Chapter 8

“So, how’s everything going with Everly?” Alex whispered to Cooper as they slowly moved through the woods toward the rear of the shabby ranch house. Remy and Brooks, along with three DPD uniformed officers, were stuck with the crappy task of approaching the front of the house with Dennis and his FBI partner.

Remy and Brooks would be the ones knocking on the door—and that was plenty dangerous enough—but if what they’d been briefed about the guys living in this place was right, there was a good chance that some bad folks were likely to be hauling ass out the back door of this place pretty soon. And they were almost certainly going to be armed. He and Alex were back here to keep those guys from getting away. One of Dennis’s informants claimed they were the men who’d provided the explosives for the bomb, so the feds really wanted to talk to them.

“Great,” Cooper whispered back. “We almost blew off dinner plans last night so we could hang out at my place, but then an old friend from my army days showed up, and we ended up going out with him.”

Alex paused for a moment, sniffing the air. No doubt making sure no one had snuck around behind them. His eyes shifted to yellow-gold, and his nose tilted up a little as he tested the air. A few moments later, the flash of color disappeared, and he looked at Cooper.

“That was pretty cool of her to hang with your army buddy.”

“Yeah. She’s amazing like that.”

Cooper smiled as he remembered those late night kisses at her place just before he’d dragged his butt out of there.

“Damn, I never thought I’d see it,” Alex said as they reached the edge of the woods and took a knee, waiting for a signal from the front of the house. “Dry and wry Landry Cooper walking around with a big-ass grin on his face. Everly must seriously be The One for you.”

“I wasn’t sure in the beginning, but I think she has to be,” Cooper admitted. “Because I can’t imagine feeling like this for another woman.”

“I’m happy for you, guy,” Alex said. “If any of us jerks deserve a shot at cosmic happiness, it’s you.”

Cooper snorted. “Because of all the hard times I went through in the army?”

Alex flashed him a grin. “Hell no. I just figure you deserve a reward for the all the time you’ve spent playing Doctor Phil for Xander, Khaki, Becker, and everyone else who goes to you for help. If you’re going to be handing out advice about love, you might as well get some yourself.” He glanced at Cooper out of the corner of his eye. “You are getting some, aren’t you?”

Cooper shook his head. How the hell did a guy like Alex ever get laid? “Since we’re talking about love advice, let me provide a little before you come and ask me for it.”

Alex regarded him with amusement. “This I have to hear.”

“It’s simple. If you’re lucky enough to find the woman you’re meant to be with, don’t talk. Just give her a smoldering look with that furrowed brow, flash her a shot of your abs every time she looks at you—maybe even smile—if you can figure out how to do it without looking like you’re in pain. But don’t talk, because every time you do, her opinion of you is going to drop like a rock.”

Alex grinned—and it did kind of look like he was in pain—but before he could respond to Cooper’s jab, a voice over their earpieces interrupted.

“We have a visual through the front windows,” Dennis said calmly over the radio. “All four brothers are inside the house. No indication they know we’re here yet.”

“Does that mean we don’t have to worry about them shooting at us until we knock?” Remy asked sarcastically.

“Probably,” Dennis replied without missing a beat. “Just remember, Jackson Burke owns the property, so his name is the one on the warrant, but his oldest brother Jed is the one you have to watch out for. He’s the guy my informant fingered as running this operation, and he’s the one with a sheet as long as my arm. He’s been charged multiple times for aggravated assault—once against a police officer—and armed robbery. He’s been in and out of prison most of his adult life, and the next time he’s in front of a judge, he’s looking at a three-strike sentence.”

“So he knows that if he goes to prison again, it’s probably going to be for life,” Cooper added. Dennis had shown them photos of the four brothers, so they’d be able to ID them on sight. “That means there’s no reason for this guy to play nice.”

“Great,” Remy drawled. “So, it’s almost guaranteed this is going to turn ugly?”

“I hope not,” Dennis said. “I really need these guys to talk to me. They may be the link to the bomber who killed Officer Swanson.”

“This informant of yours,” Brooks said. “He actually saw explosives on the property?”

Cooper knew exactly why Brooks was asking. The past couple days, everybody involved in this case—FBI, ATF, DPD, Homeland Security—had all been pushing hard on their sources and informants. Suddenly having somebody claim to have seen explosives at a ranch just inside the Dallas County line, north of Ferris on I-45, seemed a little too convenient. Wouldn’t be the first time an informant had sold his handler a piece of bogus info because they knew the cops were desperate.

As the minutes stretched out and Dennis didn’t say anything, Cooper got a funny feeling in his gut. “Dennis, answer the question. Your informant saw explosives, right?”

His friend sighed—and Cooper’s stomach dropped. “He didn’t see explosives, but he did see boxes with military markings. Some were the right size and shape to hold the C-4 blocks we’re looking for.”

Cooper heard his teammates grumbling over the line. They weren’t hiding the fact that they felt like they’d been played.

“Dennis, you’re sending us in against four shoot-first bad guys on the off chance the boxes your informant saw might hold explosives,” Cooper said. “With guys like this, our mere presence is going to lead to a confrontation, all over a weak-ass tip on some military-looking boxes?”

Dennis hesitated again. “It’s the best tip I’ve got. And it’s why I asked for as many of you guys as I could get—because I knew this could get ugly. But I wouldn’t ask you and your guys to go in if my gut wasn’t telling me there was something here.”

Cooper glanced at Alex, who nodded. But Brooks was the senior SWAT officer present—and the one going through the front door. He was the one who had to give the word.

“Brooks?” Cooper prompted.

“We know all about going with your gut,” Brooks said. “We’re going in.”

Cooper heard Brooks and Remy approach the front of the house just as the shooting started.

“There are only two shooting out the front,” Brooks said calmly over the radio. “Cooper, Alex—you can expect company any second.”

As if on cue, the back door burst open and two men raced out, carrying pistols and hauling ass for the woods to the left side of the house.

Cooper called out the obligatory, “Stop—Dallas Police!” But that didn’t slow the two men down at all. Why the hell would it? The idiots already knew the men outside the house were cops. That’s why they were running in the first place.

“Two suspects just came out the back heading for the woods,” Cooper said into his mic. “Jed is one of them.”

“Don’t let him get away!” Dennis shouted. “Go after them.”

Cooper switched off his mic. He didn’t want anything he said—or growled—over the next few minutes to make it onto the official recordings that were made of all police channels. In his ear, he could still hear Brooks making the occasional comment as he and Remy smashed their way through the front of the house and began seriously screwing up the two brothers who’d been dumb enough to stay behind to give their siblings a chance to escape.

He glanced at Alex as the two fleeing men disappeared into the woods. “Apparently, the FBI thinks we should chase those men who just ran off.”

Alex snorted. “Good thing we have your FBI friend here to tell us what to do. I would never have thought of that.”

“I guess we should go get those guys then,” Cooper said. “Before they get away.”

Alex shrugged. “We could give them a few minutes head start. Might make it more sporting. There’s nothing in the direction they headed but woods, field, and barbed-wire fence.”

Cooper considered that. “Better not. If Dennis came back here and saw us standing around, he might think we don’t take this stuff seriously.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Alex agreed. “But if the two brothers split up, you can have Jed. That way I won’t get in trouble if I end up having to damage the other one.”

That didn’t seem fair to Cooper, but Alex was already running toward the far tree line.

They kept their pace slow until they were a few hundred feet into the woods, just in case one of the other officers or feds might look their way. But once they were under the cover of the trees, he and Alex immediately put on the speed.

Cooper felt his leg and ab muscles tighten and tingle as energy poured into them. His fangs and claws instinctively slipped out at the thrill of the chase, and he had to force himself to retract them. They needed Jed Burke alive and talking—preferably not ranting about seeing a monster with glowing eyes, sharp fangs, and vicious claws.

He glanced at Alex to see that his fellow werewolf was having a little more trouble with that. The former marine’s eyes were blazing, and his fangs protruded nearly an inch over his lower lip. He and Alex were close in age, and both had gone through their change about the same time, but Cooper had been able to shift fully into a wolf within a year of his change, while Alex still couldn’t do it. Cooper could keep his fangs and claws in check, no matter how tense or excited he got. Alex, on the other hand, was on the edge of control right now, and he probably didn’t even know it.

That was how the werewolf thing worked. Control wasn’t only about maturity and experience. It was about personality, acceptance of the rage inside you, and in some ways, pure dumb luck. Having seen what a full omega werewolf was like when the SWAT team had fought several of them a few months ago while saving Jayna’s pack, Cooper was now of the opinion that some alphas in his pack had a little omega in their blood. It definitely explained why some had a harder time than others when it came to controlling their inner wolf.

Up ahead, the trail left by the Burke brothers split off. As arranged, Cooper went after Jed. He couldn’t trust his nose completely to track the man, but the idiot was running so hard and was so out of control, it didn’t take much to follow. Jed was crushing plants and leaving deep boot prints everywhere he went.

A minute later, Cooper picked up the sounds of thudding footsteps and labored breathing. Then he caught a glimpse of Jed’s red hair and plaid shirt between the trees. While he might be trim and wiry, the poor guy clearly hadn’t worked on his cardio while he was in prison because he was huffing and puffing the whole way.

Cooper slung his M4 over his head and across his back, picking up speed.

Jed whipped his head around, his eyes widening in shock. He recovered quickly enough, pointing his weapon in Cooper’s general direction and snapping off three shots. The bullets never came close, but the move gave Cooper a good look at Jed’s weapon. It was a large frame Beretta. It didn’t have more than fifteen rounds in the magazine—one more, if Jed had kept a round chambered. And he’d already fired three.

Cooper wasn’t worried about getting shot. A werewolf could handle anything but a direct hit to the head or the heart. But sometimes a shooter could get lucky—and even if he didn’t—Cooper didn’t want to show up at the house with blood pouring out of him.

So, he spent the next few minutes toying with Jed. He alternated charging him then darting behind a tree, with racing toward him, only to veer away at the last moment to slip off into the deeper forest.

As Cooper had hoped, Jed freaked at the sight of a cop moving way faster than any big guy in full tactical gear should be able to. He stumbled blindly in first one direction, then another, before tripping and slamming into the ground hard enough to knock the air out of his lungs.

But then Jed came up shooting wildly in Cooper’s direction, completely forgetting he’d been popping off rounds for the past minute. When the upper receiver of the automatic locked back after he fired the last round, he looked at the weapon in confusion, like the gun had purposely betrayed him.

Growling, Cooper closed the distance between them. He didn’t think Jed had another magazine, but he wasn’t going to wait and see.

Jed tossed the empty gun aside and pulled a Buck knife from his belt, opening it with a flick of his wrist. “You might as well pull your gun and shoot me now, you fucking pig! No way in hell am I going back to prison.”

As if wanting to give Cooper added incentive, Jed advanced, holding his knife low. He moved like someone who knew what he was doing with a blade, keeping one hand up like a shield while taking short, tight slashes and jabs at Cooper.

Unfortunately for Jed, his knife skills weren’t really going to help him now—not against someone so much stronger and faster than he was. Cooper waited until the man jabbed the point of the four-inch-long blade toward his stomach, then reached out and got a grip on Jed’s wrist faster than the man could see.

Cooper twisted Jed’s arm, throwing the guy over his hip and slamming him to the ground hard. Getting the knife out of Jed’s hand after that simply took a little pressure. Jed released the weapon with a cry of pain.

Jed struggled as Cooper cuffed him, then tried to run when Cooper dragged him to his feet. Cooper let go, shaking his head as Jed ran smack into the trunk of a nearby tree. While the guy was recovering from that, Cooper walked over to pick up the gun and knife the guy had tossed, and slipped them into a cargo pocket.

Then he dragged Jed to his feet again and started toward the house.

“I’m not going back there!” Jed shouted, digging the heels of his boots in the dirt. “You’ll have to carry me if you want to take me in.”

Cooper shrugged. “Have it your way.”

Tossing the two-hundred-pound idiot over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, he started heading back the way he’d come. Alex’s idea of letting the bad guys get a head start didn’t seem nearly as funny now as it had before.

* * *

Cooper got back to the house just as Alex was shoving his guy in the back of one of the DPD cruisers. Cooper pushed Jed in the other side, then slammed the door. The two other Burke brothers were sitting stone-faced and pissed off in the back of the second cruiser. There was no sign of Brooks and Remy, or Dennis and his partner.

“Where’s everyone else?” Cooper asked, cursing his screwed-up nose for about the thousandth time.

Alex looked around, his eyes flashing as he shifted slightly, while testing the air with his nose. “Brooks and Remy are in the house with the uniforms. I think Dennis and his partner are in the barn.”

Cooper frowned. “The barn? Did Brooks and Remy clear it yet?”

“No,” Brooks said in his earpiece. “He said he’d stay out of there until we did.”

Cooper was off and running toward the broken down barn before Brooks even finished talking. He only slowed long enough to snag his demo bag out of the backseat of the SWAT team’s SUV, then raced for the barn. Of course Dennis wouldn’t wait for someone else to clear the place first. He was too damn impatient for that. The idiot better hope that impatience didn’t get him killed.

The main doors in the front of the barn were still locked with a heavy steel chain, so Dennis and his partner obviously hadn’t gone that way. Cooper sped around to the back of the building, cursing when he saw the door that had been kicked in. Dennis might be a friend, but he was also a frigging moron.

“Dennis, wherever the hell you are—stop!” Cooper shouted as he cautiously stepped inside the barn.

He tried to pick up any smells that might make him think this place was booby-trapped, but it was worthless. He tensed, ready to charge headlong down the dimly lit hallway when Dennis’s head poked around the corner. His partner—whose name Cooper couldn’t remember for the life of him—appeared beside him.

Dennis frowned. “What the hell’s wrong?”

“What the hell is wrong?” Cooper strode down the hall and grabbed both men by their tactical vests, dragging them back around the corner to stand with him. “I’ll tell you what the hell is wrong. The two of you running around a barn that belongs to people you think are selling military weapons and explosives on the black market. Didn’t you think that if their illegal shit is in here, it might be booby-trapped?”

Dennis looked like he was about to argue—no man liked being called out in front of a coworker—but one look at Cooper’s pissed-off expression changed his mind. At least he had the decency to look chagrined.

“I didn’t really think about it,” he admitted. “I mean, Karl and I walked this far down the hallway without anything happening.”

Cooper bit his tongue. “I could say something about human mine detectors, but I’m not that insensitive. How far down the hallway did you get?”

“Just a few feet,” Dennis said. “It’s hard to see in there, but the hallway opens into a larger room at the front of the barn—where the big main doors are.”

“Stay here,” Cooper ordered.

Not waiting for a reply, he walked slowly around the corner and knelt down. He let his eyes shift, taking in the pitch-black, dusty space. He couldn’t see anything, but that little tingling running up and down his back told him something was wrong. He let his eyes shift back to normal and reached into his demo bag for the small can he always kept in there. He popped off the cap and was just lifting it when Dennis’s voice distracted him.

“What’s that?” Dennis asked.

Cooper looked over his shoulder to see Dennis peeking around the corner.

He swore. “It’s a can of didn’t-I-tell-you-to-stay-behind-the-wall.”

“I am behind the wall. Most of me, anyway,” he added. “Seriously, what’s in the can?”

Cooper didn’t bother to answer. It would only prompt more questions. Instead, he popped the top of the can, then pointed it in the right direction and pressed the button on the top down hard, shooting a long line of solvent string all the way down the dark corridor.

“You’re shitting me,” Dennis grumbled. “You yank us out of the hallway so you can play with Silly String? Um…Cooper, why is that stuff hanging in midair like that?”

Cooper frowned at the long piece of dayglow pink string hanging magically two feet in the air at the far end of the hallway, then turned and looked at his friend.

“That’s the trip wire you and your partner almost walked into. You know—the one that’s probably hooked to an explosive device of some kind.”

* * *

It took nearly three hours to clear the barn, even if Cooper ultimately found only two devices in there—the trip wire in the hallway attached to a homemade grenade hidden inside the wall, and a device attached to the main door. That one had been slightly more complicated since it was designed to set off a big cluster of black powder-filled pipe bombs if a small switch outside the barn wasn’t flipped before trying to swing either of the big doors open.

Dennis was damn lucky, and he knew it. If either device had gone off while he and Karl had been in there, they’d be dead. Cooper was pretty sure neither one of them would let their curiosity get them into trouble again.

Cooper and his teammates were still looking around the interior of the barn’s main room when Dennis came in. He’d gone out to the cruisers to talk to Jed and his brothers because they weren’t finding anything in here. The back rooms were empty or full of fifty-year-old crap that hadn’t been touched in forever, and the main area didn’t seem to be hiding anything suspicious, either. It looked like a good old boy’s home garage, complete with toolboxes galore, car parts everywhere, a busted up Chevy big-block V8 engine sitting in the middle of the floor, and a big chain hoist attached to the roof beams.

“None of the Burke brothers are talking,” Dennis said, frustration clear in his voice. “They claim there’s nothing here to find.”

“Then why the booby traps?” Alex asked sarcastically.

“To protect their tools, or so they claim.” Dennis shook his head. “Look, at any other time, these guys would be looking at serious jail time just for shooting at us. The improvised devices in the barn would be the icing on the cake. But right now, my bosses are looking for people selling military explosives, not a bunch of rednecks building homemade pipe bombs. My informant swore there were military explosives here, and we haven’t found squat.”

Cooper and the others were about to walk out when Alex stopped by the engine block on the floor. “What the hell? What am I smelling over here?”

Dennis looked at Alex like he was on crack. “What does anyone smell in an old barn? Crap?”

Brooks and Remy moved back to the engine and started sniffing, ignoring Dennis, who was saying he couldn’t smell a damn thing. Cooper joined them, even though his nose wasn’t much better than Dennis’s at the moment.

“It’s coffee,” Remy said suddenly.

Brooks nodded. “It’s faint, but I smell it too.”

Remy, Brooks, and Alex dropped to their knees, looking for a trap door. But everything around the engine sounded just as solid as the rest of the barn.

Cooper looked around, frowning as he realized the gears of the hoist were shiny with fresh oil. “Wait a minute. Why is the hoist so well taken care of, but that engine block looks like it hasn’t been worked on in twenty years?”

His teammates stopped and looked at each other.

“Shit,” Remy muttered. “We’re not smelling coffee around the engine—we’re smelling it under the engine. That big hunk of metal is a cover, like a rug over a trapdoor to a cellar. It just takes a hoist to move this particular rug.”

“Get that chain around the engine,” Dennis said excitedly. “Let’s move it out of the way!”

“Forget that,” Brooks said. “Get out of the way.”

Cooper had half a second to wonder if maybe he should point out that there was an FBI agent standing right in their midst who had no idea they were werewolves. But before he could, Brooks grabbed the big old V8 engine with those equally big hands, jerking the thing up and tossing it to the side.

Dennis gaped. No doubt wondering how even someone as big as Brooks had picked up an engine that easily weighed over six hundred pounds. Fortunately, the fed was more interested in the metal manhole cover Brooks had uncovered.

Brooks and Remy pulled the cover away, revealing a dark hole. The smell of coffee coming from it was so strong even Cooper could smell it. Apparently, Dennis could, too.

“What the hell is going on with the Starbucks coffeehouse aroma?” Dennis asked.

“Coffee throws off scent dogs.” Alex grinned. “There’s something down there that the Burke boys don’t want a dog picking up on. Drugs, maybe. Or—hopefully—explosives.”

Cooper reached into his demo bag and came out with two high-intensity light sticks. Ripping them out of their foil packages, he popped the glass vial inside, then gave them a shake and dropped them down the hole. They fell about a dozen feet before bouncing off something and coming to a stop.

Cooper went down on one knee and stuck his head in the hole. He could easily see the wooden and metal military-style boxes bathed in the green glow coming from the sticks.

“We have boxes,” he announced.

Giving the guys a grin, he hopped on the metal rungs set into one side of the concrete-lined hole and slowly moved down them. He didn’t think there was much chance of running into a booby trap down here, but he took his time anyway, checking out each rung of the ladder carefully before putting his weight on it. This time, Dennis didn’t follow until he looked up and gave the all clear.

Taking out his flashlight, Cooper shined the beam around the twelve-foot-square space. The floor was concrete too, solid and completely dry. And all around the small room stacked to the ceiling were military shipping crates and ammo boxes. He saw labels identifying M4 carbines, matching rifle ammunition, hand grenades, claymore mines, anti-tank rockets, and in one corner, a single, easy-to-recognize, wire-bound box.

He was pulling back the closure wires on the lid when Dennis joined him. “Is that what I think it is?”

Cooper lifted the lid and saw exactly what he expected to see nestled in their aluminum foil outer bags—green rectangles one inch thick by two inches wide by almost eleven inches long. The words in yellow on top were clear and distinct. Charge. Demolition. M112.

“It’s C-4 explosive,” he confirmed.

Dennis took out his notebook and compared the lot number on the blocks of explosive with the numbers written down. “It’s a match. This stuff is from the same lot the lab techs said was used to make the bomb.”

Cooper frowned at the half-empty box of explosive charges.

“Why the hell don’t you look happier?” Dennis asked. “This is the frigging break we were looking for. For all we know, Jed Burke is the person who planted the bomb in that parking garage.”

Cooper shook his head. “Yeah, it’s a break. But you don’t seriously believe the person who made those low-tech piece of shit devices in the barn also made that complex work of art—the IED you have in your forensic labs—do you?”

Dennis hesitated, his brow furrowing. “Okay, maybe not. But even if Burke didn’t make the device, he and his brothers provided the explosives to the man who did. Once we put pressure on them, one of those assholes is going to crack and give up the buyer.”

“Maybe,” Cooper said.

Dennis swore as he put his notebook away. “What the fuck is up with you? Can you at least be happy we have a solid lead?”

Cooper jabbed a finger at the box. “How many blocks of C-4 do you see in there?”

Dennis looked confused, but then leaned forward to count. “Fifteen.”

Cooper locked eyes with him in the green glow. “A case of C-4 comes with thirty blocks. The bomber used three to make that bomb at the industrial area. That’s a lot of explosive still left unaccounted for. Enough for another four bombs, the same size as the last—or one really big device that’s four times as deadly.”

Dennis didn’t say anything. Probably because he was trying to figure out what the chances were that some other psycho had bought the explosives, instead of their psycho. He must not have liked the odds, because his shoulders slumped in defeat.

“Shit,” Dennis muttered, summing up the situation perfectly.

“Yeah,” Cooper agreed. “Shit.”

* * *

Cooper and his teammates hung out at the Burkes’ ranch for the rest of the afternoon along with the crime scene teams, ATF, DPD Bomb Squad, Army Criminal Investigation Division, and a dozen other organizations and offices who rolled on the scene to get their fingers in the pie. While they waited, Dennis and Karl took a run at Jed and his three brothers back at the FBI. Dennis called to report that none of them talked. And once the lawyers got involved, no one would be talking for days, not without grants of immunity and other legal BS that would take forever to iron out. Dennis might like to think they’d finally gotten a break in the case, but in a lot of ways, it didn’t seem like they were any closer than they’d been before.

In between, Cooper thought about Everly. Damn, that woman was on his mind about every waking minute. She’d texted fifteen minutes ago, saying she was looking forward to seeing him that evening, and hoped he wouldn’t mind if they stopped by her dad’s house on the way to dinner so her family could meet him. He texted back telling her he didn’t mind at all. Funny thing was, he meant it. Granted, he hadn’t met a girlfriend’s parents since high school, but Everly was obviously close with her family. If meeting them was important to her, it was important to him.

After texting Everly, he called Jim’s cell, but it went straight to an out-of-service message. Cooper frowned. That was weird.

He Googled the phone number for the Doubletree Hotel where he and Everly had dropped him off the night before. Since Jim would be out hitting interviews, Cooper figured he’d just leave a message, but the woman at the front desk told him there was no Jim Wainwright registered there.

“When did he check out?” Cooper asked.

He heard clicking on the other end of the line as the woman tapped her computer keyboard. “I can’t find Jim Wainwright’s name anywhere in our system, sir. Are you sure he was staying here?”

“I dropped him off there last night. So yeah, I’m sure he was staying there.”

More clicking. “I’m sorry, but I’m still not finding anything, sir.”

Cooper thanked the woman and hung up. Maybe Jim had already found a job and checked out early. While that made sense, it didn’t explain why his name wasn’t in the computer.

Cooper shoved his phone in his pocket. He hoped Jim would call and tell him what the hell was going on because he didn’t like the uneasy feeling churning in his gut right then.