“Carmen.” The faint strains of music in the background cut off. “Hey, listen, I appreciate this, but you don’t have to come take me to lunch. I’m fine. You have to have better things to do.”
“Too late. I’m already on my way.” She squinted against the midday sun and slid on her sunglasses. “I just need directions to your office.”
Kat gave her quick, concise directions to a side street in the Central Business District. “If you hurry, you’ll get here before Alec comes back from bugging whoever he’s bugging. He’s been even crabbier than usual today.”
All she had to do was hit St. Charles, and it would be a nearly straight shot. “I can be there in—” Her phone beeped. “I’ve got to go. Someone’s on the other line. Give me ten minutes, tops.”
“See you then.”
Once she looked at the caller ID, Carmen stopped in her tracks and hesitated before flashing to the other line. “Hi, Dad.”
“Honey.” He sounded almost relieved. “I thought you might not answer.”
“I considered it.”
“Don’t hang up,” he said quickly. “You didn’t come to dinner last night with your brother.”
She’d parked on the opposite side of the street, so she crossed carefully and leaned to sit on the hood of her car. “I didn’t feel like having to defend myself.”
“I would have liked to have seen you.”
He sounded sincere. As a child, Carmen would have given anything to hear him say those words and mean them, but it hadn’t happened. Not after she’d watched him look her mother in the eye and tell her that he loved her, but he still had to go. “Miguel told me why you’re here, and you should know I have no intention of meeting this guy you’ve picked out for me.”
“That’s a shame. Richard is a very solid young man. He’s successful, and he’s looking forward to meeting you.”
He spoke as if it were a foregone conclusion, and Carmen’s temper spiked. “How much are you and Uncle Cesar paying him?”
“Excuse me?”
“To take a human as a wife,” she clarified.
He hesitated just a little too long before stammering out a denial, and a piece of Carmen’s heart she hadn’t realized was still whole shattered. Her eyes stung, and she clenched one hand around the edge of the hood. “Never mind. He’d just leave one day anyway, wouldn’t he?”
“That’s not fair,” he objected, his voice showing the first tinges of anger. “You were barely twelve, Carmen. A child. Things were more complicated—”
“I know.” And she did, that was the hell of it. She’d rather be back in that childish ignorance, believing that her father had left them, left her pregnant mother, because he no longer cared.
Now she knew that he cared, had always cared, just not enough to stand up to the rest of his family.
“Will you meet Richard? He’s in Memphis on business. He could fly down this weekend.”
She eased her sunglasses up and rubbed her eyes. “No, and you need to stop asking. We’re not talking about political alliances, Dad. We’re talking about the rest of my life, and I’m not for sale.”
His silence now was heavy, almost sad. “I’m sorry to hear you say that, honey.”
Fear shivered up Carmen’s spine. “Dad?”
“I have to go now, but I’ll see you soon.” With that, he hung up.
She sat there for a moment, staring at her phone. Every not-quite-human instinct in her screamed danger, and she dialed Julio’s number almost without thinking.
It routed directly to his voicemail, and she tried to think of something reasonable to say as she half-listened to his greeting. I’m afraid of our family was alarmist, and she’d be hard pressed to explain exactly why she was scared. What could they do?
What would they do?
A shrill beep interrupted her thoughts, and Carmen swallowed hard. “Hey, Julio. It’s me. Look, I don’t—I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m a little worried. If something happens to me—”
A white van screeched to a stop beside her car. The door slid open, and two men dressed in dark clothes reached for her.
Carmen ran. She almost tripped over the curb, but recovered enough to keep going. Halfway across a neighbor’s tiny postage-stamp-sized lawn, strong hands wound in the back of her shirt.
She screamed, but a hand clapped over her mouth a second later, muffling the sound. “There’s a witch in the van. If you don’t cooperate, she’ll make you cooperate.”
Her odds weren’t good if they managed to get her into the van. She kicked wildly, more in hopes of attracting attention than hurting the man. All it earned her was a tiny, frustrated sigh, and then she couldn’t move at all.
Sheer animal panic gripped her. Being restrained was one thing, but literally having no control over her body was another. Hot tears streamed out of her eyes, and she tried to scream again.
Nothing.
The other man helped lift her into the van like a doll. A woman sat in the back, and she tilted her head, sending the wild cascade of beads woven into her hair clinking against each other. “Be calm, child. Your family has decided to give you the ultimate gift.”
No. No, please. She had no idea what the witch meant, but her family had never wanted what was best for her. Only what was best for them. No.
The engine rumbled beneath them as the van squealed away from the curb. The hulking man beside her steadied her with a gentle but impersonal hand on her shoulder. The witch waved a hand, and the paralysis gripping her vanished.
If she fought or made too much noise, they’d do it all over again. So Carmen pushed her hair back with shaking hands and tried to still her trembling lips. “My father. Call—call my father. Please.” She’d dropped her phone, but they could find the number.
Something almost like sympathy filled the woman’s eyes. “Where do you think we’re taking you?”
Alec took one step into his office and knew his day was about to go from worse to catastrophic.
Kat sat at her desk, her fingers flying over the keys even though she was looking at Jackson. “—been here an hour ago. I’d just talked to her but now her phone keeps going to voicemail.” She glanced back at the screen, but her gaze shot straight to Alec. “Hey, Carmen’s missing.”
“Missing?” Alec glanced at Jackson. “How missing?”
“Pretty damn missing.” Jackson shoved his wallet and keys into his pocket. “No one’s heard from her, there are no major traffic snarls between her house and here…..and I’ve got a real uneasy feeling.”
Protective anger twisted inside Alec too fast to be anything but bad news, and guilt followed hard on its heels. He’d provoked Cesar the previous night and hadn’t bothered to warn Carmen. “What exactly happened, Kat?”
“She called to say she was on her way over, and then she had another call to take. I thought it might be the clinic, an emergency or something…..” Kat trailed off and returned her attention to the computer. “She’s not there. She’s not anywhere.”
“What are you looking up?”
“Her cell records.” A frustrated noise escaped her. “I’m trying, but I’ve still got a headache and this is a carrier I’ve never had to hack before.”
“It makes a difference?” He regretted asking when Kat paused long enough to level a scathing glare at him. “Never mind. Do you know where she was when she called?”
“Leaving her house maybe? Jackson’s got the address.”
His partner held up a small square of paper. “Uptown. You coming with me?”
“Yeah. But someone needs to stay—”
Kat made an annoyed noise. “If you say with Kat, I’m going to taser your balls.”
The stun gun sitting next to her made it no idle threat, even if it wasn’t an accurate one. Worry for Carmen made him choke back his knee-jerk reminder that Kat didn’t own a taser. “Fine, lock the door behind us, at least.”
Jackson held the door, his usual easy grin conspicuously absent. “How loose do you think old Cesar’s definition of the word suitor is?”
“The usual.” Which should be enough to impress upon Jackson how dangerous their situation might be. “Kidnapping a mate isn’t standard operating procedure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.”
“How in demand would a woman like Carmen Mendoza be?”
“Hard to say.” Which was a lie. Plenty of wolves would be willing to marry a halfbreed to get a chance at the Mendoza fortune—or a little influence with a council member—but Cesar hadn’t spent decades building the mystique of his psychic niece and nephews just to throw it away on a nobody.
“Maybe something came up and she’s just busy at home.”
It took a few seconds for Alec to figure out why that felt wrong, to put words to what instinct had already decided. “She didn’t seem thoughtless. If you were an empath, would you stand Kat up right now?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Jackson admitted as he unlocked the car, “but I’m working up to the worst-case scenario.”
“This is shapeshifter politics, Holt. Start at the worst-case scenario, and you’ll already be pretty damn close.” Unless it gets worse.
It got worse.
Alec crouched on the tiny scrap of grass across the street from Carmen’s house and picked up a cell phone with a cracked casing. “Has her scent on it.”
“Skid marks on the street.” Jackson bent and retrieved a set of keys from beneath the front bumper of a late-model navy-blue Camry. A key ring jingled, and he held it up. “Kappa Kappa Gamma. Think our girl’s the sorority type?”
He didn’t have a clue. “Do they go with the Camry?”
When Jackson depressed a button on the black key fob, the car’s locks disengaged. “Yeah, worst-case scenario.”