Page 44 of Shadow Blind

She set the cat carrier on her dining table and headed to the kitchen. The duct tape was right where she remembered it. By the time she’d finished wrapping the plastic carrier with tape, only the vents and parts of the gate showed, and low, seething growls were vibrating in the air surrounding the crate.

Tag’s captive was sitting on the couch next to Trammel’s. She dropped the vibrating, growling kennel in front of the pair.

Tram glanced over, his gaze stopping dead when it reached her arms. His eyebrows shot up. “What the hell happened to you?”

She considered blaming the marks on her would-be-assailants, but most of the scratches were scabs now. They’d still be bloody and raw if her unwelcome visitors had caused the damage.

Luckily, Tag presented the perfect distraction.

“They aren’t talking.” Tag’s voice rose in competition with the growling coming from the crate. “And we don’t have time for a proper interrogation. You’ll have to handle that yourself. Ryker’s second string will take charge of these bozos while we haul ass to meet up with you. Our priority is getting Demi out before more of the clown brigade shows up.” He tilted his head and listened. “Yeah. She’s right here.” Tag turned to Demi and handed her his phone. “It’s Aiden.”

“Demi?”

Aiden’s voice was barely audible above Trident’s growling, and the sound of claws digging into plastic and rattling metal. Cupping her hand over her left ear allowed her to hear him better, but not by much. Turning, she headed back down the hallway toward her bedroom.

“You did great, baby. Really great.”

The affirmation barely made a dent in the thick woolliness clogging her mind. She didn’t feel like she’d done great. But then, she didn’t feel much of anything. That weird mental fog was still blunting her thoughts.

Aiden’s voice roughened. “Did they hurt you?”

“No.” She forced the word out of her thick throat, which seemed to loosen her speech enough to free more words. “I distracted them, like you asked. And then Tag and Tram came.”

Slipping into her bedroom, she closed the door behind her. The cat’s ruckus and male voices from the living room all but disappeared.

“Thank Christ,” Aiden murmured.

She thought his voice shook a bit. But probably not. Aiden wasn’t the kind of man who showed emotion. No doubt the perceived tremor came from a disconnect between her brain and ears.

A shaft of anger pierced her numbness. Was it so hard for him to show he cared about her? That he was relieved she was safe and unharmed. That she meant more to him than an occasional fuck.

“What happens now, Aiden?” The question emerged sharper than she’d intended. “Now that you have your bad guys, can I return to my life?”

A long pause rocked the line. Aiden finally responded in an utterly flat voice. “No. You still aren’t safe. The two Tag and Tram have in custody are guns for hire. The bastard who hired them is still out there. He’s willing to kill to get what he wants. And he wants me. He obviously knows we’re connected. The two bastards who came after you prove that. I don’t know when we’ll have the threat contained. But until we locate the asshole behind all this, you need to vanish.”

“Okay.” Her voice was resigned.

She wasn’t stupid. Like it or not, Aiden was right. She wasn’t safe on her own. The two men sitting on her couch proved it. They would have kidnapped her without Tag and Tram’s intervention. She didn’t like to think about that, to think about what they’d have done to her once they had her under their control.

Muscle Man’s blank, dead eyes flashed through her mind, and she knew, without a doubt, she’d wouldn’t have survived the kidnapping.

Chapter nineteen

Day 7

San Bernardino, California

Three hours after following Tag and Tram out the back entrance of her condo complex and stowing Trident’s carrier in the cargo area of Trammel’s SUV, Demi and her cat arrived in San Bernardino. The trip to the rendezvous point should have taken two hours. Would have, if things had gone smoother on the feline front.

She’d directed Tram to the animal clinic, where she’d wasted fifteen minutes begging the clinic staff to take Trident. The receptionist and veterinarian refused, claiming they had neither the time, nor the space, to care for Trident for an extended period. She offered to prepay. She offered twice their daily fee. She would have offered a kidney if she thought it would have helped. Their refusal, she was certain, had more to do with the hissy fit spewing from Trident’s carrier, rather than the lack of a definitive pickup date. Either way, the clinic’s refusal meant his noisy majesty would have to accompany her on this unexpected trip.

Aiden would not be pleased.

Even less pleased than her two stoic rescuers, who’d spent the past two hours listening to Trident’s howling, growling, hissing, and cage rattling. Hell’s bells, the furry little demon had some lungs on him, and enough energy to flood the SUV with a near constant cacophony of his displeasure. It didn’t help that they’d gotten stuck behind road work for thirty minutes and then fell victim to slow traffic syndrome. From the periodic forehead massages, not to mention the wincing, she suspected the men up front had horrendous headaches. So did she.

“We’re here,” Tram said during a momentary lull in Trident’s hysterics. His white fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “Thank Christ.”

Demi silently echoed his thankfulness, relieved that her chauffeur hadn’t pulled over and ended Trident’s histrionics with a well-placed bullet.

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