Page 33 of August

August looked at her. “What do you mean?”

She looked at the three males. “It just clicked with me.”

“What did?” Justus asked.

“So if you wanted to infiltrate a secure place, and you already tried to sneak in before it opened and it didn’t work? Then the next best thing would be to steal a vehicle and use it for cover. The van could probably pull right up to the security booth at the employee lot without anyone thinking it was suspicious.”

“Shit,” August said. “I think she’s right.”

Jupiter shook his head. “So they messed with the feed at the petting zoo because they knew it would make someone take a park vehicle and go to the nearest feed store, then they could steal it and use it to get into the park? Damn it, they’re clever.”

“If they were in the park, though, why lure someone out with a park vehicle just so they could get back in?” Justus asked.

“Good point,” August said.

Jupiter pulled his phone out. “I’ve got a good idea about that, actually.” He poked around on the screen and then showed them the recording of the security cameras being covered up. Then he showed them the path of the security team. “The team walking that side of the park was coming to the petting zoo when whoever it was broke into the building. They may have been looking for you there, Ginny, and when they realized you weren’t there, they maybe had the feed tampering as a plan B.”

“True,” August said. “They could also have realized she wasn’t in the main area of the park and that she was in a restricted section for employees only, which the employee lot has direct access to.”

“So they’re learning,” she said. “They’re coming into the park during operating hours when humans are around and they’re messing with things to try to find me.”

She shivered as a mixture of fear and anger surged through her. August put his arm around her again, and while she found it comforting to be held by her soulmate, she didn’t really want to be comforted right now.

What she wanted was to be left alone.

Why couldn’t her grandfather just forget she’d ever been born?

Josiah Baldrich, alpha of the Pinewood Pack, stared at the males who’d come to him with bad news. His gaze was so powerful and full of menace that even these males, who could easily dispatch anyone with their strength and cunning, kept their heads tilted and their necks exposed in his presence.

He’d been alpha for almost forty years, and he wasn’t going to step down. The laws of the pack were few but unchangeable for the most part. When an alpha reached seventy, he or she had to step down and turn over leadership to the next in the family line.

Power was all he had since he’d lost his precious soulmate to illness. Where he’d once loved with every bone in his body, he now coveted power and would do anything, go to any lengths, to preserve it.

Even killing.

Once he’d crossed that line, once he’d taken out his eldest son and his mate, it had gotten easier. Blood madness, he’d heard his other son say before he’d killed him and his mate too.

Perhaps he was filled to the brim with blood madness, unable to discern right from wrong. But it mattered little now. The only thing that mattered was keeping the alpha position.

There were loose ends, however, and that meant his position was threatened. Once his family line was eradicated, he could change the law forcing alphas to step down. But as long as there were heirs, the laws were unchangeable.

Ginny.

Even thinking her name made him want to scream in rage.

She’d fled like a coward, and he’d finally tracked her to New Jersey.

He needed her.

She could run and hide, but he would find her. She was the lynchpin of his plans to change the laws and enter a new era of leadership. Alpha until death, and not a moment before.

“So you’re telling me,” he said, his voice gravely with his jackal’s annoyance, “that you didn’t find Ginny?”

His right-hand male, Diedrich, lifted his head from the submissive tilt. “We’re locating all the employee-only areas within the park. We found her scent at the petting zoo on one pass, but when we returned to investigate, it was clear she wasn’t there long.”

They’d moved on to plan B, which was to damage something within the park that would cause the employees—shifters living in plain sight of humans!—to leave to replace it, giving his people ample opportunity to steal a park vehicle and use it to infiltrate the employee-only areas they’d yet to be able to get close to.

Josiah let out a low snarl. Diedrich’s eyes flashed to the amber of his beast for a heartbeat, and then he lowered his head.