by Celia Kyle
The door slammed shut and she stared out the window, watching Paul round the front of the car. For a moment, and only a moment, she wondered if Gavin would believe the note.
No.
No matter what bullshit Paul wrote, she and Gavin were mates. He’d never doubt her love or her loyalty to him, just as she had no doubt he would come for her.
And when he did, Paul would be a dead man.
Chapter Seventeen
Dammit. Every time Gavin turned around, one deputy or another was cooing for the station cat, holding out little bits of food or hissing while whispering his name, “Ronald Fleasley” over and over again. Case in point, Anders currently held a tiny stuffed mouse by its tail, wiggling it back and forth while trying to lure the cat from its lounging spot on top of an important case file.
“Here’s a thought,” Gavin said, from the doorway of his office. “Why not get rid of the cat and focus on doing your damn job?”
“What’s he hurting?” Anders asked, as Ronald jumped from the desk.
The kitten made a beeline for Gavin and then took a running leap and latched on to his trousers mid-thigh. Gavin winced and wondered what his options were. If he batted it away, Rachel would hear about it, and then he would hear about it. He stared into the monster’s bright green eyes as it clung to his leg, and he had to concede it was pretty cute. Still not appropriate for a Sheriff’s office, but cute nonetheless. Then his phone rang, startling the kitten into digging its claws deep into his flesh. Suddenly Ronald was no longer all that adorable.
Limping over to his desk, kitten still firmly attached, Gavin answered brusquely. “Sheriff Blackwood.”
Odds were it was only the Tiptons. Eric, Charlie and Joey were having a sleepover, but the chances of them making it through the night without having at least one classic six-year-old-style meltdown were slim.
“Oh, Gavin, I’m glad you answered.” The raspy male voice was definitely not Robert Tipton.
“Arthur? Shouldn’t you be mid-dinner rush by now?”
There was a pause on the line, and Gavin could hear the faint buzz and rattle of the diner in the background.
“Is everything alright?” Gavin tried again.
“I, well, um,” Arthur cleared his throat. “Here’s the thing… It’s just that… Um…”
“Arthur, why don’t you quit dancing around the problem and tell it to me straight. Is Rachel not working out or something?”
“It’s not that,” Arthur stammered. “Well, not exactly.”
“Then what is it, exactly?”
Another pause. “It is Rachel. The problem, I mean. But the problem is that she’s not here.”
“What do you mean? She didn’t come in for work?”
“No, no, no,” Arthur said, and Gavin could practically feel the frantic shake of the other man’s head as he spoke. “She was here. She went to take out the trash and… never came back. We didn’t notice until things started to pick up, but she’s been gone for nearly half an hour.”
The cold hand of fear clutched Gavin’s heart. “What do you mean she’s gone? Where did she go?”
“I don’t know, Gavin. We’ve looked all over for her—bathroom, stock room, out back in the alley, everywhere. There is a note taped to her locker though. It’s addressed to you.”
“Did you read it?” He knew he sounded gruff, but he also knew Arthur wouldn’t take it personally.
“Goodness, no! In fact, aside from a couple of doorknobs, we didn’t touch anything. Just in case it’s, you know, evidence.”
Gavin cringed at the word. Evidence implied a crime, or some other ugly event, had happened. For all he knew, Rachel had gone out to make a phone call and lost track of time. Except, in his gut, he knew better.
“Good. I’ll be right over. Don’t touch anything, Arthur.”
“You got—”
Gavin didn’t wait for the older man to finish before hanging up and dialing another number. The line range once, twice, and then clicked to life. A television blared in the background as a tired-sounding woman said, “Hello?”
“Bonnie, it’s Gavin.”
“Gavin?” She clicked her tongue. “Boy, you have an awful lot of nerve calling here again after canceling like that. Poor Charlie is heartbroken.”
“What do you mean?” Gavin demanded a little too forcefully.
“I mean you calling to have Eric meet you outside, so you could take him to a movie, instead of spending the night with Charlie. I know you adore him, but he needs to make friends too, Gavin.”
“Eric’s not with you?” His heart froze in his chest.
“N-no. But you… you picked him up. I watched him get in the minivan.”
“That wasn’t me, Bonnie. What color was it?”
“Oh God, Gavin,” she breathed, panic tightening her voice. “I thought… it sounded just like… oh God, Gavin.”
“Bonnie, what color was the van? Did you see the license plate?”
“N-no. I didn’t think to look because you said… I mean, he said.” Her voice broke with a choked sob, but she managed to whisper one more word. “Silver.”
“Stay calm and keep Charlie close, okay?”
Before waiting for her reply, he slammed down the receiver again and grabbed his coat. Eric had climbed into a strange minivan and not jumped out when he’d seen Gavin wasn’t driving. Did he know his kidnapper? Of course, he did, and Gavin knew his identity, too. He was so lost in his thoughts he didn’t notice Anders sitting in the passenger seat of Gavin’s cruiser until he’d slid behind the wheel.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Gavin asked.
“Supporting my enforcer. I heard enough to figure things aren’t looking good. Just doing what any good sentry, or deputy, would do.”
On any other day, Gavin might have snapped that good sentries don’t bring cats into the station house. Instead, he started the aging SUV and raced for Dickey’s Diner.
They found Arthur in the kitchen, but he dropped his spatula the moment he spotted Gavin.
“Right back here,” he said, leading them to the employee lockers and pointing to a piece of paper taped to one of them. “There it is.”
Gavin’s eyes burned at the strong smell of ammonia in the room.
“Did you just clean in here?” he asked.
Arthur shrugged as he headed back to the kitchen. “Too busy. Maybe a bottle spilled or something.”
Gavin thought differently, but it was too soon to jump to conclusions.
Snatching the paper off the locker door, he examined the decidedly unfeminine hand that spelled his name. He had yet to see a sample of Rachel’s handwriting, so he had nothing to compare it to. Maybe she didn’t write all cutesy and girly. He could see that about her, but the handwriting on the note didn’t seem to fit her. It looked too… masculine.
Holding the note by the very edges, he flipped it open.
Gavin,
I’ve made a terrible mistake. I tried to make a life with you here in Ashwood, but I know in my heart I don’t belong. I can never be the kind of mate you deserve. I could never love you the way you love me, because the truth is that I love someone else. I’ve taken Eric, so I can follow my heart. I’m sorry to hurt you like this. It’s not you. It’s me. I hope you can forgive me someday. Please don’t try to find us.
Rachel
He jumped about a foot when Anders slapped his back and shook his head in sympathy. “Man, that sucks. I’m really sorry, Gavin.”
Gavin frowned in confusion for a moment but then realized Anders must have believed Rachel wrote the note. Nothing was further from the truth, he knew it deep in his soul. They’d bonded as mates and nothing would ever break that. If Rachel and Eric hadn’t been missing, he might have even chuckled at his sentry’s ignorance.
Bringing the paper to his nose, he breathed deeply, but the ammonia overpowered any trace of scent on the paper. Flipping over the paper, he tried again, this time focusing on the place where the tape stuck
to the fold.
There it was. The smell he’d been expecting since the very start—dying roses, Pine-Sol, and pure evil. He turned to Anders, his blood thundering in his ears.
“Rachel and Eric have been kidnapped.”
“What!”
“Gather the other sentries. I’ll call my brothers. We have to work together to bring Rachel and Eric home.”
“But who would have taken them?”
Gavin stared at the note in his hand, fur sprouting from various parts of his body as his wolf howled for justice.
“The NRC never caught Brian Riverson’s beta. They failed Rachel and Eric by not finding him, but we are not going to do the same. Rachel and Eric are coming home. Paul Gibson won’t.”
Chapter Eighteen
Rachel had never been so happy to be a wolf. Not happy exactly—grateful. She certainly wasn’t happy to be held captive in a damp, dark basement with the threat of death pacing around overhead, but if one had to be imprisoned in the moldy basement of a grimy shack by a crazy man, having hypersensitive shifter senses helped.
Not long after Paul had driven off with them in his crappy minivan, he’d pulled over to blindfold them both. Then he’d resumed driving. Driving, driving, driving. When he’d warned her it would be a long trip, he hadn’t been joking. She estimated they’d been on the road for a good four hours before he’d finally dragged them out of the minivan and into the basement.
With only a single ancient and very weak incandescent bulb dangling from the ceiling for light, she had no idea where the sun sat in the sky, but her internal clock told her it was no more than twenty-four hours after Paul had kidnapped them. Judging by the overpowering smell of rotting wood and timber, they were holed up in a forest. Somewhere.
The mildew was too strong for her to identify the underlying forest smell, but she hoped with all her heart it wasn’t as far from the Blackwood lands as Paul would’ve had her believe. He’d taken a lot of right-hand turns during the drive, so he could have simply driven around in circles most of the time. If she’d been human, she probably would never have noticed all those little clues, so she wouldn’t have had the glimmer of hope that both she and Eric might survive this ordeal.
Of course, nothing was certain when you were dealing with a lunatic. It appeared the solitude of being on the run from the NRC had done little to make Paul Gibson any saner than when he’d faithfully served as Brian Riverson’s beta. His eyes, normally a pale shade of seafoam green in his human form, had taken on the vivid emerald green of his wolf’s eyes since their encounter in the alley. His wolf was close to the surface, and if his wild eyes weren’t a dead giveaway, his sudden rages were.
Every time he skulked down the creaky stairs, Rachel couldn’t resist goading the crazy bastard—mostly to keep his attention focused on her and not Eric, but also because she was no longer the same old Rachel he once knew and tormented. Even from a distance, she felt Gavin’s love coursing through her, giving her the strength to stand her ground like never before. Besides, it felt good to tear down the asshole with snide comments about his pathetic cowardice.
It didn’t feel so good when he’d backhand her, but each time his hand connected with her face, she felt that same stab of gratitude that he’d taken his rage out on her instead of Eric. She was doubly grateful Eric had no inner wolf to hear Paul’s senseless ramblings as he paced the main floor of the cabin. He didn’t need to hear Paul grumbling about how much easier life would be if he only had to worry about Rachel. Of course, there was so much more, such as how she must be “broken” because she wasn’t helping him like she used to.
She had no clue what he was talking about, but the ramblings of madmen rarely made sense. Standing in the middle of the room, watching dust floating down from the ceiling as Paul paced, Rachel listened hard again to his babbling.
“Why doesn’t it work? It used to. It should. She should. Fuck, my head. Why doesn’t it work? She’s broken.”
That’s right, asshole. I’m the broken one. Dick.
Turning her attention to the darkest corner of the basement, she tiptoed over and peeked around the stack of old newspapers and crates. Eric sat on a piece of cardboard with his back against the wall, his knees pulled up and his forehead pressed against them. He hadn’t spoken at all since the kidnapping, except when she asked very direct questions.
“How far did you get, little man?” she whispered, reaching into the dimness to wrap a comforting hand around his ankle.
“A million.”
To keep his mind off their current situation, she’d been giving him silly tasks—make up a new color, practice singing the alphabet in his head, count as high as he could.
“A million? Wow, that’s a lot.”
She felt him shrug more than saw it. The defeat in that gesture broke her heart.
“I might have missed a couple of numbers,” he conceded with a sigh.
“That’s okay, Eric,” she said, squeezing his leg while trying to ignore Paul’s latest rant. “Now I think you should invent a brand-new animal, made up of all different kinds of animals. Think up the funniest one you can, and I’ll do the same, okay?”
Silence.
“Okay, Eric?”
He finally sighed. “Okay.”
The bitter scent of anger drifted down from upstairs and Rachel hurried toward the stairs, readying herself for her next round of abuse. But the door never opened. Paul’s footsteps became more erratic and his voice was tinged with pain.
“Why?” he moaned just loudly enough for Rachel to hear. “Stupid bitch. It’s her fault, all her fault. Or maybe the boy’s. Fuck, why does my head hurt so bad?”
It was the first time he’d revealed a specific physical symptom. Maybe it wasn’t just insanity. Tapping into her omega nature, she sent a tendril out toward Paul, trying to sniff out any other symptoms. He moaned, and she almost felt his pain. His entire body throbbed with it, to the point of making him nauseated. At the sound of his retching, Rachel pulled back into herself. If Paul was puking, he wouldn’t risk coming downstairs and being overpowered by her, which meant she and Eric were safe.
For the moment.
A glass shattered overhead, and stumbling footsteps moved toward a far corner of the house, where Rachel guessed Paul’s bed or couch sat. She took the chance to move up the stairs a little way to catch anything else he said, but it was just more of the same.
“How the fuck did she break? She’s useless. Not like before. Maybe it’s the kid. Yeah, gotta be. He was just a baby before. He’s bigger now. Gotta be the kid. Shit, it hurts.”
At the sound of springs creaking as Paul lay down, Rachel held her breath. Before her lungs started burning, Paul’s rumbling snores rattled the rafters. The last time she’d heard him snoring, she’d snuck up the stairs and tried the door, but of course it was locked. She held little hope he’d forgotten to lock it the last time he came down to smack her around, but she’d be a fool not to try.
Locked.
Dammit!
She’d expected it, but time was running out, along with hope. Paul now believed Eric to be the cause of whatever had “broken” her, and she had no doubt he’d come down to rectify the situation as soon as he woke up. She had to try everything to escape, but she had to do it quietly. That ruled out breaking down the door. Besides, certain metallic scraping sounds when he locked the door behind him suggested he’d also somehow barred it. Even if she shifted and used her wolf’s immense strength, she wouldn’t get through—at least not before Paul woke up and shifted into his much-larger beast.
Rejecting the door as an option, she tiptoed back down the stairs in time with Paul’s snores and looked around the room. The dim bulb barely cast any light along the walls of the cellar, and though she’d explored the space several times already, she readied herself to do it again, even more thoroughly.
Starting in the back corner behind the stairs, Rachel patted every square inch of the wall, even using a semi-sturdy crate to reach the ceilin
g. The stone felt cold and moist under her palms, even mossy in places. Without the benefit of light, she relied on her sense of touch and smell to “see” what her fingers felt, and not all of it was pleasant. Spongy masses, slimy patches, and soft “pebbles” that skittered away at her touch made her skin crawl, but she wouldn’t let her squeamishness get in the way of saving Eric.
After covering every square inch of the back wall, she turned to the next and repeated the process. Eric’s sniffles mixed in with Paul’s buzz sawing, and as much as she wanted to go comfort him and tell him everything would be okay, she knew they wouldn’t be unless she found a way out of the murky hell hole.
Even though she moved slowly and methodically, not allowing a single centimeter of the wall to go unexplored, Rachel’s heart pounded frantically in her chest. She did her best to calm it, not wanting to further upset Eric, but she couldn’t control it. All she could control was how carefully she inspected her surroundings. At the end of the second wall, she paused only to check on Eric.
“Hey, I think I have the winning animal,” she said, kneeling next to him and brushing hair from his forehead. “A blue whale with tiny wiener dog legs, a unicorn’s horn, and a beaver’s tail. Pretty good, huh?”
He just grunted and buried his face in his knees again. She had to get him out. Now.
Her inspection of the third wall was hampered by crates and boxes piled up in a jumble. It seemed to take hours for her to move them all against the wall she’d already gone over as quietly as possible. Resuming her routine of starting at the floor and working her way up to the ceiling, she closed her eyes and focused.
She almost missed it the first time. It felt like the million other mystery bumps she’d encountered already, but something in her mind stopped her. Going back to the spot high over her head, even as she stood on her crate, she poked and prodded the bump. It felt like the edge of a wooden board.