Page 12 of Found (Mate Rejected #8)

12

MACK

“ T his probably won’t end well,” I say as I sit in the car with, of all people, Douglas.

It hadn’t been my idea to do reconnaissance with Aerin’s dad, but as we pored over the map of Karson that we’d used a red pen to outline the Raleigh property, Douglas had decided we would do this together.

None of us is even sure if the old Raleigh borders are the same now as they were when I remember it.

It’s why it made sense for me and my dad to be in separate vehicles.

Clary has been quiet in the back seat and we’ve been sitting in the dark car for the last thirty minutes, staring through trees in the vain hope we’ll see some way we can rescue Aerin and the other omegas.

“We need information,” Douglas says thoughtfully. “Once we have that, then we have a way in.”

I stop staring between trees and raise my eyebrow. “Information is the easy, theoretical part. We still don’t even know how many we’d be facing.”

My dad was a proponent of the charge in and hit them too fast to hit back.

Douglas wants to take things a little slower. Hence the reason we’re sitting in a car parked near what I remember as being a boundary for the Raleigh forest. None of us have seen anything in all that time.

Even my dad couldn’t say for sure if those boundary lines were the same because, although the land had been privately owned, I saw the building in flames when I left. If it had been empty all that time before these new Raleighs rebuilt, who's to say someone hadn’t come along and claimed a parcel of some of that land as their own?

“No more than thirty,” Douglas says, seemingly plucking a number out of thin air.

I raise my eyebrow a little higher. “And you know that how, exactly?”

“What makes you so sure?” Clary asks, not hiding his doubt. “They hit a lot of packs and they couldn’t have done that with so few people.”

“Not necessarily,” Douglas says. “They could have hit sequentially, so there’s no reason to think it’s a big pack. Just a small, well-organized one that made a plan to hit and move on as soon as they had what they came from.”

“Like Aerin,” I say.

That sounds plausible.

Before Shane kidnapped her, they seemed to be trying to throw us off their scent.

After a few days of confusing behavior, like sightings of a wolf who didn’t attack and a tourist that wandered into my property then disappeared just as suddenly, once they hit the house, they were gone in under thirty minutes.

Even if it hadn’t been 2 in the morning at the time, I doubt the locals in town would have seen a thing. They were efficient.

And there had only been a handful who had attacked us in the forest near the hotel. If they had larger numbers, they could have wiped us out. It’s as if they sent just enough to get the job done and no more.

“Like Aerin,” Douglas echoes.

We sit silently for the next five minutes.

“Can you see anything?” I ask.

“Nothing. You?”

“Not a damn thing,” I mutter. “Just trees. I can’t even tell if that’s a tree off in the distance or a piece of a building.”

“A tree,” Clary says. “We need to get closer.”

When his seatbelt snaps, I twist to face him, frowning. “We’re just here to watch. We need to know what we’re up against before we charge in there and get everyone killed.”

Before we left the house, we discussed the aims of tonight. Just reconnaissance. We weren’t here to act. We were here to learn, because moving too fast and without a plan in place would put Aerin and the other omegas in jeopardy.

“But we’re too far away,” he says. “No one is around. All we need to do is?—”

“Walk right into a trap, or possibly capture the attention of an enforcer hidden in a tree with a cell phone who reports back to the others?” Douglas asks mildly. “Had you thought about what exactly you would do after that creeping?”

Clary doesn’t respond.

He’s been looking for his stolen mate for two weeks. This is probably the closest he’s come to getting her back in all that time, and it can’t be easy to sit on his hands.

“We’ll get her back,” I assure him. “We’ll get them all back.”

He nods, still looking out of his window. “Sure.”

I study him for a beat, wanting to confirm he’s not going to get out of the car.

Then I twist back around, curl my fingers around my steering wheel and go back to staring through gaps in trees. “There have to be more than twenty if they’ve been building homes.”

“Unless they’re efficient,” Douglas says.

“Or unless?—”

A door swings open, letting in a blast of cold air as Clary scrambles out.

Cursing, I throw my door open and follow him out, needing to get him before he doesn’t just get us killed—he gets Aerin killed.

Douglas beats me out of the car by seconds.

If anyone sees him, they’ll know we’re here, and they will lock Aerin down so tight, we’ll never get her out.

I’m a couple of steps behind Douglas when he grips Clary with one arm, hauls him back and punches him in the face.

He’s out cold instantly, and I stare as Douglas tosses him onto one shoulder and leads the way back to my car.

“What?” he asks, shooting me a rapid glance.

“Was it necessary to lay the guy out?”

“It seemed the more efficient way of quietly stopping him rather than arguing with him where someone might overhear us.” Douglas throws Clary in the back seat, slams the door shut and slides back into the passenger seat.

I can’t bring it in myself to argue because he has a point, so I get in as well.

Douglas has his phone in his hand as I slam my door shut.

He speed dials someone and my dad answers.

“What?”

“We need to end this. Clary ran into the forest and someone might have seen him before we brought him back,” Douglas says.

My dad curses. “Fine. We’ll see you back at the house. I’ll let the others know.”

I hadn’t expected my dad to agree just like that, but I guess, in times of crisis, they know when to save their argument for another time.

We’re the first to get back to the rental, and I keep a close eye on my rearview mirror in case someone saw us, and in case they followed so they could attack us when we’ve lowered our guards.

But the roads are quiet in this small town and we’re seemingly the only ones awake at nearly midnight.

The others must have left soon after we did because as my dad is placing Clary, none too gently, on one of the couches in the living room, they’re walking in through the front door.

My dad is scowling. “What happened?”

We tell him and his scowl deepens.

“Don’t, Dad,” I tell him. “He had his mate taken from him weeks ago. He’d do anything to get her back and he must have been feeling pretty desperate to nearly get himself killed to do it.”

My dad looks at me then huffs. “Did you at least see anything while you were there?”

I shake my head on the way to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. “Nothing. You?”

“Absolutely nothing.” He studies me. “We’re going to have to try a more direct approach here. They’ve built too far from the road for us to see anything, and I have a feeling that was by design.”

Yeah, me too.

“But that can be a tomorrow problem,” Bennett says, frowning. He was with Ivy, Penny, and Colton, and they also reported seeing nothing. “We could all do with a proper night’s rest and we can figure out the best way forward in the morning.”

He gives me a pointed look, which isn’t surprising. I got approximately two or maybe three hours of sleep last night and that was before Bennett called to say there was a problem we needed to check out at the hotel. After that?

Nothing.

“Fine,” I agree. “I’ll take a couch here with Clary. You guys take the beds upstairs.”

“You can take a bed.” Bennett is looking at Clary, and his attention is watchful. “I actually got some sleep yesterday, and I can keep an eye on him in case he decides to slip out in the night.”

“He won’t.” After the blow Douglas landed on him, I can’t imagine he’s going anywhere for a long while.

“Nevertheless, I’ll watch him,” Bennett says, settling down on the spare couch after tossing a blanket over Clary before I can.

Defeated, I muffle a yawn. “Okay. See you in the morning.”