Page 22 of Delivered to My Serpents

“We need to become better listeners if we’re going to have a mate,” Naga muttered.

“My thought exactly.”

After we paid, we waited for the deer couple to package our presents for our mate. A storm raged outside, but they were quick to come and go in this area, and Jasmine was safe at home. The shopkeepers were taking a long time, and finally my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out just as Naga did the same.

He went pale. “We have to go.”

“Now?” Peter was tying a ribbon around the bouquet.

“Yes, it’s an emergency.”

“Wait. Mildred? Are you about done?”

She bustled in with a box big enough to hold five pounds rather than the two we paid for. “Here you go. Anything wrong?”

“We’re needed at home. Thank you for everything.” I grabbed the flowers, Naga the candy, and we raced out the door to find the streets wet and covered with leaves. Hail caught the returning sunlight, sparkling like diamonds in the planters lining the sidewalk. “Whoa, it got bad, didn’t it?”

“Yes, and I’m thinking that might have been the issue with the alarm,” he said, jumping into the car as I ran around to the driver’s side and we deposited the flowers and candy in the back seat. “It happened before.”

“The generator should have kicked in. Do you think Jasmine is scared?”

“I’ll call her.” Naga still held his phone somehow and hit speed dial. The dash picked it up and we both listened to the phone ring and ring and finally go to voice mail. Not good. While I didn’t think anyone who had anything against us or our clients knew where we were, there was always a chance, which was why we had everything so locked up. “She’s not answering.”

Hell. I knew that, could hear it as well as he could…but it didn’t make me any less anxious. The short drive home, taken at a speed well above the illegal limit, seemed to take forever, and we pulled into the driveway to see the generator on the side looking perfectly fine from this distance. But we didn’t have time to check it out, instead parking and running for the front door. Our policy of never parking in the driveway went out the window in an emergency.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I used the app on my phone to unlock the door, but it worked perfectly. “Power is back on.” I ran inside. “Jasmine? Are you here?” Racing from room to room, upstairs and down, we searched for her, but then my steps faltered in the hallway outside the kitchen. The keypad blinked red. “Naga. I think…I can’t be right but…”

He skidded to a halt at my side. “But either it was just the new security blown by the storm, or someone has been in our office.”

“Jasmine?”

“How could she? Why would she?”

“Maybe she doesn’t trust us any more than we trust her.” I twisted the doorknob, which opened easily. “It’s not locked,” I said unnecessarily.

“Be careful. You don’t know it’s her down there,” Naga pointed out, but neither of us was ever unarmed.

Withdrawing my concealed carry weapon from its calf holster, I waited for Naga to do the same then entered the basement. It was lit up like a Christmas tree, everything flashing and voices speaking from various parts of the system in multiple languages. What the hell happened here? Red lights flashing, alarms shrieking. Bad news.

But that wasn’t as important as finding our mate. If she was down here, we’d do damage control. Anything, as long as she was unharmed.

“Jasmine?” I called. “Mate, are you here?”

“Over here,” she replied in a weak voice. “Behind all the broken stuff.”

Chapter Twenty

Jasmine

The broken stuff…yeah, I probably broke about a million dollars’ worth of equipment in my panicked attempt to get away. From the spies. Who were my mates. As I lay under the heap of steel and plastic and glass, I could feel the wetness of blood on my arm and forehead, but I couldn’t tell how much I was injured. Maybe I’d bleed to death before they found me. And maybe that was preferable to the humiliation of explaining where my brain had gone.

Why hadn’t I trusted them? Sure, I’d walked into a room full of computer equipment I didn’t understand, but they worked in cybersecurity. And of course they couldn’t give me a lot of details. They’d opened their home to me and trusted me as much as anyone could outside of their specific working contracts, and awesome me had to push the edge of the envelope and sneak around.

Who was the spy here? Maybe Bluebeard had it right. No, that was the concussion talking. Murdering all your mates or wives in cold blood and stashing them in a room was bad. For sure. Ugh!

If I could take that last half hour back or however long it was, I would give anything. Cancel the bet. I’d find a way to pay off my debts eventually through hard work and determination. But I’d never find two men like these again, and when they found me, if I was still alive, they’d dump me so fast, my head spun even more than it already was. Damn. No wonder I hadn’t met anyone before now. I’d just have screwed it up.

Trying to find an escape hatch, I’d spotted what I thought was a hole in the wall beneath a table holding five hundred pounds or more of electronic stuff—or at least that was my estimation now. I’d rushed over to it, alarms ringing and red lights flashing all around me. Those damn multiple-language voices shouting out their alerts or whatever they were saying, and in all the chaos, I missed spotting the only cord not carefully bound and tucked away and tripped. Next thing I knew, I was under all this, so I’d probably blacked out for a moment. Or longer. How did a person estimate how long they were unconscious? The clocks on the wall had all those different times, making me even more confused.

---