“Don’t worry about it,” Karen said with a wave of her hand. “You’ll be able to find it better in the morning, anyways. Let’s get you inside so I can show you around.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at the first good thing to happen to me since the Frost Security safe house.
“I just can’t believe Sheila would do something like this,” Karen said as she unlocked the front door and led me and the dogs inside. “Make threatening calls?”
“I know,” I said, sighing as I shuffled in behind her, dogs in tow. “It’s just gotten to the point where I don’t know who to believe anymore or who to trust. I mean, I thought I was going to be safe at the cabin, and I wasn’t. I couldn’t even drive home without someone trying to run me off the road.” I closed my eyes, a sudden vision of the big black truck from the day before filling my foggy mind. I shuddered and shook my head, dispelling the memory. “Now I’m just freaking exhausted.”
Karen’s getaway cabin was bigger than the cabin I lived in full time. Two stories, four bedrooms, attached garage, fully furnished. The amount of money this place must have cost was, by itself, staggering. All so she could have a place to escape to when she didn’t want to be burdened by her dying mother? Don’t get me wrong, it was nice to have a friend who could help me out in a jam like this, but the idea that someone had that kind of money to just throw around was kind of obscene.
I'd never let Karen know that, though.
“I’ll bet you are exhausted,” she said, yawning. She walked through the spacious living room, with all its plastic coverings, and disappeared into the kitchen. “I haven’t had half the day you have, or even a tenth, and I’m beat just hearing about it, hon.”
I laughed, setting the dog food down next to the plastic-shrouded couch and sitting down. Eli and Wallach both stopped and sat down, and looked up at me with their big doggy eyes. Eli promptly yawned, his tail thumping on the hardwood.
“Hey, Karen?” I called as I began to scratch my dogs behind their ears.
“Yeah, hon?” she called from the kitchen.
“Which bedroom am I staying in?”
“Pick one,” she said. “One downstairs, three up. Whichever one you want, hon, that’s yours.”
I sank back into the couch. Even with the plastic covering, it was still incredibly comfortable and supportive. If I wasn’t careful, I’d fall asleep right there. Right then, though, my bladder reminded me that it had been hours since I’d used the restroom.
“One more question,” I called, laughing. “Restroom?”
Karen laughed. “Third door on the left. Can’t miss it. There are a couple upstairs, too, if you decide to stay the night up there.”
With a grunt of exhaustion, I heaved myself up from the too-comfortable couch and went to find the bathroom. I wandered down the hallway, my brain finally deciding that this was shutdown time. Maybe it was because it knew a bed was close by and that I could finally have a well-deserved rest. Whatever the reason, I clearly wasn’t working at one-hundred percent, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I chose the second door instead of the third.
Instead of the bathroom, like I expected, I found the garage.
At first, I was surprised that I’d accidentally stepped foot in there. Then, I was even more surprised by what I found.
A truck. An older model, one of those bigger work trucks.
I reached up with my left hand and found the light switch. It wasn’t just a big, older work truck. It was a black one with New Mexico plates. “Jessica, hon?” Karen called from the kitchen. “You want a glass of wine or anything? I know it’s late and all, but might help take the edge off things.”
My mouth dropped open and my throat seemed to close.
“Jessica?” she called again, this time closer than before.
I swallowed hard, trying to remember how to breathe, how to bring myself to action.
“Oh, hon, you silly, that’s the garage,” Karen said from behind me, “not the restroom.”
I turned around, my mouth opening and closing.
She had a rag in one hand and an amber bottle in the other. She opened and closed her mouth, making fun of me, then giggled. “What?” she asked, taking a step forward towards me. “Surprised?”
I shut my mouth, my teeth clacking together, and took a step back away from her. “You?”
“Me.” And then she lunged, the rag held up and in front of her like a weapon.
I was exhausted, both physically and mentally, and my reactions were slow. I stumbled back, my arm flying up to try and fend her off, but she easily overpowered me and stuffed the sweet-smelling rag over my face.
“Breathe it in, hon,” Karen purred in my ear as she shoved me back against the truck with surprising strength. “Breathe deep.”
The world darkened, fading away like all things do in the end.
This is it, I thought through the fog. This was what my life had come to. I heard Eli and Wallach both begin to bark and heard Eli growl.
The garage and Karen seemed to tilt on their sides as the world went entirely black, and I slipped away into unconsciousness.
Just before the whole world disappeared, though, I heard Karen scream Eli yelp in pain.
God, I should have known this getaway cabin was too good to be true.
Chapter Fifty – Richard
As soon as I jumped out of the Jeep, the strangest of smells hit my nose. I knew I recognized it from somewhere, but it was so faint I couldn’t precisely place it. Where did I know it from? It was just on the tip of my nose, like a word you say every day of your life, but you forget how to precisely place it from your mental dictionary. I shook my head, trying to shake that feeling of how significant it was.
In the meantime, though, I spotted Sheila’s little Lexus and stomped over to where she was sitting on the driver’s side with her door open, her legs swung out so both feet were planted on the broken pavement.
“Where is she?” I asked as I approached. “Where’s Jessica?”
Sheila looked up at me, the dried remains of tears streaking her face.
“I-I-I don’t know,” she said. “She was here one minute, then I came back out to grab my wallet, and she was gone when I came back out again.” As she finished speaking, though, a pensive look came over her face, a look as if she’d just swallowed a bug.
“What is it, Sheila?” Jake asked as he came up beside me. “Spit it out, lady.”
She shook her head, groaning. She twisted around awkwardly in her seat and reached back into her car. “When I came back out because I forgot my wallet, I asked her to grab it for me.” She turned back around as she spoke, a disposable cell phone in her hand. She held it up for us, her watery eyes fixated on it. “She must have seen this and freaked out.”
Frank and I both rocked back on our heels. “You’ve been making the calls?”
“What?” she gasped, her eyes flickering up to meet ours and dancing between them. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “Well, not all of them. Just the one earlier today.”
“The one just after we left your house, then?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Why?” I growled. “To muddy the water for someone else? So you could bring the bikers up there? This isn’t some fucking game, Sheila!”
Her shoulder slumped and she sank into the driver seat.
“Think I don’t know that? Look,” she said, raising her eyes back to mine, “I’ve been doing the accounting at the Curious Turtle. When I pushed Jess to take Wyatt’s deal? Yeah, that was for a fucking reason. I told Jessica the business is failing, because it really is. He was offering a fucking king’s ransom for that place, a better deal than she’d ever get otherwise, and I knew it. She knew it, too, but she didn’t want to listen to reason.”
“So you moseyed on down to the store and grabbed you a phone?” Frank asked, nodding along. “Then made the call, figuring you could maybe nudge things along, huh?”
She nodded with a wince. “I wanted her to ta
ke it,” she said. “Not because I want her to leave town, but because I knew no bank would ever invest any money in the gallery or give her a loan for it. Financially, she’ll be screwed if she doesn’t find another investor and find a way to turn the business around. But who’s going to take a chance on it?”
Frank looked to me, shaking his head. “Makes sense.”
I nodded, my arms crossed. “Yeah, a stupid kind of sense.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You know Jessica’s more hard-headed than anyone. How long did it take for you to get her up to the safe house?”
“Good point,” I said grudgingly. “But that still doesn’t explain how you got wrapped up in the whole thing with the Skull and Bones, and how you ended up as a hostage. What about that?”
“Want to know the truth?” she asked, sighing and shaking her head again. “Because it’s going to make me sound like a fucking idiot.”
“Shoot,” Frank said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Try us.”
“I thought, in one of my bright moments of genius, that you all had to be wrong about them, about those bikers, that Wyatt just really wanted the gallery as a piece of his uncle’s legacy. I was so wrong, though. So, so, wrong. I was just trying to talk to him about it, see what he said, then he got a call about Lacy and they dragged me along because they knew I knew you because of my asking questions about the gallery.”
I shook my head again. “Yeah, you’re right. But, fuck, mistakes happen.”
“That’s all, as they say,” Frank drawled, “water under the bridge now. More importantly, we need to know what the hell happened with Jess. And now.” He sniffed the air, then, wrinkled his nose. “You smell that, buddy?”
I nodded. “Smelled it when we first walked up.”
“Smells like something rotting, don’t it?”
Then, it clicked. I did know that smell. Rotting turtle. No, rotting tortoise. I huffed deeply, realizing I could smell Jessica, too, could smell my mate. I turned and grabbed Frank by the shoulder. “The package! The fucking package, Frank! Her stalker was here! Whoever it is, she climbed into the car with them.”
Sheila jumped up from the seat in her car. “She went with them? Willingly? So it’s someone she knows, then!”
I nodded. “Frank, we’ve gotta find her. And soon, before it’s too late.”
We were off at a run to the Jeep, abandoning Sheila in the gas station parking lot. “Reckon you can smell her the whole way?” Frank called as we approached the Wrangler.
“Not in this form,” I said, throwing him the keys to my car. “But I bet I can as a wolf.”
“Do it, buddy,” he said, running to open the passenger side for me as I began to strip out of my clothes. Once I was in my wolf form, the whole world and all its smells seemed to come truly alive. It was like I could see Jessica’s smell covering the whole place, the trail she had left as she’d left in the car with her stalker. Her smell, and the smell of that rot, seemed to brain together, to become as distinct as a bright pink strip of paint down a golf fairway.
I gathered up my human clothes and bound into the passenger seat, panting heavily as I dropped the unkempt bundle into the passenger side foot well.
“Can you smell her?” Frank asked.
I nodded and whimpered. I could smell her.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, knowing perfectly well what I was trying to say. He was part wolf, after all.
As we pulled out of the gas station and turned left onto the highway, something deep inside me screamed that we needed to hurry. We didn’t have much time to find her. Or her stalker.
Chapter Fifty-one – Jessica
I came to a little while later, thanks to Karen roughly slapping my face. I tried to twist away from her, to avoid the next blow, but I couldn’t. I was bound, my arms tight at my sides, and her hand smacked right across my cheek.
I screamed in pain, trying to twist away.
Karen was right in front of me, bent over with her hands on her thighs so we were at eye-level. A bloodied bandage was wrapped around her right forearm. “There she is,” she cooed. “There’s my sweet little Jessica, darling of my best friend Sheila. Feeling a little better after your nap?”
“Nap?” I asked groggily. “You drugged me, bitch.”
She slapped me again, harder than before, her hand fast as a cobra.
I cried out once more as tears immediately sprang into my eyes. I could taste blood in my mouth, and my lips felt like they were on fire. “Jesus, Karen, what the fuck are you doing?”
“Me?” she asked sweetly. “I’m just having a little fun, hon. What? You don’t want to spend any quality time with me?” She faked a pout, sticking out her glossy lower lip so far she could sweep the floor with it.
I shook my head. “Not like this, I don’t. Why? Why are you doing this?”
She straightened up, the pout now gone, and put a finger to her lips. “Maybe I’m doing it because some little cunt from high school came home and stole my best friend?” She cocked her head to the side. “I wonder if that could be it?”
Really? That’s what this was all about? “You think I stole Sheila? So you’ve been threatening me for weeks? Why didn’t you just fucking say something, you crazy bitch?”
Her face twisted with rage, becoming something inhuman and deranged as she got up in my face.
It was somehow even more awful than the transformation I’d witnessed Richard perform earlier. That was just from man to beast. This was something else, I realized, recoiling in horror.
“Crazy bitch?” she screamed, spraying spittle over my lips and chin. “You think I’m being a fucking crazy bitch for wanting my friend back?”
“I didn’t steal Sheila, Karen. All I did was move back home.”
“You took the only thing that hadn’t just been given to me on a silver platter, you little bitch. You took my only real friend. What would you do in my shoes? Just let her go?”
“I don’t know what I’d do,” I said, shaking my head, “but it probably wouldn’t be this.”
She drew back again, turned and walked away into the kitchen. She pulled a drawer open, silverware rattling around as she searched.
As soon as she was out of sight, I tested my bonds and began to struggle against them. Maybe, I thought, I could get free.
Off somewhere in the house, I could hear Eli and Wallach whimpering pathetically. I dimly remembered hearing Eli yelp when she’d come at me in the garage. All I could do was hope that he was okay. I would murder that bitch if she did anything to my dogs.
The more I struggled, the more the ropes rubbed into my wrists, burning my skin. I tugged at the fibers again, but I knew it wasn’t any use.
As I slumped down in the chair, I looked around for the first time and realized my chair was positioned on a stretch of plastic tarpaulin, the kind that painters put down when they’re working on an interior. Back in the kitchen, there was the distinctive hiss of a chef’s knife coming free of its covering.
I realized then what she was doing. Oh, my God.
How had I never seen her madness before tonight? How could I have been so blind to something so clear?
“Now, now, hon,” Karen said in a sing-song voice from the kitchen. “Don’t worry. You’ve got a little longer left to live. Gonna be honest, though, it won’t be pleasant. You see, I’ve always been open to once in-a-lifetime experiences. And an opportunity like this is one you don’t ever get a chance to buy.”
She came back in, knife in one hand and a kitchen torch in the other. “Well,” she said, hefting the kitchen torch, “you can, but you have to go to Eastern Europe.”
I couldn’t help it. I took one look at her and screamed.
Chapter Fifty-two – Richard
I heard Jess’s scream like it was an air raid siren. I got Frank’s attention, directed him further down the highway, to one of the cabins on the right. As we pulled in moments later, I shifted back to my human form and quickly tugged my clo
thes back on.
Before Frank could even stop the Jeep, my bare feet were on the front lawn, my legs propelling me forward as I sprinted across the pine needles and stabbing rocks. Goddamn, if this bastard had done anything to her, had hurt a hair on her head, had injured her in anyway, I was going to savor their blood as it dripped down my throat.
I didn’t bother to knock. I slammed into the door at a sprint, my legs propelling me forward, my shoulder hitting right at the frame and bursting it open, sending splinters exploding inwards as I barreled into the cabin, gun already drawn.
“Richard?” Jessica screamed from just ahead.
A blonde woman turned, knife raised in one hand, a hissing blowtorch in the other. “Who the fuck are you?” she spat.
Karen? I leveled my pistol. “Don’t move a fucking muscle, Karen!”
She didn’t listen. She ran straight at me, knife raised, bloody murder in her eyes.
“Freeze, Karen!”
She kept coming, even as Frank came running up behind me.
I pulled the trigger, the gun leaping and roaring in my hand, once, twice, three times.
Blood sprayed the plastic covered couch and chairs, and she fell to the plastic covered floor, screaming in pain. A pool of blood began to form around her as the knife dropped from her grip and the blowtorch fell, the flame going out as soon as the trigger was released.
“Jessica!” I yelled, bounding over the screaming, crying blonde psycho. I ran to her side and began to untie her bonds. “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”
“Sooner?” she asked shakily as she continued to cry. “I’m sorry I ran from you earlier.”
The knots on her bindings untied, I pulled her into my arms.
My mate melted into my arms, her legs nearly failing her as I held her up.
I kissed her on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should’ve told you sooner. I didn’t mean to lie to you.”
She pulled back and looked into my eyes. “Would I have believed you even if you had told me?”
Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 24