Page 63 of Soulmates
“And then what? You planning to disappear again?”
Trajan always was too blunt for his own good. “I guess that’s up to you.”
His bitter laugh is no more than I deserve.
“I always thought the wolves were the strongest, you know? So organized, always standing behind their alpha.”
For now, I roll with his subject change. “I guess I did, too.”
“But they’re going to end up with a vampire war on their hands if they’re not careful.”
“How do you figure?” My knee throbs, but at least he’s given me something to think about.
“If I get killed going after the alpha’s kidnapped son, you don’t think Jacques will start something?”
Glad I’m looking out the window, because I’m pretty sure Jacques won’t do anything unless he can make money off it. “You can’t get killed. We still need to…” Whoa, do I really want to say this? “I hope we can—”
“Later. I want to hear everything. I want to know exactly what went down.” His low voice brooks no discussion. “Let’s get this done and—”
“We’ll talk.” I try to match his candor, and it takes every ounce of my will to keep my eyes on the scene in front of us. If I meet his gaze, even for a moment, I will not stop. A glance will be followed by words, which’ll be followed by touch. My palms itch with need for his cool skin.
Unlikely I’ll get the chance to move past words, but a stubborn little corner of my mind remains convinced that as long as he hasn’t killed me, I have room to hope.
Another chime, this one higher pitched and more insistent. The tracer has dropped its sensor.Good.
I open the app on my phone. It takes a moment to sort out up from down with the limited visual the little chip provides me. Trajan leans in, and I hold the phone where we can both see.
“What the hell?”
I shush him because I’ve got the audio activated, and until we know who’s in the room, I don’t want to give anything away.
At the bottom of the app’s image there’s a directional widget. I tap it to shift our view from side to side, then up. The chip is on the floor in a puddle of blood-streaked water. I shift the directional indicator around again, and we both swear out loud. David’s in a chair, and while the angle’s wrong for us to get a complete view of his face, what we can see looks pretty beat up.
Easier to see are the silver bands holding his feet to the chair. We can’t see them, but the way his shoulders are cocked, I’m pretty sure his arms are pinned behind his back with silver, too.
I make another circuit, right and left, up and down. He’s surrounded by weres, wolves, all of them on two legs. One douses him with a bucket of water and ice. David’s head rocks back, muscles and sinews taut. Another of the weres hits him with a prod of some kind, and he arches as if he’s been shocked.
His scream is shredded, a weak echo of itself, as if he has nothing left after hours of abuse. At my side, Trajan’s so still, he might have turned to stone.
“David Collins.”
The speaker stands in the center of their circle. I touch the image, focusing the sensor around on him. He bears a striking resemblance to Randolph Collins.
“Brendan,” Trajan growls.
The speaker moves toward David. David twitches, as if he’d kick his uncle if his feet weren’t tied down.
“We’ve wasted enough time here,” Brendan says, and another voice agrees. I scan the circle again.
Trajan stops me at a young wolf. “His cousin Marcus. Supposedly his best friend.”
If I was angry before, now I’m enraged. My knee is a mess, but I could still shift and go in when the team arrives.
And make a difficult situation exponentially more challenging.
Leaving aside the secret I’m not ready to share, I turn my attention back to the screen. One of the weres grabs David’s right hand, pulling at his fingers. His hands are fisted so tight, the were has to work to pry them apart. “Here, you stupid fucker,” he mutters, and presses a pen against the side of David’s hand, forcing his thumb to hold it in place.
Trajan’s got the car door open. “We need to get in there.”
