Force of Nature Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 4) (52 page)

I’m still on Wilson, but I’ll be on—”
She nearly didn’t see the other car. When it pulled into her path, all she had time to do was scream at Phil that she was crashing.

The little car was a small one that was great on gas and everything but fell apart at the slightest bump. She hit it in the hardest part, steering her own big, ugly, older car into his front, hitting the engine compartment going sixty. The car wrapped into hers and went spinning with her into the main four lanes of Main Street. She got several full windshield views of the SUV that had been coming back for her.

The last thing she saw before her head hit something very hard several more times and everything went black was the driver of the SUV that had been chasing her.
Mother fuck.
It was one of her own partners.

Chapter 12

Phil paced the waiting area trying very hard not to snarl at anyone. He’d been there since before Holly had been brought in and he wanted to see her. The short glimpse that he’d gotten of her when they’d wheeled her by him had made him sick. If someone didn’t give him answers soon, he was going to—

“Where is she? My sister, where is she?” He turned to see Austin and Dallas standing at the nurses’ station that he’d been barred from not ten minutes ago. He moved toward the desk, hoping the cop standing there would try and stop him. Again.

“Austin?” The big man turned to him and grabbed him. Phil wasn’t much of a hugger, but he knew that as a wolf, all the Forces were. He let the guy hold him until he either got control of himself or Phil passed out from lack of air.

“Have you seen her yet?” Dallas asked when Austin let him go. “When you called, you said she wasn’t here yet. I’m assuming she’s here now?”

“Yes. They took her up to surgery right away. That person….” Phil pointed to the woman at the desk, who’d told him that without a wedding certificate, he was getting nothing from her. “She told me nothing. I thought about draining her, literally, but I didn’t want Holly to be upset when I had to explain to her what happened.”

He was trying for humor, but knew he’d failed. Dallas looked back at the woman at the desk and then at a man Phil hadn’t seen before. When the guy walked to the desk, Phil figured he was going to try for information.

“Tell us what you know and I’ll decide whether or not you’ll get to see her. As her mate, it’s your responsibility to keep her—”

“You finish that and I’ll whip your bottom, Austin Jackson Force, so help me I will.” Phil closed his eyes when he heard Nancy’s voice. Nothing like a mom to bring a grown man back into line. “You will not threaten him like he’s one of those pups. The man wasn’t in the vehicle with her or she wouldn’t have been as hurt as she is. Now, Phil honey, tell us what you know, please.”

Austin didn’t growl as Phil had heard him do before, but took a step back and glared—probably a smarter way to go on his part. Phil’s own mother would have had him pinned against the wall in a heartbeat if he’d tried anything like a raised brow at her. Trying his best not to laugh at the big alpha, Phil started telling them what he knew.

“She was going to your house. She told me she was going to visit with CJ. I didn’t know why because before she could explain, she asked about a black SUV following her.” He didn’t tell them of the terror she’d felt, nor the fact that she’d been armed. They’d not had a chance to tell them what she actually did for a living yet.

The man came at them and nodded at Phil before looking at Dallas. “She is in surgery to take care of a cut on her head. The doc said that it was to the skull and that she had a little swelling. I don’t get the impression that they think there is any brain damage, but they are concerned. She has some broken ribs and a few other cuts, but I’m thinking that once she shifts, she’ll recover from those. I’m taking over her care as soon as the surgeon will release her to me.”

The guy walked away and Phil looked at Dallas. “One of yours, I take it?” Dallas nodded. “A doctor?”

Again, he nodded, but grinned this time. “He’s not been with us long. Came to Austin just last month and pledged himself. The guy thinks that the pack here will give him all he wants in a pack and decided to stay only after a few days.”

Phil nodded and then had a sudden thought. He started to say something, tell them that they should be more careful, when a nurse or whatever she was came toward them. She was dressed in scrubs and still wore the cap that held her hair. Everyone seemed to freeze, waiting for her to say something.

“Mr. Force?” Both Dallas and Austin nodded and held onto their mother. “Your sister is doing fine. I put twenty-three stitches in the right side of her head. She’s very lucky. The x-rays show that she does have a concussion and a little swelling of the brain around the injury, but she’ll be fine. I do want to keep her a few days to make sure there isn’t anything more than that. You can never tell about head injuries.”

“This is her husband, Phil Campbell. When can we go back and see her?”

Phil swore when this was over he was going to give Nancy that longevity if it was the last thing he did. She’d just saved him hours of red tape by telling the nurse he and Holly were married.

“She’ll be in recovery for a few more hours. As her husband, you’ll be able to go in first, but only for about ten minutes.” She looked at Austin when he growled. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Nothing. She’s my sister and I want to see her as well.” His tone said that he was expecting her to obey him without delay. “Now would be good, I think.”

“No. I said him first. You have a problem with that, Mr. Force, then you can simply leave my hospital.” Dallas barely caught the laugh when the doctor spoke. “Now, as I was saying, ten minutes at a time every hour.”

She went on to give more instructions, but Phil was trying to focus on the three men that had just walked in. Two he didn’t know, but the third made him think that this had gone from something bad to downright fucked up.

“Hello,” the man said as he held out his hand. “My name is Eli Blair. I just found out that Holly Force has been fatally injured in an automobile accident. I’ve come to see what it is that I can do for her family in this time of need.”

His smile said it all as far as Phil was concerned. But before he could tell the man to fuck off, Connor walked up and stepped between him and Blair. Connor had moved so fast that everyone had to step back to give him room.

“And you would be?” The question seemed to be silly when one thought that the stranger had just introduced himself, but Blair seemed to understand Connor’s query.

“I’m Eli Blair, Holly’s boss. She’d been working for me for a while now and I knew she was in town for a few days. Tragic accident, and I’m so sorry for your—”

“Holly’s not dead.” The look on Blair’s face was telling. Connor seemed to know it, too, as he continued. “Not only is she not dead, but she’ll be coming home in a few hours as well.”

Blair glanced over at the two men he’d come in with. Phil would bet his last buck that things were not going to go well for either of these men if this man had anything to say about it.

“I’m sorry. I’d not heard she’d been…. You must be very happy. I’d heard that her injuries were exten—”

“And where did you hear that? There’s been nothing on the news yet. Hell, the accident only just occurred about an hour ago. And I know for a fact that there were no names released. I made sure of that myself.” Phil watched Connor speak and walk the man backwards toward another newcomer. “In fact, I don’t think anyone there was even aware that a female had been hurt much less know her name.”

When Blair bumped into the second man, Phil knew that Blair knew the man. When he put his hands on Blair’s shoulders and turned him toward the door, Blair didn’t fight but went with him. Phil stepped to the two men that had come with Blair, reached for the one closest to him, and wrapped his hand around his throat.

“Tell me,” he whispered, and reached into the man’s mind. The connection was brief, but gave him more information than he’d thought he’d get. Underlings, what this man thought of himself, didn’t usually have this much information and Phil had to wonder why he’d been so well informed. Letting him go with a small compulsion to call him if anything more was said about Holly or this family, the man staggered away.

He turned in time to see the doctor, the wolf that Phil hadn’t gotten a name for, staring at him. Something hot, quick, and startling surged through him and he looked at Austin before he turned back to the wolf. He was gone. He’d simply disappeared.

Phil was sitting next to Holly still mulling over all he’d learned when she opened her eyes. She was staring at him when he looked up at her face and his breath caught. She looked worse awake than she had sleeping. But he leaned in and kissed her mouth gently before speaking to her.

“You’re going to be all right. You have a concussion, but nothing that won’t heal in a few days of rest. You have some—”

“I can read your mind, you know. I know just what happened and that you’re terrified that my eye is full of blood. Please don’t lie to me. We’ll never trust each other if we start off lying.” She closed her eyes and turned her head. “I was so afraid I was going to die.”

“Holly.” When she turned to look at him, he kissed her again. “So was I. You have no idea how terrified I was when I lost your connection.” He took her hand in his. “You’re right, you look like shit, but if you’ll take a bit more of my blood, I’ll be able to help you get better quicker. There are things going on here that require you to be healthy a lot sooner than you can be down.”

She nodded and he felt her attack his mind. He looked around the small curtained off area as he put his wrist to his mouth and bit. As he put his bloodied wrist to her mouth, he tried to gentle her search.

“Slow down, love,” he said as she raided his memories. “You’re going to give yourself a headache if you continue like that.”

When she suckled at his vein, he had to reach down and adjust his cock. Giving her thoughts of what he really wanted to do to her, he managed to distract her from harming them both. He filled his mind, and thus hers, on carnal images of them together in this bed and anywhere else he could think of. He was just thinking about how he could lean in and lick her pussy when she moaned.

“Phil, if you don’t stop right now I’m going to scream a climax out. And I’m reasonably sure I’m in no place to do that in.” He kissed her again before he told her he didn’t care. “How am I?”

He licked his wrist and reached for her hand. It was hold her hand or take her right there on the gurney. When she growled at him, he leaned his forehead to hers and tried to control his inner beast.

“Broken ribs, concussion, and a multitude of bruises in places that I’m sure you will discover soon enough.” He raised his head and looked at her. “I don’t suppose you know who did this, do you?”

She nodded. “His name is Mervin Adams, and yes, before you ask, we worked together. He was driving, but I’m not sure who was with him. I only knew who the driver was because he kept spinning by as I was out of control.” She looked away again and he saw the tears forming in her eyes. “The other man, the one in the car I hit, he died, didn’t he?”

He pulled her face back to his gently. “Yes. He was dead at the scene. You’re not being charged with anything because there were enough witnesses around to see that you’d been hit from behind. There are several families that came forward to say that you’d pulled into a driveway that, by all rights, should have rolled your car. And the fact that you’d picked the only driveway with no one in the yard spoke volumes for how much in control you were at the time. The other driver, the one that hit you, hit a little boy, but he’ll be fine.”

He didn’t add thanks to him being in the emergency room when he’d been brought in, or he too would have died. A little of his blood had given the doctors enough time to save the child from certain death. But she seemed to know it anyway and thanked him.

She dozed off again and he held her until the nurse came in and told him his time was up. She was taking Holly’s blood pressure as he walked out the door, and he smiled when he thought of how high it would have been had she come in earlier, or taken his for that matter. Phil ran into his parents just as he turned down the hall.

“I have the information you asked for, son,” his mom said after a brief kiss to his cheek. “I don’t know a lot about the girl, but I can tell you that the area she grew up in had its share of murders around that time. And they suddenly stopped, as you thought they might have, just after the funeral for this child was held.”

He nodded and opened the large envelope. A picture of the girl, Theresa Elizabeth Sykes, as they knew her name was now, stared back at him. It was from a crude drawing, something that would be seen in an old newspaper clipping.

“In there is a list of the people who went missing for ten years before this girl. There’s an empty casket where she was buried; they claim in the article that someone stole her body.” His dad handed him another sheet of paper. “According to that, Suzanna Reeves ceased to be the day the girl came up missing. I’m assuming, like the Trustees said, that Miss Sykes killed her for whatever reason. Maybe she wasn’t too thrilled about being a vampire at such a young age.”

A local vampire had told the Trustees that his child, Reeves, had died several days later. He’d felt that since she was a rogue no one would miss her; he stated that he certainly wouldn’t.

“She would not listen to reason. Her way of survival was to bite and then not seal the wounds. I am well and truly rid of her.” He was killed three days later when the Trustees decided it was their decision to take out a bad seed and not his. And even though he’d had nothing more to do with her death than to report it, it was his attitude that pissed them off.

“And of the names on this list, are any of them still living?” He looked at his dad when he didn’t answer right away. “What is it? Christ, are you saying all of them are?”

“There are over fifty names there and all but one is still around causing problems. Your girl, that Sykes child, she’s their leader by all accounts. They get together at least once a month to brag about their conquests. Whenever someone has a number of kills more than your girl, she ends up killing them later.” His mom looked over at his dad before she continued. “The one that is dead from that list went to the Trustees when someone in the group decided to attack someone he knew. He ended up dead three days later. That was just over two weeks ago.”