Cooper leaned in close to be heard over the engine. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Becker didn’t answer. His best friend was offering to do something illegal if Becker told him it would help find his mystery werewolf. All he had to do was ask.
But just because Cooper would willingly risk everything to help him find this woman didn’t mean Becker had the right to ask him. Becker liked to think the female werewolf wasn’t like the other werewolves at the warehouse, that she was simply in over her head, but he didn’t know that. If he was able to track her down, it might be to discover she wasn’t the woman he thought.
If any of this went bad, it probably wouldn’t end well for him—or anyone helping him.
He shook his head. “Nah. I just to need some time to find her. Do you think you could cover for me with Gage and Xander? I can’t do what I have in mind with those crappy computers we have in the office.”
“Yeah, I can do that,” Cooper said. “But be careful, okay? People catch you hacking, getting kicked off the SWAT team will be the least of your problems. The feds put people in prison for the crap you’re talking about doing.”
Becker nodded absently, already busy developing a plan—one that involved him hacking into Starbucks’s credit card system to figure out which stores in the greater Dallas/Fort Worth area had sold a cinnamon dolce latte around the time stamp on the receipt. Then he’d slip into the array of traffic cameras around the city to take a peek at the stores in question. All he had to do then was match the face of the werewolf he was looking for with a credit card receipt, and he’d have her.
He was so engrossed in the technical challenge that lay ahead of him—not to mention groaning at the thought of how many hours he’d have to spend looking at grainy video footage—that he barely remembered his friend was still there until Cooper gripped his shoulder.
“I’m serious,” Cooper said. “I know you really want to find this woman, but you need to be careful. Even if she is everything you hope she is, that doesn’t mean her pack mates are going to be too friendly if they figure out you’re the one who killed some of their members.”
Becker hadn’t given that part of the equation any consideration at all.Shit. He’d been so focused on finding her that he hadn’t even thought about how he was going to deal with the rest of her pack.
He shrugged. “I’m not that worried about it. Once I get a chance to talk with her face-to-face, I’ll be able to convince her to leave her pack and run away with me.”
Cooper looked dubious. “Has it ever occurred to you that this woman might not even find you attractive?”
“No.”
Grinning, he punched his foot down, shifted the bike into first gear, and tore out of the warehouse parking lot.
Becker’s smile faded as he turned onto the road. After the way he’d reacted to the female werewolf, it was difficult not thinking he’d stumbled across the one woman in the universe he was meant to be with. But what if after going through all kinds of hell to track her down, he discovered she didn’t feel the same about him? Just because she might beThe Onefor him, there was nothing in the legend that ensured he wasThe Onefor her. For all he knew, she might be in love with someone already—like some maladjusted werewolf from her own pack.
That thought depressed him, but he forced himself to push the nagging doubts aside. It wasn’t going to happen that way, he told himself firmly. He was going to find her, and when he did, she was going to feel exactly the same way about him that he felt about her.
It wasn’t until that moment that Becker realized how much he’d already invested in the female werewolf. Had Gage and Xander felt this overwhelming pull the moment they’d met their future mates?
He only hoped his situation worked out as well as theirs had. But then again, neither one of them had fallen for a rogue werewolf who was part of a pack trying to take over the city.
Chapter 4
“Make sure you take out the two guards the moment you step through the door.”
Liam gestured at the hand-drawn sketch of the drug lab that he, Kostandin, and Brandon had been going over for the last hour or so on the far side of the atrium. From the sounds of it, they’d be hitting the place in the next day or two. Jayna prayed they wouldn’t take anyone from her pack with them.
It was bad enough to hear Kos so casually talking about taking two people’s lives. But hearing her alpha talk about killing two people—people who had never done a damn thing to their pack and likely never would—made her feel ill.
She couldn’t sit around and listen to it anymore.
“Where are you going?” Liam asked when she pushed away from the wall and started for the door.
She gritted her teeth at the suspicion in his voice. “To Starbucks,” she said over her shoulder, not bothering to ask if he or anyone else wanted anything. That suspicion had been showing up more and more since they’d started working for the Albanians. It was like he knew how much she disapproved of what he was asking the pack to do. For all she knew, maybe an alpha could pick up on stuff like that.
Fortunately, she had a reputation as someone who couldn’t sit still for very long. Liam and the rest of her pack had known that for a long time, and the Albanians and omegas had figured it out pretty quick.
She could feel Liam’s gaze following her as she crossed the atrium, and she slid him a sidelong glance out of the corner of her eye. That was when she realized that Kos was watching her just as intently—only his gaze was way more disconcerting than Liam’s. He might have been thinking sexual thoughts about her, which was skeevy enough for sure, but he also might have been imagining what it would be like to cut off her fingers one by one. With him, there was no way to tell.
Outside, Jayna turned left and headed down the sidewalk. There was a Starbucks about six blocks in that direction where she liked to hang out and people watch while drinking her latte. It was a good place to get away from the crap going on in the loft.
She was a block from the coffee shop when she caught a familiar scent on the breeze.It can’t be.
Pulse skipping, she whirled around and saw the hunky, blue-eyed SWAT cop from the warehouse casually leaning against the corner of a building watching her.
