Tilting my head to the side, I let out an inquisitive noise.
“I don’t speak canine… Or is it lupine?” She pauses, then shakes her head. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m going to assume you want to know how I avoided getting caught by Doyle?”
She eyes me, and I dip my chin. That’s not exactly what I want to know, but close enough.
“Well, you can thank pure dumb luck. After you guys left, I opened the window for a little fresh air, but the smell from the ‘pool’ set off my stomach. Once I was done puking, I batted my eyelashes at the clerk and convinced him to switch me to a different room. I was just getting settled in when Doyle showed up.” She chuckles. “I wouldn’t have even noticed except he was pacing around the parking lot, loudly complaining to someone on the phone about the accommodations. I guess you weren’t kidding when you said this is the only motel for miles.”
She gives me a hard stare. “It sure would’ve been nice if I’d had a way to contact you guys and let you know what was going on here.” She gestures at the cage. “Then maybe you wouldn’t have ended up in this situation.”
I grumble under my breath and she rolls her eyes.
“Yeah, yeah, shut it, Wolfie. You know I’m right.” She claps her hands. “Now, how about we get you out of there?”
She rises to her feet and walks around the side of the cage, a thoughtful look on her face. Reaching out, she grabs hold of one of the bars and gives it a tug. Unsurprisingly, nothing happens. Raquel doesn’t give off any brute strength vibes. Plus she’s half my size, and I can barely move the damn thing.
She shrugs. “It was worth a try since my lock-picking skills aren’t exactly anything to brag about.”
She crouches down by the front of the cage and studies the lock on the door for a few seconds before pulling a couple bobby pins, or something similar, from her pocket. She unbends one of the pins and sticks it into the lock, then uses the second one as a lever, wiggling it around in the lock. One pin breaks and she curses before pulling another one from her pocket.
“Neil’s the one who taught me how to do this,” she says conversationally as she leans forward to get closer to the lock and insert the new pin. “It’s not a skill I’ve really had to use much, though. The motel room door was the first time I did it in real life.” She bites at her lower lip as she maneuvers the pin around in the lock. “If I can just…yes!”
Something in the lock clicks, and Raquel tugs the door open and gets to her feet, grinning at me. I awkwardly make my way out of the cage and rise to my full height, giving myself a brisk shake to release some of the tension in my muscles from being crammed into the too small cage.
She steps closer and runs one finger over the edge of the collar, frowning. “I don’t think I can get this off,” she says. “It’s not as thick and bulky as the other one, and I don’t think it’s been weldedclosed or anything, but I don’t want to try to pick the lock and find out it has some kind of painful security measure to prevent that.”
I wiggle my shoulders in something kind of like a shrug. The collar isn’t my priority. Neil is. I nudge Raquel with my nose and jerk my head toward the door.
“I’m going to take that to mean the collar is a problem for later,” she says, moving to the doorway and poking her head outside. “Coast is clear at the moment. Let’s get out of here.”
I pad over to the doorway, stopping at her side. My gaze scans the parking lot and disappointment wells in my chest. I’m not sure what vehicle or vehicles Doyle and the others arrived in, but they must’ve left the truck out at Rockcastle. And the pickings for other modes of transportation are slim.
In fact, there’s only one car in the lot, a four-door sedan parked by the motel office. The sedan is larger than the vehicle we escaped the casino in but the rust to car ratio is much higher, and I’m surprised it even runs. Well, I’m assuming it runs, anyway, since it’s here and not in a junkyard somewhere.
Raquel and I approach the car. She walks around it, peering in the driver’s side window for a second, then shakes her head. “No keys. I guess we’re not that lucky.” She glances toward the office and sighs. “Looks like I’m subjecting myself to the slimy creep at the desk again.”
She motions for me to wait here, fixes her hair using her reflection in the car window, pulls the front of her shirt down a bit, then strides inside with a wide, friendly smile on her face. She returns less than five minutes later, her smile falling away as she exits the office. She rolls her eyes, then winks at me and holds up a set of car keys.
Twenty-Eight
Neil
BythetimeDoyleis set to arrive, everything is in place. Well, as “in place” as things can get when there are bunch of unpredictable variables that are completely out of my control. There’s only so much I can do to prepare when there are about a million tiny details that could go wrong, and most of them involve trusting Taylor’s word about an Alpha I’ve never met.
Because what if he’s wrong?
Taylor said Solomon couldn’t possibly be corrupt, but that could be his crush talking and a lot of what happens next depends on the Rockcastle Alpha having impeccable integrity. In my experience, that’s not a very common quality, but I don’t really haveany choice but to trust he’ll do the right thing and not be swayed by Doyle.
I’m short on allies, so I have to take what I get.
At the moment, I’m still locked in the bedroom in what I’ve come to learn is the house where Blake and his brother used to live, waiting not-so-patiently for them to be ready for me at the main house. There’s always some initial posturing when Alphas are involved, so I’m stuck here until they get the Alpha-to-Alpha small talk out of the way.
And Ihateit. The waiting. The uncertainty. The feeling that everything is going to go wrong and I won’t know until it’s too late.
Anxiety scratches at my chest and twists in my stomach, the sensation driving me to my feet. I pace from one side of the room to the other, clenching and unclenching my fists as my head spins with what-ifs.
What if Doyle doesn’t show up? What if he doesn’t fall for it?
What if Solomon screws me over?
