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Rolling the window down, she asked, “What’s going on?”
The lead man gripped the door and leaned down to look at her.
“You need to turn off the vehicle and come with us.” His voice was low and gruff, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
“What did I do?”
“This vehicle has been sighted coming and going within Whisper Creek. You’re not a tigress, so what’s your business here?”
She swallowed hard. “I’m here to see Romeo.” She almost said they were truemates, but that was still such a foreign word to her. What else could she say?Oh, I made out with your number two guy a couple of times, and I think he’s my boyfriend now?
The man’s nostrils flared. He reached into the car and unlocked the door, pulling it open. “Get out, or we’ll take you out.”
Terror swept through her, and her mouth went salty. She’d never been captured by people she’d spied on. Finding Romeo had screwed up her spying mojo.
Which maybe wouldn’t have been a bad thing, if she actually knew what the hell she was doing back in Whisper Creek on the main road in plain sight instead of skulking around and continuing to spy on the tigers. She’d gotten sloppy and now she was busted.
“If you just call Romeo,” she said.
The man grabbed her by the upper arm, leaned over and popped the seatbelt release, then pulled her swiftly from the vehicle, slamming the door shut. In a heartbeat, her wrists were cuffed, and she was pushed into the lead vehicle.
“Please,” she said as two men got into the front seats. Although it didn’t look like a police car on the outside, a wire cage separated the front and back seats, and there were no handles or buttons for the doors or windows in the back. “If you just call Romeo and tell him Ashley is here.”
“Be quiet,” the second man said. “You don’t get to tell us to do anything.”
She pursed her lips together and looked out the window. The two remaining men had taken her keys, and one of them was driving her car and following them.
“Where are you taking me?”
They didn’t answer.
She closed her eyes and thought about Romeo.
She’d left to get some clarity. She’d come back because…she couldn’t stand to be away from him. Giving into those feelings had entirely screwed her.
The car stopped a few minutes later and the men got out. One of them pulled her from the back and marched her to a cellar door at the side of the king’s house. The other used a keypad to unlock it, then lifted one of the doors, revealing a set of stairs and dimly lit walkway.
In moments she was in a cell. The floor and walls were concrete, the bars thick and dark like iron. The only thing in the cell was a cot that had a thin mattress. The cell faced another one that was empty, and they’d passed a few other empty cells as they made their way to this one. There weren’t windows, and there appeared to be only one way to get in or out.
As the cell door shut with a loud clang, one of the men motioned her forward and grabbed the handcuffs, unlocking them.
“Please. Just tell Romeo that I’m Ashley. You’ve made a mistake.”
The four men stared at her, and she was distinctly, uncomfortably aware that she was human and they were not. But something snarled within her, deep in the recesses of her chest and she rubbed the space over her heart. She couldn’t figure out why she kept feeling something animalistic inside her.
“Stay put,” one of them said.
The others snickered.
And then they left her, returning up the stairs, the heavy door slamming shut.
She was trapped and alone, and no one even knew she was there.
ChapterFourteen
“Ididn’t want to bother you on your honeymoon,” Romeo said.
He stared out the sliding back door at the yard, last night’s fresh snow already melting in the sunshine. Ashley had bolted two hours earlier. He’d been about to leave when Midas called. Romeo had planned to meet up with Cyrus, who’d wanted to discuss Ashley and the situation with her sister. While it had gone against everything in Romeo to not try to find Ashley, he knew the easiest way to find her was to use the vampires to do a wide database search and see if and where her name popped up in Cleveland, perhaps on a rental car or hotel. He’d wanted to get the information over the phone, but Cyrus had insisted on speaking with him in person.
