The Cougar's Pawn (27 page)

“I’ll call you,” Ellery said. “Whenever I figure out where my phone is. I’m going to need to come home and deal with the hospital and such.”

Claude rubbed his chin contemplatively. “You should bring Mason. Just show up for Sunday dinner at your parents’ and see how long it takes for the polite veneer to slip.”

Claude had managed to turn them nasty in less than fifteen minutes, but then, he’d made it a challenge to undo them. He hated the way they treated Gail and had absolutely no chill about calling them on it.

“They might hate him even more than you, and he doesn’t have the bad-influence witch excuse. The out-of-wedlock kid and his lazy shave job would be enough.”

Even thinking about Nick made her miss cuddling him. Taking care of him. She hadn’t known what it meant to take care of someone who wasn’t going to be discharged and go back to their own home until now. At the hospital, she made certain she didn’t get attached. But she had no reason not to get attached to Nick. Or his father, for that matter.

She grinned. “I’ll let you know when it happens so you can get your bets in.” She hooked her arm around John’s, as did Millie, and moments later, they were on the ground at the Foye ranch.

“Shit,” came John’s voice as Ellery’s spotty vision cleared.

It took a moment to understand what she was seeing; there was just too much happening at once.

Two Cougars snarling at a noncorporeal demon.

Mrs. Foye running around frantically with Hannah on her heels, both tossing salt at the violently flagellating thing.

Miles holding a wailing Nick, and shouting at some woman Ellery didn't recognize.

Dogs—no,
coyotes
? Swarming around a fight in the desert. It was a Cougar and …

Ellery squinted, unable to make out the shapes. They were moving too much.

No. That was
her
Cougar and another she didn’t recognize. No holds barred. Teeth and claws and … way too much blood.
Whose?

“Mason!” She started toward the fray, already trying to work up some kind of magic. She didn’t know what kind, just
anything
she could put out to push them apart.

Strong arms cinched her waist and pulled her off the ground.

“Let me go, John!”

“Not John.”

“What?” No, she already knew. The energy wasn’t right. John’s energy was soothing. This guy’s was pompous, sour, and familiar.

Edgar
.

There came a sharp prick at her thigh. A burn emanated from it, numbing her body and stilling her tongue before she could scream.

The fighting Cougars blurred in the distance, and she tried to reach for the one with the red-gold fur but couldn’t lift her arm.

And then she was out.

• • •

Mason was going to kill him, and for once, he didn’t care about repercussions. They all wanted him to act like an alpha? Fine. When he tracked down that opportunistic motherfucker, he was going to force him to shift, break his snout, and flay him like a cow for its leather. Not that the leather would be any good with all the holes Mason planned on putting into him first. Oh, he’d make sure he was so holey that salmon could swim through his carcass.

Edgar had grabbed her.

She’d been running toward Mason. She’d come back just like she’d said, and she’d run toward him. And then, from out of nowhere, was fucking Edgar Sheehan. He’d put his arms around his woman. He didn’t know what he did to her, but she’d gone limp and he’d carried her off. By the time Mason extricated himself from the fight with one of Edgar’s buddies, they were gone.

The opportunistic motherfucker should have been hoping Mason didn’t find him before his cat took over for good. Mason might have shown mercy, but his cougar wasn’t so passive now. His cougar wouldn’t have anything left to lose.

John paced in front of him, hands jammed in his pockets, muttering to himself.

Agatha, who’d known only that something was wrong with Ellery, had popped in and helped John deal with the demon, but she was of no use tracking her. Even the orange cat could provide no hints. Ellery’s familiar had no clue where she’d been taken, only that she wasn’t safe.

“I can’t pinpoint her location if she’s unconscious,” Agatha said. “And even when she’s awake, she needs to put out some psychic road signs for me to read. Put off power, somehow. If she were fighting with magic, I might be able to find her because her magic comes from me and like knows like. But if she’s asleep … ”

Mason pushed some air through clenched teeth.
Asleep or worse.
“Yeah.”

“It was a really peculiar time to challenge you for your alpha position, wasn’t it?” Mom leaned in the doorway between her living room and kitchen. Her forehead was furrowed and T-shirt bloody and ripped from the fight. Mason didn’t know whose blood it was. If it was Mom’s, she certainly wasn’t showing the effects of losing it. “Is it possible that Edgar might have known too much about what was going on out here?”

“I don’t think so,” Sean said. “I think he was just at the right place at the right time. He may have been coming out here for something else, and seeing that Mason had his hands full, decided to make things a little difficult for him. There was no secret that he’d wanted the alpha job for a while and wouldn’t have challenged under normal circumstances. Maybe he thought this would be his way in.”

“By stealing my mate?” Mason asked.

Hank shook his head. “She’s not your mate yet. He might not know that, but he could tell you’re not totally bound.”

Mason buried his face in his hands and forced out a long exhale. Edgar
would
know that. Would smell it on her. She hadn’t had the fucking chance to tell him yes. And now, if he didn’t find her, his countdown would expire and he’d be out of Edgar’s way for good.

Could he find her in time? Less than a couple of weeks, and it didn’t seem like very long, but if she was with Edgar, it was
too
long. An hour was too long. If he touched her … well, he was already dead, but if he touched her, Mason would see to it that every Cougar group in the Southwest turned their backs on Edgar’s family. Cougars may have been independent, but their glarings kept them safe when they needed them. No Cougar would intentionally alienate his group, so Edgar’s risk had not only been desperate, but foolhardy.

Mason leaned back and fixed his stare on Hank. “I can’t just sit here. I’ve got to do something. We need to figure out where he might have taken her and how far they could have gone.”

“I can help with that,” Millie said. “One of the girls in the coven works at the county records office. She could pull up listings of all the property the Sheehans own and that’d give you someplace to start locally, at least.”

“Thanks.”

Millie shuffled away, dragging her sore leg behind her.

He had to respect her for getting mixed up with those Coyotes. She’d run into the fracas swinging a broomstick—no stereotype there, at all—to disperse them. And they’d run off into the desert, either because they’d grown bored in the way Coyotes tended to, or because they didn’t like their odds. She’d gotten nipped in the leg by one dumb dog, though, and he suspected she knew exactly who it was given the way she glowered at it as it turned tail and hauled ass.

“Just give me something to do and I’ll do it,” Miles said quietly. She shifted finally-sleeping Nick to her other shoulder. He’d cried for an hour straight, and not even Mom could calm him. It was obvious who he wanted, and she wasn’t there. “I don’t know why this crap always happens to her. Just unlucky, I guess. Tides need to change in her life.”

Mason had been trying to make that happen for days—since he’d plucked her out of the campground.

“Where might Edgar have gotten access to something that could knock a grown woman out in ten seconds?” Hannah asked. “I saw him grab her, and I saw him push something against her thigh. Had to have been a syringe.”

“His daddy is a large animal vet,” Hank said. “I get the sneaking suspicion that whatever he had in that syringe was meant for one of us. Ellery was just convenient. He probably had more of it, too.”

She let out a long breath. “Give me a phone, and I can call a doctor I know who might be able to make some guesses about when whatever drug it was would wear off. If she’s not being continuously dosed—”

“There might be a window of time where she’s lucid,” Agatha finished. “I may be able to get in touch with her if she’s near an open window or something.”

Mason handed Hannah his phone.

He didn’t care who she called, really. She could call the National Guard on him and his brothers as long as she did it
after
she called her doctor friend—as long as she put Ellery first.

Mom jiggled her keys and tipped her chin at John. “Why don’t you come with me? I need to go see a certain vet and ask him if he’s been keeping good track of his drugs.”

“He frightens you?” John asked.

“No. I don’t trust his wife. If she thinks one of her boys has gotten into trouble, she’ll do her damnedest to cover it up. Want you to keep an eye on her while I shake down the vet.”

“Got it.”

“And I’ll just … ” Mason fiddled the hem of his shirt and scanned who was left in the room.

Miles handed Nick over to him. “Why don’t you let us worry about Ellery? You worry about your Cougar problem.”

“She’s part of the Cougar problem.”

“Right. I understand.” She squeezed her eyes shut and gave her head a slight shake. “Or at least I think I do. I haven’t gotten out much in the past week, but I’ve picked up a few things here and there.”

When she opened her eyes again, she furrowed her brow, her expression set with contemplation. “You know, there’s this doctor in the emergency room Ellery always talks about. She thinks he fancies himself Superman. He tries to be everywhere at once and be the savior in every case, even when other people are perfectly equipped to take on some of the work. He’s good at his job. Kind, eager, energetic. But, every so often, he burns out spectacularly and we don’t see him for a few weeks. Always right beforehand, he gets sloppy. Misdiagnoses easy things. Naps too much on the job. He’s excellent, but inconsistent.”

Mason was certain she had a point in there somewhere, but he was having a hard time grasping it.

“You have all the tools you need to be Superman, if you want,” she said. “Your Kryptonite is that you don’t let the people who can handle the small stuff do their jobs. Your job is being alpha and daddy to that little boy. Go do that. Let us deal with the rest.”

He sighed. “I don’t like the idea that Ellery
is lumped in with
the rest
. She’s one of my topmost priorities.”

“Good. I’m happy. Really, I am. She needs that. But Ellery has taken care of herself for a long time. She can do so for a little while longer while you get your mess together. You wouldn’t want her if she didn’t have a little fight in her, would you?”

He had to admit that he wouldn’t. She’d never be the kind of woman who’d sit still and wait on him if she thought she could do something herself. She was take-charge.

Alpha’s girl, like his mother had been.

He just hoped she knew that, wherever she was. Hoped she didn’t give up.

Ellery came to in pitch darkness.

She was cold. Her thigh throbbed from where it’d been pricked, and her entire body tingled with retreating numbness.

She rolled her head to the side and put her cheek to what felt like a cement floor.

Water dripped percussively somewhere in the room.

A broken pipe?

Thump. Thu-thump.

No. Hollow thuds. Water on metal. A sink, perhaps.

She was so thirsty. Her tongue was dry and cottony, and so thick. She could hardly swallow.

Groaning softly, she pushed herself upright and laid her head left, then right, to loosen the kinks.

What had happened? Everything had happened so fast.

She’d seen Mason fighting, and a demon, and …

“Millie?” she whispered. Had Millie been taken, too?

Thump. Thu-thump
.

“Are you here, Millie?”

No response. No Millie.

She stood, slowly, to allow her circulation to improve in her addled brain.

So dark. So thirsty.

Holding her hands in front of her, she shuffled blindly toward the source of the drips.

One step. Two. Ten little steps until her thighs bumped the cold, hard edge.

She patted around the rim until she found the handles, then nudged on the cold water. She put her mouth right below the tap and drank her fill of the stale stuff.

Ugh. Should have let it run.

Hard water. Tasted like the water at Mason’s, so she was probably still in the area.

She shut off the water, dried her hands on her sweatpants, and revolved, systematically scanning the pitch-black room for even pinpricks of light. There were none.

She’d have to use her hands to see. If there were water in the place, that meant it was intended for human habitation. That meant there had to be an air source, too. And that air source could be a way out.

She eased to the closest wall and pressed her palms to it. Cold and rough, just like the floor. More cement? Perhaps she was in a basement or garage.

She patted her way around and tried to make sense of the things she felt. A bookcase; that was easy. That lower thing that she bumped her hip against had to be a desk. She paused when she reached a column. She felt up and down it, and stopped when her knuckles brushed over something soft. She pressed at the forgiving thing. It bounced back, having the resistance of tight springs. She pressed again, this time with both hands, and scoffed softly at the realization.

It was a mattress. She patted up higher. No,
two
mattresses. Bunk beds.

Curious
.

And around she went. No light switches. No windows. No doors, that she could find.

She clasped her fingers around something hard and round, no thicker than a man’s thumb, but rigid. She skimmed her fingers down it, stopping when a rung stopped her passage. Then across to another vertical bar.

She patted up and then down to be sure.