Page 37 of A Hunter Turned
Kane had sent her away and now sent Morgan to check on the girl? This whole situation was too fricking weird. Once Kane was done with a woman, he was done and in the avoid-at-all-cost territory. He certainly had never sent one of his teammates to check on a woman because she wasn’t answering his calls. Itching for that explanation, Morgan took a step back as the young wolf explained that she’d broken her phone and the new one wouldn’t be here until tomorrow, blah, blah, blah.
Interrupting the flood of words, Morgan said, “Okay. Well, I’ll tell him you’ll call him tomorrow,” and turning away, pulled the phone from her back pocket.
“Was she there?” was barked at her as soon as the phone connected.
“Yes, she’s home. Broken phone. Now explain the urgency in your voice.”
Kane let out a loud sigh and mumbled something about a bluff. “Kane, what the hell is going on? Talk to me.”
She’d just reached the house and raised her hand in a wave to Travis, who was standing on the porch and working his way through a ham and cheese sandwich, when Kane said, “I got a text telling me they have my woman and if I didn’t surrender myself to them before dawn, she’ll die.”
Morgan tripped on the porch step, and Travis reached out to steady her. “So, who do they have? Who else have you been seeing?”
When Travis raised a brow of inquiry, Morgan said, “I’m putting you on speaker.” That done, she repeated her question.
“No one. Nicky’s come over a few times, that’s why I assumed it might be her, other than that, I’ve been too busy.”
“So, who else would they think was your woman?”
“Jamie,” Travis cut in before Kane could answer. “That night in the bar I first met her and Kane, she accepted a proposal of marriage. Loudly. That news could have gotten back to Rodolfo, and by default, those rogues.”
Son of a bitch. That had been the night Kane and Jamie had dropped by unannounced to scope out Morgan’s date. Kane’s proximity to Travis’s dragon had set off the Born’s natural fight or flight instinct with spectacular results – full fang and snarl complete with red eyes in front of a whole bunch of unsuspecting humans. Jamie’s response had been to jump on Kane like a spider monkey and loudly proclaim that she’d marry him. The whole place had heard, lighting up with all sorts of congratulations. And while it had worked to divert one disaster, it may just have triggered another.
Without a word, Morgan took off at a run to find Archer Langley, praying the entire time that Jamie was with him.
Spotting the alpha down by the water with no Jamie in sight, Morgan was shouting, “Is Jamie with you?” just as the first howl split the night.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jamie kept lolling in and out of consciousness. The backseat of a vehicle littered with takeout bags and wrappers, rough hands as she was yanked out of a vehicle, tufts of grass sprouting from uneven pavement, the scent of mildew, age, and decay, a torch flaring, all just flashes of awareness with breaks in between. She had no idea how much time had passed, but each time she’d rise to wakefulness she hoped that someone had found Efrem and that the boy was okay.
Icy water splashed into her face, and Jamie jerked awake on a gasp. Blinking water from her eyes, she struggled to move, only to find herself bound to a chair at her wrists and ankles with wire guaranteed to cut through flesh should she struggle. Panic suffused her. Memories of her previous captivity flooded through her brain like a horror movie she couldn’t shut off or look away from. And suddenly, she was back at Rodolfo’s villa.
She’d finally gotten a back door into Rodolfo’s system, had learned the horrifying secret. She’d rushed out, laptop in her arms to tell Kane, and had been snagged as soon as she’d left her room. A huge hand had clamped over her nose and mouth, depriving her of much-needed air, she’d quickly lost consciousness. Later, she had come awake choking and gasping, her head shoved in a bucket of water to revive her so that she could listen to the Born recite his eye-roll worthy villain monologue of her crimes and what he intended to do to her.
Once Rodolfo had finished his speech, he’d set his thugs loose on her, his face a mask of sadistic pleasure as he had watched her being stripped of her clothes, beaten, tortured, bled out so that she couldn’t heal. She’d passed out a few more times from the pain, only to be brought back awake with a feeling of drowning, coughing and choking as her body tried to expel the water from her lungs.
For seeing what she had, they’d attempted to permanently close her eyes, cauterizing the lids closed with the glowing metal of a blade. The pain, the smell of burning flesh… She’d lost consciousness again and had promptly been revived so as not to miss them smashing her fingers with hammers so she’d never put her hands to use at a keyboard again. She’d screamed until her throat was raw, and the scarred one had laughed at her pain until she had fallen into blessed darkness, her body shutting down.
If they had tried to revive her again, they hadn’t been successful. Her next conscious memory was of coming awake, unable to move, her body from the neck down completely enclosed in something that smelled like earth and rotting bodies. A grave. Rodolfo’s thugs had buried her. She’d tried to scream, only to feel a tearing pain at her mouth. They’d sewn her lips together with wire so she wouldn’t be able to speak of what she’d learned.
No, no, no.Pulling herself out of the memory free-fall, she began to shake, the quakes rattling the metal chair. She couldn’t do it again. She couldn’t.
A hard slap had her head whipping sideways, blood spraying on the moss-covered paving stones by her chair. “Wake up!”
“Jesus. Take it easy. She’s our bargaining chip.”
Jamie shook her head to try to clear it and surreptitiously glanced around. Three of them. The one who’d just spoken was the bulldog vampire she remembered, the scarred thug, Marlin Hughes, of course, and a woman Jamie had never seen before, standing behind what looked like a tomb doing something with a copper plate and a flame. She was at a cemetery, she realized. In one of the mausoleums. An old one by the looks.
Not that that was much help. New Orleans had a lot of cemeteries and that was assuming she was still even in New Orleans. For all she knew, thanks to her unwanted nap, she could be anywhere.
The scarred one moved behind her, his hand snaking under her chin to painfully yank her face up until she was looking at the determined bulldog. The one who’d cautioned that she was their bargaining chip. Closing her eyes briefly, her muddled, panic-scrambled mind finally made sense of it. They were going to use her to get Kane.
From behind her, she heard Marlin Hughes confirm her suspicion. “Kane will come for her even if she’s in pieces. He’s a pathetic pussy.” A scoffing sound, “Weak. Unfit to rule.”
“But not stupid,” the bulldog interjected. “He’ll want proof of life.”
“Fine,” was snarled behind her, and Jamie’s head was released with a shove. Moving around her, Hughes pulled out a cell phone. “Smile for the camera, bitch.”
