Page 13 of Frank's Felon
FRANK
Frank was dead tired. After being up all night on the border, he needed sleep. Except every time he closed his eyes, he kept picturing Delilah being attacked by five white wolves, or worse, being caught by the WSSO in town. He had no idea where to find her, but he had to try. Waiting for her to breach the border again in search of whatever it was she was looking for was too risky.
As Frank dragged himself out of bed, he glanced at the clock. It was already nine am. An hour of sleep wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than nothing.
Damien had stopped in Frank’s zone briefly at six am, on his way to Boulder. Three of Liam’s top guards, including Griff and Daaven, were with him. That gave Frank some comfort, knowing Liam had at least provided his top guards, especially given whatever was going on over at his pack. Damien and Frank still didn’t have all the details, only that there had been some trouble between a DSA agent and one of the women. Whatever the problem was, Liam hadn’t canceled the meeting with the DSA, even though he wasn’t attending. Damien would probably draw the information out of Griff, eventually.
With Damien gone, the pack was Frank’s responsibility. He had risen high in the world somehow, despite taking all the steps to avoid doing so. Thankfully, being in charge was temporary.
Frank grabbed Benji from the machine shop. The maintenance worker had broken down a generator into a hundred pieces and spread them out on a tarp. He wasn’t pleased about being dragged away to drive Frank into town. Too bad. Pack protocol dictated shifters didn’t go into town alone. Benji wasn’t much of a fighter, but he could hold his own against a human, and Frank wasn’t pulling any of the guards from the border when they were already short of guards.
“What about letting one of the women drive you in?” Benji protested.
“I have business in town, and I don’t want to have to worry about guarding a female. You can take care of yourself. Or so I assume. I’ve seen you mouth off at Hayden enough.”
Benji mumbled under his breath. Frank didn’t care to strain his ears enough to decipher the shifter’s complaint. Instead, he tilted his head back and grabbed a few more minutes sleep while Benji drove them to town.
A hand smacked him across the face. “We’re here, your royal highness,” Benji said.
“You have a real attitude problem.”
“No worse than you guards.”
“Keep pushing me, Benji,” Frank warned. The shifter actually shut up, fortunately for him.
Frank had enough to worry about without Benji causing trouble. He had no clue where to start looking for Delilah. By now, she could be anywhere, including in the hands of the WSSO, if that’s who had been looking for her. It was possible Damien was right, that the WSSO was looking for Tess, but now that the vaccine for SEV-2 had already been created they had no reason to go after her again. Manufacturing and distribution were underway in several areas across the country, thanks to KatedivertingWSSO funds. That female was a blessing, much like all the females who had come into their lives recently.
Of his closest friends in the pack, Frank was the only single male left. Even Pryce had hooked up with Henrietta. None of the females ever looked Frank’s way though. They all knew the circumstances of his prison term, yet some of them still looked at him as if he were tainted in some way. He was the same person now as when he went in to Canyon View Correctional Facility. Wasn’t he?
Frank shoved a piece of paper at Benji. “Dump the old schoolbooks and get the new ones. Check the order before you accept it. Anything goes wrong, you’re going to deal with Tess, not me.”
“I’ll get it done,” he said, his tone amiable for a change. Of course, that had nothing to do with Frank, rather the fact that Benji would be letting Tess down. She was popular among the weaker shifters in the pack. They’d finally accepted her once they’d seen her commitment to Damien and them; she had been championing for changes in the pack on their behalf even before they had finally welcomed her.
Benji dropped Frank on Main Street in Devil’s Peak. After two hours of talking to various business owners, trying to track down both Delilah and whoever had been asking about a green-eyed shifter, Frank hadn’t found a trace of either. Devil’s Peak was the town closest to the state route where he’d last seen her heading. What if she had never made it? His gut clenched, and he found himself torn between returning home to search the border and Drake’s territory, or staying in town.
No matter which way he turned, Frank felt useless—a feeling he hadn’t experienced since he’d been in prison. The objective in prison had been clear-cut. Stay alive. That meant not letting anyone know he was a shifter. Even on the border, the objective was straight forward. Protect the pack. Being in charge, having to choose between two paths while knowing neither might work and innocents could die was not for him. Damien could have this job; Frank much preferred running along the border, protecting his pack on the front line.
Two hours into searching the town and coming up empty-handed, a flash of red caught Frank’s attention. He ran across the street, narrowly escaping getting hit by a pickup truck. The red head was the right height and shape, but when he followed her into a dress shop and grabbed her arm, she turned and screamed. Not Delilah. Not even fucking close.
“Sorry. Thought you were someone I know,” Frank said, running out as fast as he could. After searching Main Street, he walked every side street and alleyway, hoping to catch her scent. Cities confused him, as they did most shifters. While Devil’s Peak was a relatively small town, it still had a lot of ground to cover. As Frank turned a corner, heading to meet Benji, the strong scent of vanilla bean caught his attention.
* * *
DELILAH
Delilah couldn’t explain the tension rippling through her this morning. Her wolf pushed her to keep moving, to keep from getting caught again, but Delilah’s instincts said she was close to getting the answers she needed. In reality, none of the businesses on main street had anything new to tell her. Everyone appeared on edge today, not just her.
The reason the entire town of Devil’s Peak felt off popped out of a coffee shop two store fronts up from her. The man was tall with broad shoulders and brown hair and wore a dark grey suit with the telltale bulge of a gun at his right hip. Delilah ducked into the nearest alley. As she crouched behind a pile of trash bags, she listened to the approaching steps, their heft and speed. How he had picked up her trail, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t waiting around to ask him. Delilah scaled the chain-link fence and swung herself over the top, coming to a louder than planned landing on the other side.
The footsteps slapped against the pavement, striking several puddles along the way. As one set of footsteps pounding behind her turned into two, Delilah shot down a busy street, knocking over several people as she dodged through the crowd of shoppers. The woods were too far. Her best chance was staying in human form and losing the men in town. In wolf form, she could move faster, but then she’d be a target for anyone carrying a gun, and there were more humans who carried guns in this town than the two chasing her.
The buildings in the area ranged from single to five-story standalones, with narrow alleys between them. Males cursing echoed behind her. Delilah slipped into a beige brick building. The lobby was barren, sporting an empty directory, one elevator bank, and an overflowing garbage can. There were no people to blend in with here, no crowded offices, but it was too late. She had to keep moving, and up was the only direction.
As Delilah shot into the stairwell, she could swear she had heard noise from the street for a brief moment only for it to disappear again, as if the someone had entered the lobby. As quietly as she could, she climbed the stairs. She could easily leap to the next rooftop, even in human form. With her heart racing, she finally reached the door to the rooftop. There was a metal padlock on it. She yanked and pulled, but the lock and door wouldn’t budge.
She raced down the stairs and onto the fourth floor. The second she saw the window at the end of the drab hall, panic surged within. She forced herself to the window. The ledge was wide enough for her, but she couldn’t stop staring at the four-story drop. Her feet froze in place and she couldn’t breathe.
Through sheer will alone, Delilah finally pushed herself away from the window and took a deep breath of stale air. She didn’t care how many bullets they shot at her, there was no way she was going out on that ledge.
