Page 14 of Bred Mate (Stalked Mates #2)

She shrugs. “Pay my bail and maybe I did.”

She might not be a shifter, but she’s got animal wiles.

“What did she do?” Gray asks the question again.

The cop sighs and goes back to the computer. “What was your name?”

“Aline Cooper.” She twists a lock of hair nervously.

“Says domestic disturbance.”

“And she got arrested?” Gray asks the question with a slight sense of confusion.

“I was the disturbance,” Aline says, a note of pride in her voice.

“I’ll bail her out,” Gray says. “It’s only money.”

“Thank you, big boy,” she grins.

“Alright,” I say. “Now tell me. Did you see a woman named Ellie? Brown eyes. Long dark hair.”

She shakes her head. “Sorry, boss. There’s no Ellie here.”

“She was picked up same time I was. I am guessing she was put in the cells same as I was.” I turn to the officer. “She has to be here.” But what if she’s not here? It occurs to me that maybe they never bought her here at all. Fuck.

“No record of her,” the cop says. “Sorry.”

“Sorry? That’s all you have to say?”

Aline has already left, because whoever she is, she’s smart. I am starting to get the kind of angry I can’t afford to be under these circumstances.

“You can lay a complaint with the district office,” the officer says.

“A woman is missing!”

“Are you sure? She might be back at home.”

“Her home has a fucking bulldozer through it, you prick.” Gray speaks with an English accent sometimes. And so do I when I’m around him, picking up words here and there from the little prince boy who got raised overseas until he was too old to take an axe to the face.

“Well, maybe she’s at a motel. You got a number you can call her on? I would say that there’s some chance you could file a missing person’s report, but without a full name all I’ve got is an idiot who thinks some woman came in here and probably ran out on him.”

Life was easier when I could just tear someone’s face off.

Gray grabs me by the arm and hauls me out of the station the same way I hauled him in. It’s better outside, but not by much. I feel like I’m abandoning Ellie, like she’s in there even though everybody is saying she’s not.

I turn to my brother.

“I can’t find her.”

Gray laughs.

“What the fuck do you find so funny?”

“You once found me in the middle of the Siberian tundra,” he reminds me. “We are trackers. Hunters. Stalkers. We’re going to find her. Don’t worry.”

I take a breath. He’s right. We are going to find her. I’m worried what is happening to her while I am not with her. I trust her to take care of herself, but we are outnumbered right now and clearly some political influence is being brought to bear.

“I’m going back in.”

Gray follows me in.

The officer looks up, entirely blank again, as if he’s never seen me before.

“We need the cameras. The station has to have them. She was brought in, same as the rest of them. I’d like to see the footage from last night, please.”

“Citizens aren’t entitled to camera footage, I’m sorry.”

“Alright, well. I’ll make a request.”

“And I’ll note that request.”

The officer pulls out some toilet paper roll from under the desk and makes a show of pretending to write on it.

“What the hell is going on? Why don’t you care about a missing woman?”

I hate that I’m even bothering to ask such an obvious question. They’re in on it. The company building the development in the forest has made her disappear. They’ve paid off the police, and nobody is going to acknowledge that she’s missing, let alone look for her.

Gray grabs me by the collar and pulls me out of the station before I can kill the cop with my bare hands.

“They’ve done something to her,” I growl.

“I know,” he says. “I know. But we’ve got you out, and we got the boys out, and now we find her.”

The boys. I almost forgot about the boys. Ellie’s brothers are out by Gray’s car, standing in a little rudderless half circle.

“I can’t find her,” I tell them immediately. “She either didn’t come to the jail with us, or they’re not letting her out. They’ve either moved her, taken her somewhere else… I don’t know.”

“Rainer,” Tim says. “It must have been Rainer. He sent the cops after us and he took Ellie. I bet she’s at his house. We should go there.”

“We can’t just go to that man’s house if he’s behind any of this. It will only get us all arrested again,” Gray says. “We’re going to locate her using some level of care and stealth. Right now, we collect information.”

He turns to the boys. “How did Ellie become the leader of your little pack?”

Tim answers. “It’s not a pack. Not really. It’s just what’s left of our family, and there’s fuck all left now.” The brothers look at one another as if they’re on the verge of spilling a truly shameful secret. Then their lips tighten and they stop talking.

“The more you tell us, the better chance we have of working out what’s going on,” Gray prompts. I let him talk, because my patience is on the verge of boiling over.

“Our mother died when Connor was born,” Tim says.

“And our father. Well. We don’t have the same father.

We have a few fathers. None of them ever stayed around much longer than it took to make us.

I think that’s why Ellie was so obsessed with keeping the forest. It was the one thing that stayed the same.

We’ve tried to stay with her, tried to look after her, but… ”

I understand. They have their own lives that they want to live somewhere outside a fucking swamp. Ellie has been holding them back with the fervor of her need.

“You boys should go on with your lives.”

“We ain’t got lives outside the forest and the river,” Connor says. “We’re no good for anything.”

I look at them. All young, one of them way too fucking young to be messed up in this. And I make a decision.

“I’m sending all of you to New Orleans, and you’re going to stay in my father’s house, and you’re going to get jobs or go to school. Whatever you want to do. I’m going to find your sister, and I’m going to civilize her. No more of this fucking about in rotting woods.”

They look excited. They wouldn’t dare look this happy if Ellie were here to remind them of their place, but I reckon it’s not her job to do that.

It’s about time someone told her hers, I think.

Once she’s pregnant and looking after babies, she’ll understand what’s really important.

She’ll have a real family, and a real place to live.

I’ve just got to find her, and, strangely enough for me, fucking civilize her.