Chapter 29 #2
“I’m on my way.” Cedric roared into the back parking lot in a pale blue SUV, and Grayson climbed inside.
“Are you able to get in touch with Amy yet?” Grayson wished he could do that with Kendra.
“No. I smelled chloroform. Did you?”
“Yeah. The bastards, Younger and JE, carried the women out to their van. They deposited them inside and took off to the east.”
Cedric was already tearing down the road after the van, but it was nowhere in sight.
Kendra came to, realizing she was still in a chloroform fog. Younger was driving the van, JE in the front passenger seat. Her wrists were taped, and so were Amy’s. Their ankles were free, and thankfully, the men hadn’t covered their mouths with tape, probably because they had been knocked out.
But luckily, she hadn’t had as much chloroform as Amy, or it would have affected her more. She hoped Amy was okay.
Her heart pounding, Kendra kept her head down, not wanting to alert the men that she was awake. She pushed Amy with her shoulder, trying to wake her. She didn’t move.
Kendra pulled the tape off her wrists using her teeth. She knew the only protection they had was if she turned into her bear. She wanted to untape Amy’s wrists, but she needed to take care of Younger and JE before they realized she was free.
Adrenaline rushing through her, terrified she’d be found out, Kendra carefully, quietly removed her clothes, and then she shifted into her ferocious bear, tore off the headrest for the passenger seat, and bit into JE’s neck.
She wasn’t turning him. She was ending him before he did something worse to her and Amy.
He cried out and went limp. Younger tried to get away from her, accidentally running the van off the country road into the forest, and crashed into a huge boulder.
Airbags punched through the dashboard, breaking the windshield.
Younger wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, and his head collided with what remained of the broken windshield.
His heart wasn’t beating; his breath was silent.
Outside the van, birds chirped and sang to each other, as if the people hadn’t intruded on their world.
Kendra licked Amy’s cheek, trying to wake her. She began to stir. Kendra shifted and dressed. “Hey, Amy, wake up.”
Nearby were a couple of fixer-upper rustic cabins for sale. A seventeen-acre forested haven with Lost Rock Creek running through it, and for sale signs were on the property. She realized she didn’t have her purse or phone.
“Amy, our phones are gone.” Kendra left the van, opened the passenger door, and searched JE’s body for a phone. “I’ve got JE’s phone.” And no way to unlock it. She tried the 911 call, but it didn’t go through.
She tried his finger on the fingerprint ID, but his hands were already cold, and it wouldn’t work.
Amy stirred and groaned. She rubbed her eyes. “Ohmigod, what happened?”
“JE and Younger took us from the restaurant. We were in the bathroom, you had disappeared, and then I was chloroformed. They got rid of our phones so nobody could track us. I can’t unlock JE’s phone.”
“Just call 911,” Amy said. “You don’t need to open his phone.”
“No signal.” Kendra found Younger’s phone, but he didn’t have any signal either. “We’re near a couple of cabins. They’re for sale and empty. Can you telepathically communicate with Cedric?”
“I’ve been trying, but he’s not responding. I’m sure that he’s too far away, a problem with our telepathic communication.” Amy glanced at Younger and JE in the front seats. “Are they…dead?”
Kendra’s fear returned, and she heard a car engine she didn’t recognize. “Yeah, they’re dead. I hear a vehicle coming.”
“Good guys or bad guys?” Amy asked.
“We’re not waiting to find out. Come on. Let’s get out of the van and hide in the forest.”
Amy left the van and joined Kendra, and they moved as quickly as they could into the woods, wearing their long dresses and high heels. “Should we shift?” Amy asked.
“Yeah, let’s do it.” Kendra removed her clothes and hid them among the leaves.
Amy did the same.
At least Kendra knew Amy would keep trying to reach Cedric through their special form of communication, and hopefully she could get a hold of him and tell him where they were.
Amy shifted, and the two of them watched the road to see who drove up. Maybe someone was looking at one of the two cabins for sale? A real estate agent? Just someone visiting the area? Or something more sinister?
Maybe Rowland? Or Grayson and Cedric? But Kendra would have recognized the sound of their SUVs’ engines.
When the vehicle came around the bend, she saw it was a black Suburban and looked new, except for the dirt on the lower half of the car from the country road.
Kendra didn’t have a good feeling about this.
But the driver and the two men who got out of the SUV could be just concerned when they saw the van doors open, the broken windshield, and the two dead men in the front seat. That they were nobody who was sinister.
“Where are the women?” one of the men asked.
Kendra realized that was the mega-bucks guy, Barney Metcalf, who owned the mansion where Younger had stopped to see JE, and Billy had taken a picture of it. So much for Metcalf not being part of this operation.
They were the bad guys.