Rae was asking him a question, raising her voice over the plane’s engines. “How did the Shifters get found so fast? Carson looked for two years. You had two days.”
“Five days,” Zander corrected her. The front of his brain answered her while deep down inside his Shifter beast was becoming a roiling ball of fury. “I started making inquiries when we were still on Carson’s boat. I know a lot of people who know a lot of people. It’s like the Guardian Network, except it’s not cryptic in a computer and no one needs a password.”
Broderick laughed out loud. “He means he has people like Dylan Morrissey and Kendrick Shaughnessy doing him favors. Plus the secret weapon. Tiger.”
Zander shrugged, pretending rage wasn’t hot in his chest. “Like I said. I know people who know people.”
Broderick sent Rae an understanding look. “What he’s not telling you is that Dylan’s already been hunting down rogue Shifters, little by little, and he has resources, both human and Shifter. Then there’s Tiger.”
“I’ve heard of him,” Rae said. “He came to our Shiftertown with you, but I didn’t meet him.”
“Tiger’s not right in the head.” Broderick tapped his own skull. “But he’s brilliant. He’s the result of stupid human experiments—they were trying to create a super-Shifter and abandoned Tiger when they couldn’t handle him. He’s got shit going on between his ears that no one understands, but when he’s sent to track someone, they get tracked. He probably already had a bead on these guys when Zander asked about them.”
“Tiger’s a good person,” Zander broke in. “Better than a lot of so-called ‘normal’ Shifters I know. Not that any Shifter is normal.”
“Thanks a lot,” Rae said, but he saw the glint of amusement in her eyes. As upset as she was, she could still banter with Zander. He liked that.
Or would if he wasn’t so pissed off. Zander willed the plane to go faster so he could be on the ground and kick some ass.
The Olympic Peninsula, west of Seattle, was a place of rugged mountains, deep forests, and vast beauty. A huge chunk of it was a national park, which would be full of hikers and campers in the summer and, apparently, a bunch of un-Collared, violent Shifters.
The rogue Shifters had chosen to set up camp in an isolated area where no roads led but that would be easily accessible to wolves, wildcats, and bears. Eoin told Zander and his party this when they met up on an empty beach, down the hill from where Marlo had landed. How many were out there, Eoin didn’t know for sure yet. Eoin hadn’t wanted to risk his trackers—led by his own sons—to spy on feral Shifters without backup.
Dylan Morrissey and the Austin Shifters arrived shortly after Zander’s party did, brought in by one of Marlo’s pilot friends. Dylan was a Feline Shifter with a lot of black-maned lion in him. In the past, he’d been leader of the Austin Shiftertown, but he’d “retired” in favor of his son, Liam. Humans believed Dylan retired anyway, but Dylan considered himself now free to dominate the entire territory of South Texas. He put other Shiftertown leaders in place and kept his eye on everything that went on in the area. He also was in thick with Shiftertown leaders and Guardians throughout the country, moving like a liaison between them.
While Dylan was loyal to his sons, Liam and Sean, he was an alpha over other alphas, and not many Shifters could oppose him. He had resources that made Zander’s network look puny—Zander had become one of Dylan’s resources, whatever Broderick might think, not the other way around.
Then there was Tiger. He stood on the isolated beach as the others gathered, his back to them while he stared out to sea. Green cliffs rose around the cove, covered with thick tall trees. The wind blowing off the surf was cold, in spite of the rising summer sun.
Tiger was motionless, sunlight glinting on his orange and black hair. Tiger was as big as Zander when they were both in human form, and the Bengal tiger he became was massive.
Zander broke from the group to approach Tiger quietly, though he made sure the man knew he was coming. Sneaking up on Tiger was always a bad idea.
“Hey, big guy,” Zander said.
Tiger didn’t turn. He continued to gaze at the ocean, the surf pounding and curling to run up on the empty beach. Waves slid along the pale sand then eased back out to meet up with the churning water again.
“What are you looking at?” Zander asked. He shaded his eyes but saw nothing on the waves. No boats, planes in the sky, nothing.
“I have never seen the ocean before,” Tiger said.
Zander started to ask, “What, never?” But he stopped himself. Tiger had spent the first decades of his life in a cage, never even let out of a basement. From what Zander had heard, he’d taken a long time to adjust to simply being outside. Dylan now kept a close eye on him, though from what Zander had seen, Tiger did pretty much what he wanted. He helped Dylan out of gratitude, not submission.
“It’s beautiful,” Zander said. “There’s nothing like the Pacific.”
Tiger gave him a look that said he didn’t have any idea what Zander meant by that but was too polite to say so.
“I will bring Carly here,” Tiger said, turning back to the water. “And Seth. They will like it.”
Carly was Tiger’s diminutive Texas-girl mate who could do anything she wanted with him. Seth was Tiger’s cub, born not long ago. Tiger’s granite hard face and fierce yellow eyes softened a long way when he said Seth’s name.
“So how’s fatherhood treating you?” Zander asked him. “How is the little guy?”
Some Shifters found it intrusive for another Shifter to ask after a cub, especially one as newborn as Tiger’s. The protectiveness that kept cubs alive and away from volatile Shifters was strong.
Tiger, however, only let his mouth twitch into a hint of a smile. “He is robust.” Pride rang in his voice. “He keeps us awake all the time, yells louder than anyone in the house. He will be a strong Shifter.”
Tiger’s eyes were alight. If he’d been human, he’d have brought out a smartphone with a boatload of pictures on it and started showing Zander every one of them. But Tiger and devices didn’t go together, and a man with perfect recall didn’t need photos.
“Congratulations,” Zander said with sincerity. “You deserve this.”