by Lexie Ray
Willow had accused him of being obsessed and it was a position that he could no longer deny. There was a part of him that had never fully let go of the past. That had never left that dark patch of the wilderness that he had been left in to die.
Despite the comfortable warmth that he and Willow had created under the sheets, Mads could still feel the dark chill crawling up along his spine. Monsters moved out from the shadows to claw into his mind. They dragged him back to the moment he had last seen his parents.
The crackling from the fireplace suddenly sounded like the wind moving through the forest canopy; the shadows resembled the dark night he had been left in; the sheets became the muddy road that had oozed around his feet with every step. He had no idea what time it had been when the stalker had thrown him from the car, when the disappearing taillights had been the brightest point on the horizon.
For what had felt like an eternity, he had stood in place, unsure if he should stay or go. He had always been taught that, if ever lost, he should remain where he was and wait to be found. He remembered the fear he had felt in thinking that no one would be coming for him. And the absolute terror at the thought that the one who might come for him would be the man who had taken his parents.
Eventually, when the sounds of wild animals had begun to close in from all around, he had begun to walk. He trudged along dirt roads and across moss soft enough to sink him to his ankles. Through mud and bushes tall enough to smack across his forehead. Unseen thorns had torn his skin and hunger had made him dizzy. For days he had aimlessly covered ground without finding another person. And then, when he finally had, he had been too afraid that it was the man to allow himself to be seen.
Mads had no delusion that he would have survived in that endless forest. He knew that if he hadn’t been lucky enough to wander onto someone’s private property the only thing they would have found of him would have been his weathered, animal-picked remains,. But a man had tracked a deer and stumbled across a starved, terrified child.
Willow stirred within her sleep, a slight line forming between her eyes as she frowned. As gently as he could, careful not to wake her, Mads pulled the blanket a little higher onto her shoulders. Slowly, she settled deeper into the pillow, a curl of her hair drifting down over her calmed face.
He watched her, her nose twitching at the constant touch of the hair, and smiled. With tender care, he lifted the curl and returned it to the others. There was such beauty in her features. A classical artistry within each line and curve. Upon their first meeting, he had admired the aesthetic. Over the years, his appreciation had grown into something far sweeter. But, after tonight, he was sure that something fundamental had changed. Something that couldn’t be reversed or revised. Something that he couldn’t fully explore until his past had been left to behind. As quietly as possible, Mads slipped out of the bed and began to pack.
Chapter Ten
Willow sighed as she stretched out over the vast field of sheer perfection. The snow must have continued to fall during the night. The air still carried a sharp chill but it went so beautifully with the overheated sheets. A small hint of smoke wafted in the air and she realized that the fire must have burned out. Since Mads had apparently decided that his room was the one space that didn’t need to be heated, the fire had been the only thing to fend off the frigid air.
Since this was entirely his fault, Willow deemed it his responsibility to rekindle the flame and bring the room temperature back to something liveable. She reached out further, seeking out the warm solid expanse of his body. Cool sheets brushed against her fingers, drawing her further from her restful sleep. Brow furrowing, she blinked and opened her eyes to find that his side of the bed was empty.
Keeping the sheets tightly pressed to her body, she sat up and glanced around the room. Pale morning light slipped in as a soft wind made the curtains billow. The last embers of the fire released a fine trail of smoke as they died. The house stood in perfect silence.
“Mads?”
When no answer came, Willow edged towards the side of the bed and scooted out from under the sheets. It had been warm enough under the sheets to negate the need for clothes. She quickly moved to the cupboard and pulled one of his wool knit sweaters over her head. She was still working her arms into the sleeves as she opened the bedroom door and headed out into the hall.
She sighed happily into the warmth that curled around her toes and softened her trek through the hallways. By the time she reached the stairs, her stomach was rolling with anticipation at whatever he might have cooked up for breakfast. His weird tastes aside, Mads was a good cook, and she was sure that whatever he had in store would be a treat.
Warm tension began to pool within the pit of her stomach as her sleepy mind began to whisper about last night’s events. It bubbled up within her mind and worked its way into the forefront of her mind. Mads most definitely had a quirk, or a fetish, if she was allowed to put a name to it, for her to taste certain things. While she still wasn’t entirely on board with such an idea, she knew that he would be able to disguise it well enough that it would most assuredly taste good.
But, even if she couldn’t go along with it, she would most definitely enjoy helping him gather the ingredients. If she was honest with herself, it wasn’t the first time that she had imagined what the weight of his cock would feel like against her tongue. Would he be as scorching hot as the rest of him? Biting her bottom lip, she started to think about all the ways she might be able to get him to lose control again. There was a skip in her step as she moved into the kitchen.
She skidded to a stop. Mads wasn’t there. The whole kitchen was perfectly clean and looked completely untouched since he had cleaned it the night before.
“Mads?”
She leaned back out onto the hallway, listening intently for any sound that might ebb out from the lounge room or study. Nothing. She cast her eyes once more around the room and noticed the letter taped to the fridge. Mads was not the type not to have anything taped anywhere, let alone cluttering up the smooth frosted silver of his fridge.
Edging closer, Willow snatched the paper off of the fridge and read the first few lines. That was as far as she got before the sudden crash of anger against her chest made her stop.
“You’ve gone to Europe?” she snapped.
There was no way that he would hear her, but she needed to hear the words allow to believe that they were true. Her hands clenched the paper as she forced herself to begin again, scanning the lines more than actually reading them.
Still, none of it could sink in. Apparently, a new lead was enough for him to drop everything and rush back to his homeland. Alone. To possibly face down a murdering sociopath and most definitely to grab a live emotional grenade that would completely destroy him.
“You cannot be this stupid,” she growled, her hands tightening in the paper until it began to rip.
It was impossible to tell why on earth he would have ended the note with a request not to be followed. There was no possible way that he could think that she would ever agree to that.
***
Willow slammed through the doors of Latvis Security. Her simmering rage made it easy to ignore the layer of snow that dripped off her. They all looked up at her in confusion. She shoved the letter into the closest person’s chest, which just so happened to be Jamie.
“Mads is a jackass!”
“I know,” Jamie said. He frowned as he looked down at the sheet. “But what did he do this time?”
“Hey,” Dwayne grinned happily as he bound into the room. “How did it go? Was it a good play? Or musical or … whatever you called it.”
“It was very nice, thank you,” she said quickly. “But now he has decided to be a complete idiot and I want to belt him with something heavy.”
“You didn’t get together?” Dwayne asked.
Willow whipped around to him. “What?”
Her question was lost beneath Jamie’s shouted question.
“What the hell?”
>
“Well,” Dwayne said as he bashfully rubbed the back of his neck. “It seemed like a good idea. It’s how Mads got all of us girlfriends—”
“Not that, Dwayne,” Jamie cut in as he brandished the note like a dagger. “Mads has gone back to Europe because a compulsive liar gave him a theory on who might have taken his parents.”
“Hold on.” Dwayne lifted a hand as if to fend off the words, put the other one on his hip, and took a deep breath. “Mads, a full grown man, has run away from home?”
“Pretty much,” Jamie said. “And he doesn’t want us to follow.”
“Okay, I’m confused. Does he really think we’d listen to that? Or is it more along the lines that he thinks we can’t actually find him? I need an answer so I know which kind of offended I need to be.”
“Be all kinds of offended,” Willow said. “And give me a company credit card. Because if I have to traipse halfway around the damn world in search of him, I’m doing it on his dime.”
Dwayne automatically pulled out his wallet and slipped a card out of one of the folds.
“Hold on,” Jamie said. “We need to put some thought into this.”
Jamie glared at him. “We’re going after him.”
“Yes. But should we actually take Willow with us? There is the possibility that Mads could be onto something. If so, this situation could become dangerous.”
“I can handle myself,” Willow said.
“Yeah,” Dwayne said as he handed over the credit card. “She can do that.”
“And Mads can hold a vengeful grudge that will erupt in great acts of violence,” Jamie said over her head. “What do you think Mads will do to us if she gets hurt during this?”
“Good point. Solid point. Terrifying point,” Dwayne continued in a string of gibberish.
“I’m going,” Willow snapped. “Because I can’t trust either of you two to give him the bitch-slap he deserves over this move.”
Dwayne crossed his arms over his chest. “Why are you the angry one? At least you got a letter. Where’s our letter? I want a letter. I deserve a damn letter. I’m great. And I’ve known him longer. And I didn’t get a letter.”
“He slept with me last night and left the country before I woke up.”
Both men stared at each other over her head. They agreed with a nod.
“Yep. She wins the right to be the angriest,” Dwayne said.
Jamie nodded, his cheeks flushing slightly. “Buy the woman the damn tickets.”
***
Having committed to a path of action, Mads had been able to get some sleep on the plane. While he had managed to secure a position on the fastest flight, it still felt like years before he was able to put his feet on French soil. Hiring a car, he quickly left the city behind, his destination two and a half hours drive away.
Even though years had passed since he had last traveled this path, each twist and turn had been forever ingrained in his mind. He drove the streets by memory. The forest rose up to meet him, surrounding him on all sides, its branches reaching out to cover the road in a dome. The trees blanketed the sky, cutting off his view of the snow-capped mountains that he was undoubtable driving into.
Snow upon the breeze created ghostly snakes that slithered across the road before him. The further he went, the more patches of ice caught his wheel until it was possible he might fishtail off of the road and into one of the deep ravines.
Abruptly, the trees thinned to give enough room for a tiny village to be cradled within the valley. Not a single street had changed from what Mads remembered. But then, very few things about the tiny village had changed since the seventeenth century.
He passed through the snow-lined streets and climbed back up the hillside. A small stone villa sat upon the outskirts of the town, almost swallowed by the encroaching forest walls. Mads slowed his car along the frozen mud as he edged his way to the front door. He wasn’t within a few feet of it before Jean-Claude came into view with his hunting rifle in hand.
Mads turned on the engine and kept his hands in full view as he stepped out of the vehicle. Jean-Claude stared at him for a long moment, peering at him with a fledgling sense of recognition. Mads quirked his lips and tipped his head.
“It has been a long time,” Mads said, loud and clear.
“Little Wolf?”
Mads laughed abruptly. It seemed like a lifetime had passed since he had heard that particular term of endearment. Jean-Claude cocked the rifle in half and draped it over his forearm.
“What trouble have you gotten yourself into now, Little Wolf?”
“Why do you assume I am the one in trouble?”
Jean-Claude cocked his eyebrow and rolled his eyes. It was a combination that very few people could pull off.
“Well, get inside,” Jean-Claude sighed. “I have some whisky somewhere. You can tell me all about it.”
Chapter Eleven
While she had heard stories of Paris’s beauty and history, it had never really been a place that Willow had wanted to visit. Still, she felt a little cheated that her first time in the city was so rushed. They had stumbled off of the ungodly long flight and, after the quickest stop off at a café she ever had, they had piled into a rental car. Apparently, neither Dwayne, Jamie, nor Gwen understood the concept of jetlag.
As Willow had discovered on the flight, Mads’ financial records were a twisted web consisting of dozens of accounts through numerous companies under his wide variety of aliases. Some of them were obvious while others were very well-hidden. Dwayne had tried to explain it all to her at the beginning of the flight, when he had first started to try and trace down any recent activity that might give them a hint where Mads had gone. But her eyes had glazed over and he had told her not to worry about it.
As it turned out, Dwayne was scarily skilled at following the money. His fingers were almost too big to actually hit any of the keys of his laptop, but he played it like a finely- tuned instrument. He spent the flight hunched over the device, untangling the insane web of tricks that Mads had put in place to hide his tracks. By the time they had landed, Dwayne had tracked down a recent purchase of gas made in a small town with one credit card. And an order from a local grocery shop made on a different card further on.
So they had allowed Willow to slump against the front passenger door, coffee clenched in a death grip, as they made a beeline out of the city. Somewhere along the line, she drifted off to sleep, only to wake two hours later to a swirling snowstorm that pressed down against each window of the car.
“It should be up here on the right,” Gwen said from the back seat.
Jamie’s face and actions remained completely professional even as he mumbled a “Thanks, babe”, and took the turn onto the thin road almost completely hidden by snow drifts. The towering forest offered little protection from the swirling white.
“How long has this storm been going on?”
“A while,” Dwayne said as he slumped down further in his seat, his head propped at an odd angle and still pressed against the roof of the car. “And I’m just going to throw this out one more time.”
“Please don’t,” Jamie mumbled.
Dwayne ignored him. “This car, while being small and cute and tiny with limited leg room, is not designed to handle this kind of weather. So, in conclusion, just a middle finger to whoever picked this car.”
“You picked this car,” Gwen snapped.
“Which is another bone I need to pick. Why on earth would you let someone who can’t read or write French handle any French transaction?”
“Because the rental company was bilingual,” Jamie said. “You could have easily asked to see the contract in English.”
“I did not come all the way to France to speak in English.”
Jamie flinched as if in real pain and Gwen leaned as far back against her door as she could. Since she was the tallest out of all of them, that was difficult
“This is why I wanted to bring Andrea,” Gwen said.
“She does ha
ve a job,” Jamie said. “She’ll catch up with us once it’s done.”
“And until then?”
“He’ll settle down once we find Mads.”
Dwayne looked around as best he could. “You know I can hear you, right?”
“Dwayne, hush,” Jamie cut in quickly.
“You’re not my real dad,” Dwayne snapped before pausing. “Wow. Even I don’t know where that came from.”
Willow’s back had tensed up over the long drive and she longed to stretch out the muscles. But since she was the only one small enough to do so, it kind of felt like she would be bragging, so she quelled the urge and settled for reaching over to crank up the heat.
She was about to ask how far off they were when the small stone structures emerged from the misting white. The town consisted of only a few stone buildings clustered together. As Jamie inched the car along the thin cobblestones, they peered out into the forming mist, searching the quaint storefronts as they burned like fire within the encroaching night.
“There!” Dwayne said as he snapped a hand out through the gap between the front seats and pointed into the darkness. “It’s the same jumble of letters from the bank statement.”
Jamie rolled his eyes but nonetheless searched for a place to park. He found a place soon enough and pulled off to the side, the snow crunching under his slowing tires. The swirling wind attacked them the second they opened the car doors and, no matter how tightly Willow pulled her jacket, the cold was already inside, sinking into her core.
Gwen kept by her side as they jogged the short distance back to the store, undoubtedly worried that she would hit a patch of ice and topple. It was an act made all the sweeter when considering that the towering Amazon of a woman had to cut her stride by half to match Willow’s stride.
They piled into the small store, shaking the snow from their jackets and stomping it from their shoes. Once she had shed the layer of ice, Willow looked around the tiny store. It fit in perfectly with the quaint aesthetics of the town. Barrels and wooden crates of fresh produce lined the walls, meats dangled from a suspended rack, and wheels of cheese were stacked on the shelves behind the counter.