“I have an idea,” Jerry said with a mischievous smile.
As Jerry laid out the plan, she grabbed a pair of gloves and her cat carrier.
* * *
“Jerry?” Derrick yelped when he rounded the corner leading to Hector’s barn. “Hector! Get out here!”
He fell to his knees to find Jerry crumpled in a heap near the base of a pine tree, his jacket torn, his face bloody and bruised where he’d whacked the side of the tree with it. He slid his arm under Jerry’s head, cradling it in his lap. “Jerry! Buddy, wake up!”
Hector hovered behind Derrick, dropping to his knees, too. “What happened?”
Dread filled his gut like sand filling an hourglass. “I don’t know. I found him like this. Let’s get him out of the cold.” He scooped Jerry up, carrying him into the barn while Hector grabbed some blankets.
Cupping Jerry’s jaw, Derrick brushed his mussed hair from his cheek as he began to stir. “Jerry, buddy, what the hell happened?”
Jerry groaned, his swollen eye, merely a slit in his head, landing on Derrick. “Somebody hit me. From behind, I think…”
“Hit you? Nobody hits anyone around here unless it’s at Derrick’s bar. What the hell, man?” Hector asked, tucking a blanket under Jerry’s legs, his face worried.
Jerry winced, running a finger over the gash in his lip. “I don’t know. I was going to Derrick’s to see if Martine wanted to have lunch like he asked me to. Nat was already gone when I got to your house, and so was Martine. Then wham—it’s the last thing I remember.”
Derrick’s internal alarm bells sounded. Martine. She was the thread here. He was damn sure of it. “Okay, Hector, you stay here with Jerry. Jerry, you rest until you heal, and if you can think of anything else, text me.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He ran from the barn, his pulse like thunder in his ears. They hadn’t talked in two days, and now he was regretting every single second he’d spent letting her have her space and adjust to the idea they needed her mother’s help.
He’d left Martine with regret this morning, standing in the doorway of her room and watching her sleep, but reluctant to wake her. So he’d asked Nat to stay with her while he was off helping Max, and she’d texted back that she’d be right over.
He’d left knowing Nat was hot on his heels to stand watch, should anything come up.
As he raced down the path and across the yard that connected he and Hector’s two properties, he smelled something wrong.
Something really wrong. Strange smells, foreign smells, scents that turned his stomach. He took the fronts steps three at a time, pushing the door open, his gaze scanning the interior of the house. “Martine?”
Room to room he went, calling her name, his panic increasing with each fruitless glance into another empty space. He yanked out his phone and texted Nat. Where the hell are you? Fighting the impulse to punch a wall, his mind raced.
Whoa, brother. I’m at Mom’s. Right where I said I’d be all day if you needed me. What’s going on?
Fuck. He knew it. Goddamn it, he knew it. You were supposed to be staying with Martine.
“No,” Nat said, her breathing heavy as she pushed her way into his house. “You texted me earlier and said you didn’t need me because Jerry was coming over.” She held up her phone, her cheeks flushed from the run over.
Derrick held up his phone, too, his heart thumping out a harsh rhythm. “No. I asked you to come stay with her until Jerry got here to take her to lunch!” he all but yelled.
Nat’s eyes widened, her fingers trembling as she called up the message. “Oh Jesus, D. Oh Jesus. I’m sorry, but you can see what your text says.”
He clenched a fist tight, fighting for control. “I see it. I don’t get it, but I see it. Because read the text I sent you.”
Nat’s mouth fell open as she read his phone message. “What the hell?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just know someone clocked Jerry in the head, I found him unconscious, and Martine’s disappeared. We have to find her, Nat.”
Nat was all limbs and motion as she began to make her way to the door, her fingers flying over her phone. “We’ll gather the pack to search every corner of Cedar Glen. I’ll text Max and JC. Don’t panic yet. Maybe she’s just at the bar?”
“If she’d damn well taken the phone I’d offered her, we could text her and see, couldn’t we?” he replied, terse and hot with anger.
Nat threw a scarf and gloves at him from the basket Martine had set on the small table by the front door so he wouldn’t keep losing them. “Well, she didn’t, okay? Now get your shit together and let’s go!”