Wyatt
“Look at this,” Matthew points to the blueprints for the college. They’re spread out on the table. He runs his fingers over the floor plan.
“What am I looking at?”
“The school was remodeled twelve years ago,” he says. “These are the original plans for the building.” Then Matthew pulls out a second blueprint. “And these are the new plans with the modifications.”
“So what’s different?” Landon asks as we gather around Matthew.
“They mostly made small modifications, like converting a large classroom into two smaller ones. Over here, the school actually added on an entire room to create a large lecture hall.”
“I’ve been there,” Ronan says. “It’s nice.”
“Also not relevant,” I growl under my breath, but he takes the hint and shuts up. I’m losing my patience, and I shouldn’t be. It’s just that my mate’s life is on the line. This is about me and Joyce and Charlene Hill. This is about finding the girl we’ve been searching for. It’s about finding my mate before that monster lays a hand on her.
“This is the part that’s weird,” Matthew says. He touches the library section on the blueprints. “There used to be an extra stairway to the basement in the library. It was a sort of emergency exit, but it was closed off.”
“I didn’t know the college had a basement,” Ronan says.
“They don’t, at least not the full size they used to. There was a mold problem, so most of the basement was actually sealed off from the main areas. It was simpler to just seal it off than actually deal with the musty smell in the basement classrooms.”
“So you’re telling me that half of the basement is sealed off behind a new wall?”
“Yeah.”
“And it’s accessible through the library.”
“Yeah, it should be, you know,” Matthew says, and he points to the blueprints again. “It looks like it from these, but we need to look at it visually in order to determine whether it’s still accessible. Do you want to call and see if you can get a warrant?”
“No time,” I say, and I take off running out of the house. I climb into my car and take off down the road, not bothering to wait for the rest of the crew. It doesn’t matter because they come barreling out of the house and start running down the street behind me: a wolf, a bear, a tiger, and a…dragon? At least, I thought I saw a dragon before it vanished.
Fucking monsters. I shake my head. So Matthew can go invisible. That explains how he was able to get the blueprints for the college so quickly. That’s a fun little trick. Not many dragons can actually become invisible, so he’s a lucky one. Sometime, when I’m not busy trying to save Joyce’s life, I’ll have to ask him about that.
I turn on my lights and blaze through town. Soon I’m pulling into the parking lot of the community college. I don’t bother parking. I just stop my car in front of the main building and run inside.
“Um, can I help you, officer?” A young woman comes out of the administration office and looks at me, confused.
“Which way is the library?” I ask, and she points. I take off running. As I move through the building, the control I’ve been holding onto so tightly finally slips away, and I shift.
My clothes tear as I feel my skin being replaced with fur, and soon I’m running on four legs instead of two. I don’t care. I’m going to get my mate. I didn’t want this to be the way she saw me in my bear form for the first time, but I’ll take it. I just need to get to her before it’s too late. I need to save her. I need to rescue her because I know it’s my fault she was taken.
I should have protected her better.
I barge into the library and head for the back wall. The rest of the gang meets up with me and we all stare at the door to the storage closet with eyes wide open. They’ve all shifted back to their human forms and are standing naked beside me as we look at the door.
Hanging on the front of the closet door is a picture of the front cover of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
How could it have been so simple?
He’s been taunting us this entire time. He knew where he was going to take Joyce. He’d been planning this: likely even while they were dating. He’d been planning to steal her away and bring her here. Was he trying to see if she could figure it out? Was he just that crazy?
The librarian runs up behind us. “I’m going to call the police!” She says. Good. We need cops here. I shift back to my human form and look over at her.
“Do it,” I tell her. “And tell them to bring everyone.”
“What…what should I say?” The woman’s eyes are wide.
“Tell them we’ve found Charlene Hill,” I tell her, and then I open the door to the closet. The other men stay close beside me as we step into the storage closet. It doesn’t look like it’s used very much, most likely because the janitor has his own closet elsewhere in the building. This room seems like it’s mostly used to store extra textbooks the library isn’t using, along with random items, like paper towels and old furniture. It’s a wide closet, and the five of us fit easily inside.
“No staircase,” Matthew murmurs, and we all look around.
Then I see it.
A door.
It’s almost unnoticeable among all the dust and shelving, but there’s definitely a locked door right behind one of the shelves. I almost didn’t see it there. I reach for the knob and turn it, but it’s locked.
“Give me a second,” Matthew says, and he kneels in front of the door. He shifts his fingers into talons, and he begins to fiddle with the lock.
“Is this guy for real?” I whisper to the other men, but they just shrug.
“We just liked his resume,” they say. “We didn’t know he could do all of this.”
After a minute, there’s a soft click and Matthew stands up. He shifts his hand back and nods.
“It’s unlocked,” he says.
I turn the knob and pull the door open. The shelving swings with it, making this the perfect hiding place for a door. When the door is closed, even if Logan is inside the little hiding place, the shelf will be in place. No one will walk into the closet and think he’s in there. They’ll just see a closet.
This fucker has been hiding in plain sight for far too long. Well, that ends today.
Ronan silently indicates that he’ll stay behind and guard the door. That means Oliver, Landon, Matthew, and I descend into darkness together. We step quietly, cautiously. When we reach the bottom of the staircase, there’s another door. I place my hand on the door and listen, but I don’t hear anything. I turn the knob and we go through it quietly.
My eyes adjust to the darkness and sure enough, this part of the basement looks like it’s been completely abandoned. I’m guessing that once it was sealed off, everyone just forgot it even existed. There are a couple of turned-over desks in the hall down here, and years and years of dust has accumulated.
Hopefully no one sneezes.
We walk down the hallway, carefully looking for the girls, for Logan, for anything, and then I notice the door at the end of the hallway has a light coming from beneath it.
Bingo.
We’ve found them.
And Logan Smith’s time is up.
I shift again and go barreling down the hallway. I charge forward, hell bent on one thing: saving Joyce and Charlie.
I ram through the door, knocking it down, and I instantly launch myself at Logan. He’s standing in the center of the room and barely has time to shift before I hit him, but he does shift. Cougar. He’s a cougar, like Joyce. Of course he is.
He shrieks as I pin him to the ground, as I sink my teeth into him, as I make sure he’s never going to hurt anyone ever again.
And then it’s over.
He’s dead, and everything is going to be okay.
I turn to see Joyce and Charlene both very much alive. They’re on the cold, hard floor, and their wrists are bound behind their backs, but they’re both alive.
Everything is going to be okay.
Everything is going to be fine.
It’s over.