Jace (River Pack Wolves 2) (Paranormal Romance) (3 page)

Usually, her wolf had only a mild interest in the men that Piper enjoyed. And she’d enjoyed
a lot.
She figured a variety of male bed partners would make up for her vow to never take a mate—that somehow a large quantity of lovers might compensate for the lack of that one, mythical, magical shifter mate who was supposed to rock her world. It hadn’t quite worked out that way, so she shouldn’t be surprised that her wolf was all hot and heavy for the first shifter she’d kissed in
years.
And when Jace’s tall, broad-shouldered body had responded to her epic diversionary kiss—both she and her wolf became
very
aware that he wasn’t
small
in any dimension. Piper was certain any woman in his bed would be well satisfied. 

Her wolf probably thought this meant something. Like she was reconsidering
the vow
—which she definitely was not. But her wolf wouldn’t shut up about it, still panting and stomping her paws and craving this shifter’s fangs in her flesh, magically binding them forever. Even now, as Piper climbed the stairs, her wolf was drooling over the man’s sculpted V-shaped back, which tapered smoothly down to his pajama pants and ended in a tight rear end that moved like muscular seduction under those thin flannels. Her wolf was dead-sure that bedding this man would be a pleasure like she’d never known.

Okay, Piper could see her wolf’s point about that.

It was a good thing she had put on a show of trying to seduce him because her real arousal scent would have given her away. While all the talk of hot sex was just that—
talk
—a part of her couldn’t help wishing this Jace River hunk had been a little less…
controlled.

She kept her sigh of regret for lost chances inside as Jace led her down the hallway, ostensibly to her brother’s room. She had to prepare herself for this, now that the distraction of being caught by a ridiculously hot shifter had scrambled her focus.

Finding Noah.
That was all she needed in life. Make sure her kid brother—the good one, the only Wilding to ever give a damn about her—had not actually wandered off and gotten himself killed somewhere in Afghanistan. Once she knew he was safely running normal missions—as if being deployed was ever safe, but still—then she could go back to her life of traveling to exotic locales to track down the bad guys and bed down the good ones. And ignoring the world of shifters as much as possible. Then her wolf could go back to sleep and stop dreaming of mates she would never have.

Jace tapped lightly at the door to Daniel’s room. Piper scented her brother’s woodsy-yet-charcoal-undertone natural smell through the rough-carved wood. The Army must have taught him to sleep light because it only took a moment before a shuffle inside the room preceded the door cracking open.

Daniel’s hair was bed-tousled, but his eyes were sharp. They landed on Jace first. “Hey, man, what’s up?” But the last of his words faded as his gaze found Piper. He rolled his eyes, then briefly squeezed them shut, like the mere sight of her was causing him gastrointestinal pain.

Nice to see you too, bro.
She bit down on her lips to keep the retort inside. Be cool, get in, get what you need, get out. This had been her mantra all the way up the mountain. She just needed to execute on it now.

Jace seemed on top of the interaction, but he just whispered, “We need to talk.”

The house had already slept through her scuffle with Jace downstairs, but it would still be better to get behind closed doors before they started this conversation. In case it got a little heated.

Daniel shook his head but stepped back, gesturing them both into his room. He didn’t bother with a light—the moon put a silvery glow on everything enough to see—he just closed the door behind them. The River pack had a pretty nice setup here. High-end rustic furniture. Real paintings on the wall. Thick tapestries as throw rugs. Someone had money, but they used it in understated ways.

Daniel folded his arms and looked to Jace. “What’s she done now?”

Jace’s eyes narrowed. “Couldn’t honestly tell you. But she’s got a message I think you might want to hear.”

Piper lifted an eyebrow in Jace’s direction.
So…
the River brother wasn’t going to spill anything about their slap-slap-kiss downstairs. Interesting choice. She snuck a glance at Jace’s sleep pants—they were no longer sporting the erection that made her mouth water. He was probably trying to forget the whole thing as quickly as possible.

Daniel turned to her. “Why are you here, Piper?”

She opted to cut straight to it. “Noah is missing.”

Daniel’s arms unlocked. “What do you mean, missing?”

“Missing, as in
not found.
As in
not where he’s supposed to be.
Come on, Daniel, I know you went to college. They must have taught you something there.”

He growled at her, and she had to keep her smile in check. And remember her purpose.

“I just skyped with him a couple weeks ago, when I arrived stateside,” Daniel said, his tone solidly in the
Piper is freaking for no reason
position. “They probably just shut down the comms at the MWR. He said they had some kind of security breach and might not be able to communicate for a while.”

Piper frowned. And Jace was giving her the side-eye like he thought she broke into his house and then
lied
about Noah going missing. But Noah hadn’t said anything about the MWR—Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Center—being closed when they last texted, five days ago.

“I don’t contact him through the
Rec Center,
Daniel,” she said, trying to match his patronizing tone. “And I’m telling you, he’s gone radio silent.”

Daniel folded his arms. “Oh, that’s right. You’re the
spy girl
now.”

“Counterintelligence.” She glared at him, fully aware of how little he thought of her work, even though it was key to keeping grunts like him and Noah alive. It was like he thought she was CIA or NSA or something. A rival agency, not support. “But hey, thanks for playing and keeping up with the pieces on the board.”

He snarled, but she just ignored that… because something gnawed at her about what he said. The skype setups at the MWR were how Noah normally phoned home, but Piper wasn’t “home” in Seattle any more than absolutely necessary—and when she was abroad, it was never anywhere she could openly skype with a U.S. Army grunt in some public internet cafe. That was the whole reason she had set up their back-channel comm system in the first place—so she could keep tabs on her kid brother while he was off fighting the bad guys in the worst parts of the world. Their calls had started out weekly, but serving your country generally involved long stretches of extreme boredom punctuated by brief moments of sheer terror. Soon the check-ins were daily, and sometimes they text-chatted for over an hour. And he never missed a check-in unless he was in the middle of a firefight.

If the MWR was actually down… she would have heard about it. If nothing else, Noah would have reported the moaning and complaining of his fellow grunts.

“Wait… you’re
counterintelligence?”
Jace asked, bringing her out of her rabbit-hole of thought about that little mystery. He was surprised, but there was more respect in his voice than she ever got from Daniel. Or their father.

She gave Jace a tight smile. “Defense Civilian Intelligence Specialist, working for the Army abroad,” she clarified quickly, remembering Jace said he was Army, too. Or she supposed ex-Army now with the River brothers’ security business. She did do a
little
research before she decided to break in. “Which means I’m boot dust to some.” Piper threw a glare at Daniel, then turned back to Jace, who was keeping a pretty good poker face about the whole thing. “Mostly I just do collective CI—the kind of counterintelligence that collects intel on the bad guy spies. I’m not in offensive operations.” Which meant she wasn’t out there actively engaging enemy agents to turn them or playing double agent and feeding them false intel. Of course, if she
were,
she certainly wouldn’t say so. And there were times when that line got pretty fuzzy.

“I guess that explains why you didn’t use the doorbell.” Jace’s smirk said he was more amused than offended by that now. She supposed that was good. And that flirty smile of his was doing things to her nether parts that she really needed to ignore.
Focus, Piper.

Daniel snorted—his derision was a lot more familiar. “You just broke in, didn’t you? Nice.” He shook his head like she was a delinquent teen he didn’t know what to do with. “Look, big sister—why don’t you just use your fancy spy skills to figure out the big conspiracy about where Noah’s been reassigned and let the rest of us sleep?”

“He’s not just on an op somewhere!” Piper shot back. “He would have told me.” Plus this MWR thing was ramping up her nerves. Why would Noah say that… unless he expected to go dark for some reason? And why not tell
her?
Warn her, at least. So she didn’t panic. Like she was.
Right now.

Daniel gave her his best impression of their father—all authority and derision toward the little girl who was such a disappointment to him. “Maybe he found something better to do than chat with his sister. Or they confiscated his phone. Or maybe, just maybe, he dropped that extremely expensive satellite phone you gave him in the latrine.”

His smirk and his words were just making her stomach wind tighter and tighter. All that was possible… but she didn’t believe any of it.

“Right,” she huffed. “Has to be a phone down the crapper. Because nothing else ever goes sideways in Afghanistan.” Her glare darkened, and if she didn’t know Daniel could easily take her in a fight, she was tempted to shift and give him a face full of claws for not showing more concern about his little brother. Because something could be very wrong, and as far as she could tell, he cared more about giving her crap than he did about Noah’
s safety. Daniel was more a junior version of their dad each time she saw him. It had been a year since the last time—obviously nowhere near long enough.

Daniel just held her glare, not backing down.

“You know what?” Piper hissed. “You’re right. This was obviously a mistake.” She turned on her heel and got halfway to the door before a hand stopped her with a gentle tug on her elbow. Daniel knew better than to touch her, so she reeled in her instinct to whirl with a handful of claws out.

It was Jace. “Hang on,” he said, glancing back at Daniel. “If Noah’s missing, I meant what I said about finding him. We went after Cassie and brought her back. We’ll do the same for him.”

Piper pulled her elbow out of his grasp, but gently. “I know. I’m not entirely out of the Wildling pack loop. I heard about what you guys did for Cassie.” She glared at Daniel. “There are a few Wildings who still think I’m worth talking to.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of God!” He pointed a finger at her.
“You
were the one who decided to leave—”

“As if you even noticed—”

“How could I not
notice?
You stormed out like a class five Hurricane!”

“You
don’t have to deal with the almighty Colonel—”

“I
deal with him all the time. Somehow, it’s never a problem.”

“No, it wouldn’t be,
for you,
now would it?”

“Whatever!” He threw out his hands. “It’s never
you,
is it, Piper? You’ve always done exactly what you—”

“Enough!”
Jace’s voice cut through their squabbling like an alpha command—Piper winced, but she noted with satisfaction that Daniel did, too. And that
tone…
it sent a thrill through her wolf that had her lady parts a-flutter again. Piper shoved that aside. This wasn’t an alpha thing, she told herself. It was an
age
thing—Jace was twenty-eight, according to his bio, and Piper was only twenty-five, Daniel a mere twenty-three. Noah was just a baby at twenty-one, which was why she had looked out for him her whole life—because no one else did, and he was just a kid when their mom died. 

No one deserves to grow up without a mom—o
ne of the many reasons she’d decided never to take a mate.

Jace was staring them down, each in turn, and Piper’s insides were warring as to whether they liked that commanding look or hated it. Probably both. And she hated that she liked it, so that was mixed in there, too.
Gah!
She was a freaking mess with this. Piper backhanded her wolf’s hungry pant for more of Jace’s commanding touch, in words and flesh. Her wolf went off to sulk in the corner.

Jace let out a low, long breath of patience. “I do not give a
fuck
what your family problems are,” he finally ground out. “But I care very much about whether I’ve got Army shifters going missing. Or not. Both of you need to knock this shit off and work together to figure this out. Then you can go back to whatever passes for family relations in the Wilding pack. But not before we get solid intel on whether your brother is missing.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t know my sister like I do, Jace. She lies for a living now, but she’s always been a manipulator. You can’t trust her.”

Piper cringed—partly because it was true, but mostly because she was afraid it would turn Jace against her just as he was starting to come around. He turned back to her, doubt creating shadows on his face.

“Soldiers get reassigned all the time,” Jace said, carefully. “Maybe he’s just gone dark for a mission. What makes you think he’s gone missing?”

“Because I talk to him
every day.”
She lifted her chin to Daniel. “We have an actual relationship, unlike this hot mess.” Back to Jace, with a lowered voice. “He wouldn’t just go dark with no warning. I swear. Something is wrong.” That much was the God’s honest truth. She prayed he would hear it in her voice.

Jace frowned and nodded. “All right.” He took a breath. “In the morning, we’ll discuss this with my brothers and make a game plan—”

“Morning?”
Piper’s voice hiked up. “Why do you think I’m here in the middle of the night? We need to get on this, like yesterday!” She tried to bring her voice back down to reasonable. “Daniel has access to the Joint Base. He’s got clearance. I can’t even get on site, but
he
could get in there anytime and access their records, see what’s happened—”