Chapter 17
Mark was flummoxed, and he was not a man to use a word like that.
Baffled, gob-smacked, even discombobulated.
Without his bear forcing a tighter focus, his brain spun off into a thousand different directions at once, none of them useful.
Half of him was spinning into increased circles of panic about Julie.
What was happening to her? Where was she? What could he do to help?
The other half of him was just spinning.
Since adolescence, he’d daily longed for silence from his bear.
Turned out, his bear was the grounded one in his brain.
The grizzly focused on immediate things.
If food and shelter were handled, the grizzly allowed another item on the list. Like finding Julie.
But without the bear constantly limiting what could be dealt with, Mark ended up staring into space, lost in a thousand different thoughts.
Sure, they were full, complete sentences, but they overlapped one another like layers of gauze a mile thick.
He couldn’t function like this. Which is why he felt grateful for the time at the hospital. He did as he was told, followed simple instructions, and fought for control of a brain gone ADD.
It took him three hours. Three terrifying, horrendous, splintered hours.
But thanks to a sympathetic nurse who let him slam back a pot of coffee, he managed to corral his thoughts into some form of order.
First off, he had to get out of the hospital.
Nothing he could do for Julie from here.
So without overthinking it, he just put on his clothes and walked out.
Then he got a cab and went straight to his alpha’s house.
* * *
“What the fuck have you found out?” he demanded as he burst into Carl’s home.
“Nothing more than I said in the last text ten minutes ago,” Carl grumbled. He was sitting at his kitchen table looking haggard. Theo was nearby, looking as anxious as a broad-shouldered teen boy could. And Becca was doing what she always did when she was worried. She baked.
“Tell me again,” Mark growled. And when Carl sent him a furious look, Mark remembered he was talking to his alpha. “Please.”
Carl sighed and shoved his laptop away from him.
“I remembered the Crazy Cat Lady. Her name is Elisabeth Oltheten and she was part of the cougar delegation way back when. But not a primary in it. Just someone who hung around helping. She got food for the cougars, made sure the hotels were set, and finalized transportation.”
“So a secretary?”
“No. She wasn’t allowed in the meetings. She was just around. I’ve reached out to the cats, which is how I got her name, but they don’t know where she is.”
“Or they aren’t telling us.”
Carl acknowledged that with a grimace. “She’s some sort of respected elder.
” He pulled out his phone and started flipping it over and over in his hands.
It was a nervous gesture that Mark understood.
He was having trouble keeping his hands still too.
“Tonya found out that she’s got some relatives in Phoenix, Arizona, but that’s about it. ”
“What does Alan think? Does he remember her?” As the two sons of the Gladwin alpha, both Carl and Alan had been at the peace talks so many years ago.
But it was Carl who’d been the primary negotiator, showing signs of diplomacy well beyond his years.
Alan had been there as secretary while their father had sat as the big bear who was going to keep the peace.
“Don’t know,” Carl growled. “He’s not here.”
Mark jolted, his gaze hopping to the stairway up to Alan’s bedroom. “Why not? Where is he?”
Carl shrugged, his expression dark. Becca was the one who answered, her words tight and low. “He left almost a week ago, probably because of me.”
Mark frowned, trying to rapidly sort through the possibilities in his brain. It didn’t work well because there were too many. So he headed for the coffeepot while he grabbed the first idea that popped into his head. “You two fight?”
“No! We…Well…He might have thought we needed some space.”
Oh. Right. Theo, Becca’s adopted son, was part of the Gladwin Kids Camp (aka shifter school), which meant he slept in the cabins with the other teens. That left Carl and Becca, newly in love, alone here except for the third wheel named Alan. No wonder the guy made himself scarce.
“But it’s not like him to stay gone. Not at a time like this.”
“I know,” grumbled Carl. “He sent me a text days ago saying he’d connected up with a law school friend and wouldn’t be home for a while. Tonya says his phone is turned off.”
Mark swallowed the coffee black, using the bitter taste to focus. What had Carl said? Phone. Off. “Turn it back on.”
“It’s off. It can’t be—”
Mark grabbed Carl’s laptop and started typing fast. With all the caffeine, his fingers flew on the keyboard. Meanwhile, the glare from his alpha had him confessing the truth. “So remember how Tonya put a GPS tracker on your truck ages back? Because you’re the alpha and—”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Who do you think got her that really good tracker? And who do you think hacked your phones? She’s good, but she’s not a real techie.”
Becca sighed, folding her arms across her chest. “Did you hack Carl’s phone?”
Mark shrugged. “I may have installed a couple extra things on it. Like something that makes it look like it’s turned off when it really isn’t.”
Carl stared at his phone like it had grown leper spots. “I can’t believe you—”
Theo came off the couch, his teen eyes wide. “Did you hack Alan’s phone? Can you teach me how?”
Becca gave the boy a stern look, but Mark barely noticed. “It’s on your phone, too,” he said to the boy as he continued to type. “See if you can find it.”
“Awesome!”
It took Mark longer than he liked. This wasn’t his computer and he had to maintain his thoughts for more than a few seconds. But it felt good to be doing something even if it wasn’t disemboweling the bastards who had taken Julie.
“There you go. Here’s where Alan’s phone is.” Then he frowned. What the hell was Alan doing near Twin Lakes? There was nothing up there but vacation rentals. “What do you know about this old law school friend?”
Carl stared at the screen, his expression tightening. “Absolutely nothing. What else can you do with that phone?”
Mark shrugged. “If the cops ask, absolutely nothing. But—”
“I’m your alpha.”
Mark spun the laptop back toward him. “Then tell me what you want.”
Becca put her hand on Carl’s shoulder and Carl took hold of it. It was a casual, intimate gesture that made Mark’s chest tighten. God, he hoped he’d be able to touch Julie again just like that. And a whole lot more.
Meanwhile, Theo piped up. “On TV, they turn on the phone. Make it into a microphone to hear—”
“Don’t know if we’ll hear anything, but I can give it a shot.” It took an embarrassingly long amount of time, but he got it to work. And then he dialed the audio up to max while they all strained to hear the tight, female voice.
Julie.
“He’s unconscious. I don’t care how much you threaten me, I can’t bond with an unconscious bear. I can’t— Hey! Hey! Stop it!” And then she screamed.