Sealed with a Hiss: Book Four Supernatural Enforcers Agency (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jessie licked her lips.  Her squirrel groaned pathetically.  Her mouth felt woolly and painful.  In fact, her whole head did.  It was like a hangover mixed with an ice-cream headache.  Her mind was all soft, out of focus, and throbbing.  As she tried to reach for a memory, it became more and more opaque.

“Hmmmm,” she groaned.

What happened?  Did something happen? 
Cranberries
.  She had a vague recollection of something about cranberries and oranges.  She needed to buy cranberries and oranges. 
But why?
  Everything was so darn freaking fuzzy.

She tried opening her eyes, but she couldn’t.  That was weird.  She was blindfolded.  Someone had blindfolded her!  Her squirrel whimpered in alarm, but Jessie tried to remain calm.  Maybe there was a good reason.  Maybe she’d been in an accident, and she’d hurt her eyes.  Maybe all her other senses would make up for it, and she could become a vigilante superhero. 
Boy, she really had to stop watching shows based on comic books
.  And that explanation really wouldn’t also explain why her hands seemed to be tied together. 
Oh god…

Jessie tried to call for help, but only a squeak escaped her scratchy throat.  She stiffened as she heard a door opening and then closing.

“Hello,” she croaked before choking.

No answer.
  She heard footsteps moving around the room and fear crept through her body.  She tried to scent who was there, but her nose was as useless as her mouth.

Whoever it was walked around her.  She shivered as she felt them brush against her arm.  Fingers sifted through her hair.  She was reminded of the times she played Marco Polo with her siblings – without the pool because god knows they weren’t rich - they made do with the sprinklers.  But this wasn’t fun.  This was
disturbing
.

Jessie tensed as she felt fingers pressing against her head.  They were untying the blindfold.  Please be a hospital, she silently begged. 
No, it wasn’t.

She blinked and then gasped as Barry came into focus.

“Director Sayles,” she rasped in bewilderment.

He glowered at her before tracing a finger over the fading bruise on her cheek. 
The bruise he gave her.
  Shifters healed quickly but with their heightened strength they could inflict a lot of damage, and this would be with her for another day at least.  Her skin crawled at his touch.  Her beast growled.

“What… what’s going on?”

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it.  “I suspected that Gerry was banging you back in January, but I had no idea until yesterday that he was in love with you.”

He pointed at his neck, and she could see the angry dark bruises that had blossomed after Gerry attacked him.  “I left my mark on you, and he left his mark on me.”

Jessie flashed back to being in the market, picking up cranberries and then everything went black.  Barry must have done something to her.  Maybe he knocked her out.  She couldn’t remember, but it didn’t matter.  “You kidnapped me because Gerry beat you up?”

Barry scowled and puffed out his huge barrel chest.  “If that fucking vampire hadn’t come along, I’d have probably killed him.  He’s no match for me.  He’s just a fucking snake.”

Her beast snorted.  “That why your face was turning blue?” she taunted.

He raised his hand as if he was about to strike her and she tensed.  The fury on his face softened slightly and twisted into an ugly leer.

“You know I thought you two were just fucking.  Figured you were after promotion.  But you love him too, right?”

Like she was talking to this guy about her mate.
  “He’s not going to let you get away with this… whatever this is.  You might as well just let me go now.” 

He gave her a ‘yeah, right’ look. 
Well, it was worth a try.

“Bit late for that now,” he sneered.

“Why the hell are you doing this?  What did I ever do to you?”

Barry shrugged.  “Nothing.  But Gerry has to be punished.  I should have had his job.”

“You kidnapped me because you got passed over for promotion?”  He was
nuts
.  Her squirrel tried not to hyperventilate, but he was totally nuts, and not paying any attention to what she was saying.

“Do you know why I didn’t get that job?”

“Your personality,” she spat as tears started pooling in her eyes.

“It was because of Maggie.”

He looked at her expectantly. 
Nope, not rising to it
.  She didn’t want to hear his crazy justification for what he was doing to her.  Unfortunately, he just wanted to rant.  An audience didn’t make any difference to him.

“Gerry hounded Maggie.  She was an agent at the SEA and a whorey lemur shifter.  She told him I got her pregnant, said she didn’t want to have sex with me, told him I made her.”  He grunted in disgust.  “Course Gerry being the ass sucking fucktard he is, ran straight to Juliet, bitching and whining about me.  That bitch Maggie only did it to get money out of me and when she got it she backed down.  But Juliet - that fucking dead bitch didn’t trust me after that.  She pushed for Gerry to get the job over me.”

“But I thought it wasn’t her decision,” said Jessie.  Lord, she was getting sucked into his crazy villainous rant.

“It wasn’t.  But the wolf shifter on the council would do anything to get into her four hundred-year-old panties.”  He shuddered.

Okay, new tactic
.  Keep him talking while she thought of a plan.  It was looking less and less likely that he was going to let her go.  “I thought you had a friend on the council.”

“Not as dominant at the wolf,” he sneered.  “Fucking dog can make anyone agree with him.”

“So what, you’re going to kill me just for losing out on a job?”

“He ruined my life!” roared Barry.  “On wrongs swift vengeance waits.”

Jessie goggled at him. 
What the heck was that about?

“My wife found out about the lemur and left me; she took my kids from me.  Now I don’t even have my job – he’s taken everything from me.  So I’m going to take what’s his.  And don’t worry about anyone coming to rescue you, if they watch those security tapes, all they’ll see is you wandering out of the store of your own free will.”

She frowned.  She couldn’t remember anything about that.

“Now, I’m going to enjoy this.”  Barry towered over her and tried to stroke her cheek.  Her beast howled, and she tried to gnaw his hand.  He chuckled at her efforts.  “Who knows after I’m done, I might go after Gerry after all.”

Now she really was terrified.  She was scared for herself, but she had to warn Gerry – she couldn’t let anything happen to him. 
She had to save her mate.

*

Gerry watched the security tape over and over; his unblinking eyes didn’t move from the screen.  The images were a little unfocused, and the tape made a disturbing crackling noise, but he couldn’t stop staring.

VCR, he thought furiously –
who the fuck used a crappy VCR security system now?!
  His snake hadn’t stopped yowling since he realized she was gone.  Sadly, that wasn’t helping Gerry in finding her, but the beast didn’t know what else to do.

The nervous store manager, a nineteen-year-old pimply kid, called Simon tried to touch the old VCR and Gerry snarled at him.

Gunner clamped a huge paw on the poor boy’s shoulder and led him out of the room with promises that they wouldn’t break anything. 
Or at least with promises that they would pay for anything they broke.

“Gerry, maybe you should let the tech guys take a look at that before you break it.”

“There’s something here,” he hissed.  “There’s something on this tape that will tell me where she is.”  He was sure of it.  There had to be.  He couldn’t stand the thought that he might not be able to save her.  The idea of even trying to live without her wasn’t bearable.  He would get her back. 
He was determined he would.

He watched over and over as Jessie walked across the screen.  She picked up some fruit.  She smiled and waved at Simon –
something they would talk about later
– and then someone bumped into her, and she dropped her purse.

He’d found a few other items of Jessie’s under the shelving unit.  There was a hairbrush, her keys with the Chewbacca keychain and five pens – she always kept pens on her.  He almost smiled as he remembered the time he counted all her pens – twelve in total.  Although she assured him at least two had run out of ink. 
She just kept them for sentimental reasons
.

On screen, everything spilled.  The dark clothed, hooded figure who had knocked her stopped and kneeled down to help her scoop everything back in there.  Jessie’s face was caught on camera a few times.  But the hooded person never looked in that direction. 
That couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.

He – it had to be a he judging by the size - pressed something into Jessie’s hand and then they stood up and walked away.

Jessie froze for a few moments, staring at her palm, before standing up and walking out the store, leaving her basket behind and not bothering to pick up the rest of her belongings.

What did he put in her hand?
  Gerry moved closer to the screen.  His eyeballs were practically touching it.

Was it a lipstick?  No, she didn’t wear lipstick, her lips were naturally cherry red.

He watched the tape four more times and, yes!  He was sure, whatever it was he gave her didn’t come from the ground; he took it out of his pocket and passed it to her.  He barely made any movement, but the light caught his watch and the slight glare highlighted the movement.  It wasn’t easy to spot, but it was there.

“What the fuck?” he muttered aloud.

Magic – it had to be
.  Someone had abducted her by magic.

“Gerry,” said Gunner with the wariness of someone approaching a ticking time bomb.  “She just walked out the store.”

“Without her phone.”

“She just lost it.”

“Then where is she now?” roared Gerry.  “She wouldn’t just disappear – she wouldn’t leave me!”  Gunner gave him a sympathetic look, and Gerry fought his python’s urge to beat the bear to death with the VCR.

He gritted his teeth and forced himself to appear calm.  He wasn’t calm, but he could fake it.  “What about cameras on the street?”

“One of the techs got her leaving but then she went into a camera dead zone, and we lost her.”

“Something happened to her, what about scents?”

“Cutter traced her to an alley, but she must have got in a car.”

“Someone took her,” snapped Gerry in the face of Gunner’s doubtful expression.  “Trust me.”

“Okay.  I’ll get her details sent out to other law enforcement to say she’s missing.”

Gerry called Juliet and quickly filled her in.  He could feel the vampire working her way up to arguing, but he didn’t give her the opportunity.  “You need to go on TV and show her picture – someone abducted her, and we need to find her.  Understand?”

For once the vampire didn’t argue, even she was in awe of Gerry’s tone.

Chapter Twenty-Four

No, no, no, she couldn’t allow Gerry to get hurt.  She had to warn him that Barry was totally whack-a-doodle.  Somehow she had to tell Gerry what was happening.  Her squirrel whined as she pulled at her bonds.  Perhaps she could shift…  But it’d take her a few moments, and he’d grab her before she managed it.  She needed to distract him.

On that front, it was lucky that she was trapped with the most volatile rhino shifter on the planet, more likely to explode than every volcano put together.  Goading him into losing his temper and doing something stupid wouldn’t be hard. 
It was harder to stop him from losing it.

“You’re not even half the man Gerry is!” she cried.

Barry smiled almost benignly.  “Yes, you already said that.”  Distractedly, he fiddled with some kind of surgical instruments.  Some kind of incredibly sharp and dangerous looking surgical instruments that most likely played a large part in her immediate future.

Oh lord!
  Her beast urged her to try harder.  This was a male ready to kill her because he was pissed he was passed over for promotion.  The guy obviously had a heck of a lot of buttons, and she needed to start pressing them – p
ronto!

“No wonder you’re so jealous of him,” blurted Jessie.

Barry looked at her, his smile freezing on his face.  “I am not jealous of him.”

Ah, she’d struck a nerve.
  Time to really dig into it.

“Of course, you are, why else would you do this?”

His eyes flashed.  “It’s because he ruined my life.”

Jessie gave him a mocking pout.  “You’re jealous.  He’s younger, smarter, fitter, sexier…”  Her beast could think of dozens of other reasons, but she didn’t have all day.  “Naturally you’re jealous.”

“I am not jealous!” his eyes bulged, and body trembled slightly.

Mt. Barry was readying to erupt
.  He wasn’t going to last much longer, and she had just the thing to hurl him over the edge.

“I’ll bet it’s a penis thing.  Having a small one is nothing to be ashamed of.”  His face turned bright red, and steam virtually poured out of his ears.  “It usually is a penis thing with men your age.  Why do you think so many middle-aged men drive sports cars?  I’ve seen Gerry’s penis, and he is enormous.  Undoubtedly he’s bigger than you.”

“What?!”  Barry roared.  His muscles rippled, and his clothes ripped as he almost burst out of them.  “Bigger than me?  Bigger than me?!  Hah!”  He pulled his pants down and proudly presented himself to her.  “See!  Ha!  As if that skinny snake could compete with this!”

Jessie refrained from throwing up but she didn’t hesitate in kicking him in the nuts with all her might.  His face crumpled in agonizing surprise, and he dropped to the ground with the grace of an anvil.

Asshat moron!
  He should have tied her legs together.  And not tying her up with silver was just asking for trouble.  Just because she was a squirrel didn’t mean she wasn’t dangerous. 
And he was a lot smaller than Gerry!

As Barry writhed on the floor, clutching himself and muttering death threats, she relinquished control and allowed her squirrel to take over.  Bones, muscles, organs shrank, her body grew fur and a bushy tail sprouted.

The squirrel wriggled out of the clothes, far too huge for her diminutive animal form and jumped to the ground, scampering across the room.  Barry made a pathetic grab for her, but she skipped around his hands. 

His howls followed her out of the room and down the corridor as she ran as fast as her tiny legs would let her.  Seeing in her animal form wasn’t easy.  What was otherwise just a normal room to Jessie in her human form, was absolutely enormous when she was a squirrel.  It was hard to judge anything when she was so small.  She seemed to be running through miles of corridors, but it probably wasn’t much.  Perhaps she should stop and shift. 
Although, she wasn’t necessarily quicker in that form.

Where the heck was she?  A nice, juicy exit would be good about now.  There weren’t even any windows. 
Oh, a door, a door, there was a door!
  She hurried toward it but leaped back as a huge man dressed in black ran through it, almost trampling her under his enormous combat boots.  Hmmm, his scent was kind of familiar.  He was running in the direction she had come from, presumably to go and help Barry.  He didn’t even see the tiny animal.

The squirrel looked in the room the male came from.  There was another male dressed in black sat at a table in front of, oh, was that a computer?  Things were looking up.  She could work with a computer.

She darted inside.  The male didn’t even hear her.  She was so small and so light on her feet that people rarely noticed her going anywhere.

There was a computer set up on the table and a few monitors that must be the feeds from security cameras.  The male was looking between them.  The squirrel gave him a tentative sniff. 
Uh oh, cougar shifter.
  The male stilled and his nose wrinkled.

Jessie shifted, quickly.  It was one thing running away from a lumbering rhino, but a cougar would just love to play cat and mouse with her. 
Well, cat and squirrel anyway
.

The male opened his mouth in silent surprise as he saw her, naked and panting in front of him.  His yellow-eyed gaze drifted down to her chest, and for a couple of seconds, he hesitated.  That was all it took for Jessie to grab the stun gun sitting on the table and zap him.  He let out a strangled yelp and collapsed back into the chair.

Her squirrel mentally congratulated her.  She was thankful the stun gun was there.  Luck was finally on her side.

Apart from the whole being kidnapped thing
.  Under no circumstances could that be considered as lucky.

Jessie locked the door and for good measure pushed a file cabinet down in front of it.  She pulled the body of the cougar to the floor and stepped over him to get to his seat.

“Okay computer, show me what you have.  Wi-fi!  Yes, we have wi-fi!”  She fist pumped the air, and her squirrel did a little happy dance.  “Okay, then, this is going to be easy peasy.”

She did an internet search to find out exactly where she was.  That was all she had to do.  She typed into a search engine ‘where am I’ and it told her the location.  Yep, she had an address and everything!  Wasn’t the internet a wonderful thing?  God, she loved computers. 
She wondered how damsels ever got rescued before it.

A tingle of hope shot through her body.  Taunting Barry, kicking him in the unmentionables and stunning the cougar – all that had been about trying to find a way to warn Gerry that he might be in danger.  Fear of her mate - yes, her mate – fear of him being hurt drove her to do all those things she probably never would have been able to do before.  But maybe there was a chance that she could get out of this, too.  Maybe there was a chance she and Gerry could be together.  Her squirrel yipped encouraging, and Jessie giggled with happy excitement.

The door handle shuddered, and her premature celebration was cut short by icy dread.

“Mike, what’s going on in there?” called a deep and pissed-off sounding voice.  The handle rattled.  “Mike!”

Crud, crud, crud.

Jessie opened up her e-mail and fired off an message stating her location and the fact that Barry had kidnapped her to everyone in her address book.   She asked for someone to hurry up and help her and added three exclamation points just to make sure they realized this was a three exclamation points kind of situation.

She just hoped Gerry got the e-mail and hurried.

*

Gunner held up a hand to some curious shoppers and told them to back off.  They weren’t happy, but they did.

Gerry roared and tore apart some packets of cereal.  “Who has her?” he snarled.  “Why have they taken her?” 
Why didn’t they come forward so he could tear them to shreds?

He needed to destroy something.  His beast needed to destroy something.  And since he had no idea who had taken his mate, the cereal was going to have to take the punishment.

A python shifter was throwing a hissy fit, and nobody better get in his way.

Yes, that’s right.  Gerald Sanders, the coldest bastard in the SEA was having a temper tantrum.  He who had merely raised an eyebrow after he found out his brother had stolen two and a half million dollars and fled the country had lost it.  He who had casually confronted his wife over her infidelity while sipping whiskey was on the verge of a meltdown.

It was the fear.
  It was too much for him.  He’d never been afraid of anything in his life.  But he was afraid of losing her, and he didn’t know how to handle it.  It was too much for him, too much to bear.

He stopped and panted.  He trained his black swirling eyes on the polar bear accusingly.  Humph, sneered his snake.  The bear didn’t even believe anything had happened to Jessie.

The pimply store manager bravely tried to step forward and ask Gerry to leave the store, but Gunner shook his head.  He mouthed the words that they would pay for any damage.

“What if she’s hurt?” panted Gerry.  He looked down morosely at the ground littered with cereal.  “What if…”

“Ah, Gerry,” interrupted Gunner, who was irritatingly playing with his phone while Gerry was losing his will to live. 
What the fuck?

“Have you checked your e-mails?”

“Why the fuck would I check my e-mails?” he snapped as his snake flicked his tail in displeasure.  “You think I give a shit about the cafeteria’s fucking specials?!”

Gunner waved his phone.  “Because Jessie just sent me an e-mail.  I bet she sent it to you, too.”

“What?!”

Gunner summarized the e-mail, “It says, help me, I’m in danger, and it gives her location, it’s about ten minutes from here – with lights and sirens.”

Gerry lunged and snatched the phone.  His eyes eagerly ate up every single word.

An e-mail? 
A fucking e-mail for help?
  He’d laugh if he weren’t so damn worried.  She was in danger.  He knew it.  He knew she wouldn’t just leave.  Someone had taken her from him.  Not someone – fucking Barry Sayles!  The rhino was a dead man.

“I’ll drive,” said Gunner.

Gerry called for back up, demanding every SEA tactical team get their asses to Jessie’s location without delay.

At least, she was alive.  He’d spent the last hour fearing the worst.  At least, she was okay.  And the e-mail had to be from her.  His snake warmed as he reread the e-mail.  Fuck, even in panic mode she was adorable. 
Who else would send an e-mail for help and put a sad face emoji at the end of it?