The Enforcers: KANE (Silverlake Shifters) (Silverlake Enforcers Book 1), page 17
And Rachelle knew, as if the winged creature had told her, that Kane getting near Selina would be a disaster.
The whole compound was dark and silent. Rachelle found the guest cabin without trouble—it was the only one with a light in the window. She ran up the steps, rapped lightly on the door, and went inside.
Noah Reilly was in the living room, chained to a metal cot that someone had brought in. The coffee table was shoved to one side to make room for it. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t move when she came in.
Baxter was sitting at the dining table, doing a crossword puzzle. He put it down and got up when she arrived. He was a beefy man in his thirties, wearing a rumpled suit and a sidearm in a shoulder holster. There was a trank gun on the table. They really weren’t taking chances with Reilly.
“Good to see you safe and sound,” Baxter said. She nodded.
“The sooner we put Selina Douglass down, the safer the world will be,” she said. She nodded toward Noah. “Is he conscious?”
Baxter shook his head. “We had to put him out,” he said. “He was going nuts. But it’s one of the brainwave-suppressing drugs. We give him the antidote, and in five or ten minutes, he’s ready for you to do your magic on.”
Rachelle nodded. She just hoped Selina hadn’t messed up his mind beyond her ability to repair.
Baxter opened a small box that looked like it should hold a fancy fountain pen. Inside was a syringe. He took it out and depressed the plunger slightly, removing any air bubbles.
Then he nodded to Rachelle and they walked across to Noah’s cot.
His eyes snapped open, pure gold, and stared into hers. She started at the unexpectedness of it.
Baxter grabbed Rachelle around the neck, and she felt the pinprick of the syringe piercing her skin. And then all she heard was Noah Reilly laughing.
* * *
Kane woke up suddenly, realizing his bed was empty. Where was Rachelle?
He snapped the light on. Her clothing was gone from the floor where they’d tossed it, and her boots and combat vest were gone as well.
What the hell?
She was barely healed; she wasn’t well enough to be wandering around on her own, let alone going anywhere she needed a combat vest.
Kane yanked his jeans on and grabbed his phone. That’s when he saw the note on his bedside table.
Went over to Noah’s cabin to do interrogation per Carmichael’s orders.
A stab of fear hit his stomach. That wasn’t right. Carmichael would have come and gotten her.
He dashed out of the cabin, grabbing his gun but not bothering with shoes. A minute later Israel came out after him.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” Kane said. “Woke up to an empty bed and a note from Rachelle.” He handed it to Israel. His friend growled and shifted to wolf.
They approached the cabin carefully. Israel slunk up to the doorway, sniffing. He gave Kane a headshake.
Rachelle wasn’t in there.
Kane crept up the front porch steps and eased open the screen door. The inner door was shut, and there were no lights showing inside.
He counted down silently on his fingers, and on three Israel burst through the door, snarling. Kane followed, gun drawn.
There was no one there. Noah’s cot was in the living room, the chains lying discarded on the floor. There was no sign of his guard, or of Rachelle.
The place was completely empty.
Kane slammed open the door to Jace’s cabin, where Carmichael was supposedly sleeping in the second bedroom. He came out, still impeccably dressed in his suit, followed by Jace and Emma, both with guns.
Kane was pleased to note they didn’t holster them when he rounded on Carmichael.
“Where is she?” he snarled.
Carmichael raised his eyebrows. “Has something happened?”
“Rachelle’s gone.” He handed her note to Jace, who showed it to Emma, and then handed it to Carmichael. “I just went over to the guest cabin and it’s completely empty. No Rachelle, no guard, no Noah. Just a pile of chains on the floor. Do you want to explain that to me?”
Carmichael sat down on the living room couch. “That’s…distressing,” he said. Kane noticed he didn’t sound particularly distressed. “Rachelle may have told you that I’ve been concerned for some time that there were leaks in our organization. Maybe more than one.”
He shook his head. “I would not have pegged Baxter for one of them, though.”
Kane stepped forward, towering over the man. “Really. So how did they get out of the cabin and drive away without you or anyone else knowing about it?”
“I imagine they took the transport vehicle. Rachelle must have been drugged.”
The bastard didn’t sound like he cared at all. Kane’s hands began to flex, and Wolf started growling. “So call out your troops,” he said. “Do it now. I’m going with you.”
Carmichael wasn’t intimidated by Kane at all. He sat erect but relaxed, his hands on his knees.
“Certainly not. You’re far too emotional, Mr. Colton. I’ll be leaving now to go down the mountain and call in my team. Raven has an embedded tracker; as soon as I activate it, we’ll be able to find Selina’s hideout. Until then, Raven is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.”
Suddenly it all came clear to Kane. “You bastard,” he said. “Did you at least let her volunteer to be bait, or did you just have your minion drug her and send her in there without her knowledge?”
He lunged at Carmichael, but Jace managed to grab him in time and pull him off. “Don’t kill him until after he saves Rachelle,” he advised.
He turned to Carmichael. “You get yourself and your fucking suit out of my territory,” he said. “And I’m calling in every favor I have with the Council. As soon as you have her location, you better let us know what it is, or I swear my Enforcers and I will hunt you down wherever you might hide.”
“I’ll remember that,” Carmichael said. With that, he rose, picked up his briefcase from the corner and walked out.
“I really, really want to rip his head off,” Kane said.
“If you did, I wouldn’t tell,” Emma said. “I’d even help you hide the body.”
“Priorities, Kane,” Jace said. “Not till after he saves Rachelle.”
“If he saves her,” Kane snarled. “If they’ve injected her with a subcutaneous tracker, it still works after she’s dead.”
They needed a better plan. He just had to figure out what the fuck it was.
* * *
Rachelle woke up in a cage. She was in a two-story-high room with windows lining the upper part of the walls. Pale daylight poured through.
Daytime. She’d been out for at least several hours, then.
There were other cages around the room, but all of them were empty. Down the center of the room was a row of tables—some padded like exam tables in a doctor’s office, some stainless steel.
Like autopsy tables.
There were rolling stands for instruments and refrigerators for samples. Scattered throughout the room were heavy metal desks with computers on them.
This had to be the latest location for Gen-X’s lab.
And that made her the lab rat.
Rachelle pushed down the stab of panic that rose in her at the sight of all the shiny scalpels. She breathed slowly and deeply, the way she’d been taught in training. She had to think, to assess the situation.
No other prisoners, and a pile of half-packed boxes in the corner. They were cleaning house, getting ready to move again. That meant they wouldn’t keep her long—whatever Selina wanted her for, it was going to happen soon.
She scanned the lab for security cameras. No visible ones—whoever was in charge either trusted the people who worked for them, or had other ways of checking up on them.
She assessed her physical situation. Slightly nauseated, probably from the drug. And thirsty. But not hungry, so this was the morning after she’d been abducted. She hadn’t been out a whole day.
And her arm felt uncomfortable. She rolled up her sleeve to see a piece of gauze taped over the inside of her elbow. Had they taken blood? She peeled back the gauze and saw a neat red scar, where an incision had healed.
Her stomach dropped. They’d taken out her tracker. Which meant the Agency didn’t know where she was. They weren’t coming for her.
And Kane had no idea where to find her.
Upsides—not many. She was still dressed, which was a plus. One of the quickest ways to keep a kidnap victim feeling vulnerable was to take their clothes. Of course they’d taken her combat vest—too many weapons and useful tools in that.
But they hadn’t taken her belt. She tapped the hidden button in the buckle and a compartment opened, revealing her lockpicks.
She reached through the thick mesh of the cage walls and began working at the lock. The angle was awkward, and her tools kept slipping. She almost had it…
She heard heavy footsteps approaching, and slid the tools into her pocket. The door to the lab opened and Selina walked in, flanked by two guards. One of them was Noah Reilly.
Selina was smaller than Rachelle remembered. Average height, with glossy brown hair and large blue eyes. She looked almost innocent, which was even more chilling than her looking like Cruella deVille would have been.
The guards were dressed in fatigue pants and no shirts, with assault rifles slung over their shoulders. They were both gorgeous; lean and muscled, with gelled hair and oiled bodies.
They looked like stripper bodyguards. Was this what Kane had looked like when he was with Selina? Her nausea grew a little worse.
Selina walked back and forth in front of the cage, examining Rachelle from every angle.
“You’re not even pretty,” she said.
“You’re not exactly a supermodel either,” Rachelle said. “What’s your point?”
Selina narrowed her eyes. “My point,” she said, “is that I never knew what he saw in you. But now I do. Now I understand everything.”
Rachelle studied her. She had no idea what Selina was talking about, but if she kept her talking, maybe she’d find out.
“So you’ve figured it out,” she said.
“Of course I have,” Selina came up to the cage, almost spitting the words. “Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No,” Rachelle said soothingly. “Of course not.”
She could feel Selina’s energy—jagged and electric, almost like lightning.
“You have powers, like me,” Selina said. “Only mine are stronger. I took him away from you.”
“Hunter?” Rachelle asked carefully.
“Of course Hunter!” Selina spat out. “I wanted him, and he was mine. He was my favorite. But you did something to him, and he left.” She got right up to the cage. “No one leaves me,” she said. “Do you hear me? No one!”
Rachelle didn’t answer. This woman was batshit crazy, and Rachelle didn’t think any of her own powers would work on her. And if Selina felt Rachelle trying to influence her, she might easily kill her on the spot.
Selina walked over to her bodyguards and circled them, raking her fingers lightly across their chests, shoulders, backs. It seemed to calm her down. When she came back around in front of Noah, she scratched him deep enough to draw blood. Selina inhaled, and licked the drop of blood off his chest. Rachelle could see him getting hard under his fatigues.
She felt sick.
“I’m stronger now, though,” Selina said. “I can make any shifter do anything I want. Not just men. Women too.” She walked up to the cage again, dropping her voice. “All except you. And I’m going to fix that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you do,” Rachelle said. “Hunter doesn’t love you. He never did.”
Selina grasped the cage mesh and rattled it. “He does love me,” she said. “And once I bond him to me with your life force, I’ll be the most powerful woman on earth. The Shifter Council will bow down to me. I’ll have everything I ever wanted.”
Chapter 20
Kane had spent the rest of the night sitting in a corner of Jace’s cabin, waiting for word on Rachelle. As dawn started to streak the sky, though, he knew in his gut that Carmichael wasn’t going to call. Even if he knew where Rachelle was, he’d never tell Kane.
Had the bastard really sent Rachelle in there as bait, with or without her consent? He couldn’t believe she would go willingly—not without talking to him first.
And to send her in unprepared, without her consent, was incomprehensible to him. All the security teams he’d led, all the ops he’d planned—he would never do that to one of his people.
But if they had a tracker on Rachelle, they should have been moving on Selina’s location by now. Why hadn’t they heard anything?
Jace was talking in low tones with Rafe and Jesse, trying to figure out if they should contact the Council. It would be a mess. Explaining how they’d harbored Rachelle and Carmichael, not to mention Noah, the Council’s missing prisoner, would take some doing. It could bring down nearly ten years of work, building their reputations as Enforcers.
Hell, it could bring down the pack, and Kane would understand if Jace didn’t want to do it—especially since they didn’t have any useful leads the Council could act on. In any other circumstances, Kane would have advised him not to take the risk, and called him an idiot just for entertaining the idea.
The idea of destroying the pack that counted on him twisted Kane’s gut. But the idea of losing Rachelle was intolerable.
Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He burst out through the door and down the porch steps, not even knowing where he was going.
Find her, Wolf was saying. Find her now. Before it’s too late.
Kane pulled out his phone and stared at it, willing it to ring. Carmichael, Raven, Selina—anyone, as long as it meant he could do something.
Finally, he opened his text app and went back to the text Selina had sent him the night of the robbery. God, that seemed so long ago, but it was only night before last. And he’d only had about two hours of sleep either of those nights. No wonder he couldn’t think straight.
He hesitated, then sent a reply to her text. I know what you want. Let’s do this.
It was probably a burn phone; she’d probably ditched it long since. But he had to try.
Because he’d finally figured it out. He’d gotten why Carmichael would allow Noah to take Rachelle back to Selina. What he hadn’t thought about was why Selina would want her.
And the answer was, she didn’t. She wanted Kane.
Selina was obsessed. She got off on seducing men, controlling them, making them her slaves. Training them to feed her sick need for blood and pain. None of them were ever allowed to deny her anything she wanted.
And he had left her.
Knowing Selina, now that she knew where he was, she wouldn’t rest until she had him back where she wanted him.
Israel walked up and stood with his hands in his pockets. “You going after her?” he asked.
Kane shoved his phone in his pocket. “If I knew where the fuck she was, then yeah, of course,” he said. “In a heartbeat.”
Israel jerked his chin at the pocket where Kane had stashed his phone. “When you find out, I’ve got your back. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
But he wouldn’t involve Israel in this. He wouldn’t involve anyone. This was his mess. He’d tried to run away from it, to start a new life, and it had finally caught up with him. He had to make it right, and he wouldn’t let the pack endanger their livelihood—or their lives—cleaning it up.
If he did this, he’d have to do it alone.
The hours dragged on. Kane had gone back to his cabin to wait, telling everyone he had to be alone. They’d let him go—even Rafe didn’t have the guts to try to friend him with the mood he was in.
His phone buzzed. Blocked number. It was her. He hit the answer button.
“What do you want?” he asked.
Selina’s voice came down the line, sultry and honeyed.
“Huuunter,” she singsonged. “You’ve been a naughty boy.”
He took a deep breath. “I thought you liked it when I was bad,” he said.
Her voice grew hard. “Not when you touch other girls,” she said. “You know if you do that, I have to punish you. And you fucked that little Raven. That’s a big punishment.”
How the hell did she know that? Even Noah hadn’t known. Unless Carmichael had found out and told that fucking guard.
Or she’d gotten it out of Rachelle.
He knew what he was supposed to say. He couldn’t bring himself to say it, though. Just hearing her voice made him feel like an icy river was pouring down his spine.
“Hunter. Tell me what you want. Tell me what you need.” Her voice wormed into his mind. He could feel the addiction waking up, his traitorous brain pulling him toward her.
His brain. Not his heart. His heart wasn’t the enemy after all. His heart belonged to Rachelle.
He hated saying what she wanted him to say. It made him feel nauseated, but he had to convince her she still had power over him.
“I like it when you punish me,” he ground out.
“Good boy,” she crooned. Like he was a fucking dog.
Wolf growled. She doesn’t respect us, he said. Raven respects us.
Yes, she does. Kane said. And we’re going to go get her back.
“I need you to come to me, Hunter,” Selina said. “There’s a little matter I’m going to need you to take care of.”
His stomach twisted. Please let her say she hadn’t hurt Raven. But he couldn’t ask. If he said he didn’t want her to hurt Rachelle, she’d do it just to torment him.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I have your little girlfriend,” she said. “You shouldn’t have let her touch you, Hunter. You know you’re mine.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know it was wrong.” It wasn’t wrong. It was the most right thing he’d ever done, being with Rachelle. He took a deep breath and managed, “I was so lonely without you.”
