I pulled her body toward mine just as there was a knock on the door. “Got your clothes,” Brace called out.
“How the hell did your number one fan end up being a panther, of all things?”
“Heard that!” Brace chuckled as he called out to me through the door. I opened the door a smidge, just enough to allow him to pass the clothing through to me. “We’re going to be the best of friends, sweetness!” he called out to my woman while grinning like the lunatic he was at me. In a whispered tone, he told me what the boys had going down. “Get her ready to ride. Knox sent Bomber ahead to her apartment to make sure no one is watching it.”
“He fly or ride?”
“Flew, man. Probably already there knowing his crazy ass.”
I tipped my chin up at Brace and then shut the door. “Give us a couple of minutes.”
A couple of minutes turned out to be no more than we needed. Chantal dove into the clothing I handed her with a purpose. She didn’t bother going to the bathroom, looking in the mirror to see if she was presentable, or fussing over makeup she didn’t have available. Not that she needed it, but after dealing with the women who hung around the club, it was a refreshing as fuck change to have a woman who could just toss some clothes on and go when necessary.
Chapter Three Hundred Eighty-One
We managed to get to Chantal’s apartment in about 45 minutes, thanks to a break in traffic. We took the bikes in order to get there quicker, knowing that the prospect who had been with us when we first brought Chantal in was coming up behind us in a cage in order to grab anything Chantal might need to take with her. The life she had before she was abducted wasn’t something she could go back to now.
Having a woman on the back of my bike was a new experience too. Her warm body pushed up against my back, the light giggles I could hear coming from her, and the slight cinnamon-vanilla smell were a heady mix every time we stopped and I got a moment to just appreciate the sensations wrapping around me. My woman. My mate. My whole fucking world had changed over the course of an extremely short amount of time. Then there was the reason behind the abrupt change that meant we couldn’t just enjoy it. We were knee deep in shit and sinking fast. The longer it took to track down the men who attempted to hurt Chantal, meant they had that much of a head start on disappearing altogether so we couldn’t find them.
Bomber was perched on top of the condo when we rolled up. He was in his human form, and we could probably be thankful for the overcast day that allowed him to travel unseen in the other. Bomber wasn’t a small creature when he transformed. I tapped into his mind, something he could block me from if he chose to, and checked in with him. He let me know in his own way that everything had been clear so far on the outside. That didn’t mean there wasn’t someone lying in wait inside.
“You want to leave her with the kid?” Knox asked me while tipping his head toward Chantal.
“No! She comes along.” When it looked as though he’d argue I gave him a look that said I wasn’t fighting about this. “She’s safer with us than out here with a prospect. Bomber can’t keep a lookout while watching out for the two of them at the same time.”
Knox nodded and took the lead into the condo. It was a well-kept space with two floors. Wooly, Mammoth, and Brace took off up the stairs to clear the second floor, which housed a bathroom and two bedrooms. Knox and I cleared the lower level with Chantal and the prospect. When everything was clear, I sent Chantal upstairs to pack some bags while we took a good look around.
I wondered how Chantal managed a place like this. It was a condo, but it seemed a bit upscale for a teacher’s salary. Knox gave me the eye and I felt that he was thinking along the same lines. There were muddy footprints toward the back door that looked like they belonged to a man’s boot. Motorcycle boot at that. “Mammoth?” I called out to him and waited until he showed up to point out the marks on the floor. “Those here earlier?”
“Nah, no marks earlier.”
“Looks like someone was here between when you left and when Bomber showed.”
He nodded and then moved to go have a look around out the back door where there was a little patio area fenced off from the neighbors’ places on either side and across the back side. It appeared that the gate that should have been there didn’t exist though. There was no way out except up and over the fence. “I’ll check it out thoroughly,” Mammoth informed me before moving off and sniffing around the yard. It would have been easier if we could shift in public places and use our senses in our animal form, but that shit was off the table while our kind were still hiding from the humans. I texted Bomber to let him know someone had been here and to keep a lookout for motorcycle boots. One good thing about our club accepting strays who weren’t cats was that it gave us some of the best eyes in the sky a club could ask for. It also gave us amazing trackers, as was the case with the bears. It had been one of the deciding factors in me joining the MC rather than trying to find a leap to belong to. I liked
