Hunter Moon (Lupine Moon Series) (36 page)

So what if I did?
I thought back fiercely.
I didn’t ask to get kidnapped and sold into prostitution!
Even in my head, I sounded petulant and whiny. I wasn’t sure who
did
ask to be sold into prostitution—
But still...

 
Oh, quit moping and get moving, we don’t have all day!
Grandpa’s voice echoed in my mind. The memories of his gruff way of motivation resounded like a gong in the quiet desperation of my thoughts.
Get it in gear, Shells!
I smiled weakly at Grandpa’s favorite saying and sniffed back the remaining tears.

Nothing in my life had taught me to give up this easily. I had to be tough as a kid, since my mom was never home and when my grandpa took me in, he taught me how to fight my own battles. Granted, the battles mainly consisted of a stupid Brahma cow jumping the fence, but the analogy still stood.
Crazy thing jumped like a deer!

I thumped my forehead against the floor a couple times, using the pain to help clear my head. Why was I crying? It seemed like I had shed more tears this last month than I had my entire life. My grandpa called them “women’s weapons” and told me cowgirls didn’t cry. Even when I fell off the demon-possessed little pony he had bought me and broke my wrist, I fought through the pain and not a single tear fell.

What was I doing, just laying here? I
hated
those simpering, helpless women who relied on everyone else to save them. Made womankind look bad. I needed to be like Laura Croft or Mercy Thompson and get crap done on my own. I couldn’t afford to let defeatist thoughts take over, I still had way too much to fight for.

I grit my teeth against the pain and rolled onto my side that was broken rib free, sighing in relief when my shoulders relaxed by degrees. My hands and feet were bound with some sort of smooth nylon rope this time, and although it didn’t have any more give, it slipped and slid a whole lot easier and less painfully than the rough crap the vato had used before.

I twisted my hands and feet around until they bled, tightening the loops around one hand and both feet while making the last loop a fraction less tight. I continued working the cords until one of my hands could slip out, only taking a little skin off as it got free of the restraints. My kidnapper must have done a big figure eight loop because I felt the ties loosen on the remaining limbs as soon as my hand pulled free.

My arms and legs flopped down and I lay there for several moments, breathing hard. My pulse thundered in my ears. “Apparently my kidnapper was never a boy scout, because his knots suck,” I muttered to myself. I chuckled in relief and was rewarded with an electric jolt of agony from my side.

I rolled over on my back and gently flexed and stretched until I had worked the feeling back into my hands and feet. It still hurt to breathe, and the left side of my face was so swollen it was difficult to see. I sat up gradually, cursing under my breath at the bouts of searing pain from my ribs and fought to stand.

When I finally got to my feet I had to brace my hand against the wall of the shed, my head spinning worse than if I had downed a fifth of Jack.
I’d prefer the Jack!
It took me a few minutes to get my breath back because while I was desperate for oxygen, taking large breaths of air was excruciating. I had to settle for short, quick pants and it only served to make me more lightheaded.

I rested my head against the shed and heard a car pull up the gravel driveway belonging to a rundown single-wide and my shed. I peeked through the window, keeping as much of myself out of sight as I could, and watched the black Chrysler sedan park and a swarthy man in a cheap suit step out of the back, followed by two large men who had been sitting in the front seats. Mr. Brujo walked out of the trailer to meet the newcomers, smiling at suit-guy and shaking his hand, doing the manly one-armed hug, sort of bumping chests while slapping the other on the back with the free hand.

Crap!
I thought in panic.
The ‘friend’ is here.
I jerked my head away from the window.
Unfortunately, I had noticed when the newcomer’s arm rose that he had a pistol concealed underneath his suit jacket. His two goons had similar bulges under their blazers. I hadn’t seen if my kidnapper was packing heat as well, but it probably was a safe bet, considering he’d shot Cash. And he was a good shot too.
Damn.

“Alright, Shelby. You can do this!” I muttered.

I got back on my tiptoes and looked out the window again and saw the two men walk into the trailer, probably to discuss my impending slavery and whoring.
Bastards.
This was my chance to sneak away, the best I’d probably ever get. I slipped over to the shed door and tried to open it, but it seemed that although my captor hadn’t gotten better at tying knots, he had gotten better at installing locks.

He had installed two deadlocks on top of repairing the one I had broken when I kicked the door open, successfully trapping me in the crappy, cold little Tuff shed. I stepped back and tried a repeat performance, putting all my weight behind it as I kicked at the door. It didn’t budge. The only result I got was now I had a hurt foot to add to the menagerie that was my injuries.

“Shit!” I yelled at the door, not bothering to lower my voice. “I can’t be here! This can’t happen, not now!”

I clutched the door knob with both my hands, pushing with all my strength, not wanting to acknowledge the futility. My knees gave out from under me from the effort and I sank to the floor, still gripping the door knob.

Finally accepting my fate, grief washed over me and I wept. I never really understood weeping. Up until that moment I had always thought it was a weak, melodramatic way to garner attention. Now, I discovered it’s what you did when you witnessed your universe crash down around your head and your last hope vanish into thin air.

I’d never see Cash again. The man who held me captive could block our bond, and who knew what his ‘
friend’
could do. If Cash did find me eventually, I doubt he’d still want me in the state I’d be in. Used and broken. My relatives would get my land and probably split it up or turn it into a mobile home park. Jack and Jesse would cry and mourn me, but I doubted my own mother would even notice I was missing.

Three people. Three people would mourn me, but to everyone else I would be just a girl who was there one day and gone the next. Maybe Matt Albert would be sad that he never got his shot to get into my panties.
So four people would cry...

Sobs wracked my chest and tears of grief mixed with tears of pain as the motion felt like the air had turned into shards of glass in my lungs. I curled into a sad little ball on the floor and kept crying for what felt like days, but was probably closer to ten minutes. The soft sound of footsteps shuffling past the walls of my wooden prison shook me from my despair.

I flinched, bracing myself to face my old captor and my soon-to-be one. They had guns. Maybe if I could get my butt off the floor I could do something crazy and get shot. This was probably my last chance, considering I didn’t know where bad-suit-guy would take me. If he took me to Mexico I’d be SOL without any kind of documentation proving I was a US citizen.

I frowned when more footsteps passed the shed instead of opening the door. I could have been hearing things, maybe a side effect of the drugs he’d plied on me, but I heard more pairs of footsteps than could be possible, considering I was only aware of four men, not twice that.

I watched at least twenty men in black tactical outfits with the word SWAT emblazoned on their backs in white lettering stalk past the shed to encircle the trailer. My heart leapt in my throat when I recognized one particular man’s gait as he crept stealthily past the window.
Cash..
.

He was the only one wearing camo not black and I was floored to see him here. Like a mirage of an oasis to a man dying of thirst, I couldn’t believe he was really there. He held an AR-15 to his shoulder and his expression was hard and focused. I still couldn’t feel his presence in my head. The bond must have still been affected by whatever witchcraft the kidnapper had done.

Cash motioned to another man in black with a dangerous looking rifle, using those mysterious hand signals that everyone in the military knows, but to the layman looked like he signaled to the other to steal second base.

The SWAT guy motioned for Cash to bunt and then snuck up the steps. When several other men stood on either side of the door, the first man kicked it open and they all rushed in.

I held my breath as shouting broke out, in both English and Spanish. The words were muffled, but I could tell that the men inside were surprised and angry. Cash ran in a few moments later, probably after some signal I couldn’t see, and I could hear his voice roaring over the din.

“Where is she?” Silence. I knew, only because I had felt his rage through the bond for that fleeting moment when I broke free, that he must have been dangerously close to letting the wolf loose.
“Where the hell is she?”

I opened my mouth to shout my presence when a rough hand snaked around my face and closed over it.
What the hell!
I thought in extreme exasperation. I tried to kick out from the stranger’s hold, but whoever he was, had already wrapped another arm around my waist and simply lifted me off the ground.

A gruff but warm voice whispered in my ear. “I think now would be a good time to go, don’t you agree?”

I started to argue, considering that my love, mate and fiancé was quite possibly going to rip someone limb from limb in the next building and I should probably stop that from happening. Gunshots cracked through the air and broke through whatever I had planned to say.

My first instinct was to drop to the ground, but my
new
captor swept me up into a fireman’s hold and sprinted through the open door and random detritus of junk toward an old Chevy truck. I pushed down the urge to vomit and lifted my head so it wasn’t banging against the stranger’s jean-clad rear.

If I wasn’t being taken for the second time, I’d be vaguely impressed. I wasn’t exactly dainty, so the fact he could throw me around like a rag doll and run a hundred yards like a track star couldn’t have been an easy feat. He wore a plaid flannel shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots and for some reason that didn’t strike me as the correct uniform for a kidnapper.

He reached the passenger side door and wrenched it open, chucking me on my head on the beige vinyl seat and slamming it shut again. I briefly entertained the notion of opening the door and making a break for it but he had already made it to the driver’s side and pressed down the locks before I could so much as twitch my fingers.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’re safe with me.”

After painfully righting myself in the seat I looked over my shoulder at the trailer. The sun had set and in the waning light I could see muzzle flashes through the windows and heard the echo of gunshots as we drove away.

“Who the hell are you and why are you kidnapping me?”
Whoa...déjà vu.
“I’m getting really sick of asking that, by the way,” I grumbled.

“I bet you are.” The man said wryly.

His dishwater blonde hair was buzzed short and flecked with grey at the temples. Twinkling golden eyes were framed by tanned and lightly wrinkled skin. Something about his face tickled something in the back of my mind but I couldn’t pin down what it was.

“Again, I ask,” frustration and sarcasm dripping from each word. “Who are you?”

 He smiled and we pulled onto the street and I received my answer. Once more the bonds slammed home in my mind. This time it was different, though. Instead of feeling the twenty or so people I had grown used to, several were missing. One in particular.

“Oh!” I gasped. “You’re a lupine?”

His smirk confirmed my suspicions.

“Yes, among other things. But that’s all you need to know for now. The name’s Hank.”

He held out a hand and I took it hesitantly. Confusion whirled in my mind. If he was lupine, he couldn’t want to hurt me, could he? I poked his bond gently, but all I felt was amusement and relief.

“Where are the others?” Hank never pulled his eyes from the road, but a small frown creased his face.