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“I’ll call you back when I find her.” He hung up, running faster, panic powering every step.
“Hey,” Tate called out as he, Deke, and JP caught up to him, “what’s happening?”
“Quinley’s on the run in her cat form,” Isaiah replied, turning into the cul-de-sac. “Fucking shifters are chasing her.”
A curse burst out of Deke.
“Where about is she?” asked Tate, his face hard.
“No clue.” Nearing his car, Isaiah unlocked it with the fob. “She ran past the lot where she leaves her car and seemed to be going in the direction of the park behind it—that’s all her sister knows.” He ragged open the driver’s door and hopped into the seat, unsurprised when the other three males slid into the vehicle with him.
Isaiah dumped his phone in the cupholder, gunned the engine, and then sped out of the cul-de-sac. His cat hissed at him, insisting he go faster; intent on getting to the feline they’d claimed as theirs. Because yeah, Isaiah might have been the one to do the branding, but his cat had come to mentally claim her—he just hadn’t realized it until that moment.
“Either Zaire’s mate targeted her, feeling a little bitter,” said Tate, riding shotgun. “Or it was the Vercetti Pack.”
Isaiah had already considered both possibilities.
“If it’s the brothers,” began Deke, “they might have done this to lure Isaiah into a spot where they’re better able to get to him.”
Isaiah felt his grip tighten on the steering wheel. “Or they mean to either kill her or offer a trade—her for me.”
“I don’t think they’ll have her,” said Tate. “Black-foots run at the speed of fucking light. I’ve seen Quinley’s cat run—she’s no exception.”
No, she wasn’t. His woman was like a goddamn blur when she went at full speed. “But the pack carries guns,” Isaiah reminded him, sharply taking a turn. “They could’ve shot her.”
“More than bullets would be needed to take down a black-foot and you know it,” said Tate, his tone firm, insisting Isaiah think, not panic.
But how the fuck could he not panic, especially when… “Bullets could have slowed her down enough that they—”
“Don’t go there. We don’t even know they’re definitely armed. Let’s operate on the assumption that she got away. We won’t be able to track her, but we can track whoever chased her.”
That was exactly what they did, following the scents of wolf and gunpowder—and yeah, the latter made the bottom fall out of his stomach—eventually ending up in the park that Adaline had mentioned. There was grass, bushes, trees, an old rusty kids playground. But there was no Quinley.
Isaiah clenched his fists. “Where the fuck is she?”
“The wolves seemed to have paused here and then backtracked,” said JP, studying the ground.
“Maybe Quinley’s cat disappeared down there,” mused Deke, pointing at a hole. “It would explain why someone seemed to have been shooting at the ground here. It might have been some desperate attempt to hit her with a bullet, hoping it would penetrate the earth.”
His cat hissed, furious that she’d been shot at. Isaiah crouched near the hole and shouted, “Quinley! Quinley!”
Nothing.
Squatting beside him, JP sniffed. “I don’t scent her.”
“You wouldn’t. Her scent trail disappears as fast as she does.” Isaiah shot to his feet. “It’s fucking uncanny.”
“Nature tends to give the smaller breeds cool defenses to compensate for how vulnerable their size can make them to bigger creatures,” Tate reminded him.
Deke set his hands on his hips. “Our cats are just a little too big to make their way through that tunnel. It’s a shame Bailey ain’t with us. She would have fit.”
“Why didn’t Quinley run back to the salon?” asked JP as he stood upright.
“The pack would have just chased her inside and then possibly killed everyone in there,” said Tate. “She did the right thing by shifting and taking off. She had more chance of losing them than she did of taking them on.”
Isaiah’s phone started to ring. He pulled it out of his pocket and saw that it was Havana. “Yeah?” he answered, his tone clipped.
“Thought you might want to know that your mate just appeared at my door,” she told him.
