Brady’s shoulders eased down, and his lips released his animal snarl, but he didn’t say a word. Which meant it was up to her to get him talking so the rational man could take precedence over the wolf.
“Hey Brady,” she said. “It’s me, Frankie. Don’t know if you can see me. It’s dark in here.” It wasn’t that dark, but it gave him an excuse for aiming a gun at the alpha’s daughter. “So this is a bit of a shit show.” She glanced down at Jayce. “I saw the end of that fight. Jayce looked hopped up for sure.”
Brady’s chin jerked down in a nod and his eyes darted sideways for a second before coming back to her. She followed his look and saw a cardboard box on its side. Even in the half-light, she could see the plastic jug inside it dripping green goo into the sewer. Shame swamped her at the sight of that poison, but she couldn’t succumb to it now. She was not responsible for her family’s sins, and yet every part of her felt guilty. Her brother claimed that the goo made the pack stronger and it would help partial shifters kick over into their full potential. That was his reason for putting it into the water supply. He thought there’d be dozens of wolves out there who didn’t know they were shifters who could finally discover the truth.
No one expected the weird hybrids or that it would make most of the city hallucinate. And he sure as hell hadn’t told anyone that most of the pack would end up addicted to the stuff.
“Jayce was an addict, pure and simple,” she said, her hands slowly lowering to her side.
“Feels damned good as it kills you,” Brady said, his voice heavy with yearning.
Shit. He was an addict, too. No one else ached for the poison like a shifter who had tasted the pure stuff, but he didn’t go for it. Instead, he stood there with his gun still up while his gaze kept darting to the dripping jug.
“That’s what happens when you drink that shit. You end up dead like Jayce,” she said.
Brady nodded. “He should have run when the cop showed up. He should have taken off like I did. But instead, he shoots the jug and starts drinking. I came back as soon as I could, but it was too late. He’d already drunk it. They were already fighting.”
It took a few moments for her to understand Brady’s words. “You and he were transporting the goo?”
“Yeah.”
“And then a cop showed up?” Her gaze went to the grizzly. Sure enough, she could see the chain around his neck that held his police badge. It was the only part of his clothing that wasn’t in tatters on the floor. But she still couldn’t quite believe what Brady had done. “You shot a cop?”
Brady nodded, his expression miserable. “I didn’t know what to do. Jayce was crazy. I had to stop him.”
Holy shit! There was only one grizzly-shifter on the force, and that was Detective Ryan Kennedy. Goddamn it! He was one of the good guys, and now Brady had shot him? She headed for the downed bear, barely remembering to move slow. She didn’t want to spook her pack mate.
“Keep back!” Brady ordered. “He’s drugged, too!”
That didn’t track. First off, the bear hadn’t acted crazy. A shifter on the green goo would have kept beating on Jayce, even after the wolf was a corpse. Second, the grizzlies were the first ones to figure out that the Detroit flu was caused by a contaminant in the water. The No Drink order had gone out immediately, and word was the new guy Simon kept a tight rein on his people. The bears were the most sober shifters in the city right now, and that included her own pack.
“He’s a cop. We have to help him.”
She made it to Kennedy’s side and was close enough to see that he was breathing. Still alive, so that was good, but he was also bleeding sluggishly from the two holes in his chest.
“He’s a bear,” Brady said, his tone stubborn. “Wolf said to kill any of them that we can corner in secret.”
Frankie’s head snapped up. Emory Wolf was her father and the alpha in the pack. He couldn’t possibly have given so stupid an order. “He did not.”
Brady’s expression didn’t waver. “He did.”
Damn it. Her father had gone off the deep end then. She didn’t want to believe it, but it had happened. A kill order on all bears was insane. Why go to war with The Griz? This had her brother Raoul’s fingers all over it, but what the hell had happened to her father that he’d gone along with it?
She sat back on her haunches, pretending to obey her father’s orders. In truth, she was trying to buy time to reason with Brady. She had to get him on her side so he would tell her where the serum stash was and she could end this nightmare forever. But she couldn’t do that while appearing to help the bear.
“He’s a cop,” she said as she looked at Brady. “We don’t hurt cops, remember?”
Brady winced. “Your father won’t see it that way, and you know it.”
A loyalist. She knew as much. Wolves were pack creatures and they remained loyal to a fault. Fact is, once a werewolf heard a direct order from his alpha, he or she was genetically conditioned to carry it out. Brady wasn’t a killer, but once her father had ordered him to kill bears, his instinct drove him to do exactly that. It was a measure of his humanity that he kept himself from finishing the job.
“Okay,” she said. “We need to talk, but we can’t do it here. Let me take care of this, and we’ll meet—”
“I can’t talk to you. Raoul’s orders. If he even smells you on me, he’ll kill me.”
Shit, shit, shit. Brady was her only chance to find out where her brother kept the serum supply. “I can call you.”
“He’s got bugs on our phones. He said so.”
