by Rebecca York
“Call if you need us,” Frank said.
“I will,” Brand answered, wondering what, exactly, he was going to need.
Chapter Four
Tory’s eyes blinked open. Her head felt like little men were inside her skull, pounding on it from the inside with tiny hammers. For a moment she couldn’t figure out where the headache had come from—or where she was, for that matter.
She lay very still, trying to get her bearings. She seemed to be in some kind of moving vehicle. A car?
When she tried to rise up and look around, the effort sent a wave of sickness crashing through her, and she fell back against a lumpy surface. Closing her eyes helped. Still she knew she was hanging on to consciousness—or maybe it was sanity—by her fingernails.
Something bad had happened. But what? The gap in her memory made her heart pound and cold sweat break out on her body. She gasped in air, then struggled for calm.
Think, she ordered herself. You can’t panic. Think.
When she did capture a memory, it was like grabbing onto a live electric wire. An image sizzled behind her closed eyes—a man lying on the floor, blood spreading around his head. His name followed the awful picture. Johnny Denato. She’d been in his condo when men had come in and shot him.
The next part was just as bad. She’d run, bent on getting out of the city before anyone figured out that she’d been there. But it was already too late.
A goon squad had come after her. And now?
She choked back the scream welling up in her throat. Maybe if they didn’t realize she was awake, she could get away. And then what? She didn’t even know where she was. But she had to try to escape, because she understood in the part of her brain still capable of rational thinking that the unknown was better than the here and now.
She took several calming breaths as she assessed her physical situation. Nothing hurt besides her head and the palms of her hands where the roof gravel had dug into them. Or to put it more directly, the men who had captured her hadn’t done anything to harm her after they’d drugged her. At least that was encouraging. On the other hand, her wrists were secured in front of her. Slitting her eyes, she studied the bonds and saw one of those plastic handcuff things.
When she heard a door open, then footsteps approaching, she tried to relax, willing herself not to tense up as she imagined one of the hard-faced men standing over her.
“She still out cold?” a voice inquired.
“Far as I can tell.”
She forced herself not to react when a large hand grasped her shoulder and shook her.
She heard his breathing, but he said nothing more as he remained where he was for several heartbeats, then turned around and withdrew.
Her mind circled back to the problem of where she was—exactly. In a van? She could feel the vehicle moving, more up and down than from side to side. The movement didn’t seem like a car.
She focused on the odd motion, then choked back a gasp when she realized where she must be. In a plane. Oh Lord—they were flying her somewhere. North? South?
All she knew was that they were in a hurry to get her away from the city.
She struggled to hold back the sob trying to claw its way up her throat. As she clenched her fists, she tried to plan her escape. Cracking her eyelids, she looked around in the dim light. She was in a low, narrow compartment, hardly high enough to stand up. A small plane. There were no windows in the immediate area, and only a dim overhead light made it possible to see anything. It looked like she was in a cargo hold, only it couldn’t be like the hold where they put the luggage on a big aircraft, because then she’d be freezing cold, wouldn’t she? No, this was simply the back of a small plane, where someone had thrown a thin mattress for her to lie on.
Cautiously, she sat up, then began looking for some way to free her hands. The bulkheads were unadorned metal. Working by touch, she found a sharp place where two seams joined. After a quick glance at the forward door, she raised her hands and began sawing the thick plastic band back and forth over the protruding metal, praying that the guy who had come to check on her wasn’t going to come back and see what she was doing. Progress seemed to take forever, but she figured out that if she angled her hands, she could make a notch in one side, then a larger cut.
When she felt a shift in the way the aircraft was flying, she knew they must be getting ready for a landing. The band wasn’t quite cut through yet, but maybe that was good. It was almost done, and if she turned the cut side inward, she should be able to hide her progress.
As the plane kept descending, she laid down again, drawing her knees up and her head down, pretending she was out of it but preparing herself to escape when she got the chance.
They touched down none too smoothly and bounced along a runway before braking to a stop. Then she heard the door at the front open again, and a man come through. Probably the same guy who had checked on her before.
“Come on,” he said. “Time to get up.”
She made a moaning sound.
“You awake?”
When she didn’t answer, he shook her. “Awake?”
“Sort of,” she mumbled.
He opened a hatch in the bulkhead, and she saw dim light outside. It looked like early morning. Did that mean they’d been flying for the rest of the night—or had they not taken off right away?
“Give me a hand,” he called out.
Another man—probably the pilot—came from the front, and together they muscled her down a short flight of steps that had swung out when the hatch opened. They set her on her feet, and she wavered as they held her up, pretending she was weaker than she really was as she looked around.
She saw a stretch of tarmac, a couple of buildings to her right, and beyond that, trees.
A small rural airport? Did the people running the place know there was a kidnap victim arriving, or didn’t they give a damn?
“Looks like our ride is here.” The man who had first come to check on her pointed to a long black car parked at the side of the runway. A Lincoln Town Car or something similar. “Let me make sure it’s him.”
The man who had spoken left her with the pilot, and she watched him stride across the blacktop. The other guy held her only loosely, and she tried not to telegraph her intentions as she waited for her chance.
Suddenly she rammed her elbow into his side. As he grunted in pain, she wrenched away and lit out in the opposite direction from the car.
She might have been unconscious a little while ago, but she had an athlete’s stamina and legs.
Ignoring the shout behind her, she yanked at the plastic strip holding her wrists, pulling through the last of the bond as she headed for a low clapboard-sided structure, making decisions as she sprinted. The logical thing would be to go inside and ask for help, but in this case she was sure that was the wrong tactic. Her captors had deliberately chosen an isolated location. If she ran into the building, she could be trapping herself, or whoever was in there could grab her.
Veering to the right, she ducked around the building, making for the woods. She was stopped by a high chain-link fence, topped with razor wire.
oOo
Tory didn’t waste any energy on a cry of frustration. She simply changed directions, running along the barrier, praying she’d come to an open gate. Behind her she could hear the men from the plane and maybe another one. The driver of the luxury car or someone from the building.
She kept going, the air wheezing in and out of her lungs. Ahead of her she saw an entrance to the airport—and an open gate. If she could only make it through, she could disappear into the woods.
But she never reached that haven. One of the men behind her must have realized that he was in serious danger of losing her and put on a desperate burst of speed. Grabbing her by the shoulder, he threw her to the ground.
When she tried to roll away, he smacked her hard across the face, stunning her.
“Bitch.”
He had pulled back his hand to sock her in the
mouth when the other guy caught up with them and grabbed the assailant’s hand.
“Don’t damage her.”
“She . . .”
“Leave her be.”
The one who had spoken knelt beside her, then swore when he saw that she’d freed her hands.
“Tricky,” he muttered as he pulled another set of plastic handcuffs from his back pocket and secured her wrists again.
“Please, let me go.”
“Can’t do that. Come on.”
He hauled her to her feet and led her back the way they’d come.
She wanted to scream or sob, but she wasn’t going to give these guys the satisfaction. One on either side, they gripped her arms as they marched her back toward the long black car.
A back door opened, and a man she hadn’t seen before got out. Slender except for signs of pudginess around his middle, he was wearing a dark suit with a white shirt and a subdued red tie. His dark hair was neatly combed, and his face was pale, as though he didn’t go out much. He looked like he was in his mid-forties, and he could have been dressed for an evening at the Midnight Club—or the symphony.
“I’m Dr. Raymond,” he said.
“Who?”
“Dr. Raymond. I’ll be working with you.”
“Why? I don’t need you to work with me. I’m fine.”
“Not if you’re so paranoid that you needed to try and escape.”
He looked around at the open-air setting. “This isn’t a good place to talk. We can have a nice chat when we get to the Refuge.”
“Paranoid? Your guys just drugged me and flew me away from New York City to God knows where.”
“For your own good. You’ll have to trust me on that.”
“Oh, right.”
As his men held her in place, he took a quick step forward. When he lifted his arm, she saw a hypodermic in his hand, then felt the prick of the needle. Lord, not again.
Only seconds later, she felt her vision and her mind begin to blur, and she would have fallen over if the men hadn’t been holding her up.
“Let’s get her into the car,” Raymond said.
At first, she didn’t actually lose consciousness, but all her senses and her mind felt like they had been coated with a layer of thick, sticky foam.
One of the men got into the front of the car behind the wheel. The doctor got in back with her, speaking in a soothing voice, telling her that she was safe now, that she’d been too upset to know what she was doing, that she should trust him to take care of her.
Trust him?
A laugh bubbled in her throat.
She fought against the hypnotic sound of his voice, but the drug he’d given her was leaching away the ability to think clearly.
“You’re feeling disoriented?” he asked in a soothing voice that made her want to scream.
“Yes,” she managed to say.
“Just relax. Let yourself go. We’ll get you to the Refuge, and you’ll be safe. You’ll get the care you need there.”
She didn’t need any care, and somewhere in her confused mind, she was cursing herself for not going straight to the police as soon she’d found Denato’s body.
Chapter Five
As Brand drove north, he felt a strange excitement building inside his chest. It made him think of the first giddy moments when he’d well and truly changed from man to wolf. He had survived the fierce, paralyzing headache and come through the test—alive.
And when he’d glanced at his father, he saw the tremendous relief on his face. That look almost paralyzed Brand again because it suddenly jolted him to the realization that Dad had come here prepared to bring home another dead son. But this time the ancient gods had granted mercy to the Marshall family.
To celebrate, Dad took Brand on a hunting trip to the Finger Lakes National Forest. It was one of the best memories of his life—alone with the old man, learning the skills he’d need to live as a werewolf.
Of course, there were plenty of learning opportunities when he was growing up. His family lived in an ideal location for a werewolf pack—a farm in western Howard County, Maryland, where they could have the privacy they needed to hunt—and no noisy neighbors to ask why two of their teenage boys, seemingly the picture of health, had died suddenly.
The Marshalls raised sheep, which helped fulfil their need for meat. Dad also brought in money running a rural machinery repair shop where local farmers brought equipment that had broken down.
But the most memorable week of Brand’s teen years was that trip north, just the two of them.
Today he was going there again, as an adult.
His memories of that first trip were vivid. The two of them hiking to a secluded area. Dad showing him how to dig a trench around their tent so it wouldn’t flood in a rainstorm. Dad pointing out which plants a human could eat and showing him how to rappel down one of the many cliffs in the area. And the two of them working together to herd a deer into a blind canyon.
Now he’d supplemented those memories with research about the natural area and found it lay on a ridge—called the Hector Backbone—between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. New York State's only national forest, it was patterned after similar parks out west, with great sweeps of open land as well as thick forest stands.
He was going there for a wolf’s hunt, but he saw the wisdom of establishing a human campsite, the way his father had done.
After setting out before dawn, he’d made the trip north in five hours and was caught by a sense of homecoming as he found a secluded parking area where he could leave his vehicle. Intent on getting as far away from civilization as possible, he shouldered his pack and set off into the wilderness. A man might have worried about finding his way back to where he’d left his vehicle. A werewolf had no such problem.
He followed a trail through thick forest, then crossed a meadow and plunged into forest again, this time without a path to follow, which was what he’d been looking for.
Two hours later, he figured he was far enough from the world of men. Picking a clearing at the edge of a hard wood grove, he set up his tent near a stream where he could get fresh water. Once he had secured the camp site, he grew restless, ready to change to wolf form and prowl.
He’d told himself he was coming to this secluded location to get away from his normal routine. Now he was wondering why he was really here.
He should relax and wait for dark before he changed, but he couldn’t make himself hold back. He stomped off into a blackberry thicket and started taking off his clothes, too impatient to fold anything neatly before he rushed into the chant that would change him from man to wolf.
The transformation grabbed him in a way he hadn’t expected. It was like a new burst of freedom.
Still, he was cautious as he made his way through the woods, wary of running into a hunter who would love the chance to bring home a wolf-pelt trophy. If someone shot and killed him in wolf form, would he stay that way? It was a question that had run through his mind on some of his Decorah assignments.
Then he’d often been on a dangerous assignment. Was he operating as a wolf now because he wanted to take a risk?
He slipped through the forest, listening to the sounds of the wildlife around him, passing a small herd of deer, breathing in their fear as they became aware of him. But he would only hunt after dark.
Instead he headed north, sensing that something was drawing him. He had the impulse to fight it. But he shook it off because his destiny was here in these woods.
It was fanciful notion that reminded him of a book he’d read a long time ago—Appointment in Samarra—about a man who tries to outrun death but finds it waiting for him anyway.
Was death stalking Brand? He had the feeling it was something else entirely. More like life.
Or the life he was meant to lead. Did that mean he wasn’t coming back to Decorah Security?
He hoped that wasn’t the case.
Chapter Six
“How are you feeling this evening?”
T
ory opened her eyes and tried to focus on . . . Dr. Raymond, the man who had brought her to this place a little while ago.
What had he called it? A name, “The Refuge,” bobbed to the surface of her mind like a fishing cork in murky lake water.
Tory was sitting in a comfortable chair, her head lolling to the side. Gripping the padded arms of the chair, she pushed herself up straighter, blinking as she took in the doctor and then the room.
Raymond was relaxing in a similar chair, separated from her by a small oval table. There was a large rosewood desk across from them, a tasteful Oriental rug on the floor, and light wood paneling on the walls. The room was about twelve by thirteen feet, she judged, and the window behind the desk had bars. The only other furnishing was a sideboard, like the kind that held lateral file drawers. There were no ornaments in sight, probably so that she couldn’t pick up an ashtray and bash the doctor’s head in. And escape? She didn’t even know what was behind the closed door.
Last time she’d seen this man was in the car where the nicely dressed goons had taken her. Then the doctor had been wearing a business suit. Now he had on a more casual outfit, dark slacks and a light blue golf shirt.
“How are you feeling?” he repeated, closing the notebook he must have been writing in. She’d like to see those notes.
“I don’t know,” she answered uncertainly.
“You have these spells,” the doctor said.
She tried to work her way through the statement—and the implications. “Spells?” she repeated cautiously, fighting the icy fear that was collecting in the pit of her stomach like slush on the side of a highway in winter.
“Yes. Sometimes you’re perfectly lucid and other times you seem to go off into never-never land.
