Wild Card Read online

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “What?” I watched the needle edge toward ninety.

  “If they cross over the border, let them go.”

  “No way in hell.”

  “Justus. Jared didn’t bother with you because he knew he didn’t have to. He knew that if he took Kaci, you’d follow him right into their territory. Where they can hold you on another count of trespassing and keep you in custody until your trial for murder and infection.”

  “I’m not going to leave her—”

  “They won’t hurt her,” Marc insisted.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Actually, I do. Blackwell is old fashioned. He believes women should be cherished, protected, and provided for. And that they should be mothers and homemakers. He’s an asshole, but he would never let anyone hurt Kaci. However, he also believes that strays are a problem that the US prides must not accept, but confront. I’m saying this to you from one stray to another. Blackwell was part of the ruling that exiled me into the free zone several years ago. He stood by and watched Faythe removed from her position as Alpha, which nearly got her killed and got us all kicked out of our own house. Off the ranch. He won’t break the rules, but he will interpret them in a manner that supports his beliefs. And that will not benefit you.”

  “I understand.”

  “So, you’ll stop when you get to the border, if you don’t have her back yet?” Marc demanded. But I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I let silence speak for me. “Justus, I can’t let you go after her if I know your intent is to go past the boundary, where you have no authority, even as an enforcer.”

  “Well then, I guess it’s a good thing you don’t know that. I’ll call you when I have her.” I hung up and turned all my attention toward the road.

  Marc called me back, and I let the call go to voice mail so he couldn’t un-appoint me as an enforcer. Then I stomped a little harder on the gas.

  The needle hit ninety. I flicked my blinker on and carefully eased back into the left-hand lane. As much fun as it would’ve been, under other circumstances, to test the limits on a car I didn’t own, if I wrecked the rental, I’d have no way to get Kaci back. Or get her to safety, once I had her back.

  I watched the mile markers as they ticked past, counting down the miles toward Las Vegas. I passed from Utah into Arizona, then half an hour later into Nevada, where I panicked for a moment until I remembered that territorial borders don’t follow US geopolitical lines. They follow natural boundaries like mountain ranges and rivers. I hadn’t left the free zone yet.

  As I drove, I scanned the cars ahead, trying to determine their color. Unfortunately, the morning sunlight glaring off the rear windshields kept me from seeing the colors of the cars. And for the ones in the distance, I couldn’t even determine size, unless there was another vehicle nearby to compare them to.

  For nearly an hour, I counted the passage of time in my own heartbeats. In the miles that raced by beneath my tires.

  Please let Kaci be okay. Please let me get her back. Please, please, please…

  Then, up ahead, a small car swerved into the left lane, in front of a white delivery van, and my pulse spiked. I couldn’t be sure, but at a glance, it was about the right size. About the right color.

  It had to be her.

  I pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor.

  Eleven

  Kaci

  “Give me my phone!” But Jared ignored me, so I leaned back and kicked the plexiglass barricade as hard as I could. The whole thing shuddered. It was bolted to the backs of the seats and to the sides of the car itself, but not to the roof. There was an uneven, one- to two-inch gap all around the top. “Give me my phone, Jared!” I kicked again, and again the screen shuddered.

  “You dropped your phone in the parking lot. You can keep kicking the panel, but that won’t do any good.”

  But I didn’t believe him. He’d clearly cut and installed it quickly, and less than professionally, to keep me from crawling into the front seat or kicking him in the head and wrecking the car. I might not be as strong as a tomcat, but I was a hell of a lot stronger than a human. If I kept kicking, eventually the screen would break.

  Which meant he probably intended it as a temporary measure.

  On the bright side, the very existence of the screen seemed to suggest he had nothing…personal in mind for me. If I couldn’t kick him in the head, he couldn’t touch me either.

  “What is this?” I demanded. “You can’t just kidnap people out of parking lots.”

  “You weren’t kidnapped. You were apprehended on behalf of the Southwest Pride, on one count of trespassing. And if you don’t shut the hell up, I’ll add a charge for stealing my car.”

  “Oh, come on. I left your car in a parking lot where I knew you’d be able to track it. You did more damage to it by installing this stupid shield than I did.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “How’s this for a point? I’m going to charge you with kidnapping!”

  “This isn’t—”

  “You can’t just throw me into the back of your car and call it apprehending. I’m a member of the South-Central Pride, and there is no way you have Faythe and Marc’s permission to take me into the Southwest Territory.”

  “I don’t need permission to remove an apprehended criminal from the free zone.”

  The free zone. Shit. He was probably right about that.

  “Fine. But don’t I get a phone call or something?”

  Jared rolled his eyes at me in the rearview mirror. “No, you don’t get a phone call. You watch too much television.”

  “Tele—? No one watches TV anymore. We stream—” Damn it. “Did you get my bag? I need my stuff. We have to go back.”

  He didn’t even dignify that with a refusal.

  “Jared, I need my stuff! I don’t have any clothes.”

  “We’ll find something for you to wear at the compound.”

  The compound. In California. Where Paul Blackwell was probably breeding sexism and anti-stray mentality into his great grandchildren. Which he had several of. By his age, most Alphas had long-since retired and passed on the baton to a son-in-law, but Blackwell clung to his power with a death grip that seemed stronger every year, in spite of the increasing weakness of his actual arthritic grip.

  “Call Faythe. You have to call Faythe.”

  “My grandfather will handle that. My job is to bring you in. Nothing you say will change that.”

  Nothing I say…

  I grabbed the handle of the passenger’s side door and pulled until it creaked. Then I pulled a little more.

  The handle broke off in my hand.

  Jared glanced over his shoulder. “You’re just racking up debt now, and you’re going to pay for every cent of damage you do to my car.”

  “Somehow, I think whoever awards those damages might sympathize with the girl you locked into a homemade prison cell in the back of your car, like a psycho!” I scooted across the seat and ripped the other door handle off, but by then, the goal was no longer simply doing damage to piss him off. It was finding a way to make him stop the car.

  If I could expose the mechanics behind the door panel, there had to be a way to disengage the child safety locks…

  With the door handle gone, I began pulling on the “oh shit” handle over the window. The one you hold onto when you ride with Marc, and he takes all the turns too fast. I pulled and pulled, but it didn’t budge, so I turned to face the door and propped both feet against it for better purchase.

  The plastic casing around the handle creaked, then finally split apart beneath my hands. A jagged edge of plastic speared my palm and drew blood.

  “Shit!”

  Jared sniffed the air on the other side of the plexiglass. “Did you just hurt yourself?”

  “Well, let’s put it this way—I hope you weren’t supposed to deliver me without a scratch, because that ship has sailed.” I slapped my bleeding palm onto the clea
r divider and rubbed it around, leaving a bright red smear of blood in the approximate shape of my hand.

  “You know, if you obstruct my view, I can’t drive safely, and that puts us both at risk.”

  “Then stop the fucking car.” I squeezed my palm to draw more blood, then slapped my hand against the screen again, directly in line with the rearview mirror. “As fast as you’re driving, this isn’t safe anyway.” I frowned at the speedometer, viewed through a smear of my own blood. “Why are you going so fast? This isn’t a race.”

  Or was it?

  I spun to look through the rear windshield, leaving a bloody print on the fabric of the seat back, but if Justus were somehow following us, I couldn’t see him. However, I could see several other cars. None were close enough to see me yet, but…

  Pulse racing, I scratched at the wound on my palm to reopen it. Then I smeared my finger in the blood and began writing in reverse on the rear windshield.

  I’d finished capital letters H and E when Jared noticed.

  “Hey!” He twisted to look over his shoulder and the car swerved to the right. I fell over on the seat, and Jared turned back to the road. “Stop that!”

  “Make me!” I shouted as I pushed myself upright. Perhaps not my most mature comeback, but whatever. I squeezed more blood onto my palm, then started on the capital L. “If you don’t want every motorist who drives by to call 911 and give them your license plate number, you better stop this fucking car right now!” I finished the bottom of the L and started on the P, but my palm was scabbing over again. The cut was pretty shallow.

  “Kaci! This isn’t a joke. We do not bring human authorities into shifter business!”

  “We also don’t kidnap girls from parking lots! Stop the fucking car!”

  “Kaci!” He twisted to look over his shoulder again, and I noticed that the tip of his right elbow actually dipped below the plexiglass screen. Which gave me another idea.

  I glanced around at the traffic and was pleased to see that the nearest other cars were well behind us. And that there was a flat, broad shoulder leading into brown Nevada dirt. No place is a good place for a car wreck, but I couldn’t imagine a better-case scenario.

  “Stop the car!” I shouted again as I slid down into the floorboard of the car.

  Jared glanced into the rearview mirror, and when he didn’t see me, he turned again.

  I stuck my unwounded hand beneath the plexiglass and grabbed his arm. The car swerved to the right, onto the shoulder of the road, and he righted the wheel with his left hand.

  “Stop it!” He jabbed at my hand with his elbow, but I grabbed it again and hung on. “Kaci! Stop! You’re going to wreck us!”

  “Then pull over!” I let go of his right elbow, then I reached under the shield to the left of the driver’s seat and grabbed his left arm. The car swerved to the left.

  “Damn it!” He turned right, over-corrected, and the car began to spin. “Fuck!”

  I grabbed the broken “oh shit” handle and held on while he tried to control the car. But the spin was too tight.

  An inarticulate scream filled the vehicle as it tipped into a roll, and I didn’t realize I was the one screaming until my impact with the roof knocked the breath—and the shriek—right out of me.

  Glass crunched and metal groaned. The roof of the car dented toward me. Then we were rolling again. And again. I slammed into the roof, and the rear windshield, and the plexiglass. By the time the car finally came to a halt, I was bleeding from several gashes on my forearms and one on my head, and I could no longer read the letters I’d written on the rear windshield. Both because my vision was swimming and because I’d smeared them more with every impact.

  Jared groaned from the front seat.

  I pushed myself upright and realized I was sitting on the roof of the car, my head brushing the seat bottom above me.

  “Kaci?” My name sounded slushy coming from Jared’s mouth. I peered through a clean spot on the bloody plexiglass to see him blinking sluggishly, barely conscious, hanging upside down in his seat, pinned by his seat belt.

  I really should have worn one of those.

  There was a gash on his forehead and a smear of blood on the steering wheel. I felt bad for a second. Hurting him hadn’t been my goal. But then I banished guilt from my mind.

  The bastard kidnapped me. He deserved what he got. Which was a concussion and one hell of an explanation to make up for the police.

  Not to mention his Alpha/grandfather.

  I had to be gone before either of those happened. But the back doors were still locked and the plexiglass hadn’t—

  Wait. Our roll had dented the roof hard enough for it to hit the top of the plexiglass shield. Shoving it downward and ripping free the screws that had held it in place on the passenger’s side. The panel was half loose.

  Heart pounding, I grabbed the right edge in both hands, trying to ignore how much blood now covered my arms and was still oozing from various cuts and scrapes. And how badly my head throbbed.

  Seated on the roof of the car, I braced my feet against the bottom—now the top—of the passenger’s side door and wrapped my fingers around the top—now the bottom—of the plexiglass. Then I pulled with every bit of strength I had.

  The panel creaked. Or maybe that was the remaining screws holding it in place. My vision began to swim from the strain—or maybe a concussion—but I pulled harder. Then, suddenly, the plexiglas snapped in half, about a foot from the remaining screws holding it to the driver’s seat.

  I fell back from the momentum, and the broken slab of shield smacked me in the face. I folded it back all the way, edging around it until I could slither beneath the headrest of the front passenger’s seat and open the front door.

  “Kaci!” Jared sounded more alert. His eyes were open. He fumbled with his seatbelt, struggling to press the button with hands that obviously weren’t communicating very well with his brain yet.

  I crawled out of the car into the dirt and stood, bracing myself against the inverted vehicle until my head stopped spinning.

  “Kaci!” Jared’s seatbelt clicked, then there was a thump, followed by a groan as he fell.

  I stumbled back from the car, wiping a paste of my own blood mixed with dirt onto my pants, and took a look around. It was still mid-day, the sun high in the sky and already baking the top of my head. Not a good time to be stranded in the Nevada desert.

  Assuming this was even Nevada. We might still be in Utah. Or maybe Arizona. I hadn’t paid attention to the signs we’d passed and without my phone, I had no idea how long I’d been locked in the back of that car.

  But the reason the car had flipped was suddenly obvious. We’d passed the soft, sloping shoulder I’d been aiming for and rolled off a steeper incline into the dirt at the base of a series of hills. Unfortunately, there was nowhere for me to hide in the barren, craggy landscape, and I saw no houses I could run to for help.

  There was nothing but dessert brush and rocky hills.

  So, I shoved hair back from my face, smearing sticky blood paste across my temples, then ran up the incline toward the highway as fast as I could make my traumatized, disoriented body go.

  “Kaci!”

  I looked back when I got to the road and saw Jared’s head and torso sticking out of the same door I’d opened, clutching at the dirt to pull himself out of the vehicle. Damn it. I’d hoped he’d be incapacitated. Or at least unconscious.

  Traffic was sparse, but there were a cluster of cars coming. I raced across the road, hoping Jared would have to stop for the traffic, if he made it up to the road in time to see me cross.

  The closest half of the highway was only two lanes wide, but the line I ran across it was more slanted than straight, and I had to hold my arms out to keep from falling over. When I got to the rocky median, I had to stop and throw up. Which I recognized from health class freshman year as one of the earliest signs of a concussion.

  I wiped vomit from my mouth, leaving a smear of blood in its plac
e, then forced myself back to my feet and ran across the next two lanes. My steps felt a little steadier. On the shoulder of the road, I turned. Several cars had stopped on the other side of the highway, and their drivers stood at the edge of the road, staring down at the wreck.

  “Hey! Are you okay?” one of them called out to me.

  More vehicles whizzed past without stopping, and I took off running again. In the distance, to the south, I saw a line of trees—the only reasonable place to hide in such a barren landscape, utterly unlike what I’d grown up with in eastern Texas, and in southern Canada before that.

  I could not live here.

  I ran as fast as I could across the rocky dessert, stopping to catch my breath, stumbling every few steps as I tripped over pebbles I couldn’t see very well with my still-blurry vision. Sweat dripped into my eyes and I wiped my face with the tail of my shirt, for all the good that did. My shirt was grimy from the wreck.

  A few feet later, I tripped and went down face-first in the dirt. As I picked myself up, my gaze caught on my left forearm. Blood was still dribbling steadily from the gash, and when I looked back, I found a thin trail of dark droplets leading back to where I’d crossed the highway.

  Cats can’t track by scent, but Jared wouldn’t need to. My trail was small, but obvious, and there was nothing I could do to hide my progress until I made it to the trees.

  “Kaci!” Jared shouted, his voice hardly carrying over the distance.

  I kept running, my right hand clamped over the gash on my left forearm, trying to hold it closed.

  Relief washed over me when I hit the tree line and the foliage provided much-needed shade. But my relief was short-lived. The patch of trees was so thin I could see all the way through it to the narrow, shallow river that fed this lush patch in the desert.

  I was alone and injured, on the run in the desert.

  With no good place to hide.

  Twelve

  Justus