Dangerous Lover (21 page)

Something chattered in a way so angry it almost made his heart stop—and he was spinning around even before his brain registered the familiar voice of a gray squirrel.

The animal was sitting on Selene's backpack. It flicked its tail rapidly, then chattered at him again.

“What the—” He remembered that Selene had told him Squirrel was her friend Tessa's animal guide. Could this mean something, then? It whispered through his brain that maybe Tessa was trying to tell him something, before he brushed the ridiculous notion aside. Since when did he think like that?

He moved toward the pack, and the squirrel took off. He watched it go, then looked around again, kneeling beside the pack. It had been leaning up against a tree trunk when he'd left Selene. Now it was lying on the ground, five feet from the tree, and he was getting a very bad feeling. “Selene?”

His heart hit his ribs like a sledge-hammer. There was a large dusty boot print on her backpack. Not hers, that print, and not Cory's. Rising slowly, he took a more careful look around. There were marks on the ground, as if from a scuffle. And—hell, was that….?

He knelt near the small round cobblestone that protruded from the earth, and touched the red wetness there. Blood.

Hell. “Selene!” He turned in a circle, searching as his heart rate zoomed from alarmed to frantic in the space of a single beat. “Selene, where are you?”

A screech drew him around, and the pounding beat of powerful wings passed so close to his head, he ducked instinctively. The hawk, a redtail, swooped over him, then sped away into the woods below the treeline, with all the speed and maneuvering of a stealth bomber. She rocked up to one side, then to another, zigged and wove to avoid limbs, and then vanished.

He didn't hesitate long. Only a moment. Just enough time for his mind to register that there was something way beyond “normal” going on here. And then he was heading in the direction the hawk had gone, bending to scoop up both backpacks as he passed. He slung one over each shoulder, and they were heavy. He might have to leave them before long. Depended on how far they had taken her, whoever they were.

And he had no doubt whatsoever that Selene had been taken. He blamed himself. He ached with guilt, and damn near burst with worry as he recalled the fate of Selene's friend. “If those bastards hurt her, I'll fuckin' kill them.” His own anger astounded him, but he didn't take time to question it.

The hawk screeched from somewhere beyond his line of sight, and he adjusted his course. “I'm coming,” he said.

 

Garrett Brand's big, white oversized Ford pickup truck kicked up a cloud of dust when it slid to a stop in the campground's small parking lot. By the time the other vehicles—pickups, SUVs and a Mustang, filled all the spaces around it, there was so much dust one could barely see.

But he didn't need to see. He got out and absently brushed the dirt off the star pinned to his chest as he listened to other doors slamming.

Garrett's baby sister Jessie and her better half, his own deputy, Lash, got out of one pickup, and his brothers Wes and Ben climbed out of another. The SUV doors opened, and more Brands poured out. Elliot and Adam, Luke and cousin Marcus. The women—aside from Jessie, who was the best tracker in the entire state of Texas—had remained at the ranch. Most had wanted to come along, but since the entire Oklahoma branch of the family were even now making their way into Texas, the ranch needed to be manned. Those Okie Brands were going to need a home base, and this could drag on a while.

His siblings and cousin gathered around Garrett, though he towered over all of them, except for Ben, who was nearly his size and ten times as graceful, what with the martial arts and all. Wes stood closest to him, shoulder to shoulder, as always. Black eyes and blacker ponytail gleaming in the morning sun, Wes said, “Aunt Vi and the crew here yet?”

“It'll take them a mite longer. It's further off, but Aunt Vi was working on a charter plane to fly them to the nearest airport.” Garrett glanced at his watch. “Should be here in the space of another hour, though.”

“I should take a look around, see if I can pick up a trail,” Jessie said. She hauled all five foot two inches and hundred-ten pounds of herself away from them, heading along the trail.

Garrett almost called after her to be careful, then bit his lip at a swift look from Lash. Jessie hated being watched out for. And Lash had it down to a science anyway. “Wait up, hon,” he called. “I'm coming with you in case you need muscle as well as brains.”

She rolled her eyes at him, but waited.

Garrett saw cops milling around, several sending curious looks after the two trackers, and likely getting ready to intervene. So he stepped over to them and asked who was in charge. His gang trailed behind him, silent and keeping their distance, but only until they were needed.

He was directed to a white-haired, tired-looking man in a suit a size too big. Garrett, who'd had enough experience with people not to judge them on appearance alone, approached the man, and extended a hand. “Garrett Brand, sheriff up from Quinn. I bent your ear on the phone earlier.”

“Brand.” The man clasped his hand, his grip surprisingly firm, his nod sharp. “Special Agent Chapel, FBI.”

Garrett nodded. The Feds were involved because state lines had been crossed and this had all the earmarks of a hate crime, Selene and her murdered friends being Wiccans and all. People tended to misunderstand that sort of thing around these parts. Hell, he might have been a mite troubled by it, too, if he didn't have a bona fide shaman and a full fledged Buddhist for brothers. They'd pretty much enlightened him about the more ‘outer edge' spiritual systems. Wiccans cast spells, and that scared people. But Wes and Ben insisted they both did pretty much the same sort of thing, just in different ways. The differences were all semantics and details, was all.

“Good meetin' ya.” Garrett looked around. “What's the latest?”

“Campground owner is in ICU and not talking. Her partner says two carloads of men pulled in, she went out to tell them the place was closed, and they up and shot her. Then they headed back toward where the camping areas are.” He pointed as he spoke.

“How's the owner doing? She going to pull through?”

“It's touch and go right now. She's only thirty-two years old for crying out loud.”

Garrett shook his head slowly. “So did the partner say how many men there were?”

“Five, he thought. That red car there, that was theirs. No plates or registration. No insurance cards or inspection stickers. VID number's been filed off. Forensics will find any trace evidence. There has to be something. They had a Jeep, too, took that on into the grounds with 'em.”

“What went on in there?” Garrett asked, looking along the winding trail that disappeared into the woods.

“They went in shooting, demanding to know where Erica Jackson was. Had a photo of her and everything. The campers scattered.”

“Casualties?”

“Three dead, two injured. The rest are all accounted for. Except for Erica Jackson, that is. She was last seen running up the mountain into the forest. One witness says the killers went in the same direction a short time later, on her trail. Everyone else got the hell out of there. We rounded them up and questioned them one by one in the parking lot, then sent 'em into town to find a place to hole up until they can come back for their gear.”

“And my cousin?” Garrett asked. When the special agent just frowned at him, he reminded the man, “The blonde who got here before the cops did?”

“Right. Selene Brand. She was with a feller. Cory something. They spoke to the campground owner's partner, then went on into the woods in search of Erica. They're out there now, far as anyone knows.”

Garrett nodded slowly. “Okay. So we've got five armed killers chasing one preacher's daughter—”

“Preacher's daughter?” The agent looked aghast. “What the hell was a preacher's daughter doing here? This was some kind of Witchcraft festival.”

Garrett held up a hand. “That's hardly relevent here, Special Agent Chapel. I was just nutshelling this thing. We've got five armed killers chasing one unarmed preacher's daughter through the dense forest. We've got a ninety-five pound witchling and an amnesiac fresh out of the hospital chasing the bad guys, and we've got….”

He paused, glanced at the agent with brows raised, waiting for him to fill in the rest. The man nodded. “We've got cops and agents set up in a perimeter covering five square miles and closing slowly. I have a map in here, I'll show you.”

“Suppose they moved farther than that before you locked it up?”

“They couldn't have,” the old man said. But Garrett had a feeling they just might have managed.

“Maybe, just for the hell of it, I'll take my team out a few miles beyond your perimeter, hmm? That way we're not getting in your way or traipsing over your jurisdiction, and we can cover the areas you can't.”

“That's not a bad idea, Brand.” The man looked over at the others who stood waiting, just as more vehicles began to roll in.

Garrett grinned as Vidalia piled out of a pickup big enough to require a stepladder for a woman her size. More shocking was the fact that she was carrying a shotgun so tall its butt-to-muzzle distance was about the height of Vi's shoulder. Double-barrel, ten-gauge, side-by-side. And he didn't have a doubt she knew how to use it. That thing would blow a hole in a man the size of a freaking grapefruit. And that was just on the way
in.

She was a beauty, his Aunt Vi. Curvy and small and fit. Not a line on her face and hair like black satin. Seemed more likely to be the older sister of the bunch than their mamma, but he knew better.

Behind her were her daughters, Maya, Edie, Mel, and Kara. Each of them had a gun and a gun-toting man in tow. The fellow with Kara had been there waiting, and he wore a police uniform.

“All those folks deputies of yours, Sheriff Brand?”

He glanced back at the federal agent, gave him a wink. “Sure are.”

“Look an awful lot like a pack of armed vigilante civilians to me.”

“I'll keep 'em in line. And like I said, we'll work outside your perimeter.” He waved at Vi, cupped a hand and shouted to Wes. “Grab the walkie and call Jessie and Lash back. We've got a better starting point.”

“Will do.”

Aunt Vi and her family marched into the crowd of Texas Brands, and while the sisters and husbands stopped there, as introductions were obviously being exchanged, Aunt Vi kept right on moving through the pack and up to where Garrett stood talking to the agent. She stopped, cradling the gun in her arms, across her chest.

“I'm Vidalia Brand,” she announced, as if the name should mean something to the agent. “And I'm here to find out just where my daughter is, and what you are doing about getting her back here.” One fine, dark eyebrow cocked up, and one foot tapped impatiently as she awaited her answer.

C
ory followed the hawk. It would fly out of sight, and he would head in the direction it had gone until he couldn't tell if he were still on course. And without fail, when he got that far, the hawk would scream in the distance, pulling him back on the mark. He knew it was ridiculous to follow a raptor through the forest like this in hopes it would somehow, magically lead him to Selene. He knew it, and his brain was arguing with him the entire time, and yet he couldn't quite stop himself. There was nothing else to follow; there were no other signs to go by.

At least, not for awhile.

And then there were.

The first was a bracelet, glittering and flashing in the speckled sunlight that filtered down through the canopy. It hung from a tiny limb, right about at eye level. He stopped and took it carefully, and the images flashed in his mind. Selene dancing in the moonlight, around that circle outside the inn, her arms extended over her head, moving sinuously, the bracelet catching and reflecting moonbeams. The memory hit him so hard he damn near doubled over in pain. God, if anything happened to her….

He couldn't think that way. Couldn't bear to think that way, it would cripple him. The thought of some bastard putting his hands on her, hurting her. Hell, he already had, hurt her. That had been her blood back there on the stone. And God only knew what else he'd done.

No, he couldn't let those thoughts paralyze him. But he couldn't quite wipe them from his mind either. And another thought distracted him from the task at hand, too. The realization that he had actually been right to follow the hawk. It had honest to goodness led him in the right direction, for as long as he had needed it to, right up to the spot where Selene had managed to begin leaving signs for him to follow.

He walked on, and in another hundred yards or so, he found another sign. This one, her necklace. Her pentacle, suspended from its chain. Again, she'd left it at eye level for him to find. She was leading him to her.

He took it and draped it around his own neck, wondering why she would leave it behind, when she'd told him what a powerful symbol it was, how protective its powers, and how much stronger she felt when she wore it.

She might need that kind of strength. And yet, she'd risked doing without it, just to give him another sign. Hell.

He kept following. Every scrap of jewelry she'd been wearing showed up, appearing in branches and dangling from twigs every hundred yards or so. And she'd been wearing a lot of jewelry. Even the earrings, three pairs and one single, for a grand total of seven pieces, dangled one by one. A hoop hanging like a Christmas ornament from a pine tree. A wire piercing a thick ash leaf. A post, thrust into the trunk of a white birch like a thumbtack in a cork board.

When the jewelry was gone, he started spotting scraps of fabric, and even, once, a hank of her silvery-blond hair, thick enough to make it visible, and wound around a tiny limb. He winced when he saw that, thinking how much it must have hurt her to yank that much hair out. And damn, he didn't want her doing that any more. Her hair was too beautiful to waste that way.

He picked up the pace, telling himself to move faster, get to her before she ran out of things to leave behind her.

And just then a familiar crackling sound brought him to a grinding halt.

The walkie-talkie rasped again, and this time he shoved the pack off his shoulder and turned it around, and dug into it. He'd forgotten they had the things. Much less left them on. He was surprised the battery had held out.

He got the walkie-talkie, a small, bright yellow one, already tuned to channel 13, and turned up the volume.

“Do you hear me, Falconer?”

That voice. It stroked strings in his mind that played discordant sounds. It was familiar, and yet he couldn't place it. Damn this memory thing!

“Come in, Falconer. We have your little Witch with us, now, so you really have no choice. If you're out there, respond. If you're not, there's really no reason for us to keep her alive any longer.”

His thumb twitched on the button. He raised the walkie to his lips, opened them to reply, and heard another static belch, followed by Selene's voice. “This is stupid, you trying to make me talk to someone who isn't there, just to prove you really have me. I told you, I left that stranger back in Big Falls and haven't seen him since.”

There was a sound that made him clench his jaw so hard his teeth hurt. The sound of a hand on flesh. A slap. A whimper, involuntary and probably as stifled as Selene could manage. The bastard had hit her.

“Fine. I'll talk to him. Give me the damn thing.” There was a spurt, and then another. “Hey, person in the woods who doesn't exist. Or, hell, for that matter, how about sending this out to the entire band of people in the woods who don't exist? God knows the entire Brand clan must be fanning into the forest by now. This is Selene. I'm alive and well, and in the hands of the bad guys. There are five of them, all armed with—Ow!”

The static burped again as the walkie was no doubt yanked away from Selene.

There had been a message there for him. He was sure of it. She'd told him about her family, about how there was a whole branch of Brands in Texas, and how when one was in trouble the entire clan tended to come to their aid. No doubt this so-called siege was big news. And there had been plenty of time for her family to get here by now.

What was she telling him? To wait for them? To go back down, hook up with her kinfolk, and then come on after her again?

Right. No way in hell.

He lifted the walkie to his mouth again, hoping there was help on the way, but not willing to bet Selene's life on it.

“This is Falconer,” he said after keying the mike. “What do you want me to do?”

 

The shack in the woods smelled musty from years of disuse. When the man opened the rickety door and shoved her inside, Selene thought it was probably something that had been used by hunters a half century or so ago. God knew it was too far from any road to make it handy. They'd hiked through the forest for more than eight hours, most of it uphill. She had no idea how this bastard knew his way around the Texas woods so well. He didn't sound like a Texan. Or an Okie, for that matter.

She stumbled through the door at her captor's brutal shove, caught her footing and managed not to fall to her knees, then brushed herself off and took a look around.

The first thing she saw was….

“Erica!” Selene raced across the room to where Erica sat on the floor in the corner, her hands bound behind her back, her feet tied together at the ankles. She had tear stains on her face, and red, puffy eyes.

Selene fell to her knees, and hugged her friend. “It's okay, baby. It's okay. I'm here.” She reached for the rope at Erica's ankles.

“Oh, no you don't. No one said you could untie her.”

She whirled on the man who had brought her here, certain now he was the leader. There were two other men in the cramped cabin, and she'd glimpsed two outside, standing watch. “Her skin is raw. Look how red it is. At least loosen them.”

“No, but I'll make sure yours are even tighter.”

“You don't want to mess with us, mister.”

“Hank.” He nodded, and one of the other two thugs came to her, jerked her around, and, pulling her hands behind her, began binding her wrists.

“Hurt her, Hank. I owe the bitch.”

Selene felt anger rise up from somewhere deep, and in a voice that didn't sound anything like her own, she began muttering what she remembered of an ancient Sumerian curse.

“A-na-am, er-se-tam, na-ra-am, bi-i-it e-er-ru-bu, la-te-erru-bi-i-ma!”

The guy tying her wrists jerked his knot tight and backed away. She turned slowly, glaring at him, her eyes narrow. Taking a single step toward him, she repeated the curse, and thought hard of its meaning in English even as she chanted it, phonetically, in a language no one had heard spoken in at least two thousand years. “By heaven, by lakes, by the river, the house I enter, you shall not enter!”

She put her anger behind her words, felt power rising up through her as her kundalini uncoiled, and writhed up her spine, empowering and igniting every chakra center along the way.

“A-na-am, er-se-tam, na-ra-am—”

The man who'd been tying her backed all the way to the door. Her anger alone should flatten him, she thought. It was burning out of her pores now, and she did nothing to tame it.

“—bi-i-it e-er-ru-bu, la-te-er-ru-bi-i-ma!”
she growled.

He got the door open and stumbled through it.

She turned her attention to the leader now, primed with power, brimming with it, feeling incredible and invincible.
“A-na-am, er-se-tam—”

He clocked her in the jaw. She couldn't block the blow because her hands were tied behind her, and it took her with so much force, her head snapped up and her body slammed down, hard, onto the floor.

“Shut up, Witch.” He jerked his head at the one thug remaining in the room. “Slap some goddamn duct tape over her mouth, and then tie her ankles. Her hero ought to be here pretty soon, and then we can dispense with the bunch of them.”

She willed Cory not to come, willed it with everything in her. She could have wept when she'd heard his voice coming over the static-laced airwaves via the walkie-talkie. She'd been trying to tell him to keep quiet, to wait for her cousins and siblings to arrive. But he'd fallen for their garbage and replied to their threats, asking what they wanted him to do.

The leader had given him directions to this cabin, told him to be here within three hours, giving him ample time, she was sure. And he'd do it, too.

The dumb ass. She loved him.

Thug number two was smacking duct tape over her mouth. The ropes on her wrists were already chafing. He gripped one of her bound arms, just above the elbow, and dragged her to the corner to set her beside Erica. Then he knelt and tied her ankles, using the tape instead of rope this time.

“She'll be quiet,” Erica said. She sounded hoarse, as if she'd been doing a lot of yelling, or maybe she just hadn't been given anything to drink. “You can take the gag off. Please?”

“You shut up, honey, or you'll be gagged right along with her,” the leader said.

Then he turned to glance out the window. “Great. Hank's out there filling the other guys' heads with tales of this voodoo bullshit. Get out there and set 'em straight, Larry.”

The big guy nodded, and strode out the door.

Only the leader remained. He pulled out a rickety chair, and sat down at a rickety table, shaking a yellowed and fray-edged newspaper into a suitable shape, and looking for all the world like the dad from a 1950s sitcom. All he lacked was a pipe and a cup of hot coffee.

When his attention was caught, Selene met Erica's eyes, told her without a word that she was up to something, then turned, millimeter by millimeter, until her back was angled slightly toward Erica's. Erica frowned, then she got it, and it was her turn to turn, ever so quietly, ever so gradually, until her back was angled toward Selene's. Selene stretched out her fingers, and felt just what she'd hoped to feel. The rope around Erica's wrists. They leaned closer, pressing their shoulders together to conceal the work their hands were doing as they stretched their fingers to painful lengths and picked at the knots that held each other captive.

Erica was smart. She leaned her head forward and closed her eyes, pretending to be asleep. Good move. Selene just rested against her, trying to move as little as possible, and stilling her fingers each time the creep glanced their way. When she stilled, Erica did, too, not even needing to open her eyes.

As she worked patiently and tediously at the knots, Selene kept finding Cory, wandering through her mind. She just couldn't seem to stop thinking of him. Sometimes she relived the times they'd been together, the way he'd touched her, the way he'd made her feel, the things he'd whispered while making love to her. Those thoughts made her want to arch her hips and sigh, an urge she barely caught in time to prevent it. Goddess, but she had it bad for that man.

She managed to stop reliving their passion, but it only led to her imagining what the next time might be like—if there was a next time. But this was her imagination, she was in charge. So yes, in her mind, there would be a next time. He would regain his memory and realize there were no obstacles in their way. Kelly was probably an ex-wife, not a current one, and maybe they'd broken up after Cory's brother had made his little note in the date book. That worked. So there would be a next time, and this time, when he drove into her, when he kissed her neck and held her legs up high, and made her entire body sing—this time, he would add the most erotic part she could imagine. He would hold her to him, and stop kissing her just long enough to whisper, “I love you, Selene.”

And damn, that would be perfect. Just freaking perfect.

Erica's finger tapped hers, and Selene blinked out of her fantasy and realized her hands had gone still. She'd been too busy daydreaming to keep picking at the knots. And this was too important, so she got back to it.