“Hello?” Clover could hear Sapphire’s voice on the other end.
“Clover says you’re not allowed to take the kids out to lunch. Clover and I need to come meet you immediately. Give us a place to meet up, or Clover says she’s going to call the cops and report you for kidnapping.” Autumn was frowning as she spoke, clenching her free hand into a fist.
“I’ll talk to her,” Clover protested. “Give me the phone.”
“Geez, uptight bitch, much?” Clover could hear Sapphire’s snarky voice on the other end of the line. “Fine. You guys can come meet me at the entrance to the Groveland Quarry. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. No need to get her big fat panties in a bunch.”
“Let’s go.” Autumn was already heading for Clover’s car.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Clover said.
“Yes, I do.” Autumn’s voice was grim.
“She has lost her freaking mind,” Clover groused as they pulled out of the parking lot. “I am going to get a restraining order against her. I’m not kidding. I don’t know what’s come over her these days, but this is insane.”
Autumn shrugged and stared straight ahead without talking as they quickly headed down the rural road that led to the quarry.
They were only a few minutes away when a car shot out of a small dirt crossroad and pulled straight across the road in front of them, blocking them. Then a second car pulled out and stopped behind the first one.
Clover slammed on the brakes and started to back up – but Autumn was opening the door.
“Autumn, what are you doing?” she cried, stopping the car. Autumn leaped out.
“Get back here!” Clover yelled, climbing out of the car.
Men began climbing out of the other car. Sapphire was with them, and her brother and sisters weren’t with her.
The men were wearing jackets with the Skullriders emblem on them.
Chapter Fourteen
Clover ran after Autumn as she jogged over to Sapphire. “Get back here! Stop!” she cried, panicked.
“Where are they?” Autumn demanded of Sapphire. “I’m here. You don’t need them, you need me. Bring them back, or I won’t go with you.”
“Like you have a choice.”Sapphire’s face twisted into a sneer as the five men with her crowded around them, uncomfortably close. Several of them were bear shifters. Too many for Clover to fight.
“What the hell is going on here?” Clover was so angry she was shaking.
“It doesn’t matter if you kidnap me. If you don’t bring them back here and let Clover take them, I’m not telling you anything,” Autumn said. Her voice had a quaver in it.
“Oh, you’ll talk,” one of the Skullriders snarled, his eyes glowing amber.
“Come on, Autumn, just make it easy on everybody. Tell us where it is, and everybody gets to go home,” Sapphire said.
“Where what is?” Clover’s voice went low and deadly quiet.
“The crop of Somniatus.” Autumn’s face was a mask of misery.
“You were growing Somniatus?” Clover felt as if she’d collapse. This was a serious crime. Autumn could be stuck in juvie and then go straight to adult prison when she was eighteen.
“I didn’t mean to!” Autumn cried. “Mom and Dad called me up the day they went on the run and told me there was a bag of seeds hidden in their house that was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I had to get it and bring it to them. I went and got the bag and threw all the stuff away in the woods. The wind scattered it everywhere. I thought I did the right thing. I called up Mom and Dad and told them what I’d done, and I thought they’d just leave us with you and never come back.”
“Yeah, what our little genius here didn’t realize is that Somniatus will latch on to anything and grow. All it needs is sunlight.” Sapphire looked amused. “By now, all of those seeds will be a fully ripened crop.”
“That’s why you were coming around trying to sweet-talk her,” Clover said with venom. “Trying to find out where the crop is. No wonder she didn’t want anything to do with you.”
“All she had to do was tell me where it was, and I’d have left you guys alone forever. But no, she has to be all noble.”
“You were trying to scam Jeffrey and find out where a drug crop is all at the same time?” Clover’s mind was reeling. Sapphire was dead to her now; their parents had warped her mind and crushed whatever chance she’d had of turning into a decent human being.
“What can I say? You’re not the only over-achiever in the family. I work all the angles, and something’s bound to come through for me.” Sapphire shrugged indifferently. Clover wanted to grab her and choke her. She was playing with people’s lives here, as casually as if she was moving monopoly pieces.