Her Perilous Wolf by Julie Steimle (best e book reader TXT) 📕

Audry shrugged, wishing it didn’t. Everyone was shipping Breacon and it scared her.

“No.” Jandra shook her head. “You have a sixth sense about people.”

“Except the men I date,” Audry muttered, her mind going back to her exes.

But that only caused Jandra to smirk at her. “No… even them. I’ve seen you. I mean sure, dangerous guys are attracted to you, sneaky ones. But you see through them.”

Heavily disagreeing, Audry shook her head. “No, I don’t. It took forever for me to see through Harlin. And Hogan. I barely got out of that one.”

However, an ample smile spread across Jandra’s face as she slowly shook her head shake, beaming with enjoyment rather than shock. “Honestly? You don’t see yourself rightly. I knew you were not one hundred percent into Hogan—because whenever Rick came around, you’d stare at him as if you were waiting for him to rescue you.”

“No!” Audry’s head felt hot. Her heart thundered in her chest as her mouth opened in protest. “Not at all! Never happened.”

“So you still don’t even realize it?” Chuckling, Jandra side-eyed her. “Man, whenever he showed up, you’d perk up and listen for what he had to say. It was like you enjoyed fighting with him.”

Audry blushed more. Enjoyed fighting with him? That was absurd, wasn’t it? She wasn’t like that, was she?

“This is what I say.” Jandra gazed at her levelly. “Go after him, or give him up. Lose all your wolf stuff or find out if it can work out.”

That matched exactly what Silvia had said. But how could a relationship with a werewolf work out? Audry knew the logical end to such stories. They were unerringly tragic.

“It does not bother you that Rick is a werewolf?” Audry murmured out, wishing for someone to lift her back into the realm of reason and sanity.

Shrugging, Jandra laughed. It was musical. “I think for me… well, all that stuff will stay rumors and stories. I’m not getting into it. It’s not about me anyway. The question is, does it bother you? Are you really that bothered that he is a wolf? Or… does it get you excited?”

Audry’s heart boomed. Get her excited? What was Jandra saying?

Yet in the back of her brain, the idea that Rick was the wolf was kind of exciting. The wolf enriched him. It made him more.

The real problem was that there were monster hunters always shooting at him, trying to kill him—and might even kill her. And there were other werewolves who might see her as an enemy like Daisy, or some unknown enemy of Rick’s that she had yet to see or hear about. They were what was dangerous about Rick. He wasn’t the monster. Rick was a sweet, handsome, and hurt wolf who needed a break. He was her poor lone wolf.

Jandra and Audry said goodbye at her apartment. Audry decided it was time to head back to her car and get Darth from Silvia and Randon. She had to head back to Idaho, pack up there what she did not need, and then start applying for work while figuring out what to do about her doctorate. It was time to move on and rethink things.

Strolling back, Audry’s mind was full. She started to construct a mental to-do list. There were things she needed to pack, tickets to buy, another travel crate to arrange for Darth, and a load of other things to sort out in Idaho. She might even need to leave Idaho and rent out another apartment somewhere. The mini house was a rental, though extremely cheap. As she turned a corner, she took a shortcut to the parking lot to where her car was parked.

A sleek sedan pulled up to the curb in front of her. Two men popped out, rushing at her. Audry quickly recognized that man from the airport. But the other was a meaty guy with a shaved head and goatee with the appearance of some kind of in Special Ops solider in green fatigue pants and shirt.

Audry backed away, digging into her bag for her new tazer. Both men seized her arms before she could pull anything out. They covered her mouth with some sort of smelly cloth and dragged her into the backseat of the car before she could get even one sound out. Her hands wrapped around her keys. Trying not to breath in the fumes in the rag, she kicked. She tried to bite. But one of them stuck something in her arm which made her head feel even woozier. Yet Audry squeezed those keys, hoping she was crushing that special key fob together to activate it.

The meaty Special Ops guy reeked of garlic and clove oil, pressing that rag to her face as she was losing consciousness. She got a good look of her attacker. His face was red as if he had been in the sun too long, or had too many beers. The toothpaste-smile one also stank, but of spearmint, the sound of him chewing on gum.

“Oh, something got activated!” someone else in the vehicle announced as Audry felt her consciousness slipping from her.

“Her hand’s in her purse. Is it a cellphone?”

The last thing she heard before she conked out entirely was the jingling of her keys which she could hear getting flung out the window.

Chapter Sixteen

Audry woke to darkness and the rocking of the vehicle. She had no clue where they were, though she could recall with clarity how she got there. It had repeated over and over in her dreams that toothpaste-smile guy and some brute from Special Ops had dragged her off the street just as she was about to get to her car. She had been kidnapped.

But her keys. What had remembered about her keys?

That’s right. She had pressed that fob Jessica had given her. If it had worked, then she would be tracked and rescued. But on that thought, Audry recalled the jingling of the keys… and them getting thrown away.

No one could track her. No one would find her.

She had to escape on her own.

Yet, as she tried to sit up, Audry banged her head against a metal something.

Damn, they had put her into a trunk.

Thinking, wondering where they were going, Audry thought about what she knew about trunks of cars. What was it her father used to say? Kick the taillight out? When she was a kid, her father had always been concerned that some lunatic might kidnap one of them because of the Bruchenhaus name, then try to hold them for ransom—another reason to hate that familial connection. However, she was now glad her father had been that kind of paranoid.

Shifting her position in the trunk, Audry felt over the dark insides with her zip-tied-together hands. She’d get those off easy enough. It was about pressure and angles. It only took a quick snap with the correct twist of her arms.  Her brief judo instructor had taught her tricks to break those as well. But focusing on the taillight, Audry shifted so she could give it one firm kick.

The plastic popped. The cheap metal bent. She kicked it again, busting out the bulb. Pieces of plastic littered the road behind them, making a hole big enough for her arm. Audry did not see much, but that did not matter. The point was to break open a hole and then wave through it with her hand to get the attention of other drivers. If they see her hand sticking out of the back of a car, they could get down the license plate and call 911. She waved for a full five minutes before the car slowed. She also had to find the catch on the inside of the trunk. Some newer models had them—ones which allowed her to open the trunk form the inside. She pawed the back with her other hand to find it.

The car slowed down more, halting possibly at a light. Then it rolled forward, veering to the right, most likely pulling to a curb. Audry hoped they had been pulled over, though she did not see any flashing lights through the hole, nor did she hear sirens. When they all came to a full stop, Audry pulled her hand out from the hole and braced to take on whoever might open the trunk.

She heard a click and a pop. The trunk hood swung up.

She attempted to jump out, but already Special Ops guy was there. He grabbed her as she sprung up. “Not so fast little girl.”

Audry let out an earsplitting scream, struggling against his grip.

His meaty hand clamped over her mouth. “Shut up or I’ll shut you up for good.”

She licked his palm, hoping it would gross him out enough so he would let go. But he didn’t. And his hand tasted terrible. She tried biting him next.

No good. His palm was too wide, as were his fingers.

“Now, little girl, you are going to come quietly with me, for your own good.”

He shifted his hand, but she just screamed again, this time biting at his fingers when they got in range.

“Watch it, b—”

“LET ME GO!” Audry shrieked. “YOU CAN’T DO THIS! THIS IS KIDNAPPING!”

But the toothpaste-smile man laughed somewhere at her right, shaking his head as he sauntered closer. “So? We have the legal right to—”

“NO ONE HAS THE LEGAL RIGHT TO KIDNAP! YOU FREAK!” She swung a good kick toward his groin, but he blocked with his thigh—prepared for that kind of resistance. Things that worked in the movies rarely worked in real life, but she had to try.

“Now that wasn’t very nice,” toothpaste man said, rubbing his sore thigh. He would at least get a solid bruise out of it. “We’re trying to help you.”

Audry screamed again to be heard, including “RAPE!” though honestly when did anyone ever run to a woman when she called that? Her mother said a woman should call “FIRE” as people paid more attention.

Meaty man clamped his hand over her mouth again, also covering her nose. She could hardly breathe. She felt the other man zip-tie her wrists again.

“Yeah… she’s a feisty one,” Mr. Special Ops thug said. His breath stank of garlic. Rick would be sneezing just from standing near him. “Do you think he’ll come for her?”

Audry stiffened, struggling to breathe.

“Oh, he’d definitely come for this one. She fits his MO,” toothpaste man bragged, swaggering as he walked alongside the thug wrangling Audry. “Intelligent, sporty, healthy. Doesn’t overdo fashion. Doesn’t care for the limelight. Stands up for herself… And into risky behavior.”

Audry ran her heel down the inside of Special Op’s man’s leg. Yelping, he almost dropped her, hunching in a grab at his lower leg.

“LEMME GO!” Audry screamed, kicking at his shins next.

“Oh, no.” Toothpaste man shook his head. “We need you. You are exactly the bait we need for that lousy werewolf.”

All the color drained out of her. “What? Are you crazy?”

“You heard me,” he said coolly. “And you know whom I am talking about. You know his secret.”

Audry kicked and flailed again, struggling to get her bound wrists loose from under that thug’s arms. “My grandfather is going to sue your pants off!”

But he just laughed. “Your grandfather? Come on. Say what you really mean.