Jase turned to his wife, his bottom lip jutting out like a small child’s. “You made lasagna without meat? Why?” His lip trembled. “I thought you loved me.”
“She has betrayed us all,” Scout said, grabbing a stack of plates out of the cabinet. “We will hold a trial at the next Hustings and have her declared an enemy of the Pack.”
The French doors leading out onto the patio opened and Liam stepped into the kitchen. “Who are we declaring an enemy of the Pack this week?” he asked, removing his mud-encased work boots.
“Talley,” Scout said. “She made meatless lasagna.”
Liam’s nose wrinkled. “Lasagna?”
“I’ve made you some sandwiches,” Talley said to the Alpha Male. “They’re in the fridge.”
With a quick thank you, Liam headed to the refrigerator and pulled out two barbecue sandwiches and a jar of pickles. On his way to the table he snatched a bag of chips and box of snack cakes.
“Why does Liam get meat and I get zucchini?” Jase asked, lifting one corner of the lasagna with a fork to inspect its contents.
“Because Liam doesn’t like cheese,” said Talley, smacking Jase’s hands away from the food. “And he’s Alpha. Now, help Scout set the table.”
Jase opened four different drawers in an attempt to find the silverware, grumbling the entire time about how Liam was conveniently anti-cheese when it came time for vegetable lasagna but never complained when they ordered pizza. Scout might have made fun of him for not knowing where they kept the forks, but she was too busy trying to remember where the napkins were hidden. It was rare the inner-circle of the Alpha Pack was left to fend for themselves in the kitchen. They had a both a cook and maid on staff, but the cook was out of town visiting relatives and the maid had a killer migraine. Scout had told her to stay in bed and not worry about anything. The Alpha Pack was made up of adults who were responsible for the wellbeing of all the Shifters and Seers in the world. They could handle a day of household chores.
She might have overestimated their domestic abilities just a smidgen.
They were just putting the food on the table when the rest of the Alpha Pack’s core group wandered into the kitchen.
“Whatever that is smells delicious,” Ada said with a happy sigh as she slid into her seat. Joshua took his place next to the newly-minted Immortal.
“Don’t get too excited,” Jase warned. “There is no meat. Talley is trying to poison us with vegetables.”
“Oh, the horror,” Maggie, who happened to be a vegetarian, deadpanned, scooping up a large helping onto her plate. “What is next? Will your snack cakes get replaced with fruit?”
Jase turned to Talley, eye narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”
“Well, we do eat way too many carbs, and you know what they say about an apple a day…”
“Where is Charlie?” Scout asked Maggie before Jase decided to cry over being forced to eat something healthy. “Do we need to wait for him?”
Scout knew the answer before Maggie said anything. It was in the tightening of her lips and the way her eyes wouldn’t quite meet anyone else’s at the table, especially not Scout’s. The Thaumaturgic and Alpha Female didn’t have much in common, but the one thing they shared was how much they worried about Charlie. Since Layne’s death in July, he had been pulling further and further away from the group. Scout had tried to talk to him about it, but he said he needed space, and since she never could deny him anything, she gave it.
“No, he’s working. He said he’ll just grab something later.”
At least he still let Maggie in. Scout often got the impression she was far from Maggie’s favorite person, but she didn’t care. Maggie was still on her top ten list. She knew without her, Charlie might have been lost to them forever.
The rest of the meal went the same way most every meal went at the Den. Ada complained about her classes and swore she didn’t want to go, but Joshua, who was pursuing what could have very likely been his tenth college diploma, refused to let her because he didn’t want to miss whatever fascinating lecture they had scheduled. Liam complained about their neighbors, Scout complained about idiot Shifters who refused to listen to her because she was a female, and Jase complained about everything else. Once the pans of food were empty and Jase was polishing off his third helping of the vegetable lasagna, Talley pulled out her phone.
“Liam, you and Charlie are supposed to meet with the contractors this afternoon over at the lot off Tates Creek,” she said, scrolling through her scheduling app that kept the entire Alpha Pack running. “Jase, you’re Skyping with the Vetrov Pack to congratulate them on the birth of their newest cub. Her name is Nonna, and you will not say she looks like a tiny Steve Buscemi.”
“Hey, that German kid totally looked like a miniature Buscemi. Have you seen the pictures?”
“Scout—”
“Is going to work in her lab on the important experiment she’s been trying to get started for a month,” Scout finished, putting the full power of the Alpha Female into her voice.
Sadly, as her lifelong best friend and the Stella Polaris, Talley couldn’t have cared less about Scout’s oh-so-lofty position.
“Of course she is,” Talley said. “Right after she finished the to-do list I’m texting to her phone right now.”
Sure enough, Scout’s phone immediately buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out to see a carefully numbered list that seemed to have no end.
“When do I get to retire?” she asked, not entirely sure how she was supposed to mediate a dispute between two neighboring African packs who didn’t speak English.
“We can’t retire,” Liam said as he scrolled through his own list of things that needed to be taken care of after his meeting with the contractors. “The only way out is to die. But there is nothing that says we can’t run away and hide where no one will ever find us.”
Talley reached across the table to give Liam’s hand a consoling pat. “Actually, I think there is. No quitting. No running away.”
“Don’t worry,” Joshua said. “You guys have normal human lifespans, which means—” Whatever not-so-comforting words the former Immortal was going to say were cut off by what sounded like an atomic bomb warning system. The noise was so loud Scout nearly blacked out for a moment. It only took two seconds for Joshua to locate his phone and cut it off, but Scout’s sensitive Shifter ears continued ringing.
Joshua read whatever was on the screen and then his eyes scanned it again. And then a third time. His mouth was twisted up and his eyebrows were scrunched so tightly together the skin between them had gone from red to white.
“Where is Charlie?” Joshua asked.
Scout’s stomach dropped somewhere down near her knees.
“Our room,” Maggie said, panic shining out of her cat-like eyes. “He was working on his comic.”
“‘Was’ being the operative word,” Charlie said, stomping down the back staircase that led directly into the kitchen. “What the hell was that noise?”
Scout and Maggie both visibly sagged in their seats.
“You didn’t just send me an emergency text?” Joshua asked, and even though she still didn’t know what was going on, Scout’s stomach decided it wasn’t ready to head back to its home location anytime soon.
“No,” Charlie said, grabbing the lone remaining breadstick off the table. “I’m on deadline. I was trying to get some work done when someone tried to render every Shifter within ten miles of here deaf.”
“You got an emergency text?” Ada asked her boyfriend/eternal life partner. “But I thought we were the only ones with that super-special-number you make us recite every five minutes.”
“Ten people have this code. Eight of them are in this room,” Joshua said, sliding his phone across the table.
Scout was the Alpha Female. She’d fought some of the scariest monsters in the world and won. Her job was to keep werewolves in line. But she couldn’t stop her hand from shaking as she reached for the phone because she knew who the other tw
o people were who had that code, and they were supposed to be dead.
Alive. In Bath.
She met Joshua’s eyes across the table. “You can trace it?”
“Of course.”
“Jase, call Phil. Tell him we need the jet ready to go in an hour,” she said, already pushing away from the table. “Talley, you’ll stay with Joshua so you can coordinate ground transportation once he knows where we’re going. Everyone else, pack an overnight bag, complete with weapons.”
She could feel the confusion swirling around her, but everyone was already up and following orders despite not knowing why they’d been given. Everyone except Charlie. Scout took a deep breath and met his gaze.
“Layne?” he asked, his voice thick with unshed tears.
“We’re going to bring him home,” she said, hoping like hell she would be able to fulfill that promise.
London, England, UK
7.5 Hours Before Rescue
“They’re not here,” Scout said as she approached the rest of the Alpha Pack.
The call had originated in France, but Joshua had traced the phone back to Hetta Hummel, a twenty-two year old med student at King’s College in London. Since the girl in question didn’t seem to be inclined to answer her phone, Scout and Talley had paid her a little visit in her tiny London apartment. A couple of fake FBI badges and some super-Seer skills later, they had all the information she could give them.
“She saw Lizzie on a train traveling from Paris to London earlier today,” Talley said, allowing Jase to pull her against his chest. It wasn’t quite bedtime at the Den in Kentucky, but it was the wee hours of the morning in England, and they had been living on a steady diet of adrenaline while trapped on a trans-Atlantic flight. Exhaustion was weighing them all down. “She was with two guys, both British. One was young, maybe our age, and in Hetta’s words, ‘pretty.’ The other was older and appeared to be a bodyguard.” Her eyes flicked up to Charlie. “There was no sign of Layne.”
“But that doesn’t mean anything,” Scout was quick to add. “We’re not giving up hope.” She wouldn’t, not until there was simply no way to cling onto it any longer.
The past three months had been hard on the entire Alpha Pack. Even though Layne was Charlie’s nephew, the entire Pack had thought of him as an annoying little brother. Lizzie was too young to have been one of Scout’s close friends and too old-of-soul to be thought of as a little sister, but she had all of Scout’s respect and a piece of her heart. The loss of them was almost unbearable. There wasn’t a day - an hour - that didn’t go by without Scout thinking about the youngest members of the Alpha Pack and how spectacularly she’d failed them. If there was any chance at all they were still out there, she was going to take it. She didn’t care how far she had to go or who she had to kill, she was bringing them home.
“What was Lizzie doing with these guys?” Charlie asked, acting as if he hadn’t heard the news about Layne. “Did she look healthy? Was there evidence they were hurting her?”
Talley shook her head, her gaze fixed in the distance. “Hetta said she didn’t see any bruises or anything, but I got a glimpse of her memory, and Lizzie looked… diminished. She’s lost weight and she’s pale. Even her freckles and hair seem washed out.”
“And Hetta wasn’t at all surprised to see us,” Scout said. “She said she felt like something was off, and even more so after she saw the message on her phone. She was thinking about going to the police, but didn’t know really what she would tell them other than she got a bad vibe and had a strange text sent from her phone while she was asleep.”
Liam settled a hand on Scout’s shoulder. “He’s controlling her somehow,” he said, his thumb rubbing small circles in the bunched up muscles of Scout’s neck. “I’m guessing that is where Layne comes in.”
“Layne would never do anything to hurt Lizzie,” Maggie said, eyes flashing. It was no secret she had a soft spot for her eventual nephew. “He’s not the thug you guys keep trying to make him out to be.”
“We all know Layne would protect Lizzie, no matter the cost,” Jase assured her. “I think what Liam is saying, is that Lizzie would do the same.”
“What would you be willing to do to keep Charlie safe?” Talley asked the tiny Thaumaturgic.
“Anything, but Charlie is my entire world. I love him.”
“Then what if it was me?” Joshua asked. “Or Ada? Or Jase? Would you leave us to die, or do whatever some crazy kidnapper asked?”
Maggie looked around the group, the answer clear in her eyes. “If you’re right, then that means Layne is still alive somewhere.”
“He is,” Liam said, and Scout couldn’t stop the sigh of relief that left her lungs. Her mate wasn’t the type of person to say things just to make you feel better. If he said Layne was alive, then Layne was alive. She didn’t question his ability to know something that should have been unknowable. He was the Alpha Male, and as such, he had a connection to their fellow Shifters that even she didn’t understand.
“So, where to next?” Jase asked, the last word rendered somewhat incomprehensible by a giant yawn. “Do we have any leads on who these guys might be?”
“No, but we know where they are,” Joshua said. “I say we head to Bath.”
Jase’s forehead crinkled up. “You want us to all go take a bath? Like right now?”
“Bath, as in the city,” Ada clarified. “You know, the famous place in England with the hot springs? Jane Austen lived there? The place that Lizzie specifically mentioned in her message?”
“There is a city called Bath? That’s weird, right?”
Scout loved her brother, she really did, but there were times when he was a complete idiot.
“To the vehicles,” she said, already walking towards one of the two giant black SUVs that had been waiting for them at the airport. “Joshua and Ada are with me and Liam; Charlie, Maggie, Jase, and Talley can follow us.”
“I’ll drive,” Talley volunteered, but at Scout’s over-my-dead-body look, Charlie snatched the keys and jumped into the driver’s seat. “We’ll be right behind you,” he said. “Let’s end this.”
Bath, England, UK
1 Hour Before Rescue
“Any luck?” Ada asked sitting down next to Scout on a bench. The imposing edifice of a giant church stared back at them as if judging them for their lack progress.
“It’s like a needle in a haystack,” Jase said, passing her a coffee. “Except the haystack happens to be a bunch of tourists. Do you think anyone actually lives in this city?”
They’d divided up into pairs and roamed the streets of Bath for the past five hours, showing pictures of Lizzie and Layne and describing the men who had been with Lizzie on the train. They weren’t exactly making a ton of progress. No one had seen either of their missing friends, and the descriptions of the other men were too generic to get anything helpful. The stress and jet lag were starting to catch up with them, but Scout refused to let them slow down. They needed to find Lizzie and Layne soon. It was urgent. She could feel it in her gut.
Come on. Lose your control. Get reckless. This is our only chance.
“Your only chance for what?” Scout asked Talley. “And whose control are you trying to snap?”
Talley looked over one shoulder then the other. “Are you talking to me?”
“What was that…?” Scout wiggled her fingers on either side of her head to indicate the brain-to-brain network system she shared with all the Seers of the world. Any Seer could access it, but not without permission, and since Ada and Maggie weren’t Seers, the only one around with permission to just pop in any old time was Talley.
Talley shook her head. “That wasn’t me.”
“Then who—?”
This isn’t going to work. He’s bigger than me. And furious. I can’t take him.
This time, Scout recognized the mental voice. Joy and complete terror fought a furious battle in her chest.
Relax your muscles. Stay loose, she said to Lizzie through thei
r link, hoping with everything she had the other girl could hear her. Wait until you know you can land the blow to take a swing.
“It’s Lizzie,” Scout told the others. “They’re making an escape attempt.”
“Now?” Jase rubbed at his forehead. “It’s been months and they’re making an escape attempt now?”
“The text,” Liam said. “They’ve either been caught or realize it’s only a matter of time.”
“And they didn’t try before because the odds aren’t in their favor,” Charlie said, looking more alert than any of them had in hours. “Where are they, Scout?”
She was trying to connect, to ask Lizzie for whatever she could give her, but got nothing other than fear.
“There is still something screwing up our connection. I can’t…” she closed her eyes and concentrated. “I think she’s that way,” she said, pointing off to the east.
Joshua raised his eyebrows. “You think she’s that way?”
It was just a gut feeling, but since becoming the Alpha Female, Scout learned to trust the instincts of the wolf caged beneath her skin. “She is. Somewhere.”
“That’s more than we had two minutes ago,” Maggie reminded them. “I say we start driving. Maybe the closer we get the better Scout’s connection to Lizzie will be.”
“Then let’s move,” Liam said, already moving across the courtyard.
Brownlow Manor, Bath, England, UK
0 Hours Before Rescue
“This is it,” Scout said, bracing her hand on the glovebox as Liam slammed on the breaks. “They’re in there.”
“There” happened to be a giant mansion made out of what looked like a dingy white rock-like substance. Limestone maybe. Scout thought she’d seen or heard something about Bath being well known for limestone when she was wandering the streets looking for information.
Lizzie was in pain and barely holding on at this point. The only thing keeping her going was Layne, but Scout knew without a doubt if they didn’t get in there soon there wouldn’t be anyone for them to save.
Whispered Visions (Shifters & Seers Book 3) Page 22
