“I know. I care about him too.”
“Are you…are you in love with him?” Jamie couldn’t stand the hopeless look on Keenan’s face.
“I think I might be, yeah.”
Jamie hugged his brother, wishing there was an easy solution. As far as he knew, this was the first time Keenan had been in love, and he wanted his brother to be happy. He wanted to help him, but he didn’t know how. In that moment someone knocked on the door, breaking them apart, and Jamie opened the door to find their neighbor, Mr. Robles, waiting behind it.
“Hello, boys. How is the move proceeding?”
“We’re nearly done.”
“Well, I’ll be sorry to see you go. You’re both good neighbors.”
“Thank you.” Jamie smiled at the old man. He would actually miss listening to what his grandchildren were up to.
“Anyway, I’m here because a man is waiting for you downstairs, Jamie. He said he wanted to talk to you, but he didn’t want to come up.”
“Did he say why?”
“No, just that he would be waiting in the parking lot.”
Jamie thanked Mr. Robles and closed the door while Keenan went to the kitchen’s window.
“Shit! What is he doing here?”
Jamie’s stomach dropped. “Who is it?” He went to the window, his hands gripping the sill when he saw Colin standing there, looking right at Jamie’s window. “What does he want?”
“Who the hell knows? Fuck, I thought Ward’s visit would’ve kept him away.”
“Ward went to talk to him?” That was new.
“Yeah. Look, I’m going to go down and send him away. Stay here.” Keenan rushed to the door, his hand already in his pocket to grab his cell phone, probably to call Ward. Jamie would have done it, but he was a little angry with his mate. Why hadn’t he told him he had talked to Colin? They would have to have a chat about keeping secrets.
Jamie returned to his boxes, not wanting to see the confrontation in the parking lot. He was packing pots from the kitchen to give away when he heard the front door creak, indicating that someone was coming in.
“Keenan? What happened?” Jamie asked without turning around. “What did he say?”
No one answered, and Jamie couldn’t hear anything now, not even steps indicating someone had really come in.
“Keenan?”
Jamie straightened from the box and looked out of the window. Keenan was still there, talking and gesturing at Colin, so when he heard steps behind him he knew something was wrong. His heart started racing as he swung around, narrowly avoiding the arm that was about to grab him. Jamie stumbled on the box he’d been working on and hit his hip on the counter, the pain shooting down his leg and making him yelp. Scrambling to get to the kitchen’s door, he tried to go around the man in front of him, but he was cornered. The kitchen was too small for him to move, and Jamie wasn’t strong or skilled enough to fight the guy. He was huge, probably as tall as Ward, heavily muscled and wearing something that looked like a military uniform but not quite.
His assailant had no problems grabbing Jamie’s throat and stopping him from escaping. Jamie kicked a leg up, despair guiding his moves as he tried to kick the guy in the nuts, but he wasn’t able to. The man flipped Jamie around, his hands securing Jamie’s behind his back as Jamie tried to get to the window, kicking and head butting the air. He managed to dislodge one of his hands from the man’s hold and he threw himself against the window, using the freed hand to hit the window and try to get his brother’s attention.
“Keenan! Keenan!”
Jamie squeaked when Keenan turned around and looked up. He saw his brother freeze for an instant then run to the door. That was the last thing he saw, though, because his assailant hit him on the head with something and he blacked out.
* * * *
“What do you mean, he’s gone?”
“I went downstairs to talk to Colin. I heard Jamie scream and saw him through the kitchen’s window. I don’t know what was happening exactly, but I ran upstairs. The door was open and Jamie was gone.” Keenan’s eyes were wide with worry.
“Where is that little shit?” Ward roared. He had to get his hands on Colin and make him confess what he had done to Jamie. When Keenan had called to tell Ward that Colin was there, Ward had left work and run to his mate, but once he got there he found out Jamie had disappeared. Ward’s leopard had wanted out right then and there and he’d had to fight it. They couldn’t afford to be exposed to the humans, but Ward had to hurry if he wanted to be able to follow the scent trail. Instead, he had to wait for Dominic.
“Look, I don’t think it was Colin. I mean, he was with me when we heard Jamie scream.”
“He could’ve had an accomplice.”
“I suppose he could have, but…if he’s a stalker like we think he is, I don’t think he would have an accomplice.” Keenan shook his head. “That’s kind of a solitary crime, you know?”
“But who? If not him, who?”
Keenan racked his hand in his hair in frustration. “I don’t know, Ward. I can’t think of anyone who would do this.”
Ward punched the door in a fit of anger. Damn it, where was Dominic? He needed to do something, to let his cat out and search for his mate.
Ward stomped toward Colin, needing to do something while he waited for the Alpha. The guy was cowering in a corner of the living room, sitting on one of the boxes that were still there. Ward could smell his fear even in his human form, and he didn’t blame him. If he found out that he had something to do with Jamie’s kidnapping…
Ward watched as Colin noticed him approach. He cringed, trying to make himself smaller, his arms hugging his chest and his legs slightly drawing up. Ward knew he was scary right now and that all his anger was showing on his face.
“I didn’t do anything, I swear!”
“Why are you here?”
“I wanted to apologize to Jamie.”
“I told you to stay away from him.”
Colin took a deep breath, seeming to collect himself a bit. “I know, but I wanted him to know that I wasn’t the one stalking him. I might have been an ass, but that’s as far as I went. I wanted him back, he said no, and I didn’t insist.”
“If you’re not stalking him why did he see you both here and at his work?”
“I have a friend who lives in this building and sometimes I pick him up. As for his job…I like to read. I was just buying a book.”
Ward had to admit that Keenan was probably right, even if he didn’t like it. After talking with Colin, he didn’t think the man had anything to do with Jamie’s kidnapping. Still, he was going to ask Dominic to have someone keep tabs with Colin until Jamie was found.
“Go home.” Ward turned and walked away.
“But…aren’t you going to call the police?”
“Someone is already coming. I’ll tell them where you are if they need to talk to you.”
Ward watched as Colin gave a last glance at the empty apartment and got out. Walking to the kitchen’s window, he waited to see Colin’s car pull out of the parking lot.
Just as he was turning around, he saw three black SUVs enter and park. Dominic got out of one of them. A few minutes later the Alpha entered the kitchen.
“What happened?”
“Jamie is gone. I think he was kidnapped.” There was no way his mate would have left on his own, leaving his brother behind.
Dominic nodded. “We are securing the building right now, making sure no one is going to look out of the window for a while.” The Alpha gestured at one of the shifters that had come in with him and Ward recognized Nate, a jaguar and the best tracker in the pride.
“Do you have something Jamie wore recently?”
Keenan started opening boxes until he found one containing Jamie’s clothes. Sniffing at the shirts he took out, he handed one to Nate.
“Here. This one hasn’t been washed yet.”
Nate started pulling off his clothes and Ward quickly followed. While he wasn�
�t nearly as good as Nate at following scent trails, he couldn’t just stay there and wait while his mate was who knows where, hurt or worse.
Ward hadn’t smelled blood in the house, but he had smelled an artificial scent, heavy and clinging to the air. The two men shifted and Ward blinked, looking around the room. In his leopard form Ward’s sense of smell was heightened and he expected to be surrounded by his mate’s sweet scent, but it was overpowered by the perfume Ward had smelled before.
With a pang of longing as he got near to Jamie’s shirt and smelled him on it, he watched as Keenan indicated the kitchen to Nate. The jaguar sniffed the shirt then walked to the kitchen, scenting the air.
Nate came out soon after and followed the trail outside the front door until he reached the fire exit. Bryce moved to slid up the window and Nate slipped outside, Ward following him. He didn’t want to lose the jaguar in the hope that his mate was nearer than they thought, but Nate didn’t go far.
The jaguar stopped in the parking lot and sniffed the air before looking at Ward and shaking his head. Ward’s stomach dropped. He could guess that Nate had lost the trail, which meant that whoever had taken Jamie had used a car. Ward had already suspected this would be the case, but he had hoped against all odds that they would have found Jamie.
Without a scent trail, they had nothing. There was no way to find out who had taken Jamie or where he was.
Ward followed Nate back into the apartment, despair making it hard to breathe. While Nate shifted back and dressed, Ward stayed in his leopard form, curving into a small ball on the floor with his head on Jamie’s shirt. He needed his mate’s scent.
Bryce knelt next to him, softly patting his back. “We’ll find him, Ward. We’ll find a way to get him back.”
Ward whined, butting his head in his friend’s side. His cat needed reassurance and physical contact, and Ward knew Bryce would give him both in Jamie’s absence.
Keenan sat next to Ward, hesitantly holding his hand up. Only Keenan knew how Ward felt. Jamie was his brother, after all. Ward leaned into Keenan’s hand and watched as Bryce placed a soft kiss on his brother-in-law’s forehead.
“As you probably already know, Jamie was taken away in a car and Nate lost the trail. He did recognize the kidnapper’s scent, however. It seems that this person has been in the woods surrounding the mansion more than once. He used an artificial perfume to cover his scent, but Nate was able to recognize it was the same person because he scented the kidnapper’s real scent under it.” Dominic told Ward. “We’re not giving up, Ward. We will have to check if there are any cameras that could have recorded anything useful, and even if nothing comes up we’ll find another way. We’ll find Jamie. He’s family now, and we take care of family.”
Ward wanted to believe him, but how would they do it? They had no indications whatsoever about who had done it.
Ward buried his nose in Jamie’s shirt and tried to not lose hope.
Chapter Five
Jamie awakened with a jolt, scrambling to his feet. He immediately saw that he was locked in a cage, but before he even tried to open it or do anything else to get out, he had to sit down, his head pounding with the fiercest headache he had ever had. Moaning, he held up a hand to his hair, feeling around for the bump he was sure was there and hissing when his fingers grazed it and caused a jolt of pain behind his eyes.
“Hey, are you okay?” someone said.
Looking around, he noticed that his wasn’t the only cage in the room—far from it. More than a room, it looked like a small warehouse. The ceiling was high and Jamie could see the metal sheets forming it. From there hung several industrial lamps, casting a bright white light on the dozens of cages resting on the concrete floor. Almost all the cages were occupied, some by animals, others by people. And the smell…it was terrible. It smelled like wild animal, blood and excrement.
“Are you okay?” the voice insisted, and Jamie turned in its direction, noticing that in the cage next to his a young man was leaning against the bars, looking at him. He was a little smaller than Jamie and was dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, his long brown hair bound behind his nape. Jamie did a double take when he saw the man’s ears ended in a point. He wasn’t sure if it was a birth defect or something else, and he wondered if it would be rude to ask.
“Hey, did you hear me?” the man asked, irritation in his tone.
Jamie slowly stood up, trying not to move his head too much. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry.”
Green eyes looked at him, full of curiosity. “So, what do you shift into?”
“Uh?”
“What animal?”
“I’m not a shifter, I’m human. What are you?” If the guy could ask, then so could Jamie, right?
The guy seemed puzzled. “What are you doing here then?”
“I don’t know. Look, can we start from the beginning? I’m Jamie.” Jamie neared the bars and held his hand up. The guy shook it with enthusiasm and Jamie nearly feared he was going to detach it from his arm.
“I’m Finn. And this,” Finn said, indicating the warehouse around them, “is your new home.”
“Okay, look, I need you to be more specific.”
Finn sighed. “You were captured by people who study and experiment on shifters and other supernatural creatures. Although I don’t see why they took you, if you’re human. Anyway, most people around here are shifters, as you can see, but I’m a Nix.”
“A what?”
“A Nix. I’m what you can call a water fae.”
That certainly explained Finn’s pointy ears, and the huge bucket filled with water he could see in Finn’s cell. The Nix was right, though. It didn’t make sense for Jamie to be there. Groaning, Jamie closed his eyes. He couldn’t concentrate on finding answers and a way out with the headache pounding in his head.
“Come here,” Finn gestured. Jamie looked at him. “Come on, I won’t hurt you. I’ll just help you get rid of that headache.”
Jamie was skeptical, but, hey, he was willing to try just about anything to stop hurting. He neared Finn and stopped in front of him with only the bars separating them. Finn held his hand up to Jamie’s head and murmured a few words in a language Jamie didn’t recognized. Whatever it was, it was beautiful and melodic, and it also made Jamie’s headache disappear.
“Wow! Thank you!”
Finn did a little wave with his hand. “It’s nothing.”
“So, what exactly do they do here?” Jamie asked while grabbing the bars and shaking them. He could see that the lock was fingerprinted, so there was no way he was getting out that way. Not that he really expected to be able to move the bars, but it was better than not to try anything.
Finn shivered. “I told you, experiments. I’m not sure what, since they don’t do it here but in another room, and thank the gods for that, but I can tell you that those they experiment on are usually in bad shape when they get back to their cages. And you can stop shaking those, they won’t budge.”
This was not good. Jamie was stuck in a nightmare and he didn’t know how to get out of it. His only hope was Ward, but how could his mate find him?
“So, why do you think they took you? Do you have powers or stuff like that?”
“No, I’m just a normal human, really.”
“But you know about shifters.”
Jamie looked around. There were different types of shifters in there with them. He could see a wolf, two bears, a deer and several rabbits, and even a black panther. His heart hurt looking at it, reminding him of Ward.
“I’m mated. Ward is a black leopard.”
“You think they want to see if the mating changed something in you?”
Unfortunately, that was the only reason Jamie could think of for kidnapping him.
“How do we get out of here?”
“See this?” Finn asked, indicating a black electronic devise around his neck. “If you can get it off me, I can shimmer you out.”
“Shimmer?”
“Yup. I move from one p
lace to another just thinking about it.”
“So how do we take that thing off?”
“If I knew that I wouldn’t be here, don’t you think?”
“Turn around.” Jamie looked at the collar and noticed an opening on the nape when Finn moved his hair out of the way. He would need a key to open it. “The key?”
“The head scientist has it.”
Of course, it couldn’t just be hanging on a wall somewhere. Sighing, Jamie slid on the floor.
“How long have you been here?”
“Not long. For now they only took a lot of blood out of me and did some other stuff like x-rays. The others though…” Finn shuddered. “They come back with stitches and bandages, that is, if they do come back.”
“How did they get you? It’s not like you find Nix faes every day.”
“I don’t know. I was near my favorite pond when they got me. They snapped this thing around my neck and knocked me out, and I woke here, just like you. I don’t even know where here is.”
“What do we do?”
Finn sat down on his side of the bars. “I don’t know. I’ve tried everything I could think of, but I’m still stuck here. I guess the only way we’re going to get out is if we either steal the key and I shimmer or if someone finds us. Maybe your mate will be able to, because my tribe sure isn’t going to even try.”
Finn’s eyes were so sad that Jamie couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong with his tribe. Why wouldn’t they look for him? But they had more important things to think about at the moment.
“I’m sure Ward is looking for me, but how can he possibly find us?”
“I’m not an expert, but I do know that mates usually share a bond. Can’t he find you like that?”
“I don’t think so, it’s not like it’s a homing beacon or something. I feel him like a presence in the back of my head, and I am able to feel his strongest emotions, but that’s all.” Jamie felt Ward even now. The only emotions his mate radiated were hurt, sorrow and anger, and Jamie’s heart was breaking thinking about what Ward was going through.
Whitedell Pride 1 - Jamie Page 8
