“Yeah, sure.” His mind finally blank and not having to churn over what was happening with Jarrod anymore, all of Tex’s energy seeped out of him. Now that the feelings and restlessness he’d been experiencing lately had justifications, he suddenly felt worn out. “You’re right,” Tex continued in a quiet voice, running a hand through his hair then rubbing the stubble along his chin, “we probably don’t have time to stand around and talk. If things are as bad here as I think they are, then we do need to go. I’ll pack. You grab what you need to, then we’ll hit the road.” He went over to his dresser and opened a drawer.
Footfalls sounded on the wood floor. The door squeaked open. “Before I head to my quarters, I have to ask. Do you know what happened to Sloth?”
“No, man.” Tex turned and dumped a small pile of clothes on the bed. “He ditched me, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Do you know who he’s friends with here?”
“Good question.” Tex grabbed a backpack from beneath his bed. “I think he’s buddies with Blaze.” He remembered seeing the two men hang out together and have each other’s backs in tight situations, but what was up with Thumbs’s line of questioning? Tex looked at the mechanic with a narrowed-eyed gaze.
“That’s right. They have hung out together.” Smiling, Thumbs nodded a few times, then seemed to notice Tex’s stare. “What?”
“What’s going on, Thumbs? Your mind seems to be working overtime.”
Apparently caught off guard by the question, the blood seemed to siphon from Thumbs’s face, robbing it of all color this time. He stopped smiling and cleared his throat. “No time to explain. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” The big man left the room faster than Tex had ever seen him move before.
Tex shoved his clothes into his backpack. He’d always liked Thumbs, considered him a good friend, but he got the sense that Thumbs was keeping something from him. Planning to get whatever it was out of Thumbs sooner rather than later, he realized that if he and Jarrod left the area, he’d want his friend to come with them.
I just hope Jarrod and Thumbs can be friends. I’d like to keep the both of them in my life.
Out of the nightstand, he grabbed his handgun and a box of bullets. After checking the weapon to make sure it was loaded and the safety was on, he tucked it in the back of his jeans and put the bullets in his bag. Then he fixed his hair back into a bun with a rubber band he’d found in the drawer. From behind the piece of furniture, he pulled out a hidden stash of cash, shoved some into one jeans pocket then the other. He secured the rest into an inner pocket in the bag.
Thumbs reentered his room, his own backpack slung over his shoulder, an envelope in his hand.
“Who’s that for?”
“Blaze. Last I saw him he was in the kitchen. Hopefully he’s still there. We’ll go down the back staircase and sneak out that way. Hope you don’t mind leaving your bike behind for the time being. Can’t risk the noise.”
“Sure. I wouldn’t mind a new one anyway.” Something that doesn’t remind me of the Mongrels.
“You have any scent repellent on you?”
Tex opened a zipper on his pack and pulled out a container. He showed Thumbs.
“Spray yourself.”
“What about you?” Tex asked as he spritzed himself with the concoction.
“Gave myself a dose in my room. Come on. We better get going to give ourselves a good head start.”
Tex followed Thumbs down the back staircase, quietly making their way to the kitchen. As Thumbs asked Blaze to step outside with them, Tex realized there was definitely something different about the mechanic. He couldn’t put his finger on what though.
Once Thumbs gave Blaze the envelope and Blaze returned inside, he looked at Tex, put a finger to his lips then motioned for him to follow again. As they cornered around to the back of the garage, Inferno’s enraged howl echoed across the compound.
“Oh, shit,” Thumbs stated. “It sounds like Inferno just learned his prisoner is gone. Come on, we have to run.” Thumbs took off onto a trail that Tex had no idea was there.
Tex chased after him as the path bent around a hill and the compound disappeared from view. Thumbs wasn’t slowing. He didn’t stop until over five minutes later when they came to a fork in the path. Tex watched in confusion as Thumbs walked forward and picked up a boulder.
“Go in.” Thumbs looked puzzled, then offered a half-smile. “It’s a fake rock. Come on. Hurry. Once you’re in the hole, reach out with your right hand and keep it against the wall.”
Questions littered Tex’s mind, but knowing time was critical and they needed to disappear fast, he stepped toward the opening. Thumbs shifted on his feet, and Tex sensed something was off. “You’re not coming with me, are you.” Tex phrased it as a statement, full well knowing the answer.
“Nope. I’ve decided I’m not going. If Blaze has read my letter, then he should already be gone.”
“What’s the deal with Blaze? Why’d you need to talk to him?”
“That’s no concern of yours. You just need to get out of here and get to Jarrod.” Thumbs cocked his head. “Actually, let’s take a second. Speaking of Jarrod… Satisfy my curiosity really quick. You tell him about us being shifters? About the sticks and the curse? Have you claimed him?”
“No on the shifting, the sticks and the curse. Yes. I’ve claimed him.” Mentioning that piece of information brought to mind the taste of Jarrod’s blood on his tongue when he sank his fangs into his back. His cock twitched. Then a warm breeze feathered the fine hairs on his arms and neck, reminding him of the too few hours he’d spent in bed with Jarrod. Thoughts of his mouth on his human’s, pressing against each other’s, their tongues battling and knowing what the foreplay would lead to, made his cock go from twitching to rock hard.
Pushing all that aside for the moment, Tex reviewed what Thumbs had just said. The variance in his personality he’d been noticing in Thumbs crept up again. This time he realized what it was. “You seem pretty articulate. More so than I think I’ve ever heard you.”
Thumbs hummed, then replied, “No time to explain all that either.”
“Fine. But you’re going to owe me some answers someday.”
“Sure. Whatever. You know what? Ask Jarrod about me when you see him. For now, you really need to listen to my instructions and get moving. I’m not going because it may look too suspicious with member after member vanishing. The tunnel you’re getting into is over a mile and a half long. It’s dark. That’s why I told you to keep your hand on the wall. At the end you’ll come out into a deserted area. Take the path on the right. It’ll zigzag up the mountain and lead you to a shack. Jarrod’s there.”
Cold dread settled in Tex’s bones. His friend spoke with such finality he feared for Thumbs’s life. “Thumbs, I’m not leaving you behind. Why should you sacrifice yourself? Why face Inferno’s wrath?”
Seeming to ignore Tex’s pleas, Thumbs pulled a key out of the front pocket of his bag. “Wait for me in the shack. Give me an hour. If I don’t show, then the two of you will need to bug out of there. There’s another path behind the shack. It, too, zigzags around the scrub brush and rocks. Eventually you’ll come upon a cave which hides an old pickup truck. You’ll have to hotwire it.” Thumbs handed the key over to Tex. “This is to a house in Henderson. The address is on paperwork taped to the underside of the passenger seat. Go there. You’ll be safe there. No one but me knows about it.”
“Thanks, man. For everything.” He smacked Thumbs on the arm, then placed the key into his pocket and nestled it within the cash.
“You’re welcome. Now go. Great Spirit willing, we’ll see each other again soon.”
Tex dropped into the hole the boulder had hid. Cold packed earth graced his palm as he placed it on the wall like Thumbs had instructed. He looked over his shoulder. Thumbs continued to stand at the opening. “You sure you don’t want to come? You do realize Inferno had Kane killed for letting a prisoner escape, and you’ve done the same thing,
right?”
“Yep.” Thumbs nodded. “The irony’s not lost on me.” He released the fake rock.
The boulder fell back into place. Tex was thrown into pitch black.
Chapter Eight
Jarrod couldn’t sit still. For what seemed to be forever, he walked the interior of the old cabin. When Alec had called the place a shack, he’d pictured a small, rickety shed-like building, not a log house with an efficiency apartment setup.
He prayed Alec hadn’t been caught and punished for helping him escape, and that Tex would figure out he was no longer in the city. Wondering if Tex was worried or not, Jarrod paced back into the kitchen again, opened and closed the empty refrigerator’s door, then shuffled around a table and back into the sitting-slash-bedroom area.
“God, I never should have gone downstairs without Tex. I should have just stayed in the room and worried about that “charge” at check-out.”
The moment he’d gotten off the elevator and started heading toward the front desk area, he’d been surrounded by a group of large men dressed in black leather. Their vests had many of the same patches sewn onto them. On the back of the man in front of him it’d read Helldorado Mongrels Las Vegas and had a picture of what looked like a rabid dog with red eyes.
Seeing the image, which had reminded him of what he’d seen as a kid in the mine, compounded the fear that’d run through his body about the situation evolving around him. He couldn’t get past the men. No one in the casino had seemed to be looking their way for him to signal he was in trouble as the bikers directed him out to the back of the building.
When he’d seen a black van pulling up, he’d tried to fight them. For a few moves, he’d thought his black belt training had been working.
Until that blond giant whacked my head with his ginormous fist.
Knocked out cold, he had no idea where he’d been driven to or even where he was once he woke chained up in that garage.
All he could think about was his brother’s abduction by the same group. What could they want with him or Cameron? It wasn’t like either of them, or their parents, were wealthy. Were they trying to get Cameron and Gabe back to the canyon area by kidnapping him? Were they after him because of Tex for some reason? Were some of the Mongrels just plain fucking crazy?
So many questions and no one around to answer them.
Just as he contemplated leaving and taking his chances out in the wild, the handle of the door moved. Jarrod froze in place. Oh, my God, they’ve found me. I’m a dead man. Terrified, he watched the door open.
In walked Tex.
Relief that it wasn’t more trouble come to bother him swept through Jarrod. He hurried over to Tex and threw his arms around him. He hadn’t realized how adrift he’d felt without Tex’s presence, and now that they were together again, he felt whole. “Thank God. I’ve been worried you wouldn’t find me.”
“You’ve had me scared, too.” Tex returned his hug. “I thought I’d have to destroy most of southern Nevada to find you and get you back.”
Tex’s lips pressed against his in a light, feathery touch at first, then grew firmer, demanding a response. Jarrod opened upon Tex’s prompting. The exploration of Tex’s tongue in his mouth sent his senses swirling in giddy delight. He was happy Tex had a hold on him or else he probably would have swooned onto the floor.
A racket, like clanking wood against metal, prompted Jarrod to break the kiss. He pushed away from Tex, feeling his cheeks burn in embarrassment from being edgy. Nothing used to get to him. Now he seemed to be jumping at every little noise. Tex sure had rattled more than just his sex drive.
“Sounds like someone’s trying to jimmy the door open,” Tex whispered.
They both looked in its direction. Tex went over to it, opened the door and looked outside.
“I thought I’d closed it after coming in, but it hadn’t shut all the way. Seems the breeze made it shimmy in its frame.”
After Tex clicked it firmly into place, Jarrod offered him a sheepish grin. “Glad to see you’re all right and not in trouble with that asswipe back there.”
Tex’s expression had gone from happy to apprehensive, and though he smiled, his lips were closed, thin and tight.
“What?” Jarrod stepped back a couple of feet. “You are okay, right?”
When Tex didn’t answer and just stared at him, his eyes narrowing with each passing second, anxiousness filtered through Jarrod. Am I the one who’s not all right? Brief images of the nightly news flashed in his mind. He could hear the headline now, “Butchered man found in cabin in Nevada wild.”
He’d do his best to restrain Tex and escape before he became a murder statistic. But then the thought of leaving the canyon and never seeing Tex again, psycho killer or not, gutted him. Just having been apart for the few hours had felt like a knife twisting in his intestines. He didn’t want to know how it’d feel if it were forever. Maybe death would be the better option. If that’s what his lover had in mind.
“Tex? You gonna kill me?”
Tex blinked. “Sorry. What?”
“I asked if you were all right. When you didn’t reply, I wondered if you wanted to kill me. What’s going on? Where’s Alec?”
“Alec? Who’s Alec?” Tex went over to the couch and dropped his bag near it. He removed the weapon sitting at the small of his back and placed it on the end table.
Jarrod swallowed hard at seeing the gun. He knew how to use one and knew all about gun safety, but after the thoughts he’d had, Tex having a weapon concerned him a little. “Sorry. Thumbs. Where’s he?”
“Well,” Tex replied. “There is some stuff we need to discuss before we go forward with anything, but first, about Thumbs. He decided not to come. He’s staying back to help keep us from being found. He said if he doesn’t show up in an hour, then we’re to move to another location.”
“Wow. That’s big of him. First he helps me get away and now he’s watching our backs.”
“Yeah. Big. Last time a Mongrel was supposed to keep tabs on a prisoner and the prisoner escaped, the Mongrel was put to death.”
The air in the shack suddenly felt frigid. Jarrod’s gut clenched. If anything happened to the mechanic, he’d never forgive himself. Tex wouldn’t forgive him either by the look and sound of him. “Oh.”
Tex, keeping his gaze trained on Jarrod, cocked his head. “Thumbs did say something interesting. When I asked him about how articulate he’d been lately, he told me to ask you about him. Something going on you want to tell me?”
“Huh? There’s nothing between me and Thumbs, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“No. That’s not what I mean. I’m curious about his smarts … his intelligence.”
“Oh. That.” Jarrod chuckled and received a glare from Tex. Ignoring the look, he continued, “He’s not stupid like everyone thinks he is.” He filled Tex in on what Alec had told him—runt of the litter, actually pretty intelligent, plays dumb to gather information. Each word seemed to lighten Tex’s mood. “So, see? Nothing to worry about.”
“Good. I was thinking Thumbs was in over his head, but to learn he’ll have a chance to stay out of danger makes me somewhat relieved.”
“Only somewhat? We’re together again. So everything’s good.”
“Well… Not yet. Everything won’t be good until we’re completely safe. No longer in danger from the Mongrels. And to get to that point, I have to tell you something that you’ll probably not want to hear, but you need to.”
Jarrod strode over to the table and dropped into a chair. His mind filled with all sorts of crazy notions in regard to what Tex would say. Tex had a disease that he transmitted to him. Tex was a psychotic serial killer who’d been toying with him. Tex was an undercover intelligence agent trying to bust the motorcycle club and planned to implicate him in a crime.
“Has your brother or Gabe told you anything about us? About the Mongrels?” Tex asked.
He released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Not as bad as
I thought it’d be. “All I know is that Gabe has cousins in your gang, and the two sides of the family don’t get along well together.”
Tex sighed, then took a seat at the table. “That’s true, but there’s more to the story. They never mentioned the Shinans or the Tabus?” At Jarrod’s shake of his head, Tex continued, “I guess I’ll have to start at the beginning. I’m going to tell you about Gabe and Inferno’s family’s origin story, since it’s part of the reason we’re where we are at the moment. I’ll admit a lot of it sounds crazy and out there, but it’s all true.”
After another deep breath, Tex began, “Before the human race, the great wolf spirit, Tabu, decided to create friends for Mother Earth. She supplied the wise wolf with sticks made from all kinds of wood and of all sizes to carve many different people. Once completed, he planned to distribute them around the world in an even manner, so that she could visit them anywhere, and so they’d all have good places to live.
“Thing was, Tabu had a younger brother, Shinan. He liked to play tricks. He’d found the sack where Tabu kept his wood carvings, cut it open and the people fell out in groups. The friends of Mother Earth disliked how Shinan treated them and they started fighting with each other.
“There were some sticks left in the sack, though. Mother Earth took a third of the carvings that had stuck to the interior and gave those people a special place in the southwest. Another third she gave to Shinan to be his descendants in hopes it would teach him some responsibility. Shinan blessed his people with immortality and the ability to change into animal form whenever they wished. This hadn’t pleased Mother Earth, but she couldn’t do anything about it except place a restriction on them during the super moons in which they’re forced to change whether they want to or not, and for three days before and after that full moon, as well as during, they have to live in their animal form.”
Seduced by Him Page 7