“Where’s Kelsey?” he asked urgently.
Panic filled Lacey’s eyes. “Didn’t you save her first? I thought the other members of your pack were with her.”
Alex’s heart started pounding, and he could feel his fangs sliding out again. “No. I’m here by myself. Did you see where they took her?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. They were wheeling her away on a gurney when Pendergraff shoved me in here. They’ve taken her off to surgery. Alex, we have to find her!”
Alex shook his head. Though every instinct in his body screamed for him to stay here and protect Lacey—or at least get her out of the building first—he knew he couldn’t do that. He had to find Kelsey before he did anything else. Before it was too late.
“Correction,” he said. “I’m going to find her. You’re going to stay here.”
“But—”
“Lacey, I can’t focus on finding your sister if I have to watch out for you,” he told her firmly. “Stay here. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”
“Hurry,” she begged. “Please.”
Alex ran out of the storeroom, scooping up Pendergraff’s pistol before slamming open the door to the stairwell and racing up the steps. He didn’t know which floor Kelsey was on, but his gut told him that if he followed the scent of the last man who’d gone up these steps, he’d find her.
* * *
Lacey tried her best to stay calm but failed. How could she be calm after everything that had happened in the last few minutes? She’d thought she couldn’t get any more freaked out than when Pendergraff had tossed her in this storage room and wheeled her sister toward the elevator. She’d been trying to use a piece of metal she’d gotten from an IV stand to wedge open the heavy steel door when she heard shooting and growling coming from the hallway. She’d known instinctively it was Alex, though she didn’t have a clue how he’d found her so fast.
When the door finally burst open, it was all she could do not to scream when she’d seen a wolf the size of a small horse standing there. She wasn’t sure how she’d known it was Alex, but she did. There was just something about the way he looked at her that convinced her the huge gray wolf was the man she loved.
She’d gotten a little emotional then, overwhelmed by the realization that she had yet to fully grasp that there was nothing Alex wouldn’t do for her, whether it was staying with her even when she stupidly tried to push him away or shifting into a wolf so he could smash through a steel door to save her.
Earlier today, she’d tried to find the right time and the right words to tell Alex how she felt about him, but then Pendergraff had grabbed her, and she realized she might never get a chance to say anything to him ever again. So, she’d dropped to her knees in front of him and wrapped her arms around that big, muscular, furry neck, intending to tell him everything. But then reality had intruded, first when Alex had changed back into his human form and she saw that he’d been shot multiple times, then when he’d asked where Kelsey was.
With those simple words, he proved that none of this was over yet.
Now Alex had run off to save her sister while she stood there terrified that she was about to lose the two most important people in the world to her.
Lacey jumped as gunfire suddenly echoed somewhere upstairs. Crap. She knew she’d promised Alex that she’d wait here, but that was before whoever was up there with him and Kelsey started shooting. She’d never forgive herself if anything happened to them.
Heart pounding, she ran out of the storage room, desperate to find the stairs. She could have taken the elevator, but that would mean stepping out of it into the middle of a gunfight—if she were lucky enough to guess which floor to get off on.
She hesitated when she came to Pendergraff’s bloody body lying in the middle of the hallway. While she knew Alex had torn out the man’s throat, she simply couldn’t find it in her to care. Pendergraff had been a vicious killer, and Lacey couldn’t help thinking he’d gotten exactly what he deserved.
Edging around Pendergraff, she continued down the hallway, finding two more bodies before seeing the door to the stairs. There were two pistols lying on the floor beside the dead men, and for a moment, she seriously considered picking up one of them. She immediately dismissed the notion. She had no idea how to use a pistol and wouldn’t be able to hit anything she aimed at, even if she could get the thing to work.
No, the best thing she could do was sneak upstairs, find Kelsey, and get her out of the building. Then there wouldn’t be any need for Alex to fight every single killer in the place.
Lacey had barely entered the stairwell when her plan went to hell as Peter DeYoung came running down the stairs toward her. Anger surged through her. After helping Pettine kidnap Kelsey and the other girls, making and selling drugs, disposing of animals killed in the dogfighting ring, this jerk thought he could simply walk out of here? Not if she had anything to say about it.
She was ready to kick him in the balls if she had to in order to stop him. But then she saw the fire extinguisher mounted on the wall just beside the door and decided that would work even better.
“Get out of here, lady!” he shouted at her. “There’s some kind of monster up there.”
Lacey yanked the fire extinguisher from its wall mount and jerked out the pin. At least this was one weapon she knew how to use.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “And you’re it.”
DeYoung’s eyes widened as she pointed the nozzle straight at him, then squeezed the handle. The white powder spray hit him full in the face. He immediately threw up his hands to shield himself, but all he did was lose his balance and end up falling down the last few stairs in a tumble.
He cursed and jumped to his feet, then came at her. Getting a firm grip on the handle of the fire extinguisher, she swung it hard at DeYoung’s head. The impact echoed in the chamber of the stairwell long after he fell on his worthless ass.
Lacey stood over DeYoung, ready to hit him again if he got up, but the doctor was slumped against the stairs, out cold. She started to drop the empty fire extinguisher, but then thought better of it. She wasn’t going to be caught without a weapon again.
