Promising Peter (Bad Boy Alphas) (Shrew & Company Book 6) (12 page)

“Too clean,” Peter said, and settled lower down in the seat of a van he, Soren, Bryan, and Astrid’s brother, Eric, had parked amid so many other vehicles at a county fairground. There was some sort of agricultural show going on, and Soren had surmised they’d be less suspicious parked there than elsewhere in the small town where there was little to no traffic. Everyone was at the fairground.

Everyone except Gene, anyway.

They knew were Gene was. He was holed up in some ex-girlfriend’s house—not a Bear—and rarely ever stuck his head out the door. They needed to lure him out, which they could do any number of proposed ways, but they still hadn’t figured out what to do with him
after
that.

Soren had proposed a single bullet to the forehead from a distance—sniper-style.

Peter thought that was too kind an ending for him, especially with all the messes the disgraced alpha had left outstanding. A quarter of the Ridge Bears were recovering from illicit substance addictions, half were in therapy for one disorder or another, and many had physical concerns as a result of abuse. They all had a long way to go in finding the path back to happiness. They hadn’t been on it since before Gene had taken over.

Bryan grunted and put one booted foot up on the dashboard. “I’ve always fantasized about doing to him what he did to Drea so many times.”

Peter growled low.

“Follow him around. Jump out and rough him up every time he turns a corner. Maybe when I get bored, I’ll force him to shapeshift and make him do circus tricks, being sure to stab him with tranquilizers every few hours, of course, so he’s nice and compliant.”

“You’re better than that,” Eric said from behind the wheel. The van belonged to him—his lodge, rather. He and his sister Astrid co-owned the mountain inn, and he usually used the conveyance to pick up guests from the airport in Asheville or to drop them off at ski venues, but the vehicle served the current purpose fine. Normally, they would have traveled more discreetly—there was little chance that anyone connected to Gene wouldn’t have known by then that the Falks were aligned with the Shrews and the Ridge Bears—but Bryan didn’t care anymore if Gene knew he was nearby. He wanted him to know—wanted him to be anxious about the unpredictable, just like Gene had made so many Bears feel over the years.

“You say that,” Bryan said, “but right now, I don’t feel particularly moral. You weren’t there to see some of the sick shit he had me doing when I was one of his lieutenants. He had me tying up stupid shifter kids who made the mistake of stumbling too close to Bear territory so he could scar them with heated silver blades. Only in the past few months have I stopped hearing those kids screaming in my dreams.”

“You’re right, Peter,” Soren said. “A bullet in the head is too good for him.”

Peter fondled the handle of his switchblade and stared out the window at the comings and goings on the fairground. Folks were out with their kids, working and playing. Being so damned
normal
. He wondered what that was like. With his family’s nomadic lifestyle during his early childhood, “home” had always been such a nebulous concept. “Home” was wherever they had keys to at the time, and often that meant hotel rooms or furnished rentals for long stretches. That lifestyle was why Peter still hadn’t bothered acquiring many more possessions than what could be stuffed into a couple of duffel bags.

He was sick of living like that. Sick of never being comfortable and not being able to visualize a future.

He pulled the blade out only to click it back into position again. Then again.

“What’s wrong?” Soren asked. “Your melancholy is bringing down my inner bear.”

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know.” He slipped the knife into his pocket and took out his phone instead. “Do you ever get tired of living like this?”

Soren pushed up a dark eyebrow. “What? This
job
?”

“No. Everything. The hopping around from one lily pad to the next but never making it back to shore.”

“Oh, hell.” Soren closed his heavy-lidded eyes and rubbed them.

Peter didn’t have a good frame of reference, but he suspected Tamara might have dosed Soren with some sort of long-acting tranquilizer before letting him make the trip. Peter couldn’t explain otherwise how Soren wasn’t fighting to get back to his mate.

The only reason Peter wasn’t fighting to get back to his at the moment was because he couldn’t shake the belief that she’d be better off without him. She deserved a little house with a fenced-in yard to let her mutt run around in. And more than that, she deserved a man who hadn’t paid the majority of his bills to date by spilling blood. He didn’t want to let her go—he wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything, in fact—but she’d already been through too much shit. Peter wasn’t a sure bet.

“If you’re speaking in metaphors,” Soren said, “that must mean the mating fever has rotted your brain.”

“Maybe.”

“I understand what he’s saying, though.” Eric leaned in the seat to look into the next row. “You’ve got a compulsion to carve out your own little territory and build it up and make it nice. Then, you don’t really want to leave unless you have to, because your girl is there, and you know that home is a safe place.”

Peter nodded. He liked the “safe place” idea. He also liked the idea of having his girl there. “I’m ready to just be still for a while,” he said low.

“Anywhere in particular?” Bryan asked, glancing back.

“I haven’t decided.”

“Gene just left the house,” Eric said, tossing his phone into the cup holder.

He yanked his seatbelt across his body and then turned the key in the ignition.

The rest of them sat up and reached for their belts.

“Who tipped you off?” Bryan asked.

“The ex. She emailed a friend and had her send me a text. I guess Gene took her phone. Look at my cell.”

Bryan snatched it out of the cup holder. “Where the hell is he going?”

“I doubt he would have told
her
,” Soren said. “If I were him, I’d be on my way to jump into someone’s car and try to race us out of here.”

Eric scoffed and backed out of the spot. “He could certainly try.”

“Hey, yeah,” Bryan said into Eric’s phone. “My name is Bryan Ridge. You just sent my friend a text.”

Eric got them on the road toward the ex-girlfriend’s house, and Peter leaned forward, trying to catch snatches of the other end of the conversation.

“Uh-huh,” Bryan said. “No, no. Don’t worry about that. We haven’t done anything yet because we don’t want there to be any collateral damage. Where’s the kid who brought you the news?”

Peter furrowed his brow.

“Okay, good. Nah, just hold onto him. I’m glad word is getting around within the Bears in the area that folks should refuse to deal with him. That’s making what we have to do easier, so spread word to them to keep that up. I know they’re afraid, but we’re trying to get him off the streets as soon as we can. Did she say where he was going, by any chance?”

Bryan turned around and shook his head at Peter and Soren, and mouthed, “He left without saying anything.”

He turned back around. Eric had picked up enough speed that the van was listing at frightening angles as he took sharp curves.

“No, we’re not going to try to stop him. We’re not so naive that we’d think he isn’t carrying some weaponry that could knock out even a born-Bear. We’ll chase him out of the area and try to pin him somewhere where there’s no one around to get hurt. All right. Bye. Oh—and thanks.”

No sooner did he disconnect did Peter’s phone vibrate in his hand. He squinted down at the screen, reading it twice to make his brain understand the name coming up in caller ID.
Andrea Ridge
.

“Andrea…” he whispered.

What could she possibly want?

He answered. “Andrea?”

“Um… Peter?” She sounded stronger than she had when he’d left her, and some of the tension he’d been carrying around in his gut unfurled.

“Yes. What’s wrong? Are you well?”

“Oh! I’m okay. I’m at the office. We were talking about some things, and I started wondering.”

About me?

“I have a list that some of my Bear friends helped me make,” she said. “I wrote down the names of all the women Gene showed more than a superficial interest in for as long as we’ve been aware of him. The list probably isn’t complete, but depending on where you are, knowing their locations will help. He used to brag about how they’d never say no to him. He tried to make everyone think the women were so in love with him, but I think they were just afraid of him. Bear women aren’t so great at saying no sometimes.”

True.
Otherwise, Andrea would have said no to
him
.

“How did you know we were in touch with one of his girlfriends?” he asked.

“I didn’t know you were. If you’ve already thought of this, I’m sorry for bothering you. I thought the list would help.”

“No, don’t misunderstand me. We’re in Delaware right now tracking him. He’s been holing up with someone we identified only yesterday as being an ex-girlfriend, and we only got that name because his mother thought she’d be a likely target.”

“Who is that?” Bryan asked.

“Andrea.”

“Put her on speaker.”

Peter hit the button. “Andrea?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything before. Thinking is a little easier for me now, so…”

He would have paid richly to know what else she’d been thinking about, but it wasn’t the time for her to assuage his ego. They were on a job. “Are there any women within an easy drive of here on that list?” he asked.

“There are a couple that I circled. One’s in Maryland. The other in southern Jersey, probably from his old clan.”

“We got to the Jersey folks already,” Soren said. “The folks up there have got their clan locked down right now. They’re patrolling the territory and not letting any of their most vulnerable leave the area. They didn’t have good things to say about Gene.”

“What do you mean?”

The men in the van let out synchronized grunts. Peter had been perplexed by the entire conversation he’d had with Gene’s former alpha. From the way he explained the history, Gene had been a shit stain up in Jersey, too. He’d tried to raise hell during a clan dinner, got smacked down hard, and the next thing the alpha had heard, Gene had cut and run.

“Probably the Maryland one, then,” Bryan said, obviously ignoring Drea’s question. “Were you able to pull up any stats on her? We’re trying to catch up to him now before he gets too far. Any information would help.”

“Well, she has a kid by Gene. Proven by the courts.”

Bryan groaned. “Poor kid.”

“Yeah. A younger teenager. Um, the lady isn’t a Bear, and neither is the kid, at least according to my research. I got access to some confidential child support case information, and suffice it to say, the kid wasn’t exactly a lovechild. All evidence points to this woman not being someone who’d help Gene willingly. Whatever pull he’s got on her right now probably has to do with the kid.” Andrea shuffled some papers and clucked her tongue in that charming way she always did when she thought people were getting impatient.

“It’s all right. Take your time,” Peter said.

She let out a little breath, and said quietly, “Thank you. Um…she raises horses and some small livestock. A few sheep for wool and some angora goats. She has a bit of land and quite a few outbuildings according to county records, so her farm would be a good place to hide if Gene could get there.”

“If I were him, that’s where I’d be going,” Soren said. “What’s she driving?”

“She owns a black F-250 and an older, tan Taurus. I’ll text you—uh,
Peter
—the license plate numbers.”

“Please do.”

“Does that help at all?”

Peter chuckled and then gripped the seat one-handed when Eric took yet another curve too hard. “I could have used a girl like you a long time ago.”

“Oh. Well… Um. Y-you know where I am if you need me.”

I need you, all right.

Smiling, Peter disconnected the call and glanced down at the incoming text message. He looked up to find both Soren and Bryan staring at him.

“What?” he asked.

Bryan grunted and turned around. “Interesting that she called you and not me.”

“Look at your phone. Maybe she tried calling you and you didn’t catch the ringing.”

Bryan grabbed his phone from the console and activated the screen. “Nope. No missed calls.”

“I wouldn’t think anything of the decision.”

“Neither would I,” Soren said sharply. “She likely called whichever number was easier to recall. Even a four-year-old could remember your number.”

“What the fuck’s your problem?”

Soren folded his arms over his chest, leaned leftward, and looked through the windshield. He didn’t answer. Peter hadn’t really expected him to, and was he wasn’t going to force the issue. Fighting with his brother didn’t seem to be worth the energy at the moment. Even when they fought just for the fun of fighting, someone usually ended up needing sutures.

They were nearing the house where Gene had been hunkered down. Eric hit the brakes and stopped at the end of the driveway.

The lady standing near the car ran up. “I know who you are,” she said when Bryan let down his window. “He said you’d probably come by, and he said if I said anything to you, he’d hurt me.”

“Obviously, you don’t believe him.”

She shrugged. “I was stupid to let him in. I didn’t even look out the window before I pulled on the door. I was expecting a package and figured the doorbell ringing was just the UPS guy. Gene shouldered himself in, just like he used to, and snatched my phone before I could think of calling anyone. He still has my phone.”

“You don’t think he’s going to come back?”

She shook her head. “No point in returning since you’ve already found the place.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t try to send someone after her,” Eric said.

Bryan turned around and caught Peter’s gaze. “Call Dana or Tamara and see if they can get someone up here to patrol. At least until we know Gene’s cut off from communication with any Bear still associating with him.”