“Lora! What the hell happened to you?” Oliver demanded, ushering her into his room and closing the door behind them. “I came to get you, and you were gone!”
“Oh my God!” Lora babbled, throwing her arms around his bare chest and burying her face into his shoulder. “I was kidnapped, Oliver! There’s this guy who told me horrible things about you, but I think he did something to me, and now I’m not the same!”
The story spilled out in a hysterical torrent from her lips as Oliver stroked her hair, holding her tightly.
“There, there,” he murmured, his voice hot in her ear. “Everything’s okay now. We’ll get you out of here tonight before that idiot can come back.”
Lora pulled back, but Oliver seemed reluctant to let her go.
“I-I don’t think you should take me anywhere yet,” she mumbled, untangling herself from his hold. “I mean, I think we should talk about what happened first.”
A look of annoyance crossed over Oliver’s face.
“There’s plenty of time for that when we get back to New…to Denver,” he growled. Lora blinked and stepped back.
“It’s true,” she breathed. “You are from New Mexico then.”
Oliver’s scowl deepened as he looked around the room for his pants and shirt.
“I didn’t want to overwhelm you with telling you that you were going out of state,” he said quickly. “Yes, we’re from New Mexico. What’s the big deal?”
Lora shook her head, wondering what else Oliver had been lying about.
Oh God! What if Tav really was telling me the truth, and I just walked into the arms of a dangerous man? I shouldn’t have come here either. I have literally nowhere to go. I would have been better off in the mountains.
“Tell me about our parents,” Lora said, her voice catching.
“We can talk about all this when we’re on the road. Get dried off, and let’s get moving.”
Lora shook her head.
“Tell me about Adam,” she said quietly. “I want to know about my husband.”
Oliver rolled his eyes again and faced her with exasperation.
“I already told you. Adam is a good guy. He’s in finance, and you guys have a nice house…”
“In Denver,” Lora finished.
“I just explained— “
“Except that you told me his name was Andrew, not Adam.”
For a moment, the two only stared at one another. Then, Lora whirled to sprint from the room.
“Oh no you don’t,” Oliver growled, grabbing for the hood of her track suit and yanking her back against him. “I’ve already spent enough time looking for you, you little bitch.”
Lora tried to shift, to gnash out and take a chunk out of Oliver, but before she could turn her head, the impact of a table lamp crashed into her skull, and it was the last thing that Lora remembered.
17
The brothers regrouped at Tav’s house, exhausted and drenched to the core. If Tav was upset before, he was almost rabid now.
“How could she have just disappeared?” he demanded furiously at his siblings. “Weren’t you looking?”
“We were looking,” Luke assured him. “She clearly doesn’t want to be found.”
“We searched every inch of this mountain,” Andreas grumbled, sounding annoyed. “Trust me.”
“You can’t fault us,” Andreas said in his typical no-blame way, but Tav was not looking to fault anyone. He only wanted to find Lora before things went from bad to worse. Something had happened in the past few hours, something he could feel in his gut. He may not have been able to find Lora, but he could still sense her inside him. She was his mate, of that he was certain, and he would stop at nothing to find her.
“Tav, your phone,” Luke said, nodding toward the ringing cell on the coffee table. At first, Tav wanted to ignore it, but as he drew closer to the screen, he realized it was Rhodes, and he snatched it up.
“Hey,” Rhodes said when Tav answered. “Any luck finding your girl?”
“No. It’s like she’s vanished into thin air,” Tav growled. “I could have used the extra pair of eyes.”
He didn’t mean to sound as upset as he did, but his frustration and concern was growing insurmountably. It was no more Rhodes’ fault that he couldn’t find Lora than it was Luke’s or Andreas’.
“I’m sorry I can’t be there,” Rhodes said earnestly. “But I’m stuck in Europe on this deal. I’ll come as soon as things settle, but I wanted you to be the first to know what I found.”
“What is it?”
“Check your emails. I’m sending you the file on Oliver Church.”
Tav wrenched the phone away from his ear and opened his apps to scroll through his email. Almost instantly, a message from Rhodes came through.
“Okay, I got it,” Tav said, putting his brother on speaker.
“Can you read it? Looks like your boy has a rap sheet a mile long, both in the human world and among pack authorities.”
Tav didn’t speak, his eyes trailing over the documents that Rhodes had sent, his pulse quickening as he read.
I was right. He’s not related to Lora in any way, he thought, perusing the files. There were no known family members, but there were pack associates and several aliases.
“Do you see what his rap sheet is mostly for?” Rhodes pressed as Andreas and Luke peered over Tav’s shoulder.
“Stalking,” Andreas muttered, sounding disgusted.
“Kidnapping,” Luke choked. “Who is this guy?”
“Goddamn it! What does he want with Lora?” Tav raged, speaking mostly to himself.
“I still haven’t found any connection between the two of them,” Rhodes confessed. “But I really can’t find much of anything about Lora Young. It’s like she doesn’t want to be found.”
Tav froze.
This guy has a sheet a mile long for stalking, and Lora Young has no online presence or carbon footprint. Is that what the connection is? Is Oliver Lora’s stalker?
A combination of dread and rage surged through Tav as he began to hyperventilate.
“It’s all right,” Luke said comfortingly, placing a hand reassuringly on his brother’s back. “We’ll find that bastard after we find Lora, all right?”
Suddenly, Tav was thunderstruck.
“What if Lora went to find him?” he choked, leaping from the sofa so high, he almost hit the ceiling. “What if he has her right now?”
“That’s kind of a long shot, isn’t it?” Andreas scoffed, but Tav didn’t think so. He whipped around and looked at his two present siblings while addressing Rhodes.
“Is there any way to find out where Oliver Church is now? Any credit card or bank statement to indicate if he’s gone back to New Mexico or…?”
“I have a track on his cell phone,” Rhodes replied in his ever-smooth way. Tav could have cried and kissed Rhodes had he been there.
“He’s still in Alamosa,” Rhodes said after a minute. “Just off Santa Fe. I’ll send you the exact coordinates.”
“No need,” Tav growled. “I know where he is. He’s exactly where I left him.”