True Alpha (23 page)

Masking tape. That was what they’d used to seal her mouth shut, and it stung fiercely as it was pulled away. At least he’d done it quickly; slower always hurt more. “Don’t scream,” he said as he tossed it aside, “or it goes right back on.”

Silently, she spit out whatever had been crammed into her mouth. It tumbled to the ground, a sodden red rag. As she stretched her jaws, experiencing blessed relief when she closed her mouth afterward, he seized her by the shoulders and lifted her into a sitting position.

His brusque movement forced her to sit with her legs tucked under her body, which caused the pain in her ankles to flare. Her left shoulder, however, tingled as it began to regain feeling, and it was as if a weight had been lifted from her belly. Before she could make a move, he stood, reaching for a shelf high on the wall that she hadn’t noticed before.

When he squatted again, he was holding a juice box. The little cluster of cartoon grapes on the front indicated the flavor and the colorful, silly design contrasted sharply with her crude surroundings. He tore the straw from the side, divested it of its wrapper and punched the pointed end through the top of the box. “Drink,” he said, holding it out so that the straw brushed her lips.

She obeyed, far too thirsty to dream of refusing. The juice was room temperature, but it soothed her dry throat and washed the faint taste of blood from her mouth. The coppery tang must have been the result of a busted lip; her lower lip felt swollen. The fact that she’d been left with unhealed injuries meant that she’d either been kept out of the moonlight the night before or injured somehow that morning. The juice was gone far too soon. She sipped the last little bit of it, and the straw made a slurping noise as it scraped the bottom of the box. Her captor yanked it away.

“What’s going on?” she demanded. She probably wouldn’t get any answers, but she had to try.

“Payback,” he said flatly, his eyes narrowing in warning. “You’ll see soon enough. ‘Till then, you sure as hell better not ask about it again, unless you want an early taste of it.”

She clamped her mouth shut in resignation. She wasn’t about to endanger her child by testing her captor. She’d just have to gather information by listening carefully and watching for clues; something might come up. Her first priority was her baby. Every instinct she had urged her to shut up and wrap her arms protectively around her belly. Unfortunately, she could only do the former.

“Eat.” This time, he held half a sandwich – peanut butter and jelly. The cuisine resembled nothing so much as the contents of a kindergartener’s lunch box, but the fact that she was being given food and drink at all was a surprise. She complied, awkwardly eating from her captor’s hand, careful not to bite his fingers, though there were few things she would’ve liked more than to do so. A blob of jelly dripped from between the bread onto her chin, and another onto her belly, but she was too concerned for her baby to be humiliated. As she chewed and swallowed, it became apparent that the feeling of tightness in her throat hadn’t been due entirely to thirst.

Something was exerting a light pressure on her throat and neck, which became more uncomfortable when she swallowed. It felt like a band … or a collar. But why? It didn’t seem to be attached to anything. Was it some sort of weird attempt to degrade her, or an item that would prove somehow practical in time? Either possibility was disturbing.

When she finished the sandwich, her captor picked up the rag she’d spit out and stuffed it back into her mouth. Still sodden and now dirty, it triggered her gag reflex instantly. She fought it, willing her throat to be still, trying to arrange her tongue as comfortably as possible. He hadn’t even given her time to swallow all the remnants of her meal; her mouth still tasted of peanut butter and grape jelly. Her heart sank when he pulled a roll of masking tape from the shelf, tore off a fresh piece and pressed it firmly over her lips before settling onto the stool.

She still didn’t know why she’d been taken. Her captor could be a shifter hunter like the one who’d nearly murdered her and Jack when they’d first met, a run-of-the-mill serial killer or a straight-up psychopath. His talk of payback echoed in her mind, confusing her further. The only thing that seemed extremely unlikely was that she was being held for ransom; nobody in their right mind would abduct the wife of a cabin maintenance man for the sake of money. But she did know one thing, and that was that when an abductee was allowed to look freely at her captor’s face, it generally meant that her kidnapper had absolutely no intention of letting her go alive.

****

“Anything?” Sweat trickled into Jack’s eyes and stung them as he hurried to Ronnie’s truck, leaning against the driver’s side door as the vehicle slowed to a halt in the driveway in front of his cabin.

Ronnie’s stoicism melted as his lips twitched down into the slightest of frowns. “No.”

Jack cursed as his heart sank and the panic that had been simmering beneath the surface of his skin ever since Mandy had disappeared reared its ugly head. He didn’t give into it – couldn’t afford to give into it – but it was there, eating him alive from the inside. He stumbled backward as Ronnie stepped out of the truck, a rifle slung over one broad shoulder.

“On to the next step in the plan,” Ronnie said, his voice as calm as ever, though his eyes looked a little darker than usual, and he placed a huge hand on Jack’s shoulder. With his other hand, he held up a map. “We mark all the known structures on the surrounding mountains and go out in teams to check them one by one, doing a sweep of the forests while we’re at it.”

Jack nodded, his mouth dry as cotton – too dry to say anything. Mandy had been missing overnight, for about twelve hours so far. His heart pounded against his chest constantly, marking each passing second. Every moment was precious – when someone went missing, the first twenty-four hours were crucial. Half of that precious window was already gone, and they had absolutely nothing to show for their search efforts. The entire pack, plus Ronnie and Will, had been up all night, scouring the mountain. Their knowledge of the terrain was impeccable, and they’d been thorough. Every inch of Half Moon territory had been searched. Wherever Mandy was, it wasn’t familiar ground. He could only hope and pray that she was somewhere nearby. Alive.

Of course, she could be anywhere. Just about anywhere in the damned world, by now. He clung to the hope that she was close, somewhere where he could find her, if he just looked hard enough.

“Come on.” Ronnie steered Jack toward the cabin.

Inside, Will and the rest of the pack had gathered around the table. They’d all agreed to meet back at the cabin at this time to regroup and solidify their plans for searching the surrounding mountains. Jack had hoped that they wouldn’t have to, that Mandy would be back in his arms by now, her belly bumping against his as he held her.

“Found a marker,” Daniel said, his voice rough as he tossed a red marker onto the table. Jack recognized it from the junk drawer next to the fridge.

“Great,” Jack muttered, like it mattered.

The others were silent as Ronnie unfolded the map and spread it across the table. They all had bloodshot eyes and were obviously exhausted, but none of them had pulled out a chair. The entire pack, plus the two bear shifters, stood in a tired, nervous circle, eager to return to the search.

Ronnie, who, as a ranger, knew the surrounding wilderness better than anyone, began marking all of the structures he knew of. Cabins, hunting shacks – everything, and caves, too. Those places would be their focal points; they’d check them, and make sure to do a sweep of the surrounding woods as well. It was possible that Mandy’s abductor had taken her somewhere far away, but what better hiding place was there than the sprawling wilderness of the Smokies? People had disappeared into the mountains and never emerged. It made sense that the sick bastard who’d taken Mandy had plucked a victim from the mountainside on purpose, so that he could easily sneak into the wild with his abductee, where he’d be unlikely to be discovered.

That was if they were dealing with an ordinary human kidnapper, one who had no idea that Mandy was a shifter. On one hand, the possibility filled Jack’s gut with a roiling sickness – if the person who’d taken her wasn’t a shifter hunter, he was probably some sort of sick, calculating killer or psychopath.

On the other hand, if Mandy’s abductor didn’t know what she was, there was no way he’d be prepared for her to shift into her wolf form. That meant that if she had indeed been taken by some sort of serial killer or other ordinary abductor, she had a good chance of escaping. That was another reason why they needed to search the surrounding mountains; she might be trying to make her way home, possibly injured or maybe hiding out in whatever shelter she could find.

If they were dealing with a shifter hunter, the possibilities were significantly grimmer. A shifter hunter would expect her to shift. They’d either do something to prevent it, find a way to restrain her even in her wolf form, or, most likely, kill her instantly. That was by far the most terrifying possibility, but there was good reason to believe that it was also the most unlikely. Why would a shifter hunter have abducted her instead of killing her on the spot in the only way that provided a highly sought-after wolf carcass trophy – with a silver bullet through the heart? And why would they have left Jack behind? A mated pair would make quite the trophy, as far as the demented sons of bitches who hunted shifters were concerned.

“All right,” Ronnie said, still holding his red marker. “Anyone know of any other place I haven’t marked?”

No one said anything. Together, Ronnie and Will had already identified almost a dozen locations to search.

“It’s settled, then.” Ronnie capped the marker and slipped it into his pocket. “Jack, will we be dividing up into the same teams as last time?”

Jack was just about to answer when the screen door swung open, squeaking on its hinges and nearly stopping his heart. He whirled, pulse thumping madly, to face the door. Could it be…

No, it wasn’t Mandy. In an instant, his heart seemed to shatter all over again, then rage gripped him as he stared at the male stranger who’d just walked into the cabin.

Ronnie had his rifle trained on the man before anyone could so much as blink.

“Who are you?” Jack demanded, ready to shift on a dime, chase the man down and rip his throat out if he tried to run. Did the man have something to do with Mandy’s disappearance, or was he just a tourist looking for directions, stupid enough to have barged in at the worst possible moment?

“Don’t shoot,” a female voice called, seemingly from nowhere. A moment later, a head of bright strawberry-blond waves peered around the door frame. The woman who stood behind the man was Mandy’s mother, Kimberly. What the hell was going on?

“Don’t shoot,” she called again, but Ronnie didn’t lower his gun.

“Who are you?” Jack asked again as shards of something icy slid through his chest, turning his heart and his voice cold as he stared across the room at the intruder. He wouldn’t ask again.

“I’m Mandy’s father.”

Her father. Jack had thought of him since Mandy had been taken, had wondered if he’d had anything to do with the nightmare he’d been plunged into. Now his senses sharpened along with his anger, honing in on the man whose eyes were the exact same shade of blue as his daughter’s. It was bad enough that the jackass had abandoned Mandy before she’d even been born; if he was involved in her kidnapping, he was a dead man walking.

“It’s true,” Kimberly said, her voice climbing higher with alarm. What the hell she was doing at the cabin with the man who’d abandoned her thirty years ago, Jack had no idea. She was supposed to have left that morning for Nashville.

The man with the blue eyes stood statue-still, his face lined with some tense emotion, which wasn’t surprising, considering that a rifle was trained on his chest. “I know Mandy’s been taken.” His voice cracked, and his eyes flashed with something – guilt, maybe? “And I know who did it.”

****

At least two men were holding Mandy captive. If there were others involved, they hadn’t come near the place where she was being held. The second one had approached and shoved his head into the shack about ten minutes after the first one had settled down on the stool. From what she’d been able to work out since then, it seemed that they’d set up a patrol system. Mostly, they both left her alone, circling the little building. Occasionally, one would sit on the stool inside, presumably taking a break. Those were the most unbearable moments. Her second captor was surlier than the first, and glared at her almost constantly when he was inside.

Footsteps – careful and quiet, but still audible to her sensitive ears – crunched over an autumn carpet of dried leaves outside. That was the other piece of information she’d been able to snag – she was being held in a forest, which meant that the rickety structure that loomed around her was probably some sort of hunting shack. She’d gotten several glimpses of the woods when her captors had come in and out of the building. They hadn’t seemed to care that she’d seen, just like they didn’t care that she’d memorized every last detail of each of their faces. That didn’t bode well, but she couldn’t afford to slip into despair; she’d be even less likely to survive if she did that.