Should have Put a Leash On It (3 page)

Now they had nothing, didn’t even know if Rylan was still alive. Micah had been out every night searching for anyone that might have seen anything. And every night he came home with the same answers. No one saw anything, heard anything and no one knew anything. This was just too fucking clean. It had to be Trevor, there was no way a job this clean was done by anyone but a professional.

The only thing that didn’t match the precision of the job was going after Rylan. It just didn’t made sense. Rylan was Remy’s second and best friend and everyone knew Rylan would sooner die that willingly give up any information about any of them. That was one of the things that scared him.

When Rylan didn’t talk, Micah didn’t want to imagine what Trevor would do to make him.

Micah sat on the roof of the Pack House and looked out at the land around them, not really seeing anything. He turned to his brother and said, “The longer he’s gone, the less chance there is of us ever finding him, you know that, don’t you?”

Micah hadn’t slept for days and before that only for an hour or two. He kept dreaming of Rylan being tied up and tortured, the scent of burning flesh making him run to the bathroom the second he woke up. He knew some of the others in the inner circle of the pack were afraid he was going crazy, but they didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was finding Rylan.

“I know.” Asher let out a ragged breath and came to join him, sitting on the edge of the roof with him and dangling his legs over the side. “Something is bugging me about this. It was all planned out perfectly and the only reasons Trevor would come after one of us would be to get information or send to a message. Rylan’s been gone too long to just be information and we haven’t had any communication from Trevor. He’d never pass up an opportunity to gloat about killing Remy’s second.”

It was Micah’s turn to let out a rough breath.

He twisted a piece of hair between his fingers absently—he hadn’t bothered cutting it since Rylan disappeared and it was starting to grow past his ears. Unlike the rest of their siblings, he, Sage and Saffron had lighter, blonder hair they got from their father while the others had more reddish brown hair to match their mother’s dark auburn locks.

Asher kicked at the wall, growling in frustration. Micah would have done the same if he had the energy.

“Am I crazy?”

Micah opened his mouth to answer that Asher wasn’t crazy when what Asher said sank in. The words died on his lips. “What did you say?”

“I said am I crazy?”

Micah grabbed hold of Asher’s arm tightly, yanking his brother around to face him.

“You said
send a message.
” Micah jumped to his feet and started pacing. There was something important on the edge of his mind. Goddamn it, it was just a half formed thought, but he knew it was important. If he could just get it straight in his mind.

Asher got up and intercepted him and he began to turn around and pace the other way. “What? You’ve thought of something.” Asher’s gaze burrowed into him, but Micah didn’t have time to try and explain what he was thinking, he didn’t
know
what he was thinking yet.

“Say what you said before.” Micah pointed right in Asher’s face and his brother glared at his finger. Asher hated not being in the loop.

“Uhh...I said we’ve been waiting and the only reasons they’d take Rylan would be to get information or send us a message, that we’ve been waiting—”

“That’s it!” Micah could smack himself for not thinking of this earlier. “That’s just it. Trevor
wouldn’t
go after Rylan. He’s already sent us a message about who he was going to take.”

Asher looked at him blankly for a moment before realization dawned. “Fuck.”

“Yeah.” That summed it up exactly.

Trevor wouldn’t take Rylan because everyone knew how loyal he was to Remy. It would be too much trouble to take him for information and if Trevor had grabbed Rylan in order to make an example out of him to send Remy a message, then they would have heard by now. It had been right in front of them all along.

“Fuck,” Asher said again.

Remy gave him a skeptical look and Micah realized his brother didn’t get it. He looked over at Asher for support, but his brother was nowhere to be found.

Throwing his hands in the air, Micah set his theory out as clearly as he could. “Trevor’s arrogant, right? He thinks he is better and smarter than everyone. We’ve been waiting for a message when we already had one. He
told
us what he was going to do.”

No one seemed to be getting it. “Jacko’s mother was dumped with a note. He said that he was coming after Jacko. So why take Rylan?” At this point Micah was almost shouting.

Remy’s eyebrows rose and his eyes flew wide as his little brother finally got where Micah was going with this. Asher chose that moment to rush back into the room, holding out a printed piece of paper.

“Look! This is a copy of the note from Trevor.” Asher held it out to him, but Micah didn’t take it, knowing he probably wouldn’t be able to read it.

Reading flat, printed text was one thing and something he’d practiced until his eyes crossed. He was mostly fine with that unless there were silent letters or if the word didn’t correlate to the spoken form of it. Handwriting was a whole different ballgame.

Remy snatched it instead, turning it over to see the photo of the letter that had been stapled to the body of Jacko’s mother. “Since you are picking off my employees and disrupting my plans, I will begin taking an eye for an eye.”

“It doesn’t actually say that Trevor was going to go after Jacko,” Skylar pointed out without conviction.

At the time, they’d all taken the message to mean that the first target was Jacko because the body was dumped on coven lands and it was Jacko’s mother. Micah clung to the theory that they were right because it gave them hope that Rylan would come back to them. Back to him.

“Get Zeke and the elders on the phone,” Remy ordered to no one in particular. His brother was pumping out power like a generator.

Micah got his own phone out, scrolled through his contacts and hit the private number for the vampire elders. As the call connected he passed his phone over to Remy.

“Elder Lavi, Elder Van?” Remy’s voice was clipped and his brother put the call on speaker for them all to hear. Enhanced shifter hearing would probably have allowed them to hear most of what was said on both sides of the conversation anyway. He appreciated the gesture though.

“Alpha Remy. How may we help you?”

The vampires must have heard the beep of the phone switching to speaker because the way Elder Lavi spoke became stilted and formal, a stark contrast to the relaxed tone he used when he was comfortable with the conversation. It was a subtle difference, but Micah was used to picking up on vocal cues.

Micah tapped Remy’s arm, pointed to his ear and flashed his teeth briefly. He was telling his alpha that other vampires might be in hearing range of what he said.

Remy frowned but nodded. “I wondered if now would be a good time to discuss land borders.”

“Of course. We are eager to get the fine details settled,” Elder Lavi answered smoothly.

Micah assumed the vampires must be putting on a performance for someone listening in because the land borders had been settled months ago.

It was an unspoken truth that there was likely to be a traitor or traitors in the pack and coven, but they hadn’t been able to uncover who yet. Only the inner circle, the elders and a few select people knew about the operations they were running. Since Rylan had been snatched, Remy had restricted the knowledge of such things to solely the elders and the pack inner circle.

The vampires went quiet and for a moment and Micah guessed they were going somewhere private. He could hear Jacko asking who was on the phone and he smiled slightly. Jacko was cute in the annoying little brother that wants to know everything about everything sort of way. Even his mother had thawed to the triadic relationship. The little wolf and his sister were beginning to be a regular addition at family meals.

“Is there any news on Second Rylan?”

That was another question from Jacko, but at least the elders seemed to have corralled the nosey pup into somewhere secure because he heard Elder Van growling. The elders had a wicked jealous streak a mile wide.

“Don’t growl at me. Second Rylan was nice to me and leant me that cool television box set about the physicists. You liked it as much as I did.” Hearing Jacko ream a vampire elder out was something Micah sill couldn’t quite believe. The little pup could hold his own just fine against the centuries old warriors.

Elder Lavi may look like a politician, but he was just as dangerous as his bodyguard of a mate. Micah knew a predator when he saw one and the power those two were packing had nothing to do with their fangs. Something old and very dangerous lurked underneath the polite, polished exterior of Elder Lavi. Elder Van was more than just the brawn, he was a hunter. Micah had seen the vamp in action.

“You can talk freely now,” Elder Van told them.

Remy frowned. “Is Zeke there, too?”

“Yeah, bro. I’m always tagging along with the fun train master here—oophf!”

“Shush.” That must have come from Ashlock, probably accompanied with an elbow to the stomach.

He and Asher rolled their eyes. Zeke never really learned to filter. Though, it wasn’t as if Micah was in a position to talk. The stupid shit that came out of his own mouth sometimes was unbelievable.

“Micah thinks that Trevor didn’t mean to take Rylan, that he was after someone else, someone he’d already told us he was going after in his last and only
message,
” Remy explained, making it clear he didn’t mean what was actually written on the letter. Trevor was too twisted for the body not to be part of it.

Elder Van’s hiss let Micah know he followed and realized the significance of what they were saying.

“I don’t understand, if Trevor wasn’t after Rylan then why take—oh!” Jacko’s horrified exclamation made Micah wince for the pup. It wasn’t Jacko’s fault, but he bet the little wolf would feel guilt nonetheless.

“We took Jacko out to the mall a few days before Rylan’s disappearance. We took the same car Rylan was driving when he was taken, the Jeep.” Zeke’s input had Micah’s heart racing.

“From a distance Rylan would look to be about the same build as Jacko...” Asher didn’t finish the thought, but he didn’t have to.

Micah grasped at the new information and ran with it, running to the office and turning on Remy’s laptop. This one was secure and Alex, the hawk shifter, had set it up so the signals and internet trail bounced all over the world. Even the CIA would have trouble placing where the original signal came from. Alex wasn’t telling where he’d come across these skills and Micah wasn’t asking.

“We need to see if anyone was following you.” He pressed the buttons and selected the right file, as Alex had shown him, bringing up the program Alex had created. “I need date and time and license plate.”

Zeke rattled off the information and Micah entered it into the correct boxes, setting the program to search for what they needed. He had no idea what it all meant or what the program did aside from what Alex had explained to him. Compared to the hawk everyone was a computer dummy so Micah hadn’t felt too uncomfortable asking him for help.

Within only a minute the program brought up seven different screen grabs of CCTV cameras in the city and around the mall parking area. The first three didn’t show anything suspect, but as he glanced at the fourth and fifth screen grabs, he spotted something. These shots were from overhead traffic light cameras. A few cars behind the black Jeep carrying Jacko and his brother was a grey sedan.

He recognized that car.

Micah ignored Remy and Asher asking him questions and ripped open the desk drawer to pull out the folder he knew was inside. He flipped the cover open and started spreading out the photos Alex had found of the day Rylan disappeared. He slapped his hand on the photo he wanted. “There! It’s the same fucking car.”

Asher came around to his side of the desk to help him, glancing at the laptop screen and frowning as he saw what Micah was pointing at. “But you followed it up when we noticed the car, it was a student borrowing his parent’s car,” Asher said, sounding confused and frustrated.

“I did, the mother said that the student had borrowed their car,” he muttered, trying to think of exactly what she had said when he talked to her. The student had been in class and the father at work, but he hadn’t seen, heard or scented anything to indicate a lie.

Zeke called his name and Micah realized the others had no idea what was going on. “Alex’s program found all the cameras that picked up the Jeep on the date and times you gave me. The same car that we spotted twice behind Rylan’s car was also a few cars behind you on two different stops, at the mall and at a set of lights.”

“Wait—enlarge the photo,” Remy ordered shortly.

Micah must have looked blank because Remy’s face softened slightly. “It’s a touch screen, just pinch your fingers on the screen over the spot and widen them.”

Micah did as asked and the image enlarged to fill the whole screen, the photo pixelated a little at having being stretched, but they could still make out the driver’s main features. The driver was clearly male and had a dark beard with short hair. The student had long hair. He could have slammed his fist into the wall. It wasn’t the student behind the wheel, it was the father.

“But the mother said the student was driving and I didn’t scent a lie,” he maintained. He asked all his questions about why the car was following Rylan several different ways

Elder Lavi’s voice from the phone reminded him they weren’t alone. “Did you speak to the actual person that drove the car or only the mother?”

Micah froze, ice filling his veins. “No, just the mother.”

“So it’s possible the mother didn’t know, either because she isn’t involved or by design to cover their asses if someone enquired about it.”

“Yes,” he gritted out, ducking his head. He couldn’t look at either Remy or Asher’s eyes. They wouldn’t have made a mistake like this. He was so stupid. Micah could hear his old pack teachers telling him that over and over again in his mind.