Chapter 2
The attack came startlingly quick. So fast, Cecelia wasn’t even sure it was happening at first. She suddenly felt his large hands on her back and she was shoved down, hard.
Even then she was more confused than alarmed. She’d face-planted straight into the seat. There was no dog, no cage, nothing but an empty back seat. Her nose smashed flat and her breath was cut off as she tried to inhale leather.
Her mind started to catch up then. She needed to breathe, and her nose hurt.
She cried out and reared backward, but he was damned fast, gripping her arms and wrenching them behind her.
She felt hard thin plastic drawing her wrists tight together.
A zip tie? And while she was still processing that, he wrapped one meaty arm around her knees and restrained her ankles.
What the hell? One second she was looking for a dog, and the next, she was hog-tied and he was shoving her legs into the backseat of his car.
Damn it, fight!
She screamed.
She screamed like her life depended on it. And she wrenched her body every which way, but it was too late. She was crunched with her knees at her nose as he shut the car door.
Oh shit! Oh shitshitshit!
She kicked back as hard as she could, but the door was solid. She tried to scramble upright while her shoulders screamed, and she tried to wriggle her hands free.
It was useless. And then he was in the front seat, turning the ignition, and slamming the car into gear as he pulled out of the parking lot. Didn’t anyone hear her? She was lying sideways on the seat and screaming with every breath.
“Help! Help! Help!”
He didn’t even flinch. Damn it, why hadn’t she noticed he was right by the far exit? It was late at night. No one heard her bellowing except him.
Fine. She’d bring her feet around and kick the back of his seat. Anything to disrupt him. And maybe she could get her hands on the door handle.
“Help!” Her words were a constant scream. Damn it! She kicked hard against the back of his seat.
He grunted, but that was it. He just kept driving. No time to waste. They were traveling farther and farther from the hospital.
“Help! Help! Help!”
It was awkward as hell, but she twisted on the seat. Pushed with her knees and…there! She fingered the car door handle and pulled. And pulled again. And pulled.
Nothing.
And now she was out of breath, gasping as she pulled in air.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice was calm and filled with an apology that might have touched her if she weren’t being abducted.
She hauled on the door handle again. Hell. The child protection lock was on. No way was she getting out from the backseat. Fine, she’d just climb into the front. Or maybe she’d head-butt him hard enough to knock him unconscious. Something. Anything.
She fell backward as he accelerated onto the freeway.
“I’ve got information on the Detroit Flu.”
She saw the headlights of another car. She was flat on her back on the seat, but at the sight of the headlights, she put extra force into screaming. If she could just get her feet around, maybe she could break the passenger window.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, his voice cutting in whenever she had to draw breath. “I’ve got data. Information.”
“Help! Help!”
“You have to calm down.”
Her wrists were slick and painful. Blood? Sweat? She didn’t know and didn’t care. She drew back and shoved her feet outward as hard as she could against the window.
Like hitting a brick wall.
She did it again. Nothing.
“We’re trying to do the right thing,” he said. “You’re the CDC. You need this data.”
She kicked her feet again. WTF? Why wouldn’t the window break?
“I just want to give you the data. Then I’ll take you back to the hospital.”
She wasn’t screaming anymore. All her concentration was on slamming her feet into the window, which would not break. Her heart was pounding, and she couldn’t catch her breath. Why the hell wouldn’t the damn window break?
“What’s your email? I’ll email you the data.”
She didn’t want to listen to him. She didn’t want to hear his world-weary tone or his false promises that he wouldn’t hurt her.
Except, of course she did. She wasn’t escaping.
And head-butting him while they were on the freeway going sixty was a quick way to suicide.
But most of all, he kept saying weird things.
Stuff that she didn’t expect to come from an abductor.
Who kidnapped a woman then asked to send data to her email?
She stared at him, her breath coming in short, gasping pants through her burning throat. She couldn’t possibly have heard him correctly. But when she stared at him, he was holding up his phone.
“Your email address, Dr. Lu. Spell it for Siri, please.”
She frowned. He had a message app open with the microphone turned on.
“You want my email address?”
“I’ll text it to my boss. He’ll email you the data. They sent it to me, but I can’t email and drive.”
“Abduction is a felony. It carries the death penalty.”
“No, it doesn’t. And Michigan abolished the death penalty in 1846. One of the few good things about this state.”
Great. Her abductor had a wry sense of humor.
“Life in prison sucks, too,” she said. “Most people say it’s worse.”
“Nah. Death is always worse.” His gaze met hers in the rearview mirror. “At least it is for me. I can survive just about anything.”
She believed it. Something about the flatness in his expression had her believing he’d seen a lot worse things than she could even imagine. And while she was processing that, he set his phone down.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Dr. Lu. I swear. But we’re not exactly normal people here, so we didn’t know how to get you this information. People are dying. We’re trying to help.”
“So you abduct the nearest doctor?”
He huffed out his breath. “I went to the CDC. I was looking for Dr. Hayes.”
“He bailed. To DC.”
He snorted. “Figures. So yeah, I grabbed you. You were awake and right there. But only to make you believe and to give you the data. Now will you please spell your email address for Siri?”
God, he seemed so reasonable. But why the hell hadn’t he just asked for her email address at the hospital? “You didn’t have to throw me into your car for my email address.”
“You have to see the truth before you believe the data. Please?” He tilted the phone at her. And damn it, it wasn’t like she could kick out his car window and leap out. She’d tried. And that’s when she realized why.
“Bulletproof windows?”
“Yes.”
Hell. Who ran around Detroit with bulletproof windows? Gangsters, drug lords, anyone who lived near 8 Mile assuming they could afford it. She swallowed. Just whom was she dealing with?
“We’re trying to help, Dr. Lu.”
She nodded and pitched her voice to his phone, spelling out her email address so that it appeared in full on the screen.
“Thank you,” he said as he hit send. “They’ll send you all the data they’ve got.”
She blew out a breath. “Okay. So take me back—”
“Well, here’s the thing. You’re not going to believe any of it until you see for yourself. Like really see.”
She sighed, reluctantly starting to believe his tale.
Obviously, he was involved in crime of some sort.
He’d zip tied her with professional speed and had bulletproof windows.
And since the CDC had already figured out that whatever was causing the Detroit Flu was most likely man-made, it stood to reason that a criminal element might have information they didn’t.
“Data is data,” she said. “We don’t have to see anything but the numbers. If it’s repeatable then we don’t care where it came from.”
She watched his mouth tighten. He didn’t say anything, just waited her out.
In fact, it was the exact expression she used when her aunts started talking to her about how to catch a husband.
She pressed her lips together, assumed a fake expression of interest, and waited until they finished with their nonsense.
“Do you even know how real science works? If it’s a real lead, you just have to send it to us. We’ll look at it.”
“Because you always open files from strange email addresses.”
Okay, so he had a point. “Fine. You have my email address. Take me back to the hospital and I’ll look at it.”
“You have to see first. Otherwise, you won’t believe.”
She snorted. “Let me guess. Weird body changes. Hair. Claws, even dental. Look, we’ve seen the disfigurements—”
“Shape-shifters, Dr. Lu. The Detroit Flu activates shifter DNA. Full shifters go adrenaline-rush crazy. Normal people just feel sick and hallucinate for a bit. But those with only some shifter DNA? They become different. Hybrids, if they don’t die from the stress.”
Ah hell, she’d been kidnapped by a crazy person. Then she snorted. Of course, he was crazy. He was a kidnapper!
“Werewolves. Bear-shifters. Cat-shifters. All of them exist. And yeah, I know you don’t believe me, which is why you have to see. But I can’t shift while driving my car so I’m taking you somewhere safe to show you.”
No sense arguing. She needed to focus only on the true details in his crazy reality. “Where? Where is safe?”
“The Griz have a central—”
His words were cut off as his phone vibrated. He grunted under his breath, then frowned. She saw it distinctly as he cut her a hard look.
“Make a sound—any sound—and I’ll knock you unconscious. Got it?”
His expression was fierce, and she immediately nodded. Let the crazy person think that she was cooperating, but was she really going to be quiet? When the person on the other end of the line might be able to save her?
She was still undecided because, honestly, she absolutely believed he could knock her out. Quickly, quietly, and probably while driving at sixty miles an hour. But maybe that was a chance she was willing to take. Until his very first word as he pressed the phone to his ear.
“Mother?”
Damn it. Any woman who had raised a crazy kidnapper was not going to help the kidnappee.
She grimaced and adjusted her position on the seat.
He was just pulling off the freeway. Maybe she could use his distraction—and his slower speed—to engineer some kind of escape.
Though one look at the neighborhood had her gut tightening in fear.
This did not look like a neighborhood where she should be wandering around alone after dark. Or in full daylight.
Meanwhile, Hank—if that was his real name—growled low and deep in his throat. It was a dark animal sound, and it made goose bumps rise on her skin.
“Get out. Get out now!”
Cecilia’s gaze shot to him. He wasn’t looking at her but at the road as he abruptly spun the car around in a hard U-turn.
She saw his hand grip the steering wheel and his jaw clenched in his large, square face.
It was the side with the scar on it, and she watched the jagged edge of it pulse under the sporadic streetlights.
“Fine. Then bar the door.” Pause. “With a table! Anything. Hell, get everything! I’m coming.”
And he was coming. He ran straight through the stop sign and back up onto the freeway.
Before he’d been going a respectable sixty miles per hour, heading toward seventy.
Now he blew past that and she watched in horror as he topped eighty.
She was sure he’d have gone faster, but he was already taking the off ramp.
She was up now and braced against the car door so she could read the signs.
She wasn’t a native of the city, but even she knew this was not a good area.
And yet, he was torpedoing down the streets like it was safe.
Or perhaps like he was the baddest person around.
And then he started talking. It took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her because his tone was so casual.
And even then, she had to replay his words in her head just to make sure she’d heard him correctly.
“So you’re going to get that demonstration differently, Dr. Lu.
I’ve got a situation here, and it’s dangerous.
We’re going to Mother’s house. Not my mother, but a woman who takes in shifter strays.
We all look out for her because being a shifter kid is hard, and she’s been there for us no matter the breed.
” He sighed. “I know you don’t believe any of this, but one of her kids is in trouble and I’m going to help.
I’ll undo your restraints, but I promise you, if you run, you’ll find a whole lot worse trouble outside. ”
Cecilia nodded and tried to smile with genuine warmth. It probably came out more like humor-the-crazy-person because he rolled his eyes. Weird that, given he was speeding down the street straight through red lights and everything.
“I’m not crazy. This is real.”
“I believe you,” she lied.
“And it’s dangerous.”
“Right.” Her gaze cut to the apocalyptic neighborhood. “Dangerous.”
“Yeah. And it has werewolves, too.”
Of course, it did. Which is why she resolved to run as far and as fast as she could the second he stopped the car.