Then she raced around to the front of the house toward the welcome sight of a huge black Suburban sitting in the circular drive. She pushed the button on the keyless remote entry and then yanked at the door handle. No response. She tried the remote again. The door was still locked. Hell, different vehicle. In case the keypad battery was dead, she tried to insert the key in the door, but it wouldn't allow her to insert even a tip of the metal. Her skin heated with anxiety.
She glanced back at the rambling ranch-style house. Several windows looked out over the front of the property, but all were pitch black. Still, she envisioned pack members sleeping in each of the bedrooms she'd passed on her way to dinner. She couldn't help worrying that someone might look out one of the windows any second and see her trying to steal away with one of Leidolf's vehicles.
No security cameras hung under the eaves, so at least it seemed no security force watched for intruders. Not that anyone in his right mind would try to steal from a lupus garou pack leader who had a whole pack of men at his beck and call. Then she saw a black Humvee and a bright yellow Jaguar sitting in a garage, the doors to the garage wide open. Six more pickups were parked at another long building nearby, and she suspected they belonged to some of the male bachelors sleeping in a barracks.
She dashed for the Humvee, her sock feet silently padding over the cement drive. When she tried the remote on the vehicle, she heard the faint click of the lock, but when she tried the door, it wouldn't open. She used the key in the Humvee's lock, but it didn't work. Exasperated, she looked around the Humvee and considered the seductive allure of the mustard yellow Jaguar. The doe-eyed headlights, the sloping sleek grill. Too splashy. Too conspicuous. Too expensive. But it was a set of wheels.
Skirting completely around the Humvee, she thought maybe pushing the button on the remote had unlocked the Jag's door instead. She yanked at the door handle... and voila! The door opened. She hoped her insurance would cover the damage if she wrecked the sports car, or she'd be handing her life savings over in bulk to the alpha leader, that is, if he ever caught up with her again. She didn't plan for that to happen anytime soon.
She climbed in, took a deep breath of the sweet smell of new butternut leather, and admired the lightly polished maple wood. Her car's worn cloth seats were padded economy style, but she sank into the driver's seat of the Jaguar as if she were ready to lounge at home. She shoved the key in, turned on the ignition, and then stared at the manual shift. It wasn't an automatic? She hadn't driven a stick shift in forever.
Suddenly, a figure loomed next to the driver's door. Her heart did a triple beat, but before she could react, the blond from dinner, the one who was being guarded, jerked the door open, reached in, and pulled the key from the ignition.
"You're taking me with you," he said, his voice low and determined, his blue eyes piercing her with the promise that if she didn't agree, he would cause real trouble for her. And she didn't doubt that he would.
She considered her options. No way was she taking a troublesome, newly turned lupus garou with her. Yet, she assumed that if she tried to leave without him, he'd tell the world. If she took him with her, she'd have to ditch him somewhere along the way, and that wouldn't be safe for any of their kind. Or for him, either.
"Hurry up, Cassie," he said, his tone ominous. "You have a second to decide, or I sound the alarm that you're running away in Leidolf's sports car." He tilted his head to the side a little. "And I could use some good points with Leidolf about now."
Hell, no way did she want to take this guy with her. He couldn't cope in the least if she were to leave him on his own alone somewhere. She doubted she could trust him to help her or keep quiet or not get himself shot by accident.
When she still didn't decide, he tried a more coaxing approach. "You're like me, newly turned. And I know you don't want to stay here. They'll force you to. You know it. So we can work together."
"Get in," she growled. Why weren't this guy's keepers making sure he stayed put?
"Thanks, I owe you. Then again..." he said, pausing as he rushed around to the other side of the car and yanked it open, "...I figure you owe me because I can watch your back."
Yeah, right. She'd be doing all the work, trying to keep both their butts out of the fire. She held her hand out for the keys.
He hesitated to give them to her. "Don't try to pull anything. I'll be watching you."
"What in the world do you think I can do? Wreck the vehicle? Not on your life. The insurance cost would eat me alive." She started the engine and backed out of the garage.
The engine purred, and she thought how much she could get used to driving in luxury like this. When she tried to drive forward on the gravel road, the car bucked and stopped dead. She stared at the controls and then, figuring she'd put it in second gear instead of first, she planned to try again, when the blond guy said, "Don't you know how to drive a stick? Here, let me have the key and I'll drive." He grabbed for the keys, but she slapped his hand away hard, showing him just who was in charge.
"I'll do it."
No way was she letting this guy have any control over her, well, any more so than he did at this point. She put the Jag into neutral, started the engine, and rolled along the road, this time in first gear and inching along at a painfully slow pace. As they passed the bunkhouse, she cringed to think every last one of the bachelor males would come after her for stealing the pack leader's sports car. She envisioned a mad chase of trucks in hot pursuit if they heard the car leaving the compound in the middle of the night. What she saw next surprised the hell out of her.
Her headlights shined a spotlight on the barracks briefly, catching a couple of teens kissing in the shadows of the building near the road she had to take, and she held her breath. Hell... Evan and Alice?
Alice's father would kill Evan, she suspected, if he learned they were out here kissing in the dark. Worse, she was about to be caught.
The teens turned to observe the Jag, their mouths parted in surprise. The tinted windows would hide her and the blond sufficiently. She just prayed they'd think their leader was taking a spin. The teens remained frozen as she slowly made her way past them, not wanting to alert the others if all of a sudden she roared down the road.
As soon as she passed them, Evan dashed for the house. Crap. Alice didn't move. Probably didn't want her father knowing she'd been alone with Evan in the dark shadows late at night.
"Shit," the blond said. "Evan will warn Leidolf, and we'll both be in a hell of a lot of trouble."
Evan--yep, the boy Alice and Sarah had a crush on. He was a teen heartthrob already. She wondered if Leidolf had been like that or a loner early on. Probably always a loner. Or not. She frowned and then glanced at the blond. She suspected this guy would be in much more trouble than she would with Leidolf, just for being alone with her and threatening her with exposure if she didn't take him with her. Or maybe not. It depended on how attached Leidolf was to his hot rod. Probably a lot.
Her skin peppered with perspiration, Cassie sped up a little, but the road was gravel and the car slipped a couple of times. Why would Leidolf have such an impractical, low-slung vehicle for out here on gravel and dirt ranch roads? Rich-guy mentality, she guessed.
"What's your name?" she asked the blond as she headed for what she hoped would soon be a paved road, figuring he was the one the girls called Sarge but wanting to make sure.
"Sarge is what everyone calls me on account of I was a clerk in the army for a couple of years."
"Didn't like the army?"
The view of a valley, grass just beginning to green with the spring rains, appeared below the main house. She spotted several elk in the distance and, closer in, cows, yearlings, and horses on higher ground. Some of the lower-lying pasture lands under water, most likely due to recent heavy rains.
Sarge stared out the window and then glanced at her. "Got into trouble."
Figured. She had a feeling the guy was trouble in a lot more ways than just this incident, which accounted for his having had a guard detail at dinner. What had happened to the men who were supposed to be watching him? They'd surely catch hell when Leidolf discovered Sarge was missing.
"What kind of trouble?" she asked, wanting to hear the truth in his own words.
He stared at her, as if putting a hex on her, and her skin crawled. Not that she couldn't handle him, if she needed to, but she didn't like getting mixed up with a troublesome lupus garou on top of everything else.
Cassie pressed the gas pedal a little harder and crawled a little faster along the ranch road beside the river. Then she looked up at the main house and two others that overlooked the view. No one was following her, yet. As soon as the teen told Leidolf his car was going out for a drive--without him, they'd be after her. And someone was sure to alert Leidolf that his newly turned lupus garou was missing also. She figured that he really wouldn't like Sarge having come along with her. Not that she'd helped Sarge escape, but that he'd be worried about her with the unpredictable guy.
Sarge shrugged and looked back out the window. "I was kicked out of the service because of drug use. Lots of guys were doing it. No big deal. It's just that I got caught."
Which didn't explain how he came to be here. "Right. So, how did you end up in Leidolf's pack?"
"I was a werewolf hunter."
Catching her breath in her throat, Cassie didn't say anything. She felt that Sarge was watching her, waiting for her response. Everything the girls had said was true. No wonder he was being treated like an omega, someone no one wanted to be friends with. A werewolf killer? Great, just great. She glanced at his arm, but she couldn't see the scar from where the tattoo had been removed. Probably on the other arm.
"You don't kill us anymore, right?"
"I didn't kill the others."
Relieved, she let out her breath. She wasn't afraid of him. She could take care of herself. But taking someone like him away from Leidolf's pack was a real mistake when he needed heavy supervision. "Those two men who were with you, were they serving as your guards?"