Chapter 46 Abducted #2
A few feet away, Jason dropped to his knees beside Naomi, pressing down on the wound with both hands, but it was useless. The blood wouldn’t stop. Her eyes went glassy, her hands twitching before falling limp at her sides.
Lia screeched from the floor. “Get your hands off me!”
Rick had Lia pinned, straddling her as he yanked her arms behind her back. She thrashed beneath him, but it was over.
Jackson never spared them a glance. His wild eyes raked over me, taking in the blood on my clothes, the tremor in my limbs.
“Fuck. Baby. Are you hurt?” His hands roamed over me, searching for injuries.
“I’m okay,” I tried to reassure him.
“You’re not okay,” he growled. “You’re bleeding.”
I glanced at my shoulder. Blood soaked my sleeve, the pain now a dull, pulsing ache.
“It’s just a graze. A little bandage and I’ll be good as new.”
Jackson didn’t look convinced. He yanked off his shirt and pressed it firmly against the wound, his hands steady even as the bond between us screamed with barely-leashed panic.
A few feet away, Jason’s voice cracked. “Lia, what the fuck were you thinking?”
He paced in front of his sister, fingers tangled in his hair, Naomi’s blood smeared across his shirt and hands. He looked wrecked, like the ground had split open beneath him.
Lia lay on her stomach, Rick straddling her back to keep her pinned. Tears poured down her face, her breath coming in short, ugly gasps.
“I didn’t mean it,” she whimpered. “It was an accident. Naomi and Thomas made me do it.”
I stayed cradled against Jackson’s chest, his arms locked around me like iron. The bullet wound in my shoulder throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Warm blood still seeped through the makeshift bandage.
“It’s over, Lia,” I said.
Her head snapped up. Those wild eyes locked onto mine, and the mask shattered completely.
“This is all your fault!” she screamed, thrashing violently under Rick. “You took him! You ruined everything!”
Jason dropped to his knees beside her. His own tears spilled freely as he struggled to keep his sister still.
“Lia… please. Stop.”
Her struggles slowly weakened. Her body sagged against the concrete, but the hate in her eyes never dimmed.
“Is she on drugs?” Jason muttered, voice breaking. “What the hell is this?”
I watched her, that strange knot of pity and unease twisting tighter in my chest. Had she always been like this, just better at hiding it? How had I not seen it?
Jackson's hand moved slowly over my uninjured arm.
Through the bond, I could feel the storm raging inside him.
Fear for me. Relief that I was alive. Fury so sharp it bordered on murderous.
But underneath all of it was grief. Lia had been his friend.
And he hadn't said a word since she'd started talking.
In the distance, sirens wailed, growing louder until red and blue lights flashed through the warehouse windows.
Officers spilled out of the cruisers, hands on their holsters, shouting commands. Jason lifted both hands immediately.
“Over here! We need medics — now!”
Paramedics rushed in. One team dropped beside Naomi and started CPR. Another headed straight for me. Someone tried to pull me away from Jackson. They failed. The paramedic took one look at Jackson’s face and wisely decided not to argue.
I hissed as they cleaned the wound. The bullet had torn a path through the meat of my upper arm, close to the shoulder. It hurt like hell, but the bone was untouched.
“Through-and-through,” the older paramedic said. “Missed anything vital. You’re lucky.”
“Doesn’t feel lucky,” I muttered.
He snorted. “No, but it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.”
They numbed it, stitched fast, and wrapped both injuries tight. I flexed my fingers when they told me to. It hurt like hell, but everything still moved. Good enough.
A few feet away the other team kept working on Naomi. Chest compressions. The defibrillator. Someone shouted for epinephrine. The effort dragged on longer than it should have before the lead paramedic finally sat back on his heels and shook his head.
“Time of death, 14:47.”
The words landed heavy. No one spoke for a moment.
Across the warehouse, officers cuffed Lia and walked her toward a waiting cruiser. She didn’t fight. She didn’t cry. She just walked with dead eyes, hands locked behind her back.
A detective approached us with a notebook already open. “Detective Reynolds. I don’t need a full statement tonight. Just the basics for now.”
I kept it short. The abduction. The dart. The warehouse. Lia holding the gun. The shot.
He scribbled notes, glanced at my bandages, and nodded.
“We’ll need a formal statement in a couple days. After you’ve had some rest. Don’t leave town.”
As he walked away, I leaned my head against Jackson’s bare shoulder. The adrenaline was finally starting to crash, leaving my limbs heavy and my thoughts slow. Exhaustion rolled in hard behind it, settling deep in my bones.
Rick was on the phone a few feet away, voice low and urgent.
“Lia lost it. She’s under arrest… Naomi’s dead. They’re taking her to the morgue… I know. Handle it.”
I listened for another second and understood. Pack legal. Someone whose job was to keep shifter problems from becoming human problems.
CSI had already started taping everything off. The officers ushered us clear of the scene. Jackson pressed a kiss to my hair, voice rough against my ear.
“We’re going home.”
A few minutes later, we were in Jackson’s SUV. I sat in the passenger seat while Rick and Jason took the back. Jackson drove with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on my thigh, like he needed the constant contact just to stay steady.
The silence lasted less than a minute.
I looked at him. “How did you find me?”
“The bond. One second everything was normal in that meeting. The next I felt your fear. Then… nothing. Just emptiness. Like you were gone. Scared the shit out of me. I ran out so fast I don’t even remember standing up.”
I squeezed his hand on my thigh.
He glanced down at the silver mating bracelet on my wrist. “There is a tracker in it. When the signal started moving fast and you were supposed to be on foot, I knew someone had taken you.”
Rick leaned forward from the back seat. “We happened to be walking by when he tore out of the packhouse. He didn’t even slow down, so we jumped in the car.
The tracker gave us a one-mile radius. Took a bit to narrow it down to the right warehouse.
Jackson was losing his shit. Thank fuck you came back online through the bond when you did. ”
I turned the bracelet slowly on my wrist, the metal cool against my skin.
“You put a tracker in my mating bracelet?”
“Yes.” His voice was unapologetic. “I wasn’t taking chances.”
I should have been annoyed. Instead I just leaned my head back against the seat and let out a tired breath. “Good call.”
The city lights blurred past the window as we drove home. Naomi was dead. Lia was in custody. My shoulder throbbed and exhaustion weighed heavily on me.
But one thought refused to leave.
Lia said Thomas made her do it.