Jake looked into his cold blue eyes. “Oh, yeah, I always have a choice.” He couldn’t work with Bruce. He knew that, and yet the alternative made him sick. He had to get out of here, away from these toxic Weres. “I’m going for a drive around the lake.”
“I’d advise you not to go over to Rachel’s,” Bruce said.
Jake gazed at him. “Yeah? Well, Bruce, you can take that advice and shove it where the sun don’t shine. One more visit to Rachel isn’t going to make this any worse than it already is, and she happens to help me think straight. Besides, I need to satisfy myself that she’s okay. Because something about your tone of voice makes me wonder.” Reaching into his pocket for his truck keys, he walked out the door.
All the way around the lake, he realized he was running to a human to help him solve what was essentially a werewolf problem. That wasn’t logical, and yet he trusted Rachel and wanted to make sure she was okay. He no longer trusted Ann and Bruce Hunter to guarantee that. And he definitely didn’t trust this Consortium they’d hooked up with.
He’d assured Rachel that the Hunters weren’t activists, and apparently they weren’t in the normal sense. They didn’t join organizations like WARM, or HOWL, the one Kate Stillman had founded as an acronym for Honoring Our Werewolf Legacy.
No, the Hunters had decided to go underground and create some shadow group that didn’t answer to anyone but itself. The concept made Jake shudder. He shouldn’t be surprised that the debate over human and Were interaction would spawn a fringe group like this. The climate was ripe for it.
And he’d fallen right into their hands. They’d probably been monitoring his movements for at least a year or more, soon after Rachel’s carvings became world-famous. Jake had known some Weres had suspicions about his potential involvement with Rachel, but he’d never dreamed that an ultraconservative group was spying on him to gather evidence of a breach.
If so, they had all the ammunition they needed to bring him to his knees. They’d probably recorded his nightly runs over to her cabin. They’d have the bear attack on tape, and once he’d entered her house as a wolf, the plan to remove him from Alaska must have begun.
He’d been naive enough to think that the Hunters’ request was simple—the pack needed a new alpha and he was a good candidate. He’d been flattered and unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth. But now he could see that hauling his ass all the way from Alaska was an extreme solution to their alpha issue. There had been more to it—much more.
When he pulled into the parking area beside the path to Rachel’s cabin, the presence of both Rachel’s and Lionel’s trucks calmed him. These were sincere, good people. Yes, Lionel had put a bullet in his shoulder, but he’d done it out of loyalty to Rachel. The kid would lay down his life for her, and Jake treasured that, even if it had caused him pain.
Because he expected them both to be working, he headed straight for the workshop. But instead of an atmosphere of creativity and good cheer, he found Lionel sitting alone on a stool, staring into space. Rachel was nowhere around. Maybe she’d gone to the cabin for a cup of coffee.
Lionel looked startled when Jake walked through the door. “What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk to Rachel. There’s been a . . . problem. I wanted to talk to her about it.”
Lionel stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “She’s not with you?”
“No, of course not. We agreed that I’d go to Idaho to be with my . . . extended family, and she’d stay here.”
“That’s not what her note says.”
“What note?”
“This one.” Lionel picked it up from the workbench and handed it to Jake. “I’ve read it about a hundred times, and I still don’t believe it. She wouldn’t leave without seeing me.”
Jake scanned the note.
Dear Lionel,
I’ve decided to leave with Jake when he heads to Idaho to be with his family. I’m starting a new life there, so I’ve decided to be wild and crazy and leave everything here instead of going through the hassle of packing.
I know this will shock you, but I want to leave the house, the workshop, and all the tools to you. The sky’s the limit! Walk in my footsteps, dear friend.
Warmly,
Rachel
Jake reread the note as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on. “But she’s not going to Idaho,” he said. “That was never the plan.”
“But it’s her handwriting,” Lionel said. “I’ve seen it a bunch of times, and she wrote that. I’d swear to it.”
“All I can tell you, Lionel, is that she wasn’t planning to go to Idaho with me. And it’s not like she showed up over at my place and announced she was doing that. She wouldn’t have. Not considering everything.”
“You know that better than I do, Mr. Hunter. But she’s not here.”
“So you’ve been all through the house?” In his desperation, Jake prayed that she was still inside her cabin, maybe in the bathroom. Lionel wouldn’t have opened that door to check on her.
“I’ve searched everywhere,” Lionel said. “Even the bathroom.”
That killed Jake’s hope that she was in there.
“It’s like she said.” Lionel gestured around the shop. “She left without taking anything.” He turned to something lying in a heap on the workbench. “She left dirty dishes in the sink, and this draped over a chair.” He held up Jake’s wolf T-shirt.
A sense of dread settled in the pit of Jake’s stomach. “Something’s very wrong about this.”
“Well, duh, I know that. But what about her note? Why did she write something like that?”
Jake studied the note. After three years of looking at Rachel’s thank-you note to him, he knew her handwriting well. At first glance, this looked exactly like it. But there were subtle differences. The loops weren’t quite as open, and the pressure on the paper wasn’t quite as deliberate. Rachel wrote with an artist’s flourish, and this handwriting was more controlled, more tentative.
The longer Jake looked at this note, the more he became certain that someone, probably whoever had swiped her note out of his coffee-table book, had forged her handwriting. His money was on the Hunters, or someone connected to this Consortium they’d hooked up with.
He gazed at Lionel. “This note makes no sense because she didn’t write it. The handwriting’s slightly different, and besides, she signed it Rachel. If she’d written it, she would have signed it Miss M.”
“You’re right!” Lionel sucked in a breath. “Then who did write it?”
“The same creeps who have made her disappear.”
“Oh, God. You think she’s been kidnapped? Or . . .”
“Kidnapped.” Jake wouldn’t let himself think of the alternative. Although his heart pounded frantically, he had to keep his mind clear, for Rachel’s sake. “Yes, I think she’s been kidnapped.”
“Then I’m calling the cops.” Lionel pulled out his cell phone.
“Wait.” Jake had a good idea who had taken her, and calling the human police might do no good whatsoever. He laid a hand on Lionel’s arm. “Let me try something else first.”
“What?”
“Don’t laugh, but Rachel and I have a psychic connection.”
“I’m not laughing. I believe in psychic connections, Mr. Hunter. Can you tune her in?”
“I’m going to try.” Dear God, please let it work. Then he remembered how the connection between them had seemed to go dead about an hour ago and his blood ran cold. If anything had happened to her, he would have no reason to live. No, that wasn’t true. He’d have a reason—finding those who’d harmed her and making them pay.