Wolf Under Fire Read online

  Also by Paige Tyler

  STAT: Special Threat Assessment Team

  Wolf Under Fire

  SWAT: Special Wolf Alpha Team

  Hungry Like the Wolf

  Wolf Trouble

  In the Company of Wolves

  To Love a Wolf

  Wolf Unleashed

  Wolf Hunt

  Wolf Hunger

  Wolf Rising

  Wolf Instinct

  Wolf Rebel

  X-Ops

  Her Perfect Mate

  Her Lone Wolf

  Her Secret Agent (novella)

  Her Wild Hero

  Her Fierce Warrior

  Her Rogue Alpha

  Her True Match

  Her Dark Half

  X-Ops Exposed

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2020 by Paige Tyler

  Cover and internal design © 2020 by Sourcebooks

  Cover art by Kris Keller/Lott Reps

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Untamed Wolf

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  With special thanks to my extremely patient and understanding husband. Without your help and support, I couldn’t have pursued my dream job of becoming a writer. You’re my sounding board, my idea man, my critique partner, and the absolute best research assistant a girl could ask for. Love you!

  Chapter 1

  London

  Jestina Ridley moved through the dark, dirty alley, careful to avoid the broken glass and occasional uncapped syringe, praying something useful would come out of this little visit to the seedier side of Stockwell. But after sidestepping one especially wet and smelly patch of asphalt, she rephrased that thought, deciding this particular part of southwest London was pretty much all seedy. Definitely not the kind of place tourists flocked to after midnight.

  Good thing I’m not a tourist.

  “I’ve got nothing,” Jaime Wilkerson grumbled through the tiny radio bud wedged in her ear. “I told you this was going to be a waste of time. That guy we talked to doesn’t know squat about this kidnapping.”

  “In all fairness, he never said the kidnappers were holding the girl here,” Neal Goodwin, the other member of their Special Threat Assessment Team, pointed out, his gravelly voice rough over the radio. “He said the people who grabbed the kid used one of these abandoned buildings to stage their equipment and plan the job. He didn’t say they’d still be here.”

  Jes stifled a groan. Neal was right, but she’d hoped they’d get lucky all the same. She and the other two members of her STAT team had been in London for three days checking out a kidnapping with clear supernatural indicators, and so far, they’d come up with nothing.

  A week ago, someone had snatched fourteen-year-old Olivia Phillips out of her bedroom on the eighth floor of her apartment building. Her father was a high-level official in MI5, the British Security Service, which meant the place where they lived had better security than most, including watchdog monitors on all the elevators and doors, as well as cameras along every corridor and a handful of roving guards.

  None of it had mattered. Olivia had gone missing in the middle of the night and whoever kidnapped her had left the two men guarding the building dead, their throats torn out. The way the men had been killed—along with the mystery of how the kidnappers had gotten into the apartment—had immediately put the crime on STAT’s radar, since it looked like the handiwork of supernatural creatures.

  After seeing autopsy photos of the guards’ bodies, Jes had no doubt some kind of paranormal was involved in the kidnapping, but that didn’t make it any easier to track down the thing. Especially since Olivia’s parents had stopped cooperating with law enforcement within twenty-four hours of the girl’s disappearance, claiming they were doing it on the advice of legal counsel. Jes thought it was more likely because the kidnappers had contacted them to negotiate a ransom and warned them not to involve the cops. Considering the father worked for MI5, it was also possible he was freezing out the locals and letting the British version of the FBI handle the investigation.

  Not that it mattered who was running the case for the Brits. Jes and her team were here for one reason—to determine if there were supernatural elements at play and deal with them accordingly. Because that’s what STAT did: figured out what scary thing they were dealing with and made it go away.

  “All right, let’s call it a night. Wrap up whatever you’re doing and meet back at the car.” She sighed. “We’ll come back tomorrow and check out the area again, this time in the daylight. I doubt we’ll find anything, but maybe we’ll get lucky and someone might remember seeing something.”

  Jaime and Neal agreed, sounding as frustrated as she felt. Both of the guys had been with STAT for over a year and knew how bad it could be in the real world when things that went bump in the night targeted their prey. Olivia had been missing for so long, even one more night could mean the difference between getting the girl back alive or not.

  Jes continued along the alley, checking out the rear entrances to a series of low-cost government housing buildings that looked like they hadn’t seen a legitimate tenant in years. The doors were nailed shut, the windows boarded up, and there wasn’t a single light to be seen inside or out. If there was a place in this neighborhood where a supernatural creature might hang out, it’d be here. But when she stopped every so often and peeked through the cracks between the wooden slats over the windows, shining her small flashlight inside, she didn’t see anyone.
br />   She was heading toward the grassy side of the apartment building to meet up with the rest of her team when she heard a low, menacing growl over her earpiece that chilled her to the core. It was immediately followed by gunshots, then shouting.

  Jaime and Neal.

  Crap!

  Pulse pounding, Jes pulled her Sig 9mm with her free hand, clicking off the safety with her thumb as she raced across the scrubby grass in the direction of the sound. She rounded the corner of the building to find herself face-to-face with construction equipment, trash-filled dumpsters, and a handful of big, metal storage pods. As she weaved her way through the maze, she realized the growls and gunfire had ceased and all that was left was an eerie silence. She fervently prayed that meant Jaime and Neal had taken down whatever the hell they’d come across.

  But if they had, why hadn’t they called out all clear over the radio?

  “Jaime? Neal? Do you copy?”

  No answer.

  Double crap!

  Jes smelled the blood before she saw the two bodies lying motionless on the ground near one of the dumpsters. She ran toward them, her heart in her throat. If she could pick up the odor of blood, there had to be a bucketload of it.

  There was.

  Dark red pools of it that looked black even in the glow of her flashlight.

  Damn, she hated being right.

  Knowing her teammates were almost assuredly dead but needing to check all the same, she crouched beside Jaime when movement near one of the storage containers caught her attention. She jerked her head up to see something big and hulking in the darkness less than fifteen feet away. That same low growl she’d heard before rumbled from its chest as it gazed at her with glowing yellow eyes, and a chill ran along her spine.

  Jes brought up her weapon, resting it on the hand that held the flashlight, and pulled the trigger in quick succession, knowing there was no way she could miss at this distance. But the creature disappeared before the bullets could find their mark. One moment, it was there, and the next, it was gone. Before she’d even gotten a good look at it.

  As fast as the thing moved, it could easily come at her from a dozen different directions, but she couldn’t worry about that. One or both of her teammates might be alive. All that mattered was helping them.

  But when she turned her flashlight on Jaime and Neal, she realized it was too late. Whatever had killed them had savagely torn out their throats. They had been dead before they’d hit the ground.

  She swallowed hard and pulled out her phone, thumbing the speed-dial button for the STAT emergency operation center in Washington, DC as she scanned the area around her for the creature that had killed her teammates.

  “This is Agent Ridley,” she said. “Two agents are down and I need a cleanup team out here ASAP. Tell McKay we have confirmed supernatural involvement. I’m going to need backup.”

  * * *

  Washington, DC

  Jake Huang cursed silently as he strode down yet another hallway on the fourth floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building. How the hell was he going to find the conference room where he was supposed to meet with his new boss in this damn maze? He supposed he could ask one of the other FBI agents who zipped past him in their perfect professional clothes with their perfectly styled hair and perfectly shined shoes, but ultimately, he couldn’t bring himself to admit he didn’t know his way around the place yet. He was a federal agent now. Shouldn’t he know this kind of stuff?

  Then again, maybe he should cut himself a break. He’d only been in DC for less than a week and had spent most of that time trying to find a place for him and the twins to live. His boss, Nathan McKay, had given him a quick whirlwind tour of the huge FBI headquarters, then told him to focus on getting settled before worrying about the job. Of course, that was before McKay had called this morning telling him he had thirty minutes to be at the office.

  So much for getting settled in.

  If it were just him, Jake would have grabbed the first apartment he could find close to work and called it a day, but he had other people in his life now, namely Zoe and Chloe Haynes, the eighteen-year-old beta werewolves he’d rescued from a vampire coven and recently become responsible for. Bringing teenage werewolves who’d gone through their first change barely two months ago to a city as big as Washington, DC was crazy to say the least, but that’s what it meant when an alpha stumbled across betas who needed him. They became a pack and a huge part of each other’s lives.

  When McKay had offered him a position on the joint FBI/CIA Special Threat Assessment Team—aka STAT—the first thing he’d done was ask Zoe and Chloe what they thought. If they’d been against the idea, he would have walked away from the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Even though it meant uprooting the life they’d just started in Dallas, the twins had urged him to take the job. The girls were thrilled at the idea of living in the nation’s capital, while he was excited to have a job that would let him openly reveal his werewolf nature and use the abilities that came with it.

  Jake turned down another long hallway, sure he’d covered every square foot of the floor he was on, when he picked up a familiar scent—werewolves. One female alpha. One male omega. Doubting there could be many people like him wandering around the building, he let his nose lead him in the right direction.

  He chided himself for not thinking of using his keen sense of smell before this. Then again, he’d only recently started embracing his werewolf side. Ever since he’d first turned four years ago, he’d done his best to forget what he’d become.

  He half closed his eyes, letting his sense of smell take over and guide him in the right direction. That not only let him shut out a lot of the external distractions so he could focus on the two scents, instead of everything going on around him, but it also kept anyone from freaking out if they noticed his dark eyes were now bright golden yellow. Having someone see him walking the halls like he was stoned wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t as bad as them realizing his eyes were glowing like some sort of creature on Halloween.

  Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice one way or the other.

  A few moments later, he walked into a small conference room to find Harley Grant and Caleb Lynch waiting for him. McKay, thankfully, was nowhere in sight. At least Jake wasn’t late.

  “Either of you have any idea what McKay wants to see us about?” Jake asked as he sat down across the table from the two werewolves he was somehow supposed to form a pack with even though they’d just met a few days ago.

  As if all it took was shoving the three of them in a small room together and waiting for magic to happen.

  Jake wasn’t an expert on the subject, but from what he’d heard, werewolves were normally drawn together naturally, finding each other without having to work at it. Kind of like him with Zoe and Chloe. But McKay had hired him and the other two werewolves with the expectation that they’d form a pack. Probably because McKay had recently worked with another pack of werewolves—namely the Dallas PD SWAT Team—and seen how impressive the results could be when people like them worked together.

  “No clue.” Caleb leaned back in his chair, casually propping the sole of his boot on the edge of the table. Tall, with dark eyes and a perpetual smirk, his shaggy, dark blond hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a week. “McKay said it was something urgent, but it’s been an hour since he brought us in here, so I guess it can’t be that urgent.”

  Jake winced. “That’s probably my fault. He called me forty-five minutes ago, but it took me a while to get here. All I know is that he’s got a mission for us.”

  Caleb looked like he couldn’t care less about Jake’s excuse or the mission. Actually, he didn’t look like he gave a damn about anything.

  That was par for the course with omega werewolves. And Caleb was a prototypical omega. Big, strong, and as fast as any alpha, he was barely able to keep his inherent werewolf nature under control, not to m
ention he was nearly incapable of caring about anybody but himself. Loners by choice, omegas rarely formed pack bonds. Jake could only imagine how much fun it was going to be trying to get the man integrated into the team.

  To make matters worse, Caleb was a convicted criminal. The only reason he wasn’t in jail right now was because he’d agreed to work for STAT. One screwup and the man would go straight back to prison. Jake didn’t know exactly what the other werewolf had done to get him tossed in a cell or why the commander of the Dallas SWAT Team had vouched for him, but he had, and now, Caleb was Jake’s problem.

  Jake glanced at the third member of their dysfunctional pack to see if she had anything to add to the discussion. From the disinterested look on the pretty blond werewolf’s face, Harley didn’t seem to care any more than Caleb did about the meeting.

  He wished he could say he was surprised, but he wasn’t. While he’d only talked to the female alpha for a while the first day they’d met, Jake could already tell gaining her trust wasn’t going to be easy. From the little she’d said about her werewolf abilities, he got the feeling she’d yet to accept her inner wolf. He couldn’t shake the sensation that Harley didn’t like what she was. It made him wonder what the hell McKay had said to get her to agree to the job.

  Jake opened his mouth to ask if either Caleb or Harley had found a place to live yet—because the silence was starting to get uncomfortable and it seemed like a safe thing to talk about—when the door to the conference room opened and their boss walked in. Brown hair sporting a touch of gray at the temples, McKay appeared every inch the federal agent, right down to the black suit and wire-rimmed glasses.

  Harley sat up a little straighter.

  Caleb didn’t even have the good sense to take his foot off the table—nice to confirm he did indeed have the social graces of a sea slug.

  Two other agents were with McKay, a man and woman, both of whom were probably in their mid- to late-twenties. Six feet tall with dark hair, a square jaw, and blue eyes that looked like they didn’t miss a thing, the guy looked like someone central casting would give you if you asked for a standard-issue FBI agent, dark suit and red power tie included.