TROY
He sat for lunch with Zachary and Andrew. They all avoided mentioning the obvious.
Riley was over an hour late getting back from the run that Brenton had ordered her to go on. And they saw no sign of her coming up to the house or being close by.
“She could have fallen asleep,” Troy threw out. It happened to all of them at one point or another.
“Then we need to go out and get her dumb ass,” Zachary snarled. “She was in a fucking mood all morning but that doesn’t mean she’s just go pass out in the sun and ignore us.”
Troy nodded since Zachary was right. She had been a bit bitchy. She was insecure about her self defense in human form and was lashing out. It got worse every day, slowly building up to what happened today. She never snapped at them like that and Troy’s heart still ached from the tone she took with him.
Brenton walked in the kitchen, snarling.
“Where the fuck is she?”
“She’s late,” Zachary snarled. Even Andrew was there for lunch, having the day from the diner. He looked a little upset. Troy knew he’d been looking forward to helping her get through self defense.
“I told her that she need to be back by lunch,” Brenton roared. They all shrank back. Troy wished desperately his brother was there to back him up or just offer moral support when dealing with Angry Brenton. Angry Brenton was terrifying.
“We know,” Zachary growled softly to their Alpha. “We’ve been keeping an eye for her but there’s no sign of her close to the house. Only her trail when she left. We didn’t want to do a full search without your go ahead.”
Brenton nodded to that slowly. Troy watched him clench and relax his jaw several times. They sat in silence for a moment.
“Let me call G-”
“I’m here!” Gabe ran in, holding his laptop. “And I have really bad news!” He looked around. “Where’s Riley?” He paled.
“Over an hour late from getting back from a run I sent her on.” Brenton growled.
“Oh, no, she can’t be late right now,” Gabe hissed and placed his laptop on the counter. “Oh all the fucking times she’s not back on time.” He was shaking as he tried to open it.
“Gabe?” Troy had never seen him brother this worked up. “Brother, what’s wrong?”
“Fuck!” Gabe snarled, prying the laptop open finally. “Seventy-two hours ago, a Capture Alive Contract was placed on her! Two million in cash for whoever was able to grab her! I don’t know who put it out. I only found out it existed because someone claimed it! They reported that they would turn her over in forty-eight hours if the money was delivered to them on time! They fucking buried the contract deeper then my automated alert system could find,” Gabe’s voice broke.
Troy dropped his glass and let it shatter on the floor. No one said anything for a long time, then Brenton roared, grabbing a coffee mug and throwing it over the bar into the dining room. They heard it shatter into a thousand pieces.
“Everyone backyard! Zachary, you and I going in cat form. Andrew, Troy, grab guns and cover us in case we find anyone out there. Gabe, find out who put the contract out and who fucking claimed it.” Brenton’s word were barely legible but they began moving.
Troy met Andrew at their gun safe and both took M4s. Their guns were maintained and cleaned once a week and kept fully loaded in case of emergencies. Like this one.
Once they were loaded up with enough ammo to take down a pride of lions, they moved into the back. Zachary and Brenton were ready to go and they began running to the tree line. Troy wouldn’t be about to hear anything Brenton or Zachary were saying, so he and Andrew just had to rely on the feline body language.
He saw Zachary catch Riley’s scent from when she left in morning and they followed close behind him.
They tracked the scent all the way to the stream, where they found the dart that must have hit her and then fallen off.
Troy pocketed it. They could analyze it later. She was definitely hit though. These fuckers had come on to their fucking property and grabbed right from under them. Andrew cursed and pointed. Boot tracks were everything. Troy walked around and tried to grab a scent.
He knew that scent and quickly ran through his recent memory.
The cougar he smelled in Riley’s apartment.
“Andrew, it’s the same guy,” he whispered. Zachary and Brenton were both checking for Riley’s exit trail.
“Yeah,” Andrew swallowed visibly. “Who the fuck is this guy?”
“A dead man,” Troy growled.
He and Andrew found ten scents of other shifters in total. They formed a semi circle around her favorite spot on the property. Had the property been breached for weeks now? They regularly checked for anything and none of them had found anything. Maybe they stumbled on her by accident and were actually planning on storming the house. Troy growled at the thought. The fuckers would have all died before they made it through the backdoor.
A huff told Troy and Andrew that they needed to followed Zachary and Brenton. They did without complaint. Troy followed them and realized where Riley’s trail was taking them.
“She was trying to get closer to house. She knew she was going down but wanted to be reachable by us.” Troy groaned. “And she wasn’t able to get close enough.”
“If she was running, her heart rate would have accelerated the effects of the drugs.” Andrew reminded him. “She did what she was trained. We can only hope she’s passed out in a bush.”
“Shifters were after her. They would be able to track her just as well as we can!” Troy growled. Andrew paled and nodded slowly.
Zachary snarled and Troy knew what he found. He stepped closer and saw where she tried to conceal herself. Her tracks made it clear that she wasn’t doing hot when she finally found the spot to duck into. And it was also clear that she wasn’t been about to completely hide. Brenton shifted to human and turned to Troy.
“We want to track the other shifters and see either where they came from or where they went. Hopefully both. Do either of you have a phone?”
Andrew showed his and Brenton nodded.
“Keep in contact with Gabe so he knows he can give updates if he learns anything.”
“What do you think this is?” Troy asked his Alpha softly.
“I think that there’s an Alpha or a pride that has a bone to pick with Isabella Gordon and finally decided to piss me off by going after Riley,” Brenton snarled. “I warned them on the night of the break in. I made sure they fucking knew that if they involved Riley, this pride would fucking end them.”
“Then let’s fucking do that,” Andrew snarled viciously. Troy nodded in agreement. These fuckers were going down.
Brenton shifted back to his feline for, and lead them all away. They all figured the trail was nearly two or three hours old, meaning she had probably been trying to get home on time when she got tagged by the invading group.
They tracked the group for nearly two hours and only ended up on a long path to the highway. It took another hour for them to hit the highway and lose all the scents.
“They got into a vehicle and left with her. They could be hours away at this point. Troy snarled. Andrew called Gabe to come get them, who had no updates either. Brenton and Zachary had to hide off the road until Gabe brought them some sweats so none of them would get arrest. They also couldn’t come out as cats since that would just be too much for passing drivers.
Gabe only had to drive for an hour to find them.
“I still haven’t gotten any hits,” he told them as they piled in the Range Rover.
Fucking wonderful.