Wild Love (Wilding Pack Wolves 2) - New Adult Paranormal Romance (17 page)

No time to decide.

She twisted between the two front bucket seats, reaching for the black bag. The angle was terrible, and her hands were still bound by the tape, but she managed to work the zipper open. Fumbling through it, her fingers quickly found her phone. She willed her shaking hands to calm enough to text Noah.
Cassidy Motel.
That was all she had time for. Then she wiped the screen and threw the phone back in the bag, terrified the bomber would return to find her in the middle of texting. When she was sure he was still inside, she fished for the drive next. Amazingly, her fingers found its smooth surface, and she pulled it free of the tangle of wires, electronic boxes, tools and other things filling the bag. There was no time to throw the drive from the car—not that she could even get the window down without the keys—so she leaned forward and stashed it under the seat instead. Maybe hiding it would be enough to make him think he’d lost it. She shoved the drive back as far as she could, giving it an extra kick with the heel of her foot. Just as she looked up, hair flying wild around her, the bomber came striding out of the motel office, anger blazing on his face when he saw her.

She shrank against the passenger door as he yanked open the driver’s side and climbed in.

He glared at the tattered tape dangling from the steering wheel. “You’re a slippery little thing, aren’t you?”

Her stomach heaved again with the way his eyes raked over her body.

He threw the car into reverse, pulled away from the office, then drove around to the back of the motel, out of sight of the road, the office, and just about anyone who might notice he had a kidnapped woman in his car. He stopped at the very last room at the end of a long, two-story line of them, parking near the forested lot that backed up to the motel. Her heart pounded as he grabbed the black bag and got out of the car.

Run,
her mind was screaming, but she waited until he got to her side of the car and started to open her door. Then she lifted her legs and kicked hard against the door, banging it against him and sending him tumbling back. She struggled to get out of the car with her hands bound, and she didn’t get a dozen feet before his arms clamped hard around her. She struggled and tried to kick him, but he quickly had her back pinned against him, his hand clasped around her throat, choking her.

“Keep struggling, and I’ll kill you right here,” he hissed in her ear.

Black spots swam in front of her eyes.

She stopped struggling.

The pressure eased on her throat enough that she could get air. She gasped, heaving air into her lungs as he hauled her toward the room. His hand was still on her throat, holding her tight, as he fussed with the lock, kicked the door open, and pulled her inside.

She thought her heart might just quit then.

Or maybe she simply wished it would.

He dragged her to the bed in the middle of the room. It had a headboard with posts. He slung the black bag on the bed and pulled out the tape again. Breath was still heaving in and out of her, but she had no will to fight him anymore. He bound one wrist to the post on one side, then made some kind of rope with the tape and tied her other wrist to the far post. She was strung between them, barely able to move, hung up like he was crucifying her on the bed.

God,
she prayed whatever he had in mind would end fast. But the way he licked his lips when he surveyed his work made tears leak out of the corners of her eyes.

Explosives were sounding better all the time.

And maybe she should have jumped out of the car.

At least there was the possibility he wouldn’t find the drive she’d hidden under the seat. Maybe. She hoped her death would count for something—saving that many shifters, that many innocent people, almost made whatever she would have to endure before the end worthwhile.

She watched the bomber with a dull sort of awareness as he fished materials out of his bag. He was whistling happily as he lined items up on the dresser opposite the bed where she was trussed up like a sacrificial lamb. It wasn’t until he started taping something to the bedposts next to her bound wrists that she recognized the gray bricks and shiny control boxes for what they were—
bombs.
Just like the ones he had set up on the servers. They weren’t active yet—or at least the timers weren’t counting down—but he wasn’t finished, either. Two more were placed on either side of the window and two more next to the door. With the amount of explosives he had deployed around the room, Emily wouldn’t be surprised if it took down the entire motel… or at least the far end of the building.

The last item to come out of the bag was a laptop, which he set on the dresser and tapped furiously at for a long while. She was afraid he would notice the missing drive, but he didn’t seem to. She couldn’t understand what he was doing at all. Pulling up data on his laptop for some bizarre reason right in the middle of this elaborate setup to kill her? But as the minutes dragged on, she just didn’t care. Her mind was finally shutting down, refusing to try to figure out the evil that was this person, this hater, this awful being who only knew how to hurt and destroy.

Some vague time later, when the bomber finally stepped away from the laptop, she could see the red recording light was lit up.

Oh God.
The terror that had been glossed over and numbed out by her defeat surged back up again. She’d seen the videos the Wolf Hunter had made before. There was the original doxing, the exposing of all the names and addresses of the shifters in the River and Wilding packs. Then the awful dismemberment videos. Then the livestreaming of a shifter’s almost-death.

What in God’s name was he planning for her? And was this the Wolf Hunter himself?

She watched with wide eyes as he pulled a mask from the depths of the bag and slipped it over his face. When he turned to her, she saw the mask was a plain face, just an average person… some guy whose average-guy-looks were stamped into plastic. Not at all like the previous Wolf Hunter masks. But it obscured the bomber’s real face, and that was all he was after. Because apparently he was planning to walk out of the motel room before it—and her—blew into tiny bits.

“Emily Jones,” he intoned like the judge at her execution, “your work has allowed hundreds, if not thousands, of shifters to pollute our gene pool, seducing our women to spread their vile seed.”

“You’re
insane,”
she spat at him. “WildLove brought people together, consenting adults. It was all about
love,
not hate. Not like
you.”

He chuckled darkly. “WildLove was about depraved sexual acts, nothing more. By making it easy for shifters to prey on human weakness, you’re guilty of crimes against humankind. And now you’re going to pay for it.”

He was speaking to the audience on the video he was recording.

“And livestreaming my death isn’t depraved?” She shoved all her loathing into one, intense glare.

The bomber edged forward, careful not to block the camera’s view of her strung up on the bed. “Not livestream. Delayed broadcast. It’s caching with a delay, but don’t worry, it’ll broadcast as soon as we’re done here.”

Sourness climbed the back of her throat. “You won’t get away with this.”

He laughed again, then strode to the front of the bed, standing next to her and staring down through the small eyeholes of his mask. He grabbed hold of her chin, tipping it up so she was forced to look at him. “You’ll pay for your crimes, but first we’re going to have a little fun, Emily. A little lesson to those human women who think they want to share a bed with a shifter.” Then he released her chin to caress her cheek.

She wrenched her face away, but her heart was about to pound out of her chest, which was heaving again in a desperate attempt to get air.
No, no, no… he was going to…
she flashed back to her uncle, five years ago, grunting and sweating on top of her, forcing her legs apart, hurting her… The idea of enduring that again before the bomber finally blew her up, all before an audience…

Her stomach heaved again, but it nothing came up. She willed herself to get sick all over him and the bed, but her whole body was locking down, closing up, folding in on itself.

The bomber grabbed her cheek and forced her to look his way, but her eyes were already glazed over. Her mind was fleeing, seeking escape, running from this reality. There was nothing left but pain and horror here.

She barely felt his hands on her hair, her body, tugging at her clothes.

The sound his zipper made when he lowered it only registered as a distant grating.

There were other sounds, but she ignored them. Her eyes were already closed. Her mind was already gone. She would die soon. She knew this. And as her mind went far, far away, she had only a single, solitary thought that went with her:

She should have jumped from the car.

Noah was going out of his mind.

Owen and Daniel were scouring the security tapes, the rest of the pack was waiting around, getting twitchier by the moment, but Noah was genuinely losing his sanity. Images of Emily, bleeding out on a tacky linoleum floor, kept popping into his head and blocking out every other sight, sound, or thought. Only he knew it wasn’t her… it was his mother, wrists slit and life ebbing out into the puddle of broken glass and whiskey on the floor next to her. A full-color image from his childhood was haunting him… all because he was standing around the WildLove office complex, unable to do a damn thing about finding Emily, much less save her.

Noah blinked away the image.
Focus.

He checked his WildLove app for the hundredth time, but there were no more messages. Just as he was putting away his phone, another notification popped up.

Emily.

He jabbed at the notice before it could disappear, and her full message appeared. It was only two words, but they slammed into his heart.

“She’s at the Cassidy Motel!” he shouted.

The room stilled.

“What do you have?” Daniel asked from his spot next to the security monitors.

“Emily texted me her location!” Noah yelled, already halfway to the door. He sprinted out of the security office and bypassed the elevator to stampede down the two flights to the parking garage. His car was still illegally parked in front of the elevators. He was in the driver’s seat and ready to tear out of the garage, having no clue where the Cassidy Motel even was, when Daniel and Owen spilled out of the stairwell and ran for his car. Noah forced himself to wait the two seconds it would take for them to reach it.

“Go!” Owen said as soon as they were in.

Noah slammed the car into drive. “I need directions!”

“On it,” Daniel said, riding shotgun and whipping out his phone.

As Daniel directed him out of the parking garage, Noah spoke over him. “How far?” he demanded.

“About ten minutes cross-town,” Daniel said, voice taut. “It’s a shitty little place at the edge of town.”

His mind was just now catching up to where they were going. “Holy shit, it’s a motel. Why would he take her there?”

Daniel and Owen exchanged a look but said nothing.

“Fuck!”
Noah slammed his hand against the steering wheel. He knew as well as they did that no matter what it was, it was bad. The bomber could kill her there and be long gone before anyone found her. “I am
not
letting him kill her.”
Not again. Not like before.
His mind was snarled up so badly in this. His heart was pounding so loudly he could hear it in his ears, a steady drumbeat of rage that had been pounding through him ever since he’d been a child.

“Right at the light,” Daniel said, holding the dash as Noah blew through the red light and took the turn at top speed.

The car was silent after that except for Daniel calling out directions and the car tires screeching around corners. Each heartbeat felt like it was pulsing louder in Noah’s ears, and it seemed as if they would never reach the motel, but long minutes later, he careened into the parking lot. Owen had to hold him back from strangling the attendant at the front desk when he balked at giving out the room number, but the murderous look in Noah’s eyes must have convinced him.

Noah didn’t wait for the room key, just took off for his car once he had the number and sped around to the back of the motel. There was a single car parked at the end, outside the door of the room. As soon as he was out of his own car, Noah had his claws out, ready to shred the door. He was tearing into it, maniacally, before Owen and Daniel even reached him. Daniel pulled him back, and Noah almost swung and cut him, but he checked his swing at the last moment, just as Owen kicked the door in.

All three of them rushed the door… then froze.

A man in a mask cowered next to Emily—she was tied to a bed, surrounded by explosives.

“Stay back!” the man screamed. “Or I’ll blow us all!” He held a box to Emily’s chest, a gray brick of something with a silver-box detonator, just like the one strapped to the computers at WildLove. The man was using her body and the bed as cover. Identical explosives were bound to the posts by Emily’s hands.