Page 10 of Dark Auctioned Mate

Alanis walked beside him, matching his pace. She'd taken the jacket he'd handed her from the back seat and had it on now, collar up. "The handlers rotate," she said quietly. "Side door guard switches at the hour. We have fourteen minutes."

"How do you know that?”

"I counted the auction timing. Each lot ran approximately eight minutes from presentation to sale, with a two-minute interval between." She paused. "I've been tracking since I came out of the holding area."

They reached the east side of the building and moved along the wall, using the loading bay overhang for shadow. The building's electrical panel was mounted on the exterior wall, which he'd immediately seen on entry. It was a habit Silas found excessive, and Javi found useful. The panel was standard commercial—not sophisticated, not hardened. It controlled the warehouse's lighting and power supply, including, almost certainly, the hidden cameras he just noticed.

He looked at Alanis. "When the lights go out, you go in and move the women to the east lot. Give them thirty seconds of direction and then get clear."

"What are you doing?”

"Cutting off the power supply.” He nodded at the loading bay. "There's a fuel drum near the rear bay door. If it tips and ignites the loading debris, the response will pull the security from the interior toward the exterior." A pause. "Accidents happen in old warehouses."

Alanis quietly arched a brow. Then nodded. “Alright. As long as you know what the hell you’re doing.”

He pulled out his phone and sent a two-word text to Silas: “Not clear.” Their code for: I moved to a venue, don't expect intelligence output, will explain later. Then he pocketed it and looked at Alanis.

"Thirty seconds after the lights go," he said. "Not more."

"Understood."

He moved to the loading bay.

It took four minutes to position the fuel drum and another ninety seconds to rig the loading debris in a way that would catch fast and look like a chain reaction from an unstable stack. The drum had been sitting against a wall on a cracked base—anyone examining it after would conclude the base had given and the drum had rolled into materials that shouldn't have been stored adjacent to it.

He moved back to the panel, and the lights in the warehouse went out in one pull.

Inside, he heard the immediate response—voices from the floor, the scrape of chairs, the handlers calling to each other. Then the fire caught, faster than he'd calculated, and the alarm triggered.

From the east side of the building, he heard the rear exit door open.

He circled the perimeter at a run, reached the east lot as Alanis came out with three women behind her, speaking in a rapid, low voice, directing them toward the lot's north exit. Two more women came through the door behind the first group. Rael counted. Five. Then six.

He held the door for the seventh, who came through last, looking over her shoulder at the noise from inside. He put a hand briefly on her arm and pointed north, and she went.

Alanis appeared at his shoulder. "Go," she said. "I'll follow—"

"You're coming with me."

She turned to face him. "I need to follow them out and make sure—"

"They will be fine.”

“And I’m supposed to take your word for it?”

“Yes. If you would like me to tell you the truth about why I spent that crazy amount of money on you.”

Alanis nibbled on her lips, clearly looking torn. Finally, she murmurs, “Let’s go.”

After driving north for twenty minutes, Rael checked the mirrors at every interval and didn't pick up a tail. When he was satisfied that no one was following them, he turned onto another path and slowed down a bit.

Alanis had said nothing since they freed those women. She sat angled slightly toward the window. Her hands were in her lap, the red marks from the cable tie still visible at her wrists. The jacket collar was down now, and her hair whipped around in the wind.

Rael’s wolf had been running at a low, constant hum since the moment he'd cut her ties in the parking structure, and the proximity was not helping. She smelled like the warehouse—industrial cleaning fluid and recycled air—and underneath it, faint but unmistakable, she smelled like herself—like peaches.

Drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, Rael thought about how a year’s worth of work that had inched them closer to a network had just gone to ground again, all because of a woman. Actually, no. Because of his mate. Just like what happened to Silas when he bought Elle, his mate at an auction.

He had told himself, at the time, that Silas had lost the mission for a woman. So, his case was understandable. Right?