Chapter 3 Wake Up

"Am I really free, Talia?"

"Yes, sis. You're free and every one of those bastards who did this to you will pay with their lives." I fired up the Harley and pulled out of the lot; it was four-thirty in the morning, and we still had an hour or so of darkness left. I headed for the freeway, knowing there was a 24-hour Wal-Mart at the exit.

By the time the sun rose, we had gotten clothes appropriate for the road, and we were sitting in a booth at a pancake place. I ate my normal amount, which was a lot, while Tania struggled to finish two pancakes and a piece of bacon. "Tania, I hate to ask you, but I need to know." She nodded, afraid to look at me. "What happened the day you ran off?"

"I didn't run," she said. "I was given away by Beta Todd. He held something over my mouth, I blacked out, and when I woke up, I was locked in a room with a collar and chain."

Beta Todd, my father's trusted Beta male, the one who I looked to like a second father. The one who took over the Pack when my parents died.

The one I'd take pleasure in killing, slowly.

Special Agent Randall Meechum's POV

I rolled over in bed, my hand searching for the cellphone that had ruined my night. Picking it up, I caught the time on the charging station and radio; three thirty-two. It was the duty officer at the FBI Dallas field office. "Meechum," I said groggily.

"Wake up, Randall, time to work."

"What's going on."

"Fort Worth police are investigating a quadruple-homicide at the Kirk Street Budget Inn," he said. "Two of the dead are subjects of your investigation into human trafficking, and they've got a dozen women, some as young as thirteen, who were being pimped out by them."

"Fuck. Give me the address."

"I'll text it to you. Martinez wants a full-court press on this, she wants the ring taken down before they can disappear again." Rosalie Martinez was the Senior-Agent-In-Charge of the human trafficking group at the Dallas field office, and his direct supervisor. "Get out there as soon as you can."

"I'm moving." I got up and turned on the light, illuminating the bare shoulders and neck of the woman I'd picked up at the bar last night. Like most humans, she was fun, but I couldn't let my wolf loose with her. Not that my wolf was interested, he was waiting for his mate and never came out when I was banging my one-night-stands. I reached over and shook her shoulder. "Wake up, I've got to get to work and you need to leave," I said. "FBI stuff."

"I just want to SLEEP," she whined as I pulled the covers off her.

I smacked her ass lightly. "Get dressed," I said. "Leave your number on the pad by door if you want to hook up again." She groaned and rolled out of bed, grabbing her panties and her dress as she went to the bathroom in my apartment on the 22nd floor of the Dallas condominium complex. I had showered with her last night, mainly to get the heavy perfume she used off before we slept together. I walked to my dresser, pulled out some clothes and was putting my rubber-soled dress shoes on by the time she came out. "I had fun last night, and I'm sorry about this," I said as I tucked my .40-caliber Glock 22 into my holster, and strapped my backup, a .40-caliber Glock 27 into an ankle holster. I made sure my black dress pants hung properly, then grabbed my suit jacket.

"It's all right, I should have known sleeping with a Federal Agent wouldn't end up well," she said as she picked up her purse. "You're a great fuck, though, so I'm leaving my number."

"Do you need cab money?"

"No, I'll call an Uber. Thanks for the fun, Randall." I kissed her, running my hand down her back before patting her ass and sending her on the way. I used the bathroom, grabbed a Mountain Dew and a bag of chocolate mini-donuts, and was out the door. A few minutes later I was driving my Jeep Cherokee out of the underground parking garage and through the city streets.

The text message had the address and the phone led the way while I ate my Breakfast of Champions. My Mom would hold her hand over her heart and beg me to settle down with a nice she-wolf if she knew how I was taking care of myself, but my werewolf metabolism could handle it. Being a city wolf wasn't anything like how I grew up.

My parents were Alphas of the prosperous Sulphur River Pack, north of Dallas near the Oklahoma border. Our Pack ran a cattle ranch on almost ten thousand acres of land, plus we owned mineral rights to the oil below. I was the eighth of ten children and the fifth son, so I was well down the list of Alpha heirs. When I showed an interest in law enforcement after finishing law school, my father encouraged me to apply to the FBI. I'd been an agent for six years now, starting out in Minneapolis before transferring to the Dallas office and the Human Trafficking Division.

I picked Human Trafficking for two reasons; the practice disgusted me, and it gave me insight and access into how identities could be created or transferred. The FBI had a whole division dedicated to witness protection relocations, and if you just needed an identity it was even easier. Packs needed this because werewolves lived longer than humans and a person who was eighty years old and looked to be thirty raised suspicions. A few of the freelance forgers I'd come across had been "privatized" by our Pack, working with and training our Pack members in their techniques. We now supplied identity services to werewolves across the country. It was a valuable and profitable line of work for us.

I exited the freeway, soon rolling up to a piece of shit hotel in a bad part of town. It didn't shock me a prostitution operation was using a whole floor of this dump. I showed my badge to the cop at the entrance and pulled into the lot.

As soon as I got out of the car, I scented her. My wolf rushed forward, looking for his mate, and I followed the scent trail inside.

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Special Agent Randall Meechum's POV

The scent trail led me to an entrance on the west end of the building, which was propped open. I had my FBI credentials on my belt, and I checked in with the locals and got a quick overview of what had happened. As I went in, the scent got much stronger. I pushed my wolf back as I went up the stairwell. I stopped at the third floor and took a deep breath; it was stronger on this floor, but I could follow it up to the fourth as well.

I had to find her.

Opening the door to the third floor, I followed it down five doors on the right. The room was slightly opened, but empty. Her smell, and that of a human female, was strong. I closed the door behind me, drinking in her scent.

I put on gloves and started looking for clues. The room was clean, or at least as clean as could be expected for a shithole like this. The bed had been used, and I pulled and bagged some long blonde hairs from the two. I used dusting power to look for prints in the best places, the door handles and the bathroom faucets. I took pictures of the best prints, then wiped them off. I'd run them later if I couldn't find out who it was otherwise.

After ten minutes, I hadn't found anything I could use. I got a text message, Agent Martinez was meeting with the local homicide detectives and wondering where the hell I was. I walked out of the room, pulling the latex gloves off and putting them in my jacket pocket.

Upstairs, the place was a hotbed of crime scene technicians and cops. "Over here, Meechum," I heard. I walked into a room where the big shots were.

"Are we advising or running this, boss," I asked as I saw my Rosalie talking to the Chief of Police.

"Advising and assisting," she said. "The homicide is theirs, but we will be helping with the interrogations of the prostitutes and the money trail."

"Four of the women we found on this floor have told us they were being held in sexual slavery," a detective said. "Four more aren't talking, and five are missing. The only one who wasn't seen after the shooting, her name was Star, not that it means anything."

"Any surveillance tapes?"

"Hell no, the computer hard drive crashed a few days ago and they haven't gotten it fixed yet," he said with an eye roll. "We're working the front desk people, there's no way a prostitution ring rolls in without help from the hotel. The other four girls who are missing took off to avoid the cops, we're looking for them. We've got descriptions from the other girls but no real names."

It was true, most of the girls were given a first name, if even that. Whether recruited, abducted or sold, the girls who fell under the control of Dirk Carlson and his wife Peggy lost all control over their lives. They moved girls from town to town, using Craigslist and social media to reach their clientele. They were tough to track, because they would set up at sundown and be gone by morning. "Meechum, you assist Homicide on the deaths. Kent and I will run with the interviews of the girls."

"On it, boss," I said.

The lead homicide detective, Carl Anders, pulled me out of the room. "Let me walk you through the room and get your impressions," he said. He pointed into the open room across the hall. "This is where Dirk and Peggy set up operations."

I looked in, the cash box was still on the bed, nothing looked out of place. "Not a robbery," I said.

"Nope, there was over five grand in the box." We walked down the hall a little. There was a chalk outline of a gun. "Colt 1911, fired three times. Prints on the gun and the casings match Dirk. First victim here."