by Sabre, Mason
Hidden
Mason Sabre
Dedications
To those who know me truly and still don’t disappear.
To Cathy, whom this book was written for. Thank you for your support.
To Turbo
9-13-14
to
3-1-16
May you run forever peacefully.
Hidden
Mason Sabre
This book is a work of fiction. All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Author: Mason Sabre
Cover Art by Kellie Dennis at Book Cover by Design
www.bookcoverbydesign.co.uk
Copyright © 2016 by Mason Sabre. All rights reserved, including the right to publish this book or portions thereof (except for reviews, news media reports, brief quotes with attribution, and purposes of promotion of this book or other novels by Mason Sabre) in any form whatsoever.
Written permission may be obtained from the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1530864881
ISBN-10: 1530864887
www.masonsabre.com
[email protected]
https://www.facebook.com/msabre3
Other Titles
Watch Over You
The Rise of the Phoenix
Cade
Dark Veil
Hidden
Mason Sabre
Chapter One
Cathy Knuth stood at the back door to the clinic and sighed deeply. The only sounds that echoed through the darkness were that of the machines whirring in the background and the hum of the fluorescent lights in the room behind her. It was as if even the small woodland animals knew. Even the nighttime crickets seemed to have stopped playing their evening song. A veil of dread settled in Cathy’s chest that she could not lift. For so many years—more than she could count—she had been afraid that this day would come. That this would be the one when she picked up the phone and heard that voice. It had been such a long time, though. Part of her had dared to hope that the favour she owed was long forgotten. She remembered back to the early days when the deal was first made. She had feared every ring back then, every letter, and every god damn knock on the door. She feared the moment the debt she owed would be called in and tonight, it had.
His voice echoed in her mind as she stood trying to take in exactly what he had requested of her. Her hands trembled as she shivered and wrapped her arms around herself for some kind of comfort. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, she thought to herself. She cursed softly, urging herself to just let it go. She had known the moment she picked up the receiver—something inside her knew. She had not felt total surprise when she heard that voice, and even though she had not heard it in so many years, it was a voice she would never forget. The voice of the man who had saved her life, and her husband’s, all those years ago. Now he needed their help. Was it really so bad after all the time she had got with Jeff? All the happy years of marriage, two children, even a dog. She had what she wanted, and now she needed to pay for it. She had known this, but still, it didn’t sit with her any better. Today was the day that the call came, and tonight was the night that they would take a young girl’s baby from her.
Jeff slid up behind her and snaked a strong arm around her waist to pull her closer to him. He smelt like medicated soap and lemon. Cathy leaned back into him naturally as he rested his head on her shoulder. “Tell me what you're thinking,” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” she said, sighing. “How do we do this? How do we deliver a baby and then tell the girl that it is dead?” It was wrong to Cathy. It went against so many of her beliefs and moralities.
“We don’t think about it. We do what we need to do, and tomorrow we wake up like normal. Think about what he did for us if you must think about anything.”
“I've been trying. It’s just …”
“Hard. I know.” Jeff kissed Cathy’s cheek, his lips warm against her cool skin.
She rested a hand on his arm across her chest and pressed a light kiss there. His skin was softer now, having softened with age, but he was still strong. She still felt safe in his arms. They had been married for as many years as they owed this favour. This favour was why they were married and not dead. The man was the reason they had their children. “It’s like sacrificing the girl’s future for all the years we have had.”
“It depends on his reasons.”
“Can there be good reasons?” She knew that Malcolm Davies would never tell her, even if she asked, even if they were good enough. He’d never divulge his motivation. He was Malcolm Davies, Alpha of the tigers, head of the Society and leader of the Preternatural Council—he did not give explanations, just orders. “I can't stand it when a baby has really died. I can't stand hearing the mother’s cries.”
“I know. Whatever his reason is, though, we have to remember that he wouldn’t do anything he doesn’t have to.”
Jeff was right, of course; she knew that. If Malcolm was cashing in his chips now, after all this time, then his reasons were good—they had to be, because stealing a baby from some poor girl and then telling her it was dead … it had to be a damn good reason.
The girl was on her way. That was what Malcolm had said. She was in labour and they were heading to the clinic now, and Cathy and Jeff were to say the baby died.
With a heavy sigh, Cathy reluctantly freed herself from the comforting confines of her husband’s embrace and went back inside the clinic—their clinic. It was bright in there. Everything that was here was theirs, and it was all because of Malcolm. The stack of cards on the counter—patient cards—they were because of him. The pile of them in the attic, back at the house, boxes and boxes of them— they were because of him. Without Malcolm, this place would not exist at all. One girl and her baby was a worthy payment, right?
It had always been her dream to help strays—strays were shifters that didn’t sign up to Society law, and so they didn’t get their own healthcare. In fact, they were pretty much left to rot and treated as badly as any Other who had an exile sticker above his head. They were the outcasts that didn’t matter. Really, it was a joke. Shifters paid the Society fees for protection, health and everything else … They paid to be alive, and in return, they got to live in a bubble that was so weak and so controlled by Humans that it was laughable. Cathy and Jeff were strays … left to rot like everyone else. Their clinic was the one sanctuary that strays could go to and not be turned away because of money. Jeff was the doctor Life was worth more than a few coins. It made Malcolm’s request even more ironic and intriguing at the same time.
Malcolm was the head of everything. He was the one sitting on the money pots. He had access to the health care system. Shit, he ran the health care system. The fact that he was asking this meant one thing … trouble.
Cathy strode over to the reception desk and pulled out a fresh card for the girl. They made a record of everyone they treated—they had to. Malcolm had insisted. Cathy didn’t know the girl’s name, so for now, she put ‘unknown’. Under treatment, she wrote delivery, and under outcome, she hesitated. Pen in hand, she stared at the empty space. She knew what she had to write there, but writing was a different thing entirely. It was like making it real. Quickly, she scribbled the word deceased and turned the card over before she could see it herself. She pushed the card to one side and walked away from it as if just the word alone could stare accusingly at her for the lie she had just written.
Cathy had always been indifferent to Society, but she hated them right now. She hated them whenever these things happened, because the clinic didn’t only treat strays, they treated Society members, too. They came with fake names, fake IDs. Cathy always kn
ew, but she didn’t say. What did it matter? They needed treatment and that was what they were there for. They always paid even though it wasn’t required.
“Are we calling in Tammy?” Jeff asked from the other side of the room, breaking into Cathy’s thoughts. He was scrubbing along his arms. They had been working on their bike when the call came. The clinic was quiet for the first time in three weeks and they were taking a moment to just do something for themselves. God knows they needed it. With the fights that went on and the shit Humans pulled, they had been run off their feet recently.
“I don’t know,” Cathy said. “We should, but …”
“Something doesn’t feel right?”
“Maybe.”
Jeff smiled at her and went back to scrubbing. “Then we won’t call her.”
“We can trust her, right?”
“With Society politics?” Jeff shook the water off his hands and held them up to let them dry, looking every bit the doctor that he was.
“She’s been with us a while. She’s worked Society before.” She had. Tammy was their assistant, and she was the one they called in for Society stuff. She was nice, sweet. They had a few staff at the clinic—usually they were strays who had some kind of medical training and who offered to stay on. They didn’t get paid much. Cathy and Jeff gave what they could, but when Society problems came in, they always paid handsomely. Cathy wasn’t so naïve to know that the overpayment wasn’t to do with gratitude; no, it was for silence, and that was what they got. Fake names, no questions. Patient cards filled in with names that didn’t exist. “Maybe we just leave it. Let’s not risk it.”
The land they owned didn’t just house the clinic, but their home as well. There was a run between the two buildings. Cathy tried to picture not having it at all but she couldn’t. The thought of no Jeff in her life made her stomach twist. He was her life; this place was their life together.
They had met in medical school. She had been Society herself back then, one of Malcom’s tigers—part of his pack, at least. Her father had worked for him, and they paid their Society fees. She had got to go to university, only there had been a boy there. The boy she saw often reflected still in the eyes of the man she had married. He had been training to be a doctor, too, except he wasn’t Society. He was a sneak. Cathy couldn’t believe it when she had found out. He was nothing more than a poor boy from a stray family. He had lied, snuck into the classes, given a fake name and worked odd jobs to pay for the final exam fees. He had been caught eventually, but by then it was too late. He and Cathy had fallen in love, and she was pregnant with their son. That wasn’t the worst part. The worst was that he wasn’t tiger. He wasn’t the same as her. He was bear and he wasn’t Society. Malcolm had saved them both from execution.
The minutes were ticking by like the heavy hand of death looming around them. The girl would be there any moment. Cathy couldn’t just sit and wait, it was impossible. She tried, propping herself on the stool near the front door, but she stood again seconds later and began to pace.
“You’ll wear the floor out,” Jeff remarked.
“I should clean the room.”
“It’s clean, and they’ll be here soon. There isn’t time.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she uttered. She went to the main room where they would put the girl. There were three rooms in total, and they hoped to build a fourth. They were treatment rooms. They used the reception area as a waiting space. Patients were dealt with in arrival order, unless it was life or death, but that was how it was. If you weren’t dying, you waited your turn. On the best days, when they had all the assistants there, they had all three rooms open and working. On the worst, they had one, but that was rare. People liked to help. Felt it was a way to pay back. Some stayed a while, like Tammy; she’d been with them maybe three years. Some stayed just a couple of weeks, until they were better themselves. Cathy and Jeff didn’t mind. It was help. They had one theatre at the back and a small room for recovery. Maybe one day they could have another, but right now, she and Jeff were the only ones who could perform anything surgical.
Cathy sprayed the table in the theatre again. This would be where they cut the girl open to take her baby from her. She sprayed it and rubbed it hard as if washing away the lies that hadn't yet been put on it. It didn’t need cleaning. It was clean, but Others couldn’t die from infection so it didn’t matter anyway, but Cathy couldn’t help it. She wiped it down, patted it dry and then set about the small trays on the side table that housed the equipment they would need. She scrubbed so furiously that she hadn't even realised she was biting down hard enough to draw blood from her lip. It was only when Jeff came in that she noticed.
“It’ll be okay,” he soothed her. “This time tomorrow, it’ll be done. Okay?”
“What if something goes wrong? What if the baby cries? Do we just take it away? Run?”
“No. We’ve got this. Remember?”
As soon as the phone call had ended, they had planned everything. Planned it down to the last intricate detail. It didn’t help to appease Cathy’s nerves, though. They would give the girl a tranquiliser. It would release slowly into her system, first taking the baby out and then her. They would think something was wrong, whoever it was that brought her in. They’d be informed that the baby’s heartbeat was too slow and then they would have to take her to the theatre for a caesarean section. They would tell her the baby died. It was deformed. The theory sounded so simple, so easy, but standing in the room, waiting for the girl, it was fast becoming the hardest thing they would ever do.
Cathy put down the cloth and glanced at the clock. She pressed herself against Jeff and he welcomed her. “We’ll do this together,” he said against her hair. “Like everything. We do everything together.”
She nodded against him as he held her tightly. Her heart leapt as Turbo, their bulldog, barked into life at the sound of a car pulling up outside.
The girl was here.
Chapter Two
Making her knuckles turn white, Cathy gripped harder onto the handles of the wheelchair as she watched the car with a mixture of fear and panic. She barely noticed the sensation in her hands where her pulse began to throb from the pressure she was applying. She was too focused on the people outside. She knew that once she opened that door and walked out there to greet them, everything in all of their lives was going to be different. It was like knocking over that first domino. Once it was toppled, there was no way to stop the rest from toppling over too.
You don’t know these people. They mean nothing to you. She tried to console herself with that. Words that felt fake even in her head. Because it didn’t matter if she knew the girl or not. She would know what she had done. That she had taken someone’s baby and ruined their lives. It didn’t matter that it was Malcolm’s command, it was her hands plunging the knife in and twisting. What she saw in her mind was a vision of herself—herself all those years ago when she was pregnant with David and the world was against her. The plan screamed at her with all its wrongness and all the lies that went with it. It screamed to the mothering part that she harboured deep within the confines of her very soul—this was wrong. So wrong that it was off the charts and it was going to mark her forever. But what choice did she have?
The driver was the first to get out of the car. Cathy could hardly contain her gasp and shock when she caught sight of him. Tall and built, a tower of strength and power. A fighter. A true warrior of their cause. Not strays, but Others against Humans. This wasn’t a ‘someone’. This wasn’t some random stranger whom she didn’t know. Her stomach twisted into knots, making her feel sick as he emerged and she realised that this man was a boy she once knew. A boy from long ago when she was part of their world. This was Stephen Davies, Malcolm’s heir and first born. The recognition hit her like an iron fist to the gut, and she struggled to catch her breath. This wasn’t some random baby that she was about to take.
Could she?
Could she really steal his child?
Cathy sh
ook her head and put her hand over her mouth, still reeling from the shock of it. She took a step back into the safety of her clinic, wishing in that moment that she could run back to Jeff and tell him to lock the doors and send this man away. But Stephen nodded curtly at her from where he stood.
He had seen her.
Shit.
Words couldn’t even explain what she was feeling. It was deep inside her, screaming to stop what she was going to do. She had gone to school with this boy’s mother, for god’s sake. This wasn’t just any baby they would steal; this was the god damn crown jewel. Stephen wasn’t a nobody. He was a guardian to the leader, protector of the Society. He was big—magnificently big. He could tower over anyone. He was the best. Fierce, alert ...
He was a problem.
Carefully, she pressed down the release on the door, and the mechanical hiss confirmed that the lock was open. A bleep sounded behind her as she stepped out from the mechanism they had to alert them that someone had used the doorway.
“My sister,” Stephen called to her, waving at Cathy. “She’s in labour.”
Sister? Sister … Cathy’s heart couldn’t pound any louder. It echoed through her head and threatened to make her topple over. Maybe Stephen could hear it. Perhaps even Jeff would be able to detect it and come running to see what had got his wife in such a state. Getting out of the car was Gemma Davies, the cherry on the top of a cake already layered with disaster and topped off with so much shit that Cathy couldn’t even begin to think about it.
Gemma slid out of the car with Stephen’s help. This big, toned man, his muscles moving sinuously as he reached in and took the weight of his pregnant sister and helped her out of the car, did so with movements that were both gentle and protective at the same time.
Stephen turned, moving Gemma with him. She was so young. Her auburn hair was tied back, loose strands of it falling around her face. She held one hand across her small, swollen belly. If she wasn’t holding her hand there, it would be possible to miss that she was pregnant at all. That wasn’t unusual with shifters.
