by Val Tobin
“Captain Pattenden here to see you, sir.” Avery’s voice came across calm and even.
Stefan exhaled coffee breath and reached for a mint, his nerves soothed by his assistant’s mild manner. “Thank you. Send her in. And you can head home.”
“Yes, sir, have a good night.”
She entered the room and strolled to the chair across from his desk. Her manner displayed the same calm Avery had shown. Stefan’s nerves sparked again, making him scowl. Was he the only one taking this seriously?
Rachel and Hound Dog were loose. Not only did that cost him revenues, but they’d also taken out some of his best guards.
“Thank you for seeing me.” She smoothed a strand of hair off her forehead, and as she did, her hand trembled.
Good. She should be afraid. Her life hangs by a thread.
“We’ve sent protectors to hunt for them.”
He already knew that, so he scowled at her and remained silent.
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “I didn’t alert the police. We don’t want to attract attention to the arena until it’s been sanitized of any trace of grendels.”
“How far along on that are they?”
“Almost done. Then we can file a missing person report on Rachel.” She didn’t mention Hound Dog. His family had filed a missing person report on him with the police weeks ago.
The police already searched for Peter, but he was safely ensconced in the lab right here in Peterborough. Stefan had reported him trespassing on restricted property. He’d provided video footage of the reporter prowling around on his Storm Lake property
He’d neglected to mention Peter had been forced there by Stefan’s guards. If all went as planned, once his daughter and her pal were in custody, they’d be turned over to a police station loyal to Stefan. Before long, this nightmare should end, and Rachel and her irritating companion would be back in the lab.
Shame. She made a killing for me fighting grendels. He’d glowed with pride every time she’d won. Tough for a woman. A killer. Too bad she lacked loyalty to her family. To her father. He’d punish her severely for that. Did family mean nothing to her? He’d have given her everything.
At one time, he’d envisioned letting his kids take the company reins while he went into politics. Together, they’d have been unstoppable. Ungrateful kids. He’d worked hard to instil in them his values: ambition, drive, determination. Where had he failed?
Perhaps she needed time in the sex trade. Maybe then, she’d learn to appreciate all he’d done for her, all he’d given her, and that gratitude would translate into the loyalty he demanded. He’d made her life too easy, giving her whatever she wanted. Allowing her to choose her career path. He’d always opposed her decision to become a protector, but buying Pattenden’s loyalty afterward made up for it. His lips curled into a sneer.
“Sir?” Pattenden said, fear in her voice.
Stefan blinked at her and returned his awareness to the moment. He rose and she jumped to her feet.
“Find them, Captain. You get paid for results. If I don’t see them in the lab in two days, you’re cut off.”
She met his gaze and held it, no trace of the fear he’d detected a moment ago. “Maybe we’ve been going at this all wrong.”
His brows rose. “I’m listening.”
“What do they want?”
“Rachel?”
“All three of them.” She pressed her hands on the desk and leaned forward. Her lips were full, enticing. Stefan couldn’t take his gaze off them. He hadn’t slept with her—had avoided any hint he’d want to. She was a paid lackey, nothing more. The last thing he wanted was to have an affair, but she tempted him.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “What do they want?”
“You, sir. They want to break you. Now Rachel and Dog are out, they’ll want to catch up to Sanderson, and he wants his story. Why don’t we let them have it?”
“You want to use my facility as bait?” He dropped back into his chair.
“It already is.”
“How so?”
“They’ll head here.”
“They wanted to get to Storm Lake.”
“And they found it—more than they wanted, actually. Right?” She stood straight and spread her arms, palms turned toward him. “But they didn’t get files or photos. Peter will want that.”
“If they reconnect with Peter.” He saw where her logic led, but, at best, she only guessed. Rachel and Hound Dog could simply disappear. Both were clever enough to survive anywhere—in the bush if they had to, vaccinated against grendels or not.
Stefan’s cell phone sounded, and he picked it up. The call display showed his wife.
Through gritted teeth, he said, “Yeah?”
“Stefan?” Marne’s voice bleated in his ear.
“What is it?” He had no time for her, but he kept his tone even.
“Will you be home soon?”
If she asked him to stop for milk on the way home, he might lose it. “No. Too much going on. You carry on with your evening.”
“But we were supposed to have dinner together.”
“You ought to be used to this. Invite a friend over. I’ll call you when I’m on my way.” He disconnected and invited Pattenden to sit. Maybe she had something, a germ of a plan, that would get them Rachel and Hound Dog without too much trouble. When the phone sounded again with his wife’s ringtone, he declined the call, sending it to voicemail.
***
Through the crack in the door, Rachel made out the shapes of two men pacing about ten metres from the exit. They patrolled this section of the parking lot, empty of all but one vehicle, a panel van. She closed the door.
Hound Dog leaned in and whispered in her ear. “How many?”
“Two,” she whispered back.
“We go out guns blazing, it’ll bring on the rest of the troops.”
“If we don’t get out of here, they’ll find us eventually.”
“Isn’t there another way out? What about up?”
“We already tried up. It ends here.” At least, she assumed it ended here. The corridor was simple, its purpose to get grendels in and out of the arena. A hint of grendel stench lingered in the air, but she was so used to it, she barely noticed.
“Why aren’t they storming this passageway?”
She considered. “They’ve been through more than once already. Now, they’re watching the exits in case they missed us and we want to escape this way. Not a bad plan, considering we’re trapped here like rats.”
“Rats with guns,” he replied.
“I’ve got an idea.” Quickly, she explained what she wanted to do.
“You’re out of your mind.” He leaned against the wall, and for a moment, she worried he might be too exhausted to help her. Her own reserves were tapped, and she functioned on adrenaline and grit alone.
“What else can we do?” she asked. “At least this way, we’re not sitting here waiting for the cleaners to reach us—and if you don’t think they’ll come down here to sanitize the stink from this corridor before calling in the cops, you’d better think again.”
He drew himself up to his full height and raised his weapon. “I guess we have no choice then. Back up. When I open the door, we’re going to win or lose. If we lose, it’ll be in a hail of bullets. Ready?”
Rachel backed up into the passageway’s darkness. “Ready.”
Hound Dog flung open the door, banging it against the outside wall. “You two,” he screamed at the two guards, waving his rifle in a come-hither motion. “Get your asses over here. I’ve got ’em trapped and need backup.” He ducked back inside, letting the door slam shut.
Rachel hugged one wall and Dog the other, and they waited for the guards to appear.
Chapter Forty-One
Accustomed to taking orders, the two guards stampeded into the passageway. The first one went down with a blow to the head from Rachel’s rifle before he’d taken three steps into the darkness. She shoved his body aside an
d waited for Hound Dog to take down his man.
By the time the second man had stepped inside, they’d lost the element of surprise by a small margin. Before Dog could take him out, the man drove an elbow into Hound Dog’s gut. With the breath knocked out of him, Hound Dog dropped to one knee, but he didn’t allow the guard to swing his arm up again. Rather than falling backward, Dog flung himself forward, using his head as a battering ram.
The guard didn’t have much chance to regain his advantage—Rachel recognized grendel-fighting tactics in the moves Hound Dog made. Within two minutes, the tussle ended, and Hound Dog hadn’t pulled out all the tricks from his grendel-fighting bag.
“You done playing?” Rachel asked when the guard lay prone on the ground and Hound Dog braced himself against the wall with one hand, his breath still heaving.
“I gotta say I’m glad they finished my training before I went up against this guy. He’s smaller than me, but he’s quick.”
“Never mind. Move it out before the real reinforcements come.” She paused long enough to rifle through their pockets and steal whatever cash the unconscious men carried. Neither she nor Hound Dog had any money. The eighty-plus dollars she scavenged would help them at least buy food later. As a bonus, she snagged the keys to the van from the guy she’d taken down.
They burst from the passageway, prepared to blast away, but that, as Rachel expected, turned out to be unnecessary. The two sentries they’d taken down had been the only ones tasked with watching this exit. After all, how many guards should it take to watch one door after a patrol had already cleared the corridor? They took their time approaching the van and verified no one waited in ambush inside it before she settled into the driver’s seat.
“Head to …” Hound Dog trailed off. “Where the hell are we?”
“You kidding me?”
“No. They brought me here in a van without windows. I guess it’s near Peterborough. Didn’t seem like a long drive.”
“I’ve been here long enough to figure out which way we need to go. Buckle up and hang on. We’re hitting the country roads.”
Without a word, he slid his seat belt on as Rachel peeled out of the parking lot.
***
She hadn’t been kidding when she’d advised him to hang on. The woman drove like a maniac.
“You’ll get us pulled over. Slow down,” Hound Dog complained.
The pothole-riddled dirt road they drove on hungered for a fresh load of gravel, and the way Rachel tore along it, the dust they spewed in their wake would certainly attract attention. When she ignored him, Hound Dog leaned in, squinting to get a better look at her face in the dim light from the dashboard.
Her eyes focused on the road ahead with manic intensity, and her upper teeth gripped her bottom lip. Sweat beaded her brow. When he glanced at her hands on the wheel, they white-knuckled it at ten and two.
“Frosty.”
The van sped up.
“Frosty.” Louder this time.
She leaned forward and the van accelerated.
“Rachel!” he barked.
“What?” she threw him a distracted glance, but at least when she faced front, she eased up on the gas.
“We’re away,” he said, his voice gentle. “We got away.”
She hiccoughed, and he realized she was close to tears.
“You’re all right, got it? We’re all right.”
Who knew what hell she’d survived the weeks she’d been in the fighting circuit. If he could pummel someone for what they’d done to her, for what they’d done to him, he’d happily beat them bloody. For now, he could only offer feeble attempts at consolation. At least he could distract her with practicalities. “We’ll have to ditch this van soon, eh?”
The van slowed a little more, and when he glanced at the speedometer, it registered at the speed limit. He let out a tiny breath of relief.
“Yes. Sure. I’ll find somewhere to pull in.”
“No.” He shook his head for emphasis.
“What? Why?”
“They’ll have this van on an all-points bulletin soon. I don’t want to stop anywhere populated.”
“I’m sure they have an APB out already.” She ran a shaking hand across the side of her face, briefly closing her eyes as she did.
The van remained steady despite Hound Dog’s trip-hammering heart. He fisted his hands but kept them at his side so she wouldn’t notice. “We should go into the woods. Find an abandoned vehicle. Switch it out. Or if we find a van, steal its plates.”
She groaned and said, “We have nothing. A few dollars. What’ll we do?”
“Steady, boss.”
She must be overtired. He’d never seen Rachel Needham so shaken. It unnerved him. Up ahead, the dirt road they drove on crossed another road. A red flashing light indicated a stop sign. When she pulled up to the intersection, he said, “Turn right.”
She hesitated. “You want me to head to Trestlenorth?”
“We’ll find something there. Trust me.”
After another moment’s hesitation, she turned right.
They found in Trestlenorth what he’d expected they’d find: ruined homes, abandoned vehicles, and no humans in sight. As the van rolled along the deserted road, it occurred to him they’d been lucky the arena was outside Peterborough city limits and in a secluded area. That meant they didn’t need to cross any patrolled or guarded sections of the highway or pass through any manned gates or checkpoints. However, it also meant they had to watch for grendels.
It took them two hours, but at last, they found a vehicle and the keys to it—and, most important, it had no blood on the upholstery. A family car, they found it in the garage of an abandoned house, the family who owned it probably dead. Since the car worked when they tried it, Hound Dog guessed it hadn’t been sitting too long. They didn’t give the house much attention beyond making sure nothing and no one lurked inside and searching for the car keys there. The roof had been ripped off, and nature had reclaimed much of the interior. If the family had died inside the home, they found no evidence of it, but they didn’t search too diligently for blood spatter.
Hound Dog took over the driving at that point. One, he wanted to let Rachel rest and recover from her ordeal in the ring and what came after, and two, he’d had enough of her speed-demon recklessness. Admittedly, this behaviour was new to him. She was normally the most cautious person he knew. If he’d become the careful one in this relationship, they were in trouble.
He spared her a glance as they drove through the night’s darkness. Her eyes closed, she rested her head against the passenger door. Beyond the car’s high beams, the dirt road stretched, straight but hilly. Trees, rocks, and bogs filled with grasses and bulrushes whizzed past though he kept their speed under the eighty kilometre per hour limit.
“Frosty?” He whispered in case she slept.
Her eyes popped open.
“Mind if I turn on the radio? We should get a handle on what’s in the news—about the arena.”
Without replying, she flipped on the radio and adjusted the dial. Rock music blared out.
“I wanted news.”
“We wait long enough, we’ll get news,” she said.
“All right.” No need to argue—they weren’t in any immediate danger. She probably needed the respite. The clock on the dashboard read seven forty-eight. They’d get the news on the hour so just a twelve-minute wait. He could live with that. They needed to talk, anyway. After weeks apart, he wanted to know how she’d coped, how she’d survived. Frankly, he wanted to know if she’d thought about him at all, but he wouldn’t let her know that.
He opened the conversation with the practical. “We should stop soon. Catch some sleep.”
As if his words triggered it, she yawned. “Oh, God, Hound Dog, I’m sorry. I almost dozed off and left you to do the driving when you must be wiped.”
“We’re both wiped. Ideas?”
They discussed it, and as they agreed to pull off the road at the next uninhabit
ed property they spotted, the news interrupted them.
The top story was the gunfight at what the DJ reported was an abandoned arena outside Peterborough, with two dead and four wounded, and Rachel Needham and Jack Ainsworth wanted for questioning. Rachel switched off the radio.
“We’re in trouble, Dog,” she said.
Chapter Forty-Two
“You mean more trouble than we were already in,” Hound Dog corrected.
“Sure.”
When he said nothing more, she put her hand on his and gave it a squeeze. “I’ve been thinking.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Shoot.”
“Exactly.”
He shifted his gaze to hers, slowing the car as he did. “What?” He faced the road but kept his speed down.
“We’ve got to go after my father.”
He had an uneasy feeling he understood what she’d meant by “shoot” now. “Not guns blazing, Frosty. We’re already suspected of killing two people and injuring four others.”
“It was self-defence. They can’t think we wanted to hurt anyone. Those guards were the bad guys, not us.”
“I’m sure that’s how Bonnie and Clive saw it too.”
“Who?”
“The gangsters.”
She chuckled, her insides warming as she released stress. “Bonnie and Clyde.”
He grinned. “Yeah, them.”
“They really were the bad guys. We’re not.” She slid her hand from his.
“We’re gonna be if we go after your father and blast our way in. Those guards we killed probably have families.”
“Those guards made sure we stayed in the ring and would’ve shot us dead if we hadn’t killed them first.” She kept the details to herself, but they’d tried to do more than that. If she hadn’t had the mad fighting skills she did, a few of them would’ve raped her too.
More than one young grendel fighter—males and females—had been abused sexually by the guards. Some disappeared, and Rachel didn’t know whether they’d been murdered or forced into the sex trade. Often, those who vanished had only average fighting skills but above average looks. She’d had to be quick, clever, and vicious to keep the guards off her.
