Chapter 3
THREE
Jez
I WOULD WAIT UNTIL we got to the lobby and scream bloody murder, I decided. There was no question that I had to get away from this towering alpha who smelled like my mother’s kitchen at Christmas, whether he had a gun pointed at me or not.
I couldn’t let him get me into a car. Once I was in a car, everything would be harder.
Yes, it was late at night—but the hotel was hosting a business conference. There had to be some people still wandering around, and I didn’t think Gage would be willing to blow a hole through my ribcage in a public venue with witnesses.
The elevator doors dinged shut, closing us in.
I’d chastised myself for not being afraid enough, when I’d been riding this elevator up to the penthouse with Matthew Knoxley.
This time, I knew better. Yet even now, the rich, heady combination of our combined pheromones was making my head feel fuzzy and stupid.
Apparently, Gage wasn’t having the same problem. The gun never wavered against my side as he pulled out his phone and tapped the screen with his thumb a few times before lifting it to his ear.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s me. Bring the car around. I’ll be there in five, with a passenger.”
I couldn’t hear the voice on the other end as anything more than an unintelligible murmur, but Gage said, “Thanks,” and disconnected the call.
The phone disappeared back into his pocket, and then his full attention was on me.
With every fiber of my being, I hated the sharp-edged impulse that zinged through my hindbrain—urging me to tip my head away from those deep-set hazel eyes and bare the side of my throat to him.
My jaw clenched. The fuck was I going to show throat to this asshole.
As the floor numbers counted down, I silently urged the car to stop, and other people to get on. But it continued to glide smoothly downward. There was only one set of doors on the top floor, and it occurred to me that the penthouse suite might have its own dedicated elevator.
As we approached the ground floor, Gage’s brow furrowed.
“You’re thinking about making a scene in the lobby,” he said. “But unless you’ve changed your mind about taking your chances with an attempted murder charge, you should know that’s not going to go down the way you think it is.”
I kept my lips pressed tightly closed, not rising to his bait. The elevator slowed, gravity making our bodies heavier as the floor broke our slow-motion fall. I drew a deep lungful of air, ready to start screaming. Help! Kidnapping! He’s got a gun!
The doors slid open on a scene of controlled chaos, and the words died in my throat. The lobby was swarming with police and EMTs.
“Call me a kidnapper, and I’ll tell ’em what you did upstairs,” Gage said, too low to be heard by anyone else but me.
I should do it anyway. I knew I should. My gaze fell on a pair of handcuffs hanging from the closest cop’s belt.
The memory of being shackled... of being manhandled by rough hands, unable to balance or catch myself when I was shoved, flooded through my brain like icy water. My breath stuck in my throat.
Gage’s grip on my upper arm steered me through the chaos, moving me effortlessly even though my legs felt like they were attached to a completely different person.
Outside, I thought—more than a little hysterically. Once we’re outside, I’ll make a run for it.
But the glass doors opened onto a sea of flashing lights. Police cars. An ambulance. Even a firetruck. The strobing red and blue hurt my eyes. Gage’s grip on me never wavered; it might as well have been shackles, because there was no way I was breaking free.
Afterimages still painted my vision as I was dragged toward a long black sedan. No, I thought again. Don’t get in his car—
I aimed a mule-kick at the alpha’s shin, hoping to turn the stiletto heels I was wearing into a weapon. The blow connected, but not as hard as I wanted—the high heel raked over his tailored trousers.
He didn’t even flinch.
Then I was sprawled in a spacious back seat, scrabbling against leather upholstery. Gage’s bulk followed, penning me in, and before I knew it, he once more had me by the upper arm, with the gun pointed at me openly now.
Confused, I looked at the front seat. It was separated from us by a glass barrier, and a driver wearing an honest-to-god chauffeur’s cap sat behind the wheel. We were in a limo, for fuck’s sake. Not a stretch limo, but definitely not a normal car.
“Help!” I shrieked, confident that the glass barrier couldn’t be completely soundproofed. “Help me! I’m being kidnapped!”
The glass rolled down, and the beta driver craned around with an expression of confusion. “What the fuck, Gage?” he asked, and my heart sank.
The driver wasn’t hired from an outside company. He was part of the operation.
“She tried to kill Knox,” Gage said grimly. “He’s the reason all these lights and sirens are blocking the front doors. I’m taking her back to the house so we can figure out who sent her.”
My blood ran cold. They’d try to force my client’s name out of me. Would they go after Adrian, and shut him up permanently to cover their tracks?
“He’s lying!” I choked out. “Please help me!”
But the look of angry disgust on the driver’s plain features was its own answer.
“How bad did she mess him up?” he asked Gage. “He gonna be okay?”
“Bad,” Gage said. “And he’d better be okay, or I’ll kill him myself.”
The driver’s face closed off, and he gave a tight nod. “Back to the house, then.” The glass rolled up, and the car pulled smoothly away from the chaos of the hotel parking lot.
I couldn’t afford to panic, even though sick terror was clawing at the inside of my chest. I had to keep my wits about me.
Where were we going? I tore my attention away from the alpha holding a gun on me, trying to keep track of directions and street names as we left downtown and merged onto the highway.
God—they could be taking me anywhere. I never left my usual haunting grounds except when I had a job like this.
If I needed to go somewhere, it was on my own two feet, or sometimes on the L, if I had money.
I could only afford cabs when I had a client paying me.
Once I left the tiny area of Chicago that I knew like the back of my hand, I might as well have been in Alaska.
There was nothing for it, except to try and remember, step by step, the route we were taking.
But my head was muddled with fear and adrenaline, while the massive highway system seemed to merge and twist completely at random.
I knew I’d missed a couple of exit signs, and at night, I couldn’t even tell if we were headed north, south, east, or west.
The trip felt like it took hours, but I was pretty sure that was just my growing panic distorting the passage of time. When we ended up on a dark road with trees looming on either side in the glare of the headlights, my terror finally overflowed in a choked sob.
Were they taking me to the pack’s house like Gage had said, or to someplace dark and remote where a body might not be found for weeks... or ever?
“Where are we?” I asked weakly.
“Almost there,” Gage said unhelpfully.
With a pang, it occurred to me that the only person likely to miss me would be Adrian.
And let’s be real—he’d probably just assume that I’d taken his money and run.
Or maybe there would be a news story about Matthew Knockley getting hauled away from the hotel in an ambulance, and he’d at least know I’d tried to do the job before I’d disappeared.
I was absolutely alone. I’d made a grand total of one real friend since I’d washed up in Chicago, and then I’d gone and left that friend alone in his apartment with a murdered corpse. No one was coming to save me, because literally no one on the planet even knew I needed saving.
The limo slowed and pulled onto a long, winding driveway surrounded by trees. I felt like Gretel, disappearing into the dark woods without Hansel at my side... not a single breadcrumb in sight to mark the way home.
The car came to a stop in front of a massive old house that looked like it had sat here for as long as the forest around it had. The glass rolled down again.
“Will you need the car again tonight?” asked the driver, giving me a wary look.
“No, not tonight,” Gage said. “I’ll let you know in the morning if there’s any word from the hospital.”
“Sure.” The man turned unfriendly eyes on me. “Watch yourself with that one, okay?”
“Yeah,” Gage agreed, and took me by the arm again.
Outside of the car, I cast a desperate look around, looking for a direction to run.
But even if I managed to shake off the alpha’s iron grip, there was only the dark outline of trees all around us.
I wouldn’t make it fifty yards without tripping and breaking an ankle in the impractical fuck-me heels I was wearing.
I was never going to leave this place alive, was I?
Swallowing hard, I tottered after my captor on the gravel driveway. The house was even bigger than I’d first thought—looming over us as I was dragged up the flagstone walkway to the massive front door.
Gage pocketed the gun and fumbled for a keyring, opening it. “Inside. I’ll take you upstairs to the attic room and get you some food.”
Great. So, apparently, I was going to be the crazy woman locked in the attic? A completely inappropriate urge to laugh burned up my throat like acid—proof that I was finally losing my shit completely.
“Right,” I said, my voice high and wavering. “Sure. The attic.”
He gave me an odd, sideways look. “It’s converted. Might be kinda dusty, though.”
“Dusty?” I echoed, disbelieving. “I am so giving this place zero stars on Yell.”
His odd look grew odder. “You mean Yelp?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “I don’t have the internet.”
“Okay,” he said, like he was humoring me. “Come on. It’s been a long day.”
“You’re telling me,” I shot back, and let him herd me deeper into the house.
I couldn’t keep track of the route to get from downtown to this property, but I could at least pay attention to the way to the front door.
Maybe in daylight, I’d find out that the house wasn’t in as remote an area as it seemed.
At the very least, I wouldn’t end up getting lost before I even got outside.
The entryway led into a hall that seemed surprisingly narrow for a house this big. Or maybe it was totally normal. Who was I kidding? It wasn’t as though I had extensive experience with hundred-year-old mansions. Or any experience, really.
Unlike the outside, the inside looked modern. Wall sconces lit the way, but the hall was light and airy, not dark and creepy. A large room with sofas and the biggest TV I’d ever seen opened up to the right, and there were several closed doors on the left.
I jumped as one of them creaked open.
Gage paused. A young face peered out; a male omega, maybe twelve or thirteen, and so skinny that his collarbones jutted above the neck of his loose T-shirt.
Livid bruises decorated one side of his face.
Behind him, I could make out several other small figures—pressing forward, but not as bold as the child in front.
“Gage?” the kid asked in a sweet voice. It was the kind of voice that should be singing in a choir somewhere, not hidden away in an alpha sex trafficker’s mansion with a black eye and a swollen jaw. “What’s going on?”
“It’s not anything you need to worry about,” Gage said. “Promise. Try to get some sleep, okay? The van’ll be here in the morning.”
My gorge rose as the boy frowned. The van. Once again, the memory of metal walls trapping me with other small, helpless bodies washed across the reality of the house around me, blocking it out. My breathing went ragged.
“You... you have to run!” I told the child. “All of you! You have to get out of here! Don’t let them put you in the van! Hide in the woods—make for the nearest busy road!”
The burning chill of bare feet in snow made me shudder, the past elbowing its way into the present like a waking nightmare. In the doorway, the boy’s unbruised eye went wide and frightened. He took a hasty step back. The door slammed shut, cutting him and the others off from my view.
Leaving me alone with the alpha.
Gage’s grip on my arm tightened convulsively. For the first time, real anger sparked in his gaze.
“Don’t scare them like that,” he growled. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”