Page 78 of The Piece You Stole

I jerk forward suddenly, too fast to stop myself. But my arms don’t seem to want to work. None of me does.

The humming continues as I flop onto my back and blink up at black nothingness.

Feels like I’m on a ship, floating on an ocean.

That doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe I’m on a cruise ship going somewhere nice.

My teeth chatter. I want to hug myself to keep warm because someone left a window open and my skin feels icy cold, but I can’t get my arms to move. None of me wants to move.

Then why does it feel like I’m sweating?

You’re not sweating, Saige, you’re drowning.

Yes. That must be what’s happening.

My cruise ship sank, and the water is pulling me under, dragging me down, down and—

CHAPTER 19

KADE

“Seven fifty-five. They should be here any minute,” Aden murmurs, glancing at his wristwatch.

He draws the hood of his black hoodie up over his blond head, the brightest thing up this dark tree, and curves his body around the khaki-colored rifle he has wedged between two branches.

I leave Aden alone for the next couple of minutes, watching as he sweeps the rifle over a patch of grass with enough tire tracks for it to serve as Rylan Treveilers’ parking lot. He takes his time training the sight over every square inch of earth, his left hand grasping the barrel of the rifle and his right index finger on the trigger. Not to fire. That comes later.

This is all prep work.

When he raises his head from the scope and turns to me with a subtle nod, I know that, unlike the two neighboring trees we scaled minutes before, this one gives him all the angles he needs to blow a hole through anything that steps foot onto that trampled bit of grass.

It will make my fucking night if that thing is Rylan Treveilers’ head.

“All good?” Now that he’s finished his prep work, I get busy doing what I should have been doing all along, scanning the five acres of lush, green forest beneath us. We spent the first few minutes of our arrival walking almost every inch of the land.

It’s a fucking jungle. Wild, lush, weeds and flowers springing up everywhere, but it calls to my wolf. I want to leap down from the tree and run for hours. No wonder Rylan had no interest in selling. What shifter would sell a place like this?

My nose twitches from the pungent smoke hanging heavy in the air. I shift my focus west of us to where a fire is raging nicely out of control.

I almost feel bad about watching this expensive piece of land go up in flames.

“All good,” Aden replies.

I glance over to find he’s looped the rifle strap around his shoulders and is reaching behind him to the waistband of his jeans. Given we’re nearly twelve feet off the ground in what is his perch for tonight, it’s a smart decision if he wants to keep hold of it.

Aden pulls out a black handgun and double-checks to make sure there’s a bullet in the chamber. He chokes back a cough as he secures the safety and returns the gun to the waistband of his jeans. “That fire is getting out of control,” he says, eyebrow raised.

I glance at it as if I hadn’t noticed. “I’d say it was behaving exactly the way it’s supposed to.”

The fire burning happily west of us serves two purposes. One, to make Rylan Treveiler lose his shit over someone setting his expensive bit of land on fire, and two, to block off the next easiest way for him to escape off his land and onto a construction site.

North backs up to a canal. If Rylan and his pack want to leave that way, they’ll have to trudge through a river to do it. They could, no problem, but none of us could envision a guy like Rylan wanting to take the messy way out.

East leads to a rough neighborhood. We’ve parked our car there, which is taking a big risk it’ll still be there when we’re done wiping out Rylan’s pack, but after all the reading up we did on Rylan, a guy born with a silver spoon rammed down his throat, it doesn’t seem likely he’d want to rub shoulders with the pimps and dealers who like to hang out around there.

So, he’ll arrive from the south, driving down the side road that leads off the main city street, and the easiest way for him to get away when shit hits the fan. Which is exactly why we have Aden perched up in a tree with a rifle to prevent that from happening.

A few minutes from now, Rylan Treveiler and his pack will roar into the patch of grass beneath us, and we’ll be waiting for him. If Rylan suspects he’s about to walk into a trap, we’ve been helpful enough to park ourselves close enough that all he has to do is suck in a deep breath, smell the scents of three men, and he won’t hesitate to send his pack after us.

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