And her. To translate his notes.
“Thankfully, he had one bottle already made up. Convenient, don’t you think?”
And stupid of her to pull it out and set it on the counter in full view of the baddies. “So why send them after me again?”
“I didn’t send them anywhere. They were destabilizing. Elisabeth tried to bond with them, but it failed and they ran.”
“They just ran? But…”
“They went back to the last thing they’d been ordered to do. The last time they were rational.”
“My father’s cabin.” Well, Mark had said there was a kind of salmon instinct in the shifters. It’s what kept the Gladwins right here in mid-Michigan. But she’d never thought it would apply the way he described.
Psycho Einstein shrugged. “Who can fathom the workings of an unstable mind?”
Sort of the pot calling the kettle black, right?
Meanwhile, he wiped his hands on a nearby towel as if touching the empty bottle had made him dirty. “I’m hungry. I think I’ll get some lunch. Then I’ll bring you a bucket, just in case.” He flashed her a smile and a jaunty wave before disappearing out the door.
Julie stared after him, her thoughts whirling. But after a moment, they settled into two distinct sentences. What the fuck? Please, Mark, find me soon.
CHAPTER 17
Mark was flummoxed, and he was not a man to use a word like that. Baffled, gob-smacked, even discombobulated. Without his bear forcing a tighter focus, his brain spun off into a thousand different directions at once, none of them useful. Half of him was spinning into increased circles of panic about Julie. What was happening to her? Where was she? What could he do to help?
The other half of him was just spinning. Since adolescence, he’d daily longed for silence from his bear. Turned out, his bear was the grounded one in his brain. The grizzly focused on immediate things. If food and shelter were handled, the grizzly allowed another item on the list. Like finding Julie. But without the bear constantly limiting what could be dealt with, Mark ended up staring into space, lost in a thousand different thoughts. Sure, they were full, complete sentences, but they overlapped one another like layers of gauze a mile thick.
He couldn’t function like this. Which is why he felt grateful for the time at the hospital. He did as he was told, followed simple instructions, and fought for control of a brain gone ADD.
It took him three hours. Three terrifying, horrendous, splintered hours. But thanks to a sympathetic nurse who let him slam back a pot of coffee, he managed to corral his thoughts into some form of order. First off, he had to get out of the hospital. Nothing he could do for Julie from here. So without overthinking it, he just put on his clothes and walked out. Then he got a cab and went straight to his alpha’s house.
“What the fuck have you found out?” he demanded as he burst into Carl’s home.
“Nothing more than I said in the last text ten minutes ago,” Carl grumbled. He was sitting at his kitchen table looking haggard. Theo was nearby, looking as anxious as a broad-shouldered teen boy could. And Becca was doing what she always did when she was worried. She baked.
“Tell me again,” Mark growled. And when Carl sent him a furious look, Mark remembered he was talking to his alpha. “Please.”
Carl sighed and shoved his laptop away from him. “I remembered the Crazy Cat Lady. Her name is Elisabeth Oltheten and she was part of the cougar delegation way back when. But not a primary in it. Just someone who hung around helping. She got food for the cougars, made sure the hotels were set, and finalized transportation.”
“So a secretary?”
“No. She wasn’t allowed in the meetings. She was just around. I’ve reached out to the cats, which is how I got her name, but they don’t know where she is.”
“Or they aren’t telling us.”
Carl acknowledged that with a grimace. “She’s some sort of respected elder.” He pulled out his phone and started flipping it over and over in his hands. It was a nervous gesture that Mark understood. He was having trouble keeping his hands still too. “Tonya found out that she’s got some relatives in Phoenix, Arizona, but that’s about it.”
“What does Alan think? Does he remember her?” As the two sons of the Gladwin alpha, both Carl and Alan had been at the peace talks so many years ago. But it was Carl who’d been the primary negotiator, showing signs of diplomacy well beyond his years. Alan had been there as secretary while their father had sat as the big bear who was going to keep the peace.
“Don’t know,” Carl growled. “He’s not here.”
Mark jolted, his gaze hopping to the stairway up to Alan’s bedroom. “Why not? Where is he?”
Carl shrugged, his expression dark. Becca was the one who answered, her words tight and low. “He left almost a week ago, probably because of me.”
Mark frowned, trying to rapidly sort through the possibilities in his brain. It didn’t work well because there were too many. So he headed for the coffeepot while he grabbed the first idea that popped into his head. “You two fight?”
“No! We…Well…He might have thought we needed some space.”
