Trouble in a Fur Coat (The Fur Coat Society Book 1)

by Sloane Meyers

  “What the hell do they mean by Joe’s little slut?” Jack interrupted. He could feel his blood starting to boil.

  “I think they mean Silver,” Juno said, as gently as she could. Jack still exploded in anger.

  “She’s not a slut, and she doesn’t belong to Joe! I swear to god I am going to rip all of their heads off!” Jack could feel his bear within him, rearing up and ready to fight. The idea of anyone laying their hands on his woman, or referring to her as a slut, made him see red. Someone was going to pay for this.

  “I know, Jack. We all know that. Try to keep reasonably calm. Flying off the handle right now isn’t going to help Silver. We have to think rationally about this so we can find her and help her. There will be time to go into a rage later.”

  Jack forced himself to take a few deep breaths in and out. “Okay,” he said, his tone still seething. “Do you have any idea what their plan is?”

  “Not really,” Juno admitted. “But I know they were looking for test subjects for the scanners earlier that day. I only caught bits and pieces of conversations, but it sounds like they want to demonstrate the scanners at some event the mayor is holding in a few days. I have a feeling they are going to use one of the scanners on Silver and out her as a shifter. Which, they are probably hoping will cause mass hysteria and make everyone instantly afraid of Silver. Unfortunately, that’s probably exactly what will happen.”

  “Where do you think she is?” Jack asked. His hovercar was pulling up in front of Bash’s condo. Bash, who was already waiting in front of the building, quickly hopped in. The look on his face said that he was about as ready to tear someone to pieces as Jack was.

  “I…I’m not sure. But I have a few ideas,” Juno said. “Most of which involve Joe’s family.”

  “Alright, we all need to put our heads together,” Jack said. “Can you meet us at Foster Beach? And get Grant and Storm to come as well?”

  “Yeah, I’ll call them and I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Juno said.

  The call ended without another word. The hovercar was already zooming toward Foster Beach as Jack turned to look at Bash, who was frantically dialing on his phone.

  “I can’t get a hold of my dad,” he said. “He’s probably up flying tourists around right now.”

  “Let’s call Sawyer, then,” Jack said. Bash looked up at him in surprise.

  “Really?” Bash asked. “I thought you were dead set against bringing the old folks into this fray. You know if Sawyer hears about this, that’s it. The clans back home will get involved.”

  “I know,” Jack said. “But I think it’s time to admit I was wrong. If Silver’s life is at stake, it needs to be all hands on deck. This means war.”

  Bash nodded. “You’re right. I don’t know why I didn’t think of calling Sawyer. I guess I was just so frustrated trying to get through to my dad that I couldn’t think straight. Let’s call him now.”

  Jack nodded. “Computer, call Sawyer Williams.”

  A few moments later, a deep voice came on the line. “Frost Peak Tours, this is Sawyer.”

  “Sawyer, it’s Jack Tanner and Bash Rowe,” Jack said. “We have a problem.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Less than ten minutes later, Jack’s hovercar landed and came to a stop in a parking lot not far from Foster Beach. As he and Bash climbed out of the vehicle, another hovercar pulled up and landed right next to them. It was Storm and Juno.

  “Grant’s on his way,” Storm said as she jumped out of her hovercar, her feet hitting the ground with a loud thud. She was wearing gym clothes and a pair of workout shoes, and was sweaty like she’d just come from the gym. Juno still had on a white lab coat, so she must have been working her job as a research assistant right before arriving. Both girls had pale, drawn faces. Everyone was worried about Silver’s life, but no one wanted to actually voice the question of whether she was still alive. Saying it out loud would make it all seem too real.

  “Let’s get going,” Bash said gruffly. “Grant can catch up with us when he gets here.”

  The group followed Bash toward the lakefront path. North of Foster Beach, Bash stopped and veered off the path toward a grassy area with trees.

  “Silver loves this spot,” he said. “I’m pretty sure the last text she sent me, with a picture of her bike in front of the lake, was sent from here.”

  “Um, I’m pretty sure it was, too,” Storm said. “Look, guys.”

  Jack, along with everyone else, turned his attention to where Storm was standing, next to the large trunk of one of the trees. She was holding up a small pink knapsack with white polka dots that Jack instantly recognized as Silver’s.

  Bash grabbed the knapsack from Storm and started rifling through it. “Her phone’s in here, and her wallet,” he said. “So she wasn’t robbed. It’s odd that her purse is here but her bike is not. She isn’t the type to just leave and forget her stuff. Do you think she maybe took off on her bike quickly to try to run away from someone or something?”

  “Maybe,” Storm said, but she sounded doubtful. “But Silver also generally isn’t the type to run away.”

  Grant showed up just then, and Bash started debriefing him on what they had learned so far, which wasn’t much. Jack walked around the tree, trying to find any other clues as to why Silver’s bag was here, but she and her bike were not. Moments later, he spotted a small, white cloth on the ground by the tree. He almost bypassed it, thinking it was trash, but decided to pick it up and inspect it just to be sure. Something about its location struck him as odd.

  The cloth was slightly stiff and a little discolored in spots. Jack held it up to his nose and sniffed it, frowning when he detected a faint pungent odor with a hint of chlorine.

  “Juno,” he said, turning to hand the cloth to her. “I know you’re a biologist, not a chemist, but tell me what you think when you sniff this cloth.”

  Juno sniffed it, then frowned as well. “You’re the anesthesiologist, Jack. But I’d be willing to bet that cloth had been soaked in isoflurane.”

  Jack nodded. “I think you’re right. Definitely isoflurane.”

  “Iso-what?” Bash asked, reaching for the cloth and sniffing it, but seeming unimpressed. “I don’t smell anything.”

  “Isoflurane,” Jack said. “It’s not used much anymore these days, but it used to be a really popular inhalational anesthetic.”

  “Huh?” Storm said. “I’m still not understanding.

  “Someone soaked this cloth in isoflurane, which knocks you out quickly if you breathe it in,” Juno explained. “What Jack is getting at is that it looks like someone knocked Silver unconscious using chemicals.”

  “But who? And why?” Storm asked. “And why isn’t her bike here anymore?”

  “Long story short,” Jack said, “We think that Joe’s family kidnapped her and is planning to publicly use the eye scanner on her next week. They’ll accomplish a lot by doing that—they’ll freak out the general public about shifters, and they’ll ruin Silver’s chances of ever being able to show her face in Chicago again. I’m sure his family will take great pleasure in ruining her ballet career.”

  “Oh my god,” Storm said. “The safety summit!”

  “Safety summit?” Bash asked.

  “Yeah, the mayor is holding a safety summit in a few days. He’s supposedly going to talk about threats to Chicago and how to make the city a safer place and all that blah-blah. Supposedly he thinks the event is going to help him gain support for the election. I didn’t understand why it was such a big deal. The event itself doesn’t seem all that impressive to me. But if they’re going to roll out the eye scanners, and use them live to show that shifters exist, well, that will get a lot of attention.”

  “But how do they know that Silver is a shifter?” Grant said. “I was under the impression that Joe’s family was completely oblivious to that fact.”

  “And I thought the scanners weren’t working properly yet,” Bash said.

  “They’re not working prope
rly,” Juno said. “But if they set them to be super sensitive or something, they can ensure that Silver will be scanned as a shifter. I have no idea how they know she’s a shifter, though.”

  “Maybe they don’t,” Jack said. “They hate her for breaking up with Joe, right? So maybe they think that pretending she’s a shifter, making everyone afraid of her, and ruining her career is a good way to get back at her.”

  “I think you’re right, actually,” Grant said. “They probably don’t actually know that she’s a shifter. How ironic.”

  “Ironic indeed. But will scanning her really prove anything?” Bash asked. “If they make the gun supersensitive like you’re saying, Juno, then it would flag everyone as a shifter. Won’t they have to ‘scan’ some people and have them not show up as shifters to prove to everyone that the gun works? Just using it on one person isn’t going to convince anyone.”

  “I don’t know,” Juno said. “They must have some plan up their sleeves. I know the mayor has been putting a lot of pressure on everyone in the last twenty-four hours to get the scanner running properly. There’s no way it’s going to be working correctly by the end of the week, though.”

  “That’s not important,” Jack said, crossing his arms and deciding it was time to take control of the situation. “The most important thing right now is rescuing Silver. Our goal shouldn’t be to try to figure out the scanners, it should be to try to get Silver away from these bastards.”

  “He’s right,” Bash said, kicking the tree trunk next to him in anger. “We have to get her back. But how? We don’t even know where she is?”

  “Oh, come on, Bash. It’s not that hard to figure out,” Grant said. “Joe’s family kidnapped her. That means she’s probably at Joe’s parents’ house.”

  “No way,” Bash said. “They wouldn’t keep her there. That’s way too obvious!”

  Grant shrugged. “It’s obvious, sure. But they don’t care. They have the latest and greatest in security systems. That place is a fortress. I’m sure there are all kinds of secret rooms, and extra security traps throughout the entire house. Remember the one time we all went there for Joe’s birthday party? Getting in required like a three-level authentication. For a freaking birthday party. The only way to bypass all the levels of the security system was the eye scanners. And we know those eye scanners work properly. If we tried to get in using eye scans, we’d probably set off multiple alarms.”

  “Grant’s right,” Jack said, his heart starting to pound in his chest with a mixture of anger and trepidation. “I bet you anything that Silver is in there somewhere.”

  “So how are we going to get to her?” Storm asked. “It sounds like breaking through the security systems is going to be difficult, if not impossible. And we don’t have a lot of time to figure it out.”

  Jack furrowed his brow, then snapped his fingers. “I have an idea,” he said. The roof! It’s always the most vulnerable part of a building these days. In order to have enough solar power to run everything inside, there needs to be lots of open space covered in solar panels. We could land on the roof and bust through those delicate solar panels no problem. Then we’d be inside in no time and could find and rescue Silver.”

  “The roof?” Juno asked, looking at Jack like he’d lost his mind. “How are you going to get to the roof? I guarantee you it has an electromagnetic no-fly field set up so that no hovercars can land there. You’d have to manually pilot in, and even that would be tricky. Have you ever seen the top of the line no-fly security systems in action? I saw a documentary on it. They shoot off electromagnetic charges at random, quickly and in multiple frequencies, to mess with even the manual flying systems of hovercars. It’s virtually impossible to land anything when you’re dealing with that. Any attempt to fly onto their roof is guaranteed to end in a horrific crash.”

  “Not true,” Jack said. “Any attempt to fly an electric vehicle up there is guaranteed to end in a crash. But a gas helicopter could land.”

  Juno rolled her eyes. “Ok, well, assuming you could even find a gas helicopter, which I doubt, it’s still going to be a suicide mission to fly up there. Those security systems have a backup security method that starts shooting out lasers if it detects a foreign object. You’d need an extremely skilled pilot. Not only that, but once you land, you’re guaranteed to have set off a bazillion alarms. Your arrival will not be a secret.”

  “We can deal with whoever we meet inside, so the alarms don’t bother me,” Jack said. “The getting in is the hard part, and the solar panels, which are delicate and can’t be protected by internal security systems, are the best way to do that. I know that actually flying up there and landing is going to require a good manual pilot, who can dodge some lasers. Luckily, we know three of the best manual pilots out there.”

  Juno’s eyes widened. “Are you calling in our parents?”

  “We already have,” Bash said, looking hopeful for the first time in the last hour. “My dad and Sawyer are already on their way out here.”

  Juno was starting to look a little less doubtful. “Okay, but that still doesn’t solve the problem of how to get a gas plane or helicopter.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Grant said, a big grin spreading across his face. “Sawyer has always been good at getting his hands on whatever equipment he needs. Come on, let’s all head back to my place. We should plan out a rescue mission so that everything but the plane is ready to go when Sawyer gets here.”

  Storm smiled. “Okay. Let’s do this,” she said. Then she reached out and squeezed Jack’s arm. “Don’t worry, Jack. We’ll get your girl back.”

  “Yes we will,” Jack said, letting out a low growl. “We’ll get her back, or we’ll die trying.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Silver woke up with a start as a flood of light hit her eyes. She looked up to see Mr. Astor and Tim entering her tiny room, both of them with smirks on their faces. Silver struggled to focus as she sat up and was overcome by dizziness. She was starving and dehydrated, and she hadn’t been sleeping well on this cold, hard floor, with her hands chained in an impossibly uncomfortable position. She had lost track of exactly how long she had been here, but it had been a few days, and no one had given her anything to eat. They gave her a glass of water here and there, but only enough to keep her from literally dying of thirst. Silver suspected they were trying to make sure she was too weak to put up any kind of a fight at the safety summit.

  “Good morning, Silver,” Mr. Astor said cheerily. “Today is the day! Are you ready to become a shifter.”

  “More ready than you’ll ever know,” Silver spat out, glaring at Mr. Astor.

  Mr. Astor just laughed. “There, there. Don’t take everything so hard. It’s all for a good cause you know,” he said, leaning in to put his face inches in front of her face as he spoke. “And you know what that good cause is? More power for me!”

  Mr. Astor threw his head back and let out a long, evil laugh. Silver winced, her stomach turning at the strong smell of whiskey that seemed to be permeating his pores. Was it really morning, like he said? Because he smelled like he’d been drinking for hours.

  Tim sauntered over and started removing the handcuffs from Silver’s arms. “Don’t even think about trying to make a run for it, sweetheart,” he said. “We’ve got guards stationed everywhere, and the security system is programmed to require an eye scan to leave the building. Let me just give you a little hint right now—your eyes aren’t on the approved list. If the computer scans you trying to leave, this place will go on a full-blown, red alert lockdown.”

  Silver didn’t answer Tim, but she didn’t fight him as he grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, then shoved her out of the cell and into Mr. Astor’s office. She blinked as she looked around, seeing the familiar walls and furniture. She’d been in here on several occasions with Joe, back when they had first started dating. Joe had been in the middle of some huge stock buyout, and had frequently come in here to ask his dad for advice. Silver had tagged along, par
tially because she was awed by the sheer amount of technology in Mr. Astor’s office—every possible state-of-the art office gadget you could have ever wanted was here—and partially because she had still been at that brand new stage of her relationship with Joe where you literally want to spend every second together.

  She shuddered now, thinking of how she used to love Joe. He had turned out to be such a disappointing coward. Tim mistook Silver’s shudder for fear, and he laughed that evil laugh that was obnoxious and chilled you down to the bone, all at the same time.

  “Don’t be afraid, Silver. I hear being a bear is a lot of fun, once you get used to being shunned by all of society,” Tim said. Then he grabbed Silver’s hands and put new handcuffs on them, these ones smaller and thinner, but still cold and uncomfortable.

  “You have no idea,” Silver said, under her breath this time so Mr. Astor and Tim couldn’t hear her. She was tempted to shift right then and there, to give them both the shock of their lives. But she was pretty sure she still wouldn’t be able to escape. It didn’t matter if she was in bear form or human form—her eyes were the same. The security system would scan her eyes and set off alarms if she tried to leave.

  She had to come up with a different plan. But what? She was running out of time, and she hadn’t thought of any feasible way to escape, or to stop Mr. Astor from using the eye scanner on her at the safety summit. Silver felt a slow, dreadful despair creeping through her being. Where was Jack? Surely he had realized she was missing by now. Or what about Storm, or Bash? Someone had to be worried about her by this point.

  Silver had to face reality, though. Even if Jack or her other friends realized she was missing, they would have no way of knowing that she was here, trapped inside Joe’s house. And even if they somehow figured that out, getting into this place when you weren’t invited was next to impossible. The place was a fortress. If someone was going to rescue her, their best bet would be to rescue her while she was on stage at the safety summit. But for them to do that, they would have to know that she was going to be on stage at the safety summit. Again, not a likely possibility.