Oh, God. She stared at him in disbelief as the acrid odor of gun smoke wafted through the air. How could this thug do this to her? The past few weeks had already been bad enough!
Then she shifted her attention to the open door. What if there were more of them? What if he wasn’t acting alone? They never acted alone. At least she didn’t think so.
Her hands shaking, she quickly shoved her gun in her purse, sprinted across the floor, and closed the door, locking it—although that hadn’t done a lot of good before. She rushed to the man and checked his wrist and then his neck for a pulse. None.
She returned to her suitcase, pulled out black jeans and a black sweatshirt, and hurriedly jerked them on.
She looked back at the man, his mouth open, his eyes staring lifelessly at her, his head leaning against the wall.
Dead. He was dead.
Perspiration trickled down her breasts despite the cool air, and she rubbed her arms as her heart continued to beat at a racer’s pace. God, what was she to do now?
She had to call this in to the police, as much as she didn’t want to. If any of this guy’s buddies were about, and she hung around to meet with the police, she’d be dead meat. And no number of police in this rinky-dink little town could protect her. If they even had any police here.
But she was one of the good guys, she had to remind herself. She couldn’t kill a man and leave the scene of the crime without just cause.
She paced.
Hell, if she didn’t call it in, someone else in the motel was sure to have heard the gunshots and would dial 9-1-1, and then the police would question her as to why she hadn’t called it in. She would sound guiltier than she already felt. Even though he had broken into her room and tried to kill her first.
She jerked the phone off the hook next to the bed and punched in the number, then lifted the receiver to her ear. An eerie silence met her ear. The line was dead. Another spiral of fear cascaded down her spine. He’d cut the phone lines. This was so not good.
Then she heard two car doors open and shut just outside her room. Either a couple of legitimate hotel guests were arriving late for the night… or they were cohorts of the dead guy. She was certain she wasn’t hearing the police because it would be too soon for them to arrive and no police lights were flashing outside the window.
She stood frozen with indecision and went back to her earlier plan. Change into the wolf, or hope that, fortified with only a gun, she could be as lucky against two armed men, if that’s what she faced, as she had been against one. With the way her luck was going, she was sure it had just completely run out. She raced across the floor, grabbed her cell phone, and flipped it open. Thank God, it had a little bit of a charge.
After punching in 9-1-1, she watched the door, waiting for someone to answer the phone, waiting for anyone to touch the doorknob. Then in her panic, she couldn’t remember. Had she locked the door?
The doorknob twisted. Her heart thundered.
Someone spoke into her ear, “Sheriff’s department. What is the nature of your emergency?”
Alicia nearly dropped the phone in surprise at hearing the woman’s deeply brusque voice.
The doorknob didn’t twist any farther. It was locked. Alicia didn’t say anything into the phone, afraid that if she did, whoever was trying to gain entrance into her room would hear her. Which was probably crazy. He had to have figured she’d killed the other thug already.
Startling her, the woman repeated the question, more insistent this time. “This is the sheriff’s department. What is the nature of your emergency?”
Alicia licked her lips and said in a whisper, “Someone broke into my motel. Crest—”
But the miniscule relief Alicia felt that the person at the door couldn’t open it without unlocking it didn’t last long. A strong kick at the door broke a lower section of the paneling away, the crash making Alicia jump back.
“They’re trying to kill me! Crestview Motel. They’re breaking in!” she shouted, the need for secrecy a moot point, as she hoped the sheriff’s department was close by. But she hadn’t seen any sign of one when she had stopped there for the night.
She dropped the phone, still open, still charging, on the dresser, but she didn’t have any more time to speak to the operator.
The woman was trying to get her attention. “Miss, stay on the line. What’s happening? Police are being dispatched to your location. Your name?”
So they could identify her in the event these men killed her and stole her identity? Or took off with her and left her for dead in some deserted place? What would it matter then?
Alicia decided that, for better or worse, she’d shift—if she could. She thought she was really getting the hang of this, and she figured it was her only chance.
She tugged out of her clothes and dropped them on the floor. The woman on the phone kept talking to her, although Alicia’s attention was riveted to the door, where the man kept kicking at the splintering wood, while she tried to force herself to shape-shift again. She couldn’t make out the woman’s words over her own.
“Shift, damn it,” Alicia ordered herself. “Now. Shift.”
Fresh fear rippled through her. What if she could only shift so many times in so many hours?
Yet it was her only chance. If she could startle the intruder enough when he saw her as a wolf, she might manage to flee past him and run into the woods surrounding the small town.
And then? She didn’t know what to do, just get away from here as far as possible, find a way to steal some clothes, shift, and then keep moving on to somewhere new and different and far, far away from the life she had known.
Jake was already pacing as he dressed. He knew the woman in his dreams was real, if Darien’s dreaming of Lelandi was any indication. And Jake knew Alicia was in trouble, damn it. Yet he couldn’t reach out to her, couldn’t learn where she was or what had happened to her. She wasn’t in the usual places, the nicer hotel rooms with large beds and mirrors and pictures and dressers.
In his dream, she’d been in a dirty, rundown motel, he guessed. The bed had been covered with a comforter of brown palm trees, hideous and garish, along with the picture of palm trees on the wall. Yet… he didn’t sense it was Florida. Why not Florida? Because Mary from the art gallery hadn’t called him that long ago. He didn’t believe Alicia would have had time to reach an airport by car, then fly to Florida and get a room.
The phone book. Sitting on the bedside table in Alicia’s room, it had “Crestview” printed on the front. That was a town one hour southeast of Silver Town.
And someone had been about to break in.
He called Silver Town’s sheriff, waking him from a dead sleep. “Peter, call the sheriff who oversees Crestview. See if a woman has called in a 9-1-1. Get back with me ASAP.”
He clicked off the phone and headed into the hall. Everyone in the family was still asleep. He didn’t intend to wake them if it was all a wild-goose chase. How in the hell could he explain he was attempting the rescue of a woman from his dreams? Darien didn’t even believe Jake could be dreaming of her for real. Not as his dream mate. Not when she was human.
But how else could he explain the motel room and the phone book, when he’d only passed through the nearly nonexistent town a few times during his life? He was climbing into his truck when Peter called him back.
“There was a 9-1-1 call from the Crestview Motel, just like you said. The caller was a woman who said men were breaking in and were going to kill her. The operator said loud bangs could be heard in the background, and she figured a man was trying to break down the door. But she couldn’t get anything more from the woman. Then shots were fired.”
Hell. “And?” Jake was already barreling down the highway toward Silver Town and would go south on the road toward Crestview from there.
“Her name was Alicia Greiston, with an e-i rather than an a-y.”
Jake felt sick to his stomach. “Was?”
“Well, I’m not sure. She’s gone. By the time the sheriff got there, he found one dead male, his torso riddled with three bullets, and a bullet wedged in the wall across the room. Her purse, clothes, gun, pepper spray, and stun gun were there, and her still-active cell phone was charging on top of one of the dressers, but there was no sign of the woman. And her car is still locked and parked at the motel, driver’s side window bashed in. The car battery was gone, so she wouldn’t have been going anywhere in the car anyway, if she’d tried. Either the man who was dead had broken into the room, and she ran off, or there were others and they’ve taken her.”
He cursed under his breath, not liking any of the scenarios. “Alicia.” Jake frowned.
Peter hurriedly said, “What did you want me to do?”
“For now, nothing. I’m heading out there.”
“Had she called you?”
Jake didn’t say anything.
Peter cleared his throat. “The woman who called from that art gallery in Breckenridge said she gave Alicia Greiston your number.”
“Yeah, but Alicia didn’t call.”
“The phone line was cut to the room, and the cell phone was being charged, so she might not have been able to earlier. But how did you know she needed help if she didn’t call?”
“Family thing,” Jake said vaguely.
“Oh, okay.”
“Thanks, Peter. If I need backup, I’ll give you and Darien a ring.” He wanted to tell Peter not to inform his brother, but Darien was the pack leader and if Peter thought Darien needed to know about this, he’d fill him in. And Jake knew Peter would. Darien would most likely be pissed that Jake was continuing to leave him out of the loop.
Sure enough, Jake wasn’t more than five minutes down the road when his cell phone’s familiar jingle alerted him. He yanked the phone off his belt and said, “Yeah.”
“What the hell is going on?” Darien said hotly.
“She’s in trouble. The woman I keep dreaming about. She’s not pregnant. Or at least she sure as hell doesn’t look that way.”