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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

L indsay scented the man’s distress, overlaid with that of unwashed body, long before she heard the voice. He was dehydrated and weak, a fact natural predators would sense as well.

She moved unerringly toward the crevice in the ridge, moonlight brushing the variegated bands of color across the desert. Tiger caught up to Lindsay, passed her, and disappeared into deeper shadows.

Xav’s voice sounded in Lindsay’s earpiece. “Where’d you go, Tiger?”

Tiger didn’t answer. Lindsay knew, more or less, where the frightened man was hidden, but Tiger, with his uncanny ability to track, had likely headed straight to him.

Lindsay crept forward, balancing easily on the uneven terrain, and peered into the crevice.

“I can see Tiger,” she announced when she caught a glimpse of movement in the darkness.

She darted into the fissure, keeping a wary ear and nose out for any danger. Xav didn’t try to prevent her, probably because Tiger, who could stop an enemy faster and more solidly than a tank, was ahead of her.

The narrow gap turned and twisted, walls growing closer as she went.

Lindsay caught up to Tiger in a spot where the rock walls nearly touched, except for a narrow gap near the ground. There was no way someone as large as Tiger could go forward from here. Lindsay slid around him and wriggled through the opening into a wider space on the other side.

A man huddled against the wall of the small cave beyond. His scruffy beard and hair were coated with dirt, his face and arms covered with scratches and blood. He raised his head when Lindsay squirmed into the niche, his eyes wide with terror and anguish.

“Found him,” Lindsay announced into her communicator as she knelt beside him.

Tiger crouched down to peer inside then he unhooked an extra canteen he carried and passed it to Lindsay.

The man truly stank, which made Lindsay glad she wasn’t in cat form, but his scent told her he wasn’t Dean. She lifted the canteen to his lips, spilling a drop or two of water into his parched mouth.

The man’s tongue worked, then he nodded that he was ready for more. Lindsay fed him slow sips until he could swallow a mouthful.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“What’s your name?” Lindsay asked him.

“Jeff.” He seemed to have to think about his surname. “Marshall.”

“Can you walk out of here? If not, Tiger can carry you. He’s super strong.”

Tiger said nothing, only watched with his golden eyes. The man flinched in alarm then reassessed Lindsay.

“Y’all are Shifters,” he announced.

“No kidding.” Lindsay gave Jeff more of the water, as his weak hands couldn’t hold the canteen. “How long have you been in here?”

“Don’t know. We were flying around Wednesday night. I think. So, however long that’s been.”

Almost a week, without food, water, and blankets. Lindsay was impressed he’d survived as well as he had.

“Let’s get you out of here.” She put a hand under his shoulder and tried to help him to stand.

Jeff cried out and immediately collapsed. “Think I broke things.”

Lindsay put her hands under his arms again, this time more gently, and half-carried, half-dragged him the short way to the opening.

She set him down again, and he grunted in pain. “You’ll have to crawl through,” Lindsay told him. “Sorry.”

Jeff nodded once and rolled onto his belly. He had just enough stamina to inch himself forward, with Lindsay’s assistance, until Tiger caught him and pulled him out.

Lindsay dove through once he was clear, somersaulting to rise to her feet. Jeff was staring up at the huge Tiger in sheer terror. He uttered a small scream when Tiger lifted him and cradled him across his shoulders.

Xav and the others were waiting when Lindsay and Tiger, with Jeff, emerged from the crevice. Xav immediately went to Lindsay’s side, his eyes holding worry.

“Easy mission,” she assured him. “Poor guy needs a hospital.”

Tiger, without stopping, carried Jeff toward the waiting SUVs.

Xav slid his arm around Lindsay. “Nice work.”

The warmth in Lindsay’s heart became incandescent. She shrugged modestly. “Tiger pinpointed him.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. If Tiger hadn’t needed your help, he would have barreled in and out before any of us knew what he was doing.”

Lindsay grinned. “You’re right. I was awesome.” She pumped one hand into the air.

Xav surprised her by pulling her close and kissing her on the mouth. A brief kiss, but one that fanned the fires.

“Don’t get cocky,” he rumbled, his breath hot on her cheek. “There might be more people out here to find.”

“He didn’t say anything about others,” Lindsay said, not wanting to end this unexpected intimacy. “He might not have anything to do with Dean, or the helicopter.”

“Don’t bet on it. Did he look like a lost hiker to you?”

“Not really.” Lindsay shook her head. “I wonder if the gang ditched him, and why.”

“One way to find out.”

Xav released her, the cold sharpening as he turned away. Lindsay swallowed her need and trotted after him.

Swift walking soon put them back at the SUVs. Tiger had Jeff sitting on the tailgate of one, wrapped in a thermal blanket, while a DX medic was alternately giving him oxygen and helping him drink more water.

Jeff stiffened when Xav approached then relaxed when he saw Lindsay with him. “Thanks,” he told her.

“Sure.” Lindsay shrugged. “What happened? Why were you in that cave by yourself? Where are your friends? And the helicopter?”

Both Xav and Diego shot her annoyed glances, which Lindsay ignored. They needed to know, didn’t they? Lindsay’s direct questions would save a lot of time.

“Copter crashed,” Jeff surprised her by saying. He gestured weakly. “Out there. Somewhere.”

“Shit,” Lindsay said in shock. She hadn’t smelled burning or fuel, so either the helicopter had gone down miles away or the remorseless wind and sun had stripped away the odors.

Neal approached, sword on his back, gripping a still-bound AC by the arm. Emma and Brody closed in on AC’s other side. The group stopped several yards from the SUV but close enough so that AC could see the man sitting on the lowered tailgate.

AC betrayed no recognition of Jeff. Humans could keep their emotions from their faces, but slight movements and scent betrayed them to Shifters. However, Lindsay could tell AC had never met the man. Jeff’s eyes widened a bit when he saw AC, which might mean he had seen AC before, even if AC didn’t recall it.

“Everyone got out,” Jeff said to Lindsay. “There were three of us and the pilot. I was trapped under debris. They helped me free but I couldn’t keep up with them walking back to the road, so they left me behind.”

“Seriously?” Lindsay demanded in outrage.

Jeff nodded. “They parked me outside that place you found me, told me to take shelter there, and they’d send help.” He trailed off bitterly, slanting a glance at AC. “I guess they never did.”

“Total bastards,” Xav said, in a tone that didn’t bode well for whoever they were.

“Well, the dude I work for is pure evil,” Jeff said. “I should have known better than to sign on with him, but I needed the money.”

“Give me his name,” Xav said. “We’ll find him and explain why he shouldn’t have left you behind.”

Jeff moved uneasily. “Who are you guys?” He looked over Xav and the other DX men, taking in their dark fatigues and tracking gear. “You aren’t cops. You work with Shifters.”

“We’re your fairy godmothers,” Xav told him. “You won’t have to worry about retaliation.”

“Are you mercenaries?” Jeff’s curiosity grew. “Doesn’t matter who you are, though. I’m not a snitch.”

“What about Dean?” Lindsay asked him. “Was he in the helicopter? Did he go with the others?”

Jeff frowned, his puzzlement true. “Yeah, he did. He wasn’t hurt.” He directed his next words at AC. “What are you doing here? You working with these guys now?”

AC still had his hands bound, but as Neal stood half in front of him, Jeff likely couldn’t see that.

“Sort of,” AC said. “Where did your friends go?”

“ Not my friends. And hell if I know where they are now. We were moving base. Too dangerous to stay in the old one after we stole all that cash. I don’t even know where.” Jeff broke off unhappily. “I’m not high up enough in the hierarchy.”

“We can find them,” Xav said without worry. “Tell me who I’m looking for, specifically. Would assist me if you can tell me what hideout you were moving from .”

“Don’t you know?” Jeff gestured at AC. “You have him. He can give you the information, and I’m off the hook. Come on, man,” he said to AC. “Help me out.”

Xav glanced at AC in suspicion, but AC remained blank-faced. Lindsay scented something wrong, but AC still betrayed no recognition of Jeff.

“Let’s get him to a hospital,” Xav told his medic. “Maybe he’ll be more forthcoming when he feels better.”

The medic nodded and started wrapping his stuff to put away. The minute he moved from Jeff, the man amazingly tried to run.

He made it a few hopping steps before he yelped in pain. Lindsay, Xav, and the medic leapt after him, then Lindsay heard a shout behind them.

AC had lunged forward, breaking from Neal and hurtling himself at Jeff. Neal snarled and ran for him but not before AC jabbed the taser he must have lifted into Jeff’s shoulder.

Jeff gasped at the impact, shuddered, and collapsed. Lindsay caught him and gently lowered him to the ground, the medic reaching to help.

Lindsay rose to find AC waving the taser menacingly, keeping Neal and Brody at bay. “He’s one of the bastards who took my brother,” AC snarled. “He doesn’t deserve to walk out of here.”

“He couldn’t have anyway,” Xav said dryly. “He has a broken leg.”

AC’s eyes held rage. “I’d have shot him if I’d had a real gun. I think I’ll just hang on to this toy one. Tell your wolf boy to back off or he gets it next.”

“Drop it,” Xav advised. “Or one of us will shoot you—with a real gun, as you call it.”

“No, you won’t. You’re not cops anymore, and I can have you arrested for assault. I can turn you in for just threatening me. Not to mention kidnapping and confining me against my will.”

“Are you shitting me?” Xav demanded. “And here I was feeling sorry for you and your kid brother.”

“Oh, we’ll still hunt for Dean,” AC said. “When this guy wakes up, we can beat his whereabouts out of him. Let me hang onto this so I can defend myself, and we’ll be good.”

Xav scowled. All eyes were on him, including Diego’s, letting him make the decision about what to do with AC. Even Neal had halted, waiting for Xav’s command.

That meant no one was paying attention to Lindsay, and no one noticed when she started her run. A few heartbeats later, she was whizzing past the startled AC, too fast for him to react.

Lindsay sprinted into the desert beyond the SUVs, then spun around and held up the taser in triumph, moonlight glinting from it. “Score!”

“Thank you, Linds.” Xav grinned at AC, now in Neal’s firm grip once more. “This is why it’s good to have an amazing girlfriend.”

Girlfriend. Well. Not mate yet, but Lindsay decided to take the win.

She studied the taser as though fascinated by it, then she sauntered to Xav and handed it off to him. “You have that. I don’t like weapons. Don’t need them.” She mimed raking her claws in the air, smiling at AC.

The man scowled but went quiet again. Plotting something, Lindsay decided. From her exchanged glance with Xav, he thought so too.

Xav’s praise stirred her mating need. Lindsay did another claw rake in his direction then ambled away, but her pretense at being cool couldn’t stop the yearning boiling away inside her.

* * *

Xav kept Lindsay close as the team split up, one to take Jeff to the hospital and AC back to DX for more questioning, the other to search for the crash site to see what it could tell them.

Diego led the contingent to return to Las Vegas with the captives—Emma, Neal, and Brody going with him. Xav headed up the search for the helicopter, with Lindsay and Tiger to assist.

The man AC had stolen the taser from was put onto Xav’s team, and he immediately tried to resign.

“I let you down,” the blond man named Mitchell said. “He must have lifted it when we were pulling him out of the SUV. You’ll have my letter in your inbox in the morning.”

Xav shook his head firmly. “No, you won’t. You’ll help us track this crash site, and suck it up. You won’t be given guard duty for a while, but we’re not unforgiving. Learn from your mistakes and do better.”

Lindsay listened to this, her head cocked, as though judging Xav’s decision. Her scrutiny was unnerving, and her closeness didn’t help.

Mitchell was chagrined that AC, a professional criminal, had distracted him, but Xav felt forgiving for two reasons: One, if no one had given Xav a second—or third, or fourth, or fifth—chance when he’d been younger, he’d no doubt be in prison even now. Two, Lindsay had been distracting the hell out of him all day. If Xav had been the one close to AC, his taser would likely have fallen into AC’s hands, or possibly a more deadly weapon. AC was tricky, and Mitchell needed the wake-up call.

Lindsay’s quickness has solved the problem, and Xav’s pride in her surged. Sometimes her unpredictability was an asset.

Xav had to be honest with himself—he loved that about her, even while she worried the hell out of him.

He made himself focus as they spread out, half of Xav’s men on foot, the others in the SUVs on roads that could hold them. They didn’t have the vehicles to cross the desert floor, so if they found nothing tonight, they’d return in the morning with ATVs.

Before they went far, Tiger broke from Xav’s search pattern and struck out across the uneven ground. The others halted in surprise, but Xav didn’t bother to call Tiger back. When the big Shifter tracked, it was best to let him go.

Lindsay peered after Tiger, her nose twitching. “I think I know where he’s heading.” She beamed Xav a smile. “Time to shift.”

She ducked with her backpack behind a rocky outcropping, and before long emerged in her lynx form. She brushed once around Xav’s legs then took off after Tiger.

Xav admired how she bounded effortlessly through the darkness, no rocks, holes, or slippery dust slowing her down. Moonlight streaked her fur silver, the tufts on her ears almost glowing.

Xav and the other men scrambled less elegantly in her wake. Tiger hadn’t shifted at all but simply strode into the desert, sure-footed in combat boots.

It wasn’t clear just when Tiger disappeared. One moment he was moving along the rising ground, the next, he was gone.

Lindsay loped up a low hill and paused at the top, silhouetted by moonlight. Through the night-vision goggles Xav had snapped on, she glowed hotter than anything else around him.

Lindsay glanced back at Xav, as though urging him onward, then she too disappeared.

“Lindsay.” Xav didn’t know if she still had her earpiece, though she couldn’t answer him through it even if she did.

Xav headed straight for where he’d seen her last, his men falling in behind him. He felt a pull to her, even when he couldn’t see her, couldn’t hear her, as though she’d tossed an invisible rope to him.

Come on, Xav. Keep up.

She hadn’t really said that or projected it into his head—Xav didn’t think. But he knew that’s what she’d been conveying when she’d glanced back at him from the ridge.

He scrambled up the slope where she’d waited to find that it ended at the edge of a steep drop. Below him lay a smooth stretch of desert floor, another dry lake bed whose sands spread out in a pale smudge.

In the middle of this smudge lay a pile of debris. Lindsay and Tiger stood on either side of it, contemplating it in silence.

Xav pushed up his goggles and searched for a way down, finding the cut of a dry wash that snaked to the bottom of the steep hill. Paw prints were impressed into the wash’s dust, so he knew Lindsay had taken this route.

Xav smothered curses as he slipped and slid along in her wake, wishing he had the nimbleness of a Shifter. Grunts and smothered growls behind him told him his men weren’t thrilled with the path either.

They made it to the bottom without mishap, and Xav led his men cautiously toward where Tiger and Lindsay waited.

The remains of a helicopter, an R44, Xav could see, lay on its side, parts from its twisted blades scattered on the ground around it. The pilot had tried to set down in the lake bed but hadn’t been entirely successful.

The copter hadn’t caught fire, though these models had that history, and obviously the men had all managed to escape. Jeff must have been in the seat that hit the ground inside, with the frame bending around it.

Thankfully Jeff’s fellow passengers hadn’t been callous enough to simply leave him there. Though if they’d realized then how injured he was, Xav thought darkly, they might have.

Dean had been with them, Jeff had said. Though R44s only sat three and a pilot, and Jeff had been hurt, Dean must not have been able to get away from the other two. He’d been forced to walk out with them to whoever had come to pick them up.

That the three men had been retrieved, Xav had no doubt. If not, Xav’s team would have found their bodies littering the way to the crash site.

“Why did they come here in the first place?” Xav wondered. “If they were moving to a new compound, why fly out to the middle of nowhere? Were they setting up someplace near here?”

“That Jeff guy might know,” Mitchell said, sounding more like his usual self. “Though if he’s low in the hierarchy, as he claims, they wouldn’t necessarily tell him.”

“AC tased him before he could say very much. I have to wonder why.” Xav moved to Lindsay as he contemplated the sad remains of the copter. “Smell anything interesting?” he asked her.

Tiger was moving aside the remains of the door that had stuck into the air. He leaned over the body of the helicopter and peered inside.

“Careful,” Mitchell told him. “There might still be fuel leaking. Sparks can trigger a fire.”

Tiger ignored him. He’d know how to prevent the remains catching fire—the man knew how to do everything else, so why not this too?

Lindsay quietly left Xav’s side and joined Tiger. She leapt softly onto the top of the wreck, it moving not at all with her weight, and delicately sniffed the interior.

When Tiger lifted himself away from the door, Lindsay slipped past him and dropped inside.

Xav watched in horror as the entire helicopter groaned with the impact of her landing and slowly rolled over on its rounded frame, trapping Lindsay inside.