by Rebecca York
If the guy saw it, he could come down here and capture her—or tell the others where she was. Unless she acted first.
In her fogged mind, she knew that either option was a risk—but she decided she wasn’t going to huddle on this ledge praying for invisibility. Standing, she was relieved to find that her twisted ankle felt almost normal. Next she grasped the rope and tested her hold. When she felt secure, she used her hands and legs to pull herself up, taking Brand’s advice not to look down. Nearing the top, she moved cautiously, inching up until she could barely look over the edge. One of the goons—the guy who had taken her to breakfast this morning—was about twenty yards away, moving slowly along the cliff edge. She could tell by his deliberate pace that he hadn’t spotted her. She ducked down, grasping the rope tightly with her legs and hands, thankful that she had the muscles to hold herself in position.
Her heart pounded as she braced her feet against the rock wall below the cliff edge and waited for the guy to come closer. As he moved slowly and deliberately forward, she wanted to scream at him to hurry up before the muscles in her arms and legs gave out.
After an eternity, he was finally almost even with her.
She heard him pause, then mutter aloud, “What the hell is a rope doing out here?”
As he shuffled closer to the cliffs edge, bending to look down at the man-made intrusion into the landscape, she shot up one arm, grabbed his ankle and yanked with all her might.
She had the advantage of surprise. When he made a startled sound and tried to jerk out of her grasp, she held on with all her strength, shaking his leg and pulling him off balance.
Cursing, he wheeled his arms, desperately trying to keep himself from plummeting into the ravine, but there was nothing he could grab.
He toppled off the edge, his scream echoing through the forest as he fell toward the bottom of the chasm, then landed like a sack of oranges on the rocks below.
Tory was frozen in place for several moments. Rousing herself, she slid back down the rope, her hands burning as they scraped along the rough fibers. She was shaking now, totally shocked by the reality of what she had done. She had planned her moves and pulled a man off into space. Probably he was dead. Or if not, he was horribly battered. But he was one of the guards who had done Dr. Son of a Bitch’s bidding, like driving a woman crazy was just a normal job. He’d known what he was doing, and finally it had come down to one choice—his life or hers.
The others must have heard the scream, but they didn’t know his location. She prayed that they would think he had slipped and gone over the edge of his own accord.
Looking up, she saw the length of the rope dangling along the side of the cliff. Quickly she pulled as much of it as possible under the rock ledge, then huddled under the overhang, listening intently for signs that more guards were coming. When her teeth started to chatter, she remembered she was still wearing the wet shirt. Pulling it off, she quickly slipped into the dry one that Brand had given her.
As soon as it touched her skin, Brand’s unique woodsy scent filled her nose, then drifted to the back of her throat and from there into her brain. Her eyes fluttered shut to better appreciate the sensation. It felt almost like he was holding her in his arms, protecting her. But she couldn’t keep up the illusion. He wasn’t holding her. He was out there—in danger because of her. At least she’d evened the odds a little by eliminating one of the bad guys.
oOo
Brand heard a long, desperate scream ringing out in the night.
Oh Lord, was it Tory?
He told himself that was impossible. It must be one of the guards—going over the edge. As he ducked behind a rock outcropping he heard two men moving toward the drop-off. His wolf’s ears pricked as he listened to their frantic talk.
“Chambers must have taken a nosedive over the cliff edge.”
“Where was he exactly?”
“Don’t know.”
“Chambers,” someone called.
There was no answer.
After several more shouts with no reply, one of the men said, “He must have gone over.”
“Slipped the same way the woman did.”
“She’s probably at the bottom of the cliff, too.”
“Any chance he’s still alive? Somebody should have a look.”
The men stayed huddled together. Neither made a move toward the ravine. Probably they were afraid to risk it now that one of their number had gone over. And it bolstered the theory that Tory had also taken a header into space before they’d arrived on the scene.
Another voice rang out from above.
“I heard a scream. What happened?” It was Raymond who was apparently not willing to chance his footing on the slope.
“Chambers went over.”
“How?”
“We figure it was an accident.” One of the men started up the hill toward the doctor. “Probably that’s what happened to the woman. They both slipped on the wet leaves.
“Don’t make that assumption,” Raymond snapped, his tone giving away his exasperation. “Keep looking.”
The order was followed by a couple of weary sighs from the men.
“What about the guy who was with her?” one of them asked.
“You’d know it if he was still around. He’s long gone,” the doctor answered, probably assuming Brand would cut his losses and run.
One of the guards looked around the area. “What about Smith and Gerard? Where are they at?”
Probably the two men Brand had killed. He saw the remaining searchers exchanging uneasy glances as they thought about why two of their companions hadn’t come running at the sound of the scream.
“They must be too far away to hear what’s going on,” the doctor answered, giving his men more wishful thinking instead of leadership.
“I don’t know,” one of the remaining guards muttered. “What if something’s happened to them?”
“Like what?”
“Like the guy got them.”
“How could he?” Raymond asked. We haven’t heard any shots fired.
Neither man answered, but Brand would bet the two remaining men wanted to cut their losses and get out of the woods. Too bad for them that they couldn’t simply refuse to continue the fatal exercise.
Raymond spoke in a low voice, issuing orders, and the men separated again, resuming the search pattern.
Brand kept to his original plan, which had worked pretty well the first two times. Silently he stalked the man who was farthest to the right, waiting until he was out of sight before springing from behind a tree, going for the killing bite again. This time the man’s gun discharged. The shot missed Brand, but it brought the other guy running. Brand left the man on the ground and weaved into the trees, heading uphill.
He heard Raymond call out as footsteps pounded toward the fallen guard.
“What happened?”
Seconds later, the man answered, “It’s Gerard. His neck is . . . all cut up,”
“By a knife?”
“By an animal.”
“Jesus.”
“Suppose that’s what happened to Smith? Remember we saw a wolf at the compound. Maybe the guy is working with it.”
The doctor didn’t contradict the speculation, but apparently he wasn’t willing to give up yet. “Give it another half hour.”
“Okay,” the guard with the doctor answered, but when Brand followed him, he saw that the guy was leaving the area—heading back the way the search party had come.
oOo
Raymond tried to hurry up the hill, slipping on leaves as he went, wishing there were some hiding place that he knew was safe. Things weren’t going the way he’d planned. He felt vulnerable in the middle of the woods. In the rain. He knew he should have stayed back at the Refuge—for safety’s sake. But if he hadn’t accompanied the search party, he knew the men would have given up by now and come back with their tails between their legs. Or maybe they wouldn’t have come back. Maybe they would have been afraid to admit their
failure and would have put distance between themselves and the facility.
He cursed under his breath, wishing that was an option for him. What the hell was he going to do if the men didn’t find the girl? How could he report to Freemont that a stranger had come into the compound and spirited her away?
As he tried to imagine the mobster’s reaction, he shuddered. He’d accepted a job from a very dangerous man. At the time he’d been buoyed by past successes and sure he could deliver the information he’d promised. Now he was considering his exit strategy in earnest.
He didn’t even know how many of his men were left. What if he called off the hunt, went back to the Refuge, and took the money he’d already been paid.
Then what? He’d be on the run for the rest of his life unless he could find some wealthy patron who could protect him.
And what about his standing? If word got out about this failure, his reputation was in the toilet. But did that matter if he could save his own life—then start again? Maybe under another name. It would take time, but he’d done it once and he could do it again.
Yes, perhaps that was the best approach. Freemont had no way of knowing about the girl’s escape yet—unless someone back at the sanatorium was a spy.
He shuddered. He’d thought of that before and dismissed the notion. Now he knew it could be a crucial obstacle.
oOo
Brand worked his way around in back of the doctor. He could see the man moving away from the cliff edge, probably wishing he’d come in a car so that he could jump inside and lock the doors. The guy was a coward. And a bully. He apparently enjoyed inflicting mental pain, as long as he knew nobody was going to interfere with his plans—or turn the tables on him.
Brand stalked him as he moved away from the scene of the carnage. Earlier he had flirted with the idea of sparing the man’s life so that he could get some answers from him. But Brand had been fighting the stalkers on his own for what seemed like hours, and his energy reserves were dwindling. Better to finish this quickly so that he could get back to Tory
“Kimmel, you’re with me,” the doctor called out,
Nobody answered, and Brand figured he was talking to the guard who had taken off a few minutes ago.
The doctor finally stopped shouting, pulled a walkie-talkie out of his pocket and spoke into the instrument.
“Smith, report.”
There was no answer until the doctor got to Patrick.
“Sir?”
“Where are you?”
“A half mile away, I think.”
“Get back here.”
“Yes sir.”
The doctor found a large tree and pressed his back against the bark, probably to keep himself upright. It was tempting for Brand to prolong his fear, but the guy named Patrick was heading back.
Brand circled around in front of the doctor. As the man sensed movement in front of him, he lifted his head, spotted a large gray form facing him, and gasped in shock and dismay.
Their eyes met, and the doctor’s expression made Brand think of a character in a horror movie who realizes he’s going to be the next victim. Still, he had enough guts to speak—although he couldn’t quite hold his voice steady.
“Who are you? What are you?”
Brand bared his teeth in a low snarl.
“You understand me?”
Brand nodded his head.
“Are you . . .” The doctor paused as though the very question was too much to cope with. Finally he finished, “Are you the man who . . . took Tory away.”
Again Brand nodded.
The doctor caught his breath. Then he finally remembered that he had a gun in his hand and raised his arm, but he looked like the weapon was as comfortable in his grip as if he’d been holding a wiggling snake.
Brand moved in a flash of motion, dodging to the side, then charged forward, taking his quarry down from the left, then going for a killing wound to the throat. The man tried to call out. Brand sank his teeth in, just as a bullet struck a few feet away.
It must be Patrick. Shit, the guy had come back on the double. But the guard couldn’t take a close shot without risking hitting his boss. Instead he was trying to scare the beast away.
Good luck with that.
oOo
For the second time during the eternity while Tory had been waiting on the ledge, the sound of a gunshot shattered the night.
She jumped up, every muscle in her body tense.
She wanted to scream Brand’s name. She wanted to climb up the cliff again and find out what had just happened. But she knew she couldn’t make herself a problem for him. She had to stay where she was.
Almost unable to cope with the agony of waiting, she paced back and forth on the ledge, her hands balled into fists as she struggled to keep herself from going insane.
Dr. Son of a Bitch had tried to do that. His methods were a lot less successful than this torture.
A sound startled her, and she realized it was the chirp of the phone Brand had left with her. It wasn’t loud, but it could give her away.
Quickly she pressed the receive button.
“Brand?” a voice asked.
“No. This is Tory,” she answered, keeping her voice low.
The tone of the person on the other end of the line turned sharp. “Where is Brand?”
“He’s going after the men who were following us.”
“And where are you?”
“He left me on a ledge down the side of a cliff.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“I don’t know,” she answered in frustration. “Maybe for hours. Or maybe not that long. I can’t tell.”
“Okay. Give him a message. We’re on our way, but the rain has delayed us. It could be several hours before we reach your location.”
“Yes, all right.”
“Have him call in as soon as he can.”
“Yes.”
The connection snapped off, and she stared at the phone, thinking that the man on the other end of the line might not have trusted the information she was giving him.
oOo
Brand grabbed the man’s collar and dragged him into the woods, using him as cover while he fled. He dropped the limp body as he reached heavy underbrush and faded into the trees. Several bullets followed him, but it was clear that the man had no idea of his target and was simply shooting blind.
The guard gave up, and Brand heard a walkie-talkie crackle.
“This is Patrick. We have a situation here. The wolf got Raymond. I assume the doctor’s dead.” The man raised his voice as he said again, “I repeat, I think the doctor’s dead. “
One man answered. The one named Kimmel who had been on his way out of there.
“That’s it? Nobody else?” Patrick asked.
None of the rest made their presence known.
“Key in on my location,” Patrick said, backing up against a tree near where the doctor had stood and moving his gun from side to side in a two-handed grip.
Brand watched as Kimmel came plodding out of the forest.
“It’s just you and me?” Making no mention that he’d been about to clear out.
“Yeah.”
“And you saw what happened to the doctor?
“Yeah, that wolf I saw the other night came back. It was chewing on Raymond when I got here, but I couldn’t take a shot with the animal right on top of him. It got away.” He swallowed hard. “Well, it dragged Raymond with him. Like it knew to use him for cover.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No.” Patrick looked around. “What about the intruder and the girl?”
“Screw them. Let’s get the hell back to the loony bin. The doctor’s dead. He’s the one who wanted the girl.”
“Yeah.”
“We can collect our stuff and see what else we can find. Or we can just leave.”
“We gonna take the doctor’s body?”
“Why should we?”
“Just asking.”
“
Without Smith, do we know which way to go?”
“Yeah,” Kimmel answered. “Approximately.”
They were still discussing the best route to take as they headed toward the parking area where Brand’s car had met its unexpected fate.
As he watched them disappear, he wanted to lift his face to the night sky and howl, but he stifled the impulse because he knew Tory would ask him about the wolf.
He waited to make sure they hadn’t changed their minds, then headed back to the spot where he had left his clothing. Behind the same tree, he reversed the process, transforming from wolf to man. His wet clothes lay on the leaves in a sodden heap. He grimaced as he pulled on the shirt, then he went back to one of the men he’d killed, stripped off the man’s pants and put them on. They were wet, but not as wet as the ones he’d discarded.
After getting dressed, he wondered what someone was going to think when they came upon this scene of carnage, Brand shook his head. He had no tools to bury these guys. The best he could hope for was that a predator would finish what he’d started. It was a cynical thought, but he hadn’t been the cause of the fight. And he hadn’t killed any men for sport. Only to protect his mate.
His mate.
She was his, and he wanted to start making plans for the future. But he knew that would have to wait.
He’d like to think she was out of danger now. But he couldn’t say that for certain. With the boss gone, the guards would have no reason to go after her—or to stick around the sanatorium. But someone had hired the doctor to get information out of a woman who had witnessed a murder.
Maybe Tory would have a clue about what it was. And maybe she would be as deeply in the dark as Brand was himself. But he knew she wouldn’t really be safe until they figured out why she’d been brought to the Refuge—which meant starting with Raymond’s records.
He stopped at a stream and washed his face, then rinsed out his mouth and spit, washing away the taste of blood. It didn’t bother him, but he knew Tory would wonder why he’d gotten blood in his mouth.
He began working on the story he was going to spin her as he headed cautiously back to the drop-off.