Chapter 3

“So what the hell are you going to do?” Cooper asked Becker the moment they were inside the armory’s security cage.

Tuffie, the team’s unofficial mascot, had followed them into the building, figuring something must be up if the two of them were slipping off to the most private place on the SWAT compound right in the midst of all the insanity going on. The pit bull mix took up a position by the door like she was standing guard. Becker shook his head. Maybe that was exactly what she was doing. Sometimes Becker thought that dog understood more than anyone gave her credit for.

Cooper had been trying to talk to him privately ever since they’d gotten back to the compound this morning, but they hadn’t had a chance to slip away until a few minutes ago. When you worked with fifteen other werewolves, all of whom had incredibly good hearing, finding a little privacy could be tough.

Becker wasn’t surprised that everyone was losing their minds. It wasn’t every day they got into a gun battle with another pack of werewolves. And while Xander’s squad had technically won—taking down five of the nearly psychotic werewolves from the mob pack—nobody was in the mood to cheer. Their success had come at a cost. Hale Delaney, along with Max and Alex, had been hit with multiple rounds from the other pack’s submachine guns. If they hadn’t been werewolves, they’d all be dead. As if that weren’t bad enough¸ Khaki had been bitten. Seriously…bitten. She’d shot one of the enemy werewolves eight times, and the guy had still been able to get his fangs latched on to her shoulder. Khaki would be fine, but Xander was still so pissed that no one could even look at him without earning a snarl.

Becker leaned back against the counter separating the weapons and ammo area from the front of the building. “Do about what?”

Cooper looked at him like he was insane. Even Tuffie’s jaw dropped. Hell, maybe he was a little nuts. After nearly half a day to think about it, he still had no idea why he’d behaved the way he had around that female werewolf. Not only had he not arrested her, but he had hidden her in a box so no one else could either. That wasn’t exactly normal.

“You’re joking, right?” Cooper said. “You know you have to tell Gage and Xander about that female werewolf. You got a good look at her face. If we can ID her, she could lead us to the rest of her pack.”

Becker’s gut clenched. Some part of him knew it was the right thing to do. Shit, her pack had nearly beaten those poor security guards to death. On top of that, there were at least six other werewolves out there besides her, all probably just as insane and out of control as the ones they’d killed at the warehouse. But he couldn’t betray her. He didn’t understand why, but he couldn’t.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“Why the hell not?” Cooper demanded. “She’s a criminal. Shit, Becker, she pointed her automatic weapon at you.”

“But she didn’t pull the trigger,” he argued. “She could have, but she didn’t. She’s not like the others. She’s not a criminal.”

Cooper snorted. “How can you know that?”

Becker knew his friend was just trying to get him to see reason, which normally would have been a good approach. But as far as this woman was concerned, reason didn’t enter into the picture. For the first time in his life, he was making decisions based purely on instinct and emotion. He was usually linear and calculating. This should have been freaking him out, but the funny part was that it felt right.

He ran a hand through his short, dark blond hair and sighed. “I can’t tell you how I know…I just do. She’s different. You have to believe me when I say that. And whatever you do, you can’t tell Gage or anybody else about her.”

Cooper pulled a tall metal stool out from behind the counter and sat down. Tuffie left her place by the door and moved closer, as if she really wanted to hear the next part of their conversation.

“Becker, you’re asking me to lie to Gage and the rest of the team about something that could get a lot of people killed, so no bullshitting. You need to be completely honest with me on this.” Cooper pinned him with a hard look. “Are you doing this because you think a woman you’ve known all of sixty seconds could be The One for you?”

Ever since Gage had met Mac, the rest of the SWAT team had been seeing The One in every woman who gave them a casual glance. After Xander met Khaki, it had only gotten worse. It was the number one topic of conversation whenever they had some downtime. Hell, even when they were on incidents. Becker was just as guilty as the other guys when it came to wondering if there was someone special out there for him.

Right now, though, his first impulse was to say Hell no! He’d exchanged half a dozen words with her in all of thirty seconds. It’s not like he was in love with her or anything like that. He was asking Cooper to lie for him because he thought she was innocent and because…well, she seemed nice.

Shit, that was lame.

The longer he stood there trying to come up with an answer, the longer Cooper’s theory had to sink in. Was his friend right? Was the reason he’d reacted so strongly to this beautiful werewolf because they were somehow linked together like Gage and Mac, and Xander and Khaki?

That was crazy. The odds were incredibly stacked against a werewolf ever meeting his one-in-a-billion soul mate. There was no way Becker could have met his in the midst of an armed robbery. That kind of crap didn’t happen in the real world.

But it had happened for Gage and Xander. So maybe it had happened for him too.

He pushed at a piece of dirt on the floor with the toe of his boot before finally shrugging. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Cooper folded his arms, his dark eyes regarding Becker thoughtfully. “Are you sure you’re not just projecting? That you want this woman to be The One so badly you’re willing to overlook anything that doesn’t fit?”

“What the hell does that mean?” Becker demanded. He pushed away from the counter. “Since when did you turn into Dr. Phil?”

Cooper held up his hands. “I’m just saying. I know you’ve been looking around the next corner for that one-in-a-billion babe for you ever since Gage met Mac. I get it.”

Becker didn’t say anything. Cooper was right. He hadn’t had a serious relationship since he’d gone through his change, and if there was a perfect woman out there for him, he wouldn’t turn a blind eye to her—or turn her in to his fellow cops.

“So what if I am eager to find The One for me?” he asked. “What kind of dumbass werewolf wants to live his life alone?”

Cooper seemed to think about that. “I get what you’re saying. But given that you really, really want this woman to be The One, are you sure you aren’t just seeing what you want to see?”

“No. I’m telling you, there’s something about her.” Becker eyed his friend. “So…are you going to say anything to Gage?”

Cooper looked to Tuffie for help, but the dog’s expression remained happily neutral, as if to say Cooper was on his own with this one.

Cooper muttered something under his breath. “Why am I the one who has to keep everybody’s secrets when they’re doing something stupid?”

Becker chuckled, remembering how Cooper had kept Xander and Khaki’s relationship secret from everybody on the team for a while. “Because you’re so good at it.”

Cooper shook his head. “Okay, so we don’t tell Gage and the rest of the Pack. What do we do then?”

Becker frowned. “Hold on. There is no we. I’ve already gotten you in deep enough by asking you to lie for me.”

“If this all goes south, it’s not like Gage and Xander will go easier on me because all I did was lie to them,” Cooper pointed out. “It’s in my best interest to make sure this all works out right. If it doesn’t, we’ll probably both end up getting punched through a brick wall. So, how can I help?”

Dammit, Cooper could be stubborn. Becker should have told his friend that he didn’t want him involved, but the truth was, he could use the help. And as Cooper pointed out, Gage would be pissed anyway. Then again, Gage was always pissed about something.

“The first thing we need to do is get out of here so I can do some digging,” he told Cooper. “Think you can come up with an excuse without making anyone suspicious?”

Cooper thought about it for a moment, then grinned. “Yeah. We tell Gage the truth.”

Becker gaped. Had Cooper missed the part where he said they couldn’t tell anyone about the werewolf babe?

But Cooper was already out the door with Tuffie at his heels, leaving Becker no choice but to catch up.

Cooper’s version of the truth was telling Gage that the two of them wanted to check out the warehouse to see if they could find something that would lead to the other pack. Becker had expected it to be harder than that, but Gage hadn’t even batted an eye.

Cooper glanced at Becker as they headed to the parking lot. “See how easy things are when you tell the truth?”

Becker just snorted as he walked over to his bike. He could have ridden with Cooper, but since Becker didn’t know where the trail might lead, he figured he might need his wheels, so he took his Harley instead. Besides, the ride might help him get his head right where that female werewolf was concerned. Could she really be The One? Yes, he’d been immediately attracted to her and so rattled that he’d barely been able to think, but shouldn’t he have felt something more definitive? Gage and Xander claimed they’d known they’d met their soul mates the moment they saw them. Why hadn’t he?

Unless being attracted to a woman even though she’d been pointing a weapon in his face at the time actually was a sign he’d met The One.

Stupid thoughts like that were still bouncing around his head when they arrived at the warehouse. He pushed them aside as he parked his bike beside Cooper’s Wrangler.

Cooper motioned to the helmet strapped to the backseat as Becker climbed off his Harley. “Why do you carry that if you never wear it?”

Becker shrugged. “Never know when you’re going to meet a safety-conscious hottie looking for a ride.”

“If she was safety conscious, wouldn’t she want you to wear a helmet too?”

“Huh. Never really thought about it that way.”

“Yeah, I figured you hadn’t,” Cooper said drily. “And as long as you’re thinking about it, you might want to consider that a safety-conscious hottie probably wouldn’t want to ride on a motorcycle anyway. There’s a reason doctors call them ‘organ donor vehicles.’”

“I guess I’m just looking for a regular hottie then,” Becker said. “Forget the safety-conscious part.”

Cooper just shook his head and fell into step beside Becker. The crime scene techs were done processing the warehouse, but the young patrol officer left on duty still signed them into the logbook before letting them go inside.

“Were you guys part of the SWAT team that took down that crew this morning?” the patrolman asked. Then he hurried on enthusiastically, “I got a look inside. It was like a combat zone. Must have been crazy, huh?”

Becker nodded but didn’t say anything.

“World Cargo had its insurance people in here a little while ago,” the officer continued. “I heard them say the suspects who got away made it out with something like fifty of those platinum medallions. That’s a pretty big haul, right?”

Becker headed into the warehouse, leaving Cooper to deal with the overeager patrolman. Guarding an inactive crime scene had to be boring as hell, and any other time, he would have chatted with the guy, but right now, he had some urgent crap to take care of.

He headed straight for the crate where he’d told the female werewolf to hide but stopped midstride when he picked up her scent by a big trash can. He dug through papers and cardboard until he came up with her lightweight tactical vest and black sweater. Smart girl. She’d dumped them so she wouldn’t look suspicious. He checked them for anything he could use to track her, but the stuff was clean.

He could have followed her scent out of the warehouse, but he knew that wouldn’t lead anywhere but a dead end wherever she’d gotten into a vehicle. No werewolf’s nose was good enough to follow her beyond that.

He continued on to the crate and was just climbing inside to look around when Cooper showed up.

“What are you looking for?” his friend asked. “I’m pretty sure she didn’t leave her phone number in there for you.”

“Probably not,” Becker agreed. “I’m hoping I can find something that might give me a clue about who she is.”

Cooper rested his forearm on the edge of the crate. “You know, this would have been a lot easier if you’d remembered to get her name.”

“Yeah, well, I was a little distracted at the time.”

Becker hunkered down in the tight confines of the box, envisioning the beautiful female werewolf doing the same thing as he breathed in her incredible scent. Despite the perfume permeating the wood, he could still smell her.

“So what was it?” Cooper asked as Becker rummaged through the packing material in the bottom of the crate.

Becker glanced up at his friend. “What do you mean?”

“What was it about her that got to you? Was it her face? Her scent? The way she talked?”

Becker stopped what he was doing to lean back and consider the question. “I’m not sure,” he finally admitted. “I’ve been asking myself the same thing all day and still haven’t come up with the answer.”

He let his butt slide down until he was sitting in the same cramped space where the female werewolf had sat, except she’d done it with the lid closed and cops wandering around just outside the thin wooden walls. The thought of her being trapped and scared in here suddenly made him want to growl and tear into something—violently. He resisted the urge and instead forced himself to take a deep breath and focus on the question Cooper had asked.

“She was beautiful,” he finally said. “You know when people say someone has the face of an angel? Well, that was her. It completely took my breath away. She smelled amazing too. Like a cherry lollipop. And her voice…her voice was soft and just a little bit husky. She was so perfect, I swore my heart was about to explode.” He shook his head. “It was more than all that though. I can’t explain it, but something inside me knew she was special. Something told me I could spend the rest of my life looking and never find another woman like this one.”

Cooper lifted a brow. “Wow, that’s pretty…epic.”

Becker chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it is. Of course, now I have to find her, or I’ll be the werewolf known for losing the woman who might just be The One.”

He was about to hop out of the crate when a little slip of paper different in color than the rest of the packing material caught his eye. He picked it up to get a better look.

It was a partial receipt from a Starbucks for a cinnamon dolce latte with a time stamp from three days ago just before noon. Unfortunately, the part with the credit card information was missing. There wasn’t even a store number or address. He had no idea which Starbucks the latte had been purchased at or the name of the person who had bought it, but he didn’t need any of that.

“What’s that?” Cooper asked, leaning in for a look.

Becker held up the tiny scrap of paper so his friend could see it. “This is the clue that’s going to help me find a certain female werewolf.”

Cooper frowned. “How do you even know it’s hers?”

Becker held the piece of paper under Cooper’s nose. “Of course it’s hers. Smell it.”

Cooper sniffed, then shrugged. “If you say so. I’ll agree that might be a werewolf’s scent on there, maybe even female, but that doesn’t mean it’s hers. She could have sat on it or something. That receipt could lead you to Mario the plumber.”

Becker vaulted out of the crate with a laugh. “I don’t know why you even bother sniffing anything. Your nose hasn’t been right since you were trapped down in that tunnel full of homemade explosives a few months ago. Trust me, this thing smells like cherry lollipops. It’s hers.”

“Okay, let’s assume you’re right and that piece of paper belonged to your mystery werewolf girl,” Cooper said as they headed for the exit. “There’s nothing on it. How’s it going to help you find her?”

“That’s the easy part,” Becker told him as they walked out of the warehouse. He nodded at the poor patrolman still standing at the gate. “All I have to do is get on a computer and start violating about a hundred state and federal laws. I should have an answer by tomorrow.”

“I probably don’t want to know exactly what you’re planning on doing,” Cooper said. “That way, I can’t be forced to testify against you when the NSA swoops in and arrests your ass.”

“Probably a good idea,” Becker agreed as he climbed on his bike and cranked it into rumbling life.

Cooper leaned in close to be heard over the engine. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Becker didn’t answer. His best friend was offering to do something illegal if Becker told him it would help find his mystery werewolf. All he had to do was ask.

But just because Cooper would willingly risk everything to help him find this woman didn’t mean Becker had the right to ask him. Becker liked to think the female werewolf wasn’t like the other werewolves at the warehouse, that she was simply in over her head, but he didn’t know that. If he was able to track her down, it might be to discover she wasn’t the woman he thought.

If any of this went bad, it probably wouldn’t end well for him—or anyone helping him.

He shook his head. “Nah. I just to need some time to find her. Do you think you could cover for me with Gage and Xander? I can’t do what I have in mind with those crappy computers we have in the office.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” Cooper said. “But be careful, okay? People catch you hacking, getting kicked off the SWAT team will be the least of your problems. The feds put people in prison for the crap you’re talking about doing.”

Becker nodded absently, already busy developing a plan—one that involved him hacking into Starbucks’s credit card system to figure out which stores in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area had sold a cinnamon dolce latte around the time stamp on the receipt. Then he’d slip into the array of traffic cameras around the city to take a peek at the stores in question. All he had to do then was match the face of the werewolf he was looking for with a credit card receipt, and he’d have her.

He was so engrossed in the technical challenge that lay ahead of him—not to mention groaning at the thought of how many hours he’d have to spend looking at grainy video footage—that he barely remembered his friend was still there until Cooper gripped his shoulder.

“I’m serious,” Cooper said. “I know you really want to find this woman, but you need to be careful. Even if she is everything you hope she is, that doesn’t mean her pack mates are going to be too friendly if they figure out you’re the one who killed some of their members.”

Becker hadn’t given that part of the equation any consideration at all. Shit. He’d been so focused on finding her that he hadn’t even thought about how he was going to deal with the rest of her pack.

He shrugged. “I’m not that worried about it. Once I get a chance to talk with her face-to-face, I’ll be able to convince her to leave her pack and run away with me.”

Cooper looked dubious. “Has it ever occurred to you that this woman might not even find you attractive?”

“No.”

Grinning, he punched his foot down, shifted the bike into first gear, and tore out of the warehouse parking lot.

Becker’s smile faded as he turned onto the road. After the way he’d reacted to the female werewolf, it was difficult not thinking he’d stumbled across the one woman in the universe he was meant to be with. But what if after going through all kinds of hell to track her down, he discovered she didn’t feel the same about him? Just because she might be The One for him, there was nothing in the legend that ensured he was The One for her. For all he knew, she might be in love with someone already—like some maladjusted werewolf from her own pack.

That thought depressed him, but he forced himself to push the nagging doubts aside. It wasn’t going to happen that way, he told himself firmly. He was going to find her, and when he did, she was going to feel exactly the same way about him that he felt about her.

It wasn’t until that moment that Becker realized how much he’d already invested in the female werewolf. Had Gage and Xander felt this overwhelming pull the moment they’d met their future mates?

He only hoped his situation worked out as well as theirs had. But then again, neither one of them had fallen for a rogue werewolf who was part of a pack trying to take over the city.