Rivals and Retribution (7 page)

Dmitri reached out a hand and signaled at Noah to advance on him again.

Noah grinned and rushed him. Dmitri simply stepped aside, letting him barrel by. “You fight like Maximilian Rusakova,” he called as Noah skidded to a stop, bits of snow flying up from his sneakers. “You are expecting to use your body’s bulk as a weapon. But look at yourself.”

Noah did as he was told, his gaze scraping down his own body. How did he see himself? As the skinny, pimply faced kid with poor posture that his parents always told him he was? As the geeky boy whose quiet intelligence made him a target for his peers at school? Or as a young man with a wolf raging inside?

Dmitri shoved his shoulder. Playfully. “You are strong, there is no doubting that. And clever. But you are not built like a tank. You cannot afford to act like you are, either.”

Noah grunted. “Okay, so what do I do if I can’t out-muscle someone?”

“Outsmart them instead.”

He nodded solemnly, a smile slowly stretching his slender lips. “That I can do.”

Dmitri chortled, and I slipped back the way I’d come, letting Dmitri again get Noah into a fighting stance.

Jessie

I looked around the shed, my eyes as adjusted to the low light as they could be. There were a few tools left abandoned in its rusty hulk, which only strengthened my hypothesis that wherever this shed was, no one other than my kidnappers would be opening its doors soon.

An old hoe with a broken and splintery handle, a shovel—I was liking shovels more and more after lopping off a couple of Gabriel’s fingers with one in a pinch.
Pinch
. I snorted despite my predicament. Pinching was one thing Gabe wouldn’t be doing easily ever again. Not with his right hand.

The gag molded to my smile and I tested my wrists against the duct tape binding them. Still snug. I needed to correct that. I needed my hands free in order to have any chance of getting out of here alive.

Unless they wanted me alive … But why…? Why did I feel like bait for some trap?

I scooted around to get a better view of my surroundings. An old lawn mower, a gas can—probably empty since I couldn’t really smell fumes seeping out—and …

That’d do nicely.

Propped against one hard rubber wheel was an old lawn-mower blade. If I could just make sure it stayed still … I looked at it and where it rested and tried to keep the picture carefully in my mind as I edged my way back around so my stiff but grasping fingers were closest to the blade. I carefully reached out toward it and tried sliding the duct tape along one edge of its blade, but it rocked and I caught my breath and froze, afraid it would roll back and totally out of reach.

Tentatively I caught hold of the blade with one hand and tugged at it until I heard it scrape and roll forward over the wheel. I grunted. Yeah. Niiice. Right into my back. That’d bruise.

I grabbed it again and gave a little shake, but it stayed still. Adjusting my position, I stroked my wrists along the old blade’s length, rubbing and rubbing until I heard the duct tape begin to give way, threads popping as I continued, layer by layer, chafing metal against my wrists in order to free them.

My shoulders began to ache, but my hands—my hands began to move farther apart by increments of millimeters as I sawed through the tape.

Adapt to survive. I could do this.

With one last pop, the tape tore loose and my hands fell limp at my sides.

I shook my shoulders, urging life back into my limbs. I stood up and stretched.

I tried the door and heard chains rattle outside. No good going out that way.

I picked up the shovel and swung at the hole in the roof. It puckered with a horrible creak and groan—as loud as the noise the
Titanic
probably made when it split. More snow fell in, but I’d barely made a dent. And the last thing I wanted to do was alert my captors to my attempts at escape.

I was trapped.

Dammit.

Looking at my red and worn wrists, I nearly started to peel the tape free of them, but I thought better of it. Better to maintain appearances.

Better yet to find a weapon so that reality was far from what it appeared.

I rooted around the tilting shelves of the shed, nudging baby food jars filled with rusting nails and screws of all sizes out of my way as I looked for an easily concealable weapon.

I was faced with only two viable, but grim, options: a flathead screwdriver (like a distant cousin of an ice pick) and a trowel with a long and narrow point, its edges sharp for masonry.

Decisions, decisions …

Shrugging, the pain in my shoulders and arms made me want to yelp. I bit my lip, scrunched up my face, and rolled my shoulders until the pain was just another part of me. A very angry, motivated part of me. And the whole time I held the screwdriver in one hand and the trowel in the other, weighing my decision. Which was the best weapon?

I finally decided on
both
.

I sat back down, grabbed the discarded blanket, and prepared to wait for my rival for Pietr’s attention.

Or Gabriel.

I didn’t really have a preference.

Alexi

“Shit.” Max’s single exclamation summed up the sentiment in the truck as I slowed at the sight of a line of brake lights up ahead.

“Language,” Cat said.

“Can you see what is going on down there?” I asked him, slowing the truck down and bringing it to a stop so we had plenty of space between us and the car immediately ahead.

“From the lights…” He leaned forward and stared out the windshield. “It looks like a tree fell. Wires are down.”

“Ah. Country living,” I surmised. “Do we know another path to the motel?”

“I would use my phone’s GPS, but…” Pietr held his cell up, moved it around, and even touched it to part of the truck’s metal frame in hopes of getting it to act as an antenna. He growled—a weak sound in a boy who used to be a wolf. “No signal.”

We all tested our phones.

“Nothing,” I concluded.

“Bad traffic is not something that should hamper a rescue,” Max muttered.

“
Pravda
. That is true,” I reported, swinging the truck’s nose into the opposite lane and performing a less than elegant K-turn on the narrow road. “We shall not allow it to hamper our efforts for long,” I assured him. “Jessie will just need to hold on a bit longer.”

Marlaena

Outside his door I bent over and tried to catch my breath. Oh, sweet Jesus in Gethsemane, I’d really done it this time. I’d let him reject me outright. I’d given him the upper hand. And even after that—after he’d all but drawn first blood, I’d naïvely admitted that I felt something for him. That I had some emotional connection with him—even as lame as “like” was.

Damn it. I straightened and focused on the dimming light in the sky. It would be dusk soon. I’d let time slip away from me. How long until Pietr and his gang realized that Jessica was missing? How long until they figured I had something to do with it and came hunting us?

God. The sickness swelled in my gut at his words. He wasn’t good enough for
me
.… We both knew it was a lie. But how could an alpha who was higher in rank than Gareth still have to climb to be his moral equal?

Maybe if I just released her … Maybe there was still a chance all might be forgiven. Maybe I wouldn’t be falling into what suddenly felt like some snare Gabriel had set. For
me
.

I headed down the nearest stairs and skirted the motel until I came to the old storage shed back in the lumpy snow. Dry stems of uncut weeds and tall brown grass bent under clumps of snow. It was an area of the property no one cared about anymore. The only sign it had been visited recently were the tracks our footsteps had made in the snow that kept refilling as more snow fell.

I pulled the key out of my jeans pocket and rubbed the lock with my thumb to clear the frost from the keyhole. The lock rattled off the chain, sliding with a
clunk
,
clunk
,
clunk
as I dragged it through the holes in the door.

Tugging the door open, a thin beam of light fell across the bound and curled form of Jessica Gillmansen and the ramshackle mess of odds and ends rusting away near her.

Jessie

The noise of chains startled me before the door opened, light falling across me, just bright enough bouncing off the snow outside that it made me squint. My cheek was as cold as the dead ground beneath it; my ear ached. My nose had begun to run and sting not minutes after the two of them first locked me away, and now the inside of it felt thick and sharp with ice crystals. I tried to relax, to make myself appear asleep in hopes that Marlaena or Gabriel would mistake me for being less of a threat than I was.

Or at least less of a threat than I
hoped
I was …

I kept my wrists together behind my back, pressing them so tight the bones ached and my skin—raw from the tape I’d sliced through against the dull blade of the old lawn mower—stuck together. I opened my eyes just enough to peer out the scant space between my negligible eyelashes. The silhouette cleared in my vision.

Marlaena
.

The bitch was back.

My fingers itched in the cold, itched to wrap around her neck so that I could warm my hands throttling her. But I stayed still, my fingers tightening on the screwdriver and trowel as I waited for her to come closer. I had no idea what I’d do when she finally was next to me. I only knew I had to do
something
.

Something desperate.

CHAPTER FOUR

Marlaena

I shuffled toward her, my eyes focused on her face to see if she was awake. Her eyes crinkled briefly—the movement of someone trying to fake sleep.

I did the same thing when I lived with Phil and Margie so I could hear the prayers they said over me late at night when they thought I was fast asleep. They had to be more embarrassed by me than I’d ever expected, knowing what they said and the frequency with which they said it.

They must’ve thought I was the Devil incarnate.

Seeing me with Jessica taped and gagged in a rusty shed would only confirm their suspicion.

I blew out a breath, and her eyes twitched again.

Jessica Gillmansen was definitely faking.

Fine. It’d make it easier to explain things to her and set her loose. Wouldn’t Phil and Margie be surprised?

And wouldn’t Gareth be proud? If I ever told him. I took a step closer to the prone girl. I could never tell him. Better just hurry up. Get her out of here and apologize …

“Jessica,” I said, nudging her with the toe of my boot. “Jessica.”

She groaned and opened her eyes slowly to glare at me.

“It’s over,” I stated, leaning across her body and stretching my hand out toward the knot that tangled in her hair and filled her mouth with foul fabric.

Jessie

“It’s over,” she said, reaching out to grab my throat. Before I could say a thing, someone behind her delivered the line instead.

“It sure as hell is!” Gareth’s shout made her jump and I took my chance, lunging at her, my hands free and holding the screwdriver and trowel I’d found among the junk in the shed. I swiped at her face, and she leaped back with a shout as the trowel bit into her cheek and left a ragged cut from her eye to her jawline.

“You bitch!” she shouted, lunging at me, hands going for my makeshift weapons.

But I stabbed and sliced at her, keeping her back. “Takes one to know one,” I snapped, my eyes widening when I saw hers narrow in response to my taunt.
Someday, Jess,
I warned,
someday you’ll learn when to keep your mouth shut
.

Her hand went to her face and came away slick with blood.

“Not so pretty now, huh?” I shouted.
Dear God. Maybe I’d learn that lesson eventually, but it sure wasn’t sticking today.

“’laena!” Gareth shouted from behind her. “What—what is the meaning of this? Why the hell do you have Jessie—”

“Stop!” she commanded me. The hand not holding the wound on her face was up, palm out. “Just
stop
!”

For a moment I hesitated, seeing something new, something different in her eyes.

Repentance?

“Gareth—it’s not what it looks like…,” she whispered, far from the alpha role she normally played.

She was … apologetic?

But then Gabriel slipped up beside her, their combined bulk pushing me farther back into the shed, my feet tangling in the discarded junk.

“Gabe—get out of here,” Marlaena demanded, her tone terse. “Let me fix this,” she said, her attention split between me and the two guys. “It’s over.…”

In the thin space between their shoulders I saw Gareth move forward, reaching for Gabriel—to move him out of the way. And then—a shadow crossed behind Gareth and, as I focused on what was going on behind him, Gabe got past Marlaena, his hands clenching my wrists, shaking the trowel and screwdriver out of my hands with a growl.

I looked pointedly at his bandaged hand and sneered despite the pain in my wrists, saying, “Not eligible for the five-finger discount anymore, are you?”

With a snarl he raised his fist and brought it down sharply.

Marlaena

“Dammit,
no!
”

Gabe cuffed Jessica and she fell, limp, to the ground, causing him to smirk.

I turned back to Gareth, my hand still on my cheek, trying to find the words, to explain I was going to free the little wretch—to apologize.…

But Dmitri was behind him, as smooth and fast as a shadow, and raising a gun, he brought its butt down sharply on Gareth’s head. Gareth blinked once at me, his mouth falling open as his knees gave way and he sank to the ground a heartbeat before I could even shout a warning.

“Damn it!”

Gabe turned to Dmitri and grinned at us both.

But all I could think was that Gareth would wake up remembering two things: that I’d kidnapped Jessica Gillmansen, and I’d let someone get the drop on him.