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Titus was staring at his feet morosely when Benny sat down next to him. “I’ll never live this down,” he said. “Birkenstocks?”
Benny grinned at him. “I feel a story coming on,” he teased.
Titus laughed. “Good to see you, boy,” he said. “About time you two showed up. I was beginning to worry.”
“What happened?” Benny asked.
Titus grimaced. He’d made a run up to Penticton to see a lady, he said. He hadn’t heard there was any conflicts brewing between the two packs. Why would there be? Penticton pack had been waiting for him. Grabbed him, tossed him in a jail cell in someone’s basement. “Who has a jail cell in their basement?” he complained. “Can you imagine being the realtor selling that place? Do you pass it off for kinky games? Seriously.”
Benny chuckled. “When was this?”
Titus looked tired. “What day is it?”
Benny told him, and Titus frowned, calculating it. “Been three months? Is that possible?”
Anything was possible, Benny thought. But that long in a jail cell, being beaten regularly? What had he been doing then? Mid-August? He frowned. Fleeing Russia, he thought sourly.
And Tanaka became Chairman of the World Council of Alphas at its new headquarters in Seattle. Benny doubted the timing was coincidental. That must have freaked out all the traditionalists. “Is that when Dad went missing?”
“He went off a couple of weeks before that,” Titus said. “He was moody. Getting calls from all over the place. He didn’t talk to me about it, of course. Nope. But I knew the signs. He needed to clear out for a bit. Nothing new about that. So he comes by and says, I’m gone. Take care of the place, will you?” Titus started to say something else, then glanced at Ryder and back to Benny. “And he said something that led me to believe he might be gone a while. I argued with him. I’m good backup, but I’m no Alpha, and that region needs an Alpha. That’s no news to anybody. But he wasn’t having any of it. Basically said, deal with it.”
Always cracked Benny up when Titus used modern slang. The man was older than dirt, and his usual slang indicated it. But then, he’d use some phrase like ‘deal with it’ or ‘seriously.’ TV? Benny didn’t know. Maybe Titus was a secret Twitter addict.
“So you got set up?” Benny prompted.
“Classic honey trap,” Titus agreed. “Didn’t even get some honey out of it.”
“They beat you up pretty bad,” Benny observed, ignoring the rest of that.
“That started about three weeks ago. Ask me all kinds of questions, then beat the shit out of me. Even when I gave them the answers! Most of what they wanted to know was no big secret. And the rest of it, I didn’t know because I’d been in that damn basement for weeks.”
Benny snorted. “It’s occurred to me that they wanted your pain to spill out in the pack bonds and add to the instability in the Okanogan.”
Titus considered that. “Maybe,” he said. “How bad is it?”
“Bad,” Benny said. He told him about Ryder getting a call about his mom, and someone had used Oscar to do it.
“Oscar?” Titus shook his head. “Hard to imagine. He liked her.”
“He was pretty confused and messed up when Ryder found him,” Benny said. “Said he knew it was wrong. Ryder said it felt like suicide by cop. He wouldn’t give up his fellow soldiers — his term.”
Titus frowned. “Someone broke his admittedly loose hold on reality,” he muttered.
“That’s what we thought,” Benny agreed. “And I’d like to know who. That’s just wrong. But the question still exists, why?”
Ryder came to join them. “I think they were trying to get Dad’s attention,” Ryder said. “I’ve had some time to think about it. They expected someone to call Dad. And it could even be some of the pack were getting worried. Titus is missing. Dad is missing. They figured someone knew how to reach one of the two, and would, if something happened to Mom. But they got me instead.”
“That makes sense,” Titus agreed. “I don’t know how to reach Tom, though. I mean I can feel the bond still. So he’s alive.”
“Southeast Asia, I’m guessing,” Benny said. He didn’t elaborate about the girls being sent to the school from there.
Titus’s eyes narrowed as he focused inward. Checking the bond. Benny wondered how often he’d done that in the last few weeks. Taking comfort that his Alpha was still there. But he’d either kept his situation from Dad, or his father had ignored him. Would he do that?
Not the man he knew. Not unless he had a really good reason. And that was what alarmed Benny the most —wasthere a really good reason?
“I figured that’s why they were beating me up,” Titus said. “So Tom would feel it and come home. That was the question that got woven in to every session. Where is Tom Garrison?”
Benny nodded. “I’m not sure they wanted him home as much as they wanted to know where he was — easier to send an assassin after him than to challenge him for Alpha.”
