“Take you back to Cooper Valley?” he replied. “Fuck no. That town is filled with nothing but losers and hicks.”
His hands gripped the wheel, and he was trying to handle the car in the bad weather. Even though he was a cop, there was no snow in southern California, and he had no idea what he was doing. After he slid the first time, I put on my seatbelt.
“You don’t like me,” I countered. “You thought I cheated. That I dressed sluttily. That I was a bad singer. Everything I did was bad. I did you a favor leaving you.”
“Favor? Do you have any idea what people at work think? I can’t show my face.”
“People get divorced all the time!”
“I don’t. You don’t.”
“I do. I don’t want to be with you. I don’t love you. Hell, I don’t even like you.”
His nasty gaze whipped to mine, and he seethed. “You are my wife. You are mine.”
You are mine. Boone had said those exact words to me multiple times. I’d gotten upset at first for just this reason. Because Marty was crazy, and when he said it, he meant it in a non-consensual, kidnappy way.
With his eyes off the road and on me for even three seconds, when he looked back, he’d missed the oncoming car. He overcorrected and slid toward the embankment. We spun once, doing a full circle like a ride at an amusement park. We’d missed the other car; it was long gone. They knew how to drive in snow.
My heart was in my throat, my hand on the dash. Marty slammed his hand on the steering wheel. “Jesus, fuck! What is this shitty weather? Who can live in an icebox like this? We’ve got to find a place to stay for the night.”
I didn’t say a word, but I was relieved. He was going to kill us if he kept going.
“I saw a motel by the highway,” he said although I wasn’t sure he was telling me or talking to himself. “It can’t be much farther.”
A motel with Marty. I couldn’t jump out into the snowbank to escape him. There was nothing out here. Even though I couldn’t see it through the darkness and the snow, only vast prairie was on either side of the two-lane road. I had no coat. No boots or hat. I still had my bar apron around my waist. I’d be dead in thirty minutes.
A motel, though, meant I was stuck in a room with Marty. With a bed. And his gun.
All I could do was hold out hope that someone discovered I was missing. Cody was expecting me to come back with bar rags. Hell, he was expecting me to do my job. Once he couldn’t find me, he’d get concerned.
Boone was coming to pick me up. It was the first time I’d felt thankful my little car was crappy in snow, just like this rental. Boone would show up to collect me around last call and lose his shit when he couldn’t find me in the bar.
He’d look for me. He’d come after me. He’d find me.
He had to.
27
BOONE
* * *
I stormed around the building, following the tire tracks in the snow that merged into all the others from vehicles that had come and gone from the bar. There was no way to track her, not even in wolf form. I didn’t have her scent nor know which way she’d been taken.
I entered the front door. I needed Cody’s help. I had enough of a clear head to know that I shouldn’t rage like a bull inside the bar, so I stood just inside of the entrance and called Cody’s name. I yelled it, but it didn’t even turn many heads because the place was so loud and packed. But Cody had impressive hearing, and my shout would be a surprise.
He looked immediately up from the pint glass he was filling from the tap. He must’ve recognized something was wrong because he sat the glass down, called to the other bartender to take over and came over to me.
He pushed me back outside, and when the bar noise was muffled by the closed door and we stood alone in the snow, he asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Summer’s gone,” I growled. “She’s been taken.” I raised my hands to my hair, tugged.
His eyes widened. “What the fuck? She went to get rags.”
Rage made it hard for me to put sentences together. I was barely staying in human form. “Her blood…” I pointed toward the back exit. “He took her.”
“Blood?” Cody’s expression turns from concerned to grim. “Fuck! Who? Her ex?”
