Beneath a Blood Moon (69 page)

While I worried how my mate would react, my wolf was thrilled and delighted by the idea of playing a game against our males and taking the offensive at the same time. Her desire to hunt burned bright, but the opportunity to take control of our situation appealed to her most of all.

“They’re going to kill us,” I muttered. My partners-in-crime ignored me, hovering around Wendy while she filled out information for the rental car and went through the tedious process of adding each of us as extra drivers. Giving me the option to drive the car seemed like a terrible idea to me, but I kept my mouth shut.

Wendy was enjoying herself far too much, which was a far cry better than her growling.

“We’re only running away a little,” Lisa replied, flashing a grin at me. “Come on, Sara. It’ll be fun.”

“It’ll be fun right up until they catch us.”

“Nonsense.” Turning to me, Nicolina matched her twin’s grin. “Are you kidding? They’re all going to be so worked up by the time they catch us they’ll only have one thing on their minds. When we present our prize, we’ll emerge the ultimate victors. Their expressions are going to be priceless.”

“Assuming we pull this crazy stunt off,” I muttered.

Nicolina laughed. “Have a little faith, Sara. You’ll be in the same car with some of the most dangerous women alive. It’s the worst club on Earth, and you get a free pass to join. If you want to worry about someone, worry about those who get in our way. Lisa and I are a force to be reckoned with. Add in Amber, and we’re a three-woman army. With Mom acting like a nuclear bomb ready to detonate at any moment, I pity anyone who doesn’t get out of our way fast enough. Richard likes telling me it brushes off on anyone we come into contact with. We’ll have you as bad as us by the time your mate rescues you from us.”

I sighed and kept quiet. Leaving our cell phones in my room bothered me almost as much as abandoning my mate did. There was merit to the plan, which is why I went along with it, but the thought of worrying Sanders in turn worried me.

In their enthusiasm for the hunt, they hadn’t let me even leave a note.

When Wendy finished with the paperwork, she herded us to the SUV she had rented for the first leg of our trip, tossing the keys to Amber. “Take the front, Sara.”

Amber caught the keys and sighed. “Lucky me. At least our chance of reaching our destination without a crash has gone up substantially.”

“Funny, Amber,” Nicolina grumbled.

“I still think this is a bad idea.” I took the front passenger seat and buckled in. “I guess I should be grateful you let me keep my wallet. Did you really have to take my phone?”

“We’ll get new ones on the way. Those phones were too easy to track. It wouldn’t be much fun if our mates could just call the Inquisition and get our coordinates—and if there are still traitors working with the Inquisition, they could do the same,” Amber replied.

“Has it occurred to any of you we might be getting a little carried away with this?” I demanded, twisting around in my seat to glare at Wendy and her daughters.

All three grinned at me.

“Definitely,” Nicolina replied.

“It’s part of our charm,” Lisa agreed. “And Mom’s usually all reserved and quiet. This is great. We’re basically pulling a heist, and our Mom even gave us the okay to do it this time.”

“We have never pulled a heist, Lisa,” Nicolina grumbled.

“We are not starting bank robbing careers this road trip, girls,” Wendy murmured. “Relax, Sara. Wolves love games, and I was nice enough to text my mate we were going shopping and wouldn’t be back until later tonight. They won’t even notice we’re gone for at least a few hours.”

I turned back around, hung my head, and sighed. “How are you going to explain not answering our cells?”

I didn’t think the situation was funny, but Wendy laughed. “They’re all turned off and under the bed. Stop worrying. We have at least a few hours until they notice anything. My Charles will be arguing with Richard for at least two hours over plans, then they’ll get on the phone with the Shadow Pope, which will surely fill a couple of hours. Perhaps your Sanders will worry, but he’ll ultimately get caught up in the bickering.”

Lisa snickered. “Alex will think it’s funny. He loves watching his brother get riled up. Of course, he’ll get caught up in the hunt as much as the rest given some time. That’s a nice thing about the Murphys. They’re both worriers, and when they worry, they act. They’re reliable.”

Reaching over, Amber gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Just think about it this way, Sara. It’s a legitimate strategy. If your mates can’t find us, no one else should be able to. The risky part is picking up your Alfa Romeo—we don’t know if anyone will be watching the house.”

“Leave that to me,” Nicolina stated. “The alarm system is no match for me, and if anyone does try something stupid while I’m getting the car, I’ll teach them a lesson or two.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Wendy admitted. “Wait. We could grab Sanders’s truck. It’s parked at his house. We hired a house sitter, but they only come around every couple of days for a few minutes. It’s got a huge cab and should be comfortable enough.”

“We’re not stealing my mate’s truck.”

“It’s not stealing if we have the keys,” Wendy murmured. “It’s your truck now, too.”

“You do not have the keys to Sanders’s truck, Mom,” Nicolina chided.

“I may not have them right at this moment, but I know where he keeps the spare set in his house. His truck is seriously sexy.” Wendy clapped her hands. “I love it. Grand theft auto. Onward, Amber! To Sanders’s house!”

I surrendered with a sigh.

By the time dinnertime rolled around, I realized Wendy had ulterior motives for wanting to go on a road trip. With a grin bordering on the demonic, she forced Amber to stop at a store to buy us all phones under a false ID.

“You have fake IDs, Amber?” I asked after we were back in the SUV. While I wondered what Wendy was up to, I waited. I had the feeling I’d find out soon enough.

“I have three on me, one of which hasn’t been hacked by the Inquisition yet. I keep a few the Inquisition knows about so they feel like they can keep track of me.” Amber squirmed in her seat to pull out her wallet, which she tossed onto my lap. “I’m actually impressed you had as good of a fake as you did. It tricked us at first glance. Whoever you got it from knew what they were doing.”

I checked Amber’s wallet, and after a little searching, I found her extra licenses tucked behind her card-sized carry permits. She had a lot of permits for the United States and a government ID for Canada.

“One of my coworkers recommended the guy. A lot of us had fake licenses.”

“Why?”

I hesitated to admit I had been underage when I had first started dancing. Sighing, I confessed, “I was underage when I started working—a lot of girls in my position were. We needed really good IDs. None of us wanted to deal with a year in prison over it—or fines we couldn’t afford.”

“Sounds tough.”

“Vegas is a tough town.”

Wendy cleared her throat. “Amber, there’s a buffet a mile from here.”

My wolf’s eagerness for another buffet experience matched my dread over whether or not my dinner would stay in my stomach where it belonged. Laughing, Amber asked for the address. “Hungry, are you?”

Thanks to traffic, it took us almost ten minutes to reach the buffet. Impatient to eat, my wolf’s restlessness grew, excitement taking over when Amber pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot.

“You want to eat your way to Alaska, don’t you?” I accused, sliding out of the SUV.

“Why lose such a nice opportunity?”

“And in an hour, I bet both of you will be throwing up almost everything you ate,” Amber said, shaking her head. “I will happily pull over for you, but do not puke in the SUV. I refuse to clean it up. I draw the line at cleaning up vomit out of a rental.”

“She who pukes first loses,” Wendy declared.

I rubbed my temples to ward away my growing headache. “She who pukes at all loses, Wendy. Misery shouldn’t be a contest.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport, Sara.”

Lisa grinned at me. “Maybe we should make bets on how long it takes Sara to decide she’s had enough and put Mom in her place.”

“Are you trying to get us both in trouble?” Nicolina demanded.

Laughing, Wendy put her hands on her hips and turned to her daughters. “Girls, when are you not in trouble?”

“You’re so mean, Mom.” Lisa wrinkled her nose, shook her head, and sighed. “We better feed you before Sara or Amber have to call Dad and tell him you ate us.”

“You’re both too scrawny to eat. I’m taking you to a buffet to fatten you up so you’re worth grilling,” Wendy retorted. “Come along, girls. We have food to eat and plans to make.”

In my effort to keep my dinner where it belonged, I ate the least. I amused myself watching Wendy compete with her daughters, ultimately defeating them both by a wide margin.

Amber narrowed her eyes, poking my empty plate with her fork. “You should eat more than that. You have two to feed.”

“If I throw it all up, I’m feeding neither one of us,” I retorted, and with a grin, I pointed at Wendy. “She can puke for both of us.”

“Whoever dubbed it morning sickness never got pregnant. I find it’s all-of-the-time sickness,” Desmond’s mate replied. “If I’m lucky, it won’t last through the entire nine months this time. Twins are terrible for your digestion, Sara—especially after they’re born.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Nicolina muttered.

“Okay, let’s get down to business, then. Sara, of all of us, you’re the one at most risk—but for this to work, you’ll have to take the most risks. We have several choices, and I want you to think them through on the way up to Alaska,” Amber said, pushing her plate aside to grab one of the fresh napkins. “Pen.”

Wendy dug into her purse for a ballpoint, handing it over to the witch with a flourish.

“If we want to catch him, which I think is an absolutely terrible idea with the most risks, we’ll need to lure him somewhere remote. I can get us Ketamine and wolfsbane to drug him, though I don’t know how long it’ll keep him down. He could be down for the count like Richard or he could be more like Sara, burning it off remarkably fast. Either way, it’s risky and a lot could go wrong. Issue one is the delivery of the drugs. I don’t want anything he might be able to turn on one of us, so syringes at close range are a no-go. Darts are possible, so long as we don’t hit Sara or Wendy accidentally.”

I frowned. “What would they do to my puppy if I got hit with a dart?”

“You likely won’t have a puppy anymore if you get hit with a dart,” was Amber’s somber reply. “I’m really against catching him at all. Put him down like the mad dog he is so we can get on with our lives. There are ways to find out what happened to Sara’s mom without risking her puppy to do it.”

With a flinch, Wendy lowered her gaze to the table. “He’s the only one who knows for sure.”

“It’s an imperfect world, Wendy. Is it really worth the risk to find out? Ultimately, the decision is Sara’s to make, not ours.” Amber drew a pair of rectangles on the napkin. “Our other option is to go in for the kill. We lure him into a trap, and as soon as we know we have the right wolf, we kill him. The only problem with that is we’ll need to go to Yellowknife to get the bullets.”

“What bullets?” Wendy demanded.

Nicolina flinched. “Richard’s stupid bullets. They’re solid silver shot, and they’re old. If you want to guarantee a kill, you use those. Can’t we just go in with hollow points, Amber?”

“If we’re killing him, I want him dead with one shot, Nicole. No dicking around with him. One shot and done. Let’s not drag this out any more than necessary.”

“Humane. I like it,” Wendy stated, her tone cold. “The only type of firefight I want to go into is one I know I’m going to win before it starts—without any one of us getting hurt in the process.”

“So, think about it, Sara. If we have to swing up to Yellowknife, we’ll do so. It’ll add time, but I won’t take any chances.”

Nicolina muttered something under her breath, grabbed her purse, pulled out her wallet, and dug into the zippered section, pulling out a small, black bag. Holding it carefully by the strings, she handed it over to Amber. “There’s three. Richard makes me carry the stupid things around with me in case I need them. Every time I try to put them back in the safe, he gets burned putting them back in my damned wallet.”