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CHAPTER THREE
W here is he?” Lindsay demanded.
Diego Escobar met Lindsay’s question with grim hardness in his eyes.
They stood on a dark and cold highway north of Las Vegas, stars sharp in the early February sky. While daytime temps could rise into the sixties and sometimes seventies, nights remained in the low forties, especially in this area, where the land started to rise toward high mountains.
When she’d seen Xav’s text, Lindsay had immediately abandoned the club and called Diego, to find that Diego had already realized Xav was missing.
“I have a tracker on him,” Diego had informed Lindsay on the phone. “We keep them on each other during a mission. He never came back to the office tonight, so I reactivated it.”
“Great, then you know where he is.”
Diego’s silence had Lindsay in her car, screeching out onto the road to head toward DX Security’s offices.
“Not exactly,” Diego had finally answered. “I’m texting you a map of his last known location. Meet me there.”
Lindsay’s phone wasn’t state-of-the-art, as Shifters were only allowed older technology, but it was enough for Lindsay to find the place Diego meant.
Though Las Vegas was a teeming city that continued to grow each year, beyond its edges the desert got empty and dark very fast. On a stretch of road past the turnoff to Mount Charleston, Diego waited for Lindsay to pull onto the shoulder behind his SUV.
She’d passed exactly one car on her journey, and it had been heading the other way. Now she and Diego stood alone in the endless darkness, Diego’s flashlight the only illumination. Not that Lindsay needed much light. The night was clear, and stars and the quarter moon were plenty for her cat’s vision.
“I found this here.” Diego held up a round device, no bigger than a button. “We don’t bother using phone apps, because phones are the first things gotten rid of. This was sewn inside his shirt.”
A cold lump formed in Lindsay’s chest. The fact that Diego held the tracker meant someone had ripped it from Xav’s clothes. They’d have thrown away his bulletproof vest as well, if he’d still been wearing it when he was nabbed.
“Who did this?” Lindsay asked, though she knew Diego would have already told her if he’d known.
Diego shook his head and held the device out to Lindsay. “Can you help?”
He meant, could Lindsay pick up a scent and find Xav? She didn’t know—if they’d taken him away in a vehicle at great speed, then no. Scent only revealed so much.
But she’d have a damn good try.
“Let me stash my clothes,” Lindsay said. “Look after my phone for me?”
Diego took it without a word. Lindsay returned to her car and skimmed off her jacket, dress, and heels while Diego politely kept the flashlight trained elsewhere.
She put the car between herself and any chance passing vehicle, dragged in a breath, and sought her inner wildcat.
Lindsay didn’t like shifting too many times in one day, because each attempt grew progressively difficult and more painful. This was for Xav, she reminded herself as she grimaced with her struggle.
After a few agonizing minutes, she was fully cat. Lindsay shook herself out and trotted toward Diego on her padded lynx paws, the cold fading into insignificance.
Diego held out the tracking device, and Lindsay took a long sniff. Not that she needed to learn Xav’s scent—it was already ingrained in her. The Shifter in her knew that walking away from him forever was not an option.
Lindsay tested the air, letting her wildcat senses take over.
There were so many scents on the wind—dust, coyotes on the prowl, the tang of exhaust that lingered on the highway, and strongest of all, Diego and his concern. Lindsay inhaled, analyzed what she smelled, and sorted the odors into neat categories. She was good at it, one of the best scenters in Shiftertown, which was one reason Cassidy counted on her so much.
She couldn’t find Xav’s scent, to her dismay, other than what was on the tracker or clung to Diego from daily contact with his brother.
But she knew Xav was out there.
Which made no sense. Lindsay couldn’t simply follow someone’s presence, as a psychic human might, or the very magical being called Ben, or special and gifted Shifters like Tiger.
Something came to her, though, like a tendril through the darkness, telling her that Xav was that way .
Lindsay gave the tense Diego a follow-me look and set off north across the desert.
* * *
Xav kept his eyes shut, feigning unconsciousness.
His captors had sprung upon him in the darkness of the arena parking lot after Diego and the others had departed, as Xav had walked confidently to his car, the only one left in the lot.
He’d fought, but there’d been three men, strong and competent, who’d quickly divested Xav of weapons. They hadn’t been members of the gang Xav and Diego had just arrested—Xav had never seen them before.
The punch behind his ear had stunned him but not completely knocked him out. Xav had readily folded up, pretending it had. This forced his captors to heave his limp body around and also allowed Xav to listen to them.
They’d ripped his phone from his hand, after he’d been able to send the one-word text to Lindsay, and tossed it into the nearest dumpster. He’d already removed his bulletproof vest as he’d made for his car, and they’d found and ripped the tracker from the hem of his shirt. Next, they’d zip-tied Xav’s ankles and then his wrists behind him and stuffed him into the covered bed of a pickup.
They headed far into the desert, leaving paved highways behind. The air lost the taint of the city and took on the crisp dryness of sparsely vegetated open ground coupled with the dust the pickup raised in its wake.
No one drove a person out this far for any good reason. In the dense, trackless desert, it might be months before a dead body was found—or the remains of one, anyway. Buzzards and coyotes would be glad of the easy meal.
These morbid thoughts didn’t cheer him, but Xav wasn’t about to go down without a fight. Diego would track Xav as far as he possibly could, and he’d recruit help. Xav simply had to stay alive until Diego found him.
The zip ties were tight, but he worked to loosen them as much as he could while he lay alone in the rocking darkness.
The truck was an older model but not too decrepit to navigate the winding dirt road and ungraded washes. After a long time of bumping and jolting, the pickup halted.
From Xav’s calculations—the time he’d counted in his head, plus the relatively slow speed a road like this would need—they’d gone about twenty miles off the highway.
His captors yanked open the truck’s tailgate and hauled Xav out. They dragged him through dense darkness into some kind of building and dropped him on the floor. Two of the guys remained with him, leaving the third outside as a guard.
Light illuminated a cramped space, Xav saw through barely-open eyes. Someone slammed a door, cutting the freezing draft that had blown in with them. Now it was just cold.
Xav slumped against the wall where he’d landed, keeping his hands behind his back. The zip ties on his wrists no longer impeded him, but he’d not move until the time was right.
The large man who crouched over him had thick brown hair and a hard face. He was human, not Shifter, which was to Xav’s advantage. Humans were much easier to lie to.
The man smacked Xav’s cheeks, stinging blows meant to wake him. Xav mumbled and groaned, then gasped when a second man, much thinner than his companion, emptied half a bottle of water into his face.
Xav blinked and shook his head as though he returned to awareness slowly, as someone who’d been out an hour or so would do.
He cracked open his eyes. “Waste of water, dude,” he said to the wiry man.
“Might be all you get,” the big man informed Xav. “You answer me, and maybe we’ll let you walk back to town.”
An electric camp lantern lit the room they occupied, which was very small and made of metal and chipped concrete, its ceiling low. The door, newer than the rest of the building, closed off any sound from outside. Not that there would be much, but they should have heard wind through the dry plants and the yip of distant coyotes.
Xav had a feeling he knew where he was, which was good. Diego would also know this place. They’d explored it more than once as irresponsible adolescents.
At least, Xav had been irresponsible. Diego had been a workaholic since he’d been about three and had only softened with his mating to Cassidy and the birth of his adorable daughter. Xav knew Cassidy was expecting again, though it was early days.
Xav continued to feign grogginess. “Answer what?”
“Where is she?” the big man demanded.
Great. An asshole who wouldn’t speak in clear sentences. He’d expect Xav to know what he was talking about and beat on him if Xav protested that he didn’t.
Xav was very familiar with such bullies, having grown up around them. He’d survived when young by being cute and when older by being charming. Bullies were confused by charm.
“Which she?” Xavier managed a grin. “There are so many out there. Most of them sweet. Can you narrow it down?”
“She works for you.”
DX Security employed a number of women who did all sorts of jobs, from extraction team members to accountants. Xav had the feeling he knew who the guy was talking about, though.
“Emma? She doesn’t really work for us. More like with us, when she feels like it. Are you sure you want to mess with her? She can kick serious ass.”
“Not Shields. The other woman. The Shifter.”
Holy fucking shit, he was talking about Lindsay.
Xav’s heart banged while he tried to keep up his inane grin and pretended befuddlement. Lindsay could also kick serious ass and take out a human man as big as this one without much effort. Xav was always amazed at her strength and quickness, as he had been in the arena earlier.
But there were three of them—no, four. There was another guy in here, one who stayed in the shadows, which Xav didn’t like. The man beyond the lantern light seemed familiar, and Xav busily wracked his brains to remember why.
Four men tracking down Lindsay and subduing her with a tranq dart was not a scenario Xav desired. Why they wanted her, Xav didn’t know.
Not that it mattered. It wasn’t going to happen.
“Shifter?” he asked as though bewildered. “If you mean my sister-in-law, she doesn’t work for us.” Not officially, but these guys didn’t need to know details. “And you don’t want to mess with her either.”
If Lindsay was tough, Cassidy was a force of nature. Cass and Diego had once taken on a rogue Shifter and his band, demolishing his headquarters and rescuing a bunch of his captives and their cubs. Cass had also rescued Xav in that adventure, and he’d come out of it with a broken arm and admiration for Diego’s new mate.
“Not your brother’s bitch,” the large man stated. “The one you’re screwing. Bring her to us.” He held out a cell phone, not Xav’s and probably not his own. A burner, most likely.
Xav didn’t bother to protest that he and Lindsay weren’t screwing. Xav wished they were, but relationships with Shifters were complicated.
Diego’s sister-in-law, Iona, had explained to Xav that if Lindsay didn’t form what was known as the mate bond with him, then no matter how great a time they had together, nothing would be permanent. Regardless of her feelings for Xav, the moment Lindsay mate bonded with another Shifter, she’d be gone. Forever. Not a damn thing Xav could do about it.
That fact had made Xav hesitate. Sure, he could settled for a casual relationship, as he had in the past with other women, but he knew he didn’t want casual with Lindsay.
And so, they kept each other at arm’s length and then argued about it, as they had tonight.
Xav stared at the phone as though he’d never seen one before. “She’s not going to answer if she doesn’t know it’s me. What do you want her for, anyway? Are you thinking to hire a Shifter woman to break heads for you? That can backfire big time, you know.”
The shadowy man in the back finally stepped forward. “Watch him,” he advised the other two. “He’s tricky.”
Xav’s memory abruptly dredged up the guy’s identity, and it did not make him happy.
His name was AC Parkes. Xav and Diego had arrested him for gun running years ago, when they’d been police detectives. After a lengthy trial, in which both Xav and Diego had taken the witness stand multiple times, AC had been carted off to prison.
He’d aged in the last fifteen years, now balding with graying brown hair and a grizzled close-cut beard, but he still bulked with muscle, and his light brown eyes held the same hardness.
AC stood for Andrew Colin, but he’d shot people who called him that. AC had been put away for a long stretch, and Xav had figured that had been that.
Obviously he was out again, and he wanted Lindsay. Nothing was adding up to anything good.
The larger thug balled a hefty fist. “Tell us where she is.”
“Like I’d know.” Xav managed to scowl at him. “If she’s not home, she’s out somewhere. Lindsay goes her own way.”
The statement was the truth. Tonight, after Xav had pissed her off for scaring the shit out of him, Lindsay had stomped away, heading who knew where.
Xav had texted her because she was at the top of his favorites list and the easiest to reach before they’d grabbed his phone from him. He assumed she’d call Diego and pass off the task of rescuing him, if Lindsay paid attention to his plea at all. Whenever she got angry at Xav, she could stay mad for weeks.
The wind must have strengthened outside, because the door rattled in its frame. The door was an add-on, something from a building supply store, with nowhere near the resilience of the rest of the structure. That had been constructed to withstand a nuclear blast.
Xav and Diego had played here when they were kids, having imaginary adventures both on earth and in outer space. This little building had made a decent spaceship. Xav knew it had no back door or any windows. Having no other way in but the front entrance made for good protection but also turned the little building into a trap.
AC gestured to the rangy guy. “Help Rick check the perimeter.”
The wiry guy nodded reluctantly and slipped outside. He was obviously not pleased to be ordered around, but he didn’t disobey.
Wise. AC wasn’t someone who took insubordination lightly.
A cold draft blew in when the rangy man opened the door then cut off when he slammed it.
Xav’s thoughts churned rapidly. His plan to sit tight and wait for Diego had changed when he’d realized AC was his true captor. AC could kill Xav on a whim, leaving his dead body for Diego to find. Xav would have to get out of this himself.
The zip ties on Xav’s wrists no longer restrained him, but he would still have to disentangle himself from them and the ones on his ankles, disarm the big guy, and use him as a shield against AC. A lot to coordinate. Xav had to choose his moment.
The big man continued to hold out the burner phone they wanted Xav to use. “I can’t call anyone with my hands tied,” Xav told him.
He’d have to make his move when the big guy turned him around to cut the zip ties, especially when they realize he’d loosened them. Now or never.
Another gust of wind rattled the door, followed by something that sounded like a boulder banging into it.
“Check that out,” AC told the large man. “Leave the phone.”
The big guy did not want to go out and find out what had happened to his partners, but like his thinner colleague, he hesitated to risk AC’s wrath.
He laid the phone on the dirt floor and hauled himself to his feet, his head nearly touching the ceiling once he straightened all the way. He opened the door, bringing in another cold gust, glanced around into the darkness, and tentatively stepped out.
A blast of wind caught the door and slammed it for him.
Xav was left with AC, who studied him closely. Xav flashed him a grin that held more confidence than he felt.
“You gonna risk untying me? Now that it’s just us?”
“No.” AC crouched out of Xav’s reach and lifted the phone. “What’s her number?”
It wouldn’t help Xav to lie about that so he relayed it. AC tapped the numbers, put the phone on speaker mode, and held it close enough to Xav so he could talk.
After three rings, Lindsay’s chirpy and at the same time sexy voice filled the small space. “This is Lindsay. Leave a message.”
AC swiped the phone off before Xav could speak. “We’ll try again later.”
Xav shrugged. “Whatever.”
Xav had managed to hide his surprise at Lindsay’s voicemail greeting. She didn’t have voicemail—most Shifters still weren’t allowed it. Which meant Lindsay had actually answered and pretended she hadn’t.
Because she hadn’t recognized the number? Or because she was up to something else?
Another muffled bang sounded, this time on the roof.
“Wind really blows around here,” Xav said cheerfully. “Up to gale force sometimes. Dust storms like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I know. I grew up here.” AC removed a pistol from a back holster and pointed it at Xav. “Get out there and see what’s going on.”
“Oh, sure, if the first two landing parties got obliterated, beam a third down into the same unknown situation and see what happens to them.”
AC scowled. “What?”
“Sorry, my niece is really into Star Trek . She’s three and stares at the shows for hours. Old ones, new ones, and everything in between. My sister-in-law says Captain Picard is her babysitter.”
Apparently, AC had never watched TV in his life. His expression didn’t change as he hauled Xav to his feet.
Xav kept his hands tucked behind him. If he tried to overpower AC while AC’s firearm pressed right against Xav’s ribs, Xav would die. He’d wait until he got outside and then use the darkness and whatever was distracting the other guys to get the hell out of there.
AC opened the door and shoved Xav out, stepping back into the shelter of the building, pistol still trained on Xav.
Before Xav had time to look around, someone tackled him, carrying him several feet from the vault before he hit the ground. The large door slammed in AC’s face and a metal bar slid across it, trapping the man inside.
Xav rolled onto his back, tossing away the zip ties and bracing against the heavy, warm object on his chest.
He looked up into the green eyes of a large lynx, who put her furry paw on his chin. She was a beautiful cat, but the look in her eyes told Xav to stay down if he knew what was good for him.
What could Xav do? He gave in.
Good choice, because it kept him out of the way of the horde of men and animals who swarmed up on top of the building and tore off its roof.