A crunch announced a footfall nearby, and I pushed into the brush, watching legs and boots go by. Those boots looked a lot like…
Sliding back farther into the bushes, I heard the snap of a stick and the boots stopped moving. A face appeared. A beta from my old pack. “She’s over here!” he shouted. “I’ll grab her.”
“Over my dead body!” I surged forward, pushing him back and tearing around him. “Leave me alone!”
Chapter Eighteen
Aries
Nothing worse than waking from a dead sleep to the phone ringing. On the second ring, my brain kicked in and I realized it might be Carver.
“Hello?” I barked into the phone.
“She’s gone.”
I sat up in bed so fast that my head spun and I nearly keeled over. “What do you mean she’s gone? She walked somewhere? She… What the fuck do you mean?” My voice cracked with worry. Our mate was gone. Where? How? Carver was supposed to be keeping her safe.
“I was on watch all night. Thea said she’s gone. Out the window. It was open. I had no idea. I’m sorry. I…”
“I’m on my way.”
Carver cursed under his breath. “Fuck, Diesel is gonna kill me.”
I hung up on him. Diesel wasn’t the only one who was going to kill him. But we couldn’t have had any idea that Josie would choose to flee through the window.
Tripping and jumping into some pants, I knocked on Diesel’s bedroom and felt the house shake as he made the few steps to the door. “What?”
“She’s gone. Carver called. Out through the window. Let’s go.”
“Fuck! Two minutes.”
I had a feeling we would all be using the f-word a lot today until we found her.
In less than fifteen minutes, we arrived at the motel to find Thea frantic. Her eyes were wide.
“Nothing?” I asked. My chest tightened. What if we never found her? What if our date was the one chance we got to spend time with our mate ever again.
No. No, I couldn’t think that way.
As easy as it would be to slip into a path of negativity, we had to stay positive. We would find her. Or she would come back. There was a good chance all of this was a misunderstanding, and somehow we’d find our way through it.
Find mate. Now.
He was right. We had to find her before figuring out what the hell happened. I was getting ahead of myself. “Not last night. We have to find her, Aries. She might be in trouble.”
“We will,” I assured her.
Diesel was making rounds and sniffing things out. He’d gone straight to the window and was trying to follow her trail, but it had been hours, and the scent had faded.
Carver came in. Pale. Shoulders slumped. Utterly defeated. “I’m sorry.”
“No. This isn’t on you. We had no idea she was a flight risk. I have no damned clue what caused this, but let’s focus on finding her. Here’s what we do…I want you to go to the club and print out a good picture from the cameras in the laundromat. At least ten copies. I’m going to start going door to door and asking people if they’ve seen her when you get back with those. Diesel is doing his tracking thing.”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he sprinted away.
“Thea, I’m going to start asking around. Call us if you see or hear anything, please.”
She nodded, and I got to work. Carver, smart man that he was, texted me a pic from the security cameras and then said he was printing more. I’d already asked all the residents if they knew anything. With the photo on my phone, I went outside to ask strangers.
