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Clearing his throat, Eric finally managed to scrape out some words. “The room number is 263. I’ll have your bus brought here first thing in the morning, so that by the time you’re up and ready to go, she’ll be waiting. The keys will be left at the front desk for you.”
“Fine,” she murmured, rubbing her thumb against the smooth surface of the card key. Her gaze slid away, over the nondescript front of the hotel, then cut back up to him. “I appreciate the ride, the room and the fact that you’re getting my bus fixed—but, I meant what I said before. This doesn’t mean that I owe you anything.”
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind about that,” he told her, still fighting the urge to reach out, grab her and pull her against his chest…against his body. He wanted to know the feel of her, the heat. Wanted to have her unique scent wrapped around him, seeping into his pores. But it couldn’t happen.
Instead, he had to do whatever it took to make her see reason.
Her slim brows knitted with irritation. “Excuse me?”
“You owe me your word that after you get your little ass up in the morning, you’ll get it the hell out of town.”
Her eyes rounded with a mixture of shock and indignation. “You can’t force me to leave Wesley, Eric. Your mountain, maybe. But not this town. You don’t have any power here.”
He stepped even closer, scowling down at her, and forced himself to deliver the words he was hoping would save her life. “You stay, and you’re likely to end up dead. Listen to what I’m telling you, Chelsea, and don’t argue for the sake of your grating little Miss Independent routine. Go home, and go back to work. Collect your paychecks, pay your mortgage on that condo you just bought and take care of yourself. When your sister wizens up, she’ll come crawling back. But if you keep digging into things at that club, keep wandering around by yourself up in those mountains, you’re the one who’s going to end up in trouble.”
Finally, he could see a shadow of fear creeping into her rigid expression. “Just what exactly is up there?”
He gave a hard, brief shake of his head. “Nothing you need to know about.”
The scowl on his face would have terrified most men, but she simply glared right back at him. “So I should just be a good little girl and take your advice?”
“You will take it, if you know what’s good for you.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You probably won’t be around long enough for me to say I told you so. The best thing you can do is leave.”
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her bag until her knuckles turned white. “How is that the best thing, when it means leaving my sister in the hands of this stranger and not caring about what happens to her?”
In a slightly gentler tone, he said, “I didn’t say it was easy.”
She blinked up at him, staring into his eyes with a sharp, intense focus, as if she knew there was more…something important he wasn’t telling her. Taking a receipt from his pocket, Eric reached around her, into the truck, and grabbed a pen from the center console, then handed them to her. “Give me your mobile number.”
“What for?” she asked with a heavy dose of suspicion.
“I’ll look into some things, and if I do happen to run across your sister, I’ll call you.”
She hesitated for a moment, then quickly wrote down her number. With a slow shake of her head, she handed the slip of paper back to him. “You’re so sure I’m going to do what you say, aren’t you?”
“You’d be an idiot not to,” he muttered, shoving the receipt back in his pocket. “And I have a feeling you’re anything but.”
She absorbed his words with a small nod, studying him for a moment longer, then shook her head again and held out her hand. Eric took it, closing his hard, roughened fingers around the tender softness of hers. It was a small, endlessly feminine hand, not bony, just cushioned and lovely and sweet. He wanted to pull it to his body and press it against his skin. Feel it hold him where he was hard…feel it grip him…the unwanted need making him restless, angry. With another scowl pulling between his brows, he released her chilled hand and took a hasty step back, hating the urgent feeling prickling beneath his skin. She was like a rash that he needed to shake, before the damn thing spread.
“Well, goodbye, Eric Drake,” she said huskily, hitching the backpack higher on her shoulder. “It was certainly…interesting.”
Eric gave her a jerky nod and clenched his jaw as she turned toward the hotel, walking away from him with a tired, but proud, confident stride. When he realized his gaze had snagged on the way those low-rise jeans hugged her ass, he muttered a blistering curse. Heading around to the driver-side of the truck, he quickly climbed behind the wheel and made his way back onto the road, gunning the engine.
He might not like it, but the truth couldn’t be ignored.
No matter what demons she faced on her own, Chelsea Smart was a hell of a lot better off without him.
Chapter 4
Chelsea Smart needed to have her little backside blistered. And Eric was tempted to do it himself, just as soon as he managed to find her.
As he pulled into the parking lot of the Heaven and Hell strip club late the following afternoon, he didn’t think he’d ever been so furious. There’d been an odd ache in his chest just moments before, when he’d driven past the Travelodge without spotting Chelsea’s bus—which had been delivered to the hotel early that morning—in the parking lot. Though he’d known it was for the best, the idea of never seeing her again had been uncomfortably disturbing, a strange sense of loss weighing heavily in his gut. But instead of easing when he’d caught sight of that ridiculous bus parked in the club’s lot, he was suddenly in a world of hurt. One much darker and deeper than before. One that was angry and hard and violent.
She’d blatantly disregarded his orders, and now the headstrong little idiot was chin-deep in the kind of danger he’d tried to warn her about. Son of a bitch.
He’d mistakenly assumed that with her being a woman and him being a big, intimidating, dominant Lycan, it would be enough to make her realize she should listen to him, whether she wanted to or not. But he’d obviously been wrong.
After a long day of dealing with issues up in Shadow Peak, Eric had headed down to Wesley intending to visit the club to see if there was anything he could learn about Perry Smart’s whereabouts, as well as to get a better idea of exactly what was going on there. He hadn’t planned on having to save her older sister’s stubborn ass, though that seemed the more likely scenario now that he knew Chelsea hadn’t left town…but had done exactly what he’d told her not to do instead. Damn. He’d known she was willful, but still. The woman was downright destructive.
Pulling in a deep breath, he struggled for patience as he finished a pass around the two-story square, windowless building and parked next to her bus, trying to give himself time to come up with a plan, but the lingering traces of her scent inside his truck were still screwing with his head.
There were things hidden in that scent. Confusing things. Important ones. Things he needed to understand. He just…he couldn’t quite catch hold of them, as if a strong wind kept whipping them out of his reach, like meandering whorls of smoke. One instant they would be so close, and in the next, whoosh. They were gone.
Climbing out of his truck, Eric dug his cell phone from his pocket, then reached into his other pocket for the receipt with Chelsea’s number. The call went to voice mail after eight rings, and he ground out something that would have made his mother box his ears when he was younger. Whatever Chelsea was doing inside the club, she wasn’t in a position to answer her phone, and a cold sweat settled over the back of his neck.
Her bus had been delivered to the Travelodge at six that morning. It was now five-thirty in the afternoon. Which meant she’d had eleven and a half hours to get into trouble. Nearly half a damn day to be bullied or threatened or whatever the hell else might have happened to her. Rape. Assault. Torture. The nauseating list was endless.
Muttering another gritty curse under his breath, Eric quickly scrolled through his contact list until he found the next number he needed.
“Burns here,” said a deep voice, after only two rings. Jeremy Burns was one of the pack’s Bloodrunners, and a serious badass with a warped sense of humor. He was also the husband of one of Eric’s closest friends, Jillian, the pack’s healer, which had put the two males on rocky footing when things had started heating up between Jillian and the Runner the year before. But as soon as Jeremy had accepted the fact that Eric and Jillian were nothing more than friends, he and the Runner had slowly become friends themselves. He knew he could trust the guy with his life, and with anything else he threw at him.
“It’s Eric,” he said, locking the door to the truck behind him. “I need to let you know where I’m at, in case I don’t make it back to the Alley tonight.” Bloodrunner Alley was a secluded part of the forest where Jeremy and the other Bloodrunners lived, and where Eric had been spending a lot of his nights lately.
“Well,” the Runner drawled, “that’s a hell of a way to open a conversation.”
He scanned his surroundings to make sure no one was listening in. “Save the sarcasm for another time. I’m down in Wesley, in the Heaven and Hell parking lot.”
Jeremy cursed, but didn’t waste time demanding to know what Eric was doing there. Instead, he asked, “You got weapons?”
“Yeah, but can’t take them in with me. They’ll have security at the doors.”
The Runner’s frustration was evident in the hard edge of his voice. “I should have known something was up when you started asking questions about that place this morning. Didn’t think you were stupid enough to actually go down there on your own, though.”
“What can I say?” he grunted, squinting against the last dying rays of the sun. “I needed something to do.”
Jeremy snorted. “Yeah, well, next time just ask. If you’re bored, I’ll think of something to keep you busy. Jillian’s gonna kill me if anything happens to you.”
He started to tell the Runner that that’s why he was calling—to make plans if something did happen—but Jeremy suddenly told him to hold on a second. Eric could hear him talking to someone else, relaying the situation, and then another voice came on the line. From the rough tone and lilting Irish accent, he knew it was Cian Hennessey, one of the other Silvercrest Bloodrunners. “I’ve got some information you might find useful, seeing as how you’ve decided to jump the gun on us.”
Various possibilities of what the Runner might have learned ran through Eric’s mind, and none of them were good. “I don’t have a lot of time, Cian. Just get to the point.”
“Well, after I heard about the woman you ran into last night, and that you were asking for information about that club, I thought I’d look into things for you. Made a few calls to some of my…” the Irishman gave a husky laugh “… let’s just say some people who owe me a few special favors. But you’re not going to like what I learned. You were right about the Donovans being involved with the club, but they’re not the only ones. From the sound of things, the Whiteclaw pack has a finger in the pie, as well.”
“The Donovans and the Whiteclaw?” Eric wouldn’t have been more surprised if the Irishman had just told him that the NRA was partnering up with Greenpeace. As far as the Silvercrest knew, the Donovan family didn’t like the arrogant, thuggish Whiteclaw clan any more than the rest of the Southeastern Lycan packs. “What the hell is that about?”
“Yeah, I know,” the Runner murmured. “It sucks. All I can figure is that they have some kind of joint operation going on down there. The Donovans are obviously the brains and the money, the Whiteclaw most likely the hired muscle. And seeing as how they’re all a bunch of assholes, it’s not a comforting combination.”
“No shit,” Eric grunted. “Especially with them both so close to our land.” The Silvercrest were still in a highly vulnerable position, thanks to his father’s bullshit, and it freaked the hell out of him that the vultures were joining forces.
“Brody and I were planning on checking it out later,” Cian said, referring to Brody Carter, his best friend and Bloodrunning partner, “but it sounds like you’re beating us to it.”
“No choice.” Eric cast an uneasy look toward Chelsea’s bus, his gaze moving over the whimsical confection of clouds. “She’s here.”
“She?” There was a significant pause, and then, “You don’t mean the woman from last night, do you? The human?”
“Yeah. That’s exactly who I mean.”
Cian gave a low whistle. “Holy hell. That lady have a death wish or what?”
“Feels like it,” he ground out, starting to make his way across the parking lot. “I’m getting her out.”
The Runner’s voice turned hard. “Don’t be an idiot, Drake. You need to wait for us to get there. Brody and I can head down now.”
“Can’t—it’ll take too long, and there’s no telling how long she’s already been in there. Can you put Burns back on?”
Cian ordered him not to do anything stupid, then handed the phone back to Jeremy. “Look, I don’t have a lot of time,” Eric said, “but I need to ask you guys for a favor. If you don’t hear from me, I need the Runners to look after—”
“Dude,” Jeremy cut in, “stop right there. If you go down, your sister will be looked after. That’s a given. But keep in mind that I will track your ass to hell and put you through serious pain if you get killed. I will not be happy. You got that?”
A wry smile twitched at the corner of Eric’s mouth. “What makes you think I’m not headed for heaven?”
The Runner snorted again. “The day they let a jackass like you past the pearly gates is the day those self-righteous pricks up in Shadow Peak stop looking down their noses at us.”
They said a quick goodbye, and by the time Eric was slipping his phone back in his pocket, he’d reached the front of the club. Making his way down the concrete walkway leading to the entrance, he glanced up at the neon sign perched on the roof. The words Heaven and Hell glittered in the twilight with obscene brightness, pulsing like a heartbeat. A fitting name, he thought, walking inside, where a beefy bouncer sat on a black stool just inside the doorway. One quick sniff and Eric knew the guy was one of the Whiteclaw clan. The man drew Eric’s own scent into his lungs, and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What’s your business here, Drake?”
So the Lycan knew who he was. Good. He could use it to his advantage.
Anxious to get inside and find her, Eric deliberately ran his gaze over a tall, busty brunette who walked past the club’s arched entryway, balancing a tray of shot glasses on one hand. “I’d think my reason for being here was rather obvious,” he said, slanting the bouncer a knowing smile.
The guy snickered. “What’s the problem? Can’t get any in your hometown anymore, now that your old man turned psycho?”
Eric fought to hold his hard smile in place, but it wasn’t easy. Slipping the bouncer a crisp hundred-dollar bill, he lowered his voice. “Let’s just say that I’m bored with the usual fare I get back at home. If I was looking for something a little less…tame, would this be the place to find it?”
The Lycan didn’t so much as bat a lash, but Eric knew he’d caught the guy’s attention. The seconds stretched out while the bouncer’s steely gaze bore into Eric’s, looking for the trap. Finally, he gave a low grunt and moved off his padded leather stool. After checking him for weapons with a quick pat down, he told Eric to take a seat inside the club and order a drink, saying that someone would come by to talk to him within the hour.
Uncertain whether or not the bouncer had bought his story, Eric walked through the high arch that separated the entryway from the main room of the club and tried not to wince. But it wasn’t easy. Why Chelsea’s little sister would have ever been willing to serve drinks here, he couldn’t understand. It wasn’t as cheaply decorated as a lot of the clubs he’d seen, but there was no mistaking the heavy desperation that hung in the air. It slid against his skin like a damp, sickly caress, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He could only imagine how it made Chelsea feel.
Wanting to rip the place apart until he found her, Eric forced himself to slide into a chair at a table hidden in the shadows at the far side of the room, to the left of the raised stage where five glassy-eyed human females were slowly gyrating their naked bodies in time to the deep, throbbing rhythm blasting through the sound system. Despite the early hour, over a quarter of the tables surrounding the stage were already full, the clientele a mix of werewolf and human—a fact the humans were no doubt oblivious to. The Lycans seemed to come from a wide variety of packs, though he was thankful he was the only Silvercrest in the room. Eric recognized a few of the Lycans as belonging to the Whiteclaw clan, and suspected they were there to keep an eye on things. Either that, or to broker the deals for whatever illegal activities the Donovans were running at the club.
As he sat with his back to the wall and scanned the room, Eric had what could only be described as a seriously bad feeling. It didn’t escape his notice that while the clientele were a mix of human and Lycan, the strippers and servers were all human females. And young ones, at that. It was like watching a group of baby seals unknowingly swim through shark-infested waters. A crap idea no matter how you looked at it.
The Whiteclaw, it seemed, were treading a dangerous line in their new partnership. Since the pack didn’t have any Bloodrunners, any infractions of the laws that governed their kind were the responsibility of the nearest packs: the Silvercrest and Youngblood. If they were harming humans, deadly measures would have to be taken. If they were simply exploiting these women for money, then they’d be watched to make sure things didn’t go too far.
And since the Donovans were a part of the Youngblood pack, there probably wouldn’t be any help coming from that quarter. Rumor had it that the Donovans had been buying off the Youngblood Runners for years, lining their pockets with serious amounts of cash to look the other way. Jeremy and the other Runners had asked the Silvercrest pack’s leadership to authorize an investigation into the matter too many times to count, but Eric’s father had made sure the requests were always denied. Now it looked as though it would be an issue that came back and bit them in the ass.
Hell, at this point, Eric wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that his father had been on the take, as well.
One of the servers finally approached his table, carrying an empty tray. She had an edgy, worried look about her, and a quick glance at the name tag pinned over her right breast had Eric leaning forward in his seat. His nostrils flared as he caught a faint trace of Chelsea’s scent lingering on the girl.
“Maggie?” he said, before she could ask him what he wanted to drink. Her eyes went a little wide at the urgency in his voice, and he tried to dredge up what was hopefully a reassuring smile. “I’m not going to hassle you. I’m just hoping you can give me some information about a friend of mine. Her name is Chelsea. You spoke to her yesterday, about her sister.”
The instant he mentioned Chelsea’s name, the girl’s face went white. “Please,” she whispered, starting to tremble. “I can’t—they’ll hurt me if I let her go. I wanted to, but they—”
“Shh. It’s okay,” he told her, making sure to keep his expression easy, since he was the one facing the room. But his pulse was rushing like a goddamn freight train. “Lean down toward me a little, like you’re flirting. That’s it,” he murmured, hoping like hell he could get her to cooperate. “All I need to know is where she’s at. Can you tell me where they’ve got her?”
Though she looked terrified, she managed to place one shaking hand on his shoulder, understanding the need to put on an act for anyone who might be watching them. “She’s in a room in the back of the club. If you go to the men’s restroom, there’s a door at the end of the hallway, on the right. Go through it, into another hallway, and then use the first door on the left. That’s where you’ll find her.” Her throat worked as she swallowed. “I don’t know what it was, but Curtis and the others gave her something that knocked her out. I tried to wake her up, but she isn’t moving.”
Hearing that she’d been drugged made him want to howl with fury, but Eric forced a laid-back grin to stay on his face as he pressed her for more details. “Are any of the doors locked? Or alarmed?”
She shook her head a little. “No. I don’t think so. But they’ve got a bolt on the room she’s in. It’s on the outside, so you’ll be able to open it.”
It was nearly impossible not to stand up and demand to know where he could find the bastards who had drugged her, then locked her in a room, so he could rip their fucking throats out, but he managed to choke it back. Barely. “What about the back exit?”
“It’s guarded like the front one. But I’ve heard that there are other ways to get out of the building.”
“You mean like a hidden exit?”
Maggie nodded. “I don’t know how many, but I’ve heard some of the other girls talking about them. I guess the owners use them when they want to get out without anyone seeing. But I don’t know where they are.”
“That’s okay. You’ve helped me a lot,” he said, determined not to lose control, even though he was seething inside at the thought of Chelsea being at the mercy of Curtis Donovan and his buddies. He’d never had much contact with Curtis, but he’d heard the twenty-something Lycan was a troublemaker. Whatever they had planned for her, it wasn’t good.
“I’m going to get her out of here, Maggie. But whatever happens, don’t tell anyone that we talked about her. As far as they need to know, if you’re asked, all I’ve been doing is hitting on you. If you sense any trouble, get the hell out of here. In fact, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave this place and never come back.”
Pulling her lower lip through her teeth, she said, “Yeah. I’m beginning to figure that out. No amount of money is worth this kind of crap.”
“That’s right. Now grab that half-empty bottle of beer on the table behind you, then throw it in my face and tell me to get lost.”
She blinked down at him. “What?”
“Just do it. And act really pissed. If anyone asks, tell them I said something ugly to you.”
Comprehension dawned. “Oh, I get it.”
Tension coiled through his muscles with cold, dark purpose, his body burning with an icy rage. “Do it now, Maggie. I need to find her.”
“Okay. But tell her that I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for her.” She took a deep breath, grabbed the bottle and flung the warm beer at him, then stormed away from the table, just like he’d told her to do.
Eric wiped the beer off his face as he moved to his feet, then plastered on a cocky smirk for the group of Lycans sitting at the table to his right. “Guess she wasn’t interested,” he said to the males. They laughed, raising their beer bottles at him as he walked by, heading for the doorway marked Restrooms. He scanned the club as he made his way toward the door, looking for Curtis, but didn’t see him in the growing crowd. As soon as he went through the doorway, he caught a subtle trace of Chelsea’s scent. The farther he went down the hall, the stronger that trace became. Quietly opening the last door in the hallway on the right, he gave a quick sniff, relying on his heightened sense of smell to tell him if he was alone. He doubted Curtis Donovan had left the club, and he wasn’t in the main room, which meant the Lycan was either upstairs or somewhere back here. And Eric had little doubt the bastard would be armed. The smart thing to do would be to turn and get the hell out of there, but it didn’t matter. He was willing to pay whatever price it took to get Chelsea to safety. It might not make him smart, but at least he’d still be able to face himself in the mirror if they managed to escape in one piece.