Kaleb (Samuel's Pride Series) (2 page)

When contact with her stopped
, he knew that she still lived but not for long. Samuel could feel her body weakening and was terrified that they’d be too late. He looked over at Jimmy when he cleared his throat.

“What is she?”
It took Samuel a few seconds to think what he’d been asking. And when he started to answer, Jimmy continued. “The reason I ask is because I’ve known you for nearly all your life, and I’ve never seen you get this worked up over a girl before Kennedy.”

“We were children together.
And she’s a human last I saw her. She could…we could communicate with each other, but we never figured out why, nor did we tell anyone. She was just…she was my savior as a child. Probably more than my mom had been. Then one day she simply disappeared. I haven’t thought of her in years.”

“But she knew to contact you when she was in trouble.”
Samuel didn’t know why she’d done it now either, and hoped that he got to ask her. “I don’t like this. Do you know why she’s where she is?”

“Nope. But she said she was dying and wanted me to come and get her body. She said she
didn’t want to rot where she was.” Samuel thought about what else she’d said. “I think she’s being tortured. She said they had stabbed and shot her up.”

The address they were at was surrounded by a tall fence
, the kind that said don’t even try it or you’re dead. Jimmy parked the car, and they both got out and started to undress. They’d be better at getting in as their beasts than humans anyway. By the time they were moving along the property, Kaleb and Stephan had joined them. Each of them paired up and took off around the entire place looking for a way in. After about twenty minutes, Stephan came to find him.

“I’ve taken Jimmy in
, and he’s hunting for any sign of her. We’ve managed to deplete the number of guards, too. Nine so far that we’ve seen. What is this girl? Anyway, I got tired of walking around.” Stephan grinned. “I’ll take you and Kaleb in if you promise not to scratch me up.”

“Can’t make any promises. Besides,” Kaleb started
, “a man like you should know better than to wear a fancy suit to a hunting party. You might mess up that silk shirt of yours.”

Samuel wanted them to simply shut up
, but he knew that tensions were running high and let Stephan take him first. Shifting quickly then dressing, he was running toward the smell of blood when Jimmy told him he’d found the building.

None of them would look at him
when he got there. Samuel knew then that they were too late. When Jimmy walked toward him, he started shaking his head. He didn’t want to hear that she was dead.

“She’s in there
, but…you should be prepared for what you see. I’ve only gotten a small glimpse of her because of the guards they have just inside the building, but if she makes it back with us it’ll be a miracle. She’s…Christ, Samuel, they did things to her that I don’t think I’ve ever seen done to anyone, much less a human.” Jimmy looked back at the building before continuing. “She’s hung from chains, and it will take some work to get her down. Then we’ll need for her to be taken to the hospital to—”

“The clinic.”
Jimmy looked over his shoulder, then back at him before he nodded. He knew who was behind him, knew since he’d gotten there that Stephan had been assigned to hold him back in the event that something went wrong. “I’ll let them know she’s coming and that at all costs they’re to save her.”

“I can’t change her.”
Samuel turned to look at Stephan when he spoke. “I don’t know what she is, but she’s not wholly human, not if she can talk to you like she has. I’ll give her blood to help her along, but I can’t…I don’t know what kind of person she is.”

Samuel understood.
When a vampire or any other supe changed a person to one of them, they were responsible for them. Forever. And if they fucked up, became a rogue or killed anyone even if by accident, the one who changed them was responsible for it as much as they were. Nodding once, Samuel braced himself to enter the room. Kaleb was given the signal, and he tore the door from the wall.

“Mother fuck.”
Samuel had no idea who had said it, but he felt it was an understatement. But before he could go to her, three guards, all of them human, rushed them. In seconds they were dead, and they made their way to his friend.

“What did she do to piss them off this badly?”
Vinnie moved closer to her as he continued to whisper. “They didn’t want her to die quickly, that’s for sure. There are nine…no ten knives in her.”

But the knives weren’t all they’d used on her.
There were seven bullet holes in her legs alone, and her arms had been sliced in long ribbons of open flesh. Her face, what he could see of it, looked as if it had been used as a punching bag. Moving toward her, Samuel said her name. When she lifted her head slightly and then let it drop again, he felt the bile in his belly rise to his throat. He’d been wrong. She’d not been used as a punching bag, but someone had flayed her open and left the skin hanging where it had been cut, making her look like raw meat.

“Samuel.”
He realized that Kaleb had said his name several times when the man hit him. “I need you to back away from her so we can cut her down. She’s going to scream if I don’t miss my bet, and that might bring more shit down on us.”

He couldn’t touch her
, but while he watched, he contacted the clinic with his cell phone to let them know that Stephan was coming in with an emergency. When he was finished, Samuel wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her, tell her it would be all right, but he wasn’t sure. There was no way she’d make it to the next breath, much less to the clinic. When the chains were broken from her wrists by Vinnie, she did scream, but not loud enough to bring anyone running. It had been more of a whimper, and that hurt him more.

Kaleb backed away from her
, but Samuel noticed that he held her hand. He wished that he could hold her as well, but knew that he’d break down if he did. Letting Stephan near her, he watched as the large vampire opened his vein at his wrist and pressed it to her mouth. When his blood spilled from her mouth to trail down her already bloodied cheek, Kaleb leaned to her ear and whispered something to her. After a few more tension-filled seconds, she swallowed.

Before long
, she was breathing better and her heart started to beat just a little quicker. Stephan picked her up and stared long at Kaleb before he turned to Samuel with hopefulness in his eyes that surprised him.

“I’ll take her now.
Have you let them know how bad she is?” Samuel nodded. “Then I’ll meet you back at the clinic. I won’t leave her until you get there. But I wouldn’t dally if I were you.”

They made their way across the compound. None of them spoke
, but they did work together every time they came upon a set of guards. By the time they got to where they’d entered, they noticed that Kaleb was no longer with them. Just as he was going to go and find the big bear, he came toward them.

“Where did you run off to? Didn’t you hear that we had to get to the clinic?”
Kaleb nodded but said nothing. “I was ready to leave your ass behind.”

“I needed to do something.”
When he didn’t explain, Samuel turned from him. Whatever it had been, it wasn’t going to get them to the clinic any sooner, so he let it go.

Chapter 2

“What do you mean there’s no one there? I left two dozen men. Are you telling me that they all left their post?”
Ansell shook his head and sat down at his long dining room table. Lyod hated when he gave him that smile. It was like he was saying that Lyod was so stupid that he didn’t want to startle him into being violent. “What are you saying then?”

“They’re dead. All of them.
As for the girl, she’s gone too, but not dead, just…gone.” Lyod sat down hard. “When I had one of my men go over to finish her off, he called me to tell me that he’d found all their bodies. Some of them looked as if a wild animal had torn at them. The rest?” His shrug was not encouraging.

“The rest were what?”
Fear settled over him gently. He’d been afraid all of his career that he’d be caught at helping Ansell and thought that this was it. The Feds had come in and found his little side job.

“
Mutilated. Most of them had their throats ripped out. Two of them…well, let’s just say that identification of them will be next to impossible. And those were the sixteen we found. The rest were in pieces all over the compound.”

Lyod frowned. Ansell was lying to him.
He had no idea why, but there was no way that his men were killed at close combat.

“What happened to Thornton?
”

Ansell shrugged as he poured himself a cup of tea.
The man had a prissiness about him that drove Lyod nuts. But he paid him well. And for that alone he could put up with him.

“I’m having the video looked at again by an expert. From what I’ve heard and seen, there is nothing there.
I was told that the feed wasn’t shut off so much as it’s just blank.” Picking up his cup with his pinkie finger sticking out like a dick, he sipped at his drink before continuing. “The time stamp is there so it’s running, but there is nothing to indicate what happened. It looks like all the cameras were blacked out. But they were not.”

Lyod tried to think what might have happened
, and where Thornton was. She was not just a small liability but a major one. She could take them down with one word, and he knew it. Before he could say anything else, his cell phone went off…the private one, not his business. Answering it, he waited for the person on the other end to speak first. He nearly fell off his chair when he did.

“Turn on the news. Apparently someone notified them about the shit that went down at the cells.”
Lyod asked if there was a television nearby and was told in the den. As both he and Ansell went to view it, Tyler continued. “They are saying it was an animal attack. But they seem to be holding back that there were guns there as well as blood all over the yard. They’re saying sixteen dead so far. What the fuck happened? Who called them?”

“I did,” Ansell answered when Lyod asked him.
“I thought it best that we put this out there before whoever took her tells. This way we can control the situation and if it leaks without us, then they may say whatever they wish. The animal attack is my idea.”

Lyod doubted that anything would be contained from this if the pictures from the
aerial view were any indication. There were sheets all over the place, it seemed. He was glad now that he’d been able to keep his name off the property lease. He didn’t need this shit coming back to bite him in the ass.

After assuring Tyler, his right
-hand man, that things were going to be all right, he asked him to watch the hospitals and morgues. Tyler told him he’d already started on that when he’d heard that Thor was gone. Lyod sat down across from Ansell to talk. They had to figure out what happened to Thornton, and the sooner the better. Right now only Ansell was involved, but he’d throw Lyod under the bus so fast that he’d never see it coming. Lyod knew that he needed to make this right, and as soon as possible.

“I thought you assured me that no one would come for her.”
Lyod didn’t get the chance to tell him that no one would when he continued. “She’s not going to be able to identify you, but me she will. I’m not at all happy with you at the moment.”

“I don’t blame you. Neither am I. When we left her
, she was as good as dead. They took their time with her, cutting her up so badly it’s doubtful her own mother would know who she was.” Ansell nodded. “And if she is alive or was when she left the cell, she’d be hard pressed to live longer than it would take for them to get her to any hospital.”

“When you find her, living or dead
, I want to know. I owe the girl. She killed five of my best men before we were able to get her under control.” Ansell leaned back in his chair and stared at him. This was it, Lyod thought, he’s going to try and kill me. Sliding his hand into his pocket where his gun was, he put his finger on the trigger and waited. Ansell cleared his throat before he spoke again. “What do you know about the shipment that is coming in on Thursday?”

It took him several seconds to catch up.
“Shipment? You mean the drugs? I’ve made arrangements to have the entire load picked up as soon as it’s brought in. There should be about seventy tons of it already cut and the sixty thousand pounds you wanted cut again. I have my teams already set up to divvy it up to our street teams.”

The long pause had him nervous
, but he didn’t shift on his seat like he wanted to. When Ansell handed him a file, he took it but didn’t open it until Ansell started talking. The pictures on the first page made him look up.

“Do you know that man?”
Lyod told him he didn’t. “He’s the man responsible for my last two shipments coming in short. He works for me. I’d like for you to take care of his family for me.”

“Do you have an address?”
Ansell handed him another sheet of paper. “I’ll have someone get on to this right—”

“No. I’d prefer you did it.
Call it a payment for fucking this up with Thornton. You owe me this much and maybe just a tad more.” Ansell sat back in his chair and smiled. “You wish to argue with me?”

“No.
I’ll get it done.” He had no problem killing for the man. He’d made Lyod as wealthy as he’d wanted to be, and there was more to come. “I’ll have it done by the weekend. You want the man dead as well?”

“Oh no. That won’t be necessary. I would like for him to continue working for me
, and this will give him an incentive to do better. And bring me pictures. I’d like to show them to him whenever he gets it in his head to steal from me again.” Lyod nodded and put the file back on his desk. There was no way he’d be able to leave with it anyway. Looking at the address again, Lyod committed it to his memory. Ansell was shredding that even before he continued with what he wanted done.

“The child can be done quickly if you’d like. But the wife, I want her to suffer in ways that would make what my men did to Thornton look like a walk in the park.
She will be your greatest gift to me.” Lyod nodded. He’d get to play. That’s all he really cared about. “As for the staff, kill them as well. Leave them all where he sees them first thing.”

Lyod decided that he’d leave
for the house first thing in the morning and spend the day playing. He felt his dick get hard at just the thought of what he was going to do to any of the females in the house. A few minutes later, he left the mansion and headed to the office. Things were about to get nasty for the young detective as well.

Thornton had started off on the wrong foot so far as Lyod was concerned.
Her first day on the squad had him wanting to transfer her out of his little house and onto someone else. But she’d made a name for herself with the higher-ups and there was no budging them. The mayor had told him point blank that if he didn’t like her, she’d stay and Lyod would be gone. He’d been playing nice with her since that day three years ago.

“Hey
, boss. Did you see the papers?” Lyod told Simon Dickless that he’d seen the news, too. Dickless wasn’t really his name, but Lyod had never been one to remember anyone when he couldn’t benefit from them. “What do you suppose went down that would have all them armed guys running around? The zoo is saying that they’ve accounted for all their wild animals, too.”

Lyod wished he had someone at the zoo.
It would have been easy to have one of the big cats killed off and laid out there to take the blame. Now someone was going to have him searching for this thing when all he wanted to do was find Thornton. When Dickless said something about Thornton, he asked him to repeat it.

“She’s not in. I’m thinking she might still be
on that stakeout she’d been talking about yesterday. I think she might have a handle on one of the big ten.” The big ten was what their department called the top ten on the FBI’s most wanted. There were so many names on the list that no one believed that any of them would ever be found. But Thornton had managed to find two already. Fucking cunt.

“I don’t suppose you know where it was, do you?”
Dickless shook his head. “Then I suggest that you shut the fuck up and get back to work. When you have something solid on her, tell me. Otherwise, keep your speculations to yourself.”

He was opening the door to his office when Dickless told him the
mayor was in there. Lyod decided that the next time he needed a fall guy, Dickless was going to go down. The mother fucker knew how much he hated the mayor. Hell, even the mayor did. But there was no going back now. He knew he was there.

“What can you tell me about the compound that had two dozen armed men on it?” Not even a
“hi, how the hell are you?” “I want answers as of ten minutes ago. And so you know, I hate finding out this shit from the papers. Damn near had to run over a news reporter when they were camped out on my lawn wanting answers.”

“I know as much as you do.
There were sixteen armed men found on the property in various stages of being torn apart. There wasn’t any other animals there other than the smallish kind that were feeding on them. The call came in around five-thirty from someone who didn’t leave a name.” Lyod sat at his desk and found a file opened to the information that he’d requested from his assistant on his way in, but most of this shit he knew. “The property belongs to someone by the name of Dan Enterprises. They manufactured pallets. But the company went belly-up about five years ago. So far as I know it’s not been sold since then.”

At least that’s what they’d find if they went to find anything
about it in the records downtown. That little bit of work had cost him dearly, too. He looked up when Mayor Reese Horne started cursing.

“Where is Thor?
I want her on this case.” Lyod took great pleasure it telling him that she’d not come in today. “Did you send someone out to her place to see what’s wrong with her?”

“Why would I do that?”
Horne looked at him as if he couldn’t believe him. “I mean, I don’t know what’s she’s doing. For all I know, she’s shacked up with some shit hole and is having sex for the first time in her life.”

He knew he’d gone too far the moment the man sitting in
front of him stood up. There was anger boiling off him, and Lyod would have been a fool to say anything else. Instead he waited.

“Do you have any idea what this woman has done for this department?
Just last month she managed to single-handedly thwart a robbery and made sure that several thousand people were not killed when she discovered that there was a madman in the airport with a bomb. What the fuck have you done?” Before he could tell the man that he’d been there with her, Horne continued. “As of right now, it is your duty—no, your number one priority—to find her and make sure she’s not injured. I want reports from you hourly until you have solid information. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“Yes
, sir.” As soon as Horne left the office, Lyod sat down. “Fucking cunt. She’ll have my job when she gets back.
If
she gets back.”

Lyod did what the mayor demanded of him
, and put it out there that Thornton was missing and sent a car to her home. That took nothing more than sending one of the men out. Apparently they all knew where she lived but him. He fucking hated the woman.

~~~

Samuel was surprised to find Kaleb in the room with Thor, more so to find him sleeping in the chair next to the bed. When he sat up, Samuel asked him how long he’d been there.

“About midnight.
She’s not moved. The nurses said that her blood pressure is rising and her temp has come up a few degrees as well.” Kaleb stood and stretched before continuing. “Did you know that she’s a cop?”

“No. I haven’t heard from her in years.
When we were kids together, she and I used to…I guess protect each other. Fat lot of good it did either of us, but we did have each other when it didn’t seem we had anyone else.” Samuel sat down in the chair that Kaleb vacated. As Kaleb walked to the window, Samuel thought about Kaleb leaving them at the scene. “What did you have to do that was so important the other night when we were leaving with her?”

He didn’t think he was going to answer him.
Kaleb continued to look out the window and not at him. There had always been something so different about his friend. Other than being a grizzly, Samuel realized that he knew very little about his friend and wondered if anyone really did. Kaleb Jonas had always been very quiet and reserved.