“Nothing,” she said, smiling brightly.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, running his eyes over her face, her well-worn brown dress, hands, and bare feet and sighed with relief when he didn’t find any bruises or cuts marring her beautiful pale skin.
“Why would I be hurt?” Mary asked, stepping away from him as she toyed with her apron strings.
He reached out and gently took her hands in his, refusing to allow her to pull away again. “Mary,” Trace said, looking into her eyes, “I saw him strike you.”
She shrugged it away as if it were nothing. “I broke a Pack rule.”
“What rule?” he asked, frowning when she pulled her hands free.
“Mary, what-oomph!” The air rushed out of his lungs as he dropped to the ground, barely able to register Mary’s pleased smile as he watched the large wooden mallet race towards his head, again.
Chapter 1
Westdrom, Maine
Present Day
“Charlie! Oh my god, don’t pee on that!” Samantha pleaded as Charlie raised a dark furry leg and gave her a pointed look that could only be taken as a threat.
Samantha pulled on her old fluffy pink bunny slippers as she eyed her brother’s pain in the ass German Sheppard that he’d left with her when his unit was deployed two months ago. She pointed a finger at him, trying to look stern as she said, “If so much as a drop hits that staircase, you will never have another slice of pepperoni pizza.”
The dog eyed her for a moment before shifting his attention to the two-story colonial house’s original staircase that she’d spent last weekend sanding. The wood was bone dry and would happily absorb every drop Charlie gave it and then Samantha would have to come up with the ten thousand dollars needed to replace the staircase, something that she’d been hoping to avoid.
Slowly, ever so slowly, Charlie lowered his leg, his eyes never leaving hers as he looked for a reason to go through with the threat. Samantha stood up, putting her hands on her hips and said, “That’s right, buddy. You better remember who controls the pizza in this house.”
Charlie huffed as he padded past her to the front door. Samantha was just about to run upstairs and grab her flannel bathrobe, but then shrugged and followed the horrible dog that hated her outside. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to see her in her brother’s old Superman pajamas out here. They were ten miles from town and their nearest neighbor was eight miles away and was only here during the summer. She could walk around naked all day and never have to worry about another soul seeing her, except maybe for the deer that liked to walk around the small clearing in the backyard.
She didn’t bother grabbing Charlie’s leash since the dog would take that as a challenge and drag her out back through thorns, weeds, and over the rocks in the stream before he happily dunked her ass in the mud, again. He seemed to really enjoy making her life a living hell, something that she’d reminded Nathan of numerous times before he’d left. Each and every time, he’d sigh heavily and tell her that it was all in her head and that Charlie loved her.
Her eyes narrowed on the dog as he showed the tire on her SUV a lot of love. The entire time he stared at her, daring her to say something about it. She narrowed her eyes on him as she bent down and picked up the old slimy tennis ball on the front porch. Standing up slowly, she held it up.
“Uh-oh, does Charlie want his ball?” Samantha asked in a syrupy sweet voice, as she moved the ball from side to side, smiling as the little bastard’s eyes narrowed on his favorite ball. Just when he put his leg down and crouched to spring at her, she pulled her arm back and let the ball go flying through the trees and thick brush. “Go get it!”
The dog threw her one last dirty look that promised all sorts of retaliation before he took off through the brush where she hoped he finished his business. He had a nasty habit of leaving his little “packages” as her Grandmother Powers used to call them, around her truck. She didn’t care what Nathan said. She wasn’t paranoid.
That dog was out to get her.
Wiping her hands off on her pajama pants, Samantha walked back into the house, untangling the necklace that Nathan had given her when they were kids from her hair as she decided this would be the perfect opportunity to enjoy a hassle-free breakfast. It was something she hadn’t had since she moved in with Nathan after she’d left Craig.
It was funny how four months ago her biggest problem was Craig throwing the newspaper away before she had a chance to read it. Their mornings together had been quiet, relaxing, and comfortable. The only thing that interrupted their quiet routine had been talk of the wedding. The wedding that should have happened two months ago but didn’t thanks to Craig and the cashier at Anne Marie’s Bakery.
Apparently, Craig liked his coffee with a little something extra and Beth provided it. Of course, their breakup probably wouldn’t have been so bad if the two of them hadn’t stumbled out of the employee bathroom with their pants down around their ankles for everyone to see, including Samantha. Then again, she probably would have survived that humiliating moment if Craig hadn’t taken the opportunity to announce to one and all that she was horrible in bed. That had also led to him pointing out that she was too damn fat to turn any man on.
Instead of yelling at him, or at the very least bitch slapping him, Samantha had been left speechless. Later, of course, she’d thought of a hundred different things that she should have said to him. That always happened to her. She was really horrible at handling confrontation, which was probably why her high school debate teacher handed her a library pass the second week of school with a pitying look and told her that she could skip class for the rest of the year. It had been humiliating, but at least she didn’t have to worry about passing out and hitting her head on the podium, again.
Nathan, “the gifted one” as she liked to call him, never had to worry about trying to figure out the right thing to say at the right time. He was smooth, confident, funny, and if anyone was stupid enough to piss him off, he usually just beat the hell out of them.
The only good thing about the news of her humiliation spreading through the small town like wildfire was that it brought Nathan to the bakery where Samantha hadn’t been able to do anything more than sputter and pray that she didn’t add to her humiliation by passing out. Her brother simply strolled into the bakery, nodded in greeting to a few friends before coming to stand next to her. He’d looked from her red face to Craig’s lipstick smeared mouth and wrinkled clothes and smiled like it was Christmas morning. Although Nathan had been disappointed that it had only taken one punch to knock Craig out, she’d honestly never seen him happier.
He’d actually whistled a jaunty tune as he’d put his arm around her shoulders and led her out the door, but not before he’d drop-kicked Craig in the stomach for good measure. That really seemed to make his day. Not even the four hours they’d spent packing up her junk and moving it out of the small house she’d shared with Craig during one of the hottest days of the summer had dampened his mood. For weeks later, she’d look over at him when he sighed dreamily and found him once again smiling fondly.
Samantha flicked on the kitchen light as she walked into the dark room. Why anyone would build the kitchen on the south side of the house, she would never know. Granted, whoever built this house probably hadn’t foreseen two generations of Powers ignoring the upkeep of the property.
She walked over to the large porcelain sink and yanked open the yellowed curtains, revealing what should have been a beautiful sight. Instead, all she saw was a large ratted nest of briars, old leaves, and twigs with just a hint of sunlight peeking through. She groaned as she reached over and turned on the coffeepot that she’d been forced to buy after the old one caught fire thanks to faulty wiring. It was just another sad reminder of all the work that was waiting for her.
Not that she was really complaining. Thanks to all the work around the house and property, Samantha was able to stay busy when she wasn’t working at the hospital. It made pretending that she didn’t have a
social life by choice that much easier because no one would believe that she had to rush home right after work every night because she missed Charlie, the bane of her existence.
She reached over the coffee pot and opened the cabinet that had seen better days and sighed when the handle broke off in her hand. Without batting an eye, she tossed the rusted handle onto the counter to join the rest. She opened the cabinet and reached inside for the box of blueberry Pop-Tarts and almost cried when all she found was an empty box.
Damn it.
She’d have to settle for strawberry Pop-Tarts, her second favorite. She’d really been looking forward to starting her day with some blueberry goodness. It was fine, Samantha thought with a sigh, placing her breakfast in the toaster. At least she could look forward to eating her breakfast in peace without a hundred-pound hound from hell stealing her food.
Just as the mouthwatering aroma of heated synthetic strawberry filling and icing hit her nose, the light in the kitchen flickered out. Her eyes automatically shot to the coffee pot that had just been warming up and ready to spurt out the lifesaving elixir only to find the red light off.
Samantha grumbled as she grabbed the flashlight off the counter and the extra fuses for the fuse box and headed for the pale-yellow basement door that had been the star of most of her childhood nightmares. It figured that the one time she needed Charlie, he was off terrorizing squirrels. It didn’t matter that she was a grown woman, she hated going down into the old cellar.
Always had and always would.
It was creepy, dark, and gave off a sinister vibe no matter what Nathan said. Of course, he’d never been scared of the cellar. Nothing ever scared him. When they used to come here as kids to visit Grandma Powers, the little bastard used to hide down there, leaving Samantha to Grandma’s cheek-pinching, endless hours of reminiscing about better days and prune remedies. Hours later, he’d come back upstairs smiling, covered in dust and picking spiders off his clothes and god, how she’d envied him.
The one time she’d spent more than five minutes in the basement had been life-altering. Her grandmother sent her down to the basement for a jar of prunes for a snack when neither of them could find Nathan, who’d smartly ran off after their father dropped them off earlier that morning. At the time, Samantha had dreaded the basement and the prunes in equal measure. It wasn’t until she had the jar of prunes in her hand that her hatred for the basement won out. Her grandmother, eighty at the time, had forgotten that she’d sent eight-year-old Samantha downstairs two minutes earlier and shut the basement’s only light off, closed the door, and promptly bolted it shut.
Several things occurred during the memorable ten hours that she’d stayed locked in the basement. Her fear of spiders and all things creepy took on a whole new level of terror. She’d also discovered that the old basement was soundproof, given that no one heard her screams. She would have kicked the door at the top of the stairs, but she hadn’t been able to find the narrow passageway that led to the stairwell in the pitch-black. It was also when she’d discovered that the basement was haunted, which had only taken five seconds of listening to the eerie growling coming from the wall that she hadn’t imagined no matter what Nathan says, to help her come to that conclusion. It was also one of the reasons why she avoided going into the basement whenever possible.
Of course, her inability to deal with anything stressful was probably her least favorite development from her time spent in the basement, hence the passing out at damn near everything. It was kind of funny how she could handle working a trauma and even help put someone back together, but any hint of embarrassment, confrontation, or stress had her hitting the floor. What made it worse was that everyone knew about her problem. It had made her a target all throughout school and made her the town joke on more than one occasion. It helped that her brother was the town’s golden boy, but not by much.
No one respected her, especially at work. She’d lost count of how many people she’d trained that had been promoted ahead of her over the years. Even though she had the least amount of patient complaints, put in more hours than anyone else, and had more training and experience under her belt than anyone in the emergency department, it didn’t seem to matter to Dr. Adams. When she’d worked up the nerve, and also made sure that she was sitting down just in case, to confront him, he’d pointed out that he was afraid that she’d blackout during an emergency even though it had never happened, not once in the seven years that she’d worked as a nurse.
She paused in front of the thick oak door, half-hoping to hear Charlie’s scratching demand to be let back in so that she wouldn’t have to do this alone. It really was the only thing the dog was good for, Samantha decided. Knowing there was no other choice when she didn’t hear the annoying bastard’s demand to be let back in, Samantha took a deep breath, opened the door, and told herself that ghosts weren’t real. Knowing that standing here wasn’t going to help, she reached out and placed her hand against the smooth stone wall as she navigated the steep stone stairs.
Admittedly, the cellar was well put together with its old-fashioned workmanship. It was the one thing that didn’t require Samantha to spend her hard-earned money to fix. Whoever built the stone cellar really knew what they were doing. None of the rocks were falling out or even cracking. It remained cool in the summer and winter, and thankfully, had never flooded.
At the bottom of the stairs, she shifted to the side so that she could walk through the small passage that led to the cavernous basement. When she reached the end of the passageway, her foot caught on something and sent her stumbling.
“Damn it!” she muttered, catching herself before she fell.
“Who the hell is that?” a man’s voice demanded, making her heart skip a beat as dread filled her.
Samantha’s eyes widened when she realized that the normally dark basement was brightly lit by sunlight, flashlights, and her grandfather’s old lanterns. Her eyes shot from a group of six men, several of them holding sledgehammers, to the wide-open cellar doors that she hadn’t been able to open in years. Her eyes shot to the pile of broken rocks by their feet and then up to the hole in the wall to her left.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded before common sense kicked in, and once it did, she froze on the spot.
Six men had broken into her house and were tearing her cellar apart with sledgehammers. Her breath caught when she heard the telltale click of a gun being cocked. Correction, six armed men had broken into her basement.
“Drop the flashlight,” a large man with short curly red hair said, aiming a gun at her.
The flashlight and the box of fuses hit the floor before the last syllable left his mouth. She even put her hands up without being asked to. She wasn’t a wimp, but she also wasn’t stupid. One woman against six armed men in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly hope-inducing.
“Grab her,” he said, gesturing to two large men who didn’t look particularly happy to see her. Samantha went to take a step back and take her chances when the men grabbed her roughly and dragged her over to the red-headed man.
“We really didn’t need a fucking complication with this,” he grumbled, rubbing the back of his thick neck as he shot her an accusing glare like this was somehow her fault.
Samantha licked her lips nervously. “Listen, I don’t know why you’re here tearing apart my basement, but I think there’s been a mistake. You have the wrong house,” she said, using the same calm, reassuring tone that she used when she worked in the emergency room.
He looked around the basement and shook his head. “No, this is the right basement,” he said as he gestured to a large flat grey stone just above the small hole in the wall they’d created. Samantha looked at the initials carved into the stone and frowned. She’d never noticed them before. He reached over and ran his fingers over the R first and then the T.
He tapped the spot. “I carved my marker the day we finished building this cellar.”
“Um,” she cleared her throat,
trying to figure out a way to say this tactfully, “this cellar is over three hundred years old,” she pointed out.
“Three hundred and fifty-four to be exact,” the man said with an amused smile.
Okay...
“What I meant to say is that there is no way that you built this cellar. So, you’ve got the wrong house,” Samantha rushed to explain when black spots started to dance around her vision. Passing out right now was not a good idea, she told herself, fighting it with everything she had as she looked him over.
He didn’t look a day over thirty and she already knew that her grandmother had never hired anyone to work on the basement because there had never been a need. So, he’d either just carved his initials into the rock before she’d spotted them or he was insane.
She was gonna go with insane, Samantha decided, slowly exhaling as the black dots multiplied and threatened to drop her on her ass.
He sighed heavily. “Look, I don’t have time for this. My mate’s being a bitch and won’t get off my ass until I check on something. Unfortunately, you walked in on something that you shouldn’t have seen. Granted, we would have taken care of you before we left,” he said with a careless shrug of his shoulders as she fought to process what he just said.
She tried to take a step back only to have her arms yanked roughly behind her back and her hands tied together. Someone kicked out her legs, causing her to drop to her knees on the stone floor, sending sharp pain through her knees and legs.
“I’m sorry about this, little human,” the man said as he pulled back his large fist.
“No!” she cried out seconds before she was struck in the temple. She fell back, slamming her head against the stone floor with a sickening crack as her world went black.
Chapter 2
“Put your shoulder into it!”
The harsh demand slowly brought Samantha back to consciousness. She cringed as throbbing pain shot through her head. Keeping her eyes closed, she slowly took several deep breaths as she fought against the nausea that was threatening to take over. When that didn’t work, she carefully turned her head so that the throbbing part of her skull was pressed against the cold stone floor.
Tall, Dark & Furious (A Pyte/Sentinel Novel Book 6) Page 2
