“Okay.” She nestled close again.
“And,” he said, kissing the top of her head again, “anytime you need to just let go, ask us.”
“We need a code phrase,” she said.
He chuckled. “How about, ‘fuck my brains out’?”
She snorted. “I thought that was a given.”
“Well, it is, but thought I’d toss it out there anyway.” He made her look at him once more, his expression turning serious. “Whether it’s a good hard fucking, or you just need to curl up in our laps and cry, or need us to kick someone’s ass for you, we’re here. Whatever it is. You are our number-one priority. Okay?”
She nodded. “I know what I need right now.”
“What?”
Her stomach chose that moment to grumble, making Brodey laugh.
“I think I need that same thing, babe.”
They grabbed a quick shower to rinse the smell of sex off them before heading out to join everyone else. Lina and Mai looked as worn out as Elain still felt. Jan and Rick were manning the grill. Ain and Cail walked over to Elain and got hugs from her.
“You all right?” Ain asked.
She nodded and forced a smile she didn’t feel. “Yeah. Just tired.”
She could tell from the look Cail was giving her that he didn’t buy it, either. He stroked her cheek. “I think we need to get you back home to Florida and order you to take some time to relax.” He pulled her in for a hug.
“That sounds like a good idea.”
Mai and Lina were sitting on the couch. They had the kids on a comforter in the middle of the living room floor. BettLynn was trying to sit up, but the boys were on either side of her, holding her hands as if trying to help her balance. Elain sat on the end of the couch, on Mai’s other side.
“Are they doing what I think they’re doing?”
Zack, who sat just off the comforter, within easy grabbing range should BettLynn fall over, nodded. “That’s what we think they’re doing. They’ve been doing it ever since they woke up from their last nap.”
Mai yawned. “When one of us tried to help, all three of them fussed at us. So we just let them be. They’re figuring it out on their own.” She laid her head over on Elain’s shoulder. “I’m thinking an autumn wedding.”
Elain snorted. “You have more than enough years to plan for their wedding.”
Lina giggled. “For her, Micah, and Jim, goofball.”
“Oh.”
* * * *
Ain waited until it looked like Elain was busy talking with Mai and Lina before waving Brodey and Cail. He led his brothers a few yards away from the porch where they could talk in privacy.
“Well?” He and Cail stared at Brodey.
Brodey glanced around. He jammed his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.”
“What the hell happened out there?” Cail asked. “Lina wouldn’t say anything but, ‘Mission accomplished,’ and grin like a loon.”
Brodey blew out a long breath before meeting Ain’s gaze. “It was… She did good, don’t get me wrong. But we need to be careful.”
Fear chilled his gut. “Careful how?”
“For starters, you cannot go all Prime on her.” Brodey pointed a finger at him. “You have to stay in kinder, gentler Prime mode.”
Ain nodded but didn’t interrupt.
“Second, no matter what happens, no matter how it freaks us out, we always have to be supportive.”
“Why the hell wouldn’t we be supportive?” Cail asked.
Brodey’s gaze dropped to the ground. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker around, nudging at pine needles and dead leaves for a moment before speaking. “They’re friggin’ strong,” he whispered. “They wiped the house right off the face of the planet, okay?” He looked up at Cail, then at Ain, where his focus remained. “One minute there was a house standing there, then it’s like it folded up and disappeared. Gone. Poof.”
Ain blinked, shocked. “How did they do that?”
“That’s just it. Elain doesn’t even know. But when you put the three of them together, they’re a literal force of nature. That’s not an exaggeration.” He stopped scuffing his shoe around. Squatting down in the grass, he pulled a leaf off a plant and held it up. “See this?”
“Yeah?”
He folded it in half, then half again, repeating it until it was barely larger than a pea. “Pretend I’m a magician and know how to make stuff disappear.” He dropped the leaf ball and fanned open his hands. “Ta da. Gone.”
Cail snorted. “Bonehead, that was poison ivy.”
Brodey grimaced and wiped his hands on the grass. “Shit.” He stood, careful to keep his hands out in front of him. “The point is, she’s terrified we’re going to be scared of her. I assured her that, no matter what, we would never be scared of her.”
Ain rubbed at his face. “Got it.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the house. “Go wash up before you accidentally touch anything or anyone.”
Brodey started for the house but turned. “Oh.” He smiled. “She found out she really hates the taste of cockatrice blood.” He headed into the house.
Cail stepped close once Brodey left. “Scared of her? Why would she think we’d ever be scared of her?”
Ain crossed his arms over his chest. “Because she’s probably scared of herself right now.”
He waited until after Elain had some food in her to maneuver her out into the backyard on the pretense of wanting to take a walk with her. The temperature was dropping, the impending night trying to steal away the warmth of the sunny day as it crept in through the dense woods behind the cabin.
They only walked a little way down one of the trails before Elain stopped and turned to him. “Spill it.”
He didn’t deny it. “Are you okay?”
Her beautiful blue eyes skimmed over his face. “What did Brodey say?”
He caught her hands and brought them up to his lips and kissed them. “He told us what happened.”
“Anything else?”
“No matter what, no matter what you do, no matter what happens, he’s right when he says that nothing will ever make the three of us scared of you.”
She blinked, her eyes suddenly looking a little too bright. “I want to go home,” she whispered. “Please, take me home.” Then she threw herself against him. “I want our bed, I want our house. I miss Mom and Dad, and Juju and Bea, and Coot and Mina. I miss you guys coming home at night smelling like cowshit and I even miss the fucking heat and humidity. I want to go home to Florida. Our home.”
With his arms wrapped around her, he buried his face in her hair. “We’ll leave first thing in the morning, sweetheart.”
“Thank you.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Mercedes left Marston at the house and headed for the store. She still kicked herself in the ass that she’d ratted Marston out to Blackestone, meaning she couldn’t risk Marston being seen around town.
Once we get out of here, then we can go somewhere they’ve never heard of him.
She pushed her cart down the dairy section, grabbing some Greek yogurt. I really should grab some more snacks for the go bag. She headed down the chips aisle. Be prepared, that was her motto. Since returning from Yellowstone, she’d made sure to amply stock the little cave in the wolves’ territory, the one she’d staked out for her emergency hideout well before she’d met Marston.
Better safe than sorry.
If Lacey was going to rat her out to the wolves, she likely would have done it already. It didn’t hurt that Mercedes knew she now had a little cachet with the Maine wolves. She did save one of their own.
Still, she wouldn’t risk it. She’d grown up with the stories drilled into her brain by Edgar and Lenny about how their mom had been hunted by Abernathy.
She wouldn’t jeopardize her baby’s safety, especially with her due date less than three weeks away. She’d scanned in all the files she had on Abernathy as well. The originals to a few things she
kept with her laptop. Everything else, she’d shredded. She had copies on her hard drive, on several thumb and external drives, as well as uploaded to a cloud server.
If she had to leave in a hurry, she was prepared.
She was walking down the soda aisle when something caught her attention, a scent.
Fuck. Me.
Trying to keep her pulse from racing, she hoped she was wrong. Cockatrice.
She had most of what she’d come for, except meat. Fuck it. She headed for the checkout stands and hoped she could get out of there before she ran into whoever that scent belonged to.
* * * *
Cameron slowly walked through the grocery store. His plan had been to try to shoplift some food. Another cousin, Gerry, was supposed to come in sometime that afternoon and meet up with them. He was going to introduce them to a nest looking for a Heisenberg to start a meth operation a couple of townships over.
But then he smelled it.
He wasn’t sure at first, thought maybe it was just wishful thinking on his part. Until he started crisscrossing the store and passed her.
The bitch from Yellowstone.
It took everything in his power not to kill her right there in the store.
She, however, seemed to be clueless.
He forgot about the shoplifting run and headed out to his truck. He’d need to follow her, track her down.
And then he could fucking make her pay.
* * * *
Mercedes barely managed to keep her nerves under control. She pegged the guy immediately and suspected from his scent that he was Cameron, the last cockatrice from Yellowstone.
Fuck!
Once she returned to the house, she grabbed the bags of groceries from the car and raced inside.
“We need to get out of here. Right now.” Mercedes blew through the living room, grabbing stuff as she went and shoving it into her backpack, including her laptop and the charger, as well as the thumb drives with all the information she’d accumulated on them.
Marston stood. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Move your ass. Now. We have to get out of here. There’s a cockatrice from town after me.”
“Why?”
“For Yellowstone, that’s why. Serves me right for getting involved.” She shoved the backpack at him and headed into the kitchen, toward the basement door. “We need to get Abs out of here, too. They catch him, they’ll kill him. That means no bounty for us.”
She threw open the basement door and pounded down the stairs. Marston’s brain finally engaged. He ran to their room and grabbed his wallet and passport, then added a change of clothes for each of them to another backpack. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d escaped from somewhere with little more than the clothes on his back.
He also grabbed his phone charger. He knew that was stupid, but all his pictures of him and Mercedes were on it.
He wanted to keep that little bit of humanity, at least.
Pausing at the nursery door, he looked around. It was hard not to think about them shopping for things together, how she helped him assemble the crib. He started to turn when his eye landed on the baby book on top of the dresser. He grabbed it and put it in the second backpack with the other things.
He returned to the kitchen and threw some snacks and bottles of water into a cloth grocery bag. Mercedes reappeared, leading—or, more accurately, dragging—Rodolfo up the stairs. She’d given him a pair of pants to wear, but nothing else. A cloud of odorous funk followed them into the kitchen.
“Jeez, he stinks,” Marston said.
“No time. We can dunk him in a stream or something in the woods. We have to move.”
“Where to?”
“Out the backdoor and into the woods.”
“What? They’ll track us. Especially with him smelling like that.”
“That’s what I’m counting on. I told you, I’ve got that spider hole out there, a cave. Stocked some stuff in it months ago, added more after I got back from Yellowstone.” She grinned and yanked Abernathy’s chain. “On the Maine wolves’ land, no less.”
“On the wolves’ land? Are you deranged?”
“Relax. I spent a lot of time scouting the land out there. Never smelled another shifter’s scent. It’s too far out from the main area. And the cockatrice won’t dare follow us out that far. We’ll lie low for a couple of days, until the Montalvos can come pull us out. Or if they track us there, we can take them by surprise and ambush them.”
“Um, pet, stupid question. Why not just take the car?”
“Because they’ll be looking for it. They’re probably waiting at the end of the road. It was only one guy, but he likely has buddies. If we drive, they’ll just follow us. We have to stop for gas sometime, and the damn tank’s already low.”
He grabbed her arm and made her stop and look at him. “Are you sure they actually saw you?”
“Yeah. The guy followed me. He passed me in the grocery store and I pretended I didn’t see him. When I left, he followed me. I took a couple of detours, hit the drive-through ATM, but he stayed with me. I didn’t dare stop for gas.”
“Right.” He pointed at Rodolfo. “What about him? How do we know he won’t get us killed?”
“When he started getting feisty last week, I upped his medication. He shouldn’t give us much trouble.” She jerked his chain. “Should you?”
Abernathy mustered something that looked like a scowl, but contained none of the former fury the wolf used to possess. Apparently, his time in captivity, and Mercedes’ abuse, had finally succeeded in breaking the man.
Along with the pharmaceuticals, no doubt.
She handed Marston the chain. “Hold him for a minute.” She grabbed her phone and scrolled through it until she found the number she wanted. Then she grabbed her backpack and pulled a slip of paper out of it. Nervously tapping her foot as she waited, the call finally connected.
“Hello, Ortega Montalvo? Mercedes Megaera, we met in Yellowstone… Yes, exactly.” She looked at Rodolfo. “Remember our discussion about a certain goal you had in mind? Do you have a pen? Write down these GPS coordinates.” She rattled off latitude and longitude. “I will be there with a certain something you’ve been looking for. You might know it by the initials ‘RA.’ But I need help as soon as you can get it to me. I’m sort of under the gun and on the run now.” She grinned. “Twenty-four hours? Yes, I believe we’ll be okay that long. See you then.” She hung up and pocketed her phone.
“So we have to hold out twenty-four hours?”
She shrugged. “He said it wouldn’t be any longer than that. I’m sure he’s scrambling his guys and running for his private jet right this minute. If we’re lucky, maybe twelve hours.” She took the chain back and yanked on it. “Sorry, Daddy. You’re a liability now. Time to cash you in.”
Less than ten minutes later, they were out the backdoor and heading for the woods with Mercedes in the lead. It was nearly dark when she stopped and swore.
“What is it?”
She turned. “I forgot the fucking book. Goddammit!”
“The baby book? I grabbed it.”
She laughed and kissed him. “No, papi, but good thinking. I meant the spellbook. Dammit. It was still in the bedside table.”
“You’re not seriously thinking about going back after it, are you?”
She chewed on her lip for a moment. “No, it’s not worth the risk. When the jaguars get here, we’ll have them take us to the house. Hopefully the fuckers don’t find it before then.”
“Hopefully they don’t find us.”
“Don’t worry.” They entered a small clearing. “They won’t. Even if they are stupid enough to cross onto the wolves’ land, we can hold them off until Montalvo gets here.”
As they entered the small cave, she pulled a flashlight out of her pocket and played the beam around. “Back here.” She led Rodolfo to an alcove in the very back, where she’d driven two spikes into the wall. Mounted on them, silver rings.
“You are a
brilliant pet, love,” Marston said.
“Thank you.”
She broke out a padlock and looped the chain through both rings before securely locking it. “There, that’ll hold him.”
When Rodolfo glared up at her, she kicked him in the balls, doubling him over in pain. “Don’t get snotty with me,” she warned. “You’d better be nice to me and hope I put in a good word for you with the jaguars.”
* * * *
Cameron and his cousin, Gerry, watched the house. “What do you say?”
Gerry shrugged. “Wait until dark.”
“That’s the fucking bitch. I know it is.”
“And going up there in broad daylight might get our asses shot off. Are you crazy? Best case scenario, she calls 911. I got warrants, man. I don’t need no fucking hassles from cops.”
“Shit.” Cameron ran a hand through his hair. “Fine, we wait until dark. Then we go after that fucking cunt.”
As dark fell and they saw no signs of life, Cameron got a bad feeling. He finally risked just walking up to the front door and knocking.
Nobody answered. After walking around to the side of the house and looking in the uncovered kitchen window, he realized they’d bolted. Bagged groceries still sat on the kitchen table.
He waved to his cousin, who joined him. “They’re gone.” Walking around to the back, they broke the window on the back door and unlocked it, letting themselves in.
The house lay still, with an abandoned feel. Downstairs, they smelled the distinct scent of a cockatrice. From the setup, they could tell it’d been held captive.
“Who the fuck is this crazy bitch?” Gerry asked, staring at the rings driven into the walls.
“I don’t know, but I want her dead.” They headed back upstairs. The unused nursery went along with the baby bump he’d spotted her sporting. They didn’t find much of value, until they rifled through the bedroom.