A SEAL Wolf Christmas (15 page)

“On the property. Behind the gift shop. There’s a road that skirts around to the back of the shop. The house is set back, surrounded by pine trees that tower over the place.”

Bjornolf ground his teeth. He wanted Jessica to stay put until they arrived, reporting to them if Everton and Anna showed up. On the other hand, she would be safer with one of the wolf-pack families until they could sort the situation out. He didn’t trust that Everton would not harm her if he knew she’d learned what he was up to.

“We could have a wolf pick her up and take her to his home, but it would take longer. Or we could tell her to drive to one of the family’s homes, but she might not feel comfortable doing that. Her father might catch her trying to leave,” Bjornolf said.

“We’re half an hour from there,” Nathan said. “Everton’s got at least ten to fifteen minutes head start on us. But we don’t know if he’s really going to the tree farm or not.”

Nathan called Jessica back. “We’ve got friends on the way, but it will take some time for them to get there.”

“He was angry, Nathan. I’ve never heard him so mad.” Tears choked Jessica’s voice.

“Okay… okay, um…” That was one thing Nathan couldn’t handle. Women’s tears. Worse, he couldn’t think of what to tell her to do to stay safe.

“He said that your aunt and uncle weren’t really your aunt and uncle. He thinks they’re trying to steal me away.”

“What? That’s crazy! You don’t believe that, do you?” Nathan meant about the stealing part. He’d have to explain that they weren’t really related, though.

“He said… he said he caught them sneaking around the property like they were trying to find a way to break into the house. He told me he didn’t call the police on them because he knew they were friends of yours, and I care for you.”

“Do you believe him? That they were trying to break into your house?”

“No. He lied. No one was anywhere near the house but my mother and father and me. Well, and you when they weren’t around.”

Nathan took a settling breath. “Okay. Bjornolf and Anna aren’t dangerous, alright? They’re like my godparents. They—”

“He’s back,” she said in a strangled whisper, sounding scared to death.

“Anna? Is Anna with him? Jessica, answer me!”

“He’s… he’s opening the trunk.” Her words shook.

Nathan barely breathed.

Bjornolf’s heart was racing so hard that Nathan could hear it. Bjornolf couldn’t drive any faster without getting himself and Nathan killed on the road, but he was pushing it as hard as he could. Nathan knew Bjornolf was straining to hear what Jessica was saying. He didn’t want him to hear the truth if Anna was no longer alive.

“Oh my God. He’s carrying something in an old army blanket,” Jessica said.

“Like a body, Jessica?”

“He’s putting the… the… oh God, I see a hand. A woman’s hand. He’s tossing her body into the bucket of the backhoe.”

“Jessica, listen to me.” Nathan’s blood pounded so hard that he could hear it throbbing in his ears. “Jessica, I want you to leave.
Now
.”

“He’s taken the keys to my car. I looked. They’re gone.”

“Open the back door to your house. Remove your clothes and shift into a wolf.” He felt Bjornolf glance in his direction, but he didn’t say anything.

“Jessica,
listen
to
me
. I
know
you’ve done it before.” Nathan suspected she must have shifted a few times since she’d reached puberty. He spoke forcefully, urging her to break through her fear and take care of herself in a wolf way. “We can’t see it because of the clouds, but the moon’s full. You must feel it. You can shift again. I can also. Bjornolf and Anna are just like us. Get
out
of the house. Hide in the woods until help arrives.”

He heard a door squeak open and his heart plunged. Was it her father, returning after disposing of Anna?

“Jessica?”

“All right. All right. Promise me you’ll come for me.” She stifled a sob. “I love you. I have to go,” she whispered.

He listened into the phone. He heard the rustling of clothes, and then the scrambling of wolf claws on the tile floor before the sound of the backhoe’s engine growled in the distance, moving away from the house and into the woods.

Nathan gripped the phone so hard that he was surprised he hadn’t crushed it. He couldn’t look at Bjornolf, couldn’t tell him that they could be too late for Anna. Her first Christmas… and her last. Hot tears filled his eyes.

“Turn wolf as soon as we get there,” Bjornolf suddenly said.

Breaking free of his thoughts, Nathan glanced at him. “What?”

“You’ll run faster. Howl for the pack. One of us needs to remain in human form. I’m trained to take down the enemy as a human. You aren’t. You’ll do better protecting Jessica with your wolf teeth.”

“We go after Anna first, right?” Nathan asked.

He wanted to protect Jessica, but he knew she could hide from her father, while Anna was the one who needed rescuing pronto. He yanked off his sweater, then began tugging at the buttons on his shirt.

“Yeah. But you can’t bite Everton unless we have no other option. Then you find Jessica. Keep her safe until the troops arrive.”

He prayed that Anna wouldn’t need the troops. That he and Bjornolf would save her before it was too late.

Shit.

Anna hated shopping, but as soon as she’d spied her favorite dark chocolate mints—the sole thing that made her take notice of the holidays—she felt a gun poke her ribs.

With a quick twist of her head, she’d looked up into the mottled red face of one very angry Everton.

She couldn’t register why he had targeted her in the drugstore. Why he had a gun. Why he acted like he wanted to kill her.

“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” he growled softly in her ear.

“One of whom?” she asked, honestly not knowing what he meant. Her first thought was that he knew she was a wolf. He couldn’t know
that
unless he was also a
lupus
garou
, but he wasn’t.

Did he think she was DEA?
Hell
. That’s probably what he thought. That she was investigating the other agents’ murders and also was one. Which meant? A death sentence for her. It also had to mean he was involved in the men’s killings or the cover-up, or both.

She wanted to use her martial arts on him. But because she was in such close proximity to two ladies picking out vitamins and four elderly customers looking at other kinds of health remedies, she was certain his gun would go off, and he’d hit somebody. If not her.

She couldn’t risk it.

With a gloved hand shackled to her arm, he pulled her through the store and into a short hallway that housed an employee bathroom. His target was the employees’ back door. She quickly noted the fire exit sign and the statement that opening the door would set off the alarm, which gave her hope. With their enhanced wolf hearing, Bjornolf and Nathan would be alerted.

Apparently the warning sign was just for show because when he opened the door, nothing could be heard except the creaking sound of rusty hinges. She was on her own.

Once she was outside, she went all ninja she-wolf warrior on him for a few seconds. She slammed her fist into the bridge of his nose, using the bottom part of her hand like a hammer, breaking the cartilage. It twisted and made a loud
crunch.
Blood gushed forth, and he howled in pain.

In the next instant, she kneed him in the thigh with a sharp jab, missing the more vital groin area because he jerked to the side when she broke his nose. He cursed and clamped something over her face.

She struggled, kicking his shins, and scratching a gloved hand that held a damp cloth over her nose and mouth. The odor from the cloth was pleasant, nonirritating, and sweet smelling.
Chloroform
, her brain instantly registered. Trying to fight harder, to break loose, she felt herself drifting like a footloose cloud away from all the others bunched together in the sky. Snowflakes collected on her eyelashes as she stared up at the blood gushing from Everton’s crooked nose.

The red blood, his red splotchy face, the black ski cap stretched across his big head, and even the white snowflakes faded to gray, and then to black.

The next thing she was aware of was bouncing around in the trunk of a vehicle. She was wrapped up in a scratchy wool blanket, standard army issue. Every bump in the road bruised her as the roar of the tires rolling over the snowy pavement filled her ears. Icy cold air circulated around the top of her head. The uninsulated space was freezing. Worse, she couldn’t recall how she had gotten into the trunk of a vehicle or why.

Car fumes and the smell of the old musty, moldy blanket and a rubber tire nearly asphyxiated her.

Then bits and pieces of memories floated into her sluggish brain—she was looking for pregnancy tests in the drugstore. No, the dark chocolate thin mints had caught her attention first, and she hadn’t even made it to the aisle where the pregnancy tests were shelved. Then Everton had grabbed her.

For a moment, she focused on an image in her mind’s eye of Nathan and Bjornolf, waiting patiently while she ran into the store. No way was she going to admit to them—if she got out of this mess alive—that she’d been thwarted by a display of her favorite chocolate mints.

Her cell phone vibrated against her hip. She moved her hand to reach her jacket pocket and realized her wrists weren’t bound. Thank God for small miracles! She tried to move her hand to her jacket pocket but couldn’t concentrate enough to get her fingers into it. Ready to scream with frustration, she tried again, missing the pocket over and over.

The phone stopped pulsating.
No!

The vehicle continued driving, and she wondered where Everton intended to finish her off. The tree farm? Somewhere else? Woods abounded in the area so it would be easy to dump her anywhere, and she might be lost forever.

She still kept trying to reach her phone. Why couldn’t her brain make her hand do what it was supposed to do?

Her heart lurched when the annoying buzzing from her phone started up again.

She shoved at her pocket and this time managed to get her hand inside and grasped her phone.
Don’t stop buzzing
. By the time she got her cell out, the call had ended. She barely had time to be frustrated and upset before the phone started vibrating again as if the caller wasn’t quitting until he got through to her. God, she loved whoever it was.

She peered at the caller ID, having difficulty fixing on the name as it blurred.
Hunter
.

“Yeah.” Anna held the phone against her ear, straining to be heard. She thought she sounded as though she’d just woken from a hundred-year nap.

“Anna, thank God. Where are you?” Hunter’s voice was frantic.

“Trunk… car… driving,” Anna said. Her words were slurred and annoyingly took their time to come out of her mouth.

“Anna,” Hunter said, his voice gruff, commanding, as if he was going to tell her to get her act together.

“I’m… here.” She tried to sound as forceful as Hunter, more… in charge of her situation, but her voice was whispery soft without any real body or bite.

“Drugged?” Hunter asked.

“Chlor—form.”

“Okay, listen up. The whole pack is searching for every vehicle that the Everton family and their workers drive.”

“Everton,” she breathed out, trying to reveal his name so they wouldn’t be looking for the wrong man.

“Yeah, Roger Everton. Actually, Everton is just the name of the business. He changed his name to that when his father didn’t leave him anything in his will.”

“Great.” So Everton probably thought she and Bjornolf were DEA and trying to get his adopted daughter away from him by inviting her over to dinner that night. Then they’d interrogate Jessica for all she knew about her dad’s involvement in the murders.

“Bjornolf and Nathan are going to the tree farm. They suspect he might be headed there,” Hunter said.

She didn’t say anything as she wondered how the other men had been killed. She was almost certain Everton had buried them somewhere on the five hundred acres of the tree farm. He probably intended to bury her somewhere nearby, if not in the same spot.

“Anna?” Hunter said.

When she didn’t say anything, Hunter ordered, “Don’t go to sleep! And don’t hang up on me! Keep talking.”

“Tri… angu… lating?” she asked, attempting to shake free of the grogginess, but the harder she tried, the more she felt like she was going to pass out again. Then she realized her mistake. She had a phone with GPS. “Ping… ing?” she got out before Hunter responded.

“You bet. Finn’s on it.”

“Tell… him…to…” A rough bump in the road shook her, and she nearly lost the phone.

“Tell him what, Anna?”

“Put… a… rush…”

“A rush on it. You got that, Finn?”

She could almost see the two men smiling at each other as if they didn’t know that she was in kind of a hurry here. She smiled, too. Then they’d be serious again and so was she.

After that last thought, she blacked out until she felt her body draped over a hard shoulder that dug into her ribs. She heard the impatient footsteps of her kidnapper as he headed somewhere, his boots crunching on the crusted-over snow. She realized then that the army blanket didn’t smell just musty and like wool and the great outdoors, but like the two DEA agents who had died.

That meant her senses were returning little by little. The fog still cloaked her brain in a numbing sort of way, but she was coming to the conclusion that she might have a little fight left in her—if she could remain awake long enough.

Then he tossed her and she felt for a moment like she was sailing through the air. She landed hard on something metal. Despite the blanket padding her head, it banged against the heavy steel, and at impact, a sharp pain shot through her skull. Not enough to knock her out. Instead, it shook her from her drugged stupor a little.

Her heart began skipping beats when she thought she was in a coffin. An engine roared to life, and whatever she was in vibrated. She guessed the vehicle was some kind of earth-moving machine. She wondered if he intended to bury her alive.

Her blood turned to ice. She fumbled under her jacket for her holster. Why hadn’t she thought of the gun before now? Her fingers touched the metal, and she let out a tentative sigh of relief. He hadn’t checked her for weapons.

Thank God the vehicle he was driving was slow moving. She hoped he was going to go a long way before he dumped her body. Maybe she could wake up enough to aim the gun accurately before he attempted to kill her.

She tried to reach her phone to tell Hunter where she was and realized it had been in her hand when she passed out the last time.

Now… it wasn’t.