Chapter Five #3
Ben sucked in a breath. Taylor agreed with Jacob, but he didn’t say it.
He wanted Ben to have the mental space to wrap his mind around it.
If he wished to come to Taylor and talk about Jimmy, Taylor would be there for him and would listen.
In the meantime, there would be no judgment from him.
He hoped Jimmy was dead, but he was okay with never mentioning it if Ben needed more time to deal with it.
“We should separate,” Tony said. “Be careful. Even though we believe the house is empty, we might be wrong. Taylor, you’ll stay with Ben?”
“You don’t even have to ask.”
Tony nodded. “That’s what I thought. Call out if you find anything.”
He stepped out of the kitchen, quickly followed by Peter and Jacob.
Ben didn’t move, so neither did Taylor. He allowed Ben to step away from him and slowly walk around the table at the center of the room.
He looked like he was taking everything in.
He probably hadn’t had the time to do so when he’d run.
From what he’d told Taylor, he’d been in a panic.
He hadn’t stopped to think about what was happening or why Jimmy hadn’t returned.
He’d freed himself, had made his way through the house to the back door, and hadn’t looked back.
He’d probably thought he’d never see this place again, yet here he was, standing in the kitchen where he’d eaten with Jimmy.
Ben cleared his throat. “Well, as you can see, this is the kitchen. I wouldn’t open the fridge if I were you.”
“I can smell it from here, even though it’s closed. I don’t think any of us is eager to open it.” If Jimmy hadn’t been home in months, whatever was left in the fridge would be far from edible. Taylor had no intention of dealing with the cleanup. It wasn’t his job.
He followed Ben when he stepped out of the kitchen. Ben hesitated. Taylor could hear Jacob and Tony talking somewhere to the right, while someone—Peter—was moving on the left.
“I think Peter’s in the living room,” Ben said. “And there’s an office on the other side, so maybe that’s where Tony and Jacob ended up. I don’t know if we’ll find anything interesting upstairs. There are just bedrooms and bathrooms, and Jimmy never spent a lot of time there.”
“What about downstairs?” Taylor asked. Downstairs was the basement where Ben had been locked up.
Ben shook his head. “I don’t think I can be in that room again.”
“You won’t have to be. I do have to check it, though. Can you show me where it is?”
The last thing Taylor wanted was to see the room where his mate had been locked up, but he didn’t have a choice.
He could ask one of the others to do this, but it was his job as Ben’s mate, and he’d do it to ensure that they got everything they needed and wouldn’t have to return.
Hell, Taylor was tempted to set the house on fire once they were done.
If Jimmy was dead, he didn’t need this place anymore.
Ben nodded and walked down the hallway. It didn’t take long for Taylor to see the open door. No one had closed this one, either. They wouldn’t have been able to because the lock and handle hung off the splintered wood of the door.
He peeked in. The basement was dark and smelled of dust, mold, and public toilets. He wasn’t surprised when Ben didn’t come closer. He wished he could avoid going down there, but they needed to make sure that Jimmy wasn’t hiding something else.
He turned to Ben. “You stay here. I’ll be right there.”
Ben nodded. Taylor could feel his mate’s gaze on his back, so he did his best not to show how horrified he was as he faced the darkness of the basement.
There was a switch on the wall by the door. Taylor flipped it, relieved to see that the light turned on and that the stairs were in good condition. He was careful as he walked down, pausing at the bottom of the stairs to look around.
There was a dirty mattress in the corner with no sheets or pillows.
A blanket had been abandoned half on it and half on the cold cement floor, the cheery flowers on it a stark contrast with the rest of the room.
A broken chain hung from the wall next to it, and even though the floor was so dirty that Taylor couldn’t see it, he could smell blood.
His mate’s blood.
His mouth tasted like ash. He ignored it, just like he tried to ignore the corner in which Ben had been locked up once he was sure he wouldn’t find anything there.
It wouldn’t help to obsess over it. Ben needed Taylor to be focused, even though it was hard.
He needed Taylor to remember that he wasn’t chained to the wall anymore and that he was safe.
Taylor slowly made his way around the basement.
Apart from the mattress and the chain and a tiny, disgusting bathroom with no door, there was nothing odd there.
There was a stack of boxes in a corner, some tools, and a table with no chairs.
It was grim, but that was because of what Taylor knew had happened here.
If he didn’t, he’d probably just think that Jimmy had been a messy pig.
He moved slowly, but he still managed to trip over something.
He stumbled and reached out to catch himself, but unfortunately, the only thing for him to hold on to was the stack of boxes.
They were heavy, but not heavy enough to hold his weight.
The one on top slipped, crashing to the floor and spilling its contents.
Taylor almost tripped on one of the books, and when he looked down, he realized it was a diary.
Well, maybe more of a journal. Jimmy wasn’t a teenage girl.
Taylor leaned down to pick it up. As little as he wanted to know what went on in Jimmy’s head, this felt important.
* * * *
BEN HEARD THE SOUND of something falling. He desperately wanted to join Taylor and ensure he was okay, but he also didn’t want to go down into the basement. He didn’t think he’d survive it, not a second time.
“Taylor?” he called out, leaning over the stairs as far as he could without falling.
“I’m fine,” Taylor answered. “I bumped into something, but I’m fine.”
“Are you coming back upstairs? Did you find anything?”
“I think I did.”
Something in Taylor’s voice raised Ben’s hackles.
What had he found? Ben had been locked down there for weeks.
He’d never noticed anything weird. Of course, he’d been chained to the wall, so he hadn’t exactly had the opportunity to explore, and when he’d run, he hadn’t wanted to stay one more minute in that place, so he hadn’t looked.
“What is it?” he called back when Taylor didn’t explain.
“I’m coming back upstairs.”
That was good, but it was also worrying. Whatever Taylor had found, he wanted to show everyone else. Was it that important? Why?
Taylor appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Ben relaxed, allowing himself to believe that Taylor would be okay. The house was empty, and there were no monsters in the basement, not anymore.
He hated being scared of this place, but the trauma he’d had to endure here wasn’t easily forgettable. This wasn’t just a basement. It had been a prison, a place he hadn’t been sure he’d ever leave. Jimmy might never have hurt him physically, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t hurt him at all.
Taylor carried a box up the stairs. His expression was serious, and he didn’t stop to explain what was going on. “You said that Tony and Jacob were in the office?” he asked.
“It sounds like it.”
“Can you show me where it is?”
Ben nodded. He hated this place, but the only room he didn’t want to see again was the basement. The rest of the place was okay. It was just a house.
Ben had been right. They found Tony and Jacob in the office, going through some bills spread out on the desk. They both looked up when they heard Taylor and Ben, their expressions serious.
“You need to see this,” Taylor said. He put down the box on top of the bills on the desk. “This guy was a hunter.”
Ben frowned. He knew what hunters were, but he could tell there was more to it by the way Jacob sucked in a breath. Both he and Taylor looked horrified. Tony looked worried, but not much more.
“I’ll get Peter,” Jacob said as he stepped away.
Tony nodded. “Can you explain what you mean by hunter?” Tony asked, turning his attention back to Taylor.
“As far as I know, we don’t have this kind of problem in Green Hill, but there are groups of people, usually humans, who think that shifters don’t deserve the same treatment as they do.
I’ve never been involved in anything like that, but we’ve all heard the stories.
They catch and hurt shifters. I’ve been told they also worked with those labs a few years ago, making money off selling us.
” He looked around. Ben felt like he couldn’t breathe, especially when Taylor’s gaze stopped on him. “You didn’t know?”
“That Jimmy was a hunter? I wasn’t even sure what you were talking about until you explained.”
“You know what hunters are, though.”
“I’ve heard stories, but I didn’t think they were still around. Are these people really hunting shifters?”
“They are, and from what I could read in this journal, Jimmy was involved with the labs.”
“But he didn’t hand me over to them.” Ben was confused. That was what hunters did—they found shifters, grabbed them, and either killed them or delivered them to the lab facilities. Taylor had just confirmed it.
“Maybe in his own way, he cared about you,” Tony said gently.
“What he did shows me that he didn’t.”
“I didn’t say that it made sense or that it was logical. What I’m seeing is that a hunter somehow ended up in a relationship with a shifter. He knew what you were, right?”
“Yeah. I told him on our first official date. He said it didn’t matter to him.”
But if he’d been a hunter, it had mattered.
Ben was confused. If Jimmy was a hunter, why had he dated him? Why had he locked him up in his basement instead of handing him over to whoever he was working with? It didn’t make sense. Nothing did.
Jacob and Peter appeared. Peter looked slightly confused. “What did you tell whom on your first date?”
“I told Jimmy that I was a shifter,” Ben explained. “Apparently, he was a hunter.”
Peter’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
Taylor grabbed something from the box he’d carried upstairs. “These are Jimmy’s journals. We have names, locations, and a bunch of other stuff. I don’t know if he ever mentions the people he was working with, but he certainly kept records of the people he hunted.”
“If he was a hunter, it would make sense for him to have vanished,” Tony pointed out. “It would be easy for something to happen to him on a hunt.”
“So he’s really dead?” Ben asked.
“Considering what I know of hunters, I think there’s a good chance that he is. They view being wounded during a hunt as a sign of weakness. They don’t take care of each other, even when they belong to the same biological family. They don’t think anything of leaving their wounded behind.”
“And you think that’s what happened to Jimmy. You think he was wounded and that the people he was with didn’t bother helping him.”
“It would make sense. That’s why he never came back.
We can’t know exactly what happened, but I suspect that when he found out that you were a shifter, he decided to stick around, maybe so he could sell you off to a lab or kill you.
The problem is that he started liking you.
You mentioned that you’d never met his family. ”
“No, but like I said, his father had been hurt on the job.” Ben gasped. “You think he’s a hunter, too?” If he was, he could’ve been hurt on a hunt.
“It’s possible.”
The more Ben thought about it, the more convinced he was that that was the case. How could he not have noticed any of this? How could he not have suspected what Jimmy was?
“But he never really cared about me,” Ben said. “Why would he have locked me up if he did?”
“Even if he didn’t have feelings for you, he wanted you to be his,” Taylor said softly, taking Ben’s hand and linking their fingers together.
“You’d think he’d have been happy when I broke up with him.”
“He was losing control.”
“I just have a hard time believing that he wanted me so badly that he dated me even though he didn’t believe I should have the same rights as he had or even be alive.”
“I don’t think we can make sense of all of it.” Taylor looked at Tony. “But we need to take this back to Gal. He’ll have to contact the Council. These journals have names of people Jimmy and his fellow hunters hurt, and maybe more.”
Tony nodded and squared his shoulders. “All right. Taylor, where did you find this?”
“In the basement. There are more boxes. I didn’t check what was inside those.”
“Peter, you go. Bring back anything you think has something to do with the hunters, any journals or personal notes. Jacob, check the rest of the house, just in case. Taylor, Ben, and I will stay in the office and poke around. We might find more.”
It would be a lot of work for Peter and Jacob, but neither of them argued. They left the office, and even though Ben wasn’t alone, he allowed himself to freak out for a moment.
He knew how lucky he’d been. If Jimmy hadn’t liked him the day they’d met, would he have killed him? Would he have captured him and sold him to a lab? How many times had he done just that to other people?
“Keep your eyes and ears open,” Tony said as he opened one of the desk drawers. “We don’t know what we might find.”
Ben had no intention of rooting around Jimmy’s stuff. Just being in the office and smelling him made Ben’s stomach turn. He told himself to be brave, but it was hard, even with his mate by his side.
Everything about this situation was hard. Ben hoped they were almost out of it, but considering what they’d just found out about Jimmy, he suspected it was only the beginning.