It didn’t hurt that they kept their rotations coordinated around him, letting him know Logan’s game plan. He had to give it to Logan though, it was a good plan. The Ramjis were fast, great trackers and strong and this plan would have worked on anyone else. Unfortunately for Logan, Kale had made enemies in damn near every species and was always prepared for this type of bullshit.
He moved back into the crowd or early morning walkers and watched as the Ramjis took after the scent. Not even thirty seconds later a large group of Sentinels took off after them, confirming his suspicions. This had been a set up.
Shit.
Fine. They wanted to make this difficult. He could handle that, he decided as he shot another look at the line of aging brownstones as he kept matched his pace with the crowd. He’d finish the job, both jobs soon. He just had to be a little patient.
********
Chris risked a look over his shoulder and had to laugh at the amount of demons, shifters and minions chasing after him. The minions were the easiest to spot, they were the ones lagging behind. They might be fast, but they were still human and wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rest of them. They were going to be easy to pick off, or at least he’d make it easy for his backup to grab them, he decided.
Thankfully he’d worked in Boston enough times to know some shortcuts and most of the places humans should avoid, but didn’t. He cut across a busy intersection, ignoring the honking horns, jumped a hood and kept moving his ass, knowing that he needed to get them as far away from the compound and take out as many of them as he could before they figured out that this was a setup.
The few that already decided to cut their losses and head back had already been discretely taking down by his backup or his father. But the bastards following him didn’t care that Izzy was nowhere in sight. The ones who’d scented her on him knew he’d been in contact with her and were more than willing to settle on him if it meant they might use him to get to her.
Never f**king happening.
He’d kill every last one of them with his bare hands before he let them near her. He may not be able to be the man that she needed him to be, but he was going to make damn sure that she was okay and so was their baby if that’s what she really wanted and he knew it was.
His mate was going to have a little girl, a little girl he would never disappoint or hurt, but one he would also never see or hold. As he cut down the narrow alleyway between a pawnshop and a Chinese restaurant he wondered if she’d have Izzy’s hair or his. Would she be a short cute little thing like her mother or would she be tall like him. Cursing as he jumped over a fallen trash can, he wondered if his little girl was going to need someone to hold her at three in the morning and hum to her to help her fall back to sleep after her bottle the way Marc had when he was a baby or if she was going to wake up and need someone to come scare the monsters out from under her bed when she was six.
Now wasn’t the time for this bullshit, he reminded himself. He needed to keep his focus if he was going to keep them safe. He headed towards the dead end at the end of the alley and decided it was time to get rid of the minions. He forced himself to run faster as he approached the ten foot high brick wall and when he was about ten feet from it he shifted course and headed for the wall to his right. He jumped and quickly kicked off the wall and reached up, grabbing the rough edge of the brick wall and pulled himself over.
“Son of a bitch!” he heard a man yell and knew it was a human, because the shifters and demons were still on his ass.
“Freeze!” he heard his backup yell and he knew the human problem was taken care of. Now it was time to get rid of the rest of the riffraff so that he could haul his ass home before he did something he’d regret.
He chanced a look over his shoulder as he headed towards the long ago forgotten docks and warehouses and wondered if Kale Quinn was currently on his ass.
God, he hoped so. He’d love to take out the biggest threat to his mate so that Eric and his team had one less thing to worry about as they moved Izzy out of the country.
All he saw was a group of men and women determined to get their hands on him. He had no clue if Kale Quinn was back there since no one knew what the man looked like other than a few vague descriptions, but he doubted the man was. Based on his reputation alone, Chris knew the man would never follow along with this group. He would have already figured out a way to cut Chris off and take him down. The fact that he hadn’t made Chris nervous.
He hoped the bastard hadn’t been able to cut Joshua off and got his hands on Izzy. No, there was no way his father would have allowed that to happen, he reminded himself as he headed for small rust colored warehouse in front of him. He ignored the heavily chained front doors and went for the boarded up window and launched himself at it.
The board shattered, splintering apart with a loud crack as he broke through it. His sore ribs sent up a reminder to be more careful, but he ignored the warning and kept his ass moving until he made it to the middle of the stained cracked cement floor. That’s when he stopped and turned.
His gun was already drawn by the time the first shifter, a female, jumped through the window and landed gracefully on her feet. She quickly moved further in the room towards him as she released her claws.
“Where is she, Sentinel?” she demanded with contempt as she looked around the empty warehouse. When she tilted her head slightly and inhaled deeply he knew she was trying to scent out his backup. She wouldn’t find any, at least not yet.
He watched as the rest of them made their way into the building. A few demons that he couldn’t quite figure out what they were broke open the door and came in. There were ten of them and they all looked f**king eager as they formed a loose circle around him. The rest of the shifters and demons apparently thought that was a good idea and joined, closing the circle and blocking him in.
They eyed each other warily as they closed the circle even more and he wondered how long it would take for them to start fighting over him. Probably when they realized he wouldn’t be giving up Izzy.
“Where is she?” one of the demons he couldn’t place asked and he noticed that he hadn’t bothered to eye the competition. Then again none of his comrades had and that was telling. Without knowing what they were or what they were capable of, Chris knew they were the ones to watch out for.
“Where’s who?” Chris asked, keeping his gun by his side.
“Don’t play coy with us, Sentinel. Tell us where the bitch is,” a shifter demanded.
“It would probably help if you told me who you were after,” Chris said, barely resisting the temptation to put a bullet through the bastard’s head for the crude reference towards his Munchkin.
“This is a waste of time,” one of the demons said as he gestured to his allies to step forward. “We’ll take him to the Master and let him sort this out.”
The female shifter stepped forward. “Why should you be allowed to take him? The Master I work for is just as capable of extracting the information.”
Oh goody, they were going to fight over him, he thought dryly as he chanced a peek at his watch. He hoped like hell Eric was using this little distraction and had Izzy at the airport by now. They’d probably face the same type of bullshit waiting for them there, but with the cloying scents of thousands of humans, security and private entrances and the private plane they should be able to avoid all this bullshit and get her safely out of the country.