“Lovebirds?” Nina called from the kitchen just adjacent to the living room.
Harry and Mara’s eyes shot across the room where Nina stood by Jeff’s shiny, silver fridge. She held up another of those now familiar slips of paper.
Mara’s heart began to crash against her ribs in a painful beat.
It was the same handwriting, the same lined notepaper torn from a spiral notebook.
“Tell Mara and Harry I see them.”
* * *
MARA tucked her hair up in a knot on the top of her head before placing a knitted cap over it, trying to shake off the fear eating her alive.
For now, because Jeff had been missing for over forty-eight hours and he was a human, they’d filed an anonymous missing person’s report, realizing the police would eventually show up at Pack and question his coworkers.
Harry had been the voice of reason on Jeff’s disappearance. Their chances were better if the police didn’t immediately put Harry and the kids together with Jeff’s vanishing. How did you explain that since you’d become a werewolf, your wards and one of your coworkers had gone missing all in the space of a week? Not to mention identical messages had been left both with the kids and at Jeff’s place—key pieces of evidence.
The common denominator in all this was Harry.
But they were only buying more time at this point. The police would have to show up sometime, and if they were smart, they’d eventually string together the relationships between Harry, Jeff, and the children, and then the heat would be on.
They’d also searched Jeff’s house, something she, Nina, and Harry had done before letting the police in on his disappearance. Nothing.
Absolutely nothing, other than the scattered furniture, said this person who was snatching people up had wanted something important from Jeff’s personal research. Jeff was a respected scientist, but to her knowledge, he wasn’t working on anything for Pack that would change the world.
After a lengthy discussion, they’d all nixed the idea that Jeff’s kidnapping had anything to do with his work, and had everything to do with his connection to Mara and Harry and that damn lab. What had Jeff seen that would make someone want to tear his place apart or worse, hurt him?
Jesus. At this point, was Jeff even alive?
Mara’s stomach coiled into a tight knot of fear. Someone had lured Harry to the lab, and that someone had seen what had gone down that night. There was no escaping that.
She’d worried all last night about Jeff, wracked her brain to find his connection to this, other than that he was a convenient way to get Harry to the lab.
She’d notified Keegan and the council about Jeff, who was very human. If Jeff was hurt, or even if he wasn’t, the council had been clear, this revelation could lead to more charges. The only solace she took was in Keegan’s words that he’d do whatever it took to find Jeff.
She sighed, forcing her fears to quiet. Today, Mara was determined to enjoy Mimi and Fletcher for their short visit to tube along the hills behind her cottage. It was a rare opportunity for Harry to spend some time with them in this madness, and it was important.
With nothing else to go on, no clue where to look for Jeff, they’d entered the frustrating land of limbo.
And if she didn’t find something else to focus on, she’d go crazy.
Mimi’s and Fletcher’s excited voices drifted in from the living room where Nina made them hot chocolate with marshmallows and explained why Carl was such a strange color and couldn’t speak. She didn’t balk at their questions. She didn’t chastise them for being curious.
She invited them to ask her anything and everything to create an open dialogue about his differences, yet alleviate the fears they surely experienced upon seeing him for the first time.
“Fear created chaos” was Nina’s motto, and while she didn’t exactly tell them the truth about Carl, she was as honest as the situation allowed, telling them only that Carl had been in an accident that left his skin a different shade than what was considered normal and his limbs stiff and difficult to use.
As they giggled and chatted, she’d encouraged them to hold Carl’s hand, and when he’d grunted his pleasure, they’d all gone about their giggling and chatter like they hadn’t just met a real, not so alive, zombie.
“I have to give it to Nina, she’s an amazing guide to parenting,” Harry said, wonder in his voice. “The kids have accepted and moved on to the topic of what would happen if you woke up and there was an alligator on your floor.”
“We can all only aspire,” Mara said on a forced smile.
He grabbed her hand to prevent her from avoiding him, warm and reassuring. He stroked the skin between her thumb and index finger. “So we still haven’t talked.”