“Yeah, they say she’s fine. A little beat up, but breathing.”
“Good.”
“Yeah,” he said dryly.
She cleared her throat. “I’m sorry about Hannah,” Lucidia offered. The words felt foreign in her mouth. She wasn’t sure why she’d felt the need to say them.
“Thanks, Lucie.”
“Clay?”
“Yeah?”
“When this is over, I’m gonna owe you two dates,” she said.
He let out a tight laugh. She pictured the way his eyes crinkled against the firelight when he laughed like that, and then, she cleared her head.
“At the very least,” Clay replied, his usual humor returning.
Lucidia hung up the phone and set her sights to the Northeast. If Reykon had escaped, he’d already formulated a plan to find Robin. He probably made it while he was still captive. Either way, he currently had the leg up on Lucidia. She was determined to change that.
Chapter 5: Retrieval
Reykon
He hung up the phone and sighed, touching his ribs. They’d stopped aching as much, even though it had only been thirty minutes since his escape.
He’d made two crucial calls: the first to his motorcycle buddies, half a state over, who were coming over to assist him, and the second, to a Demonte satellite house, set in the desert of New Mexico.
Reykon was a thinker. He thought ahead, he thought behind, he thought inside of the box, and he thought outside of the box. Most of his assignments were really just thinking.
Which is why he’d had the foresight to stick a microchip satellite tracker in the heel of Robin’s shoe, and the common sense to keep that little secret to himself.
Needless to say, Reykon was big on shoes. To conceal weapons, to conceal trackers, and because nobody ever paid attention to them. War was deception, and all that.
Now, he was headed to the GPS coordinates that Georgie (his favorite tech whiz) had given him for the specific tracker ID he’d loaded to their database. A small speck of a cabin, in the middle of the backwoods. Joy.
Reykon wasted no time getting back on the road and didn’t bother to coordinate with the other three strongbloods. They’d get there when they did and handle the wolves for him. They were still geared up from their previous mission, which meant they’d brought the appropriate tools for a wolf hunt.
He also knew that Lucidia was lurking somewhere around here. That would be an interesting encounter, to say the least.
He checked his watch. It was near three a.m., and it had been a bitch of a night so far.
Robin was probably exhausted, if she was even conscious. He didn’t like the thought of her, trapped in a cabin surrounded by wolves, even if the young pup had given the order to keep her alive. Wolves had a pack mentality; that meant undying loyalty, but it also meant foolhardy camaraderie. He’d witnessed how they could get riled up from each other’s excitement firsthand. Someone almost always ended up with a broken nose.
A deep fear spread out across his gut, and he felt anxious to find her. For Magnus, he tacked on. Reykon slammed on the gas, speeding up with tunneled determination.
Robin
Robin woke up from a shallow, jump-filled nap, and looked around.
The cabin was the same as she’d remembered it, except that Callie and Tucker were nowhere to be found. The fire had died down a little, but it was still dark outside. She put the time at roughly four a.m., and that was generous.
The other frat boy and the wrestler sat at the table, laughing loudly and playing cards. A small mountain of beer cans had piled up on the table.
“Morning, Sunshine,” the frat boy laughed.
She sat up on the couch and cradled her arm, which now felt hot and itchy.
“Where are the others?” she asked.
The wrestler tapped his card on the table, making an annoying clicking sound with it. “Hunting down your Romeo.”
“What?” she asked, scowling.
“Oh, you were out. Yeah, the little blood hound managed to weasel past the others. No doubt he’s on his way.”
“Can’t wait for him to get here,” the wrestler said. “Been waiting to rip my teeth into something all night.”
“That strongblood ever rip his teeth into you?” the other one asked her, shooting Robin a humorous side glance.
“Probably,” the wrestler scoffed. “Had her for a couple of days, I heard.”
They laughed and threw some more cards in the middle of the table.
She frowned at him and turned away, eyes fixed on the window. If Reykon was alive, he was headed to her now. She didn’t have the slightest idea how he’d manage to find her, but there was one thing she was absolutely certain of: he would find her.
She pressed her hands together, between her knees. Her foot had started tapping nervously as she felt like a sitting duck, waiting to be faced by the angry abductor that she’d drugged and left for dead.
Her mind drifted back to the pistol.
She spotted it on the table. It was next to the beer cans, facing towards the wrestler’s arm. Either he’d never learned gun safety, or he was too drunk to care.
But at least it was there. It would be the first place she’d go if anything went down.
“So, Blondie,” the frat boy said, dropping his cards on the table and walking over to sit by the fire. He still had a beer in his hand.
“Robin,” she said.
He grinned and raised his drink. “Jax. And that’s Sonny.”
She nodded and watched the fire.
“Don’t feel like talking?” he pressed, scooting closer.
“Not really.” She was getting a bad feeling about him. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, she didn’t like the smell of him (sweat, old spice, and beer), and she didn’t like the way his eyes grinned up and down her body.
“What’s the matter?” Jax asked, faking concern.
She ground her teeth together, now irritated. “I don’t feel like talking to you.”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” Sonny said, tossing her a beer can. “Relax a little.”
Robin moved over, letting the can fall on
