Beryl tried to keep it together. It was idiotic to try to run after the car. What was she going to do? What was she going to tell the police? “A medieval executioner dressed in black just took off with my boyfriend in the trunk of a Honda.” No. Probably not a good idea to say that.
Beryl turned to Jett. “Did you see his face? Can you identify him?”
“Nope. But I noticed that he was very tall.”
She wanted to scream at him. “Half the town is populated by Alphas, Jett. Everyone is tall!”
He held his hands up in surrender. “Sorry. I barely got a look at him.” He got his phone out and started swiping through several screens.
“Are you calling the police?” Beryl asked.
“Um. No. You should do that, though.”
Beryl narrowed her eyes at her brother, but he wasn’t paying attention to her at all. She took her phone out and dialed 911, terribly worried that they were going to be too late to save Jake. After those banditos had failed to snatch him, they should’ve hired a bodyguard. She should have known the person behind these weird incidents involving Jake wouldn’t stop.
She gave the information to the 911 dispatch operator, who promised to send Alienn’s sheriff to the scene, since he was the officer on duty this evening.
Beryl lowered her phone as Jett continued to play with his. “What are you doing?”
“Well, I happened to notice that Jake was wearing the same jacket he had at your house when we all had family dinner.”
“So what? He always wears that jacket.”
“For the sake of argument, let’s say that I put a tracker under the collar of Jake’s jacket that night.”
“You did what?! Why would you do that? What is wrong with you?”
He looked at her like she was a few strawberries short of a pint. “So I could track him if I needed to and find out where he was at all times. While he seems like a nice guy, I employed the trust-but-verify method.”
Before she could say anything to that, Beryl’s phone rang. For a brief, blissful instant, she thought it might be Jake calling to tell her where he was and would she mind terribly coming to pick him up. The name on the screen destroyed that fantasy.
She answered with a hurried, “Wyatt. Hey.”
“Beryl,” her cousin’s husband said. “Chance Hollister just called to let me know he’s on his way to you now. Do I understand correctly that somebody yanked Jake off the street, stuffed him in the trunk of a car and drove off?”
“Yes. I saw it happen with my own eyes, and so did Jett. I called it in.”
Wyatt pushed out what sounded like a weary sigh. “Okay. Look—I am on my way to you. It’s not exactly my jurisdiction, but I feel like I’ve got skin in this game and I don’t want to leave you hanging.”
“Thank you, Wyatt.”
When Beryl disconnected the call, she said to her brother, “We will discuss your felonious acts later.”
“Yeah. You’re welcome.” Jett stared at his phone, pushing buttons and swiping occasionally. Beryl hoped that Jett’s illegal tracker would help them find Jake. If it didn’t, what were their options?
Instead of berating him, Beryl said, “Wyatt is on his way to us, as is Alienn’s sheriff.”
“The Alienn sheriff is a human, isn’t he?”
Beryl shook her head, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Is he? Is that important right now? I’d hire a three-ring circus with monkeys and elephants if it would help find Jake.”
Jett ignored her circus-with-monkeys comment. “Wyatt will know. I think his name is Hollister. He just got hired, not long after the old sheriff retired and went to Florida.”
“It doesn’t matter if he’s human. I’m sure they wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t good at his job.”
Jett said, “Remember the part about us Alphas hiding in Alienn, Arkansas, in plain sight? Humans aren’t allowed to know about us, right?”
Beryl pushed out a breath, trying to corral her fears for Jake’s safety and not take them out on Jett. “Yes. You’re right. I’m just worried about Jake.”
