She didn’t need to ask who. Everyone knew the story of my missing mate. How’d I’d found her and lost her in the space of a single night. “Where?”
“I don’t know. Someplace far from here. Southwest, I think. It’s too vague.” Frantic. Fear. Adrenaline. The mark on my thigh burned like fire. “She’s being attacked. Right now. I don’t know where she is but I can feel her.” The powerful onslaught I felt—anger, heartbreak, fury, pain—was enough to bring a grown shifter to his knees. A kaleidoscope of messy emotions that made me want to gasp for air and grab at my chest to relieve the pressure. I’ve never felt anything like that before.
Luke’s voice was crisp, clear, and worried as hell. “On the phone with one of the shifters on duty back home, Wyatt. A shifter who works as a volunteer nurse at some small Nebraskan clinic just called in a panic, said there was a huge ruckus at her job, a shifter patient by the name of Jerry Menard is begging for you specifically. Before she was hustled out of the room by the sheriff, her old man said that his daughter Isabel’s in trouble and she needs you. Now.”
Every single muscle tensed up. “That old bastard’s been living under the alias Jerry Menard for all these years? Where the hell is Isabel? Where has he been hiding her?” And how did he manage to hide her so well?
When West named a small, shitty town about five hundred miles over in the next state, I cursed. She’d been in another pack’s territory the whole time? I figured they’d have fled to a large city where our reach and control was more limited. Is that why she was in trouble? I leaned over the van seats to snatch the phone from Luke’s hand.
“Get the chopper ready,” I barked, hanging up on whoever it was and calling the Alpha of that territory. It rang five times before going to voicemail. I cursed. “If I find out that Talin’s been holding out on me this whole time, I’m going to…” Probably better off to not finish the sentence. Not that I needed to. Of the few packs that dared to challenge me, none remained.
My fiancée. My mate.
I finally, finally had a traceable lead.
“I want five of our best with me, including… Shit, West. Not you. I know you need to find Brigit’s sister. Nyria. You too, Luke. It’s time for me to get my mate.”
And make her mine. Irrevocably.
Chapter Four
Branch, Nebraska
Cara
The familiar weight of the necklace vanished from around my neck as I fell to my knees and then tumbled forward from the impact. A sense of extreme heat and them extreme cold shimmered through me from top to bottom and my vision briefly went dark with a few startling pinpoints of light. A part of my thigh burned like someone had pressed a cigarette butt to it.
Shit, had I hit my head? Blinded, I scrambled forward a few feet on my hands and knees and then lurched to my feet as the snowy ground came into focus. A glance over my shoulder showed the sheriff wrestling with the window, screaming for someone to run to the parking lot to cut me off from my car.
There was no way I’d be able to make it to my car before one of the men beat me to it unless hospital staff stepped in, but I couldn’t risk it. Besides, even if the hospital did intervene, what could I say that would outweigh whatever the sheriff would say? No. I was on my own. With no bag, no car, no wallet, and no help.
I took off across the white lawn, aiming for the dense woods surrounding the hospital. On the far side of the trees was one of the main highways, and I’d driven along it often enough to know that hitchhikers weren’t particularly rare. I had my phone and some cash in my pocket if they hadn’t fallen out, and I could hopefully find a safe, sane soul to hitch a ride with to a nearby town. Anywhere, really. A distant city would be even better before the sheriff put out a bogus APB on me. At least there, I had a greater chance of finding a clean cop to get help for my father.
Tears started streaming down my face at the thought of what would happen to him if I didn’t get help soon enough. I had no doubt he would be beaten up even more. If he owed that much money to the wrong people, he could be killed. Even if the sheriff managed to get his hands on me. I choked on a sob, and then took all those fears and shoved them to the side. Crying would slow me down, and I couldn’t afford that.
Faster.
I tried to focus on the pattern of my feet hitting the ground, dimly aware that the snow would make it impossible to hide my tracks. One, two, one, two, one two… The ground was like a well-paved road under my sneakered feet, sticks and logs a blur as I tore past the tree line and into the eerily quiet woods. Everything around me seemed crisp and sharp; my breath steaming the air, the cold wind biting at my lungs, the dimming light as the sun started to set, the strange coordination of my body as I ran faster than I ever had in my life.
It wouldn’t be enough. The sheriff had not let himself go behind his desk, and once he got outside, he’d be following my trail like a bloodhound.
“Keep running,” a voice called out from behind me, and I gasp-choked on a surge of tears, slowing momentarily. His voice sounded a lot closer I thought he would. I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder. Knowing exactly how far back he was could end badly given that with my luck, I’d trip over a dead branch or run smack into a tree trunk. As long as he kept talking, kept bragging, I’d know when he got too close.
Run faster. Don’t cry. Just run. My lungs were starting to ache a bit, the wintery air really taking a toll on me. What if the sheriff’s endurance was far stronger than mine? A few workouts a week in between work and classes had nothing on years-long hardcore fitness routines. Yet I’d managed to outpace him so far. Just need to hang in there.
“For every minute you make me run, your father will owe more.”
A cold, hard part of me didn’t react to the words. Started calculating. My father was in trouble either way. The only way I could do anything about it was to get help. Or I could get captured and try to help both of us, but the chances of that working were even slimmer. Far up ahead, I heard the soft, insidious noise of car wheels spinning across asphalt. Was I a minute away? Ten minutes away? My senses seemed oddly sharp and off-balance, like everything was within reach yet farther than I thought.
I could now hear pounding footsteps behind me. If I could reach the highway, would I still be safe if he were right behind me? Chances are he’d treat me like a criminal, try to spin anything I said as a criminal’s bid for escape. Maybe he’d knock me out to keep me quiet.
There was a good chance that if I screamed the right things and managed to get some people to pull over, a Good Samaritan would help me, suspicious enough of the cops that I stood a chance. Or at least call more cops, and if any good ones showed up, it would delay whatever nefarious plan he had. Twilight was falling rapidly, and I could not see very far ahead of me.
The ground vanished under my feet, and I lost my footing and tumbled, hard, to the ground. Instead of hitting snow, though, I landed elbow deep into freezing cold water running swiftly over sharp rocks.
I staggered to my feet, but all energy been sucked out of me. I could see little sparks of light flashing in between the thinning and darkening air ahead.
The highway.
It couldn’t have been more than thirty feet ahead.
The footsteps behind me didn’t slow, and the sheriff laughed as he ran past me, clearing the stream in one huge leap, then spun around once he stood between me and the highway. His gun was in both hands, pointed firmly at me. The last time I had a gun pointed at me, the guy wanted my wallet.
This man wanted my freedom. My life.