Carolina Moon

Clean Up: Tess

Inside the SUV, all I could smell was the thick scent of the burnt plastic and the raw, musky odor of the wolves coming down from their shifts. The silence was heavy, broken only by the sound of our ragged breathing and the crunch of tires on gravel as we put distance between us and the facility.

I was shaking. Even now that everything was done and the building was falling away behind us, my hands still wouldn’t stop trembling. I gripped my laptop bag against my chest. Through the fabric, I could still feel the warmth of the metal casing from the server room’s heat. Next to me, K.C. was also a wall of radiating heat. His knuckles were white as he gripped his knees.

I showed him the text from Gideon Stroud. He didn’t growl this time though. He just looked at it with a cold, predatory focus. “He’s watching the data stream,” he said, his voice low and thick from the adrenaline that was still running through him. “He knows the exact moment you brought down the grid.”

I knew we couldn’t just be done. We couldn’t just go home and sleep. Stroud’s lawyers had claimed there was a “public safety concern,” and it was going to become a reality the moment the fire department found a basement full of melted servers and unconscious, injured mercenaries. We had to shape the narrative before Stroud had a chance to.

I pulled out the burner phone Leon sent with us when we came back from Kingsport. I couldn’t let K.C. make the call. His voice was still too rough, there was still too much wolf in the register. So I made the call to Sheriff Grady myself, keeping it clipped and anonymous.

“Sheriff Grady,” I started. “You need to get down to the old water treatment plant. There was an industrial accident — some kind of electrical surge. There’s armed men on-site. They aren’t local, and they’ve been using the facility for illegal signal broadcasting.”

“How-“ I ended the call before he could get the question out. It wasn’t a perfect fix, but it put the “private army” on the sheriff’s radar before Stroud could try to spin the story about domestic terrorism like he had in Kingsport.

The tension barely eased out of my shoulders as we pulled back into the bungalow’s driveway. The house was still dark, exactly as we’d left it. I wasn’t sure though if it was still a shield, or if it was becoming another cage.

Marcus, Holden, and the others, moved with silent efficiency. There was no more teasing or easy camaraderie among them. The adrenaline crash was effecting all of us. Ronan and Mason took the first watch, disappearing into the tree line with tactical silence.

K.C.’s arm stayed around my waist as he we headed up the porch steps. As I unlocked my front door, I realized that the forty-eight hours never really mattered. Stroud didn’t care about the land, he wanted the alpha. The countdown was a fear tactic to make us think we had nowhere else to go. It made me realize that Stroud might not know about K.C.’s cabin after all.

Inside, the silence of the bungalow felt deafening. I dropped my bag on the table. K.C. stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking at the dried flowers I’d moved earlier. He looked like a man who had lost his sanctuary.

I walked over and wrapped my arms around his back, pulling him down for a slow, lingering kiss. It wasn’t frantic or hungry. It was the kind of grounding kiss that reminded us both that we were still here. We were still alive. When the kiss broke, he buried his face in the crook of my neck, his arms tightening around my waist. I felt him let out a long, shuddering breath against my skin.

“Cypress Hollow is compromised,” he murmured. “He has the deputies, the grid.”

“Not necessarily,” I reassured him. “The grid is down, at least here. We need to make contact with Leon. If Stroud was trying to force us out of the bungalow, he might not know about your cabin. We can send a couple of guys to inspect it. And Sheriff Grady hasn’t been bought yet, and he’s your friend. If we’re honest with him now before things get worse, we may be able to keep an ally.”

“Do you really think it’s a good idea? Telling Grady everything?”

I shrugged. I could see it going well, but I could see it going really poorly too. “He’s your friend. Do you trust him?”

K.C. didn’t answer immediately. He stepped back just enough to look at me. His amber eyes were still dark and swirling with the remnants of the Alpha’s pull. He looked at the kitchen door, then at the darkened window, as if he could already see the patrol car turning onto the street.

“I trust the man who used to share a six-pack with me while we talked about the best way to kiln-dry cedar,” he said, his voice regaining its human timber. “I don’t know if I trust the man who has a badge and could end up with Governor’s orders for my arrest at any second.” He paused, signing. “But you’re right — if we don’t give him the truth, Stroud will give him a lie he can’t ignore.”

He took the phone I’d used earlier, then paused. “Leon first. Regardless of what happens next, I need to know we didn’t trigger a retaliation against the pack back in Kingsport.”

The connection with Leon was grainy, but his voice was like iron. I gave him the technical rundown — the server fry, the meltdown, and the data mirror I managed to pull before the system went down.

Leon confirmed that there was a flicker of static when we hit the water treatment plant. Stroud wanted us to believe we’d only caused local damage, but we’d actually caused a regional blowout on his network.

“Don’t worry about sending any of the guys that are with you,” Leon reassured us after I told him my belief about the cabin being an unknown safe-haven. “Just stay put, I’ll send a specialized sweep team out to ensure it’s not bugged or burned. If it’s clean, I’d recommend keeping a few of the guys at the bungalow as a decoy while the rest of you move to the cabin.”

He paused for a moment, then added, “If Stroud has K.C. labeled as Alpha 01, not only is he not going to stop until he has him on a leash, he’s going after other Alphas too.”

After the phone call, it felt like the house was holding its breath. K.C. called the sheriff and asked him to come out to the bungalow. We sat on the sofa while we waited. The enforcers felt like shadows in the corners.

While we waited, K.C. talked about the cabin. I caught the dreamy look in his eyes as he described the way the sunlight hit the front porch, and the smell of sawdust that didn’t seem to want to go away. I hadn’t seen it yet, but I hoped that it wouldn’t end up tainted by the red emergency lights.