I couldn't stand the guilt a moment longer, though I couldn't help but breathe in his scent deeply one last time, before getting up and quietly packing a small overnight bag. I left him the keys on the dresser and knew he would get the remainder of my stuff home. I grabbed my phone and pulled up my Uber app. I'd get a car to take me to the airport and I'd go visit Ramone and Patrice in Alaska. It had been ages since I had last seen them and I desperately needed the distraction.
With the plan in place, I chanced one last look at this beautiful sleeping man who would be my mate, if I could only let go of the crippling fear the challenges would bring. Then I whispered a goodbye and left.
Tears were streaming down my face by the time I reached the lobby. The pain was almost too much to bear and I wanted desperately to just run back to the safety I felt in his arms. But I knew what I was doing was the right thing for both of us. My cowardice wasn't fair to him. He deserved a stronger mate than I could be.
“Ms. Westin, are you alright?” the receptionist asked, startling me.
“I'm fine,” I said unconvincingly, while I wiped tears from my cheeks. “I have a car coming,” I tried to explain.
She gave me a sad smile and then offered to let me sit in the back office, because apparently I looked that bad. Mortified, I gratefully accepted. She led me down a small hall behind the front desk, passing a few doors before we came to the one she unlocked and ushered me into. I thanked her. I was too distraught to find the situation odd and in hindsight I should have immediately gone on alert. Instead I thanked her and she nodded, gave me an apologetic look, and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Looking around the room, there was nothing more than a desk and a chair. The office was entirely void of anything personal. And it didn't take me long to start to feel uncomfortable and a bit claustrophobic in there. I calmed down, pulled myself together to face society once again, and reached for the doorknob, only to find it was locked. I jiggled the handle again. Nothing—definitely locked. Then I began to panic.
Grabbing for my phone I was ready to call Patrick, but it dawned on me that I didn't have his number. I immediately called Kelsey. It rang and rolled to voicemail. I knew it was still very early and they were likely asleep. I didn't want to freak her out too, so I tried to lighten my voice as I left a message.
“Hey, Kels, it's E. I sorta, kinda did something stupid this morning and now I'm locked in this office down off the main lobby of the resort. But I don't have Patrick's number. Can you text it to me when you get this? I know, I'm an idiot.”
I hung up, hoping I hadn't overdone it too much. Would Patrick wake up and come looking for me? I hadn't left a message or anything. I had just left. What had I been thinking? While I mentally beat myself up, I started pacing and assessing the situation, trying not to freak out. There was only one door. I banged on it a few times and put my ear to the door, listening for anything at all, but heard nothing.
I looked up for some sort of air vent to climb through like you see in the movies, but no one was getting through the tiny round vent above me. I inspected high and low. Nothing. I banged some more, louder this time, and yelled, too. Nothing.
Checking my phone again I saw I only had three percent power left, because I had forgotten to charge it the night before. I slumped down against the door and wondered what else could possibly go wrong. I gave in and tried Kelsey again. Relief washed over me as I heard her voice.
“Hello? E? It's really early, what's going on? Are you okay?”
“Kelsey! Thank God!” I gushed. “I'm locked . . .”
The beep of the phone told me we had just been disconnected. I looked down to see my phone shutting off, out of power. I banged my head against the door in frustration.
I'm not sure how long I sat there, but eventually I did hear voices outside. My instinct was to pound on the door and scream for help, but I wanted to be sure this time I wasn't fooling myself again. So I leaned in close with my ear against the door and my heart leapt when I was certain I was hearing voices. I pressed closer, channeling my wolf's hearing, and listened.
“The boyfriend's been down here three times already. I told him the Uber driver picked her up, but apparently she's got her cell phone on her and had already called out for help. You swore this wasn't going to affect me.”
“Shut up. You got your money, now go away. This doesn't concern you.”
“And you're certain? You are absolutely positive no one can trace this back to me? I can't afford to lose this job and five thousand dollars isn't enough if there’s even a chance.”
“If you'd just shut up and go back to work, and forget you ever saw her or us, then there’d be no problem. Now get.”
My heart started pounding hard in my chest. Were they talking about me? What could anyone possibly want from me? I wasn't sure and prayed I had just misunderstood everything I had heard, but just in case I crawled to the desk, eased out the chair as quietly as possible and hid under it. I replaced the chair and held my breath. I'd never been so scared in all my life. Suddenly, every fear where Patrick was concerned paled in that moment.
The door opened and I held back a scream.
“Where the hell is she?”
“That bitch tricked us?”
“Oh, she's dead for this! Come on.”
The door slammed behind them and bounced back open. I counted to ten and then slowly crept back out. I rose and peaked around the door and held my breath while I checked the hallway. How they hadn't heard my heart beating a mile a minute was beyond me. The hallway was clear. I breathed a sigh of release. I knew the girl had brought me in from the right, but I also figured that's the direction the men went in search of her, so I chose to go to the left. There were a couple of rooms with washing machines and one with lockers. No one was in sight. As I came to the end of the hall, it dead ended at an emergency exit.
I heard footsteps in the hall behind me, and the lady screeched that I had to be in there. I had two options. Continue to hide, trying my luck in the washing room or the locker room. Or, chance an alarm on the door and make a run for it. I knew I was faster than any human, so I chanced the door, took a deep breath, and pushed.
The alarm was blaring, but I didn't wait. I pushed through and took off at a run, hearing voices yelling behind me.
Before I even hit the parking lot, one of the men had caught up to me. No way was he human, I thought, seconds before I was grabbed from behind.
“Not so fast there, miss,” my captor said. I flailed out and smacked him as hard as I could. He didn't lessen his grip. I kicked back landing a hard one right to his balls. He loosened his hold on me as he started to drop to the ground, but his friend was there and a dark cover was yanked over my head from behind before I could take off again.
“Bitch!” one of them yelled. I assumed it was the one now on the ground.
I continued to fight, praying someone would see and help. The one holding me yelled to the other to hold me down. He grabbed my arm hard and twisted. I felt a sharp sting and everything faded to black.
Patrick
Chapter 12
I saw the keys to the car, and Elise's key card to the room lying on the dresser. A quick check showed she'd cleared out her stuff in the bathroom, and at least one of her bags was missing. She had so many, I couldn't be certain it was only one. My heart plummeted into my gut and I ran back to the bathroom fearing I would vomit. The worst of the fear I'd ever had, after a night I couldn't remember at the bar, was nothing compared to this.
I called down to the front desk and a polite voice answered. I described Elise and asked if she was down there. The lady assured me she was not and even told me she had not seen her all morning.
Something didn’t add up for me, so I threw on fresh clothes and ran to the elevator. On the way down, I called Kyle to let him know his sister might have run while I was sleeping. It was early, but he answered quickly, laughed at my inability to land my mate, and wished me well. It wasn’t until I hit th
e cold tile floor of the lobby that I realized I was barefooted, having forgotten to put on shoes. At the front desk, I found a woman behind the counter and, describing Elise, asked if she had seen her come through. I immediately recognized her voice from the lady over the phone. This time she told a different story. She had been down in the lobby with her bags, but she hadn’t seen where she went.
I thanked her and began checking every inch of the lobby and common areas. I went to the gym, the spa, the restaurant, every nook and cranny I could find, but no sign of Elise.
Returning to the front desk, the woman was gone. I obnoxiously banged on the little bell until at last she appeared again.
It took me only a little amount of time to explain that I desperately needed to find Elise and straighten out a misunderstanding. I begged her to think of where she had last seen her. She did not look sympathetic to my cause at all, while telling me that my mate had been picked up by Uber a good half hour earlier, but didn’t want to tell me that to give her time to get away as she had been upset and anxious to leave. She made no qualms about her opinion that I was the reason for E’s hasty retreat, and I would have believed her too, if I hadn’t noticed her agitation and smelled the anxiety wafting off her. At least there were some benefits to being a shifter.
I dismissed her scent as my own paranoia and suspected my facial expressions were less than friendly. I thanked her and walked to the front door of the lobby. I walked outside, not caring about the pain spiking up my legs from the cold, frozen ground. I took a deep breath. Nothing. There was no sign of Elise.
I sniffed the air half a dozen more times to be sure. If my mate had been there within the last half hour, I would have smelled her lingering scent, but there was nothing. I quickly returned to the lady at the front desk, barely keeping my anger in check.
“You’re lying,” I challenged.
Her pupils dilated, her cheeks flushed, and her voice waivered in her attempt to challenge me.
“I-I-I’m not. You have no proof or reason to say such th-th-thing,” she awkwardly stuttered.
“I’d like to see your manager,” I demanded.
The woman paled and I had a bad feeling in my gut that there was a lot more to this story and that I wasn’t going to like it one bit. I bit back the anger flaring in me, and gritted back against my wolf as he surged to take control of the situation.
‘H-h-he’s not here and won’t be in today on account of the storm.”
“The same storm you say that Uber drove through, picked up my”—I struggled with the right word, knowing “mate” wasn’t right in the human world—“my friend, and then left in?”
“Y’y’yes, that’s correct.” She blatantly lied, and I knew that she knew, that I knew she was lying.
Knowing she was lying and knowing I was going to do something I might potentially regret if I did not step away, I turned and left her, heading for the elevator and back to my room.
I checked my cell. No missed calls. I called Kyle as I pulled on warm socks and boots.
“Hey, did you find her?” Kyle answered the phone.
“No, and the lady at the front desk is lying to me, Kyle. Something is seriously wrong here. I mean her stuff is gone. She was definitely running, but at first the lady said she hadn’t seen her. Then she said she was around somewhere, but there were no signs of her anywhere. Then her story changed again. This time an Uber picked her up, but man, I’m telling you, I may not be a tracker, but I know my mate’s scent, and if she had been in that doorway I would have smelled it. She didn’t go near the front of that lobby, let alone out that front door. I’m about to lose my shit, Kyle. Where can she be?”
“Something’s definitely wrong. Go back down and keep looking. I’m sending reinforcements now, but it will be a few hours before they get there. Send me the exact name and location of the resort you’re staying at. And Pat, find my sister.”
“I won’t rest until I find her.”
“I know,” he said and I heard some whispers and commotion in the background. I was about to hang up when he came back on the line. “Patrick, sounds like E got herself locked into an office off the main lobby. Not sure on the details, but she left Kelsey a voice mail this morning saying she was locked in and needed your number. She called back a second time, but the phone disconnected while they were talking and it's going straight to voicemail now. I don't know what's going on, but check the offices near the lobby.”
As I hung up the phone, the reality of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. I could only imagine the worse. What if someone harmed my mate? I knew without a doubt I would kill them, human or not. What if she’d had an accident and was unable to get help? Every possible negative scenario played through my head until I was pacing the room and itching in my own skin.
Sitting around the room sulking and thinking up nightmarish situations was not doing her, or me, any good. I forced my feet to move once again and headed back down to the lobby.
“Elise called for help. She said she was locked in one of your offices before the phone disconnected. I will find her, with or without your help,” I told the lady behind the desk.
It was clear I was agitating her. But why? I watched her cringe at my words, but stand firm, her back straight and her shoulders erect. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything further from her, so I made my rounds once again throughout the common areas of the resort and by walking the hallways. Anywhere I thought she might be. I couldn't find any offices near or off the lobby. It didn't make any sense. I even let my wolf surge close to the surface to heighten our senses in the search.
My hunt left me once again empty-handed. There was absolutely no sign of Elise anywhere and I fought back the bile as it rose into my throat and worry consumed me. The best I could hope for was that the woman behind the counter was telling the truth and she had left with an Uber driver, and maybe it had been longer than the lady had thought and enough time had passed to dissolve her scent in the air. I didn’t really believe that, but it was so much better than the alternative.
Deciding on a new course of action, I headed back to the front desk for what felt like the millionth time. This time I would ask her to describe the Uber car. That way, I could begin the research towards identifying whoever had picked her up and where they went. I would demand to see video footage of the front door to confirm her response, because I knew I could not trust this woman, but also because it would hopefully give me a time and direction to continue my search for her.
With my wolf still so close to the surface, I took a big whiff as I approached, and I smelled her. I smelled Elise. It wasn’t the freshest trail, and it wasn’t leading to the front door, either. I walked around the side of the front desk and pushed past the lady as she attempted to stop me in protest. My heart leapt with joy at the smell of my mate.
“You can’t be back here,” she demanded, culling my enthusiasm. “I’m calling security.”
“You do that. I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear how my girlfriend was not picked up by Uber, and that you are lying. Perhaps they will be more helpful in locating her than you are.”
I saw her sway, looking simultaneously furious and scared. The mixed scents she was putting off told me it was a little of both. I continued on the trail I had picked up, ignoring her constant protests at my back.
I heard heavy footsteps ahead as I zeroed in on a room to my left, down a long, dark hallway. It was cracked open and I nudged it the rest of the way as security reached me, but not before I saw Elise’s bag sitting in the room.
“Elise!” I yelled, as two hands grabbed each arm and pulled me back. “Elise!” I yelled again, but she didn’t respond.
I shook off the security officers.
“Sir, you can’t be here. This is an employee-only area.”
I stopped and turned towards the two men more calmly than I felt.
“That’s my girlfriend’s bag,” I said, pointing into the abandoned room. “The same girlfriend she assured me took an Uber
this morning.” I pointed to the woman who had continually lied to me all morning. “Look, I don’t want to cause any trouble here. I just want to know where my girlfriend is, and why she’s been lying and giving me the run around all morning.”
The security men stopped and eased up on their grips. They turned to the lady and she opened her mouth, then shut it tight. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” she finally settled on, but I could tell that her response and body language weren’t sitting well with the security guys, either.
“Check that bag,” the heavyset one told the other.
“Shit,” I heard the lady say under her breath.
The short, scrawny officer looked throughout the room. There really wasn’t much to look through, but he found scratch marks on the back of the door, and under the desk in the center of the room they found Elise’s purse. A quick check for identification in the wallet confirmed it was hers. But where was she?
I turned back to woman. “Where is she?” I demanded.
She paled, but her jaw was clamped tight.
“Come on,” the heavyset one said, letting go of me and grabbing her by the arm instead. I followed them to a room filled with video cameras on the opposite side of the building. I fought the itch to change into my fur—or throw up—as we made the walk there. I wasn’t really sure which was worse, the anger surging irrationally, or the bile burning my nose and throat as I tried to hold on to any sliver of control.
“Take a seat.” The little guy nodded towards me, then an empty chair. I wasn’t sure I could sit, but I somehow forced myself to comply. Showing aggression now was not going to help the situation.
“Viv, you have a lot of explaining to do. What was this girl’s stuff doing back in the office?”
“How should I know?”
I bit my tongue hard, tasting blood, as I struggled to allow them time and space to find the answers that eluded me.
Fighting Destiny (Westin Pack Book 2) Page 8
