Keeping Her Pride (Ladies of the Pack Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  "In so many ways, Fletcher. What wrong choice are you talking about specifically here?"

  "I should've done what you asked me for. Testified for you. It wasn't a big thing. And it made me realize how many compromises I've made, how many things I've done that I knew weren't right, but they felt right at the time."

  "Haven't we all," she sighed. Sometimes it felt like her life was one long series of wrong choices, especially when she was stuck in the backseat of a car belonging to a gun-wielding mobster.

  "I wanted to cut ties with the Sperlins, with the company, with all of it. I wanted to be the father that Olivia deserves. I wanted you to be safe. I just wanted ... I don't know what the hell I wanted. No," he corrected himself. "I do. I wanted to try again with you. But after what I'd done, there was no way I could ask you for ... anything. There was nothing I could bring you that would make up for what I did. So I gave it all up instead."

  "You gave up the company—for me."

  "Well, it wasn't quite like—I mean, I don't want you thinking ... sort of," he admitted, looking away. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

  "And were you planning to call and tell me?" You massive, adorable idiot.

  "Eventually. When I'd worked myself up to it. After all, I had to testify for you, right? And ..." In the flickering light of the passing street lights, she saw him smile, very faintly. "I still have some of your things to give back. Including a pretty little hairbrush that looks expensive."

  "Oh, that. You can keep it. My sister gave it to me, and we had a recent falling out."

  "Sorry."

  "Family, right?" she murmured.

  "I guess we've both had our problems with that."

  "You were really going to testify for me?" she asked quietly.

  "Of course I was. I should've said yes when you first asked me, but I was ..." He paused.

  "Scared?" she prompted quietly.

  "More like caught up in my stupid pride."

  "There's been a lot of that going around lately," Debi said.

  In the dark between them, his hand brushed hers, a tentative, questioning touch.

  Debi hesitated, then turned her hand palm-up. His hand settled on hers, and she laced her fingers through his.

  "Isn't that cute," Casper Sperlin said, looking into the backseat. "Just a couple of peas in a pod. This exit, Jimmy."

  The car veered out of the flow of traffic. Fletcher leaned closer to Debi. His lips brushed her ear, and despite her terror, despite the peril of their situation, it sent pleasant electric thrills through her. "I think I know where we are," he murmured.

  "Yeah, we're somewhere south of Beacon Hill. Oh!" She sat forward as recognition clicked, and leaned back to whisper, "You took me here before."

  Fletcher nodded slightly. "That job site where we went together."

  A cold chill curled in her stomach. She remembered how isolated the building site had felt. Going there with Fletcher hadn't worried her. At night, in the rain, with two mobsters ... it didn't take a fertile imagination to guess what fate their captors had in mind for them.

  Casper Sperlin was talking softly to the driver, which meant he was paying less attention to them. "Plan?" Debi whispered.

  "Wait 'til the car stops, then run?"

  "Good way to get shot."

  "So is not running."

  "True." She hesitated. "Fletcher, I'm so sorry that I—"

  "Stop." He touched his fingertip to her lips. "The only person who should be apologizing is me. If you'd never met me, you'd be—"

  "Lonely and miserable in a life I hated. I don't regret getting involved with you, Fletcher. I just don't want it to end like this."

  "It's me he really wants." He smiled crookedly. They were on a residential street now with few street lights, giving her eyes a chance to adapt, so she could see his face more clearly now. His voice was the barest thread of sound, for her ears only. "I'll go one way, you go the other. I think it's me they'll go after. Don't stop and don't look back."

  "I won't abandon you to die, Fletcher."

  He opened his mouth to say something else, but closed it again as the car jolted over a pothole and came to a stop.

  As it turned out, they had no chance to run. Casper and the driver got out, one at each of the back doors, and opened the doors simultaneously with a gun pointing at each of them.

  Debi got out into a cold drizzle. She wished she'd had a chance to grab her umbrella back at the office. At least she had the light raincoat she'd been wearing while she waited outside Fletcher's building.

  "C'mon," Casper said impatiently, gesturing with the gun. "Go stand with her."

  "I don't see any reason why I should make this easy for you," Fletcher snapped. He wiped his wet hair out of his eyes with a swipe of his hand. "Just let her go. She's not involved in any of this."

  "Don't be a drama queen. Walk."

  Once they were huddled together at one side of the car, the henchman guarded them while Casper reached back inside and retrieved a briefcase that had been between his knees. Leaning into the car to keep it out of the rain, he selected something from its contents and then snapped open an umbrella before turning around with a clipboard and pen.

  "You," he told Fletcher, "are going to sign this."

  "And what's this exactly?" Fletcher demanded.

  "It's a last will and testament, dated a year ago, leaving everything you have to Chloe Sperlin. That'll make it six months newer than the one you have on file, which leaves everything to your daughter."

  "But with a large enough time gap that it won't look like Chloe killed me to get the company. I guess you think you've thought of everything." Fletcher gave a short, harsh laugh. "There's just one thing you didn't take into account."

  Casper held out the pen. "Are you going to stand there talking until I have my friend here shoot your girlfriend?"

  "It's already Chloe's, you complete moron," Fletcher snapped, snatching the pen and clipboard away from him. "She's got the paperwork right now. And there's a copy of it filed with my lawyer, so you can't mess with the dates on that. Nothing quite so incriminating as a nice fat deed to the company, signed two days before they find my body out here, huh?"

  Casper narrowed his eyes. "Nice try."

  "Yeah? Call Chloe and ask her."

  Casper studied them both before bringing out his phone. "Not a word out of either of you," he ordered, pressing a button. "Chloe. Sister dear. Did you and Briggs have a conversation about the future of his company just recently?"

  Fletcher edged closer to Debi and brushed the side of her hand with his own. She nodded slightly. If they were going to get away, this might be their best chance.

  Debi bent her knees, tensing for a shift. Her ankle gave a slight pang as if in anticipation.

  It would hurt. It would hurt terribly. She'd never experienced severe pain in her life, and she had no idea how much she could still do with a broken and possibly severed foot. But all she needed was a moment. Casper's shifted form was very small, and his henchman wasn't a shifter at all.

  Give me a few seconds, and I can take them down—

  But Casper was already hanging up the phone and turning to them. "Well, well. She does have your paperwork. My mistake." He smiled thinly and held out his hand. "I suppose we can conclude this business like gentlemen, then. Shake?"

  Fletcher glared at him suspiciously and kept his hands at his sides.

  "Surely you understand. We're all businessmen here. Business people," he amended, offering a hand to Debi as well. She refused to take it, her whole body tense, muscles like iron.

  Casper laid a hand on her arm.

  Fletcher snapped suddenly into motion. The bodyguard jerked, and in that instant Debi knew Fletcher had come a hair's width from being shot as he closed his hand over Casper's arm.

  "Don't touch her," Fletcher snapped.

  Casper shifted, his clothing falling away from him, and suddenly Fletcher was holding a snake.

  This must be the a
dult version of Olivia's cute, tiny viper. Casper was muscular and long, three or four feet of lean brown snake. Even the henchman jumped, caught off guard. Fletcher yelped and tried to drop him, but Casper whipped around and sank his fangs into Fletcher's forearm.

  "You bastard!" Debi forgot about shifting in her fury. She seized the snake around his throat, just below his head, and wrenched him away from Fletcher. For a few seconds Casper kept his fangs buried in Fletcher's arm—Fletcher, gasping in shock, was pulled forward a few steps—and then Casper opened his jaws and Debi yanked him off. His long body thrashed about, striking her like a whip.

  She had underestimated how hard it would be to hold onto a wet snake. Casper whipped his body back and forth, wriggling steadily out of her grasp. She seized him with her other hand, then as his head vanished into her palm, let go with the top hand and seized him again below the bottom hand.

  In some ways it was like a child's party game: Hold the Snake! But it was deadly serious. Casper, furious, was trying to get his fangs into her, thrashing around with a lot more strength than she would have expected. His head slipped into her palm again, and this time he latched onto the side of her hand.

  "Ow!" Shocked more than hurt, she reacted by instinct and flung him as hard as he could. There was a sharp sting as his fangs came loose from her hand. He thrashed through the air like a piece of rope, bounced off the side of the house, and fell into a mud puddle.

  Debi grasped her wounded hand. It hadn't hurt in the initial instant of the bite, but now it felt like it was on fire. She looked up at the henchman, who was staring at her with a look of mingled shock and horror. Not as much shock as she would've expected in a human who had just watched someone transform for the first time: he must have known his boss could do this. But watching hand-to-venomous-snake combat was a sight to rattle the most hardened killer.

  Fletcher had gone down to one knee, gripping his arm.

  "Fletcher?" Debi began, starting toward him.

  Casper stood up, human-shaped and naked, with muddy water coursing down his body. "Well, that was unpleasant." He spat. "I hate biting people."

  "Shoot 'em, boss?" the henchman asked.

  "Of course not. Why put bullet holes in them when there's a perfectly good dose of viper venom coursing through their bloodstreams right now?"

  Debi clutched her hand and curled around it. "Ow," she whimpered as the henchman manhandled her around the back of the house. But in reality, she didn't feel that bad. She was pretty sure Casper had only caught her a glancing blow before she'd torn his fangs out of her flesh, and he'd already expended most of his venom on Fletcher. She just needed to make sure he didn't find out, because that would be a good way to get bit again, or shot.

  Fletcher, on the other hand, looked terrible. He barely put up a fight as Casper, still naked, drove him forward with a fisted grip on his jacket.

  In the darkness and the rain, Debi realized where they were going too late to do anything about it. The henchman gave her a tremendous shove, and then there was nothing beneath her except air. She'd just been thrown into the open-topped shaft she had noticed when she was at the building site with Fletcher last week.

  She cried out in mingled shock and fear, then yelled in shock again when she splashed into water and mud at the bottom of the shaft. As she started to pick herself up, Fletcher landed on top of her with a muffled groan, knocking her back down into the mud.

  Debi struggled to a sitting position under Fletcher. The water wasn't deep; the bottom of the shaft was clogged with heaps of leaves, broken pieces of wood, branches, and other trash. They were lucky they hadn't been impaled on rebar when they landed.

  Not that anything else about this situation was lucky in the slightest.

  The shaft was about eight feet across and sided in sheer concrete. Debi tilted her head back, squinting against the rain as she looked up at the brighter square of the city sky. The top of the shaft was fifteen feet or so above her, but it might as well be fifty feet for all the possibility of getting up there.

  There was a grinding sound she couldn't place, and a moment later, a metal grating was hauled, inch by inch, across the top of the shaft.

  "You bastards!" Debi shouted up to them. Her voice echoed back and forth from the shaft's walls.

  Casper appeared against the sky, pulling on his wet jacket as he stepped onto the grate and stood looking down at them. "So the question is, what's going to get you first? Snakebite? Exposure?" He held out a hand theatrically to the rain. "Drowning?"

  "I'm wearing a tracking anklet, you stupid asshole! They're going to find me!"

  "Find your body, you mean," Casper said. He shrugged and turned to go.

  "I'll tear you apart!" Debi screamed after him.

  There was no reply. The sloshing of his footsteps quickly faded, leaving her with nothing but the sound of the rain and Fletcher's quick breathing.

  "Fletcher?" she asked, shaking him.

  He groaned and turned his head, blinking. "You okay?" he asked weakly. "He got you too, didn't he?"

  "I don't think he got me too badly." She tried not to think about how much her hand hurt. "We've got to stop the venom. Do you have anything to make a tourniquet with? Do you have a belt?"

  Fletcher shook his head. "My tie?"

  "Oh, that'll work." She squirmed out from under him and dragged him higher on the heap of trash, trying to get him out of the water as much as possible before she started working on the knot in his tie. She had to work one-handed; her injured hand hurt too much to close the fingers.

  She felt lightheaded, but she wasn't sure if that was from venom, shock, cold, or a combination of all three. Her heart was also racing, but that could be from the trauma of their situation.

  Fletcher was definitely in bad shape. His skin was waxy and pale, his heartbeat a weak, rapid flutter against her fingertips when she checked his throat.

  "Fletcher, wake up," she ordered, patting his face with her muddy hand. "I have the tie, but I can't make a knot with one hand. You're going to have to help me."

  Fletcher took a deep breath and opened his eyes. His right arm was already visibly swollen, the fingers immobile. The fingers of his good hand were cold and trembling as he held the tie against his upper arm for her while Debi struggled to wrap it one-handed around a stick and make it stay. Tying a knot in concert with another person made her think of a corporate team-building exercise; she had to fight down a hysterical laugh. Finally they managed to get it to stay knotted. Debi twisted the stick to tighten the tourniquet and clamped Fletcher's good hand over it to hold it in place.

  "What about you?" he asked through chattering teeth, his eyes starting to slide shut again.

  "I'll be okay, I think." The side of her hand was puffy and it still burned horribly, but she was confident by now, from looking at Fletcher's condition, that she'd be doing much worse if Casper had gotten a significant amount of venom into her. Her shifter healing abilities were probably also helping. She sucked on the wound and spat the blood into the swirling, muddy water around her feet while she stood and looked up the vertical walls of the shaft.

  She couldn't climb that as a human. On a dry day, with full use of both her hands and a lot of time to work on it, she might be able to brace herself in the corner of the shaft and work her way up to the top. In the rain, working against a rapidly ticking clock, and especially with her hand the way it was ... She tried pressing her palm experimentally against the rough concrete and jerked it away with a hiss of pain. She might be able to power through some of the pain, but resting her body weight on it—she just didn't have it in her. She wouldn't be able to do it.

  As a lioness, however, she was fairly sure she could leap or scramble out. It wouldn't be easy; big cats couldn't climb as well as small cats. But she thought it should be possible to use a combination of claws, momentum, and feline parkour to get up there. The grate would still be a problem, but if they hadn't locked it down, she could use her powerful body to heave it out of the way.


  There was only one remaining problem.

  She looked down at her ankle, where the tracking anklet was hidden under the muddy leg of her pantsuit. She'd never hated the thing so much as she did at that moment.

  At least it was finally useful for once. Sooner or later, probably sooner more than later, Nia would realize she'd vanished and use the tracker to find her. It was likely that she and Fletcher would only have to wait overnight.

  But she knew, her stomach sinking, that Fletcher couldn't wait that long. He couldn't wait anywhere near that long. He needed medical care, warmth, and most particularly, antivenom.

  Her earlier thought of destroying the ankle monitor came back to her. She fumbled around in the trash until she found a chunk of concrete, put her foot up against the wall, and swung her makeshift weapon at the anklet.

  The impact made her wince as the anklet ground into her flesh and bone. After another couple of blows, she cursed softly and dropped the piece of concrete; it splashed into the muddy water at her feet. It was no use. She couldn't hit it hard enough to break anything without hurting herself. Which she was fully prepared to do, if necessary, but the problem was a matter of willpower. She couldn't make herself swing anything hard enough at her leg to do actual damage.

  Could she use a nail or something to damage the electronics and short it out? She still thought there was a good chance the SCB would show up if she could just make it stop sending a signal. She crouched and felt around for something to use. As she hunted through the debris, her gaze fell on Fletcher. His eyes were closed. Lying pale and still, he looked dead.

  "Fletcher!"

  His wet lashes fluttered weakly. "Still here," he murmured.

  "You should loosen the tourniquet," she said quickly, covering up her moment of panic. She had to help him do it, her hands covering his cold, weak one. Whether or not the tourniquet was making any difference, Fletcher seemed to be fading fast.

  She had to shift and go for help. There was simply no choice.

  It had been easier to contemplate shifting in the heat of the moment, with a gun pointed in her face. This was a cold, rational decision. The extra-strong ankle cuff would definitely break and crush the bones of her ankle. It might sever her foot. It was very likely that she would never be able to walk normally again.