***
Mac chewed on her lip as Gage loaded more equipment into the operations vehicle, then climbed in with Delaney and Lowry. There were way too many different locations to hit and not enough SWAT officers to go around. Which meant that one or two would go in with regular cops for backup at each target. Gage, Delaney, and Lowry were hitting Hardy’s home out in Southlake. Gage had assured her it wasn’t any more dangerous than the other locations, but if that were true, he wouldn’t have insisted on taking that one himself, and there wouldn’t have been two other SWAT guys going to the same location.
The anxious feeling that had been growing all day suddenly turned to fear. She jumped up on the running board on the passenger side of the vehicle. Grabbing Gage by the collar, she pulled him close and kissed him, not caring if she embarrassed him in from of Delaney and Lowry.
“Be careful out there, okay?” she whispered.
His mouth curved. “I will. And you stay inside as much as possible. If you come out, I want someone with you.”
Mac nodded. Cooper, Becker, and Brooks were staying back to supposedly man the compound, but in reality, they’d been pulled out of action so they could be there to protect her. She expected them to be unhappy about being left behind, but they weren’t nearly as upset as she thought they’d be. In some bizarre way that only a man could understand, the three werewolves took it as some kind of distinction that their alpha leader had selected them to stay back and watch over his woman. She was already comfortable with Becker and Cooper, and Brooks was so damn big that she couldn’t help but feel safe around him.
Still, as she watched Gage drive off, she couldn’t deny she was terrified, not for herself, but for Gage and all the other guys in the Pack. They might be stronger and more capable than ordinary men, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t get hurt, or worse.
Mac and the guys spent the next few hours listening to the drama unfold over the police radio, with frequent updates from the teams. During the initial entry, there had been some resistance, but not anything extreme—yet.
Of course, when the press got wind of what was going down, every TV news channel lit up like a Christmas tree, so they were able to watch the whole thing going down live. Around seven that night, Gage called to talk to Cooper. Mac worried her bottom lip as she waited for a report.
“Hardy wasn’t at his house or any of the places the teams have searched so far,” Cooper said when he hung up.
Crap.
“But on the upside,” Cooper continued, “Gage says they’ve already found evidence tying Hardy to the gunmen he hired. Apparently the man was so obsessed with getting someone who could kill the two of you that he didn’t even slow down to hide his tracks. Arrest warrants are on a judge’s desk right now.”
Hearing about the evidence helped, but she’d feel a whole hell of a lot better if they could locate Hardy.
Mac tried calling Zak to see if he’d heard anything, but it went to his voice mail. She left a message asking him to call, then hung up. Her cell rang before she could even get it back in her pocket. Zak’s name popped up on the display. That was fast.
“Hey,” she said.
“Mackenzie Stone?” a woman’s voice asked.
Mac frowned, not recognizing the voice. “Yes.”
“This is Amy Bronson. I’m a nurse in the Intensive Care Unit at Mercy General. We found your name listed in Mr. Gibson’s phone under his emergency contact.”
OhGod.“Is Zak okay?”
“We’ve been able to stabilize him, but he was beaten pretty badly.”
“Beaten? Where? By whom?”
“We’re not sure. A few tourists found him in an alley and brought him to the emergency room about thirty minutes ago,” the nurse said. “Does Mr. Gibson have any family we can call, or would you rather do that?”
“I’m the only family he has,” Mac said.
“Then you might want to come quickly.”
Mac clutched the phone to her chest. “It’s Zak,” she told the three werewolves. “Someone beat him up. I have to go to the hospital.”
She jumped to her feet, but Cooper caught her arm. “Hang on. Let me call back and make sure Zak’s really there. Which hospital?”
Crap. Cooper thought it might be a trap. She hadn’t even considered that. “Mercy General. The nurse said he was in ICU.”
Mac listened impatiently as Cooper identified himself and gave his badge number to whoever answered the phone. The look on his face told her all she needed to know.
“He’s there, and he’s in bad shape,” Cooper told her when he hung up. “Come on. We’ll drive you.”
Fifteen minutes later, Brooks pulled the SUV up to the emergency entrance. Mac would have jumped out right away, but Cooper stopped her.
