Page 49 of Same Thing

“Why do you want to go?”

“Because fuck that dude.”

Liam had talked to him about Jackson in more detail earlier, while the girls had been cooking, but Nate hadn’t seemed to care either way. It was “human business,” he’d said.

“Let me go or I’ll tell Nory what you’re doing.”

“You can’t if I order you not to.”

There was fire in Nate’s eyes as he glared at Liam.

With a sigh, he twitched his head. “Get in,” Liam told him.

Nate got in immediately and pulled the door gently closed beside him, checked the house. As Liam pulled out of the yard, Nate told him, “Delta is listening for Nory. She will cover for us.”

“Why would Delta do that?”

“Because she knows you are doing something Nory won’t like.”

“She likes Nory,” Liam rumbled as he turned right on one of the curves that would lead him to the highway. “Why would she cover for us?”

“Because she knows what is best for Nory,” Nate said. “If someone messed with what’s mine?” Nate cast him a serious look. “I would pluck his limbs from his body.”

Okay. All right. Nate did understand.

There was no need for conversation, or even music on the way to Nory’s apartment complex. There was a somber acceptance that they were about to clash with human law.

He could feel Nate’s excitement building, but that was natural.

They were about to hunt. His bloodlust was talking to him too.

Liam turned onto a dirt road before he got to the apartment complex. There was a lumber yard behind it and a thin strip of woods in between.

He didn’t say anything as they reached the locked gate. This place had been abandoned years ago, but whoever owned it had chained up the gate thoroughly before they’d gone. Liam threw the truck in park and cut the lights, got out, and strode to the gate. There was old, rusted razor wire along the top, and he checked the tops of the trees. He could see the roof of one of the apartment buildings from here. He cast one last glance behind him at Nate, but he was already getting into the driver’s side.

Liam snapped the chains with a firm tug, and loosed the gate from them, then pushed it open, allowing Nate to drive histruck through. This was visible from the road, so he closed it back, leaving the chains off in case they needed to smash it open in a hurry with the nose of his pickup.

He followed his truck, and Nate parked it just fifty yards in. This place wouldn’t have motion sensor lights anymore, or cameras. The apartment complex though? He had no way to go in through the parking lot without video evidence.

He reached into the bed of his truck and grabbed the fence cutters as Nate cut the engine.

Liam cut the chain link fence in a line, where they could slip right to the green space that separated the trees from Jackson’s bottom floor apartment. Cameras hadn’t been placed back here or by the doors of the apartments. Just in the parking lot and around the office.

“We’re here,” Nate murmured, and Liam jerked his attention to his Second. “Hang up. Delta doesn’t need a play by play.”

A wicked smile stretched Nate’s lips, and he hung up the phone, and shoved it into his back pocket. Lifting his chin higher, he asked, “What makes you think I’m talking to Delta.”

Liam straightened slowly and sniffed the air. Something was wrong. Nate was up to something, and now he was feeling cornered.

“What have you done?” Liam demanded, body humming with violence.

This was a betrayal. It was an ambush. Was he working with the humans? Collaborating with the Elders? Had they decided he needed to go? Was this a coup?

He was going to kill Nate!

“What up bossman,” Vic said.

Liam spun around to find Vic carrying the struggling body of…Jackson.