by Jamie Craig
“God, I’ve missed you,” Sara breathed. “I don’t think I knew how much until now.”
Josh touched his forehead to hers. “I missed you, too. I am so sorry, Sara. I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner.”
“Are y’all ready to order now?” the waitress asked, her voice startlingly loud, as she set the coffee in front of them.
Josh pulled away from Sara with some hesitation and glanced up, his smile pleasant with no signs of the frustration she thought he must have been feeling—the frustration she was feeling herself.
“What’s your soup today?”
“The kitchen just made a batch of chicken noodle. And we have some clam chowder, too.”
“Can we get a bowl of each, please? And a cheeseburger.”
“Want fries with that?”
“Yeah. That’d be great.”
The waitress jotted all of it down, gathered up their menus, and bustled away. Josh smiled wryly. “I hope by making a batch she doesn’t mean just heating up one of those giant cans.”
It was easy to match his grin. “Hell, we could’ve done that,” she teased. “Unless you’ve managed to learn how to cook while I’ve been gone.”
“I’ve actually had a few lessons, and expanded my catalogue to include several types of pasta, a variety of egg dishes, and I’m quite good with a barbecue. Not to mention the fact that I’ve perfected the meals I was already quite good at. Nobody makes a better tuna salad sandwich than yours truly,” Josh said with genuine pride in his voice. “As soon as we get settled, I’ll make one for you.”
Cooking. The car accident. What else had happened to him while she’d been gone? How much had she missed? Her smile faded a little, but she kept her hand on his leg, spreading her fingers to touch even more of him. “Make me one of your fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and we’ll call it good. Though I might have to work up to fried food.”
“I’ll make you a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich every morning, if you’d like.” Josh sipped from his coffee, watching her over the brim of his cup. “What did they feed you?”
“Basic stuff. Soups. Sandwiches. A lot of vitamins.” She snorted. “Well, they told me they were vitamins, at least.”
Josh frowned thoughtfully. She recognized that look from a long time ago, when they first met. It meant he was storing the details in his mind, wishing he had his notebook, and preparing to analyze and reorder everything until it made sense.
“But not often. Just enough to keep you alive? I wonder if they were worried about administering an accidental overdose when they gave you the sedatives. That’s a risk, especially since…” His eyes caught hers and he looked away quickly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
Sara squeezed his leg in what she hoped was reassurance. “Don’t. You’re being you.” Her gaze flickered to where his fingers were toying with his spoon, the urge to write manifesting in the only way it could. “I need that.”
“I know I said you didn’t have to, but maybe we should try to talk about it a little. Not right now. But you might remember something that’ll give us a clue of who we should be hiding from—or going after.”
“Go after?” A burn of adrenaline shot through her veins at his almost careless afterthought. “But how did you find me if you don’t know who it is?”
He abandoned the spoon in favor of tearing at the corner of the napkin. “Once we realized you had disappeared, we contacted the police, of course. And eventually, the federal authorities got involved. They didn’t…Well, we thought it would be best to be in contact with other shifter communities through the wonders of the Internet. One of the members of a forum we used called me with information on where to find you. Well, that’s who she claimed to be. It occurred to me it could have just been some prick sending us on a wild goose chase. But we had to take that chance.”
“So you don’t know who’s behind all this,” she said. “But we’re going to find out, right? We’re going to stop them?” Her hand started to tremble, and Sara pulled it away, slipping it under her leg to try and control it. “Do you know…do you know if there are others? Or did they pick me on purpose?”
“We are going to find out who’s behind this, and we’re going to put an end to this. But I hope you understand now why we can’t go home. We don’t even know who in Delta we can trust right now.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. “This isn’t going to be over for us until we know who it is and we stop them.”
Ignoring the casual glances from the teenagers at an adjoining booth, Sara turned into Josh’s body, slipping her arms around his waist so that she could nestle into his chest. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Her ordeal might be over, but the thought that the monsters who had tortured and tested her without reprieve were doing it to others ignited every protective instinct Sara possessed. Nobody deserved that treatment. She would do everything she could to make sure it didn’t happen again. Josh wouldn’t fail her.
Chapter 7
The journey to Delta was more excruciating than Cameron had imagined. It wasn’t just the growing miles separating him from Josh and Sara. It was the sheer loneliness of the drive. Hours behind the wheel with only the radio for company. Though he had begrudgingly grown accustomed to the hole Sara had left in his life, he wasn’t used to Josh not being there. Cam needed his presence like he needed to breathe.
He needed both of them. Josh’s assurances they’d be together, the three of them, were all he had to cling to.
He entered city limits after sundown and headed straight for the house. Pulling into the narrow, winding road of their community, he tried not to notice the lights at the neighbors’ windows or the outdoor toys scattered across a few of the lawns. These were families. People who loved and went to work and celebrated holidays and laughed with their kids. These were all he’d known all of his life. It was impossible to believe a shifter could be responsible for everything that had happened to Sara, for tearing their lives apart. Even with the truth from Sara’s lips, Cam wanted to think it could only be an outsider.
Sara didn’t have enemies. She was outgoing and generous, always looking for the silver lining, always believing in the best of people. It was the one trait that Cam and Josh had long ago decided had been her downfall. She had trusted the wrong person, and that person had taken her away. They had always assumed it was an outsider who had captured her attention, but if it was a shifter, that was even more reason for her not to suspect anything amiss.
He parked in the drive behind Josh’s Camry, grateful when nobody poked their heads out to ask why he was alone. The sensors activated the porch light as he approached, and Cam hurried with his key to get inside. He didn’t need questions. He needed to get their things and get back on the road as soon as possible.
The door closing behind him boomed louder than he expected, and Cameron froze. The house hadn’t felt this empty since the day Sara had disappeared, when he and Josh had walked in and realized for the first time she wouldn’t be coming home that night. It took everything he had to force one foot in front of the other. The sooner he finished packing, the sooner he didn’t have to face his ghosts.
He chose a suitcase for each of them. His and Josh’s clothes were simple, but when it came to face Sara’s wardrobe, Cameron hesitated. They had taken her favorite skirt and blouse for the rescue mission, but those were going to hang on her when she finally put them on. She had to have lost at least twenty pounds since her abduction, and on her five foot eight inch frame, it might as well have been double that. The last thing they needed was for her to feel self-conscious about her appearance. They had enough to try and cope with.
So he chose clothes she could cinch, jeans she’d complained were getting too tight and skirts with drawstring waists. Underwear was trickier, and in the end, he only picked up a couple of her favorites. They would buy the rest. Sara had always loved a good shopping trip.
Cameron moved through the rest of the house, picking up
items that would lend a sense of home to any place they rented. He took her scrapbooks to remind her of happier times, the cards sent by her kids at school, DVDs of her favorite movies. He packed up his and Josh’s laptops, as well as a box of their files so they could both conduct business as if nothing was wrong. From the back of the couch, he grabbed the afghan Sara’s grandmother had given her as a graduation present, and in the kitchen, he dug around in the junk drawer until he found her stash of green ink pens with the turtle toppers that she’d bought at the San Diego Zoo.
It took two hours for him to get a sense that he’d done as much as he could and make sure he hadn’t missed anything on Josh’s list, and then another thirty minutes to get the car loaded. They would have to make the arrangements about the mail and the bills long distance, he decided. It was too late to deal with it tonight, and he didn’t want to have to stick around until morning to take care of it. A light came on next door as he locked up, and his neighbor stepped out on the porch.
George Ramsey was in his fifties, short and stout like somebody’s jolly grandfather. He had been the first to welcome Cam and Sara when they’d bought the house together and the first to put a stamp of approval on Josh after he’d moved in. With Sara’s family in Southern California and Cam’s parents taking early retirement in Florida, George was as close to a father figure they had. But Cam didn’t want to have to deal with him now. Of all the people in the neighborhood likely to ask questions, George was at the top of the list.
“Little late, isn’t it?” George asked as he came over to the fence. His curious gaze flickered over the shadowed car. “What’s going on?”
Keeping his keys ready in his hand, Cam crossed to stand between George and the car. “Josh and I decided to make our getaway a real vacation,” he lied. They’d told nobody about the tip on Sara. Her parents didn’t need their hopes dashed yet again if it didn’t pan out, and Cam didn’t need more of his friends’ pity for not giving up. “The break will do us good.”
George nodded. “You two haven’t had a vacation since…” He stopped. Nobody mentioned Sara’s name around Cam or Josh anymore. “Too long,” he finished. “Where are you off to?”
“Wherever the wind takes us.” Though he hated lying to George, until they knew more about how and why Sara had been taken, nobody was to be trusted. “We might be gone for a while.”
“You need me to take care of your mail for you while you’re away?”
It would be one less thing for him to worry about. “I’ll call you when I know more,” Cam said. “Most of our bills are payable online, so it should just be junk anyway.” He paused. “Listen, Josh asked me something this morning I couldn’t answer. Maybe you can help me.”
“Sure. What is it?”
“He was wondering about shifters turning against shifters, why the crime rate was so low in Delta and if that held true for other shifter communities.” He smiled. “You know Josh. His brain never stops working.”
George’s bushy brows pulled into a frown. “Shifters turning against shifters? Never heard of such a thing. We got enough to worry about from outsiders without adding to our problems.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“Well, you tell him to stop thinking about such things. You two have had to deal with enough badness in the world. You don’t need to be looking for more of it.”
“I’ll make sure and do that.” He gave George a little wave and stepped around the front of the car. “Thanks. And I’ll call you in a couple days.”
Sliding behind the wheel, Cam started the car and watched George go back into his home. He still wanted to go talk to Sammie Jo, but he was growing more and more sure he would get some of the same answers. Shifters didn’t hurt shifters.
And yet, someone had hurt Sara.
He was a block away before he decided he should let Josh know what he planned to do. It was just gone midnight, but odds were good Josh would still be up, watching over Sara. Even if he was asleep, he would rather be awakened and told than wait until morning.
Cam pulled over to the curb, dialing Josh’s cell phone at the same time. As it rang, he turned off the engine and rubbed his tired eyes. He needed to get some coffee if he didn’t want to fall asleep at the wheel.
When the call connected, he glanced at the clock on the radio, wondering if Josh had been awake or not.
And then promptly froze when Sara’s soft, “Hello?” came over the line.
* * * *
When she was sure Josh had fallen asleep, Sara slipped out from beneath his arm and got out of bed. Her brain wouldn’t stop working, and with a meal larger than she’d had in months sitting heavy in her stomach, her body wasn’t faring too well, either. It was just as well. After so many nights of being drugged into unconsciousness, it was a good feeling to know she could stay awake if she wanted to.
Unwilling to wake Josh, she curled up cross-legged at the foot of the bed and turned on the television. Beyond their foray to the diner, it was her first glimpse at the outside world since leaving Delta. Her heart thumped in excitement at getting to enjoy something as simple as a sitcom. Sitting in the dark with the volume as low as she could get it without losing what was being said, she watched Jo and Blair bicker over some inanity, smiling without reserve as the lights flickered across her face.
The ring of a phone startled Sara, and she dropped the remote as she twisted in the sound’s direction. Josh’s cell sat on the desk, and when it rang again, she reflexively jumped up to answer it. He needed to sleep. And somebody needed to learn not to call in the middle of the night.
“Hello?” Her voice was almost a whisper. She didn’t want Josh to wake up.
“Sara? Is that you? Where’s Josh? Don’t hang up.”
The sound of Cameron’s voice washed through her, leaving her flesh alternating between fiery hot and icy cold. Sara’s first instinct was to throw the phone, followed quickly by an overwhelming sense of yearning to hear more of him. She hadn’t heard him this close for so long; her torturer—not Cam, somebody else, she reminded herself, somebody else—never spoke a single time whenever he’d come to her. If she blocked out the memories of pain, she could imagine this wasn’t the voice of someone who had hurt her. This was the voice of someone who’d only loved.
Her hand trembled as she gripped the phone more tightly, and she stumbled back until her legs hit the mattress and she could perch on the end of the bed. “Josh is…asleep,” she managed.
“Asleep?” Cam sounded surprised. “I guess he’s had a long day. What are you doing? I thought you’d be asleep, too.”
“No, I’m watching TV.” Her gaze flickered to the set. “Facts of Life.”
Cam laughed. “Facts of Life? Remember the drinking game we used to play? One shot every time we thought Jo would punch Blair, two shots every time we thought Jo wanted to kiss her.”
She hadn’t until he’d elicited the memory, and in spite of the terror crawling through her veins, Sara smiled at it. “Jo was in complete denial,” she said softly. “She should’ve just admitted she wanted Blair and been done with it.”
“A night with Jo probably would have done Blair a world of good, anyway.” There was no missing the forced lightness of his tone. “Do you think Diff’rent Strokes will be on later?”
An answer was on the tip of her tongue before Sara realized what she was doing. “I…I don’t know,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut. Her voice broke a little on the words. Even more was breaking inside as she struggled to reconcile the schism of hearing his voice and seeing his malevolent snarl in her mind’s eye. “Let me get Josh.”
“Sara, wait. Please. Please, wait just a few seconds. I just need to hear you. Look, I’m still in Delta. Would you like me to get something for you?”
“No.” Then she remembered the conversation she’d had before dinner. “But Josh needs his notebooks.”
“I got them. Tell him I grabbed his laptop and his other files, too. Are you sure you don’t want anything? I have
your afghan, and most of your movies.”
This time she couldn’t help but blurt out her response. It just felt too normal not to. “Did you get Bill & Ted?”
“Of course. Both of them. And I didn’t forget any of the Harrison Ford flicks, either.”
The bed moved behind her, and Sara turned to see Josh propping himself up on his elbows, a slight frown on his face. Holding out the phone to him, she had to swallow once in order to say the words. “It’s…Cam.”
Josh shook his head and gestured that she should keep the phone. “I’ll be right back,” he mouthed, rising from the bed. Before she could protest, he disappeared into the bathroom.
Sara had no choice but to put the phone back up to her ear. “Sorry,” she said. “Josh woke up.”
Cam hesitated. “Sara…thank you for talking to me. You don’t know how much it means to me.”
If she could focus on everything Josh had said, she might make it through the rest of the conversation without falling completely to pieces. “I should be the one thanking you,” she forced herself to say. “Josh told me, it was both of you that got me out of there.”
“Yeah. We needed to track you, and Josh is clever, but you can’t beat a German shepherd’s nose. He drove the getaway car, and I…I held you…”
The cry came from her throat unbidden, the horror she’d felt in waking up in his arms that morning returning with a full vengeance. Leaping from the bed, she ran to the bathroom and pounded on the door until Josh opened it, then thrust the phone into his hand.
“I can’t,” she said, backing away. “I can’t.”
Josh took the phone, but wrapped his free arm around her. She didn’t resist, burying her face in his chest.
“Cam…what? No, I’ll call you. Cam, listen to me…I know. I know. I’ll call you…I know, she’ll be fine…I know.” He tossed the phone aside and embraced her, holding her tightly. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.”
“I’m sorry.” The shaking wouldn’t stop, but at least she wasn’t crying. “I tried, I really tried, but he…I…I’m so sorry, Josh.”