Chapter 12

“The judge signed the warrants against Hardy,” Gage told Mackenzie when he walked back into his office.

She didn’t exactly look thrilled to hear his news, but then again, he hadn’t expected her to be. They’d spent a good part of the early morning hours talking about what going after Hardy would entail, and Mackenzie had been pretty clear about her feelings that she thought someone else in the department should be kicking in the man’s front door instead of him and his team. They’d barely survived Hardy’s first attack, and now Gage wanted to put himself right in the crazy bastard’s sights.

“I have to do this, sweetheart,” he’d told her.

She’d tried hard not to cry, but he’d seen the tears. “Why?”

“Because there’s a good chance Hardy will resist when the DPD shows up on his doorstep.” Gage gently wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “If that happens, a lot of cops will die. Unless my pack and I are there.”

Mackenzie still hadn’t liked it, but at least she’d understood.

With the twenty-four-hour news outlets already plastering Walter Hardy’s face all over the TV and Internet, sensationalizing the attempted murders and detailing the supposed connections between him and the dead gunmen at the barn, it hadn’t been hard finding a judge to sign the search warrants the police needed.

“When will you serve them?” she asked as she sat up from the couch where she’d been napping. Her hair was a wild tumble around her shoulders and she looked more tired than she had when he’d left to go downtown for the meeting at police headquarters at dawn this morning. Gage doubted she’d gotten any sleep.

“We’re going to hit all of his major business locations and his residential addresses simultaneously at noon.” He glanced at his watch. “In a little less than three hours.”

Mackenzie sat up straighter, alarm clear in her eyes. “That fast? Don’t you need more time for planning?”

“Normally, we’d want at least a full day to plan out an operation this ambitious, but in this case, our biggest concern is that Hardy will get wind of what we’re doing and flee the country before we move on him. He likely has people on his payroll planted throughout the police department and the prosecutor’s office, so our only hope is to limit the number of people who know the details and hit him faster than he expects.”

Gage could already hear his men getting ready outside, talking in low voices about team assignments and how they would deal with the possibility of serious resistance at multiple locations around the Dallas area at the same time.

Mackenzie stood up and crossed the room to hug him. “When do you leave?” she asked, the words muffled against his shoulder.

“Thirty minutes.” Gage hated seeing her worry like this. “I’m leading the team into Hardy’s main residence. The prosecutor thinks that’s where we’re likely to find the most evidence.”

“What happens if he’s already gotten rid of any evidence that could tie him directly to the people who tried to kill us—if there ever was any?”

Gage didn’t want to think about that. They had this one shot to find something worthwhile on Hardy. If they did, they had a good chance of getting him off the street. If they blew it, Hardy would hit back even harder than he had the last time Gage had come for him. And the son of a bitch had already shown a penchant for aiming at Mackenzie.

But he didn’t voice any of those thoughts. Mackenzie needed to hear that this was all going to work out okay.

“That’s not going to happen. We’ll get him, one way or the other.”

Fortunately, Mackenzie was so preoccupied that the anger in his voice escaped her notice. That was good, because this was another topic they’d argued about in the early morning hours, when he’d made the mistake of saying he’d track Hardy down and tear him into several small, Butterball turkey–sized pieces before he ever let the man get near her again. Mackenzie had come seriously unglued, complete with finger waving and foot stamping.

“You aren’t a murderer, and I’m not going to stand by and let you turn into one,” she’d told him angrily.

Yeah, he realized as he stood in his office and hugged her tightly. She’s still an idealist. Learning about werewolves hadn’t changed that.

***

Mac chewed on her lip as Gage loaded more equipment into the operations vehicle, then climbed in with Delaney and Lowry. There were way too many different locations to hit and not enough SWAT officers to go around. Which meant that one or two would go in with regular cops for backup at each target. Gage, Delaney, and Lowry were hitting Hardy’s home out in Southlake. Gage had assured her it wasn’t any more dangerous than the other locations, but if that were true, he wouldn’t have insisted on taking that one himself, and there wouldn’t have been two other SWAT guys going to the same location.

The anxious feeling that had been growing all day suddenly turned to fear. She jumped up on the running board on the passenger side of the vehicle. Grabbing Gage by the collar, she pulled him close and kissed him, not caring if she embarrassed him in from of Delaney and Lowry.

“Be careful out there, okay?” she whispered.

His mouth curved. “I will. And you stay inside as much as possible. If you come out, I want someone with you.”

Mac nodded. Cooper, Becker, and Brooks were staying back to supposedly man the compound, but in reality, they’d been pulled out of action so they could be there to protect her. She expected them to be unhappy about being left behind, but they weren’t nearly as upset as she thought they’d be. In some bizarre way that only a man could understand, the three werewolves took it as some kind of distinction that their alpha leader had selected them to stay back and watch over his woman. She was already comfortable with Becker and Cooper, and Brooks was so damn big that she couldn’t help but feel safe around him.

Still, as she watched Gage drive off, she couldn’t deny she was terrified, not for herself, but for Gage and all the other guys in the Pack. They might be stronger and more capable than ordinary men, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get hurt, or worse.

Mac and the guys spent the next few hours listening to the drama unfold over the police radio, with frequent updates from the teams. During the initial entry, there had been some resistance, but not anything extreme—yet.

Of course, when the press got wind of what was going down, every TV news channel lit up like a Christmas tree, so they were able to watch the whole thing going down live. Around seven that night, Gage called to talk to Cooper. Mac worried her bottom lip as she waited for a report.

“Hardy wasn’t at his house or any of the places the teams have searched so far,” Cooper said when he hung up.

Crap.

“But on the upside,” Cooper continued, “Gage says they’ve already found evidence tying Hardy to the gunmen he hired. Apparently the man was so obsessed with getting someone who could kill the two of you that he didn’t even slow down to hide his tracks. Arrest warrants are on a judge’s desk right now.”

Hearing about the evidence helped, but she’d feel a whole hell of a lot better if they could locate Hardy.

Mac tried calling Zak to see if he’d heard anything, but it went to his voice mail. She left a message asking him to call, then hung up. Her cell rang before she could even get it back in her pocket. Zak’s name popped up on the display. That was fast.

“Hey,” she said.

“Mackenzie Stone?” a woman’s voice asked.

Mac frowned, not recognizing the voice. “Yes.”

“This is Amy Bronson. I’m a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit at Mercy General. We found your name listed in Mr. Gibson’s phone under his emergency contact.”

Oh God. “Is Zak okay?”

“We’ve been able to stabilize him, but he was beaten pretty badly.”

“Beaten? Where? By whom?”

“We’re not sure. A few tourists found him in an alley and brought him to the emergency room about thirty minutes ago,” the nurse said. “Does Mr. Gibson have any family we can call, or would you rather do that?”

“I’m the only family he has,” Mac said.

“Then you might want to come quickly.”

Mac clutched the phone to her chest. “It’s Zak,” she told the three werewolves. “Someone beat him up. I have to go to the hospital.”

She jumped to her feet, but Cooper caught her arm. “Hang on. Let me call back and make sure Zak’s really there. Which hospital?”

Crap. Cooper thought it might be a trap. She hadn’t even considered that. “Mercy General. The nurse said he was in ICU.”

Mac listened impatiently as Cooper identified himself and gave his badge number to whoever answered the phone. The look on his face told her all she needed to know.

“He’s there, and he’s in bad shape,” Cooper told her when he hung up. “Come on. We’ll drive you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Brooks pulled the SUV up to the emergency entrance. Mac would have jumped out right away, but Cooper stopped her.

“Wait until Becker gives the all clear.”

Becker got out and scanned the surrounding area, then nodded.

Mac was out of the car and running toward the building when she heard gunshots—a lot of gunshots. She whirled around to see Cooper and Becker falling to the ground, blood staining their uniform shirts. More gunfire echoed as whoever was shooting riddled the SUV with bullets.

Mac froze for a moment, then sprinted toward the downed SWAT officers. But she didn’t make it more than a few steps before someone grabbed her and dragged her across the parking lot to a four-door sedan that squealed to a stop.

When the guy tossed her in the back, she immediately lunged for the opposite door, but a second man jumped in, trapping her. The man who’d first grabbed her shoved her back against the seat as the driver punched the gas.

“Yeah, boss, we have her,” the man in the front passenger seat said, turning to give her a smirk.

Roscoe Patterson. Mac would recognize that smug face of his anywhere—even with bruises covering half of it. There was a soft cast on his right wrist, too. She wondered who had beaten him up.

“She ran straight to the hospital, just like you said,” Patterson continued. “We put down three of those fucking SWAT assholes, too. Told you there was no reason to bring outsiders in to deal with this. We’ll be at the hangar in thirty minutes.”

Mac swallowed hard. She wasn’t sure how badly Cooper and Becker had been hit, but Hardy’s thugs must have put a couple hundred rounds into the SUV. There was no way Brooks had made it through unscathed. Gage had told her werewolves weren’t immortal. Could Hardy’s men have killed them? Tears stung her eyes. She didn’t even want to think about that.

“What are you going to do to me?” Mac asked.

Patterson ignored her as he said something into a handheld radio. Since he kept looking in the side mirror, he must have been talking to someone in a car behind them. She was right. A moment later, another sedan passed them and took the lead.

Patterson gave her a nasty smile. “Honestly, I don’t know what Mr. Hardy has in store for you. But considering that your boyfriend is responsible for the destruction of his entire business empire, killed his son, then had the balls to walk in and threaten him in his own home, I assume it’s going to be something very painful. I really wouldn’t want to be you when the boss gets his hands on you.”

Mac didn’t have a clue what the man meant about Gage threatening Hardy in his own home. But if Hardy had gone to the effort of grabbing her alive, it meant he had something specific in mind for her. If he’d wanted her dead, his men would have gunned her down like Cooper, Becker, and Brooks.

They must have been the ones who’d beat up Zak and used him as bait to draw her out of the compound. She had no idea how Hardy could have known about her relationship with Zak and that it was one thing that would pull her out of hiding, but somehow he had.

Mac saw a blur of movement out of the corner of her eye. Up ahead in the darkness, something big slammed into the side of the car in front of them, sending it spinning out of control. The driver of the car Mac was in swerved, barely avoiding it, then slowed to a stop.

“Shit,” muttered the guy beside her. “That was a freaking man who hit them.”

“No way,” Patterson said, turning to look over his shoulder at the other car that was now thirty feet behind them.

“I know what I saw,” the other man insisted. “It was a man. He hit them like he was tackling the damn car.”

Mac had seen it, too, but she wasn’t going to clarify that the man they’d seen wasn’t really a man at all. She didn’t know how it was possible, but Brooks had survived the ambush and chased down two speeding cars to rescue her. She hadn’t realized a werewolf could do that. Then again, she didn’t really know what a werewolf was capable of.

Gunshots echoed in the air. Mac turned to see orange flashes of light in the dark.

Patterson swore. “Get us out of here.”

“What about the others?” the man driving asked.

“Screw them if they can’t take care of themselves.”

Over her shoulder, Mac saw a dark shape hurtling toward them. Even though she knew it was Brooks, she still screamed when he slammed into the passenger door hard enough to shatter the glass and dent the door panel. She screamed again when he yanked off the door and dragged out the man beside her.

She had enough sense to get out while she could. Or would have if the man on her right hadn’t grabbed her at the same time the driver floored the gas and sped away. As they did, she caught sight of movement behind them.

“What the hell was that?” the driver asked.

Patterson was looking around everywhere at once. “How the fuck should I know? Just get us the hell out of here.”

Mac jerked around, trying to get another glimpse of the werewolf chasing them, but it was too dark. It wasn’t big enough to be Brooks, so it had to be either Cooper or Becker.

She braced herself, expecting whoever it was to slam into the car again, but nothing happened and the blurred shape fell back. She kept looking around, but twenty minutes later, they drove through a small gate somewhere on the backside of the airport and stopped in front of a series of hangars. The man beside her dragged her out of the backseat.

“Keep an eye out for Mr. Hardy,” Patterson ordered the man, grabbing Mac’s arm and pulling her toward a metal building. “We’ll be leaving as soon as he takes care of her.”

Mac fought Patterson, trying to jerk out of his grasp, but it was no good. Even with the soft cast on his arm, Patterson easily overpowered her and dragged her toward the door that another man was holding open for them.

“Stay out on the gate, and make sure no one followed us.”

Before Patterson shoved her through the door, she got a chance to see the man alternating looks between the ripped-up car and the darkness beyond the gate. He didn’t seem like he wanted to be out there, either.

Patterson dragged her across the hangar and around the big, sleek jet in the middle of it until they reached a door on the far side. Without a word, he opened the door and shoved her inside, slamming it behind her.

The room was almost completely dark except for an orange glow leaking through the row of small windows near the top of the outer wall. She looked around, but couldn’t see much more than some shelves and a lot of boxes.

Mac ran her hand along the door for the knob, but it was locked. She jerked on it a few times, but it didn’t give. She felt her way around the room, looking for another way out, but there weren’t any other doors, and the only windows were nearly fifteen feet off the floor. There was no way she could get up there.

She didn’t like thinking about what Walter Hardy had in mind for her. He was a vicious man with nothing left to lose. As Patterson had said, Hardy blamed Gage for everything that had happened to him, from the death of his son to the cops being on his trail. The powerful man had tried to take his anger out on the commander of the SWAT team, and failed. Mac could only assume that he’d decided to go after an easier target—her. Somehow Hardy knew she and Gage were together. He figured that if he couldn’t hurt Gage directly, he’d do the next best thing and hurt someone who was important to him.

That thought terrified her so much it made her tremble, but one thing helped her keep it together. Gage and his pack would come for her—no matter how many of Hardy’s men stood in their way.

***

Gage had been pissed as hell to find out Hardy wasn’t home. He’d really wanted to serve the man the warrants personally. But the search of the Southlake residence had still gone well. Not only had they connected Hardy to the men who’d come after him and Mackenzie, but they’d also gotten enough to put the guy away for years on racketeering charges, tax evasion, money laundering, illegal drugs—just to name a few. Gage couldn’t believe Hardy had been so sloppy as to keep records of all his dealings. It was like he didn’t think the cops would dare come after him.

He was still worried no one had seen Hardy yet, though. Gage was just about to go check to see if the deputy chief had heard anything when his cell phone rang.

“Dixon.”

“Hardy’s men grabbed Mac,” Brooks said simply.

Gage’s heart stopped. “What? When?”

“About ten minutes ago. The bastards beat up Zak to lure Mac to the hospital. We chased them for a couple miles, but they got away.”

Shit.

“I’m on my way. Where are you?”

After Brooks gave him the location, Gage shoved his phone in his pocket, then shouted for Delaney and Lowry to get in the vehicle. He saw Mason glance his way. Gage pretended not to see him. They didn’t need SWAT on the scene now anyway.

Brooks had obviously alerted the whole team, because there were several SWAT SUVs parked along the side of the road where the senior corporal had said to meet him.

The road had been blocked off around what looked like a traffic accident. A dark sedan was lying in the ditch with the driver’s side door smashed in and the windows missing. Bullet holes riddled the car, and there were four dead bodies lying in the grass, automatic weapons alongside them. Hundreds of shell casings were scattered around the area.

Gage’s whole pack was clustered around the first SUV in the line. Well, not all of them. Becker and Xander were missing. Cooper was sitting on the hood of the car with his shirt off, a stoic look on his face while Trevino dug a bullet out of his shoulder. The team medic dropped it to the asphalt to join the others he’d already taken out. Shit, there were a lot of bloody bullets lying there.

Brooks turned. There was a dark purple and black bruise running down the big man’s neck and into his collar that probably stretched across his shoulder and chest. It looked like he’d been hit by a freaking car.

“Any idea where they took Mackenzie?” Gage asked.

“We don’t know for sure. All we know is that she was taken by Roscoe Patterson.”

Brooks briefly outlined the call Mac had gotten from the hospital, the ambush they’d walked right into, and the subsequent chase.

“You rammed a car off the road?” Gage asked.

Werewolves were strong, and Brooks was stronger than most. But tackling a car? That was extreme.

“Yeah, I thought it was the car Mac was in.” His jaw tightened. “It wasn’t until I started yanking people out that I realized I’d hit the wrong one.”

“That’s when I ripped the door off the other car, but one of Hardy’s thugs got in the way,” Cooper said. “They sped off before I could pull Mac out. I tried to keep up with them, but I couldn’t. Sorry, boss.”

Gage appreciated the effort they’d gone to get her back. He knew there was nothing more they could have done. “And no one here has any idea where the car was heading?”

“No one who’s alive,” Cooper said. “We’re hoping Becker gets lucky.”

Gage frowned. “Where is Becker?”

“Trying to get in to talk to Zak,” Brooks answered. “According to the nurse at the hospital, a couple of tourists brought Zak in. We assume those tourists were actually some of Hardy’s men, and that Zak might have overheard something—either while they were beating the hell out of him, or while they were taking him to the hospital to be bait.”

Gage wasn’t sure what they could expect out of Zak. The guy didn’t exactly seem like the kind of man who could pay attention to details while in the middle of an ass whooping. “And Xander?”

“He’s there to make sure the doctors don’t try to drag Becker in for surgery,” Cooper supplied. “He got hit a few times, too. Not as many times as I was, but I think that’s because he was using me as a shield.”

There wasn’t much they could do until Xander and Becker got some information, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t search the car and the men who had been in it. Maybe they’d get lucky.

Gage was digging through some suitcases in the trunk of the sedan when three police cruisers and an unmarked car pulled up beside them.

He spotted Deputy Chief Mason’s salt-and-pepper hair in the front seat. Mike came over to stand next to Gage as Mason got out of the car. Shit, this was all he needed.

Mason’s jaw was tight as he took in the bodies on the ground, the automatic weapons, and the bullet holes in the car. His eyes narrowed when he saw Cooper sitting on the hood of the SUV with blood covering half his chest and a SWAT medic leaning over him with a pair of forceps.

“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded, his gaze snapping to Gage and Mike. “First, I find out there was a shootout in front of Mercy General involving three of my SWAT officers. Then I learn you’ve ordered your entire team here. Have you lost your mind, Sergeant?”

Mason walked over and looked down at the first body he came to—a body that didn’t have any obvious bullet wounds but had clearly been killed in an extremely brutal fashion. He made a face, then turned to Gage again.

“As if that isn’t enough, I got a call on the way here that one of Hardy’s enforcers is dead in a ditch about a mile up the road. The patrolman said it looked like someone threw the man out of a moving vehicle. What’s left of him, anyway. They still haven’t found his arm.” The deputy chief strode over to Gage. “Maybe you can explain it to me.”

Gage wasn’t going to pull any punches with his superior. He didn’t have the time, and neither did Mackenzie.

“Hardy’s men abducted Mackenzie Stone about forty minutes ago and have taken her who the hell knows where. My guess is that they’re delivering her to Hardy as we sit here on our thumbs.”

Mason looked at him sharply. “The reporter? What would Hardy want with her?”

“Payback,” Gage said simply. “I took away someone who was important to him, so he wants to take away someone who’s important to me.”

Mason’s brows rose. “You and Stone?” He swore under his breath. “Fuck, you should have told me. You don’t have a clue where she was taken?”

Gage shook his head. “Not yet, but I hope to soon.”

Mason regarded him thoughtfully. “What do you plan to do once you figure out where Hardy took her?”

Gage didn’t hesitate. “I’m going to get her back.”

“By yourself?” his boss asked drily. “Without telling anyone else in the department?”

Gage didn’t answer. He didn’t give a shit about proper police procedure in a case like this. There was nothing that’d keep him from going after Mackenzie.

Mason sighed. “I’ll get a BOLO out on Ms. Stone. Maybe we’ll get lucky and someone saw where they took her. Then I’ll get a team out here to take care of this mess.”

The deputy chief walked away, leaving Gage to wonder if the man was really going to look the other way on something like this. Then his boss stopped and turned back to glare at him. “And get Cooper to the hospital before he bleeds to death.”

Gage nodded as the deputy chief reached in the car for the radio. A few minutes later, Xander called.

“Tell me you talked to Zak,” Gage said as he put the phone on speaker.

“We did,” Xander replied. “Hardy’s men really beat the shit out of him. Probably figured he’d die from it, but he’s tougher than he looks. The doctors didn’t think he’d even come to for a couple of days, but he was already awake and shouting to talk to someone from the SWAT team when we walked in.”

“Does he know where Hardy’s men took Mackenzie?”

“Maybe. After kicking in his door and doing a number on him, they tossed him in the trunk of their car for the drive to the hospital. Through the backseat, he heard them talking about a private hangar where Hardy keeps a jet. Zak thinks that’s where they’d take Mac—so Hardy can kill her before he leaves the country.”

That last part made Gage flinch, but he forced the image aside. He had to stay focused on the fact that he was going to get Mackenzie back safely. Zak’s information wasn’t as concrete and definitive as he would have preferred, but it was the best intel he was going to get at this point.

“Okay. I’m heading to the airport,” he said. “Is Becker in good enough shape to do that computer thing he does and figure out where Hardy keeps his plane? There has to be some record somewhere that’ll give us a clue where that hangar is.”

“Don’t worry, Sarg.” Becker’s voice came on the line. “I’m already on it. If it’s a private hangar, it’ll be on the north side of the airport. Riggs and I will meet you outside the airport on the expressway. I’ll have something specific before you get there.”

Gage hadn’t been asking them to join him, but he appreciated it anyway.

“Gage.” Xander’s voice came back on. “You know Hardy is bound to have a lot of his men around the place. Who else is going in with us?”

Gage didn’t answer. He turned to look around the blocked section of highway and was surprised to see that his pack had stopped digging for clues and come to stand in front of him, their faces set and determined. His gaze lingered on Brooks and Cooper, still torn and bloody from their last encounter with Hardy’s men. Their faces were no less determined than the others.

He couldn’t ask any of them to do this with him. Hardy was going to have an army of thugs around him, and whether Mason looked the other way or not, this operation wasn’t likely to go down well with Internal Affairs and the politicians down at police headquarters. They were going to figure out that Gage had broken every rule in the book because his girlfriend was involved. He didn’t care what they did to him, but if any of his men went in there with him, they’d be risking their futures in the department as well. He couldn’t ask them to do that.

But as he looked at each of their faces, he realized he didn’t have to ask them.

“We’re all going,” he told Xander.