprayed bullets around the place without any concern about where they might end up was cold-blooded. Clearly, they weren’t concerned about collateral damage. The way Damien had ripped that little boy right out of his mother’s arms confirmed they were only interested in getting what they wanted.
Jake couldn’t believe how close he, Jes, and Forrest had come to being shot. Although, if he was being honest, he’d mostly been worried about Jes. That’s why he’d scooped her up and protected her with his own body and pretty much left Forrest to fend for himself. It was a shitty thing to do, and luckily Forrest was okay, but his inner wolf had taken over, and there was nothing he could have done to stop the beast.
Not that he would have changed anything about how he’d reacted. Protecting Jes had felt like the right thing to do. Sort of like the way it felt to have her arms wrapped around him right then.
“Is that them?” Jes yelled, pointing over his right shoulder. “Just now going into the tunnel?”
He looked and saw she was right. The gray SUV was about two hundred yards away, casually traveling in the right lane…as if they hadn’t shot up the Robinsons’ house a few minutes ago.
“That’s them,” he confirmed.
“What’s the plan?” Jes shouted.
“I’ll slip up beside them, and you put a couple rounds through their rear tire,” he shouted back over the echoes as they entered the tunnel only a couple car lengths behind the SUV. “Hopefully that will put them into the wall of the tunnel, and we’ll be able to smash in the window and grab the kid while they’re still shaken from the crash.”
Jake was glad he couldn’t see Jes’s face right then, so he wouldn’t have to see the doubt there. Because yeah, the plan was lame AF. He could think of half a dozen ways it could be done better. A sniper round to the driver’s head, a truck positioned just ahead to block in the SUV, another vehicle T-boning the SUV just as it left the tunnel. But all of those options required people and coordination time they didn’t have.
He stayed to the left of the SUV as he moved closer, tucked in behind a small panel van so Damien and his buddies wouldn’t see them. They were only a single car’s length back when he felt Jes reach for her weapon.
Then everything went to hell.
Jake didn’t know they’d been spotted until the rear window of the SUV exploded and automatic weapon fire sprayed the unsuspecting van in front of them, a BMW sedan to the right, and asphalt all around them.
Shit.
Jake slammed on the brakes—nearly putting the big bike in a nose stand—just in time to avoid the panel van that swerved to the side and bounced off the tunnel wall in a shower of sparks and concrete chips. Too close to even attempt an evasive maneuver, he held his breath, waiting for the careening vehicle to spin around and smash the motorcycle and them like a bug—or for one of the vehicles following behind to run them over in a blind panic.
But fate stepped in at the last second as a bullet from the depths of the SUV found the driver of the sedan near them. The BMW swerved out of its lane, ramming into the panel van so hard the van went up on two wheels and started to go over. The recoil from the impact had the BMW ricocheting back to the road, and for a fraction of a second, there was a gap between the two vehicles. It was insane as hell, but he twisted the accelerator hand grip anyway and prayed this would work.
The bike surged ahead so fast under them, he was worried Jes was going to fall off. But somehow, she held on to him—and her weapon—and a moment later, they were through the gap and in front of the two vehicles that continued to smash themselves to pieces.
That left them completely alone behind the SUV, with no one to hide behind and no way to protect themselves short of giving up the chase. For a second, Jake considered it—for Jes’s sake more than his own—but then he caught sight of the four-year-old boy scratching and fighting Damien inside the vehicle, and he knew they couldn’t desert the kid.
Jake zigged and zagged back and forth across the narrow two-lane tunnel, both to avoid getting shot and to try to set Jes up for a shot at the SUV’s rear tires. It wasn’t an easy shot in the best of situations. Jes couldn’t take any shot that might put the Robinson boy at risk. Unfortunately, Damien and his buddies didn’t have that same restriction. The guy in the backseat with the automatic weapon blazed away as if he had an unlimited supply of ammo, while the driver seemed to take great joy in smashing the big SUV into the vehicles ahead of him, bouncing them off the walls and right into Jake’s path.
When they finally exited the underpass a few minutes later, Jake decided he could go the rest of his life without seeing another tunnel, even if that one had been less than a mile long.
The road opened up a lot more, and the SUV was able to go faster, still swerving all over the road to keep Jake and Jes from getting too close. Half a mile later, a Metro Police vehicle pulled up beside the SUV and gestured for it to pull over. The poor cop got run off the road for his trouble, coming to an abrupt stop on a concrete guardrail.
They needed to end this now before someone else got hurt.
Jake accelerated, pulling up beside the SUV and setting Jes up for a clean shot at the back tire, but as she pulled the trigger, the big vehicle veered off the road, taking an exit that headed into a more residential part of the city.
Cursing, Jake followed the SUV as it took turn after turn in an effort to shake him. Several more police vehicles showed up to put a stop to the chase, but after the second cop car got shot to pieces by the guy in the back of the SUV, the rest dropped way behind.
Jake had about given up hope of finding a place to take down the SUV when a sign for Greenwich Park flashed by and the area to the left of the road opened up onto a carefully manicured lawn, while the right was populated by little clusters of trees.
“Get ready!” he yelled over his shoulder.
“They’re going too fast!” Jes protested.
“I know, but we might not get a better chance.” Revving the bike, he swung up on the left side of the SUV, beside the rear tire, keeping pace with the vehicle as it sped up. “Now!”
Keeping one arm tightly wrapped around him, Jes took aim at the back tire a few feet away from her and fired her 9mm three times in rapid succession. A split second later, the tire exploded into pieces.
His gut clenched as the SUV fishtailed a couple times, then slid gracefully off the road and into the tree-lined area to their right. For a moment, he thought they’d nailed it, but then the right tire dug into the soft shoulder of the road and the big vehicle flipped once…then twice…then a third time before finally coming to rest back on all four wheels. Smoke and steam immediately whooshed out of the engine compartment.
Jake slammed on the bike’s brakes so hard Jes nearly slid right up and over his back. The moment the motorcycle came to a stop, she was off and running for the wrecked vehicle. Jake dropped the bike on its side and followed, terrified the boy had been killed in that horrific crash.
But then one of the back doors swung open and Damien stepped out, a crying, struggling little boy in his arms. There was blood on the kid’s forehead and hands, but he was alive and kicking.
Thank God.
The other bad guys crawled out of the vehicle more slowly. They looked a little disoriented but undamaged—unfortunately. Damien tossed the kid to the driver, muttering something Jake couldn’t make out. Without a word of comment, the man took the kid and headed for the woods, while Damien and the last guy hung back, obviously planning to keep Jake and Jes from getting anywhere near the boy.
Sirens echoed in the distance but they were getting closer. The local cops would first set up a perimeter of some kind before moving in. Jake knew they couldn’t wait for help.
“Stick close,” he murmured to Jes. “As soon as I engage them, you go for the boy. I hate to leave you on your own, but we don’t have a choice. Remember how hard it is to kill these things, so focus on doing what you have to, to rescue the kid and get away.”
She threw him a quick glance. “What about you?”
Jake let his fangs slide out. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be right behind you.”
Pulling his Glock, he charged Damien and the other man, popping off one round after another as he methodically closed the distance between them. He hit what he aimed at, but the bullets had little effect on them. Not surprising since the three rounds Jes had put in Damien’s chest not too long ago had obviously failed to slow the man down very much. Still, his assault momentarily put both men back on their heels, which was all he was going for. All he needed was a little distraction so he could get close. Then he could use the other weapons he had at his disposal.
Damien and his buddy returned fire, and Jake winced as he felt at least two rounds hit him, one digging through the meat of his left thigh, the other grazing the right side of his rib cage. Ignoring the pain, he slipped his gun in its holster and surged forward with a growl. The muscles in his legs, back, and shoulders became bulkier as he shifted, long claws extending in preparation for the coming fight.
As he tensed for impact, he realized he was almost happy his bullets had done little damage to Damien and the other man. He was actually relishing the chance to physically tear into them. He considered that, especially since he’d never even used his werewolf-given abilities like this before, much less looked forward to the prospect.
Why now?
The revelation came to him faster than he thought possible: it was because Damien and the other man had tried to kill Jes back at the Robinson’s place. These…things…had the nerve to actually go after someone who was quickly becoming incredibly important to him.
Jake had only a fraction of a second to ponder the significance of that epiphany before the time for thinking was past. Lunging into the air, he leaped past Damien and slammed into the other man—the one with the automatic assault weapon. He might want to kill Damien deader than dirt, but he needed to get rid of the guy with the assault rifle first. While he could absorb multiple hits from a weapon like that, Jes couldn’t.
Jake felt as much as heard the crack as bones broke when his shoulder connected with the man’s chest. He was fairly sure at least one of those bones was his, but he deemed the pain worth it when the man flew backward like he’d been hit by a truck, the M4 in his hands tumbling into the woods along the side of the road.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake saw Jes peel away and chase after the man with the kid. Jake wanted to track her progress through the woods, but he couldn’t allow himself that luxury. Before the man he’d rammed had even hit the ground, Jake spun around, sure Damien would make his move.
He barely got halfway around before catching sight of the pistol aimed at his head. Jake absently wondered if it was pure chance or whether Damien actually knew a bullet to a werewolf’s head would kill him.
Either way, he brought his arm up, blocking Damien’s and knocking his aim off just as the asshole pulled the trigger. The gun went off so close to Jake’s head it felt like someone had driven a spike straight into his skull. His ears rang like crazy and his vision blurred, but it didn’t matter. Damien was already lining up his next shot. And the first guy Jake had knocked down would be getting up. As much as Jake wanted to cradle his head in his hands and drop to his knees until the pain faded away, there wasn’t time.
Grabbing Damien’s gun hand even as he shook his head to clear his blurry vision, Jake pushed the weapon to the side, then brought his knee up and smashed it into the man’s crotch hard enough to lift him off the ground. Before Damien could recover, Jake reached up with his free hand and grabbed a fistful of hair, dragging him close and headbutting him.
The crunch of breaking bone had Jake’s inner wolf growling in satisfaction. But a glimmer of movement to the side reminded him the other guy was still out there, so he settled for slashing his claws across Damien’s face before ripping the pistol out of his hand and tossing it on the ground, where it slid under the SUV. With a snarl, he shoved Damien aside, then turned to face the other guy, who was presently coming at him at a dead run.
Luckily, the guy hadn’t bothered to look for the assault rifle Jake had knocked out of his hand earlier. But just because he wasn’t carrying a gun didn’t mean he wasn’t armed. On the contrary, he had short, jagged claws like Damien. Even though Jake knew Darby and the men who worked for him were supernaturals of some type, it was still a little weird to see them sprouting claws. It seemed unfair that creatures other than werewolves got to have weapons like that.
At least the creature’s claws didn’t look as dangerous as his own. Although Jake had no doubt they could still do some serious damage if the guy got close.
