by Reina Torres
He listened again and this time he only made eye contact with Black Tie. Paige felt the baby move within her body, a gentle reassuring brush of movement as if the baby was trying to tell Paige she wasn’t alone.
The driver lifted his gaze to the back door of the strip club and Black Tie gave him a little nod.
Sitting forward, he reached for the handle of the sliding door on the minivan. “I’m going inside, see if I can slip the bartender some cash for a few minutes in the office and whatever passes for a first aid kit in there.” He slid down to the ground and gave Dodge a glare. “Let’s go.”
Dodge flipped him off with a bloody finger. “I’ll wait here and-”
The driver waved the gun as he gnashed his teeth. “I’m tired of your lip.”
Dodge pulled open the door with his free hand and slid down. From the sound of it, he’d landed in a puddle.
The van door slammed as he followed the other man inside.
Paige tried to be as invisible as possible, hunching her shoulders and staring at her knees.
“You just had to live on a fucking island.”
Breathe, Paige.
“What’s it like?”
She swallowed. The sound of his voice raked at her nerves. Even with her eyes cast down she could still see the cold stare he’d fixed on her. “I’m not sure what-”
“Fucking an animal. Is that what you like?”
Fear blossomed deeper in her chest, but again she felt her baby’s movement like a gentle caress. “It’s none of your business.”
Cold metal touched her leg and she saw the barrel of his gun on her thigh, bunching up the hem of her skirt, baring her knee. “I admit, it’s got me curious.” He traced the end of the gun along her skin, putting pressure on the inside of her knee as if he wanted her to spread her legs. “Just how hard up you are… what you’d let me do if I pushed you down on that seat.”
Paige felt the sweat beading on her brow. She felt the tremble of her muscles just under her skin. And she felt the fear in her chest turn to fury, and her worry turn to rage. “Stay away from me!”
The side door of the van slid open with a loud rusty groan. Black Tie got in and when he flopped down on the seat, he bumped Paige and changed the dynamic in the van.
The driver’s jaw unclenched slowly as he lowered the gun to the console beside him. “You took care of Dodge?”
Black Tie gave him a cold look. “You have to ask?”
“Did you hide him?”
“He’s propped up on a toilet, door locked,” Black Tie brushed the front of his suit. “I’m going to need a change of clothes. I don’t even want to know what’s on that floor.”
Paige wanted to laugh at the absurdity of his words. He’d just killed one of his… people… and now he was worried about his clothes?
The phone rang again, and the driver picked up, his upper lip curling in something akin to disgust or anticipation, she was unable to distinguish the difference.
“What?” He listened for a moment. “Okay so the second team is handling the pick up on the lake. Where do you want us to take the girl?”
Girl. It shouldn’t have bothered her so much, but she was a pregnant married woman. ‘Girl?’ It seemed like the baby agreed and Paige felt a little pinch in her side.
“Really? Well, Boss, it’s a ballsy move. But at this point we don’t have a lot of options.” Snapping the phone down on the console between the driver’s seat and the passenger seat he tossed a look over his shoulder. “We’re taking her to meet with the boss and he’s arranging for transportation from there.”
The van pulled out of the alley and Black Tie slung an arm over the back of the seat, his fingers tapping Paige on the shoulder. “We’re just going to park this baby at the corner?”
“Shut up, Foley.” He hissed out his breath. “You’re taking her inside, I’m ditching the car.”
“And then-”
“And then,” he cut off his ‘friend,’ “we get the hell off this rock.”
The driver stomped on the break and Paige was forced to throw her hands out to brace on the back of his chair. When she pushed herself back against the seat, she caught sight of a couple of teenagers on skateboards in front of the van.
Cobb and Pino – two more of Boone Wayland’s foster bears. They shrugged an apology at the driver and skated off with the driver’s one-fingered salute at their backs.
“The boys.”
Beside her, ‘Foley’ turned a suspicious look at her. “What did you say?”
“The boys,” she swallowed, “they could have been hurt.”
Tipping his head back, Foley laughed out loud. “I bet you like puppies and kitty cats too.”
Pursing her lips together, Paige answered him in her head. ‘I like cats with big, sharp, claws.’
Information relayed like wildfire back and forth through Sylvan City.
As soon as Cobb messaged, tagging Devlin, Boone, Cage, and a few others, pieces started to move around the board.
Officer Gary Chin was working with them at Headquarters with the Chief of Police at his side, and Mayor Lundin slumped in a chair.
Reports were coming in, tracking the van through the town. They were taking a convoluted route, but they seemed to be narrowing their path.
“This is taking forever,” the Mayor mumbled into his hands as his leg shook almost violently, “who could do this?”
Gary spared the mayor a glance over his shoulder. “Sir, perhaps you can take a look at the screen. See if there’s something familiar. Some kind of clue.”
The Mayor’s hands dropped away from his face as he looked at the clock high on the wall. “Is Devlin on his boat? They were very clear about their demands.”
The Chief pulled a chair up beside the Mayor and grabbed his shoulder. “It’s taken care of, Patrick. Let us do our jobs.”
The Mayor’s stricken look turned the mood in the room bleak. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, help us.” The Chief gestured at the screen. “Someone took your girl-”
“Agents took her.”
The Chief nodded, his voice even. “But someone had to tell them where she’d be.”
Mayor Lundin straightened up in his chair and pulled out his phone. “What time did the accident happen?”
Gary called up the reporting system and rattled off the time.
It took just a few moments to find the entry. “Her doctor. They were doing an ultrasound.”
Nodding, the officer turned back to the screen.
The Chief stepped back into the conversation. “Who knew?”
“Who knew her schedule?” He scoffed. “Me, Paige, Devlin, the security, but you can’t think they would-”
“Anyone else?”
“No, there wouldn’t be anyone else. Paige’s doctor visits aren’t anyone else’s concern…”
“Patrick?” The Chief moved closer, his face full of concern. “What’s wrong? You look sick.”
“That’s just it. Kessler. Doctor Kessler. He’s been asking about Paige. The pregnancy. He knows where she was.”
The Chief turned to the screen. “Chin?”
“Already up on the screen. Located in the center of the van’s tightening route is Doctor Kessler’s office.”
The Mayor was already scrolling through his contacts when the Chief grabbed his phone away. “You can’t call him, Patrick.”
“I can talk to him. I can make him see reason.”
The Chief tucked the phone into his pocket as Gary finished the message on his phone and sent it out.
A moment later the phone chimed, and Gary read the incoming message. “Devlin’s got a plan.”
The Chief nodded. “He’s going to get Paige back, Patrick. Just you wait and see. He’s going to save her.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Crouching down beside the Mayor, the Chief gave him a hard look. “Because he has to.”
Chapter Fifteen
Mrs. Patte
rson gave the doctor a long, worried look as she gathered her purse in one hand and her sweater in the other. “Are you sure, Dr. Kessler? I can stay if you need me to help you… with anything?”
The widow had been his assistant for nearly six years and had always been a loyal and caring friend.
Giving her what he hoped was a genuine smile, he shook his head. “Really Mrs. Patterson,” he began, and then he felt an odd tug in his chest, “Sally. Please, take the afternoon and do something nice for yourself. You deserve it. I’m just going to go through some old records and I really do need the quiet.”
She opened her mouth and he knew there was an argument coming, one that would encourage him to let her stay on and help. She was always going the extra mile for him.
“Really,” he gestured to the pile of folders on the side desk, “I’ll be bored stiff myself and I’ll likely take it out on you and feel like an absolute heel later. Please, save me from having to apologize to you again and again.”
“Okay, Doctor. But you know my phone number if you’d like me to come back and-”
He was already walking her toward the door, holding the door open for her and giving her a wave as she walked toward the bus stop. Before she was even down to the curb, he’d pulled the shade down over the glass door and set the lock.
Turning back to the pile of folders he’d amassed as a ruse, he resigned himself to leaving her the work of putting them all back in the morning.
A loud knock at the back door set his heart pounding.
The call he’d received earlier had nearly given him a heart attack. He was already buckling under the guilt that he’d passed on Paige’s private health information when the government agents appeared in his office, but when they’d contacted him again, told him that Devlin had refused the ‘job’ they’d offered him, he’d known that his involvement wasn’t over.
He unlatched the back door and didn’t have more than a moment or two to step back before it flew open and bounced off of the wall.
“Get in there!”
Paige stumbled in, followed by a man in a suit. A quick look up at his face said he’d been one of the men who had gotten him into the mess in the first place, but the doctor turned his attention to the Paige.
“Did they hurt you?”
She looked up at him, startled at either seeing him there, or perhaps she’d put it all together and knew the awful truth. “A little,” she darted a look at the other man and then back at him, “do you really care?”
The question stung, but it was well deserved. “I never meant for you to be hurt, Paige. I was upset when they came to me. I thought you were replacing me, leaving me out of… out of-”
“What the good doctor is trying to say, is that he was more than happy to sell you out,” he looked down her body, taking a little too long when he reached her breasts, before coming to rest on her stomach and hips, “and your little freak of a baby, too.” He waved his gun at her and the doctor. “You two should get comfortable. We’re just waiting for someone to come and get us while the rest of our team is taking care of a little problem, and then we’re gone.”
“And just where are we going?” Paige met his eyes evenly.
“Well, we’re going to our home base where you will get the best medical care that government money can buy.”
“And then?”
“And then,” he smiled at her, a cold, calculated look in his dark eyes, “we’ll have our own little tiger to train. So much better than the circus, really. It won’t be about playing for an audience, it’ll be like having our own living, breathing weapon to kill where we see fit.
“Your ‘mate’ had too much of a conscience to join us. Too bad for him. At least if he’d joined us, the three of you could have had some contact with each other.”
“What have you done to Devlin?”
“Done?” He chuckled softly. “Nothing yet, but he’ll be on his way to a rendezvous to save you. He just doesn’t know that all he’s going to get is a belly full of lead. He may be a freak, but he’s not immortal.”
The doctor saw her hand start to shake. He saw the subtle undulation of something under her skin as if something moved inside of her, all over her body.
For a moment he thought it was a figment of his imagination, but then she covered her belly with her hands and he heard a growl.
The other man turned about, his eyes looking for the source of the sound, an open window, a propped door, but there was nothing.
But the doctor knew. He saw the look in Paige’s eyes, knew that the color of her irises had gone from warm brown to pale amber. She wasn’t a shifter, but perhaps… just perhaps… the baby inside of her was lending her some of its strength, just like a mother can nourish the baby she carried.
And yet, this spark of knowledge, this realization that he’d just had, might be for naught, because of what he’d done.
Paige swayed on her feet, her hand reaching for the edge of Mrs. Patterson’s desk and nearly missing. Doctor Kessler was at her side. “Paige, let me help you.”
She let him guide her down to sit on the desk, but she didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Thank you.”
He heard the edge of anger in her voice, saw the shake of her shoulders as she held back tears of despair. He felt horrible about what he’d done. There had to be some way to fix it.
Down a block and in a back alley, Devlin caught sight of Cage in the middle of a group of men that were heavily armed and not a single one of them carried a badge. Looking off to the side, he could tell that the police weren’t really thrilled with the situation, but really, Devlin couldn’t care less.
Officer Charlie Butler was the only one to come right up to Devlin as he walked down the alley.
The older man clapped a hand down on his shoulder. “Whatever you need us to do, Dev. Just say so. No matter what anyone else might think, no one wants to see Paige hurt.”
“You mean, because of me.” Devlin’s eyes were squarely on Charlie’s face. “is that what everyone thinks, that this is happening because of who she is to me?”
Charlie shook his head, a quick, definitive movement. “Paige could have died in the carjacking. She could have died the night you saved her. Whatever they feel about shifters and this new world we’re just finding out has been hidden from us from the beginning, has nothing to do with Paige. They want to help bring her home safely, that’s all.”
Devlin clapped a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. “I’ll let you know what the plan is in a minute.”
Cage introduced one of the men who’d come with him. “This is Dominic. He was just passing through town, but I’ve known him for years. He’s worked undercover before but he’s also damn good at breaking into things.”
Dominic looked like a cross between the old Cosa Nostra and a biker. He had an old-fashioned feel under the worn t-shirt and the leather jacket. “I got a current blue print of the building from a… source of mine in the archives office.”
One of the men muttered something about his source and a hard, wooden table and ended up swallowing one of his teeth.
Moments later the plans had been explained and an entry plan formulated. Devlin took one look at the time on his watch and blew out a breath. “Whatever we’re going to do,” he explained, “it’s going to happen in ten minutes.”
At Cage’s curious look, Devlin continued.
“I’m expected somewhere in about that amount of time, once they realize that I’m not there…”
“Okay, then,” Cage folded his arms over his chest, “you tell us what we’re going to do.”
The boat wasn’t made for speed. It was made for fishing and solitary moments. So, at its current speed, the engine was whining a bit, but that was the least of his concerns. A quick look at his watch made him grit his teeth. He had just a few minutes to get to the rendezvous point and to be completely honest the watch was giving him a rash.
It wasn’t something he usually wore, but he needed his hands free to operate the controls. His fa
ther lent him the watch, knowing he wasn’t likely to get it back. The band was silver and sadly, it was the only thing about him that fit the old myth. Still, the metal wasn’t going to kill him, just make him really cranky and sometimes really pissed off. It fit the mood of the day.
He didn’t mind assholes coming after him. Or any other shifter. If you couldn’t take care of yourself that was your problem. Survival of the fittest. Darwin had quite a bit of insight into the world and nature.
But, the same thing didn’t apply to mates. Especially not human mates… carrying a child. That kind of shit, was enough to make him royally pissed off.
Another boat approached his trajectory from the mainland, three men on board. Three.
It was insulting.
If they thought that’s all it would take to subdue Devlin… “Assholes really don’t know what kind of animals they’re dealing with.”
As the man with his hands on the wheel kept his gaze on the water ahead, the other two men had their eyes on the boat.
It would only be a few seconds before they realized that he wasn’t exactly Devlin Kerr.
And he was going to need those seconds to keep them from reporting the truth back to whoever they were working for. Turning the wheel, he felt the small craft almost jackknife in the water, the resistance rocking him to the side.
The two men waiting for him had to make a choice. Radio or fight.
They chose to fight.
Forrest Landau’s smile was all tooth and no joy.
He was going to enjoy himself… immensely.
Dominic Vestri wasn’t exactly the kind of guy that liked a lot of people, and he certainly didn’t like teenagers. He’d been one and it sucked. A lot. He’d made a lot of mistakes and gotten in a ton of trouble so boys that age were things to be avoided or exorcised, whatever was most convenient.
But he had to admit that Chad, one of Boone Wayland’s whelps, wasn’t all that bad. At least the kid knew how to be quiet and work a set of lockpicks.
