She’d probably run into one of her friends, had stopped to chat. That he could imagine.
“Here you go.” The manager handed him a generic smartphone. “It’s for hotel use. I’ll have to charge a deposit—”
“Call the hospital and make sure no one has been brought in. If she shows up here, have her call me. You call me, too. It’s urgent.” He walked away, already dialing Monroe’s phone. He left her a message, then got into his car.
He drove slowly out to the mansion, his eyes peeled for a woman walking a bike with a flat tire.
There was no sign of her. As he neared his gate, the phone blasted out a cheesy pop song that had been playing nonstop on the radio and in the bars the last few months.
He shut off the engine. “Yeah?”
“Mr. Van Buren, this is—”
“Is she at the hospital?”
“No cyclists or pedestrians were brought in. There was another drowning an hour ago, but unless she’s in her fifties—”
“Do me a favor and keep checking every thirty minutes until I ask you to stop. I’ll make it worth your while.” He hung up.
The night was cloudy; there was definitely a storm coming in.
As soon as he got out of the car, he caught her scent. Very faint. She’d been here.
Hands on hips, he turned in a slow semicircle. Where had she gone next?
The gate was still locked down, so she hadn’t gotten into the mansion. A quick glance up confirmed that she hadn’t disemboweled herself trying to climb over the wall. Not that she’d have been able to reach the top of the wall, but if something bad had happened, it would have been his fault for not warning her that he’d turned the mansion into a fortress.
He would have told her, too, if he’d been thinking straight. But if he’d been thinking straight, he would have been keeping her updated. She wouldn’t have had to come out here, looking for him.
“Where did you go?” he murmured. Perhaps she’d taken his advice and gone to the sand dunes. He’d warned her not to go off-road there. The trails were enchantingly gorgeous but were covered with small but sharp stones. He should have been clearer. Or perhaps she’d gotten lost.
He was halfway back to the car when his phone rang again. Same number as before. Such a quick return call could only mean one thing. Relief coursed through his veins.
“Put her on,” he said.
“Sorry, sir, she’s not here. I was just thinking and it occurred to me that you can get your calls forwarded to the new phone. I didn’t know if you were aware of that…”
“It hadn’t crossed my mind. Thank you.” He hung up, then dialed his voicemail.
This time, there was a new message. “Koenraad,” Darius said. “Victoria’s come to me with the most fantastical story. I’m sure she’s just having fun, but you and I need to discuss this. At your earliest convenience.”
In other words, Get your ass down here, now.
Koenraad wasn’t completely surprised. He’d pissed Victoria off. The shifter only had two tools in her arsenal against him: threats and harassment. It wasn’t the first time, so he knew she could keep him tied up for weeks while she aired her grievances. It was how she’d gotten primary custody of Brady even though Koenraad had been able to produce numerous witnesses who supported his claim that Brady would be better off with him.
If Victoria weren’t Darius’s niece, she never would have gotten away with any of it.
He ignored Darius’s message.
After he set it up so that his calls and texts would be forwarded, he got in his car and began driving toward the dunes, his eyes sweeping both sides of the road.
He hadn’t even reached the edge of his property when he smelled blood. His blood.
The car came to a screeching, jolting halt, and Koenraad threw open the door. He’d never injured himself in this area or even close to it, and he certainly hadn’t done so recently.
The scent was easily traced to the thorny hedges, and he saw the blood there. Not much, just a few drops. Dried.
He rubbed his finger over it and sniffed. It was definitely his blood.
This had to be Victoria’s doing. She must have gotten into his pool, grabbed some of the blood and…
No. No, that didn’t make any sense.
He sniffed the blood again, and this time he smelled Monroe’s blood. That didn’t make any sense, either. Not this long after giving her the transfusion. At the very least, the blood should have smelled of a mix. This blood was separated. His blood existing alongside hers, not mixed, not mingling. He’d never heard of such a thing.
Unfortunately, the scent was so strong that he couldn’t pick up on much else, but he did catch the scent of her skin and hair.
He was having a hard time focusing in on the smells, he realized.
Carefully, he stepped away, into the road, and scrutinized the gravel and bushes. She’d gone off her bike…
He backed up, his gaze sweeping side to side. Someone had laid some serious rubber here; the black marks were unmistakable. He hadn’t noticed them before, but then, he hadn’t been looking at the ground.
A car had hit her?
But that wasn’t what the scene was telling him. He closed his eyes and inhaled, forcing himself to separate out the different smells, but he couldn’t get a read.
Maybe she’d been frightened, lost her balance. The car had tried to avoid hitting her…
But who? He couldn’t smell anything.
The phone played that horrible pop song. He recognized Darius’s number. Ignore.
He went back into the car and found a flashlight in the glovebox. It probably wouldn’t make a difference; the problem wasn’t his vision. He just couldn’t smell properly.
It was the sick. He’d been inhaling ocean water for hours, and even though he’d stayed away from the worst of it, he’d gotten pretty close to the line several times. He was lucky he’d been able to smell anything at all.
Fuck.
In less than twenty-four hours, he’d lost his son, gotten into trouble with the Council, lost his girlfriend, and screwed up his sense of smell. He only prayed that everything would be back to normal within the next twenty-four hours.
What he needed was help, and there was only one person he could call.
Just one problem. Spencer couldn’t be allowed to know that Koenraad had given Monroe the transfusion. He’d be obligated to turn him in.
But Koenraad needed help to find Monroe. He’d just have to hope that Spencer wouldn’t figure out what was going on.
Koenraad dialed his friend’s number from memory. While the phone rang, he told himself he was doing the right thing. He trusted Spencer with his life. Absolutely. Now he’d have to trust him with Monroe’s life, too, and that didn’t sit well. Risking Monroe was the last thing he wanted.
He’d worry about it later, when she was safe in his arms again.
Chapter 7
Monroe’s wrists and ankles were tied, but the man hadn’t done a very good job. He’d been in a hurry, and she didn’t have the impression he thought she’d put up much of a fight.
He’d driven a few minutes after grabbing her, then he pulled over. Now he was on the phone with someone, but she couldn’t make out the words.
She’d seen a television show on abduction once, been forced to watch it by her mother. Her mother had looked her in the eye and said, “If a police officer tries to pull you over, what do you do?”
“Keep the doors locked and windows up and ask him to follow me to a well-lit area,” she’d said. “Or maybe drive away as fast as I can, honking my horn and swerving all over the road.”
“This isn’t a joking matter, Monroe. Fair or not, women are seen as easy targets.”
It had been an uncomfortable conversation, but her mom had prevailed, and Monroe had watched the whole show.
The memory faded as her struggles with the rope turned her wrists raw. The binding felt a little looser, but she wasn’t sure if that was wishful thinking. She
pulled hard on one side until her circulation was cut off, and she tried to force her hand through the small amount of give that she’d won.
The car began moving again, and panic wrapped around Monroe. She had to get free.
The bones in her hand felt like they were collapsing inward, and she was about to give up, try another strategy, when the car slowed noticeably.
She’d thought she was as hyped-up on adrenaline as she could be, but a new rush surged through her veins. Gritting her teeth, she yanked her left hand through, choking back a squeal at the pain. The metallic tang of blood filled the air.
The car came to a sudden halt that sent Monroe slamming up against the front of the trunk.
Quickly, she shoved off the rest of the rope, then pulled her knees to her chest and began working on her ankles. Her muscles ached, her head pounded, her heart thudded so loudly that she couldn’t be sure if she was hearing footsteps walking toward her.
The knot around her legs loosened, and she kicked the rope free moments before the trunk swung up. The man held a baseball bat.
“Now why do I smell blood?” he asked in a sing-song voice.
Her muscles were frozen. If he could smell blood from the front of the car, that could only mean one thing. He was a shifter. And if Koenraad could smell her emotional states, so could this man.
If she was going to act, she’d have to do it without thinking.
She whimpered as he poked the baseball bat into her chest.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “I don’t have any money.”
“You humans think everything is about money.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” she said, and to her horror, her voice caught in a sob.
“Let’s see your hands.” His smile flashed in the darkness.
Monroe’s body moved before she even knew it was happening. She grabbed onto the bat, yanked it away from him, and she swung her feet in an arc, catching the shifter on the side of his head.
He staggered back in surprise, and she was out of the trunk.
Instead of running away, she surprised herself by diving into the driver’s seat and stepping on the gas.
The car was in park. She used precious seconds to slam the door, lock it.
The shifter yanked on the handle, but Monroe forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand. She yanked down the gear selector and floored the gas.
To her surprise, she went backward. Apparently, the shifter was surprised, too, because he was frozen a moment, his mouth agape.
She crashed into something behind her—hard enough to whip her head into the seat and send her headache spiking off the charts, but she didn’t have time to wait for the dull ringing in her ears to subside. She put the car in drive this time and gripped the steering wheel.
The shifter stopped the vehicle with a hand under the side. He lifted it several inches off the ground.
“We can do this one of two ways,” he said. “Either you get out of my car like a nice girl, or I throw this over the cliff. Think of Koenraad, how sad he’ll be if you meet a tragic end.”
“I’m no use to you dead,” she said.
“Don’t be so sure about that. You have to the count of three.”
Her response was to fasten the seatbelt. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest choice. If the shifter could pick up a car, he could surely get to her. But she didn’t think he wanted to throw the car off the cliff, and anyway she wasn’t sure there were cliffs anywhere on the island.
The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that he didn’t want to hurt the car. And why not? It was a nice vehicle.
That told her he didn’t have a lot of money. Otherwise he wouldn’t have hesitated to get at her. Heaven knew he was pissed enough.
As long as she stayed in the car, she might have a chance.
“One,” he said.
She stared straight ahead and said a silent prayer.
Chapter 8
Spencer pulled up in his convertible, the top down. He smelled of booze and cheap perfume. Koenraad could smell that much.
“Thank you for coming,” he said as Spencer got out of the car.
“You saved me from an excruciatingly horrible date with the world’s dumbest dolphin. She was cute, but I was ready to bribe some other guy to take her off my hands. It was that bad. So thank you.”
Koenraad didn’t buy it. Making a mental note to later thank Spencer for his graciousness, he gestured at the bushes. “What I need is a second opinion. What do you smell?”
Spencer’s brow creased, but he shrugged and inhaled deeply. His head swayed slightly as he separated out the different scents. “Second opinion on what?”
“What do you smell?”
“Uh, nothing. Nothing unidentifiable. Your blood, Monroe, another shifter. Couldn’t tell you who. A car with that special new smell.” He looked over at Koenraad with puzzlement etched on his face. “What am I missing? What happened here?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. I spent a lot of time in the ocean today. My sense of smell took a hit. Do you think you can track them?”
Spencer stared at him, and Koenraad knew he was trying to decide how much he wanted to know.
“Sooner is better than later,” Koenraad said. “Monroe is missing.”
“That way.” Spencer pointed down the dark road, and Koenraad slid into his car, honked impatiently. The direction he’d indicated matched what Koenraad had suspected, but there were mazes of roads, paved and unpaved. It would be impossible to find someone just by driving around.
He took off as soon as the majority of Spencer was inside.
“Drive slower,” Spencer said. “I never was very good at tracking stuff out of the water.” He stared into the darkness, his attention fixed.
Koenraad could smell the ocean. Brine. Kelp. Algae. Water. He could smell the bushes, the sand. But he couldn’t smell Monroe or the car that had taken her. Everything was painted in broad brushstrokes. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling.
“Make a left… ah, here.” Spencer leaned out the window. “Stop!”
Koenraad slammed on the brakes.
“I lost them.” Spencer got out, walked around a bit. Koenraad beat his fingers on the steering wheel and tried to control his impatience. He wanted to holler for Spencer to hurry up, but this was definitely a moment where a light touch was needed. What he wouldn’t give to have a wolf shifter nearby; they could track anything.
Spencer went off the side of the road and held up a twisted bike frame and Monroe’s beach bag, and Koenraad stopped breathing.
Spencer tossed the bike aside and got back into the car. “He dumped her stuff, but she didn’t get out of the car here. The good news is that I smell her now, faintly, through there.” He pointed off to the left, inland. There was no road leading that direction, but Koenraad knew how to get there.
He sped away with a screech of tires.
“Why didn’t Brady go to the aquarium?” Spencer asked. “I called and—”
“He got away,” Koenraad said. He didn’t go into the stuff with Victoria because then Spencer would ask follow-up questions. Spencer was too smart. He wouldn’t try to trap Koenraad in a lie, but it would happen, and then his analytical scientist’s mind would go crazy trying to work out the truth.
It was just how Spencer was wired. Kind of like how Koenraad was wired to handle impossible situations, one way or another.
He heard a screech of tires, then a vehicle hitting something at a low speed. He guessed it was a mile away.
“Car crash—”
“My ears work. Tell me what you smell. How many shifters. Is Monroe there—”
A car horn interrupted him. It wasn’t a polite little toot. He could tell that whoever was doing it was furious. Then it suddenly cut off.
“I think I smell her, but it’s hard to know. Can’t say for the rest of your questions,” Spencer said. “I hope you know a road to get there because the wind is too strong. I’m
not sure I’ll be able to pick her up again.”
There was another noise, the creaking of metal under distress.
Koenraad’s blood boiled with barely contained rage as he plowed his car down an unpaved road. The road wouldn’t last long, but it would get him close enough.
He was going to rip that unknown shifter into millions of pieces.
Chapter 9
The standoff with the shifter felt like it had dragged on for an hour, but it probably hadn’t even been five minutes. Still, Monroe knew her time was running out.
It wasn’t that her kidnapper seemed inclined to make good on his threat to throw her over the nonexistent cliff, but he was getting fatigued. He wasn’t exactly shaking or panting for air, but she could see it in the tightening of the muscles around his eyes and in the set of his mouth.
He couldn’t hold her forever, but he couldn’t put her down because then she’d drive off. She planned to set a new speed record, too. All she needed was the chance to do it.
The shifter suddenly went stiff, then turned his head to the side.
“Why don’t you just let me go?” Her voice sounded deceptively steady, and it irked her to have to plead with this piece of scum like he was a rational, empathetic human being.
Except he wasn’t human at all. Thinking of it in those terms didn’t make her feel much better, though.
“How about if we talk—”
“Shut the fuck up,” he growled. His voice had become strained.
Given the circumstances, Monroe thought it better to do as he said. Since he was distracted, she took the risk of looking away from him.
If she could get out the passenger side of the car, she’d… She’d what? Make it half a dozen steps? She wouldn’t even be able to get the door open before he’d be on top of her.
Her only chance was to stay where she was, in the driver’s seat.
She’d been trying not to antagonize her foe, but the stalemate couldn’t continue indefinitely; either she would get away or he would find a way in.
Oceans Untamed Page 6
