She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around her knees. “I don’t want any of us to have anything to do with that.”
Megan chewed on her thumbnail. She always did when she was worried. “Do you think Liam could work something out with the Albanians? Maybe he could pay back the money some other way.”
Jayna was so close to telling Megan that Liam had lied about everything, but she couldn’t make herself say the words. Liam might have gotten them into this mess, but she wasn’t ready to turn her pack against their alpha yet.
“Something tells me the Albanians won’t go for that,” she finally said.
Megan nibbled on her nail some more. “Maybe we should just leave. There has to be someplace we can go where the Albanians won’t be able to find us.”
If only it were that easy. “Liam won’t leave. And I don’t think the guys will go if he doesn’t. Are you ready to leave them behind?”
Megan sighed and shook her head. Then she looked at Jayna sharply, her pulse suddenly pounding so fast it seemed to echo in the room. “You won’t leave on your own, will you?”
The panic in Megan’s voice was so painful to hear, it almost brought tears to Jayna’s eyes. Getting up, she walked the three short strides that separated her bed from Megan’s and plopped down beside the other girl. She wrapped her arm around Megan’s shoulders and hugged her close.
“I’ll never leave you,” she murmured, resting her cheek against Megan’s silky, dark hair. “Never.”
Megan immediately relaxed, her heart rate slowly returning to normal as she wrapped her arms around Jayna. Megan had been through so much and depended on Jayna. Jayna would die before she let the girl down.
“We’ll be okay,” Jayna whispered. “We’ll find a way out of this. I promise.”
“I believe you,” Megan said. “You’re the heart and soul of this pack. If you say we’ll be okay, we will.”
The burden on Jayna’s shoulders suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. How the heck could she do anything? She was only a beta.
Jayna thought about Eric Becker and how the big alpha had promised to help her and her pack. She almost laughed at the notion that some outsider—a cop to boot—would ever help them. But something told her that Eric was going to come through for them.
She prayed her instincts were right because she needed something miraculous to happen if she was going to get her pack out of this situation alive.
Chapter 6
The plan was simple. Walk into Gage’s office, get the fake ID out of the safe, drop a leave form on the boss’s desk, and be out before anyone came in for PT that morning.
That was why Becker and Cooper got to the compound at oh dark thirty. Luckily, Cooper was right about the combination to the safe being the date Gage had changed into a werewolf, so opening it wasn’t a problem. Even finding the high-quality forgeries the SWAT commander had made just in case the Pack ever had to go on the run was easy.
In addition to a license and passport, there were also credit cards. Becker had seen some good fakes when he was with the Secret Service, but this stuff was some of the best he’d ever laid eyes on. The name was even perfect—Eric Bauer. Definitely close enough to his own that he’d instinctively answer to it.
“That was almost too easy.” Becker grinned as he dropped his leave form on Gage’s desk and followed Cooper out of their boss’s office. “Maybe we’re in the wrong line of work.”
Then the door of the admin building opened and Gage walked in.
Shit.
Gage stared at them—not exactly with suspicion but definitely with curiosity. “What are you guys doing here so early?”
Becker’s mind went completely blank. He was going undercover with a group of werewolves who would tear him apart if they even sniffed something wasn’t legit. And right now, he couldn’t come up with a single excuse that explained why he and Cooper were at the compound so early.
“I, um, had to come in early and drop off a leave form,” he finally said, trying to sound casual.
His boss frowned. “You’re taking leave? Now?”
“Yeah.”
Becker glanced at Cooper to find his friend regarding him patiently. Clearly, there wouldn’t be any help coming from that direction. So what now? Gage was really good at sniffing out lies, and if he called Becker on this one, his undercover assignment would be over before it started.
“It’s my sister. They think they might have to induce labor.” He felt like crap for bringing her into this and lying about her being pregnant, but he didn’t have a choice. Jayna’s life might depend on it. “I know my timing is bad, especially with the other pack in town, but I really think I should be there. It’s her first child and all.”