So, feeling like a piece of crap, Jayna smiled back. “Yeah.”
Jayna was careful not to look at her friend as she wedged the chair back under the door. By the time she turned around, Megan was sitting cross-legged on her bed, regarding her expectantly.
“What are we going to do?” Megan asked.
Jayna walked over to the other bed and sat down. “About what?” she asked as she took off her boots.
“About these things Liam and Kostandin are making us do. I heard them talking earlier about a job they want us to take lead on. Something involving a jewelry store.” Megan sighed. “I don’t know anything about security at a jewelry store, but I’m guessing there will be guards—and guns. If things keep going like this, one of us is going to get hurt or worse. At the very least, they’re going to ask one of us to kill someone, maybe even one of those alpha werewolves from SWAT. I know that we have to stay here until the rest of the debt is paid off, but I don’t want to have anything to do with killing anyone.”
Jayna’s stomach clenched at the thought of one of her pack mates killing someone, especially one of the alphas from Eric’s pack—if that was even possible. She wasn’t sure about Liam anymore, but the rest of her pack weren’t killers. She knew it in her soul.
She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I don’t want any of us to have anything to do with that.”
Megan chewed on her thumbnail. She always did when she was worried. “Do you think Liam could work something out with the Albanians? Maybe he could pay back the money some other way.”
Jayna was so close to telling Megan that Liam had lied about everything, but she couldn’t make herself say the words. Liam might have gotten them into this mess, but she wasn’t ready to turn her pack against their alpha yet.
“Something tells me the Albanians won’t go for that,” she finally said.
Megan nibbled on her nail some more. “Maybe we should just leave. There has to be someplace we can go where the Albanians won’t be able to find us.”
If only it were that easy. “Liam won’t leave. And I don’t think the guys will go if he doesn’t. Are you ready to leave them behind?”
Megan sighed and shook her head. Then she looked at Jayna sharply, her pulse suddenly pounding so fast it seemed to echo in the room. “You won’t leave on your own, will you?”
The panic in Megan’s voice was so painful to hear, it almost brought tears to Jayna’s eyes. Getting up, she walked the three short strides that separated her bed from Megan’s and plopped down beside the other girl. She wrapped her arm around Megan’s shoulders and hugged her close.
“I’ll never leave you,” she murmured, resting her cheek against Megan’s silky, dark hair. “Never.”
Megan immediately relaxed, her heart rate slowly returning to normal as she wrapped her arms around Jayna. Megan had been through so much and depended on Jayna. Jayna would die before she let the girl down.
“We’ll be okay,” Jayna whispered. “We’ll find a way out of this. I promise.”
“I believe you,” Megan said. “You’re the heart and soul of this pack. If you say we’ll be okay, we will.”
The burden on Jayna’s shoulders suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. How the heck could she do anything? She was only a beta.
Jayna thought about Eric Becker and how the big alpha had promised to help her and her pack. She almost laughed at the notion that some outsider—a cop to boot—would ever help them. But something told her that Eric was going to come through for them.
She prayed her instincts were right because she needed something miraculous to happen if she was going to get her pack out of this situation alive.
Chapter 6
The plan was simple. Walk into Gage’s office, get the fake ID out of the safe, drop a leave form on the boss’s desk, and be out before anyone came in for PT that morning.
That was why Becker and Cooper got to the compound at oh dark thirty. Luckily, Cooper was right about the combination to the safe being the date Gage had changed into a werewolf, so opening it wasn’t a problem. Even finding the high-quality forgeries the SWAT commander had made just in case the Pack ever had to go on the run was easy.
In addition to a license and passport, there were also credit cards. Becker had seen some good fakes when he was with the Secret Service, but this stuff was some of the best he’d ever laid eyes on. The name was even perfect—Eric Bauer. Definitely close enough to his own that he’d instinctively answer to it.
“That was almost too easy.” Becker grinned as he dropped his leave form on Gage’s desk and followed Cooper out of their boss’s office. “Maybe we’re in the wrong line of work.”