Page 35 of Gavin

They weren’t.

Normally Victor worked alone and with good reason—he didn’t have to share the decision making with anyone but himself. But Brent had the manpower and the knowledge of the tiger’s territory and Victor needed him.

“Well, hell,” Brent said, turning off the video feed with a sigh.

“I would remind you that I suggested it was too soon,” Victor said, leaning back in the chair that he’d set up next to Brent in the abandoned pizza shop’s tiny office.

Brent waved a dismissive hand. “We might not have gotten the white wolf but we did learn something.”

“What would that be? That the tigers are fast runners and can sense danger? Because I could have told you that.”

Brent’s upper lip curled. “No, their response time and their patrol schedule.”

“That’s easily changed,” Victor pointed out.

Brent shifted slightly in the creaky old desk chair to look at Victor. “We did learn one very important thing.”

“Which is?”

“What the white wolf looks like as a human. Tobias!”

One of Brent’s lackeys rushed in with a printed photo. The large, glossy picture was a print of the screen showing the face of the woman who was new to the tiger’s town. He’d known by scouting that a new woman was in town and she was staying with one of the tigers. When Brent sent his people in, they’d attempted to abduct her from the house but the tiger had come to her rescue and they hadn’t even broken the back door down.

Victor hummed. “Do you have any information on her?”

Tobias nodded. “It’s on the back of the photo. Her name is Sadie Parker and she’s from Michigan. I copied her driver’s license. She had a cell phone listed in the database search but I ran the number and it’s disconnected.”

“Pull up the drone footage again,” Victor said. He stared at the image of the woman. She looked young, but as a shifter it would be hard to tell her age since they aged so slowly. He put the photo down and looked at the monitor. “There,” he said, pointing to the home that Sadie and two tigers walked into, “who’s house is that?”

“Midas, the leader,” Brent said. “I already tried to take him out but he and his witch managed to avoid dying.”

“Witch?”

“His mate. Her name is Maya,” Tobias answered.

Victor stared at the drone footage of the large home. There were several men stationed around the home standing guard. His mind spun as Brent told the drone operator to fly over the entire territory in a wide, slow circle one more time and to mark the location of the security personnel.

“I have two thoughts,” Victor said, drumming his fingers on the rusted desktop.

“Which are?” Brent asked.

“That it was a mistake to send your people into the pride to try to take the wolf, but that mistake seems like it will work in our favor.” After a long moment, Victor said, “I need to go to my storage unit and pick up a few things. Get me your best gunman.”

“We’ll be ready,” Brent said.

Victor rose from the chair and left the building. One of the first things he’d figured out about shifters when he began hunting them as a young man was that in the defense of the people they cared about, they could get sloppy and make mistakes. Fear of losing a loved one, even for a person who was a literal beast, was a driving force for them.

All he had to do was scare them. They’d be easy picking, then.

The white wolf would be his soon enough, and he’d have the added bonus of helping Brent take out the tigers, who he’d just learned had a few white tigers in their ranks as well. He was certain he could find clients who’d enjoy having white tigers to do with as they pleased.

Coming to Northern Ohio was going to be very lucrative.

Gavin pacedin the conference room in Midas’s home as Ryan debriefed the elders and several of the high ranked males about the situation. He couldn’t sit still. His tiger was on high alert because of how close he’d come to losing Sadie.

He glanced toward the doorway, then pivoted and continued to pace.

On the other side of the large home, Sadie was with Maya watching some TV drama about a hospital. He knew she was safe in Midas’s home, but he still felt compelled to go to her. The onlything keeping him in the conference room was that he needed to be part of the plan to keep her—and the pride—safe. Because if they knew anything about Brent Foley, it was that he was not above using innocents to get what he wanted.

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