Gage should have known something was wrong the last few times he’d seen or talked with Amy. She'd been distant. Strange. He'd been wondering if there was something going on between her and Peter, thinking it was something as mundane as infertility, and now he had proof that something was wrong. She'd been trying to tell Gage something with her reticence, and he hadn't been aware enough to read between the lines. If Peter was controlling her somehow, threatening her, of course she wouldn't just come out and say if something was wrong. 

Gage felt like smacking myself for not being pushier. He had always called Amy his best friend, but he hadn't been a very good friend lately, had he? A good friend knew when to push and when to stay back. He'd thought he was giving her space, letting her have room to tell him what was going on when she was ready. But what if something was so wrong she'd never be ready? 

Had Peter been the one after Sean all along? How would he even have known? It was possible more people knew, or at least suspected, than Gage had thought. Amy would have been one of the first people to have had the opportunity to figure it out. If she was in as bad of a situation as Gage now suspected, any number of things could have made her divulge her inside knowledge. And she would have had the opportunity to place the cameras. Her scent was all over the house from helping Gage move in.

Gage should have been mad at her. As his best friend, she should have been looking out for him. But with Gage’s own guilt in not seeing her situation, he couldn't. Instead of worrying about two people...three if he included his unborn child...he was worried about four.

He was grateful Cole and Dare were with him. Peter was a big guy and he didn't have the sweetest temperament. Gage was pretty sure he could take Peter with his anger and protective urges fueling him, but there was no sense taking chances. Alice had given her permission as one of her official pack members had been taken, giving her a right by pack law to pursue the matter onto Cherry Creek territory.

Gage was out of Cole's SUV before it came to a full stop, sprinting up the sidewalk and banging on Peter and Amy's door. Dare was right behind him, and Cole followed as soon as he finished parking the car.

Gage’s pheromones must have been off the charts with anger. Peter came barreling out of the door at the first knocks, his chest bumping Gage’s, ready for a fight. Gage went straight for his throat. "Give me back my mate," he growled.

Peter knocked Gage’s arms away and threw him into the wall. "She denied it, but I knew that slut was running around with you."

"What? You thought Amy—and me? Is that why you put cameras in my house? To catch us?"

"Cameras? You were recording yourselves? That's some sick shit, Gage." Peter took a swing at him and Gage ducked, trying to figure out what was going on.

"So you weren't spying on us?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Peter came at Gage again, but Dare charged and threw him up against the wall.

"Back the fuck off, White Falls," Peter grunted, trying to throw Dare off. But even with Peter's greater size, Dare wasn't moving.

Something was missing.

"Where is Amy?" IGage asked.

"Like I'd tell you if I knew, asshole. You two going to run away together? The pack won't stand for that."

"For the last fucking time, I'm not sleeping with your mate. I gay, for fuck's sake, my mate is missing, and someone was spying on me from your house."

You would think that would have penetrated Peter's skull and adjusted his attitude. You would be wrong. Well, partially. One thing got through to his brain.

"Always knew there was something wrong with you, cocksucker."

Dare punched him before Gage had to, and Peter slumped against the wall, dazed but not unconscious. "Go," Dare ordered Cole and Gage. "Search the house. See what you can find."

The door was still open from when Peter had barreled out of it. They covered the first floor quickly, and found nothing. "You take upstairs," Gage told Cole. "I'll take the basement."

Gage fumbled for the switch in the dark before descending the stairs. he'd never been to this house before. Any time he'd met up with Amy since she'd mated, it had either been at Gage’s place or somewhere out. He realized now that should have been a sign. There was another light switch at the bottom of the stairs, and it took him a minute to process what he was seeing when he flipped the light on.

At the far end of the cluttered basement was a cell. It was just long enough for a single mattress, and maybe just as wide. A thin blanket lay crumpled on the mattress and there was no pillow. A five gallon bucket sat in one corner and a water spigot exited the wall at the edge of the cell above a drain.

Gage walked toward it in a daze. Now that he was closer, he could see a bowl with what looked like dry dog food hidden by the five gallon bucket. And the bucket, Gage had to hold his nose as he approached. It held uncovered human refuse that had clearly been sitting there for a while. He turned around in a circle. The rest of the basement looked normal—the usual clutter of seasonal goods and childhood memories covered in layers of dust. His stomach was roiling, threatening to rebel. Amy had been hiding something, Gage knew that. He had never imagined it as anything as bad as this.

"What the fuck...?" Cole stood frozen at the bottom of the stairs. 

* * *

Dare frog marched Peter down the stairs and threw him in the cell. It locked automatically behind him.

"You can't do this to me!" Peter screamed, the vessels in his forehead throbbing, his face lobster-red. "This is my house, dammit! My territory!" 

"You forfeited that right," Gage said. "Either by kidnapping my brother and mate, or for whatever reason you even have this fucking place."

"If you had an omega like Amy, you'd know exactly why I have it."

Gage turned away in disgust while Dare and Cole stared Peter down with impassive faces. Gage could tell they weren't unaffected, though. Cole was practically shaking in anger and Dare kept flexing his fingers, his nails poking throw the tips and his eyes shining yellow. 

Gage had so much he wanted to say to Peter, to scream at him, to bash into his head. But he knew it wouldn't do any good. People like him couldn't be reasoned with. You couldn't beat sense into their heads. It might make Gage feel somewhat better, but he would just be wasting time. He might lose his chance if he turned away now, but Luke and Sean needed to be his priority.

"We need to find the receiver," Gage said, going to the stairs. There was little chance it was down here. The dust was so thick, they would have been able to tell if someone had been moving anything. Other than the cell, nothing had been touched down here in a while. 

Peter started yelling behind Gage and he tuned it out. But there was a giant thunk and clang, and then he went silent. Gage couldn't even feel a sense of satisfaction, though. Not while Luke and Sean were still out there.

This time, he really dug in; he started tearing things apart. The couch. The entertainment center. The kitchen. Cole joined him while Dare pulled out his bug scanner and started walking around the house. It beeped fairly frequently.

"This whole house is bugged," Dare said as he looked in the laundry room where they were tearing the cabinets apart. "Maybe this is just a relay?"

If Peter was telling the truth and he didn't know anything about the cameras in Gage’s house, that would make more sense. But who did that bring them back to? Mark?

"I don't think so," Cole said, kneeling in front of a bottom level drawer. "I think this is the source." He handed Gage a tablet and poked at the giant black box with wires and lights blinking at it. 

Gage pressed what looked like the power button and the screen lit up, cycling through a series of images from the house they were in. It cycled through a few blank screens and then back to the house. Gage clicked the menu icon and an overview of all the cameras popped up, each labelled. House Living Room. House Bedroom. It went through nearly every room in the house, including the hallways. And then there were the cameras from Gage’s house. Gage Living Room. Gage Room. Another menu item showed them the list of microphone only bugs.

"Gage," Dare said quietly. "Is there any chance it could be that we're looking for Amy?"

"That doesn't make sense," Gage said reflexively, angrily. "She's my best friend. Why would she do this?"

"I don't know, but think about it. What's the one place in the house she could be fairly certain Peter would never enter?"

The laundry room.

"Who had access to your house without raising suspicion?"

Amy.

"No," Gage protested again. "Maybe she's being forced to by someone else. Maybe... maybe..."

The other men let him work through it in sympathetic silence. Dare was right. Gage was stretching for complicated answers to avoid the obvious one. Amy.

"Where would she go?" Cole asked. "Peter said she's been gone since this morning, and if she got Luke and Sean after practice, she has about two hours on us."

"The cabin," Gage said after a moment of thought. "Her parents cabin, up in the mountains. It's free land, no pack claims it. And no one has been there since her dad died."

"How far away is it?"

"About four hours."

"Then we better get moving."

Dreadful certainty burned in Gage’s gut. They were on the right track, but he didn't want to believe it. Why would Amy do this? A million unrealistic explanations twisted through his mind, complicated by the knowledge that Peter had been abusing her and the fact he'd never known. She'd never felt comfortable coming to Gage. What was going on in her head? Were Luke and Sean safe? Would they stay that way until they found them?