After leaving her place, he’d stopped at Starbucks for coffee on his way into the DAPS office, needing caffeine before dealing with Theo. He’d just reached the counter when Rachel’s voice came through his radio earpiece, shouting for backup. Even though he wasn’t technically working the protective detail today, he’d slipped in the bud out of habit. Now, he was glad he had.
Knox didn’t even remember leaving Starbucks. One moment he was there; the next he was on his motorcycle speeding off and hoping he wouldn’t get killed before he got to the courthouse. Luckily, he’d been less than two miles from the Frank Crowley Courts Building when he’d heard the SOS.
As soon as he raced onto the bridge over the Trinity River, he spotted what had to be the courthouse. The building was made up of two squat high-rises separated by some kind of arty-looking glass center section. But it wasn’t the size of the place or all the glass that told him he’d guessed right. It was the pure pandemonium of terrified people flooding out of every available doorway, running for their lives.
Knox didn’t bother heading for the parking lot on the side of the courthouse complex. Nor did he stop on the sidewalk along the front of the building. Instead, he yanked on the handlebars of his bike and jumped the curb before heading straight up the concrete stairs leading to the main entrance. There were a lot of steps, and people running down them had to throw themselves aside to avoid getting run over, but he was too worried about Rachel to care. Even from here, he could hear the gunfire inside the courthouse.
He managed to get his bike stopped before crashing through the large glass doors, but only barely. He leaped off the bike, letting it fall to the pavement instead of wasting time getting the kickstand down. Then he was pushing, shoving, and fighting his way through the flood of humanity still trying to get out the main doors. He heard a growl from deep in his throat, and he prayed his fangs and claws stayed where they frigging belonged. That was all he needed, to incite even more panic by looking like a damn monster.
But he had to admit, it was nice being a werewolf when it came to getting through the crowd. He never would have made it otherwise.
When he finally broke through the wall of bodies, a courthouse security guard—an older guy whose wide eyes and hammering heartbeat confirmed how freaked out he was—motioned him back toward the doors.
“We’re evacuating the building,” the man said, trying to sound authoritative. It didn’t work. He sounded as scared as all the other people running through the arch covered atrium. Knox didn’t blame him. “You need to leave.”
Knowing that identifying himself as an employee of Direct Action Private Security wouldn’t do shit in this situation, even if his company had been hired to protect one of the city’s prosecutors, Knox instead yanked out the leather holder with the cheesy security guard badge Theo had given him when he hired him and flashed it quickly at the man.
“Dallas SWAT!” he shouted, not even slowing down as he headed for the stairs.
The guard looked confused, no doubt wondering why Knox wasn’t decked out in all the requisite tactical gear. The man opened his mouth to say something, but an angry growl echoed up from somewhere downstairs. The poor old guy went pale and turned to join the rush of people trying to get out of the area.
The main stairs in the atrium didn’t lead down to the basement, so Knox ran for the door at the far end of the hall. He hit the steps, letting his nose and ears guide him downward, praying his barely developed instincts didn’t steer him wrong. He hadn’t heard any more gunshots since coming inside, but he hoped that growl meant Rachel was still alive.
When he reached the basement level, he sprinted down the corridor, wondering where the hell his DAPS teammates were. If Rachel was in trouble, those assholes should have been here already to help. Then a disturbing thought hit him. What if the other security team had shown up and were dead?
He pushed those thoughts aside, focusing all his efforts on finding Rachel. It wasn’t difficult to know which way to go. Even his inexperienced nose could figure out which direction the scent of burnt gunpowder was coming from. There was another scent on the air with it, tangy and metallic. He made a conscious decision to ignore what that smell might mean.
Another growl came from a room just up ahead.
Rachel.
Knox ran faster.
He had his weapon out and finger on the trigger as he entered the room, ready to do anything he had to do to protect Rachel, but what he saw froze him solid.
Two men lay on the floor, their bodies twisted unnaturally. A third man was draped across the top of a row of filing cabinets. The dead bodies weren’t what shocked Knox, though. No, what stunned him was the amount of blood spattered around the room.
Rachel stood in the middle of it all, her back to him as she struggled with a man he couldn’t get a good look at even though the guy had to have a good half a foot on Rachel and at least a hundred pounds. Knox started forward to help her when she let out a loud snarl and ripped the man’s throat out with her claws. Blood spray coated the nearest cabinets and wall in a fine mist of red, mixed with larger droplets that immediately began to run down every surface they landed on.
Realizing there weren’t any more threats in the room, Knox holstered his gun. Figuring it’d be best not to startle Rachel, he opened his mouth to let her know he was here, but before he could say anything, she spun around, crouching low and growling at him, like she thought he was another enemy about to attack.
He knew what it was like in combat, when you fell into a zone where you stopped thinking and simply reacted to things around you, so her response wasn’t surprising. Especially since her eyes were glowing red. But it was the knife sticking out of the front of her shoulder that had him more worried. The blade was sunk in at least two inches deep and had to hurt like hell.
Knox stepped toward her without thinking.
The claws coming his way were a blur, but he got a hand up and caught her wrist, stopped them inches from his throat. Rachel bared her teeth in a snarl.
Shit. She’d lost it again.
“It’s okay, Rachel,” he soothed. “It’s me—Knox.”
He thought for a moment she might take another swing at him with her other hand, but instead, she lifted her nose and took a good sniff of him. That seemed to calm her a little, but he continued to make comforting sounds until the red glow faded from her eyes. The moment it did, all tension left Rachel’s body and she collapsed against him. Well, as much as she could with a knife sticking out of her shoulder.
Hating to do it but reminding himself she was a werewolf, Knox pulled the knife out as gently as he could and tossed it on the floor. Then he wrapped her in his arms and held her as tears ran down her face. While she wasn’t nearly as hysterical as she’d been at her apartment last night, it tore his soul out to see her in pain all the same.
They were still standing there a few minutes later when Diego and a female cop moved cautiously into the room. The duo took one look around before putting away their weapons. Knox recognized the tall, dark-haired woman as another werewolf from the Dallas SWAT pack, and based on previous conversations with Rachel, he was fairly sure her name was Khaki.
Diego moved around Knox and Rachel toward the back of the room, talking softly on his radio, telling the other cops currently on their way there at high-speed to slow down, that the threat had been neutralized. When he was done, he ducked down behind a row of cabinets and came up with a semiconscious Jennifer Lloyd in his arms.
