Leah's Triplet Mates (3 page)

Lutterworth had at least twenty suits, many still in the cleaner’s bags. As for shirts, he must have had forty or more, all hanging in a row. Saxon pushed the items into the middle of the closet, checking the back wall and the two side walls. Then he kneeled down and checked the floor. In the back corner was a wheeled piece of luggage, but when he went to move it, the carry-on bag was much heavier than he’d expected.

He unzipped the top and saw it was a bowler’s bag, with bowling balls in it. About to zip it up again, Saxon had an idea. He stopped, carefully laying it flat and taking out each ball one at a time. In a compartment meant for cleaning cloths was a velvet pouch. “Bingo!”

Saxon opened the drawstring and tipped the contents just far enough out to look at them. The sparkle of jewels was unmistakable. Quickly he tied the drawstring, pushed the jewelry into his jeans pocket, and replaced the items in their correct pockets, zipping up the luggage and putting it back in the closet, ensuring that the wheels were precisely in the dents in the carpet where they’d been made. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and rang each of his brothers, letting the phone vibrate just once each.

Saxon slid the phone back into his jeans, pushed the clothing back into place, ensuring it was hanging flat and perfectly straight, closed the closet, and hurried up the hallway back to the bathroom.

Bram was already hanging out the window. As soon as he disappeared, Hardy arrived in the bathroom and Saxon slid out the window. He landed softly and then stood up, guiding Hardy’s feet onto his shoulders. Hardy closed the window and then jumped off him. He followed Hardy to the fence. His pocket vibrated once, and he slapped Hardy’s butt to hurry him over the fence and followed him. Then the three of them walked casually back in the direction of their car.

“I wonder how Little Miss Trouble is managing,” said Bram.

“Yeah. What are we going to do about her?” asked Hardy.

“That’s a fucking good question. I wish the hell I had an answer for it.”

Leah had just remembered that some man had captured her fleeing from the fucktard’s house when she’d been tied up and dropped into here. Wherever here was. The fall and the enclosed space had caused her to black out again. However, now she was awake, worried about her sisters and about how to escape. She didn’t know much about the police, but no holding cell ever looked like this. And no one had Mirandized her either. Nope, these men weren’t cops. Likely they were friends or employees of Lutterworth’s, which meant she needed to get the hell out of here, ASAP.

Which brought her back to needing to know where
here
happened to be. And fast. Before they pulled her out and began questioning her.

Leah tried to explore the space where she was. She lay perfectly still and drew in deep breaths, trying to isolate a scent that would be a clue. When that didn’t work, she tried to measure the space using her head, shoulders, and legs. It was pretty small. Her body was curved to fit into the space, but she wasn’t tightly squashed. And she could almost extend her legs, just not quite. She wiggled and twisted until she was on her back so she could estimate the space above her. It was a damn nuisance with her hands tied behind her but extending her legs up told her there were only a couple of feet above her body.

As she wiggled some more, she caught flashes of light gleaming from one of the corners of her space. Leah lay on her side and waited until the light flashed again. And then the answer smashed through her still cotton-wooly and somewhat aching head.
The trunk of a car. They’ve put me in the trunk of a car.

Immediately, her heart pounded, and claustrophobia raced through Leah. She began panting and then gasping for breath. Her feet kicked out of their own volition and her boot smashed against the flickering light source.

Instantly, she stopped moving and breathed more easily.
The tail light. I can smash out the taillight, and that’ll let in plenty of air. Also, the cops will pull them over if they spot a car missing a taillight.

Of course, they might have simply abandoned her in a stolen car somewhere, but with the taillight kicked out, she could think about how to break open the lock to the trunk and untie her wrists.

Leah concentrated on kicking the taillight, gradually finding its most susceptible places, and before long, she had a hole letting in air and the outside light. Not that there was much outside light this late at night. Or likely it was the early hours of the morning already.

Leah wiggled and shifted and twisted and turned and finally got herself facing the other way to kick out the other light. In the process of all her moving, she discovered the mesh bag and the stamp albums in the trunk with her. She had a moment of pure joy, knowing she still had them. “All I have to do now is escape.”

Hmm. Likely that was easier to say than to do, but she wasn’t the kind of person to give up easily, so she’d do it. Besides, her sisters would be worrying about her soon. They hadn’t wanted her to come alone, but they’d already done all the surveillance and planning, and she didn’t want them anywhere nearby during the actual burglary. She’d also warned them it might take her a while.

“I won’t enter until and unless I’m sure I’m alone,” she’d promised. Well, she’d done that. She’d just forgotten to check that she was alone when she exited. Hell, she still had the stamp albums, so it wasn’t too bad. All she had to do was get out of this fucking car.

Happier knowing she had a source of fresh air, Leah wiggled some more and began kicking at the rear supports for the backseat. If she could force her way into the backseat, she could smash a window and escape.

In all her wiggling around, Leah caught her leg on the metal around where she’d kicked out one of the taillights and felt her jeans rip. “Fuck!” She went to move and then stopped.
No. That’s a good thing. I can cut off the rope tying my wrists.

Once again she twisted and contorted her body until her wrists were against the rough edge, and she began sawing back and forth. It took a hell of a long time, and she was pretty sure her sweater was taking a beating over it and likely the sleeves would be ripped to shreds as well, but finally the ropes fell off. Leah spent five minutes twisting and rubbing her shoulders and then felt all around the ends of the back seat, searching for the gadget that would release the seat and let her out of the trunk. She almost fell forward when she finally operated the latch, but she had to wait and search for the stamp albums. Only when the mesh bag was in her arms again did she haul her body through the gap and into the back seat. She braced her body on the seat and slammed both feet into the window.

The glass shattered with a lovely releasing sound, and she kicked some more at it until she could crawl through without risking slicing her body on glass shards.

Greatly relieved, she looked all around and recognized the area. This was a road filled with houses, only two blocks from the fucktard’s brownstone. Hastily she turned in the opposite direction and headed away from his house and its surroundings. She moved at a steady jogging pace, which she hoped looked purposeful rather than guilty. As she turned one corner, she thought she heard a noise, but there was no way she was looking back. As soon as she reached the next intersection, she moved faster though and faster again until she arrived in the area where she’d left her car, having taken a rather round-about route.

She slid into her car, started the engine, looked all around her, and saw nobody anywhere. “Thank you, God, for your help,” she breathed and drove home.

* * * *

Hardy Stewart walked briskly back to his car, not listening to his brothers’ conversation. He knew Bram had been attracted to the woman who’d robbed Lutterworth’s house, but they didn’t have time for romance in their lives right now.

The last few years had not been very kind to panther shape-shifters. All shape-shifters everywhere had a tendency to breed more males than females, so he and his brothers had grown up knowing that likely they’d have to share a woman or remain single. They’d had a lot of long conversations about women and had agreed that they were willing to accept a human woman, but even so, they’d never found one all three of them liked enough to tie themselves down permanently.

The neighborhood BDSM club was very strict about participants being over eighteen and signing a detailed consent and rules of play form, but apart from that, they didn’t mind how many people of whatever gender got together to play. Consequently he and his brothers had shared a woman several times both for BDSM and for sex. But somehow it wasn’t as fulfilling as it should have been. Whipping a woman until she begged him to fuck her was good and arousing, but whipping his own woman,
their
own woman, would be ten times better, Hardy was certain.

He shook off his thoughts. They had panther problems to solve before they could think about finding a woman.

As they approached his car, Hardy could see something sparkling on the ground beside the rear passenger seat. Glass fragments. “What the fuck?” He raced forward and flung open the trunk. The woman was gone, the stamp albums were gone, the back seat had been pushed out, and— “She’s fucking smashed the taillights. Both taillights.”

Hardy’s fangs descended, and he knew he had to shift and find her. This was too much. Not only was she gone, but she’d also destroyed his fucking car. His car! He threw his sweater and shirt into the trunk and leaned his ass against it to pull off his athletic shoes and socks. With a quick glance around to ensure they were alone, he dragged off his jeans, crouched down behind the car, and transformed into his panther. He sniffed the ground where the glass was and caught her scent immediately.

Just as he started running, Saxon said, “We’ll follow you.”

Hardy thought the cops would pull them over for not having working taillights, but he wasn’t going to change back to answer Saxon. He couldn’t. He had to follow her. The woman’s scent was very clear and fresh on the ground and the air as he ran after her. She didn’t have much of a head start. Her scent wouldn’t have been so easy to recognize if she’d left immediately after they’d gone to the house. It must have taken her a while to get free.

He felt a shard of guilt for tying her up and locking her in the trunk of the car but shook it off. She shouldn’t have robbed the house where they were about to reclaim the stolen jewels. Too many elderly panthers were being taken advantage of. He and his brothers were kept far too busy sorting out shape-shifters’ problems.

Hardy raced through gardens where he could, only running on the sidewalk when he needed to check he was still following the woman. He was much too big to be mistaken for a housecat. His best hope was that people would be so far away they’d assume they’d imagined seeing him or tell themselves they must have seen a dog.

He had to be in this form to use his enhanced senses and to move faster than he could as a human. In shifted form, his sight, hearing, smell, taste were all sharper than as a person. And he could run faster and farther as well.

Rounding a corner, he saw her getting into a car outside a boarded-up minimart. Immediately, he memorized the license plate as he moved behind some bushes and padded closer to her on his four silent paws. “Dark green Ford, maybe a 2005 or 2006 model,” he told himself. With that information plus the license plate, they could find her. She’d smashed up his car and fled the scene. He had a legal reason to demand her address, although he wouldn’t go to the authorities if he could locate her himself.

She drove past him, and he raced after her, cutting across the road and running through gardens to take a more direct line to the intersection. She turned left, and he was right behind her. He had to admire the calm way she drove. Her movements were self-assured, with no jerky stops or starts. Considering she’d been tied up and left in the trunk of a car, he was surprised she wasn’t lying on the ground in a fetal position having hysterics. Instead, she was making a determined getaway. Maybe she was a professional cat burglar after all. Not like his panther clan. They called themselves The Cat Burglars, but it was as much a pun on their species as a declaration of what they did.

Through the surface of the ground, he sensed a vehicle coming behind him. It was the first car that’d passed him since he and his brothers had left Lutterworth’s house. Instantly, he froze under a shrub, hoping his black fur would blend into the surrounding darkness.

The car, which was running with no lights, drifted to a stop beside him, and he heaved a sigh of relief when he recognized it as his car. Although driving at night without lights was just as likely to get them into trouble as driving with headlamps and no taillights. He supposed his brothers were hoping no one would see them until it was too late to look for the license plate. The back door of his car opened, and he ran over to it and jumped in.

Instantly, it took off, and he realized half the backseat was still out of position. That made it tricky to lie down below window level as he transformed back to a human. But after he’d done that, it was very easy to reach into the trunk and grab his clothing and shoes.

Hastily, he pulled his briefs and jeans on and then replaced the backseat so he could sit properly to finish getting dressed.

Bram was driving cautiously, staying well behind the woman, only moving faster after she’d turned a corner and was out of sight.