Marc (12 page)

He pulled her off the counter and handed
her a bowl. “Mix until I tell you to stop. It’s time you learned to cook
something besides noodles in a plastic bag.”

“I can cook. I just choose not to.” She
glared at him when he swatted her ass. “I’ll learn to cook just so I can know
which poisons to mix with your food if you hit me like that again.”

He laughed and went to the phone when it
rang. He picked it up smiling, but after speaking to someone on the other end,
his entire body language changed. She put down the bowl when he motioned her
closer. He put his finger over his lips and put the phone on speaker.

“What did you say she looked like again?
I’m not really very sure, and you can understand that I don’t want anyone to
get into trouble if I don’t have the right information.” He wrote a large
question mark on the blackboard next to the phone as he asked the caller to
repeat himself.

“Oh yeah, sure. Understand that
completely. She’s tall and sort of on the thin side. Not too skinny, just like
one of those pretty fillies that you see on that channel that has animals. Dark
hair and sort of black blue eyes. Not bruised, mind you, but the color. She
sort of has this…well I don’t want to say she’s a bitch, but she can be mouthy
when it suits her.”

Jonny grabbed the table and shook her
head. They’d found her. When she tried to back away, Marc grabbed her and pulled
her to him. His whisper in her ear was low and urgent. She nodded when he
handed her the chalk. He’d asked her who it was, and told her that he wasn’t there.
He promised her she was safe. She wanted to scream at him that she wasn’t
worried about her but only his safety, and that of his family. Trembling, she
went to the chalkboard.

“Harris Manning, aka, henchman.”
He nodded and
pulled her back into his arms. She tried not to listen to Harris talk to Marc,
but she was too close to the phone not to hear him.

“She’s been out for near a month now.
Don’t know what her family is gonna do when they find we misplaced her again.
I’m guessing the doc here is gonna make her take something to keep her a little
less a flight risk, if you know what I mean.”

Marc laughed when Harris did. “Yes, I
believe I do. But the person you described doesn’t ring a bell. I mean, if you
give me your number I could call you if I hear or see anything.”

“Nah. I can call you. I might not have
any service. You give me your number and I’ll call you in a couple of days and
we can see if you remember anything.” Marc smiled at her when she heard the
small beep.

“The service you called can get in touch
with me. I’m in and out of the office so much that I really don’t have a
number. Every call goes right through them.” She heard Harris say something
about that being sad, but Marc continued. “You call me back on Wednesday. This
is Sunday, so four days might be enough for me to see what I can find out for
you. That okay?”

“Yeah, I suppose. Really is a shame you
don’t have a number I can call you back on. Not even a cell phone number?” Marc
told him no. “Okay then. I’ll call you back on Wednesday. Thank you kindly.”

She watched him as he put the phone on
the charger again and pull out his cell phone. While it rang he looked at her
with the biggest grin on his face. She smiled back, just happy to see it.

“I’m calling Reed and Sebastian. They
will have the best luck in tracking down the number— Hello, little brother. I
was wondering if you could come over and help me with a trace.” Marc winked at
her. “I’ll make you waffles. They happen to be Jonny’s specialty.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on. Why
are you calling your brothers here when I told you that I don’t know where the
house is? I got lost and turned around so much I don’t know how to get back
there.” He nodded and handed her the bowl again.

“I have a tracer on the company phone as
well as the phone from the service. When someone calls the office when we’re
closed, the service knows to let it ring three times before answering. And to
always have to put them on hold, even if they know how to reach me. That makes
it so the call doesn’t have to be so long when I speak to the person and I can
trace the call.” She nodded as he handed her another bowl to mix. “Manning was
on the phone long enough for me not just to be able to trace him, but to locate
him too. And Sebastian is coming over to tell us just where Manning is.”

“So you can find the house.” He nodded. “You
think he’s not going to think of that?”

“Most men like Dawson never think that
anyone is smarter than them. That’s what makes catching them so much more fun.
I love outthinking an asshole. Especially an asshole that hurt you.”

They had waffles nearly done when
Sebastian knocked on the door. He looked like a kid in a candy shop when Marc
told him what he wanted. It was going to be a really long day, she thought.

Chapter 12

Sebastian watched Jonny. She was still
really skittish around him, but he knew why now. She explained to him what his
dad had said to her. And when she told him she was going to get him back and
wanted to know if he wanted to help, it was all he could do not to pick her up
and swing her around the room.

“It should be coming in soon.” Marc
nodded as he handed him another waffle. “I can’t believe you had this thing all
this time and didn’t invite me over to check it out.”

“It wasn’t broken, and the point of
having it was to keep it a secret. You would have told your nerdy friends and
they’d be coming over too.” Sebastian wasn’t going to lie to him and tell him
he wouldn’t, but he didn’t much care for the term “nerdy.” Reed was the nerd,
not him.

The signal bounced over the map. Then it
began to slow and pinpoint where the call had come from. He looked up at Jonny
when she sat down across from him. Marc had left the room to answer the phone
in his office.

“You should know that I don’t hate you.”
He nodded at her. “I don’t know you, but I don’t hate you. I’m…I never really
had any family but my parents growing up, and I never dated. At all. I’m not
very good around…I was going to say I’m not good around strangers, but I don’t
do well with people I know either.”

“You’ll be fine. We’re not your usual
family.” When she snorted, he remembered what his dad had told him about her not
knowing anything about her kind. “A family is also what a sort of pack of
panthers is called. We just happen to be a family too. But ours is different. Most
panthers want to live alone, especially males. We all live right here and have
even built homes to be closer.”

She nodded and stood. She was a pacer
like Marc was. He wondered if they realized that yet. When the computer beeped
that it was finished, she came around behind him and looked over his shoulder.
But he noticed she was careful not to touch him. Standing quickly, he turned
and pulled her into his arms. She didn’t fight him, but was as stiff as a
board.

“I won’t hurt you.” Marc came into the
room just as he said that and leaned against the doorjamb. “See, he’s not all
foaming at the mouth. Relax. Hug me back. I promise you that I’m just a guy
needing a hug from a beautiful sister-in-law.”

“How did you know?” He lifted her hand
with the large diamond on it. “Oh. We’ve not said anything yet. He asked me
yesterday.”

“And did you say yes?” Marc laughed at
him. “What? She didn’t fall down at your feet like Suzy Miller did?”

“Suzy Miller was seven, and I was all of
nine. And no she didn’t. I had to force her to sit still so that I could propose.
And even that was a chore.” Marc pulled her from him and hugged her. “Mine. Go
find your own mate.”

Sebastian sat down and looked at the
address. “It’s about fifty miles from here. Let me see if I can pull up any
records on who owns it. And maybe a picture. Would you know if it was the same
house if you saw it?”

“Maybe. When they brought me there, every
time I was drugged. Then when I left, it wasn’t usually by the front door. But
it had a pool. I could smell the chlorine, so I always thought it was inside. And
when I left, I could see that there were two other buildings behind the house. One
of them looked like a barn, but I can’t be sure. But it was large and maybe a
couple of stories.” She came around him when he asked her to look. “I don’t…is
there any way you can get to this part here? That’s where I left from if this
is the house.”

Sebastian zoomed in on the left side of
the house. He could make out a trellis as well as several small round little
bushes under a large door. The decking that had come from the back extended
just to the door.

“That’s it. See this right here?” She
pointed out the long white vine-covered trellis. “I used it to climb down. This
room here is where he supposedly killed Anita. And those bushes are much
larger.”

Marc took the address and left to go to
his computer. Jonny started clearing up the dishes. Sebastian watched her for
several minutes before he spoke.

“You said every time. How many times did
they take you?” She moved to the dishwasher with another load. “Jonny, please
help me understand what we’re going to be up against.”

“Seven times. I got to be really good at
getting away after the second time. It took me until then to realize they
weren’t very smart. I could stay on the property for hours at a time before I
left. Usually they were all gone when I started off. But their way to keep me
was getting to be much better, not the people holding me. The last time they
captured me I was….” Marc sat down and told her to go on. “The last time they
captured me I was leaving my job. Wasn’t much of one, but it paid for my gas. Anyway,
Roy walks up to me with Anita in his arms and a gun to her head. She was
begging me not to let him kill her. As I tried to think what to do, I heard
this other person—Henchman is what I’d begun to call Harris—he came around to
my left with a gun. It wasn’t until the first dart hit me that I realized it
wasn’t a regular gun. I didn’t go down at first, but my cat sort of got
pissed.”

She stopped talking and looked out the
window. He started to ask her what was wrong when Marc touched his arm. He put
his finger to his lips and shook his head.

She seems to think things through better
when she does that. It’s kind of freaky, but it works for her. And what she
said about being on the property for hours without them finding her is probably
more than likely because she has a natural ability to stalk and hide. Last
night and the night before, I couldn’t find her in the woods no matter how much
I tried. And let me tell you, I wanted to find her. She was like a fucking
ghost. If she hadn’t walked by me so that I could see her, I’d still be
looking.

Sebastian looked at her with admiration.
Marc was the best tracker of all of them, and if she outmaneuvered him then
Sebastian was impressed. She turned to look at Marc, and Sebastian could see
what Marc had meant. She got it. Whatever
it
had been, she got it.

“She said ‘she’ll pay now.’ I just
remembered that. ‘She’ll pay now,’ then she said something about her brother
was going to be avenged. I didn’t know what that meant then or now, but she was
in on it from the very beginning.” Sebastian asked her who the woman was. “Anita
Kidd. We met when I escaped a few years ago. She’d moved into the building I
was living in about a week later. She seemed so nice and friendly at first.
Then as the weeks went by I realized she’s nuts.”

“Christ.” Sebastian looked at them both.
“She’s none other than Anthony Kidd’s daughter. You know who he is, the mob
boss out of Jersey. She’s reported to be worth millions and is….”

He read through the rest of the article,
then stopped. This was not good. Not good at all. He clicked onto a few more
pages before he spoke, no longer thinking about the couple in the room with
him. When he was finished, he noticed first that he was in the kitchen alone
and that it was nearly six hours later. He rubbed his hand over his face and
went to find his brother and his mate. They were in the office going over
something from Marc’s investigative office.

“She really is nuts. According to some
files I found, she’s been in and out of asylums for years. Only until the past
few years she hasn’t. And it’s more than likely because her father has stated
that he’s washed his hands of her. According to this report, she tried to kill
him in a drunken rage and he was hospitalized for a month. She’s not been able
to see or be near him in almost four years. Her files say that she is bent on
killing the one person who ruined her life.”

“My mother, and since she can’t find
her, she’s focused on me.” Jonny started pacing again. “So Roy hooked up with
her somehow, and now that they’re partners, he and she both are trying to get
me. I wonder if he knows what sort of person she is.” Marc nodded. “She
attacked him as well, right?”

“Not him but his office. He filed a
claim that she’d went ‘a little mad with grief’ over something and had torn his
office up. The insurance company didn’t pay because it was dropped by Dawson a
few days later. Probably because her dad found out and paid up.” Sebastian
pointed to the printer as he continued. “I sent some stuff to that one. If you
had it on, you’d have been reading it by now.”

“It turns off when I’m not using it. I
asked you three times to fix that, and you kept telling me you’d get around to
it.” Marc turned on the printer and stood there as several sheets started spitting
out. “Is this going to be more than five hundred sheets?”

“Close, but no.” He laughed. “I wanted
you to see some of the destruction she caused, as well as a few of her records
I managed to get. Some places should have a better security system if they want
to keep records off the grid.”

They went over the papers as he watched
them. Marc would read them, then hand them to Jonny. Sebastian was happy for
them both, especially his brother. No one had ever dreamed that he’d find
someone else. Sebastian was going to be the best mate he could be if he ever
found his. He had been keeping mental notes on what he noticed his brothers did
to both piss off their own mates as well as what made them smile. Jonny by far
smiled the most.

“It says here that she’s living in
Jersey with her father. Do you have any idea where she really is?” Jonny asked.
Sebastian nodded. “Let me guess, the house I was in.”

“Yes. She’s been there for nearly two
years according to DMV records. Then last year she was supposed to get her
licenses renewed but couldn’t. It doesn’t say why.” He had an idea it had
something to do with the hit and run she’d killed someone in and never spent
any jail time over, but he would let them find that. “Jonny, I think you should
learn to fire a gun. She’s going to come for you, and the more prepared you are,
the better chance you stand of living.”

“No. If I take the bitch out, it’s going
to be by my own hands. She wanted my cat, so she’s fucking going to get it.” Sebastian
looked at Marc. He looked as nervous as he felt. Jonny wasn’t as timid as she
first appeared.

~~~

Roy was ready to take what he had and
leave the country. His latest dealings with Anita a week ago had ended with him
being tied to his bed while she beat him with a whip and a bat. He shivered
when he thought of what she’d done to him—all the things she’d done to him—and
he shifted in his chair.

She’d walked into his office like she
owned the place. He had been going over ideas on how to make it up to the
people that were screaming at him and threatening him with a lawyer. His only
solution was to simply disappear. He’d been about to tell her that when she
came around behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her affection soon
turned violent and she slammed his head down on the desk twice before he lost consciousness.
When he woke, he felt terror like he’d never felt in his life.

She’d gotten him to his bedroom. He had
no idea how she’d done it, but there he had been. A gag ball had been strapped
to his mouth, and he’d been naked and on his belly. He tried to jerk from the
cuffs at his wrists and ankles, but all he managed to do was tear into his
skin. He glanced down at the bandages there and knew that they covered nine
stitches. It was nothing compared to his back and legs.

He had no idea how long he’d been in the
room with her. He knew that there were times when he simply wanted her to kill
him, begged her to hurt him. But she’d only hit him more and harder, never once
saying a single word to him the entire time. Every time he blacked out, he’d
wake to find her lying next to him masturbating.

When he woke, as it turned out three
days later, she was gone and he was loose. There was a note beside him, and he
struggled to read it until finally things came into focus. His body was wracked
with pain, and when he read her words, he knew that it was her or him. Reaching
for the bedside phone, he’d called the only man he knew who could help him. An
hour later, he was in a special hospital being treated. And Anthony Kidd was
seated next to his bed the entire time.

“Can’t do this again.” Anthony nodded. “Have
to leave before she kills me. If I don’t, she’ll kill me.”

“I understand. And I’m sorry, Roy. But
I’ll take care of her. This is my mess and I’ll take care of it. You simply
wait for me.”

Roy handed him the note he still had in
his hand. He read it aloud.

“When I find my daddy dearest and get
all his money, I’m coming back for you. Both of you will suffer much more than
this little slapping around I’ve given you. Love you so much, A.”

Anthony lowered his head and began to
cry. Great sobbing came from him as he sat there with the note in his hand.  The
doctor at his back never said a word, but handed him a box of tissues and went
back to work. Roy could only watch Anthony in stunned silence. When he lifted
his head, Roy thought he looked like he’d aged ten years in just those few
moments.

“I’ll take care of this. You just let me
know when you find her or she comes back to you. I’ll have a team standing by. Also,
you won’t be able to live in this area for the rest of your life when I’m done.
So you’d better have all your affairs in order before she gets to you. You’re
going to take the fall for killing her. It’s the least you can do for me.”