Alexei bit back a smile. “This was the point you were trying to make?”
Beka wiped her eyes. “No, sorry. I kind of got side-tracked there. What I meant to say is that you’re still raw from the experience. Humans would call it PTSD - post traumatic stress disorder - and say it is normal that you’re jumping at shadows that aren’t there. I’m sure Bethany is fine.”
Alexei felt his shoulders relax a little bit. Beka was probably right. It was probably something perfectly benign, like a problem with the truck, or something minor that had needed to be dealt with at the bar. Maybe her cell phone had run out of whatever it was regular cell phones were powered by, since they didn’t have magic.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess. But look, since you’re here, would you mind staying with Bethany’s father so I can run over to the bar and make sure she doesn’t need help with something? I’d feel a lot better if I could go check. Even though she’ll probably give me hell for not trusting her to be able to take care of herself.”
Beka laughed. “Oh, she definitely will. But I don’t mind staying. You run off and check on your woman.”
Alexei rolled his eyes. “She’s not my woman.”
Beka just snickered and settled back into her chair with her cup of tea. “If I’m asleep when you get back, just roll me out to the bus, will you?”
“With pleasure,” he said and headed out the door at something that wasn’t quite a run.
*
Anxiety prickled up his spine when he saw that the bar was shuttered and dark. Alexei drove around to the parking lot, figuring she might be in the tiny office in the back, but there were no lights on anywhere that he could see. He hopped off his Harley and went to check the door.
Locked. But his foot kicked something that jingled when he hit it, and he bent down to retrieve a set of keys he recognized from the tiny metal anchor that hung from the ring. Bethany’s keys. But no Bethany. He couldn’t seem to draw air into his lungs, and he had a sudden flashback to the moment he’d awoken in a dank, dimly lit cave to see his brothers bleeding, locked into cages where he couldn’t reach them.
If someone had harmed Bethany…
He glanced around the area and his eyes fell on her father’s beat-up old truck, parked at the far end of the otherwise empty lot. He raced over to check it, but it was as empty and abandoned as the bar.
A small white square tucked under the windshield wiper caught his eye, and he forced himself to stop and breathe before plucking it out from underneath the rubber wiper. He walked slowly to stand underneath the light, tilting the paper so he could read it. It felt strangely heavy in his hands, like old-fashioned parchment, and the message appeared to be written with a fountain pen. The writing was flowery and bold, and the nib of the pen had bitten so deeply into the paper it had left grooves that could be felt with Alexei’s trembling fingertips.
In contrast to the elaborate delivery system, the message itself was quite simple:
Leave town immediately and never return. Or the woman dies.
Chapter 17
Bethany woke slowly, her head filled with fog, her mouth dry and nasty tasting. Nausea threatened to overwhelm her, and it took her an immeasurably long time to get to the point where she was certain she wasn’t going to throw up. Reasonably certain, anyway.
Unfortunately, that was about the only thing she was sure of. The space she found herself in was completely unfamiliar, tiny and claustrophobic, with only a dim light coming from a lantern hanging from a hook far overhead and no windows that she could see. She seemed to be lying on a folded mass of white cloth than smelled damp and moldy, and the vague shapes of boxes, crates, and bags surrounded her on all four sides.
Bethany thought she could just barely make out the outlines of some kind of hatch in the ceiling. It was that and the subtle swaying motion of the floor underneath her that finally registered in her groggy brain as something she could put a name to: she was on a boat, somewhere at sea. Probably locked in the hold.
Shit.
She dug into the fog, trying to find the last things she could remember, looking for a clue as to how she had ended up here. She could remember being eager to head home to Alexei; that brought a pang of loss and sorrow so powerful it threatened to swamp her like the waves she could hear brushing up against the hull. But she pulled herself together. There was no time for emotion now. Nobody knew where she was. No one, not even Alexei, would be coming to rescue her, although if she knew him, he would probably be moving heaven and earth to try to do so.
No, she was going to have to rescue herself. And for that she needed all the information she could get. Think, Bethany, think. Hard to do when your head throbbed in time with the swaying of the ship, but eventually she recalled locking the back door, then turning around. She’d seen something…someone.
That man. The one from the bar. The one who had tried to pick a fight with Alexei. He’d been standing there by her truck, right before someone had grabbed her from behind. But why?
A cold hand of dread grabbed her by the throat. Was the man stalking her? Had he locked her up so he could rape and torture her for weeks without interference? You heard about those kinds of things on the news. All women lived in fear of it happening to them. Was she going to join those horrible ranks?
She forced herself to breathe again. Thought about the way he’d looked at her across the bar. No, that hadn’t been lust, for all that he’d made such a production of staring at her breasts. Not lust. Not even interest, really. But if it hadn’t been about her, then what? Where had his real interest lain?
Alexei. He’d come for Alexei. She’d seen him purposely try and provoke Alexei into a fight, although it hadn’t really dawned on her until later that that’s what the stranger had been doing. So his goal probably wasn’t rape and murder. She tried not to sob in relief, suddenly aware that she’d been biting her lip so hard it had bled.
But why kidnap her if he really was after Alexei?
The thought of Alexei being in danger made her try to sit up, only to be thwarted by the thick ropes that tied her wrists and ankles. It took her ages to struggle into an upright position, but she was motivated enough to ignore the discomfort the movement caused in her head and stomach. She had to get out of here. She just had no idea how she was going to do it.
*
An eternity later, the hatch creaked open and a slim figure clambered awkwardly down the ladder into the hold, carrying something in one hand and clinging to the rails with the other. Not the huge stranger. There was something about that guy that was…sinister. An old-fashioned word, but one which seemed to fit. Bethany felt a rush of tension leaving.