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“I know he’s alive, but he’s not conscious. I can’t feel any of his emotions. He’s there, but the connection is weak.” I took a drink from the tumbler in my hand. Quin’s fancy alcohol was wasted on me. It was too smooth, and the lack of burn as I swallowed did nothing to distract me from the regret that pulsed from my heart through every inch of my body. “I should have claimed him. Then I’d be able to get a better sense of where he is.”
After orca shifters fully claimed their mates with a bonding bite, we earned the unique ability to almost be able to see through our mate’s eyes during periods of stress or high emotion. Scientists thought it was an evolutionary trait that came from our ability to use echolocation in our whale forms,but the science didn’t matter to me. I thought I’d have plenty of time to fully claim Felix. Now, I might be too late to ever get that chance.
“We’re going to find him.” Quin’s tone was matter-of-fact.
“I know we will, but will he be alive when we do?”
“Have a little faith. If there is a way to track him down digitally, you know Jules can do it. And Cal—” Quin held up a hand when I started to protest. My rage over Cal’s decision to take Felix out of the house and then to let him out of his sight was still too close to the surface for me to look at the situation rationally.
“Cal, for all his faults, is good at what he does. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have had the foresight to memorize the car’s plate number when he realized he couldn’t catch up. He fucked up, of that there is no doubt, but he will make this right. You know he will. None of us want to see you suffering when it’s been forever since we’ve seen you as happy and relaxed as you are with Felix.”
“Sitting here feels like giving up.”
“It’s not. It’s showing patience. The second we have information to act on, we will.”
“We? You’re coming with us? I thought you didn’t like to get your hands dirty.”
Quin’s answering laugh was tinged with bitterness. “Which is funny since I’m the only artist in the bunch.” He set his glass on the carved mahogany table next to his chair and held up his hands, turning them to show both his palms and the backs of his hands. “My hands are always dirty.”
Maybe I never looked at Quin’s hands because I was too distracted by the bespoke rest of him. Custom designer suits, handmade Italian leather shoes, accessories from French fashion houses with names I couldn’t pronounce if I tried. Everything about Quin was expensive. For the first time, I actually studied what he was showing me. His fingernails werecut short and neatly trimmed, but his cuticles were raw, and the edges of several nails were stained. There were faint paint splatters on the backs of his hands and a healing red cut along his palm. There were nicks and scars dotted among the paint.
He flipped his hand over and ran his opposite thumb along the healing wound. “Gouged myself with a chisel working on a marble bust.” He smiled. “Turned out great, though. The buyer had no idea they weren’t getting the real one, which I saw safely returned to the private collector it had been stolen from.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, and luckily, I was saved from having to say anything when Julius ran into the room, Cal hot on his heels. I was on my feet in an instant.
“We found him.” My brother was beaming. “He’s being held in an old warehouse on Harbor Island. One of the other warehouses is being turned into luxury loft apartments, and they had cameras. I was able to tap into them and saw the sedan parked behind a warehouse a little further out.”
“Who owns the car?”
Cal shook his head. “It’s registered to a Marshall Owens.”
“What do we know about him?” Quin asked.
“He died last year, and the car is likely stolen,” Cal responded.
“So we still don’t know who has him? Who’s behind all this?” I wanted to go get Felix now, but if we pulled him out without taking care of whoever had taken him in the first place, the threat would still hang over his head.
Cal’s smile was terrifying and feral. “Not yet, but we will find out when we get there, and I promise, they won’t be an issue for long.”
As Quin and I stood to follow Julius and Cal out of the study, the doorbell rang.
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
FELIX
“Wher—”I snapped my eyes shut, willing the room to stop spinning and trying to choke down the bile that rose in my throat. My mouth felt like I’d been sucking on cotton balls, and when I couldn’t swallow without making myself gag, I concentrated on taking small breaths instead.
When the urge to vomit subsided, I chanced opening my eyes again. The room came into focus slowly. Too slowly, and the image never quite resolved the way it should. It took me way too long to realize my vision was blurry because my glasses were missing. I tried to lift my hands to rub the grit away from my eyes, but I couldn’t move my arms. They were bound behind me, secured to the hard chair I was sitting in with what felt like zip ties covered in duct tape. The sharp edges of the plastic dug into my wrists as I tried to twist them free, and the tape stuck to my skin pulled painfully with every small movement.
Arguably, I had done my fair share of stupid shit in my time on this planet, but not waiting the two minutes it would have taken Cal to finish his phone call was easily one of the dumbest. Maybe it had actually started with leaving the house to get that drive.
Fuck.
Where was the drive?
Panic threatened to overwhelm me, and the desire to scream for help bubbled up from my chest, but I didn’t utter a sound. Yelling wasn’t how I was going to get myself out of this. And I needed to keep my head even though it throbbed, pulsing in time with the beat of my racing heart and making me feel dizzy and like I couldn’t trust what I was seeing.
