| |
––––––––
Siofra sat cross-legged on the bed with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She would kill for something to read, anything to keep her from obsessing every second over Rory and her future.
Something on Spartanburg would be nice so she’d have a better idea where they’d taken her and how far it was from meeting Baatar.
She’d been here for hours. When Vic had delivered a sandwich to her and didn’t look happy to be doing it, she managed to see his watch. Based on that time, it had to now be around two or three in the afternoon. But what afternoon?
She counted her days of freedom, rolling her eyes at considering this freedom, and came up with Tuesday. It seemed as if she’d been on the run for weeks instead of only a few nights and days.
Things were definitely rocking along now with her new life.
She had no shoes, no money, no ... anything. And they thought she had tried to kill Rory, the only man to step between her and danger since Baatar.
A man who had risked his life for her ... a nobody.
Her heart whimpered. Please don’t die, Rory.
The door opened unexpectedly again and Vic stood there. He had no food in hand.
Her heart tried to climb her throat. Had Rory died?
Vic said, “Get up. The boss wants to see you.”
“What about Rory?”
When he said nothing, she snapped, “I just want to know if he’s still alive, dammit.”
Maybe the break in her voice got through. Vic said, “Still breathing. Still unconscious.”
What had it been? Twelve hours?
She dumped the blanket, stood and straightened her shoulders. She would not face him as a beaten woman, but someone who deserved to be heard in spite of the hospital gown.
She walked alongside Vic down a hallway and around a corner, then down another hallway until he directed her to enter a large room with a big table in the middle. Five chairs had been placed along each side with only one chair at each end.
The two men who had seemed to be Rory’s friends during the battle at the Black River Pack compound stood on either side of where eagle man sat at the end. She’d heard Rory call the bear shifter Justin, and the other one Cole, but she’d gotten no indication of Cole’s animal.
Vic led her to the closest end where he had her sit opposite eagle man. Oh, joy.
The lights had been dimmed just enough to give plenty of illumination without blinding someone, probably because shifters had sensitive eyesight.
Justin, the bear shifter, stood with his thick arms crossed and his brow furrowed. Not too happy to see her, that’s for sure.
Cole studied her through gray-blue eyes, and had his thumbs hooked in the front pockets of his jeans. He’d been the calmer one when Rory and the bear got into a disagreement, but he was no happier with her right now either.
Eagle man said, “Rory is still unconscious. We’ll get to that in a moment. You will explain first why you claim the Black River pack wolf shifter was lying. He claims he was present when you offered his boss, Hector, a deal to work together.”
Put that way, it did sound bad.
Before she said a thing about Hector, she wanted to establish that she had saved Rory during the fight at the Black River Pack compound. “I would first like to point out that your men heard Rory yell at me for jumping in to attack two wolf shifters who had him pinned down last night.”
Eagle man said, “Point taken and we know you are telling the truth about that incident, but we do not know your motivation for any action last night. Back to Hector.”
She swallowed and took her best shot. “I had a problem in Pittsburgh and got disoriented. I lost track of where I was and stepped in front of a vehicle that wrecked, but I don’t think anyone was hurt. It was absolutely an accident, but I woke up in a hospital.”
“A mental hospital,” the bear corrected.
“That may be true. It’s not like anyone told me what was going on. When I woke up from whatever drug they gave me, I was groggy, then I heard someone coming into my room. I was locked behind a steel door.”
The bear asked, “They didn’t put you in a straightjacket?”
Boy, he hated her. She managed to not snap at him, but just barely. “Anyhow, I didn’t want to go with the two men who came into my room, but they used magic dust on me. I figured out then that they were magic users, but not who they were with until I saw a tattoo on the wrist of one.”
“Describe it,” the bear ordered.
She gave them details of a vicious wolf design with his fangs showing as he snarled. She said, “They took me to that compound your team raided, hosed me down and delivered me to Hector. He wanted to know where a ... friend of mine was—”
The eagle man raised his hand off the table. “Stop. Friend is a lie. Who is it?”
She did not want to put one more person on Baatar’s trail.
“Do I have to remind you that this is your one chance to prove your innocence?” he asked.
“Nope. Heard you just fine. Before you call me a liar again, this person was originally a friend, but I think of him as a brother now, more than just a friend.”
She got a nod of approval so she continued. “He must have escaped after I did—”
“From where?” blue-eyed Cole on the left asked.
Damn. She was talking herself into a hole. If she’d had a chance to clean up and compose herself, she wouldn’t be so rattled. That’s exactly why they did this now and with her looking as rough as she had upon arrival, and still wearing a ragged-looking hospital gown.
She explained, “I was captured as a child and I’ve lived in different places over the years, being shuttled from one work camp to another. Six months ago, my friend was brought in. He stepped in a couple of times when the jackals were harassing me. We got to know each other and he helped me escape after one of the guards tried to rape me.”
She paused to let them realize she was not being called out for a lie, confirming her words. Clearing her raspy throat, she said, “I helped a female lynx shifter I met on a bus from Texas to Pittsburgh, which is how I ended up captured the first time.”
Cole walked around the room and poured a glass of water, which he set in front of her.
“Thank you.” She grabbed the glass as he returned to his original position.
“Why Pittsburgh?” the bear shifter asked.
“That was all the money I had to get me as far as I could go once I found a bus station. While on the bus, the woman’s little boy started to shift while he was sleeping and she was scared I’d turn them in, which I would never do.”
Justin asked, “Why not? You aren’t a shifter.”
“Because I don’t screw over an innocent person just because they are different from me,” she snapped, tired of having her good intentions questioned. She continued, “No one else saw the boy start to shift. Once his mother realized I was not a threat, we became casual friends. Then bounty hunters looking for shifters grabbed us. They thought I was a shifter, too. Your people found us. Rory showed up in the woods as a jackal guard was clawing me to make me shift. He fought them. There were two. I helped take down one. He will confirm that.”
“If he lives,” eagle man said.
“He will.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me he was hard to kill. I believed him ... and still do,” she said without thinking about it.
That drew some odd looks from the two men standing.
The eagle man lifted a finger, indicating for her to continue. She took a deep breath and said, “I was telling you how Hector wanted to find my friend. I did offer Hector a deal, but ... ” She raised her hand. “I was trying to trick him into letting me lead two of his wolves to find my friend.”
“You lied to him,” the bear shifter pointed out.
She gave him a look of duh. “Of course I lied to him. I’m not going to betray a man I think of as a brother.”
Now they looked disgusted with her. Crap. She couldn’t read minds. “What’s wrong now? I’m telling you the truth.”
Blue eyes said, “You just admitted to being clever enough to convince a shifter you weren’t lying.”
She dropped her head to the table.
They had no reason to believe her even though they knew her words were true. “I quit,” she mumbled against the polished surface. “I’ve tried and tried. You all win. Every man, except Rory and my brother, has screwed me coming and going. I’m tired. Just kill me and be done with it.”
The table surface was cool. She could sleep right here.
“You’re not finished,” eagle man said.
Sighing loud enough for shifters outside the room to hear, she pushed herself up and propped her crossed arms on the surface so she’d stay upright. She hadn’t slept at all, and she wouldn’t. Not until she knew Rory would live. “What?”
Their boss asked, “Who was your mother?”
Talk about a left hook in the conversation. “I have no idea. I only knew my dad. Before he was killed and I was captured, he told me she abandoned us. Now you know as much as I do about her.”
The two men standing looked at their boss, who nodded. Were they checking to see that everyone believed her?
Their boss said, “Tell me about your power.”
What could she tell them? That it was deadly and erratic? How would that help her with what they believed she did to Rory? “Would you tell me how Rory is doing first? Please?”
Justin scowled, but his boss answered, “They tell me he’s resting and stable.”
“Thank goodness,” she murmured.
“But it has been twelve hours,” eagle man said, letting her know this meeting had more purpose than just asking questions.
She’d reached her deadline for Rory to recover.
Her mouth went dry. For now, she’d keep everyone talking as long as she could. It was her only hope. “As for my energy, it showed up when the jackal tried to rape me in the Texas camp.” She’d noticed little odd things before that, but nothing specific. She hadn’t so much as lit up a lightning bug before Dyson. “I panicked at one point during the attack and ... this energy just rushed up my arms as I grabbed him and ... ” She stopped.
“Finish.”
Crap, how much worse could it get at this point?
She probably shouldn’t put that question out to the universe with the way her life kept running head first into Disaster City.
Taking a deep breath, she launched back into her explanation and hoped for the best. “When I grabbed the jackal to push him, my energy sort of exploded inside me. He acted as if a bolt of lightning had hit him. He arched hard then just shook and fell down on me. My friend ... brother ... showed up because he heard me screaming. He told me to run and how to find the road, then said he’d draw the jackals away. They would follow him, because he was far more valuable than I was.”
“Why?”
That eagle guy didn’t waste a lot of words.
She would tell what she could about Baatar, but she would not talk about the one thing he had asked her to keep secret if she escaped. She cared for Rory, maybe even as much as she cared for Baatar, which she honestly didn’t understand since it had happened so quickly, but she owed her brother her loyalty. “I don’t know the whole story about why they brought him in, but every captive was subject to being bred or sold to the Black River pack. Evidently there was something special about him and they planned to sell him.”
The bear asked, “Are you saying you were kidnapped to be used as a breeder?”
“Maybe. I never knew their full intentions. They captured me when I was six, after all. Regardless, that didn’t work out so well once they determined I’m ... sterile.” Her throat wanted to close up every time she said that word.
Eagle man asked, “What about your friend? Was he a shifter?”
“Oh, hell no! He can’t stand shifters.” She grimaced and smacked her hand over her mouth. What was she thinking? Okay, her hand cut her words off before she could add that neither of them liked shifters, but the action also told them she hadn’t meant to say that. Yeah, not the brightest thing to admit in front of this bunch.
Besides, she’d decided that she only disliked male shifters.
Where did that leave Rory?
He wasn’t a shifter, not to her.
Just a man who had to live or ... she’d never be the same again.
Cole said, “You say you were captured at six? By whom?”
“The Cadells.” She’d barely spoken those two words when so much power rolled through the room she felt it push against her.
Eagle man stood and boomed, “You’re from the Cadells?”
Cole’s hands curled into fists and the bear shifter started growling.
They were looking at her as if she claimed being part of the Cadells.
“Hold it!” she shouted right back, then stood to make a point. She was done being looked down upon by everyone and treated like yesterday’s garbage. “I’m not from them or representing them. I. Was. A. Captive!” She smacked her hand on the table. “Just like I am now. The Cadells capturing me doesn’t mean I like them any more than I like you, because I am a captive. Again.”
“Can we believe her, boss?” blue eyes asked.
For the first time since meeting him, the eagle man had a moment of hesitation.
Her hope of surviving this just dropped to subterranean level.
The door blasted open and everyone turned to find Rory standing there. His hair stood straight up and he was still on the pale side, but his eyes burned with fury.
Oh shit, oh shit. She started saying, “I am so sorry, Rory.”
He came straight at her as everyone yelled at him to stop.
