He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind as they shot south down the interstate. Tried to project confidence and reassurance down the bond as Elizabeth got farther and farther away, heading east.
“What happened?”
Mari’s voice from the back seat was uncertain, maybe even scared. She definitely smelled of fear. Cray rubbed his face and tried to collect his thoughts. He wasn’t sure what Mari knew about the bond, and he didn’t want to be the one to make things worse for Lucas.
“We lost them. I can… feel her a little, through the bond. Where she is. And I thought they were on the interstate. But they’re not. I can feel her going east.”
“You can—what? You can feel her?”
Damn. “Just a little. It’s a directional thing. And a distance thing.” He sighed. “She’s getting farther away.”
Mari sat there in the back, not saying anything. Absorbing what he’d said, maybe. Shit. He hoped this wasn’t going to cause more trouble. Didn’t these women talk? He was no good at explaining things. Gage shot him a glance in the rearview, mouth grim. But he didn’t say anything, just continued on, speeding south toward the next exit with the speedometer approaching ninety. Well, no help from that corner.
“Let me get this straight. Someone stole Elizabeth, and we don’t know who. But you can feel her and you know she’s not on the interstate?”
Cray rubbed his temples. “That’s right.”
“Give me your phone.” She held out her hand.
He’d never heard Mari use quite that tone. Decisive and authoritative. He pulled it out.
“What do you want it for?”
Elizabeth seemed to have realized he was picking up all her emotions through the bond, because she seemed to be trying to tamp them down. Which he did not like. He needed to know what she was feeling. Thank the Maiden she wasn’t any good at blocking him yet.
“I’m going to call the house. Lyla’s a witch. Maybe she can find Elizabeth. She has all kinds of spells in that book of hers.”
Cray blinked at her, feeling a surge of hope—and an echoing surge from Elizabeth as she picked up on it. He sent her a blast of determination. I’m coming.
“You know, Mari. That’s actually a great idea.” He handed her the phone. “Thank you.”
Mari plucked it from his hand and started pushing numbers. “Elizabeth is my friend. Nobody messes with my friends.”
She turned her focus to the phone.
“Aaron! Listen. Tell Lucas. Someone stole Elizabeth, threw her in a van, and took off. We’re trying to find her, but the van got away. Put Lyla on the phone. I think maybe she can use a spell, like that lure thing, to find her.”
There was some mumbling from the other end of the phone. Cray watched in amazement as a look of steely determination spread across Mari’s delicate features. She cut in.
“Aaron, that’s everything we know. Put Lyla on the phone. Right now.”
For the first time, Cray got a glimmer of the type of mate she might be for his Alpha. An inkling of the woman she might become, once she put the memories of her dead husband behind her.
“Lyla! They’ve got Elizabeth. Someone grabbed her right off the street and threw her in a van. We were trying to follow, but the van got away and Cray says he can feel her getting farther away.” More indistinct murmuring from the other end. “I know, right? But listen, I thought maybe you could use one of your spells to help us find her. Right. Exactly. Okay. I’ll hold on.”
Chapter 23
Lying there, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey on the floor of the van, Elizabeth couldn’t stop herself from remembering. Even though she really, really didn’t want to. Her mind went back to that horrible night—her very last night working at the import/export company. And Artie standing in Greg’s office, shaking his head. He’d been talking too, and something wasn’t quite right with his voice, but that hadn’t registered at first.
“No. No one else knows. I just noticed the discrepancy myself.”
That’s weird. Artie was holding the file she had brought to his attention only half an hour earlier. Elizabeth kept moving, ready to barge in and set the record straight. She’d been the one to notice that the receipts for a number the items she’d sold were off. By a lot.
She’d brought it to Artie’s attention since he was the bookkeeper. If they ever got audited, that could be a real problem. He’d been reluctant to address it, rousing all her suspicions. It wasn’t until Elizabeth threatened to bring it to Greg herself that he agreed to take action.
But just when they’d reached the CEO’s office, Artie had sent her back for another file. A file she hadn’t been able to find anywhere. She was just about to march through the door and give him a piece of her mind when a funny noise brought her up short.
The office door was ajar and she could just see Greg and Artie through the crack between the door and the doorframe. Artie had his back to her. Greg stepped back, pulling something, oh, dear Lord—
He was pulling a letter opener—from Artie’s throat. It was one of those fancy ones shaped like a sword, and it glistened with bright red blood. Artie’s blood. Elizabeth stood there frozen to the spot. Through the crack in the door, she watched Artie crumple to the floor in slow motion. There was a horrible gurgling noise.
“Good,” Greg said, standing over Artie’s body with the letter opener still in his hand. “I’d hate to have to kill anyone else. These people I’m working with— they don’t like complications.”
She must have made some kind of noise then, because Greg looked up and met her gaze through the crack. She ran. Like her life depended on it. Which it did.
Thank God she’d already changed into her sneakers for the trip home. She raced down the corridor to the stairs, her heart thumping, her mind jumping from thought to thought like a frightened rabbit. He killed Artie. Sweet, kind, mild-mannered Artie. With a letter opener! She burst through the door to the stairwell and flew down the stairs, two, and three at time, sliding her hand loosely down the railing for balance.
Go, go, go! Oh, God, would he shoot her in the back? Too noisy, right? Oh, please, God, let that be too noisy. She was afraid to look behind her, afraid she’d lose her balance and go careening down the stairs head first. And then she did trip and had to clutch at the railing for dear life. But she could hear him getting closer and launched herself back down the stairs.
She made it to the bottom and shoved open the emergency exit. No alarm sounded. What the hell did that mean? She didn’t know—didn’t care. Just get to the subway.
The subway was half a block down on the right. There would be people on the platform at this time of night. If she could just get there before him—
She ran flat out down the sidewalk, dodging around the few pedestrians, and raced down the stairs, digging in her bag for her swipe card. Oh, God, where is that card! Her hand fumbled for it. There. Right in the side pocket, where it always was. Don’t panic, Elizabeth. Now is not the time to panic!
She could hear a train rumbling into the station. If it was on her side of the platform, she just might have a chance. She reached the end of the stairs and raced toward the turnstiles, banging her hip when she tried to swipe the card too fast and the stile refused to budge. She swiped again, risking a frantic glance over her shoulder.
There he is!
Her heart lurched. He reached the bottom of the stairs and kept coming, his dark eyes pinning her in place. The turnstile moved. She tore her gaze away, shoving through. The doors to the subway were open and she made a dash for them. She jumped on, knocking into a man holding the pole and reading his paper.
“Sorry,” she muttered automatically, and whirled around to see Greg sail over the turnstile, leaping it rather than bothering with a fare card. He ran straight at her, a look of pure menace on his face, but no one paid the slightest attention. New Yorkers. They just assumed he was trying to make the train.
The bells dinged. He stretched out a hand, ready to stop the doors from
closing—but he didn’t quite make it. They snapped together, right in his face. He slapped the closed window with the palm of his hand, making a resounding smack. Elizabeth recoiled.
She stood there clutching her heart and gasping for breath as the train lurched to a start. Greg made a little gun with his thumb and forefinger and shot her with it. Elizabeth almost fainted. The train rumbled off, leaving Greg standing on the platform. Elizabeth tried to suck in air past her pounding heart.
Okay, okay, think, Elizabeth. You need a plan.
By the time the train pulled into Whitehall, she had one. She’d had time to think while the train made its way from Brooklyn to Manhattan. She needed cash, and she needed to disappear. Greg must be tied to organized crime. That was the only answer that made sense. It had to be some kind of money-laundering scheme. Which meant that they weren’t going to play around. And neither could she.
She would head to her uncle’s cabin way up past the Adirondacks. Not an ideal destination in the middle of February, but there was no way anyone would find her there. It was so far off the grid you had to hike in. There wasn’t even a road, except an old unpaved logging road that was barely passable twenty years ago. She’d go there, lay low, and figure out what to do next. But first, she needed to muddy the waters.
She got off at Whitehall and switched to the One Train. Then she got off at Chambers and hit the only ATM she knew of with an $800.00 maximum withdraw. Then it was back on the One Train to Fourteenth Street and Paragon Sports, a camper’s paradise. She couldn’t help looking over her shoulder the whole time she shopped, but really, who would expect her to go here? She paid for all of her survival equipment with cash and then headed to Penn Station.
She had to take a cab to accommodate all her stuff. Since this was New York, she didn’t get as many funny looks as she might have, but she got a few. She did have a toboggan strapped to a little folding wheelie cart, after all, piled high with sleeping bags and all kinds of other stuff. The place was busy, so it was hard to tell if anyone was watching her with too much interest. Her eyes kept darting around looking for trouble, but so far, nothing.
She used a credit card to purchase an Amtrak ticket to Philadelphia. It was the next train leaving that was heading south, and if someone ran her credit cards, she wanted them to think she’d gone that way. Then it was up the escalator to the cab line so she could get to Port Authority. Port Authority and a Greyhound bus headed north.
She stood there on the cab line for what seemed like forever. The minutes ticked by with excruciating slowness. Traffic on Eighth Avenue wasn’t that busy at nine-thirty on Wednesday night, and Elizabeth watched anxiously as cabs rolled up and people got in. Any second now, she expected the goon squad to cruise by and spot her. Elizabeth prayed she wasn’t going to be the cause of some drive-by massacre.
This must be what they mean by sweating bullets. The line inched forward. The people in front of her, a young family with two adorable little girls, got into a cab, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
Finally it was her turn. She had to disassemble the whole sled apparatus before she could get in, but she made it to Port Authority. She bought her ticket with cash. And it wasn’t until she climbed up the steps and found a seat towards the back of the bus that she started to relax.
That had been a great plan. The whole thing had gone off without a hitch. Right up until you ran smack-dab into a pack of werewolves, anyway. But it had worked. So how had Greg’s people found her? She’d been so careful— hadn’t used her credit cards, hadn’t touched her bank accounts.
Was it possible these guys were members of Marten’s wolf pack? But she was mated, so that didn’t make sense. At least she hoped it didn’t.
Oh, Elizabeth, how did your life come to this? Engaged to a werewolf and abducted by the mob. Maybe. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried. She really did. But she couldn’t come up with a single plan to get her out of this one. And she could feel Cray getting farther away as the van sped onward.
But he could feel her too. She knew it. He would come. She held on to that thought like a lifeline.
Chapter 24
Lyla raced up the stairs to the bedroom, clutching the phone to her ear and trying not to hyperventilate. “Do you think it was that other pack? You didn’t see an ax, did you? No, of course not. They wouldn’t have an ax on the street. What am I thinking? Okay. I’m upstairs. I have the book right here. I know I saw a spell for scrying in here the other night. Just let me—”
She flipped through the pages. “Okay here. Creating an Energy Barrier Against Scrying. No. That’s not it.” She flipped back a few pages. “Here we go. How to Scry for Location Using an Object.”
She scanned the page, not easy to do since this was her grandmother’s spell, but easier than it would have been before she spent so much time deciphering the journals.
“Okay, so I need an object—something of Elizabeth’s. Something personal, with her resonance on it, would be best. Can you think of something that might be here in the house? Or should I send Aaron to the cottage?”
“What about the wedding book? That should be there in the breakfast nook, right by the phone.” Mari’s lilting Southern accent sounded slightly tinny through the phone.
“Great idea. Except—we don’t want to get that wet. Hmmm.”
Aaron burst through the door just then, followed by Lucas. “Aaron, go downstairs and get me Elizabeth’s wedding book, maybe there’s something—”
“What about her pen? She has that green marble pen she always uses,” Mari interjected. “Would that work?”
“Perfect! Mari, you’re a genius.”
“Get her pen, Aaron,” she called to Aaron, who was already heading back down the stairs. “The green one!”
Unfortunately, that left her alone with Lucas. A very unhappy Lucas, standing over her with his arms crossed—all broad shoulders and glowering expression. Since their initial altercation, she had done her best to avoid him and been fairly successful. He’d been away for much of the time, so that helped. Still, the best she could say about their interactions was they hadn’t quite reached a policy of mutually-assured-destruction. It was more like a state of icy détente.
“Um… Mari. Lucas is right here. Did you say you wanted to talk to him? I’m going to need to gather a few things to set up this spell, so why don’t you fill him in while I do that?”
Lyla rose and passed Lucas the phone, maintaining as much distance between them as possible. Which was less than she would have liked, since Lucas was kind of looming over her—
but still, she congratulated herself on finding a way to get to her feet without looking too defensive.
She went to the closet and started rummaging around in the shopping bags she’d brought from her house. She was positive she’d put a large silver bowl in there—good for all kinds of spells since the silver amplified the magic. Yes, there it was under several bundles of dried herbs. Now had she brought any colloidal silver? She couldn’t remember, but she would have, wouldn’t she? It was great for wounds of any kind and after what she’d seen with Aaron…
Oh, good, here it was. She bit her lip. Now for the herbs. She’d had some dried cinquefoil for sure, but she wasn’t at all confident that she’d brought it. Did she have any heliotrope? Or she could maybe use wild thyme. She’d definitely had some of that, but had she brought it?
Lyly dumped out the bag and started sorting through the packets of dried herbs. Flax, gardenia, mugwort, she tossed each one aside as she identified them, searching for one of the herbs mentioned in the spell. Thistle, lemongrass—
Wait a minute. Had the spell mentioned mugwort?
“Lucas?” She poked her head out of the closet. “Can you check that spell, Scrying for Location, and see if it says mugwort?”
Lucas paused in what looked to be some kind of heated discussion with Mari and blinked at her. “You want me to check the… spell?”
“Well, yes. I’m hoping I have at least one of the herbs
mentioned in it, but I just kind of threw a whole bunch of stuff in here. Can you read it? It’s open to the right page. Read them all out if you don’t see mugwort.”
“You want me to read your magic book?”
“Lucas—a little help here.” Oops. She’d hadn’t meant to be quite that sharp. She took a breath and tried to moderate her tone. “We are trying to find Elizabeth. Fast. Before something happens to her.”
“As raison.” The French words sounded almost like an apology. He gave her a quick nod and sat in the seat she had recently vacated. “Hold on, Mari. I am checking the spell.” A short pause while Lucas peered at the pages opened before him. “This is English? Are you certain? It is very difficult to— no, wait. I see. The letters are scrunched together.” He squinted down at the page, but Lyla noted he didn’t touch the book. “Hmm… heliotrope? Yes, that is it. And… cinquefoil, marigold—yes, mugwort.”
“Marigold? I have that too.” Lyla rose to her feet, carrying the bowl and other items. “You don’t happen to have any distilled water, do you? Or fresh mountain stream water would be better.” She snapped her fingers. “The river out front.”
Aaron arrived with the wedding book and Elizabeth’s green pen. “Thank you, Aaron. Can you get me some water from the stream in this bowl please?” She pulled the bowl from the plastic Ziploc it had been stored in and wiped the inside with the silk cloth it had been wrapped in. “Don’t let the water touch anything but the bowl. And don’t put your fingers inside the bowl, okay?”
“Um… Lyla, the water is going to touch everything in the river.”
“No. I mean don’t scoop it out of the river in anything but the bowl, okay? We don’t want any interference with the spell. And, Aaron— hurry.”
Aaron pounded down the stairs and out of the house. Lyla stood uncertainly, clutching the rest of her supplies while Lucas continued to study the book in front of him. He looked up, his eyes shrewd and assessing.
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