“I’m telling you, we’ve struck the mother lode here in Dallas,” Boyd said. “I can’t believe you don’t want to take down an entire SWAT team full of these werewolves. I thought a major hit on a full pack was what you’ve been looking for all along. We can finally teach these freaks a lesson.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been looking for,” the man on the other end of the line agreed. “And I would have been thrilled if you had come to me with this information several days ago, before you alerted this pack to our existence and splashed your faces all over the internet. Not to mention got trapped at some damn clinic.”
“I’m sorry about that.” Boyd ground his jaw, as if he hated having to apologize. “But our source in the DPD didn’t give us any indication there’d be any other werewolves here besides the female we were after and the injured cop. If I had known this was a major research clinic full of doctors and nurses guarded by werewolves, we would have come in with a different plan.”
“Uh-huh,” the older man scoffed.
“Look, I’m not making excuses,” Boyd snapped. “I can only work with the intel I have at hand.”
“I’m not interested in any of that. I want to hear about the clinic. What kind of research are they doing there?”
Boyd must have realized that he’d just stumbled over something the old man actually cared about because he grinned. “It’s a frigging werewolf hospital. They have the cop we shot with wolfsbane ammo in some kind of cryo-suspension. He should have died yesterday, but they’re keeping him going. They have doctors and nurses and loads of special equipment.”
“I don’t care about the equipment,” the man said. “I’m interested in the doctors and nurses and what they know.”
Boyd’s smile broadened, as if realizing he had the old man where he wanted him. “I was thinking they could help us advance our weapons program. With the proper motivation, of course.”
There was silence on the other end of the line as if the man was considering that. “Could you get those doctors out of there if you had assistance?”
Lana’s heart plummeted. She didn’t like where this was going.
“Hell yeah,” Boyd said, that arrogant tone coming back into his voice. “If that assistance gets here soon.”
“I can have people there in an hour. Can you come up with a way to delay this SWAT team of werewolves for that long?”
Boyd shot Lana a look of pure malice. “Oh, I think I can come up with a way to discourage them from coming in for a while.”
While she didn’t have werewolf hearing, Triana must have realized something bad was going to go down because she cursed and leaned in toward Lana slightly. “I have no idea what they’re talking about, but the way he looked at you can’t be good.”
“It’s not,” Lana agreed softly, watching as Boyd put his cell phone back in the pocket of his jacket.
Heart racing, she turned to look at the broken windows in the doors. “Max, if you or any of your teammates out there can hear me, you need to get in here now,” she whispered. “Something really bad is about to happen.”
Lana strained her ears, hoping Max or one of his teammates would whisper something in return, but Boyd interrupted.
“Hey, werewolf girl,” he said as he came toward her. “Come here. I have something special planned for you.”
Crap.
“Max,” she whispered hoarsely. “Hurry!”
Chapter 15
“All teams, ready on my mark,” Gage said over the radio as Lana’s urgent plea echoed in Max’s ears. “We go in five…four…”
The terror in Lana’s voice had frozen Max solid, but Gage’s countdown broke through that ice, forcing him to move. On the east side of the roof of the clinic, Max snapped into his rappel line alongside Remy and Brooks, then braced his feet on the edge of the roofline and waited, heart pounding.
“Three…two…one…go!”
As one, all three of them kicked away from the edge of the roof, dropping their ropes behind them at the same time. Since the clinic was only a two-story building, it wasn’t going to be much of a rappel. One jump away from the building, a long slide down the rope, then they’d be crashing through the front doors. On the west side of the building, Alex, Trey, and Diego were doing the exact same thing through the back doors.
Max and his teammates had slipped onto the roof ten minutes ago. It would be their jobs to get to the hostages and protect them, while Gage and the rest of the SWAT team went in through the side windows of the clinic and took out the hunters. Gage had deliberately put Max, Alex, and Remy on hostage rescue, knowing that’s where their heads would be anyway.
The ground came up fast between Max’s feet as the rope slid through the carabiner clip at his waist. As he glided toward the building in a graceful swing, he yanked the slack end of his rope around behind his right hip, jerking his body to a rapid halt. The momentum of his swing carried him inward, and a moment later, he crashed through what little glass was left in the main doors.
Brooks and Remy hit the floor right beside him, weapons coming out as they kicked the gurneys in front of the door aside and dove forward to cover up the hostages. Max would have done the same, but he caught sight of Boyd dragging Lana kicking and struggling toward the operating room.
