Chapter Twenty-Eight
Melinda stood in the dusty attic, the door locked and two guards posted outside. They had her laptop and her purse. She had a few boxes and a tiny window too high for her to reach. She also had these.
Melinda unclenched her hand and stared at the lighter and the tiny red pouch of…
something. Grace. The woman from earlier.
The one who Cordelia had manipulated into to doing who knew what by threatening her family.
She’d stumbled into Melinda on the stairs, shoving it into her hand.
“Burn it,” she’d whispered in her ear before apologizing to Melinda’s captors and moving on as though she’d not a care for her predicament at all.
Getting out of the attic was one thing. Getting past all Veilluex’s men was another.
But it was a big house, and Melinda’s childhood had been a master class in hiding.
If she could get her laptop and find somewhere to hide, she might have a decent chance of escape.
Of hacking into their security system. Better yet, hacking into their Wi-Fi and finding a way to contact Pierre and Louis.
She had to warn them this was a trap. Warn them Veilleux and some guy named Dutton were on their way to stop Isobella from going back in time.
And she had to tell them they were right, and she’d been wrong about Cordelia. So wrong.
She peered into the pouch. Herbs? Something witchy? A potion? She resisted the urge to sniff the leaves. Melinda eyed the gap beneath the door. She’d need something to cover her face, and something burnable to make a fire, but it was worth a try.
Melinda opened one of the boxes. Old books.
Perfect. She chose a cookbook with glossy pages and lay it open on the floor, close to the door, but not against it.
When the guards opened the door, they wouldn’t knock her little fire over onto the timber floors.
She wanted out of the attic, not to burn the whole house down with her in it.
From several brittle paperback crime novels, she tore pages and crumpled them up, placing them over the image of a crème br?lée.
Probably another of Louis’ favorites. She added more pages to her little pile.
If she got out of this alive, she could ask him.
She’d want to ask him, and Pierre, more important things than that.
Like, were they ever going to tell her it was them who’d sent the malware?
Had it all been a lie? Had she meant anything to them at all?
She squeezed her eyes shut. It still hurt.
Their betrayal. Melinda could understand why they’d tracked her.
To get to Cordelia. But everything else that had happened after they’d found her…
How much of that was a lie? Making tea together.
Their nights spent in the big bed, the way they’d worshiped her body as though she were the most precious thing in the world.
Cordelia and the Veilleux guy seemed to think she was their mate.
From a logical standpoint, it made sense.
Would they have divulged they were werewolves to her had she not been?
That wasn’t something you bandied about to just anyone.
And Gabriel, telling her Pierre and Louis would have died for her that day in the warehouse? That had to mean something, right?
She’d never find out if she didn’t get the hell out of here.
She crumpled more pages until she had a decent sized pyre, then wrapped her coat around her face, covering her mouth and nose, and lit the pile.
As the fire took hold, she sprinkled the contents of Grace’s little pouch onto the flames.
With another cookbook, she fanned the smoke, pushing it under the door.
Melinda stepped back. The smoke now had a distinct smell, like…sage? Grace had given her sage? Was this some kind of joke? She was going to…what? Overpower two men with a cooking herb?
Her little fire flared as the attic door opened.
“Putain.” A tattooed man stared at her flames.
A second man pushed through the door, her open laptop in his hand.
Yes.
The cookbook was on fire now, and the room stank worse than a hippie gathering in the nineteen seventies. He helped his companion stomp it out, both of them breathing in lungfuls of smoke.
Melinda waited, holding her breath, her face covered. This had to work. She had to believe Grace wouldn’t have risked handing her something as benign as a common garden herb.
It started with a smile that turned into a chuckle.
Then both men were laughing, one holding up his hand, staring at it as though he’d never seen it before.
He touched the wall, her fire forgotten.
He said something in French, and his friend stared in wonder, before raising his hand to the wall, too.
Were they…tripping? She edged closer. Neither of them paid her any attention.
She grasped the edge of her laptop, and he let her take it, too absorbed with what was happening with the wall.
Nothing, as far as Melinda was concerned.
One of them turned, his glazed eyes looking right at her. She froze. He dropped to his haunches and with child-like abandon, he hopped about the room like a…like a frog. The one who had held her laptop giggled, then licked the dusty wall like it was a lollipop.
Thank you, Grace.
Skirting the smoke, tightening her coat around her face, Melinda backed out of the door, closed it behind her and locked the men in, their laughter the only sounds from within.
Now all she needed was a place to hide. Somewhere quiet where she’d remain undiscovered long enough to get a message out. Somehow.
* * * *
Through the windscreen, Pierre stared at the large manor house down the street.
If he’d had any doubts they had the right place, Veilluex and a half-dozen men leaving in a black Escalade confirmed it.
He’d checked their files on known Faucherians.
All but one matched. It hadn’t taken Louis long to identify him as Dutton King.
He’d had an idea where they were headed and he’d shot off a text to Gabriel. A single word. Incoming.
Beside him, Louis checked the security feeds of the surrounding houses while Alois and Elliot, their only backup, scouted the neighborhood.
That it was a trap was a given. It wouldn’t stop them going in after their mate, but they needed to be smart about it.
They wanted to save her, not get her killed.
She was so fragile, too human. As soon as they had her safe, that was going to fucking change.
No more skirting around the subject. They were telling her everything, then they were going to make her theirs.
Pierre hated to admit it, but Louis had been right.
Rather than preventing this scenario, keeping things from Melinda had led to it.
If Melinda’s life wasn’t in danger, he and Louis might well have traded punches.
For real. They hadn’t done that beyond the training mats since they were young pups. “Anything on the feeds?”
“Oui. I count two men in the front garden behind the hedge, and two at the back.” Louis swiveled his laptop, showing him the two in the front. “If they’re armed, they’re being discreet about it. Don’t want the neighbors calling nine-one-one. No telling how many are inside.”
“Less the seven who left earlier. They’ve had to split their forces, too.”
“I guess Gabriel does know what he’s doing, after all.”
Pierre grunted. Maxime trusted Gabriel’s judgment. They should, too, but it still irked him his brother was using their mate like a chess piece, another pawn in the war between them and the Faucherians. “And if Cordelia’s here?”
Louis shook his head. “Not our primary objective.”
No, but if he had the chance to take her out… It’d taken them months to find the witch. If they lost her this time, they might never get this close to her again. With any luck, she’d die of old age.
Louis grabbed his arm. “Pierre, look.”
The image on the screen zoomed in on the house, but Louis wasn’t touching the keyboard.
Louis gripped his arm harder, grinning. “It’s Melinda. It has to be. Clever little cipher.”
He didn’t know if his heart would burst with pride or relief. The picture zeroed in on a window on the second floor.
Pierre pointed at the screen. “Look. On the window. Behind the curtains. What is that? Lipstick?”
Louis took control of the image and zoomed in close. “It’s a message. A single word. Trap. Where the hell did she get a lipstick from?”
“Does it matter?”
A slender hand snaked up above the windowsill and wrote out another message. Run. Oui, it was a trap, but there was not a chance in hell they were running. They’d come for their mate. They weren’t leaving without her.
* * * *
Pierre and Louis were here. She’d got all choked up when she’d hacked into the security cam on the house across the street and spied them sitting in the car.
They’d come? Once again putting their lives on the line for her?
But… Were they here for her, as Cordelia had suggested?
Or were they here for Cordelia? Perhaps it was best if she wasn’t here to find out.
They’d hurt her enough already, and unlike her mother, she wasn’t going to stick around to let them break their promise all over again.
Melinda discarded the lipstick she’d found in the bedroom’s en suite bathroom.
She’d warned them that it was a trap. If they chose to come after Cordelia, that was on them.
She wanted no part in it. What she needed was to get out of here, get Manchu and then disappear for good.
Go somewhere where there were no werewolves and no witches, time traveling or otherwise.
The Greek Isles were sounding more and more appealing.
The clump of boots outside the door stilled her fingers on her keyboard.
It was only a matter of time before someone discovered she was no longer in the attic.
Concealed behind an ornate bed head beneath a window, thick drapes on either side, she was well hidden, but her hiding place wouldn’t stand up to a concerted search effort.
The footsteps passed without entering the room.
She breathed a quiet sigh of relief. With any luck, she could count on the twins being a distraction.
Then she’d make a break for it. While they were busy here, maybe she could sneak back into the penthouse and grab Manchu. And her mother’s teapot.
Melinda switched to another open tab—the house’s alarm system.
Not a closed-circuit system. A bad move on their part, but perfect for her.
She couldn’t turn into a werewolf or fire a gun, but she had her own way of making chaos.
While it was all going to hell in a handbasket inside the house, no one should notice her sneaking out of the back door.
Her finger hovered over her enter key as she listened.
All was quiet. She grinned. Not for long.
She hit enter. The alarm blared, ear-splittingly loud.
For a minute, nothing happened. Then doors slammed, boots pounded on the stairway and shouted commands competing with the whoop-whoop of the alarm echoed through the house.
Melinda flicked to another tab and set off the sprinkler system.
Someone had been safety conscious when they’d renovated this house.
It worked in Melinda’s favor. Water sprayed from the ceiling.
Curses, in French and English, receded down the stairs.
Melinda switched to another tab and checked the black SUV down the street. It was empty. Pierre and Louis were coming in. Tucking her laptop under her coat, she peered out from behind the bedhead. Time to move.