A minute later, she heard the sound of an engine turning over, then she heard his truck driving out of the parking lot.
He was doing it. He was leaving her. He had actually left her alone in the hotel room, throbbing with arousal, suffering from a severe case of blue clit, and helplessly restrained to the bed.
She sat up and began feeling around the headboard, desperately searching for a way to dismantle it. She found nothing.
Then she slid off the bed and planted her feet on the floor and tried pulling the entire bed towards the door. It didn’t budge.
She settled back down on the bed, trying to figure out her next move. She could scream for help, but if she knew Austin, he would have made sure that there was no one in the rooms on either side of her, and nobody coming to clean the room either.
Then she saw the doorknob rattling. She sniffed hard. Her ability to scent was muted considerably in human form, but she could swear she smelled…Anthony?
The door flew open, and Anthony rushed in.
“Oh, my God!” she cried out, relief flooding through her. “I never thought I’d be happy to see you!”
He looked hurt. He held up his hand; something tiny and silver gleamed in it. “I got a handcuff key. You want me to uncuff you, you have to be nice to me and tell me I am the smartest and handsomest fox in all of Foxhaven, and you have to personally serve me pizza every day for a year. Also find me a girlfriend my age. Or you could date me. Well, nah, you’re kind of old.” The little bastard. She was twenty-two! “Set me up on a date with Jessamine.”
She yanked on her handcuff chain. “How about if I agree not to rip your throat out?”
“Works for me.” He quickly hurried over and freed her. She leaped to her feet, rubbing her wrist, which was sore from yanking against the cuff.
He looked at her askance. “Jeez, Savannah. Why didn’t you just shift?”
“Oh, why didn’t I think about that?” She slapped her forehead. “I forgot I was a fox!”
“No need for sarcasm. I am your actual hero.” Anthony pouted.
She sighed. “Yes, you are. Thank you for uncuffing me. That bastard injected me with something that made me unable to shift for about another eight hours.”
“Wow.” Anthony’s eyes widened. “I didn’t even know there was such a thing. He also stole all of your tires. And I think he did something to your engine.”
She gaped at him in amazement. Grudgingly, she had to admit that she admired Austin’s foresight. But she was still going to make him into a fur skin rug, the bastard. Or at least steal his mark from him. “That son of a Seabiscuit.”
“Good thing I followed you here in my own car.”
His own car? Right. She walked over to him until she was standing a foot away, and fixed her gaze on his. “Anthony, you are fourteen, and not to be mean, but your family doesn’t have two nickels to rub together.”
He grinned. “Good thing I boosted a car and followed you here.”
“Why did you do that, you little juvenile delinquent? And do I even want to know why you have a handcuff key. Do I? No, I don’t.” She frowned at him. “It really was you breaking into those stores downtown, wasn’t it? No, I don’t want to know that either. Damn it, Anthony, you can’t steal things. This has to stop. People are giving you a pass for now because you’re young and you haven’t gotten caught in the act. Yet. But you keep this up, and I’m going to be hunting you as a bounty, and in case you haven’t noticed, shifters don’t like to waste a lot of time on rehabilitation. You’re going to end up as a nice little hat.”
His expression turned serious. “I wouldn’t normally boost a car, but I’m backed into a corner, Savannah. You’re going after that Roy guy. I know there’s a million-dollar bounty. Let me help you, and give me part of the reward. If you gave me a hundred thousand dollars, it would be enough for me to support my whole family for the rest of our lives. We don’t need much, just a house.”
She looked at him. “Do you understand that Roy is huge, unbelievably dangerous and psychotic? That he’s killed people? I train for this kind of stuff, Anthony, I’ve been training in self defense and takedowns since I was little, because my dad was a survivalist and he made me and Jessamine and Niall practice this kind of stuff since we were toddlers. But you do not have the training, or the knowledge, to survive someone like Roy.”
Anthony’s gaze slid to the ground, and his face wrinkled in misery. “My mom left. Three months ago. Ran off with some trucker guy she met at the rest stop.” His shoulders hunched against the pain of what he was saying. “I bring home pizza every day from your restaurant for my brothers. And I hunt. And we have a little vegetable garden and four chickens. But we haven’t paid the rent, and the landlord’s going to kick us out in a week. I could get us a little mobile home if I had even, like, thirty grand, and then the rest I could use to send my brothers off to college or trade school.”
“Oh.Oh,” she said, and suddenly felt like the most horrible person in the world. She’d been so focused on what a little jerk Anthony was being lately that she hadn’t stopped to figure out why. She’d been caught up so much in her own troubles that she’d been ignoring everybody else. Anthony hadn’t always been a troublemaker.
She should have talked to him instead of yelling at him.
And he wasn’t even worried about his own future. He was just trying to provide for his little brothers.
She swallowed hard. “You have to tell my mother. She’ll take you and your brothers in.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “But you don’t even like me.”
“I don’t like my sister, either, but I love her. And I wouldn’t let her starve any more than I’d let you and your brothers starve.”
