Xander nodded and opened the door again. He grabbed the jeans and pulled them on, then yanked off the hospital gown and put on his T-shirt. He glanced at Gage as he shoved his feet into his boots and tied the laces.
“Engler confronted Khaki earlier in the week, begging her to go back to Lakefront with him. Then a few nights ago, he followed us to a restaurant. I roughed him up pretty good and I thought for sure he left town.”
Gage frowned. “You thought a guy who was so obsessed with Khaki that he not only forced her out of her previous job, but followed her halfway across the country left town because you knocked him around?”
Xander tried to muster up some righteous anger but couldn’t. Gage was right. He should have known better. “Do we need to discuss this now?”
Gage’s jaw worked for a moment, but then he shook his head. “If Khaki deliberately gave Becker and Max the slip, that probably means she ID’d Jeremy as the shooter. Any idea what she might be up to?”
Xander was about to admit he wasn’t sure, but Mac spoke before he could.
“She’s going to go kill him. If Khaki thinks he tried to kill Xander, she’ll want to tear him to pieces.” Mac shook her head, her blue eyes a mix of consternation and worry. “I can’t believe I have to tell this to a pack of werewolves.”
Gage swore, then strode over to Cooper. He held his hand out for the phone. “Max, which way was she heading? Mesquite? No, I don’t want you to try to find her. I want you to get Becker to a computer. I need him to track Khaki’s cell phone signal. We need to stop her from doing something crazy.”
Xander jerked open the door and walked out of the room. He was halfway down the hall before he realized he didn’t know where the exit was. He looked around for a directional sign, found one, and headed that way. Gage was right behind him, still giving instructions to Becker and Max. Behind him, Trevor was on the phone with Mike, telling him to get his squad together and head toward Mesquite, while Mac and the others practically had to run to keep up. Xander’s legs still felt a little weak and every step made his chest throb like hell, but he ignored the pain and kept moving.
He glanced over his shoulder at Gage. “Tell Becker I’ll be with Alex, Hale, and Cooper. I want Khaki’s location as soon as he has it.”
Xander expected Gage to demand he sit this one out—as if that was going to happen—but his boss only nodded.
“I’ll link up with Mike and bring in the cavalry,” Gage said. “You find Khaki.”
* * *
Khaki sat with her back against an old Honda Accord and tried to stop the blood pouring out of her stomach with her hand. It hurt.
Confronting Jeremy hadn’t gone the way she’d planned, not even close. Then again, she hadn’t really had a plan. She’d been going off pure animal rage. She should have realized Jeremy wanted to meet her at a deserted junkyard for a reason.
She didn’t have her backup gun since she’d gone directly from the recovery center to the crime scene, then here, but she also hadn’t thought she’d need one. She’d envisioned chasing Jeremy through a helter-skelter maze of rusted hunks of metal as he shouted in terror. She’d even deliberately parked her car a good half mile from the junkyard, wanting to make sure she didn’t tip him off that she was there. The place had been as quiet as a church, and with only a few dingy pole-mounted streetlights throwing the place into shadows, she was sure she’d have no problem sneaking up on Jeremy.
But that hadn’t happened. She’d just started weaving her way among the piles of old cars when she felt a stab of pain in her midsection. A moment later, the boom of a rifle echoed around her. No doubt it was the same rifle Jeremy had used to shoot Xander.
Khaki pressed her hand against her stomach harder, waiting for the initial wave of pain to pass and the worst of the bleeding to stop. She reached around behind her back with her free hand and felt the warm patch of blood there. The bullet had gone straight through. That was good. Alex had told her that werewolves healed faster when there was no foreign material in the wound.
Footsteps sounded on the gravel. Jeremy was coming to finish her off. Her heart pounded overtime, though whether it was because she was afraid he intended to shoot her again or anticipation at the thought of ripping out his throat, she wasn’t sure.
She closed her eyes and willed her claws to extend, savoring the sensation of punishing Jeremy for all the crap he’d put her and Xander through.
But when she opened her eyes, her nails looked as human and unthreatening as always. Khaki growled in frustration and tried harder to shift as she heard Jeremy coming closer. Her fingers tingled in response, but her claws refused to come out.Dammit!
She kept pushing…right up until the moment another bullet smacked into the far side of the Honda she was hiding behind.
That’s when she knew she had to move. She forced herself to her feet and hobbled toward the remains of an old pickup truck thirty feet away. She moved as fast as she could, but even though the pain was starting to lessen, it was still hard to stand up straight. Getting shot in the stomach was worse than getting stabbed there.
She made it to the truck just as Jeremy came around the side of the Honda. The sound of his mocking laughter made her grit her teeth, but she kept going. She had to bide her time until she could heal enough to turn the tables on him.
She moved silently past a truck and two more cars until she reached a fifty-five-gallon drum that reeked of old oil. She went down on one knee behind it, taking a moment to check her wound before peeking around it to keep an eye on Jeremy. She reached into her back pocket for her phone to call in the cavalry, but then remembered she’d left her phone in her purse, which was in her car…half a mile down the road. She hadn’t wanted anything to distract her from what she’d been planning to do. Not her best idea. Like everything else about this trip out to a desolate junkyard, anger had clouded her thinking.
“You are one tough little bitch!” Jeremy shouted as she saw him kneel down and trace his fingers through the bloody patch of ground where she’d been hiding. Then he stood and turned in a slow circle looking for her. “But you’ve got nowhere to go now. You’re sure as hell not scrambling back over that fence like you did coming in, not with how much you’re bleeding.”
As Khaki watched, Jeremy turned and started moving off to the right, as if he had no idea which way she’d headed. But that didn’t keep him from trash talking.
“Why don’t you come out and just let me finish this nice and fast? I promise I won’t leave you flopping around on the ground like that SWAT boyfriend of yours. What’s his name…Riggs? What did you ever see in him? You could have done so much better. Hell, you did do better—me.”
She knew she should have kept quiet. Jeremy was only trying to get her to snap and say something to give her position away. She should have kept going the other way until her stomach closed up enough to allow her to move fast again. But the second he spoke Xander’s name, the anger she felt burning inside her was worse than the bullet wound.
“When did you get so screwed up, Jeremy?” she shouted. “You stalked me all the way to Dallas, tried to kill the man I’m dating, tried to kill me. All because I dumped your ass and left the Lakefront PD?”
