Page 24 of Brock’s Mate

His wolf growled softly.

The vehicle was a van, also black, with the back doors open. The guy laid Desi on the floor in the rear compartment, and then took out a cell phone and made a call. “I got her,” he said. He listened to the other end of the call. “Yeah. Meet you there. Fifteen minutes.”

Oh hell no. Brock walked casually out of the shadows, hands in his pockets, like he was just a guy coming over to hang with a friend on a Saturday night.

As soon as Desi’s captor became aware of him, he pulled his weapon and trained it on Brock. “Stop right there,” he said. “Identify yourself.”

“Whoa, bruh,” Brock said, stopping and lifting his hands, palms out, like a surprised civilian would. “I’m just a friend of Desi’s. What’s going on? Is she okay?”

The guy didn’t lower his weapon. “Approach slowly.”

Brock did what he said, trying to act like someone totally innocent, who wasn’t used to having weapons pointed at him.

As soon as he got close enough, he could smell that this guy was a shifter. Wolf, with a nasty scent. Maybe an Enforcer; maybe a bad guy. Maybe both.

More important, he saw the flare of the other guy’s nostrils, and the moment when it registered with him that Brock was a shifter too. His whole demeanor changed.

“Wolf Council Enforcer,” he said, drawing himself up and getting all authoritarian, which made Brock really want to smack him down. “I need your ID and pack affiliation.”

“No offense, my man,” Brock said, “but you’re the one who has a woman unconscious and bound in the back of his van in the middle of the night. So I’m thinking I should be the one checking your ID.”

“That’s it,” the guy barked. “Hands on the side of the van, legs apart.”

Brock snorted in amusement. “I don’t think so. Show me your ID.” He stepped closer.

The guy got right in his face with the gun. “You’re under arrest.”

Not gonna happen. This guy was an idiot—and badly trained. He was way too close. Brock grabbed the gun and twisted the guy’s wrist, using the momentum to disarm him and slam himface first into the side of the van, arm up behind his back. Brock stuck the gun in his jacket pocket.

This was turning out to be a very annoying night.

“Now, let’s start again,” he said. “Where’s your ID?”

“Right vest pocket, motherfucker. And you’re still under arrest.”

“Yeah, you just keep telling yourself that.”

He found the ID badge. The badge didn’t say anything about the Wolf Council, naturally, because shifters were secret.

It did have what looked like the official USWCE logo of the United States Wolf Council Enforcers, with the guy’s photo and the name of Michael DiSantos. It might even be real, though Brock wouldn’t swear to it. Most of his work had been with the Shifter Council, which oversaw all the governing bodies of those shifter groups who had their own Councils, like the wolves. He wasn’t as familiar with other Enforcer badges.

“You have no idea how much trouble you’re in,” DiSantos blustered, face still against the van.

Brock laughed. “First of all, I could kick your ass with a beer in my hand, and not even spill it. Second, I grew up calling the Lieutenant Director of the National Shifter Council Enforcers ‘Uncle Kane.’”

Actually, he’d called him ‘Mr. Grumpy Woof’, but that was irrelevant at the moment.

He went on, “Kane Colton outranks you, and your boss, and your boss’s boss. In fact, he outranks your entire organization. So even if you are who you say you are, I’m pretty sure I’m not in as much trouble as you’d like me to be.”

He pocketed the ID and got out his phone. “Should I just go ahead and give Kane a call now, and ask him what the hell the Wolf Council is doing, threatening law-abiding citizens for walking up a driveway at eleven o’clock at night? It’s earlier in Idaho, so he probably won’t even be in bed yet.”

“The girl’s a rogue,” DiSantos said. “Out of control, attacking human livestock, and possibly at least one human as well.”

Oh, shit. If that last part were true, Desi was in big trouble.

DiSantos went on, “She needs to be restrained and evaluated by a qualified healer, to determine whether it’s possible for her to be rehabilitated. Even your buddy Lieutenant-Director Colton can’t object to that.”

He was right. If this guy was legit, he was within his rights to take Desi for evaluation. But every instinct in Brock was screaming. He didn’t trust this guy. Especially not with Desi.