The Blind Tiger: An Unusual Paranormal Romance (10 page)

THE RANSOM

The message came when Noah was asleep.

The message alert on his computer went ‘Ping!’

He opened his eyes to complete darkness. How long had he been asleep? Something felt . . . off.

He roused himself off the bed.

“Adeline?” he called. He always maintained their adopted names just in case other people were around.

He listened for the usual sounds around the house. There were none. Karen should have been home by now.

He had always been afraid of this day. And now his sixth sense told him that it was finally here. His skin felt as cold as the ice sliding down his soul.

And this is all happening because I can’t kill my brother.

Could he kill now to protect everyone he loved?

He tried to calm his shattered nerves as he moved to his computer at his desk. He always exercised perfect discipline when he wrote – it was always at the desk on his ergonomically supported chair, never in bed. He felt for the switch and turned on his Braille translator.

The message was very clear:

“Hello, Jonas.

Miss me, your big brother?”

Noah involuntarily clenched his fists. He straightened his shaking fingers again to read the rest of the translated message.

“You’re probably wondering by now where your wife and kid have gone off to. Don’t worry. They’re safe, for now. Good thing for your daughter she’s a girl, or I might have someone else to worry about. If you want your family to be left alone, meet me tonight. A car will be at your place to pick you up.

Your beloved brother,

Kyle.”

Noah sat back. The blood was cold in his veins. So it had come to this. To keep his family safe, he had to sacrifice himself.

His mind churned.

Suddenly, there was nothing more he wanted than to be alive. He wanted to hear Karen’s voice again, feel Kitty’s little fist curl around his thumb, touch the firm shoal of his wife’s pregnant abdomen and feel the gentle kick of the baby inside.

He furiously typed:

“How do I know you really have my wife and daughter?”

He waited.

Minutes passed. Then a ‘ping’ came.

He read with his fingers:

“I’m sending you a sound byte.”

The bile rose to his throat.

There was a rustling noise. Then:

“Daryl, they have us. But don’t do anything rash. Please –”

The sound byte ended.

Noah stared at the darkness for a long, long time. There was only one thing he could do.

He couldn’t be Daryl anymore, or even Noah. He had to be Jonas.

He had to meet his brother.

Only one would be left standing.

Kyle was a battle-hardened warrior. He had been alpha for over eight years. He had probably fought and killed a lot of shifters to maintain his position.

All Jonas had was instinct . . . and the inability to take another human or shifter life.

THE PROMISE

Zach didn’t hurt either of them, as promised. But Karen was still on edge.

She had given up all pretense of calling herself Adeline now. With Zach around, she had regressed to being Karen – a frightened shell of a woman who now had to worry about her husband and child.

But no, she fiercely told herself. She was better than that. She was still frightened, but fear was good. This was the type of fear that led her to do courageous things.

She and Kitty were put in a comfortable bedroom. The window was fortified with iron bars, but otherwise, it was a normal bedroom – double bed, dresser and mirror, bathroom. There were no sharp objects anywhere. Even the toothbrush was short and blunted so that she could not use it as a weapon.

Kitty was asleep. Karen stared out of the window into the trees and sea. From what she could make out, they were in a large house by the sea, isolated from everywhere else by a large expanse of jungle. No one would hear her scream.

The door opened. Zach came in.

Karen immediately tensed.

Zach smiled. “I miss that reaction in you.”

Kitty stirred fitfully.

“Ssssh, I’ve just put her to bed,” Karen said with the automatic caution of a mother.

“Then come with me. We’ll talk.”

Karen hesitated, but just for a moment. She wanted to explore the house, just in case she could find the chance to escape. She nodded. She was not afraid of Zach anymore, she kept telling herself.

She followed Zach to another room down the corridor. She took note of the corridor with its many closed doors and the stairs at the end. Zach noted this.

“Very good,” he remarked. “You’ve come a long way from being that scared rabbit.”

She turned to him. “I’ll do anything to protect my husband and children, and don’t you forget it.”

“I’m sure you will.” He lifted a hand to caress her jawline. “I’ll hold you to that promise.”

Karen chilled. Zach’s gaze upon her was just as covetous and possessive as she remembered. She remembered that look well. He always had that look when he came home each day, right before he took her on whatever surface was available.

Zach pushed open a door.

“Go in,” he ordered.

Once they were in the other bedroom, which was similar to the one she had been incarcerated in, Zach looked the door behind them. She was aware of the implications – a bed, just the two of them. Like old times.

He studied her up and down.

“I’ve missed you, Karen.”

“I’m sure you have,” she replied evenly.

“No. I’ve missed you. I’ve really missed you.” His eyes glittered with a strange expression. “I did love you . . . in my own way.”

A choke welled to her throat.

“But it’s over,” she declared. “We’ve both moved on.”

“Oh no, we haven’t. There has been no closure for either of us,” he insisted.

“What exactly would be closure for you? The fact that you’d kill my husband and child?” she demanded.

“That’s not for me to decide. My client has specific instructions to let him deal with his own brother. But he did promise me an added reward for Noah’s successful capture.”

A wave of nausea hit Karen’s gut.

Zach favored her with an amused stare. “After my client has killed your husband, he will take your daughter away from you so that she will never be a revenge tool against her uncle when she grows up. That’s how the shifters do it, apparently. Very old school. Vladimir would approve.”

“Does your client know you call him an abomination?”

“I’m sure he’s been called a lot worse.”

“Then I’m sure I would be an abomination to you, too.”

“On the contrary, only the child inside you is an abomination.” Zach came closer and put his hand on her pregnant belly. “I’ve never fucked a pregnant woman before.”

She could see the hardening of his crotch. He had always been so turned on by someone else’s pain.

“I won’t bend to you, ever,” she hissed. “Never again.”

“So being with a soft man has made you hard. I’ll relish the opportunity to make you soft again, little flower.” He smiled at her. “It’ll be quite the challenge to break you and mold you into what I desire again, just as I’ve once broken you before.”

THE CONVERSATION

The car came for Noah at ten o’ clock, as promised. So many names, so much confusion.

Well, tonight he was going to be Jonas. He had always ever only been Jonas. He realized that now. He couldn’t run away from his name anymore than he could run away from being who and what he was.

The car that came for him was a black Mercedes. When the door opened, Noah was surprised to hear a familiar voice from the back passenger seat.

“Nice to see you again,” Zach said. He waved a hand at the empty seat beside him. “Please, come in. Oh, I forgot. You can’t see gestures, can you?”

The driver got out and led Jonas into the car. Noah gritted his teeth.

“If you’ve hurt them in any way,” he began.

“Save the clichés. You’ll need your strength.”

“I’m surprised you’re still on my brother’s hiring list after your last botched attempt.”

The car drove off.

“He never told us about your
condition
. You put two of my men in hospital for two weeks. So it was a fair deal that your brother compensated us for it. I asked to continue the search, even if it took me years. You cover your tracks well, but I suppose you’ve had plenty of experience. Nevertheless, someone with the persistence discovers even the best eventually.”

“Did you come here because you wanted to boast to me about your own cleverness?” Noah said in a low, dangerous voice.

Zach laughed. “No. I came here for another purpose. Has Karen ever mentioned her time with me?”

“It was not a time she particularly wished to revisit.”

“Why do you think that is so?” Zach paused, enjoying his rhetoric. “She gave me her body freely. She enjoyed being a submissive. She loved me – a fact she does not deny to this day.”

“We all must transcend our pasts.” Noah swallowed the hard lump in his throat at the thought of Zach touching his pregnant wife.

“Indeed. We are all complicated creatures, are we not? We are never black or white. In some phases of our lives, we must appear as villains. In others, heroes.”

There was an undercurrent here – something Noah couldn’t grasp at the moment. All he knew was that he had to listen very carefully.

Zach said, “Did Karen ever tell you that I was a student of psychology?”

“No.”

“Well, I was. Four years of college at my adopted father’s insistence. He wanted me to understand the condition of the human mind – how it can be elevated or broken.” Zach paused again. “I became very interested in human conditioning.”

“So interested that you even had your own lab rat?” Noah shot back.

Zach laughed. “I’ve had many lab rats, as you so quaintly put it. And it has not always been about domination for me. When I graduated, I was a submissive for half a year to an older woman. Ah yes, you seem surprised. Call it experimental. After that, I decided that I much preferred to be a dominant. Next, I moved on to the psychology of interrogation. You can imagine the myriad streams of processing that can run through a man or woman’s mind during such an ordeal.”

“Is that what you’re doing to me now? Interrogating me?”

“Not all of us play such cookie cutter roles, Jonas. You see your brother as a villain. Rightly so. He seeks your annihilation for his own purpose. He sees your children as threats. However, turn this the other way. Your brother also has a family. Ah, I can tell that you are surprised.”

Noah rarely inquired about his brother for obvious reasons.

“You’re both victims of your own heritage and customs. Your brother is not a villain in his own mind. In his mind, he’s merely a father trying to protect his own children, and he will do whatever it takes.”

“Are you done?” Noah said evenly. He did not plan to discuss his twin’s motivations with Karen’s ex-lover.

“Not quite. Interesting customs you shifters have. The determination of an alpha by duel.” Zach laughed. “It’s so 19
th
century.”

“I’m sure you can relate to it in your line of business.”

“But you lost to him once, didn’t you? You lost because, unlike your brother and myself, you never did have that killing instinct within you. Not when it comes to your own kin. Not when it comes to anyone.”

So he knew. Noah grimaced. Zach was right, of course.

Eight years ago, he had denied his brother the pleasure of killing him in a duel. He had robbed Kyle of the uncontested right to declare himself alpha against all odds, especially with the niggling presence of a live twin in the background. Those kinds of things rankled an alpha, especially one as deathly competitive as Kyle.

Now he was to be given a second chance to die like a hero so that his brother would have uncontested alpha rights. Not that he had ever contested it in the first place. But such things did not matter to those who practiced the old ways, like the tiger shifters.

“Well, know this then. If you plan on dying when your brother is finally through with you, he will take your daughter and give your wife to me for my own pleasure.” Zach’s voice wore a smile. “Knowing the way your brother does things, let’s see how long they both will last.”

MORNING

Karen was asleep on the bed with Kitty when the door to their bedroom opened. She rose, immediately tense. It was Zach.

He smiled at her. “Rise and shine. You have exactly thirty minutes to get your daughter ready.”

“Ready for what?” she demanded.

“Ready for the duel. Your husband has been given a reprieve. He will meet his brother, Kyle, in single combat.”

The door closed.

Karen swung her legs out of bed. It was too late for her to try to escape. The die had been cast, and the bait had been taken. She had known that Noah would come. She would have done the same thing without hesitation if their positions had been reversed.

Single combat? Her heart leaped. Noah had come for her, and his brother didn’t kill him outright. As long as they were all alive, there was hope.

“Kitty,” she said in a gentle voice. “Wake up.”

Kitty stirred.

“Mmmmm, Mommy?”

Karen wondered if it was a good idea to bring her daughter to the duel. But then, she wasn’t given a choice. It would be traumatic for Kitty to watch her father die today.

No matter what happened today, she would shield and protect her daughter for as long as there was breath in her body.

*

Once they were ready, Zach came for them again.

He studied her. “You’re beautiful.”

Her captors had provided her clothes – summer dresses, billowy print kaftans, island khaki wear. Zach had been as good as his word. They had been treated with utmost care.

She had chosen a blue summer dress, pretty much like the one she had worn when they had hosted Noah. Not that Noah would ever see her or the dress. But she wanted to remind Zach of that night – the night she had chosen Noah over him.

“Thank you,” she replied.

She picked Kitty up. Kitty was dressed in a white frock.

“Where we go, Mommy?” Kitty asked.

“To see Daddy.”

Zach only smiled.

Outside, Karen and Kitty were ordered into the back of the same black van they had come in. No windows. Just the same two sullen local thugs for company. Their journey was uneventful, though after a while, the van seemed to ascend.

So they were climbing, Karen thought. Bali had many mountains and cliffs.

They finally arrived. The van doors opened to bright sunshine and green, green jungle. She was right. They were on a mountain. Other vans and cars were gathered there, as though for an event.

Zach announced, “Welcome to the arena.”