Black Hills Desperado (Black Hills Wolves Book 3) (2 page)

As she turned to address the cop, her weapon was wrenched away and the butt caught her in the jaw. Xio dropped like a bag of rocks. Her wolf wasn’t helping her out of this one. That was what she got for letting her ego get involved.

“Good morning, Miss Davis. Let me introduce myself. I’m Special Agent Marcus Cazador of the FBI. Didn’t anyone ever tell you banks are most often robbed within the first few minutes of opening? We figured you’d be here, after the invitation we’d extended. Safest bank in Texas. I can see you
liked
the billboard at the port of entry. You and I have a lot to talk about, but business first.”

He’d used her real name, one she hadn’t heard in ten years. It sounded strange coming from his mouth, but also right, as though he’d been born to say it. Not good. This man was dangerous in so many ways. “Bite me.”

“You have no idea how much I’d like to.” A knee pressed down into the center of her back, and he yanked her arms behind her and slapped cuffs around her wrists. He rolled her to her back, sat her up, and tugged the mask from her face. “At last we meet.” And then he spoke the words she’d hoped never to hear. “You have the right to remain silent.”

Ten years earlier

Xio stomped down the road, pissed for more reasons than she could count. Since she’d dropped out of school, Magnum, the pack’s Alpha, had been on her case about everything. Get her GED. Find a mate. Be a good little wolfie.
Screw him
. She didn’t blame his son for running away. The cocksucker would drive anyone to it. Who put him in charge of her life, anyway?

Well, she was running away, too. Drew wasn’t the only one with smarts enough to get out.

“Want a ride, China Doll?” The voice, with a heavy Spanish accent, came from her left. A cherry-red motorcycle pulled up alongside her and stopped. Of course, she’d heard him coming from miles away and hadn’t needed her wolf hearing for that. It was why she’d decided to hit the highway after she’d ditched her companion, the man Magnum had assigned to keep an eye on her. She had great knot-tying skills, and it would be a while before he caught up to her. By then, she’d be long gone—courtesy of her new amigo.

What the man on the bike called her amounted to a racial slur and insult, but Xio let it pass because she needed his help. Even though she was only one-quarter Asian, her long, dark hair and almond-shaped eyes dominated her features, to the point she’d been mistaken more than once for full-blooded Chinese. She could understand his assumption. Whatever. He could call her Lucy, for all she cared, but only once. The man was her ticket out of Los Lobos—and on a Night Rod.

Xio turned to him to let him know she wouldn’t let it pass a second time. “Some people would consider that rude.”

“Would they? How about you? Do you consider it rude?”

“Not this time. Let’s leave it at that, but don’t do it again.” She glanced down at a Bowie knife she kept sheathed on the side of her boot. The boots had been a gift from her twin brother, Xan, sent to her via mail from somewhere unknown, after he’d joined the CIA. Custom-made to hold a sticker, something she handled quite well, they were her most cherished possession. As long as she had them, all would be well.

His gaze traveled down and stopped on the bone handle, inlaid with a jade dragon. A huge grin spread on his face. “Something tells me you can be more than a handful if you want to be.”

“Test me and find out, cowboy.” Not that she needed a blade. She and her brother had been taught to fight since they could walk—the one thing Magnum had done right. Aikido, karate, judo, all the fine defensive arts, and a few of the killing ones, too.

She could be lethal without the blade, but it got her point across a lot quicker, so she always carried it. Besides, with her petite frame and delicate features, it kept the predators from mistaking her for prey.

And he was right about being a handful. Restraint had never been one of her strengths. Her wolf was wild and had a bit of a temper. Some said she was Alpha material—if she could learn a little self-control. Yeah, like that was going to happen. Besides, to be an Alpha, you kind of had to hook up with one, and she had no inclination to seek out another pack or find a mate.

No man would ever control her. They could try to tell her until they were blue in the face that she would stand beside them, but she’d yet to see an Alpha that let his mate do that on equal terms. Magnum certainly hadn’t. That was why she was getting out of Los Lobos, before Magnum got any ideas and used her to make a political play with another pack, enslaving her to some wolf. Xio lifted a brow. “So, you’re going my way?”

“Just point me in the direction, beautiful.”

The rider looked to be about ten years her senior, but not hard on the eyes, attractive in that bad-boy way that made her heart pound and her stomach flutter. Full-sleeve tats covered his arms, and eyes the color of ink stared at her in pure lust. It didn’t take a genius to know what he wanted. And if it got her out of this state, away from the Alpha pack, she’d let him have it. She wasn’t exactly a virgin anymore, anyway.

Screw pack law. Screw living in this godforsaken place in the middle of nowhere
. Xio gathered her long hair, twisted it into a knot at the nape of her neck, and grabbed the motorcycle helmet the stranger offered, placing it on her head.

She was tired of being told whom she could date, where she could go, what she could do, and being watched by the other wolves as though she needed a babysitter. She was nineteen, a free spirit, and didn’t need them up her ass and in her business anymore. She’d live independently from here on out. Yes, she’d lost her parents as a child, but so had her brother, and they’d let him go off and live his life.

Just because the pack had taken it upon themselves to raise Xander and her, bouncing them from house to house, whatever place was convenient, didn’t mean they owned her. Even so, the Hills had never been home. Now with Xan gone, they felt like a prison.

“Where to, sweetheart?”

“Anywhere but here.” She’d leave wearing nothing but her cutoff shorts, black combat boots, and the thin T-shirt she’d stormed out of the lodge wearing, and that would be more than enough. The stranger didn’t look like the kind that would be opposed to a little shoplifting if she needed to stock up on supplies. If what he’d ridden up on reflected what he had in the bank, she could do worse. She couldn’t risk tapping into her bank accounts and triggering an enforcer pursuit. Her money didn’t matter anyway. It looked like she might’ve just found herself a bad-ass sugar daddy.

She normally wouldn’t go anywhere with a stranger. But Magnum had caught her smoking a joint behind the lodge, in a rather intimate post-coital moment with an enforcer’s son. And after the Alpha had told her to stay away from him. Something about him not being good enough for her.

The term off-limits had worked like bait, and she hadn’t been able to leave him alone. To be honest, Magnum had been right. The enforcer’s son wasn’t good enough for her, and her wolf had found the sex ho-hum. What a way to lose her cherry, and that should have been regret enough, but Magnum had made living with her mistake worse.

Since her mother had been human, not wolf, and the hybrid genetics tossed the possibility of an unexpected pregnancy into the equation, he’d ordered her to piss on one of those pregnancy tests every week for the last month.
Fucker
.

To punish her further, he’d clamped down on her freedom, and made it his mission to find her a mate—someone worthy of her family’s genetics.

Fat chance that would happen now. He’d have to find her first. She smiled at the man on the bike, who cocked a brow. Magnum was going to explode when he discovered she’d escaped and the thought turned her smile into a grin. She swung her leg over the seat and settled behind him, closing her eyes. Inhaling deeply. The stranger—her new best friend—smelled like trouble. Whatever. Couldn’t be worse than what she planned to leave behind.
Adios, Los Lobos
.

“What’s your name, handsome?”

“Diego Sanchez. What’s yours?”

“Lena Ming. You ever been to prison?” No sense in giving him her real name. For all she knew, he lied about his as well.

“I pity the man who ever tries to put me there.”

A shiver ran through her. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her breasts to his back. It didn’t take wolf senses to tell this man was dangerous, and that suited her just fine. Actually, it excited her a little. “I think we are going to get along great,” she leaned in and whispered in his ear before the bike pulled back onto the highway. “Take me away, cowboy.”

From that moment on, she never looked back.

“Okay, let’s review the charges you’re facing before you tell me to go fuck myself again.”

Xio rolled her eyes. “Whatever gets you off.”

Agent Marcus Cazador hadn’t sat at the table since he’d come in, but continued to pace in front of her. He stopped, placed both palms on the surface, and leaned in until he was almost nose-to-nose with her. The muscle in his jaw twitched. Even so, his next words came out so softly, she had to strain to hear him.

“Two counts of armed robbery for the banks in the United States. The Mexican government wants you for sixteen more. Assault with a deadly weapon. Possession of an illegal firearm. Discharging said firearm in a public location. Smuggling of illegal substances into the United States, fraud, shoplifting, and that knife you carried in your boot had a blade at least ten inches long.

“Personal protection.” As for the smuggling, not her fault. She hadn’t known Diego’s boys had a drug shipment in the BMW, or she’d have put the proverbial brakes on that. Yes, she might have smoked a joint in the past, but she’d grown up since, and didn’t agree with the stuff Diego moved over the border and pushed to kids. Call her traditional. It wasn’t her thing and she’d told him countless times not to involve her in it.
Bastard
.

“Why am I not buying that?”

She opened her mouth, but he raised his hand to cut her off.

“Regardless what it’s for, it is way over legal length. There’s more, but what I listed will get you an easy three-hundred-to-life. This looks real bad for you…but I can help you, Xio.” He lowered his voice further and glanced at the two-way glass. “You’re in deep shit. I’ve contacted your Alpha, and if you don’t fully cooperate, I have orders to administer punishment according to pack law. That makes three-hundred-to-life look like a party in the Bahamas.”

“There’s always a
but
, isn’t there?” She sat back and blew out a breath. He had her. Without his help, she was screwed. It would behoove her to stow her attitude and hear what he had to say. The pack hadn’t raised a fool. “Go on.”

“We’ve been after Diego Sanchez for a long time, and you’re his girl. An insider.”

“What’s Diego got to do with this?”

“We want to go across the border and take down your boy, but the Mexican government won’t let us pass go and collect two hundred dollars, not unless we have solid evidence to present to them. He’s got half the Mexican government in his pocket and the small stuff isn’t going to do. I need something substantial—irrefutable.”

“Why not his men? You captured two at the bank.”

“They were executed by their cell mates last night. Since you are female and were alone, we lucked out. But don’t hold your breath. You’re next. If you don’t cooperate, and go to prison, there’s a good chance there won’t be enough left of you to administer pack justice to.” His nostrils flared and his eyes dilated as he stared at her.

The heat seemed to reflect back on her. Xio squirmed.
Noooo. Please no. Is nature playing a sick joke?
Pieces of the puzzle snapped into place—why she’d been so bent since El Paso.
Him. It was him
. How the hell did she manage to get herself into these situations?

Time to see if her instincts were on target. “So you’ve got a boner for Diego and want me to help—in exchange for what? A private cell where he can’t find me? You know if I go to prison, he will find me, and I will die.”

“We’ll put you in the witness-protection program, give you a chance to start over, but don’t think for a minute I won’t be watching your every move.” He growled low in his throat. The vibrations pulsed through her body, and she barely stopped herself from groaning.
Shitty timing
.

“I’d rather stay with my pack.”

“That can be arranged, and it’s not a bad idea. You and I know they are better equipped to hide and protect you. So, will you turn evidence against Diego? The cartel? Provide us the information we need to get cooperation from the Mexican government?”

Xio swallowed. She was so dead. Diego wouldn’t let this go. He’d search the globe if he had to, but eventually he’d find her. Her only chance, and it was a small one, would be to exist as a wolf where her pack resided, and Agent Cazador offered the one way she might be able to save her hide. “I will.” Besides, Diego had already broken her trust by hiding the drugs in her car. He didn’t deserve her loyalty anymore.

“You worry about helping us take him down, and I’ll make sure you are safe.”

She’d no doubt he would try. A wolf would protect its mate to the death.

***

Ten months later

As they left the back of the courthouse with an armed escort, Xio looked both ways.

“Relax. We have agents everywhere.”

“You want me to drop my guard when I just put Diego away for life in an American prison? Do you have any idea how pissed he is right now? He’s going to kill me. Just because he’s locked up doesn’t mean he can’t reach me. We’re talking about the Mexican cartel.”

“That’s why I’m going with you.”

Xio stopped in her tracks. When he’d said he’d be watching her every move, she’d assumed it would be from a distance, with all the agency’s high-tech gadgets and technology, or with spies. Not in person. “Excuse me?” She turned toward him. Did he know? It didn’t usually happen like that. In most cases, you discovered your mate after you’d had sex. It wasn’t that way with Marcus. Even as he was arresting her, she’d felt it, the pull. She could deny it as much as she liked; that didn’t change anything. He was her mate and if he went with her, they’d eventually give in to the attraction. “You can’t. The FBI needs you here.”