Jaxson(43)

Taylor nodded. “You got it, boss.” He flicked on his headset and spoke through the mic. “I’ll be set up in ten.” Then he trotted off with his gear toward the warehouse.

Jace winced as he watched Taylor go. “I wish we had more manpower on this.”

Jaxson glanced at the crew they had remaining. He and Jace were ex-military—Jace was an Army medic, but he’d seen more than his share of combat—and all rest of the Riverwise pack had military experience of one kind or another.

There was one shifter he didn’t recognize mixing in with his crew.

“Who’s the grunt?” Jaxson asked, gesturing with his chin to the dark-haired kid chatting it up with Murphy. He was young, probably no more than twenty-two.

“Daniel Wilding. He’s Army, active duty, stateside between tours. Son of a lieutenant colonel in the Wilding pack. After what went down with Cassie, he wanted in on anything we were planning.”

Jaxson nodded. “All right. Brief everyone on the plan. We’ll head out as soon as Taylor gives the go.”

Jace gave a quick nod and jogged off toward the group of shifters gathered around the vans. Jaxson knew they had all tallied up the odds when they signed up for this, but he still didn’t like it. They hadn’t tried a direct assault from the beginning due to lack of intel… but also because it was dangerous, and it tipped their hand, exposing who they were and endangering the entire pack. But more importantly, they still didn’t know who they were up against.

And an unknown enemy was the most dangerous kind.

But they didn’t have a choice at this point. He wasn’t going to leave Jared to rot in their cells, enduring whatever went on in that warehouse. His brother had already been through too much—more than any man or shifter should have to. Jaxson wasn’t going to let them slice into him any further, physically or mentally.

They piled into the vans and waited for Taylor’s signal. When it came, they formed a two-van caravan, gaining speed until they took the turn toward the gate. Jaxson drove the lead van with Jace riding shotgun. Jace gave the thumbs up that Taylor had blown the fence just before they reached the shack. The surprised guard couldn’t get off a shot before they crashed the gate, but gunfire quickly followed after.

Jaxson sped around the back of the warehouse, gaining cover behind the square aluminum-siding building and also seeking out the rear garage door. Dust clouded around the van as he skidded to a stop. The second van was right beside him. His shifters spilled out of both vehicles and sprinted toward the building, taking up stations, weapons at the ready, on either side of the garage door. A small human-sized door to the side was an ambush waiting to happen, and they didn’t have time for Murphy and his munitions to blow the garage door. It looked flimsy enough, and he hoped like hell it would give way to the van, because that was all they had for a battering ram. He threw it in reverse to gain some distance, slammed to another stop, then gunned the engine and popped the clutch, spinning out rocks behind the van as it barreled toward the door.

He ducked behind the cover of the dashboard just before impact.

The shock threw him against the seat then knocked him hard on the van’s oversized steering wheel, but the van kept going, so he blindly jammed his foot on the brake. The van skidded to a stop. His vision was doubled for a moment, and he couldn’t see into the murk inside the warehouse anyway, but he heard the shouts of his crew as they spilled into the building after him. He blinked away the blurriness and checked the side mirror, which was shockingly intact—they had definitely breached the door, which was a blown-out wreckage of sheet metal behind him. The van was still running. He tensed to use it as a weapon if there were forces inside the warehouse… but as far as he could tell with the dusty, dim light, it was empty.

Jaxson blinked, put the van into park, and climbed out.

His crew were likewise standing in the middle of the warehouse with wary but amazed looks on their faces. The place was two stories tall, with darkened rafters filling the upper half, but it was the ground level that attracted their attention. Steel-barred cages, ten by ten, stood empty except for mangy cots and what looked like buckets for toilets.

“There’s the van,” Jace said over his helmet mic. He was at the front of their crew, pointing to a white van at the far end.

“So where’s the driver?” Jaxson replied, pulling his weapon out and sweeping along the empty cages. But he couldn’t see anyone in the entire building. As he crept forward with the rest of the crew, checking each cell, he heard a muffled grunt.

Jaxson said over the mic, “Everyone hold.”