“Come in.” His voice sounded pained.
Good.
She walked in. He didn’t flinch from where he sat in a chair at a small table, another man seeing to his injuries. When the medic made as if to leave, she stopped him. “No, it’s okay. Finish what you were doing. I’m not going to whack him again.”
She glanced around. “Where’s Colleen?”
“Asleep. Crib.”
She pulled out the other chair from the table and sat close enough she could reach out and touch Marston. “Give me your hand.”
He held out his right hand to her. Forcing herself to take a deep breath, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist. She wanted to know exactly what happened, how Mercedes had died, from his point of view.
As she searched, she realized her visions were confirmed. Nothing in his memories contradicted what she’d seen at the graves. If anything, it made the events much more poignant in her mind, to feel how much he’d loved Mercedes.
Elain searched back, farther, looking for information. “I need the address of the house you were staying at.”
He nodded. “All right. She’d leased it for a couple of years, paid in advance. It should still be vacant.”
“Good.” More searching. When she came across how Mercedes had first drugged and restrained him, she softly chuckled to herself.
Marston made no attempt to draw away from her.
On she searched, skipping around what she now knew about Kael’s family, to Marston’s first mate and children.
“How did you go from being an honorable man to such a royal shit weasel?” she asked.
“I never said I was proud of what I’ve done. I’ve never said I don’t regret my actions.”
Returning to the recent past, she searched out how he’d killed her uncles’ mates, and the mate of one of the Lyall cousins.
That’s when she froze. “Wait a minute…”
She tried to process what she was seeing, what Marston knew.
“Are you fucking shitting me?” she whispered.
He stared at her through swollen eyelids but didn’t respond.
When she finally released his wrist, she sat back, shocked. “He was paying them? All these years?”
Marston shrugged. “Rodolfo was very adept at spreading lies through various sources. He had most people convinced Liam was an honorless, deadbeat criminal without morals, who’d abandoned his mate and child. How do you think I knew where to find them? Rodolfo didn’t know I also knew many of his men. I was careful how I cultivated my contacts, but I wanted at least a chance to receive notification and run if Rodolfo decided to get rid of me.”
He winced as the medic finished doctoring a cut on Marston’s right cheek. “Everyone heard the rumors about Rodolfo’s temper, of course, but only the people that dealt with him in his Clan usually saw the sour side of him up close. He could be rather charming. If someone shows up with a large financial windfall and offers it to you for nothing more than ensuring you’ll pass on information about someone you believe is a scoundrel and a criminal, would you not take it?” The medic finished and packed his things, leaving them alone with the other guard.
“Their mates were not innocent,” Marston said. “They were complicit in the dealings.”
Elain slowly nodded. Her circle of trust had just tightened up a bit. She never would have thought she couldn’t trust her father’s brothers, or even the Lyall cousins.
Or that she could trust someone she had considered her mortal enemy. “The fucker had my mom abducted. Did you hear about that?”
He slowly nodded. “I did. That was a common tactic of his to secure cooperation by families.”
“Do the names Ken and Trent ring a bell?”
“They do.”
“Did I screw up by letting them get away?”
“I don’t think so. With Rodolfo no longer controlling their lives, they were probably happy to flee. I doubt you could find them now if you tried.”
“Oh, don’t count me out, buddy.”
“Well, I meant the average person, of course. Not someone with your…skillset.”
“I beat the everlovin’ snot out of you, and you’re still polite to me. I’ll hand it to you, you’ve got class.”
“I meant what I said, Elain. I meant the oath I took in front of Ortega.”
She slowly nodded. “And I’ll keep that sword hanging right there over your head, Damocles.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
* * * *
Elain hoped her men weren’t going apeshit trying to contact her. With her new shadow leading the way, she found Ortega in his office.
“I need to contact my guys.”
Ortega nodded. “Feel free to call from my house phones as much as you wish.”
“Umm, yeeeaaah, about that. They don’t know I’m in Bolivia. I’d rather keep it that way.”
“I see. Did you bring your laptop with you?”
“Yeah?”
“Does your cell phone provider allow you to text from the Internet?”
“I—” She thought about it. “Dang good question. I never looked.”
He smiled. “Some do, some don’t. Go look and see. If so, problem solved. If not, I have a way of fudging a phone call, as it were.”
She headed back to her room, Ortega’s man giving her the Wi-Fi password. Sure enough, when she logged into their account, she found a feature allowing texting. She could also see texts that had come into her phone.
“Hot damn,” she muttered.
All three of her guys had texted her good morning. She quickly texted them back, giving them the same copied and pasted response that she was fine, missed them, loved them, and would call in a couple of days.
Hopefully that holds them.
With that done, and it growing late in the afternoon, she needed to take care of something else. Now knowing the way without assistance, her shadow followed her as she returned to Ortega’s office.
“That worked, thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
“Now I’d like to pay another visit to…you know who.”
“Certainly.” He rose from behind the desk and once again offered her his arm. “I told Fiona you stopped in for a visit. She’s very eager to see you.” He led her out the front door and through the compound.
“Where is she right now?”
“Up in her rooms doing homework with my wife.” He smiled. “Her teachers all say she is doing quite well in her studies, and she loves having cousins to play with.”
“Good.”
“As I said, sometimes she gets angry. I worry about that.”
“I’ll talk to her before dinner.”
They entered the first well-guarded door. Elain felt her pulse race, her stomach tighten. She was actually glad for Ortega’s steady arm to hold on to.
She had to do this, once and for all, and wasn’t too proud to admit she felt scared shitless.
Her dread increased as they made their way through the final door and into the room where they held Rodolfo. The lights were dim, and he still lay in the same place she saw him before.
“I need to touch him,” she said. “I’m not going to hit him,” she added.
Ortega chuckled. “Him, I would be honored to witness you hit. Or, if there’s anything else you’d like to do to him—”
Her stomach rolled. “Nope. Just touch. Uh, this might sound weird, but could you stay with me while I do it? Let me…hold on to you?”
The large, steady jaguar was not only a physical anchor, but an emotional one, his quiet strength an excellent ground for the frantic, fearful energy now spiraling through her.
“But of course.”
He walked over to Rodolfo with her. She hung on to his arm with her right hand as she knelt and reached out to Rodolfo with her left.
At first, she wasn’t sure where to touch him. She opted for his temple. Immediately, a mental cacophony of insanity threatened to overwash her, until she forced his energy back with he
r own and stood looking at it with her mind’s eye. She was afraid to delve too deeply, the way she had with Marston, fearing she might get caught up and lost inside the dangerous, impossible maze that was his mind.
He was…insane. Already so to a certain extent before the torture started. Now…
She tried again, better prepared this time. Steeling herself, she mentally waded through his mind, with a specific target in mind, until she found what she wanted.
Confirmation of what Marston had told her.
Rodolfo had paid off her father’s brothers for information, which was why Marston had targeted their mates, kidnapping and then killing them when more information wasn’t forthcoming. And more than just that one Lyall cousin had been on Rodolfo’s pad, although that was the only mate Marston had killed on that side of the family.
Son of a bitch.
Elain didn’t try to make sense of his insanity. Instead, she sent to Rodolfo a wave of anger, rage, indignation. A little sample of what he’d caused over the years.
Rodolfo let out a whining yelp.
Then she broke the contact with him and took a deep breath of air to clear her thoughts.
Ortega helped her to her feet. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “A damned sight better than he is, that’s for sure.”
Chapter Seven
Aliah wished she could blow off cleaning rooms and get back to her search, but she needed the money. At least with the cash in hand she could top off the gas tank on the stolen car.
She also needed the time to regain her nerve. What kind of wolf could simply disappear? And what about the strange scent, the one that appeared out of thin air for a few yards before disappearing again?
Maybe it had a simple explanation. She wasn’t exactly a wolf-quality tracker. Maybe it was an older scent and had faded, tricking her into believing it had appeared suddenly.
Yeah, that’s it.
The longer she thought about it while she cleaned rooms, the more it made sense. Maybe it was an even older scent the wolf had been following, overlaying it with her scent, as well as the stronger scent of the body, for most of the way.
Of course.
It didn’t explain why both of the scent trails, as well as that of the corpse, and the drag marks and tracks, also disappeared.
I’m not a tracker. I was upset.
Also likely explanations.
By the time she’d finished working, collected her pay, and topped off the gas tank, she still had a few dollars left. She spent some of it on a map of the area before returning to the McDonald’s parking lot, where she studied the area again on Google Earth.
That wasn’t helping. The satellite pics had been taken in spring or summer, when foliage was the heaviest and obscured the clearings.
After performing a little Google-fu, she was able to locate an online topography map.
That was when she made headway. She saved it to her hard drive, along with screenshots of some of the satellite pics, and drove to the vacant house.
She passed Gerry’s car, still sitting off the road. Apparently, no one had called the police yet to investigate it. She found the house exactly as she’d left it, the front door still locked, no fresh scents.
There were no houses or other structures, as far as she could tell, in the immediate vicinity of the area she suspected was where the cave and graves were located, although there was a house several miles away, overland. Based on the shadows, she knew she’d generally been heading southwest when she abandoned the search.
I can’t believe I freaked out like that. I’m an idiot.
That house could have been the wolf’s destination.
She packed more water, scavenged another few snacks from the cabinets, and headed back to wolf Clan territory. When she drove by the house, she saw no cars in the driveway, no signs of life. No signs of a dog outside.
She drove a little ways down the road, turned, and passed by again.
Nothing.
Senses still on high alert and well aware that if a wolf caught her there she was likely dead, she pulled into the driveway.
No response.
With the map in hand, and an address she’d made up on a road that didn’t exist, she took a deep breath and headed for the front porch.
It stank of wolves. And what she suspected were dragons, maybe even a bear and a big cat or two. Several of the scents she definitely recognized from Yellowstone.
And…
She froze.
That peculiar scent again. And the female wolf’s scent.
It could not be mere coincidence. That both scents smelled very fresh and strong raised the hackles on the back of her neck. Also strong, the scent of another female wolf, practically embedded in the wood of the house, but faded, as if she usually spent a lot of time here and had departed recently. Yet another one she’d smelled at Yellowstone, in the lodge. The owner of this cabin, if she had to guess.
Swallowing back her fear, she reached up with a trembling hand and knocked on the front door because there didn’t appear to be a doorbell.
After a moment with no response, she knocked again. And a third time.
Emboldened, she stepped off the porch and walked around to the back of the house. A well-tended herb and flower garden filled the space before flowing into the woods. And that’s where the scent of rotted hybrid corpse smacked her full in the face.
Her heart raced as she walked into the yard, her ruse completely forgotten now. She even centered on the stench, what seemed to emanate from under a sundial, but…
The earth looked like it hadn’t been disturbed. No fresh dirt, no newly seeded grass poking through. And the closer she got to it, the more the scent kept fading in and out, as if a mirage.
Or maybe someone used some pretty powerful magick to try to dispel it?
She circled the yard, once again stopping there by the sundial. The female wolf’s scent was strong here, up onto the back porch, as was the other, peculiar scent.
But the house lay empty, as far as she could tell.
Nothing made sense.
Not in the slightest.
At least she had another clue, something she could use to research. She noted the house’s address on her phone before jumping in her car and hurrying out of there. She didn’t dare risk spending too much time in the wolf Clan territory. But now she could figure out who the house belonged to, who the female wolf was.
And maybe figure out who’d killed her mate.
* * * *
Ortega took Elain upstairs and led her through another set of doors into an enormous wing that could have dwarfed two average-sized American homes.
He stopped in front of an open door and lightly rapped on the frame. “Fiona, you have a visitor.”
He led Elain inside. The older woman with black hair and amber eyes and sitting in a chair next to a desk had to be Ortega’s wife. She was definitely a jaguar.
Fiona smiled when she spotted Elain. She jumped up from her chair at the desk and ran over to her, throwing her arms around her in a hug.
From her, joyous emotions washed over Elain…
Except for a little darkness tucked away deep inside her.
Anger. Pain. Grief.
Elain knelt to hug her back. “It’s so good to see you, Fiona.”
“Grandpa and Grandma said you were here. How long are you staying?”
“Not long, sweetheart,” Ortega said. “I’m sorry, my apologies. Elain Lyall, this is my wife, Lucy.”
Lucy stood and walked over, smiling as she hugged Elain. “I’m so pleased to finally get to meet you. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for us. You and your Clan are always welcome in our home as part of our family.”
Fiona looked up at her grandfather. “Can Elain have dinner with us, Grandpa?”
“Of course she will.” He looked to his wife. “Dear, a word, please?”
Lucy smiled and followed him out.
Elain let Fiona lead her over to the desk,
where she showed Elain her math homework.
“You know,” Elain said, “your grandfather asked me to talk to you.”
Fiona nodded, but didn’t reply as she stared at the equations on the paper.
“Before I was born, bad people were following my mom and dad. My dad had to leave my mom to try to keep me and her safe. And then my mom died right after I was born, and her best friend adopted me and raised me.”
Fiona stared at her, but didn’t respond. Elain reached out a hand and touched her arm. That’s when she sensed the swirling vortex of grief and anger at war within the child as she tried to process what Elain said.
And Elain felt hopeful, because she also sensed that Fiona felt an affinity with Elain, and that the little girl was glad to finally feel like she had a true family.
Elain kept trying. “It’s okay to feel upset. To be angry. To feel like it’s not fair, because it isn’t fair what happened. Just don’t let it be what you make of your life. Make sure you look at all the good stuff and enjoy it, because that’s what you need to do. And if you ever want to talk to me, your grandfather has my number. He’ll help you call me.”
“Were they bad men working for Abernathy?” she asked in a voice that sounded way too old to belong to a child so young.
“Who?”
“The bad people following your mom and dad.”
“Yeah, they were. So we have that in common.” Unfortunately.
“I wish I could have known my mom and dad.”
“I know, sweetie.” Elain had to remember to keep up the pretense that Ortega’s son had been Fiona’s father. The child had enough to deal with without knowing her father’s true identity. “The important thing to remember is you can’t change what happened. All you can do is keep moving forward. Your grandparents love you very, very much. And you have a huge family now. Focus on that, not on how angry you are. Anger does really bad things to people if you let it sit there and grow. It turns into a nasty monster that can eat you alive from the inside out.”
“Grandpa said he made Abernathy sorry for what happened.”
Triple Cross [Triple Trouble 7] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 9