Page 69 of Hunted
“You’ll have it. While I prefer traditional methods of information gathering, that creepy Professor X thing you do saves time.”
“Anytime, Twilight.”
A beat passed. “Do you believe what he said about your uncle?”
“I don’t know.”
When we both knew I’d let the silence stretch too long, Cris said, “If you uncover intelligence that confirms it, do you intend on sharing that information with us, in the interest of cooperation?”
“We’ve gone this far without screwing you over, haven’t we?”
Not exactly an answer, and we both knew it.
“This,” Cris said, ending the call, “is why I hate working with wolves.”
Since today was already going about like having your balls waxed with fly paper and bear spray, I called Brody.
“Hang on,” Brody barked by way of greeting, shouting over a cacophony of howls in the background. “Dad, can you take over?”
“Yeah! I’ve got him. Get over here, Major!”
The howling increased.
“Yeah, if this is a bad time—”
“No, you’re good.” A door closed in the background. The barking faded to a dull roar. “We’re just at Major’s behavior modification classes.”
“It takes two Alpha wolves to take down one pudgy golden retriever with a doughnut addiction?”
“Make fun, smartass. Like we all didn’t see when Major inhaled that plate of cheese enchiladas on the sly at the wedding when it was your shift on dog-sitting duty.”
“I turned my head for literally two seconds.”
“Just saying, dogs don’t fail out of obedience school six times running on accident. So what’s up?”
I relayed the information about the safe houses and the call with Alek, finishing with what I’d learned from Lorenzo Rossi.
“You think it could be true about Guillermo setting up the safe house?” Brody asked.
“The bigger question is why our uncle has had a connection to the Rossi family this entire time and lied about it.”
“He’s one of the most powerful werewolves on the planet. He and Mom both have connections to a lot of the influential packs and old bloodlines back in Europe,” Brody pointed out.
“Okay, but this thing with Rossi has been all over the news for over a year now. Mom has never made any mention of the Montemayors knowing them. Pretty sure she would have brought that up.”
“No, you’re right. It doesn’t look good. You ask Guillermo about it?”
“I would, except he’s always off base lately.” I rubbed my temples. “Something else has been bothering me, too. Six months ago, we were being hit left and right by assassination attempts covertly carried out by black ops military units. There was the attack against you, Mom and August on the highway outside of Killeen where August was shot. They sent a separate team to the ranch in Blood Moon. Now Rossi is operating out of safe houses using vampires as suicide bombers. Why the sudden change in tactics?”
“The attack out at the ranch was easy to hide, but there was no covering up the mass shooting on the highway, or the attack at the peace summit a month later,” Brody said thoughtfully. “We’re in a public relations war. Sure, the public is afraid of shifters and vampires, but they’d lose it if they found out the government was being sent out to assassinate its own citizens. They get one whiff of a black ops team being behind a mass shooting and that’s game over. My guess is that Rossi’s superiors weren’t too happy with the optics and ordered him to clean things up, change the playbook, if you will.”
“Sure, but even if the tactics have changed, Rossi is an asset they’ve invested considerable time and money into developing. He’s a uniquely gifted magic user who can control drones from anywhere, from a bunker or air base where we have no way of easily getting to him. Why make himself vulnerable? Why is he suddenly living like some lone wolf who’s pissed off his Alpha and has to go off grid?”
“Nothing more dangerous than a lone wolf,” my oldest brother warned. “Are your orders still to bring him in alive?”
“He’s a military asset. Guillermo wants him interrogated.”
“And I get that, but sometimes priorities have to be compromised if it puts soldiers’ lives at risk out in the field.”
