To Be More (Slate/Gray Book #2)

PART II

Chapter 13

It has only been twenty-four hours since Slate has been gone, but it feels like weeks.

Yesterday just before he’d been driven away--taken--one of the men had taken Gray’s cell phone and even if she hadn’t been sick just at the sight of the Freemans, she had no numbers memorized if she wanted to use their phones. She could only bond communicate with her siblings and Sara, but she was an hour’s drive away from any of them and only Slate and Asher would have been able to transcend that distance through the bond, so Gray was fully out of luck.

In the end, she did have to rely on Emily and Kellan Freeman, but only to call a taxi. With all of the tires on their cars popped, she had no transportation and she felt entirely uncomfortable asking anyone else in the Freemans’ pack for a ride anywhere. As it was, she was barely able to contain the fire in her veins when she’d realized how badly the Freemans had betrayed them.

In her deepest moments of burning fury, she’d even thought to herself that she wished she had just let fate have its way with Crystal Freeman and that she and Slate had never bothered themselves with her. Later, she’d felt ashamed for wishing ill intent on a completely innocent child, but...it’s hard. The whole thing.

It’s a nightmare the likes of which Gray had never expected to experience in the sleeping or waking worlds.

When Gray was a mile away from Atwood property, she felt like she’d burst if she had to wait one more moment on a bumpy car ride and ended up basically warning the driver she was about to jump out whether the car was moving or not before tumbling right out. She’d sprinted the last of the distance on her own two feet.

The second she could feel a thread between herself and Sara, she was screaming over the bond. Sara they have Slate, they have Slate, I need help, I’m so sorry, they took him… and so on and so forth.

Eventually Sara broke through the wild barrage of input to tell Gray to calm down and take a breath, but by then, she was mere yards from her front door.

Sara was now about six months pregnant, but still amazingly spry--especially for the amount of pain and discomfort she was often in. She flung open the door and was waiting in her front yard to be collapsed upon.

“Sara, he’s gone, they took him, it was a set up,” Gray gasped out between sobs and heaving, panting breaths.

“I know, honey, I know,” Sara murmured tightly.

Gray pulled away and shook her head desperately. “No Sara, I’m serious, someone took Slate.”

“And I’m telling you I already know.” Sara gave her a little shake and Gray came back to herself enough to take in the puffy eyes and stress lines on Sara’s face.

“What?” was the only thing Gray could choke out through the fog in her brain.

“I know, sweetie. Slate told Asher as it was happening and he came over and told me immediately, he and Jason are inside now. Dad’s on his way home too. We’re going to work this out, okay? We are,” she asserted with a tight jaw, voice trembling.

“Okay,” and, “I’m sorry,” were all that came to mind as the adrenaline slowly faded out.

“Come on,” Sara murmured as she tucked Gray into her side and led her inside. “We’re going to be okay.”

Now it’s an entire day later and they haven’t made much progress. In the beginning, Asher and Slate were in near constant communication, and it was all Asher could do to narrate everything he was seeing and hearing to those they’d gathered together.

This is an entirely unprecedented occasion and no one knows quite what to do except that they’re all willing to do anything and involve anyone necessary to get Slate home as soon as possible. Until Brett gets home tomorrow, they’ve decided to keep the younger three Atwoods out of it. Right now, Sara and Asher have to focus on Slate, and Forrest really isn’t equipped to deal with his own emotions and Sage and Raven’s all by himself, so it’s better to keep all three of them in the dark. It seems almost cruel, but...it’s the better of two bad options.

As time has passed, bond communication between Asher and Slate has drawn thinner and more distant. Asher says he isn’t sure if that’s because of the literal distance between them or because Slate has put up mental barriers himself. The two of them had never really tested the boundaries of their bond so it is, again, entirely new territory.

Gray worries the disconnect is because things are bad enough that Slate is trying to protect Asher by being distant. Asher worries the same thing, Gray can tell, and she’s sure they’re not the only ones. No one wants to say it out loud.

From what they have heard, Slate has been traveling basically ever since he’d been taken. He didn’t get a chance to share many details about his surroundings because they’d put a blindfold on him pretty quickly. They have the license plate of the car he drove off in, but Slate says he’d been in a few different vehicles since then.

Alpha Atwood has been driving furiously across almost the whole of Wyoming and Idaho to get back home, but has stayed busy all the while. He’s been on the phone to Alpha DeMarco--Emily and Kellan Freeman’s alpha--several times. If the woman is to be believed, she had no idea the nefarious nature of the meeting. She was aware the healing wolf and a companion were entering her territory to heal Crystal Freeman, but was under the impression that it was to be a private affair, so she hadn’t asked questions.

She seemed appropriately horrified about what had happened in her own territory with her own wolves--her own family--and is doing everything she can to help out. For her part, her husband actually works at the local county police station and was able to run the plate number of the car that Slate drove off in. It looks like it was purchased and registered to a man named Albert Belmont less than a week ago. It was obviously acquired for the purpose of abducting Slate. Or, well, the healing wolf.

Albert Belmont had no priors and no other information in the legal system that was accessible to Mr. DeMarco, so that was a dead end.

Alpha Atwood had demanded to speak personally to the Freemans on the phone–one of the only things he could do to help while on the road–who offered a few more tidbits of information. They primarily spoke to only two men: Trenton and Kyle, no last names. Trenton and Kyle had infiltrated their house through a rather gullible nanny and threatened their child until they promised they would drop the healing wolf right into their hands.

Apparently the Freemans are quite distraught and traumatized by the experience. Gray wants to curse and rage in their faces until they learn that trauma is not being verbally threatened by a couple of goons. Trauma is going out of your way to do a favor for someone, a good deed, only to get abducted under threat of your own death, your Mate’s death, and/or an infant’s death.

She takes some pleasure in the knowledge that they sounded truly anguished by the betrayal they had partaken in, but it’s no consolation for what has been lost.

Alpha Atwood had asked if there were any identifying traits about Kyle or Trenton, Gray not having had the chance to really get a good look at them. Trenton, they were told, was average height, bulky build, cropped brown hair, brown eyes. No tattoos, scars, or distinct skin markings visible. Kyle was taller, slimmer, slightly longer blonde hair and brown eyes. No identifying features and neither of them had left anything behind or really even touched much in the house. They even used cloth over the doorknobs so they wouldn’t leave prints.

It seems that the men they are contending with are smart criminals.

One thing Emily and Kellan could tell them was that Kyle and Trenton are working for someone else, someone who isn’t directly part of their crew. Someone somewhere else.

Slate had been able to give them descriptions of four of the six men that had taken him and names of all six. He wasn’t able to catch a glimpse of the driver or front seat passenger before he was blindfolded, but they’d been referred to as Gil and Lee, respectively. Besides Kyle and Trenton, the other men crammed into the SUV were named Raj and Devin.

He had no way to know if these were their real names, but they were all consistent in using them on the right person.

Gathered in Sara’s living room currently are Jason--who’d cited family emergency as his reason for indefinite leave from work--Sara, Asher, Perry Woolley, Elsie and Ken Kim, and Angel Carson. Until the alpha returns, they’re keeping knowledge of Slate’s abduction close, though most households have been informed discretely and with instructions to help in any way they can but to stay quiet about it. The alpha has to be the one to tell his other children where their older brother has gone.

Gray can’t even imagine how that conversation will go. How do you tell a six-year-old that his brother is...gone? How can they expect Sage to keep going to school and do homework and go to bed on time when his brother is gone? How can they expect Forrest to keep up with his classes while anything could be happening to Slate?

Gray knows, for herself, that nothing else in her life will take any sort of precedence until Slate is back home safe. Except, of course, for her siblings. Whom she has not told but who definitely know something is up.

Across the room, Asher lifts his head from where it had been buried in his arms, furiously trying to reach Slate, and gasps. “Slate?” he whispers.

The room goes dead silent and everyone watches while unspoken conversation happens between the brothers. Gray leans closer to hear Asher mutter, “He says they’re still driving, thinks they’re not actually traveling a full twenty-four hours’ distance away but that they’re taking the long way to throw off suspicion. He’s…” Asher’s eyes flicker back and forth at nothing and his forehead creases as he focuses all his energy on this tentative connection.

He closes his eyes tightly and presses his forehead to clasped hands. “If I focus really hard,” he breathes, “I can tell he’s in some pain. I don’t think it’s bad, but…”

The silence that follows is ominous, but no one breaks it until Asher collapses back in his chair and pants heavily as though having exerted himself strongly. Jason puts a hand on his shoulder and speaks quiet, purposeful words for the room to hear. “Remember, they want him alive. He can’t heal for them if he’s not alive.”

Gray’s eyes flicker over to Sara, who she can tell wants to input that alive is different from unharmed, but she has been known to show some self restraint on occasion. They don’t need any negativity right now, they need hope.

What Sara does do is pull out her phone and jab at it a few times. “Let’s get back to the phones until we have more information. If nothing else, we can do this.”

They’d been making calls to surrounding packs to see if they had any members or knew any wolves with the names Trenton, Kyle, Gil, Lee, Raj, or Devin. They’d had a couple hits, but nothing with enough relevance to warrant a visit. The names are all fairly common, after all. Still, it’s something to do.

Gray pulls out her phone.

:::::

Apparently Slate is not acting appropriately terrorized. And apparently this is a grave insult to his captors.

He categorically does not care.

He cares a little more, however, when they realize he is actually listening to the inane jabber they can’t help but spout off instead of spending all his energy being frightened. Slate learns all about who’s banging whom, who’s cheating on whom, who’ll do anything for a few bucks, who’s got vendettas. While the information is useless, the fact that he has working ears and a competent attention span to pay attention results in Slate being knocked unconscious way too many times in a twenty-four hour period. He’s fairly certain he can’t retain any actual brain damage from the love pats they’re giving him when he’s awake for too long, but at the very least, it’s leaving him confused and dazed for frustratingly long when he is actually conscious.

It’s making it hard to clear his head enough to communicate with Asher. He’s unsure of which details he’s already shared and which ones are even relevant to share at all. They’ve stopped for gas a few times and Slate has tried to listen in on conversations going on in the gas station, but he hasn’t been able to gather any useful information.

Beyond trying to make sense of the utter crap these idiots are spewing, there’s frustratingly little Slate can do to help or control his current situation.

Despite this, he’s not really scared, though he probably should be. He’s...frustrated. Annoyed. Irritated. But not scared. They’ve left the only things they could use to hurt him far behind at this point, so in Slate’s mind, he has nothing to lose. He doesn’t care what they do to him. He looked death in the eye for the first time at age sixteen and the chill of that moment has never left his mind, but only as a memory.

Back then, he was scared to die. He wasn’t ready to just...end. He had plans, ambitions, hopes, dreams. He still has those things, and he wouldn’t go so far as to say he’s “ready” for death now, but he’s accepted the reality that he’s a mortal in a dangerous life.

And now...some days, he thinks it might be nice to just end. He never entertains that thought for too long, but it crosses his mind every now and then.

Which is not to say he wouldn’t pull every dirty trick and fight tooth and nail to stay alive, because he would. His family needs him too much. It’s just…not scary. To think about failing.

The whizz of cars speeding past fades a bit, like they’re pulling off the freeway. It’s hard to tell with his stints of unconsciousness, but he doesn’t think it’s time to fill the tank again yet. They’ve pulled through a drive through for fast food a couple times, but the goons haven’t complained about being hungry in the last hour, so that seems unlikely as well.

“Bro, are you sure this is going to work?”

Slate is at the point where he’s almost decided to just tune out the soporific droning, but his ears perk up at the change of tone. This one, he thinks the voice belongs to Kyle, sounds wary. A far cry from the cocky confidence of just hours ago.

“Yes, Kyle,” another one groans. “You’re so paranoid. We’re not the first people to figure out how to cross a border without detection, you know. The boss has smuggled people across before.”

“You mean Alpha--”

“Devin, don’t say his name, you idiot!”

Slate inwardly sighs. Of course one of them had to have some common sense. They may not be the brains of the whole operation, but he will give them credit as far as being successful captors goes. You have to have some wherewithal to be able to take someone from a home without being detected.

Really he blames himself more than anything else. They got him so...easily. All it took was, what, distracting him for a moment and putting a baby in his arms and suddenly he’s helpless? He shakes himself minutely to rid himself of useless pondering.

It sure would have been convenient if their propensity for babbling didn’t stop short of giving their abductee a few points of crucial information though.

“Oh, um,” Devin says, sounding cowed. “You mean the boss has taken people across the border before?”

Slate reasons that if they were just traversing America, they’d have no reason for pause at any state borders, so they must be taking him either to Mexico or Canada. Maybe they won’t compromise the identity of their employer, but he might have finally caught a break and the guys aren’t as slick as they fancy themselves.

“Yeah. He has connections at a private hangar.”

Well. There goes that. If they’re putting him on a plane, he could be going anywhere.

“Epic,” one of them, the driver he thinks, drawls. “Now shut up.”

“Ugh,” another one groans. “But Gil, I’m dying here. Hey,” he perks up. “We’ve got captive entertainment here, eh? Why haven’t we been having some fun with ’im?”

“Raj,” Gil sighs. “Can’t we just agree to get to the airport and get out of here with our sanity intact?”

“Nah, come on,” Devin chimes in with an audible grin. “We’ve been on the road for more than twenty-four hours and I’m tired of you all already. Let’s get to know the fresh meat.”

Slate compresses his lips. Gil is definitely his favorite. Though, maybe if he can ingratiate himself with them, he can get them to share another helpful tidbit or two.

“Good luck,” Trenton, to Slate’s right, mutters. “I think he might be mute.”

“Dude, he’s probably more bored than us. We can make him talk,” Raj says awfully arrogantly.

“Just leave me out of it,” Gil huffs, though Slate can tell he’s got his ears perked.

“You think we could take the blindfold off?” Raj presses on eagerly.

“I don’t know--”

“Come on, Trent, what’s he gonna see? Trees? He’s gonna identify our location by the species of trees we pass?”

Trenton growls, but evidently relinquishes control pretty easily, because a second later, the blindfold is torn from Slate’s face and he’s immediately blinded by the first light to reach his eyes in almost twenty-four hours.

Once he can open his eyes beyond slits, he first takes in all the faces around him and commits them to memory. Next, he looks out the window and sees that they’re on a two-lane highway, surrounded almost entirely by forestry. No other cars in sight. Wonderful.

“Hey, wolf,” Raj from the passenger seat turns around and prods his knee. “You awake in there? Have we knocked your brain around too much?”

Slate was intending to play their little game and see if he could weasel out any info, but this is just painful. He manfully resists rolling his eyes and hopes a raised eyebrow can communicate his most heartfelt derision. “No,” he grunts.

“Huh,” Raj considers. “A regular Shakespeare, eh?” He squints a bit before grinning like a shark. “Who was your lady friend? She good in bed? Looks like she’d be a good lay, am I right?”

Kill him now.