“What about those two supernaturals you told us about?” Zoe asked, nibbling on a Dorito. “Did they ever recover from being melded together?”
“As far as I know, Seamus and Batu were still unconscious when they transferred them to the STAT supermax in Colorado, so I’m not sure,” Jake said.
Sawyer frowned. “Assuming he wakes up at some point, how the bloody hell do you keep someone like Seamus imprisoned? He’d only pop through the walls and bars of whatever cell they put him in.”
“I don’t know,” Jake admitted. “But McKay mentioned that holding them, along with the vampire we captured, won’t be a problem. For all I know, maybe they’ll keep Seamus unconscious the whole time.”
That idea didn’t seem to sit too well with Zoe and Chloe, if the expressions on their faces were any indication. Harley had to admit, she wasn’t thrilled with the concept, either. Both Seamus and Batu were horrible people, no doubt. But keeping someone drugged and unconscious came off a little bit too much like what Yegor had done to the supernaturals he’d captured to auction off, and he was one of the bad guys.
Caleb squeezed mustard onto a hot dog. “The person I’m curious about seeing again is Brielle. I never did get her to tell me how she was able to throw Batu out the window like she did. I tried to find her after we took down Yegor, but she’d already left.”
“McKay talked to her before she took off,” Jake said. “He wanted to make one more run at her, with a job offer this time instead of a prison sentence, but she turned him down. As far as I know, she and her brother have both fallen off the radar. I don’t think we’re ever going to see her again.”
Caleb looked disappointed but didn’t say anything.
Harley thought Jake was probably right. If it hadn’t been for her dumb-ass brother, Brielle would never have shown up on the radar to begin with. Now that he was out of prison, with his record wiped clean, it would be easy for them to disappear.
“Any luck with trying a full shift again?” Caleb asked, catching Harley’s eye from the other side of the coffee table where he sat on the floor.
She shook her head. Since the raid at Gravelines, she hadn’t been able to make it back into her wolf form no matter how hard she tried. “I’ve been trying every night,” she admitted. “But while I can get my claws and fangs to come out easily now, even get muscles to reshape so I can run faster, I can’t get close to wolfing out. It’s like I forgot how.”
“I don’t think it’s so much forgetting as it is not being able to get back in the same headspace you were in during your first full shift,” Caleb remarked. “You said you were riding on pure adrenaline and terror, worried that Sawyer was about to die. You’re going to need to re-create some of those same feelings if you hope to be able to do it again. At least until you figure out a better way to make it work for you.”
She shuddered. “Well, if it takes Sawyer almost dying to make me shift, I’ll be fine of it never happens again.”
Beside her, Sawyer leaned in close, his lips brushing her ear. “Giving up your full wolf if it means keeping me safe is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.”
Harley turned her head to kiss him. “I think we both know that’s not the only thing I’d give up to keep you safe. I love you like crazy.”
Sawyer whispered that he loved her just as much. A declaration that had Caleb making gagging noises, which made everyone laugh, including Harley.
They were still teasing her and Sawyer when Jake’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket and got up to go into the kitchen. Harley forced herself not to eavesdrop on the call. Even before what happened in Calais, where her werewolf abilities had improved so much, she would have been able to hear most of the conversation, even from this far away. These days, she’d be able to hear the words being spoken on the TV in the background of the person making the call. She’d had to learn to control all of her senses much better since getting back from the mission, just to keep from being overwhelmed—or hearing something she shouldn’t.
Jake walked into the living room a few minutes later. “Sorry to break up the party, but that was McKay. We have a situation in Turkey. We’re all booked on a flight out of Reagan National in a little over four hours. Support team is already en route.”
“What kind of situation?” Caleb asked, shoving what was left of his hot dog in his mouth.
“McKay didn’t say. But it must be something big because he wouldn’t even hint at it over an unsecured phone line.”
Harley looked at Sawyer. “It looks like we have our first official mission with you on the team. You ready for this?”
He gave her a kiss. “I’m always ready.”
The next SWAT (Special Wolf Alpha Team) werewolf romance from New York Times bestselling author Paige Tyler is sure to make you howl for more!
Coming August 2021 from Sourcebooks Casablanca
Chapter 1
Dallas, Texas
“Man, I hope they’re wrong about someone dumping a body out here,” Officer Connor Malone murmured as he moved through the heavily wooded area ten yards to Trey’s left. Fellow SWAT teammates and werewolves Corporal Trevor McCall was another ten yards beyond Connor, while Officer Hale Delaney was a bit farther out, bringing up the end of the search line. “I mean, dumping a body anywhere is sick, but this place is way too beautiful for crap like that.”
Trey agreed with his blond teammate. The Trinity River Audubon Center was part nature preserve, part public park along the southern side of the county. In the distance, he could hear the drone of vehicles speeding along the Interstate 20 belt loop, but for the moment at least, the area he and his pack mates were in was quiet and tranquil.
That would all change if they found anything. In a heartbeat, a place usually known only for its slow-moving streams and mist-shrouded walking trails would immediately be overrun with cops and crime scene technicians looking for clues to help them identify the person the local papers had tagged as “the Butcher.”
While the name of the latest serial killer to terrorize Dallas might not be original, it was unfortunately devastatingly accurate. Four bodies had been found over the past week and a half. Or more precisely, parts of four bodies had been found. In each case, the corpses—all men—had been found dumped in wooded or remote locations missing their heads and both hands. The theory was that the killer was mutilating the bodies to make it harder to identify the victims. If that was the plan, it was working, because the Dallas Police Department had yet to put a name to a single one of them.
Four bodies found with hands and heads removed was morbid and depraved enough, but unfortunately, there was more. Each victim was also missing at least one other body part—the right arm in the first case, right leg in the second, both lungs in the third, and on the body found two nights ago, several whole sections of skin had been missing. The DPD had tried to keep those details secret until they had a suspect, but somehow, it’d leaked out and the media had been running the Butcher storyline nonstop ever since.