Page 14 of Claimed By The Tracker

Chapter 2

Riding, Not Surrendering

JACE

She drove like a woman who understood survival was measured in momentum, not miles.

I followed in the truck, three car lengths back—far enough that she wouldn't feel hunted, close enough that I could see her knuckles white on Delaney's steering wheel. She'd taken I-40 West instead of the back roads. A calculated choice. Visible enough that anyone tracking agency signal would find her; buried deep enough in highway traffic that pulling her over before we reached ground support would cost more than it was worth.

Smart. Something in me settled at that, sharper than it should have. She'd earned it without knowing she was being watched for it.

Her scent trailed the Civic in a thin gold ribbon, unsuppressed for the first time in however many years she'd been holding it down. It came through the cracked window on every gust, and my wolf surged against my ribs hard enough to steal a breath.

Mine, it said. Ours. Chosen.

I gripped the wheel and managed my breathing the way I'd been managing it since she'd pulled out of that parking lot—one mile at a time, until I got her somewhere with a perimeter and four trained operatives standing between her and whatever her father decided to send next.

My phone buzzed against the dash. Roan: ETA twelve. Secondary location secure. Bring her hot.

Bring her hot meant don't slow down for protocol. Get her inside walls before⁠⁠—

My phone buzzed again before I'd finished the thought. Gideon: Contract predates Voss affiliation. Filed when subject was nineteen. Bloodline acquisition clause. This is institutional. Repeat, institutional.

Institutional meant resourced. Institutional meant the retrieval contract wasn't the only asset her father had already put in motion.

I'd taken the assignment yesterday morning the way I took every assignment—read the file, memorized the target, treated the whole thing like a problem with a clean solution. Runaway bride. Wealthy family. Retrieve and deliver, no complications, standard rate. Roan hadn't liked the client. I hadn't cared. A job was a job, and Pack Guard didn't turn down work just because a man's money smelled like old rot underneath the cologne.

That calculus had lasted exactly as long as it took me to walk through a diner door and catch her scent from across the room.

Nineteen years old when her father filed the contract, according to Gideon. Twenty-eight now, by the file. Nine years of her father holding onto paperwork that turned his own daughter into collateral, waiting for the moment it became profitable to cash it in. I'd read a hundred ugly files in this job. This was the first one that had made my wolf come up snarling before I'd even finished the sentence.

That was when I saw the sedan.

Dark gray, three cars back in the next lane, matching her speed within a mile an hour for the last four exits. Nothing about it should have caught my attention—gray sedans were the least interesting object on any interstate in America—except that it had taken the same exit ramp adjustment she had, twice, at exactly the same second she signaled. No driver does that by accident. A driver does that when they're following the same GPS ping I was.

My wolf came up off its haunches inside my chest.

I dropped back, let the sedan pass me, memorized the plate, watched the driver's profile long enough to catalog human, focused, professional—a contractor, not family, not sentiment. Somebody paid to bring her back the way a package gets brought back, not the way a daughter does.

The sedan drifted closer to her lane.

Something in my chest went white and simple. Not fear. Something under fear, older, with teeth.

I put my foot down.

The truck closed the gap in under four seconds. I came up on the sedan's blind quarter and held there, close enough that the driver had to choose between me and his lane discipline. I let him see my eyes do what they wanted to do—gold, full, no apology—through the glass for exactly as long as it took him to understand what he was looking at.

He took the next exit like the ramp had personally insulted him.

I didn't follow. Wasn't worth the time, and Roan's rule held even when I wanted to break it: don't create a second incident when the first one's still rolling toward safety. I let him go, logged the plate for Gideon, and got back into position behind the Civic with my pulse still running too hard and my wolf pacing behind my sternum, unsatisfied, wanting the sedan back within reach.

She hadn't seen any of it. Eyes forward, hands steady, driving like the only threat in the world was the one three car-lengths behind her.

Good, I thought. Let it stay that way as long as I can manage it.

She took the exit toward the farmhouse access road, slowing early, signaling like she was following protocol, still playing the frightened woman her file had described her as. But I could see her through the Civic's rear window. Her shoulders were set. Her hands hadn't moved off ten and two. She was terrified and driving through it anyway, which was a different thing entirely from not being afraid.

That was the woman I wanted standing in front of my team in ten minutes. Not the performance. The one underneath it.