Chapter two #2
“And you decided to use the explosion as cover so you could escape the situation without having to worry that anyone would ever come looking for you, including me,” Mike said.
“I get it. I’m furious at you for doing it, but I get it.
How did you survive the explosion, though?
I saw you walk by the window right before the house blew up.
It must have only been a second or two.”
Lark once again felt a stab of pain at the reminder of how she’d left things, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. The past was in the past. All she could do was hope she and Mike could move on from it.
For Kal’s sake.
“Werewolf, remember? I move really fast,” she said.
“I could see the clock on the bomb, so I knew exactly how much time I had. I grabbed the go-bag I always kept packed in case I had to leave quickly and took the cash we kept in the cookie jar in the kitchen. When I saw you get out of your SUV, I almost changed my mind, but then I picked up Kal and ran. I was already ten yards from the back of the house before the bomb went off. I left Dallas and went to my pack, where I hid with Kal, questioning the choices I’d made nearly every day since. ”
Mike didn’t say anything for a long time. Instead, he gazed at her, his face unreadable.
“How are you a werewolf?” he finally asked, the sudden change in topic enough to almost give her whiplash. “I don’t understand what you mean when you say you were born a werewolf, and that your whole family is werewolves, too. That doesn’t make any sense.”
Lark wanted to ask how it was possible Mike didn’t know about this kind of stuff, but she quickly squashed that thought, knowing it was unfair.
She’d been born into her werewolf heritage, sitting with her parents and grandparents around the kitchen table along with her siblings from the time they were kids, playing board games together while they’d told stories about how werewolves came to be.
“You’ve probably noticed I smell different than the werewolves in your pack, right?”
When he nodded, she continued.
“Well, to put it simply, there are two kinds of werewolves. Hereditary werewolves like me, where the trait is passed from parent to child. And hybrid werewolves like you, where external events push the change.”
“External events?” Mike repeated with a soft snort. “That’s a nice way to describe getting shot.”
“You were shot?” she repeated, her heart seizing. The idea of Mike going through something traumatic was one thing, but knowing he’d been shot was another thing completely. “I’m afraid to ask.”
“Then don’t ask,” Mike said flatly. “It’s a long story, and now really isn’t the time for it.”
All Lark could do was nod and stare down at the floor, not sure what else to say.
The silence stretched between them until it became uncomfortable.
It had never been like that when she and Mike were together.
Of course, that was before she’d left him.
That was always a sure way to ruin a good thing.
“How did Roman know where you were?” Mike asked.
The reminder that Roman had their son was all it took to twist Lark’s stomach further into knots.
“I don’t know,” she admitted, lifting her head to look at him.
“At first, I thought Kal had gone to a friend’s house without telling me.
When I realized he wasn’t there, my pack and I immediately searched everywhere for him.
Luckily, someone remembered seeing an unfamiliar black SUV near our house.
We tracked it to a ravine a few miles outside the county, where they’d dumped it, but unfortunately, even with all our resources, we couldn’t get a lead on who’d been driving the vehicle or where they’d taken Kal from there. ”
“How did you figure out Kal was in Dallas then?” Mike asked.
“I didn’t,” Lark admitted, giving him an embarrassed look. “When Kal was taken, my father suggested we needed to look at the most obvious suspect first.”
Mike’s dark eyes went wide at what she’d left unspoken, pain reflected there. “You thought I took him? That I’d somehow figured out you and Kal were alive and tracked you down to Washington State so I could kidnap him? I can’t believe you’d think I’d do something like that.”
“I didn’t want to,” she said softly, hating that she’d hurt him yet again. “But it’s not like I could have blamed you if you had, since that’s what I did. I had to at least assume it was a possibility.”
He clenched his jaw. “So, you came to Dallas to find out for yourself?”
“Not at first,” she admitted. “Dad thought it would be better to send out some scouts first.”
Mike frowned. “Scouts?”
“Werewolves who are used to spending time outside the safety of the pack boundary,” she explained. “A few of them came down here several weeks ago to sniff around and see what they could learn. They ended up having some run-ins with you and some of the other members of your pack.”
“I guess that explains what they were doing here,” Mike said with a nod, as if just realizing something important. “We caught them stalking us a few times, but never realized they were focused on me. I assume they were following me, hoping it would lead them to Kal?”
“That was the idea.” Lark winced. “They were supposed to be discreet and not let you see them. They didn’t realize you and the other guys were werewolves until it was too late.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when they called and told me.
At first, I thought they’d tracked down the wrong Mike Taylor––until they sent me a photo.
After they got over their surprise about you being a werewolf, they quickly figured out you didn’t have Kal. ”
Mike tilted his head a little to the side, regarding her thoughtfully. “If you didn’t think Kal was here, why did you come?”
She reached up to run her hand through her long, dark hair.
“Once I learned you weren’t involved in Kal’s disappearance, I was relieved, but also terrified because then I had no idea where to turn.
I didn’t know who had taken our son, the cops didn’t have any leads, and I didn’t know what to do next. ”
“So, you decided to ask me for help,-” Mike finished.
The way he said the words hurt almost as badly as if she’d spoken them herself.
Lark looked down at the floor again. “I know I don’t have any right to expect anything from you. Not after everything I’ve done. I’d apologize if it wasn’t all so completely unforgivable.”
“Let’s just skip the apologies and the expectations,” Mike said harshly. “This is about finding our son. We’ll worry about everything else after that.”
Part of her hoped Mike would accept her apology, even if she hadn’t actually said the words, and give them a chance to move forward right then. The other part knew that had been expecting too much.
“Did Roman say why he kidnapped Kal?” she asked, moving on from a subject that simply didn’t matter at the moment and looking at Mike again. “Or why he waited so long to approach you after abducting him?”
“I have no idea why he waited so long. As for why he took Kal, he said something about me stealing some kind of flash drive that belongs to him. Roman said he wants it back, or he’ll kill our son.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what flash drive he’s talking about. I certainly never stole one from him.”
Panic gripped Lark. Knowing a man as dangerous as Roman had their son was bad enough, but hearing Mike didn’t know what the man wanted or even how to get it for him was heart-wrenching.
“What are we going to do?” she asked desperately. “How are we going to get Kal back if we don’t have what Roman wants? What happens if he calls to set up an exchange? What are we going to do?”
“First, we calm down,” Mike said firmly, stepping forward to take her hands in his.
They were warm and reassuring. “There’s already a BOLO out on Roman.
Now that we know he’s in town, it shouldn’t be that hard to find him.
He’s not the kind of man who can keep a low profile.
Someone will know where he’s hiding. At the same time, I’ll start working on what this whole flash drive thing is about.
Hopefully, I’ll either find Roman, or the flash drive, before any kind of exchange can be arranged. ”
“What happens if you can’t do either of those things in time?” she whispered, looking up at him, not sure she wanted to know the answer to that question.
“Then my pack and I will go into the exchange with a decoy flash drive and hope for the best. It’s not the best way to do it, but if that’s the only option we have, we’ll make it work.”
Lark nodded, trying not to think about all the things that could go wrong with that plan.
“If Roman calls you to make the exchange, I want to be involved,” she said firmly. “My pack mates and I can help.”
She held her breath, expecting Mike to say no, but he surprised her by nodding.
“You can also help by sending me a picture of our son, so I know what he looks like now, since the last time I saw Kal was when he was a baby.”
Lark fought back tears and nodded, feeling more horrible than ever as she reached for her cell phone to pull up the most recent photos she had of their son.