Randi reached forward, moving her finger over the trackpad until the cursor lined up with the Play button. She glanced at Britt, and he nodded.

The video began to play, the grainy green image indecipherable at first. Then the camera adjusted, and Britt could make out a wooden lean-to in the background and patchy grass in the foreground. The camera panned out, and he could see a chain-link fence enclosed the entire area. Inside the fence, a pair of canid eyes reflected back at him.

Randi sucked in a breath.

Britt's teeth clamped together so hard he feared they would break. His gaze shot to Jonah's. "What is this?"

"Live video feed of a red wolf."

"Where's the broadcast coming in from?"

"That's the million-dollar question."

"How did you come across this video?" Randi asked.

"I hacked into the Carolina Club's network. They need to get a new IT person. Their firewall was scary easy to breach."

"Why?" Britt asked.

"You mentioned that some of the members kept scorecards of their trophies." He shrugged. "That made me curious, so I poked around their website until I came across a Members Only login." He took a drink of his water. "Locks and Do Not Enter signs on the Internet are like tubs of caramel sea salt ice cream. Too tempting to resist. So I don't."

Covering his mouth with one hand and leaning back in his chair, Britt folded an arm over his middle while he followed the wolf's anxious pacing. The kennel appeared to be about ten by ten, and from the condition of the turf and the makeshift den, this wasn't the first time the kennel had been used to hold an animal captive.

"Did you find the scorecards?" Britt asked.

"Yep. Looks like anyone who hits six hundred kills becomes a Master Marksman."

"Six hundred animals?" Randi asked.

Jonah nodded. "Norwood's one kill away, and several others are on his tail."

"I can't even imagine."

"Do you think that's one of our wolves?" Randi asked.

Her use of "our" lightened his heavy heart for a brief moment. "The video quality is such that I can't be a hundred percent, but I'll venture a guess and say yes."

"Britt, I'm so sorry." She placed a comforting hand on his arm. "Is the wolf limping?"

His stomach roiled. "Looks like Reid and I missed a trap."

"Hit the escape key," Jonah said.

Randi did so and the video contracted to a small square in the center of a page. A page detailing how members could bid for the opportunity to hunt a rare female red wolf.

Reducing the size of the video improved the quality. Britt leaned in, squinting. He slammed his fist on the table. "Those sons of bitches."

"What?" Randi asked, focusing harder on the wolf. "What do you see?"

"Calypso. One half of the Steele-Shepherd breeding pair."

Horrified, Randi's gaze cut from Britt to the detested video. "The pups' mother?"

Grim-faced, Britt nodded.

"I don't understand."

"Auctions bring in a lot of revenue for hunt clubs," Britt said in a low, dangerous tone. "I've read some statistics where over sixty percent of the operating fund comes from auctioning off permits to hunt rare or endangered animals."

"What do we do now?" she asked.

"According to the page, members have until three o'clock tomorrow afternoon to place their bids. Then the GPS coordinates of the release point will be sent to the winner's phone." Britt gripped the back of his skull with both hands. "Without the coordinates, we're dead in the water."

"There must be something we can do," Randi insisted, her heart aching for both Calypso and Britt. "Why don't we hunt down a list of all the properties owned by the club."

"Assuming they snatched Calypso within an hour of Reid and I visiting the den site, they've had a good twenty-four hours of drive time. That's a vast expanse of property to search."

"Do you think the pups have been without food for that long?"

"They've been spending more and more time outside of the den, which means Calypso was beginning to wean them. If the pack hasn't already started doing so, they'll introduce them to solid food through regurgitation."

"Dude, you could have stopped at 'solid food.'" Jonah's thumb tap-danced across his phone's screen.

"Please tell me we're not just going to sit here." Randi had never seen Britt so indecisive, so defeated. It broke her heart, and she could feel desperation bubbling in her stomach.

Britt rocketed from his seat and paced the small confines of her kitchen. "There's not much I can do. Without a lead on the release location, I have no direction to follow. I could go to Norwood, but intimidation doesn't work on the bastard."

Jonah swiveled his laptop back around and typed a few commands before closing the lid. "The way I see it, you have two options."

Randi tore her eyes away from Britt and focused on his brother. At first glance, one could easily dismiss Jonah Steele. He had many of the typical millennial generation characteristics-disconnected to those around him, technology dependent, bored to the point of rebellion. However, when he spoke, he commanded attention. His intelligence, without question. His focus, laser-sharp. His curiosity, no equal.

"Well, one, really," Jonah continued, "but I'll share the second option just for the sake of giving you a choice."

A growl erupted from Britt's throat.

Standing, Jonah stowed his laptop in his bag. "One, you can stay here and pace all night, emitting a few savage sounds as your frustration builds. Or, two, you can head to the Hill and help us locate the wolf."

Britt halted. "Us?"

"Reid, Grif, Evie, Brynne, Carlie Beth, Mom, and anyone else who answers my text for action."

"Text?"

"While you were growling and pacing, I was texting." He slung his bag across his torso. "A good deal more productive, I might add."

Randi's eyes widened as Britt stormed over to his brother, who started backing away.

Britt pulled Jonah into a brief, hard, back-slap hug. "Thanks." The single word came out low, rough. He cupped the back of Jonah's neck. "I know you're not a kid anymore. But you'll always be my baby brother." He pushed him toward the door. "Deal."

An ache caught deep in Randi's throat. The two brothers annoyed each other and were as opposite as opposites could be. But at the heart of their relationship, they loved each other and would do anything for one another. A gift she hoped they never took for granted.

"Don't dally, stud man." Jonah glanced back at them, giving his big brother a pointed look. "The clock's ticking."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes."

After throwing a puzzled look her way, Jonah left them alone.

I'll be there in twenty minutes. I not we. The exclusion hurt. A lot.

Her inability to navigate the maelstrom of emotions that had hit her when she realized Britt was telling her that he loved her may have destroyed the best moment of her life.

How could he love her after spending mere days in her company? How could she return the sentiment? It made no sense. The rapid advancement of her feelings smacked of blind, irrational lust, and it frightened her. How could she love him when in all honesty she knew him so little? And what little she knew reminded her of her mother, which was not a good comparison.

The silence between them stretched, became deafening. Every comforting, reassuring phrase that came to mind sounded flat and idiotic. She longed to walk up behind him and knead the tension from his square shoulders. But Britt Steele held a large, flashing sign over his head that said, "Don't mess with me right now."

Instead of smoothing away the hurt she'd caused, Randi slid from her chair. "I take it I'm not invited to join you at the Hill." When he said nothing, Randi rubbed at the knot forming in her chest. "I see." She strode to her bedroom door on Pinocchio legs. "I hope you find Calypso in time, Britt. I really do." Locking her bathroom door, she shed her clothes and stepped into the shower.

The frigid spray did nothing to stop the scalding tears from falling, nor the shattering impact of the front door slamming on yet another failure in her life.

27.

By rote, Britt participated in the chatter around him, half his heart thrown into plans for saving Calypso while the other half remained in a bungalow on the opposite side of town.

Why in the hell had he put Randi on the spot like that? He'd considered trying to joke the words away, but that would have made him look like a bigger lunatic or, worse, a liar, both of which he hadn't been able to stomach. He'd ruined one of the most momentous days of his life, with his schoolboy impetuousness. Worse, he couldn't think of a way to repair his mistake.

And dammit, he missed her. They'd been separated for less than an hour, yet those minutes seemed like weeks.

"What do you think, Britt?" Grif asked.

Adjusting his focus, Britt caught the empathetic glances of his brothers and their mates. He glared at Jonah, whose face was buried in his laptop. His brother couldn't have missed the tension between him and Randi, and he must have remarked on it to this gang. With his mother puttering in the kitchen, he was saved from enduring her commiserating gaze. But Carlie Beth's condemnation could have cleaved his head in two. Where was Evie? He needed to have at least one ally in this house.

As soon as Britt had strolled into his mother's house, Reid had settled into his familiar Green Beret tactical mindset and dubbed Jonah's suite of rooms as the War Room. Amid Jonah's electronic command center, Reid taped pictures of Norwood, Ito, Ferguson, Taylor, and Watters to the wall. He also posted several large sticky notes on the wall. One note contained various preserve-type settings in the area that would be large enough and private enough to host an exclusive, illegal hunt. Another note identified the steps they would take to locate Calypso once they hit the ground.

"I'm sure Deke would offer us a hand," Britt said, answering Grif's question. "He might even be able to scatter up some of his buddies at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service."

Jonah was muttering beneath his breath.

"What d'you have, Jonah?" Reid asked.

"A worthy opponent." His gaze narrowed, focused. His fingers hit the keyboard harder, faster. "The IT person who set up their main website isn't the same as the one who secured the inside of the members-only site. The latter geek knew what he or she was doing."

"Do we have a plan if Jonah's not able to hack the site?" Brynne asked.

"I'll hack it."

"Brynne has a point," Carlie Beth said. "Let's say Jonah gets in, but the information we need isn't there."

"What is it with the two of you?" Jonah complained. "I'll search until I find what we need to save Britt's wolf. Now stop distracting me."

Carlie Beth and Brynne raised matching eyebrows, not used to Jonah's take-charge side. Britt sympathized with their confusion. His brother was usually absorbed in one device or another. However, this afternoon Jonah seemed possessed by the desire to annihilate the Carolina Club for daring to mess with his family.

Jonah would succeed. It was only a matter of when.

Even if they failed to reach Calypso in time, Britt would never forget Jonah's determination today. How his brother had worked so hard to stop a terrible act he didn't particularly have a passion for one way or another. How he worked until his fingers cramped for one reason and one reason only-because the issue was important to Britt. Period.

Glancing around the room, he'd never felt closer to his family than he did right now. Rather than Britt shouldering the entire burden of Calypso's kidnapping, each person in this room had taken a piece.

And just like that, years of resenting his big-brother, man-of-the-house status peeled away like a rattlesnake's skin, leaving him...content. Truly content for the first time in memory.

The only rough patch in this field of new spring grass was Randi. He wished she were here so he could share this moment with her. After the way he'd excluded her from this meeting, he'd be lucky if she ever spoke to him again. He would never speak to himself again if their roles were reversed.

Though he hadn't seen her expression, he'd heard the pain in her voice. The acceptance. Something about that last part made him angry. Didn't she care for him at all? Love might not have crossed her radar yet, but a deeper connection existed between them. They enjoyed each other's company, they shared a love for the environment, and they desired each other. He hadn't misread those cues, and Britt knew without a doubt they were just the beginning.

Carlie Beth clicked off her phone and stood, snapping Britt out of his reverie. "Brynne and I have an errand to run."

"We do?"

"Yep." She grabbed Brynne's hand and pulled her out of the cocoon made by Reid's arms. "Text us when Jonah locates Calypso."

After a flurry of kisses and good-byes, the ladies left, leaving four bewildered men behind.

"Anyone know what that was about?" Britt asked.

"No," Reid said, "but I doubt it bodes well for one of us."

"My money is on Britt," Grif said.

Reid moved to stand before the list of potential locations. "We're missing something."

"Like what?" Britt asked.