Bram looked over his shoulder at Shane, who still had his eyes closed, his features focused.
“Someone took Charlotte,” Bram said after a moment. “That’s the only answer. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why, but we’re going to find her.”
Kameron rubbed his chin. “It all smells like a trap to me.”
“Then we’ll get trapped,” Bram said simply. “But I’m not going to let them have her because we’re too scared to do anything about it.”
Kameron’s eyes rose, and the bastard smiled. “I’m going to like having you as a Talon, I think. And yeah, we’re going to find her. Montag isn’t going to win. Ever.”
“You think it’s Montag?” Bram asked.
“It’s his calling card,” Shane answered instead. “And I’m pretty sure Kameron here has been studying Montag’s moves for a while now.”
“Better to know your enemy than be surprised by it,” the Talon Enforcer answered.
“I think I can find her,” Shane put in at that moment.
Bram turned quickly to face his mate. “You can?”
Shane nodded, his eyes cloudy. “I think you can, too. Just do what Ellie said and try. We’ll find her, damn it. There isn’t another option.”
Bram leaned forward and kissed the other man hard on the lips. “No, there isn’t. We’re going to find her. I know it.”
Because if they didn’t, he’d lose everything all over again. And he wasn’t sure he and Shane would survive without her.
Chapter Fourteen
Charlotte needed to wake up. Pain radiated through her skull, knocking around so it felt like someone had bashed her head in. And if she thought about it that might be the case, but she honestly didn’t know anymore. Her eyes were too heavy, and while the rest of her body hurt even more than her skull, she knew she couldn’t do anything about it until she woke up.
Wake up, Charlotte. Wake up.
No amount of chanting would work, though. And her wolf was too quiet.
Fear began to crawl icily through her body, and she did her best to ignore it. Fear wouldn’t get her out of this situation—a situation she didn’t even know the root of as of yet.
So yes, she needed to wake up.
Muffled voices surrounded her, and she stiffened, her mind slowly working its way to being fully conscious. She tried to open her eyes, but again, they were too heavy, but she was getting closer and closer to being able to see what was going on.
She couldn’t sense her Pack or any other wolves around her, and that was what brought on the fear. Those voices she heard weren’t Pack. They had to belong to whoever had knocked her over the head and most likely taken her away from where the bomb had thrown her down—where Chloe had lost her life.
At that thought, her wolf whimpered a bit, as if waking up from a dazed coma herself. A sense of relief poured through Charlotte for only a moment before she tamped it down. She could feel that when she was home in her mates’ arms, and when those who dared to harm her and take Chloe’s life were punished.
Preferably with their throats slit just like the young wolf’s, who had died before Charlotte’s eyes.
Finally, she cracked open her lids and winced at the harsh lighting. She tried to lick her dry and chapped lips but froze when she realized that there were dark shadows blocking some of the lights above her.
They were watching.
“Good,” a deep voice, a familiar voice, exclaimed. “You’re awake. I was afraid the men had hit you too hard, and we’d lost you before we had a chance to use you.”
Montag.
This was General Montag. Though, was he still a General if he’d gone rogue? The military had to know one of their own had gone off his rocker by now, but she wasn’t sure what anyone was going to do about it right then. The “shifter problem” was on everyone’s minds, and apparently, no one could work fast enough to take care of one of their own, a demented man with too much power.
Charlotte held back the rush of breath she wanted to exhale as she brought her thoughts back into focus. She needed to worry about the problem at hand and not everything else going on, but her head hurt too much for her to think clearly yet.
Hopefully, she’d heal enough to figure it out soon, or it might be too late.
Her eyes finally opened fully, and she held her breath. Four men and one woman stood around her, all dressed in dark military outfits that bore no insignia. They were truly off the grid it seemed, and that didn’t bode well for her at all.
The room had been painted the normal eggshell white of most hospital or clinic rooms with metal cabinets and countertops glistening under the harsh lights. Someone had strapped her down with thick rubber and metal bands to a long medical table so she couldn’t move. Whoever had designed the straps knew how to keep shifters contained, and that scared her but didn’t surprise her. After all, she’d known Montag had tortured and studied other wolves at his previous lab before Shane and the rest of them had blown it up.