Training Their Mate [Pack Wars-Book 1] (5 page)

They exchanged glances, but
Trax was the one to continue the interrogation. “We’re terribly sorry. Do you
have proof it was Couch?”

She stood, retrieved her
purse, and pulled out her mother’s diary. “Yes. Last week, my mother committed
suicide because she couldn’t take it anymore. I found this in her drawer.” She
was proud she was able to state that fact without faltering. “I’ll read a
little bit to you if that’s okay.”

“Please do.”

She inhaled to muster the
courage to go through the horror of that night. “This is dated twenty years
ago.
Dear Diary,

“I don’t know if I can go on.
The absolute worst thing in my life happened last night and I can’t tell
anyone. Not even Brian.”

Liz closed the diary for a
minute but kept her finger in the spine. She hesitated to read farther, but the
men wouldn’t help her get Couch unless they heard the whole story. “Brian’s my
dad. If my mom wouldn’t even tell him, it must have been bad. My father said in
the beginning of their marriage, they’d shared everything.”

Trax nodded to the book.
“There’s more I trust?”

“Yes. A lot.”

She opened the book again and
read.

“Brian was out of town on
business, and I was in bed reading when I heard a noise in the kitchen. I
thought maybe he’d come home a few days early. When nothing else sounded, I assumed
it was my imagination so I went back to my book. That’s when the nightmare
started. A tall shadow appeared in my doorway. It was Harvey Couch grinning at
me like I was some prize. I pulled the sheet up over my chest and asked him why
he was there even though I knew. The man was pure evil.”

Liz swallowed hard. “The next few pages detail
the rape. It’s horrifying.” She slammed the book shut as tears streamed down
her face. She cried not only for what her mom had gone through but also because
her mother had suffered the cruelty and degradation by herself. Liz sniffled
and decided to paraphrase instead of read. The memory of her mom became too
alive when she saw the words. “My mom wrote that because Harvey Couch was so
wealthy, she believed if she went to authorities to turn him in, his lawyers
would say she instigated it. After all, they’d spent weeks together while she
showed him homes.”

Liz shut her eyes and
imagined how horrifying that must have been for a woman alone. “Couch might
have been pissed at my mom for some reason, but whatever the alleged offense,
rape wasn’t the answer.”

“What did the diary say about
the recent attack?” Dante asked.

She sniffled. “The entries became
more sparse, but she named Couch as her rapist again.” Liz opened the book.
“The bastard came again and raped me. Couch laughed and said if I talked he’d
ruin Liz and anyone else I care about.” She closed her eyes. “The entries are
blank for the next two weeks, but then she wrote, ‘He’s here again. This is the
third time this month. I’m not sure I can take much more of this.’”

She shut the book one final
time. “My mom killed herself a week later.”

Both men came over, sat next
to her, and rubbed her hand. “We’re so sorry,” Dante said. “Couch is a bad man,
but killing him isn’t the answer.”

Easy for him to say. “What
would you have done?”

Dante’s lips firmed and
turned down in a frown. “Me? I would have shot the bastard.”

She almost smiled at his
vehemence. “So what can I do now?”

Trax stood and held out his
hand. “You need to come with us. It’s not safe here.”

She nodded to Trax’s holster.
“Does your gun have the right bullets?”

He placed a hand on his
weapon. “Yes, but—”

“No buts. I want some. The
next time I won’t try to poison him first.”

“Babe, that just ain’t going
to happen. You want to pack a bag, or do I have to carry you out of here?”

She didn’t like him taking
away her choices. She would stay. Now more than ever, she’d have to be more
careful. “I’m not going anywhere with you two. For all I know, you’ll lock me
in your house and call the authorities.”

“We are the authorities.”

Her stomach tumbled. “You
told me you weren’t.” They lied?

“We’re not with any
organization you know. We kind of take the law into our own hands.”

“So, are you vigilantes?” In
a way, she liked that idea, but if they went off half-cocked, no telling what
they might do. No. She was safer here. If she thought someone was following
her, she could stay with Chelsea.
Crap
.
What would that accomplish? They’d just kill her, too.

“I guess you could call us
that.”

“I’m still staying.” Or was
she being too stubborn for her own good?

Trax shook his head. “I’m
sorry you feel that way.”

In one second, he pulled her
to a stand and tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold. He clasped the
back of her legs and walked to the door, acting as if she weighed no more than
a sack of potatoes.

She pounded on his back with
her good hand. “Put me down, you brute.” This wasn’t happening.

“Dante, grab her purse and
some toiletries, and I guess some undies. No telling how long she’ll be with
us. We sure as hell don’t need her walking around naked.”

Like she ever would. Surely
he was kidding. He exited the door, walked down the porch steps, and deposited
her in the backseat of his black SUV. She fumed. This was the last straw to a
totally shitty day.

As soon as he walked over to
the driver’s side, she unlocked the door and raced out.

He was by her side in a
flash. “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I don’t like
being kidnapped.”

“I asked you nicely, ma’am.”

He picked her up around the
waist with one arm and placed her on the backseat again. She was about to climb
out again when he slapped a set of handcuffs on her wrists and attached the
other half to the overhead handle.

Oh,
shit.

Chapter Four

Dante tossed her suitcase and
purse in the back of the SUV and climbed in next to her.

“Hey, sugar. Don’t worry.
This is for the best.”

Even though Dante seemed to
be the more reasonable one of the two, she wasn’t happy in the least. “Aren’t
you worried I’ll turn you in to the authorities for kidnapping?”

He reached toward her face
and she moved closer to the door. “Sugar, don’t be like that. We are the good
guys.”

“Good guys don’t kidnap
innocent women.”

He chuckled. “You are not
innocent, sugar. You just tried to murder someone. Besides, I was lucky to find
that peashooter of yours in your robe pocket. Now that it’s safe and sound in
your top drawer, I can breathe a sigh of relief.”

Dante was being overly
dramatic.

“I wouldn’t have shot you.”
She was only pissed at Harvey Couch for ruining her life.

“In our line of business, we
have to suspect everyone.”

That was probably true. She
jiggled her wrist. Her hand tingled. Jerk had cuffed her right hand, the one
with the cut. “Can you undo me now? My hand is throbbing.”

Dante reached across the
front seat and held out his palm for the key. Trax slowed the car as he
extracted the key from his hip pocket and handed it to his brother. As Dante
leaned over her, she inhaled his spicy scent. Maybe it was the smell of fresh
rain, but he did something to her insides. He uncuffed her, and the moment she
lowered her arm, pinpricks shot up her arms.

He grinned and sat back on
his side of the seat. “So tell us about yourself.”

Her mouth dropped. “This
isn’t a date. I’m being held hostage. Maybe I should know who the hell you
are.”

He laughed. “Bro, we are
going to have so much fun training her.”

“Training me to do what? Don’t
even think about making me in to some vigilante.”

That got a chuckle out of
him. “I wasn’t talking about you joining forces, but if—”

Trax lifted a hand. “Just
shut the fuck up, okay. I need to think.”

When Dante mouthed
I need to think
and scrunched up his
lips, she almost laughed. Bad men didn’t have this sense of humor. Dante, she
trusted. It was Trax who gave her pause.

Nothing she could do now, so
she settled back against the seat. She couldn’t even decide whether they were
rich or poor, but the car, the clothes, and the fact they owned a business
implied they weren’t some dirt bags living hand to mouth. Because Dante was
rather quick to retrieve her purse, she figured he didn’t live too far from
town.

She looked out the window,
needing to remember where they took her. Once they passed through downtown,
Trax continued toward the commercial district. The area was mostly rundown, but
it was dotted with a few nice places.

It wasn’t until he turned
down a back alley that her nerves shot to high alert. “Where are we? What’s
going on?” She scooted to the far end of the seat. If she thought she could
actually get away, she might have tried to run.

“We live here.”

“Here?” It was a bunch of old
three story brick buildings. There wasn’t a residence in sight.

Trax parked. Dante pushed open his door and
rushed to her side. Was he being a gentleman or did he think she’d run?
Regardless, she appreciated the help because the minute she put weight on her
knee it buckled, but she recovered quickly and
held out her wrists.

The interior light
illuminated Dante’s face enough to see him quirk a brow. “Sugar, we’re not
going to cuff you. You couldn’t get away if you tried.”

The challenge pumped up her
adrenaline. “Maybe while you’re getting my stuff out of the back, I’ll take
off.” That was assuming her legs would hold up.

“I’d like to see you try.
Trax would catch you in five seconds.”

That was probably true. “He
some kind of runner?” Stupid comment but her brain wasn’t working.

Dante leaned close and
winked. “He’s faster than a werewolf in heat.”

She swore Trax growled a
response. “Let’s get the lady inside in case we have any prowlers.”

Their conversation creeped
her out, but in truth, her life was in danger. Dante grabbed her gear and
motioned for her to follow Trax. At least the rain had stopped, but the sky remained
overcast.

Trax stepped up to a metal
door and leaned forward. A green light glowed, and a whirring sound emitted for
two seconds before the door clicked. Okay, that was cool. Maybe they did own a
monitoring company.

Trax pulled it open. “Ma’am.”

Apparently, she wasn’t getting
out of staying with them, though at the moment, she might have more peace of
mind being here. Her biggest concern was keeping her thoughts off these two
amazingly hot men and her unexplained attraction.

She stepped into a dark alcove. A second later,
light flooded the hallway. A handrail traveled up twenty steps and led up to
another door. Liz placed her right foot on the step. When she pushed up, her
knee ached. She had to balance on the wooden handrail but couldn’t grasp it.

“Aw fuck.” Trax swooped her up in his arms and
jogged up the stairs.

Her pulse shot skyward. Given the steep angle,
her head rested against his rock solid chest. As amazing as it was to be in his
strong, virile arms, his irritation pissed her off. “I can walk.”

He finally made eye contact, and she swore his
lips turned up. “I know, but I want to get inside sometime tonight. I’m
starving.”

So it was all about him. At the top of the
steps, he leaned her against his flexing chest to get the key into the lock.
Only then did her hip bump into something very large and very hard. No freaking
way he had a hard-on.

When he pushed open the door, she expected him
to unceremoniously dump her on her feet, but instead he crossed the room with
her in his arms. While he hadn’t touched a switch, the lamped turned on
automatically. Dante had mentioned something about having sensors everywhere
and now she believed it.

Trax set her on the sofa.
“Don’t move.”

She wasn’t sure where she
would go even if she did. They were in a humongous loft apartment that was very
upscale. Two of the walls were brick and shot up fifteen feet, giving the place
an expansive feel. Ductwork and pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, which made her
believe she was in a bigger city than Gulfside. Across from the living room sat
a large, modern kitchen with granite counter tops and stainless steel
appliances. Her heart ached as she remembered how much her mom always wanted a
kitchen this grand but had never been able to afford it.

Besides the large colorful paintings
adorning the walls, what struck her was how neat the loft was. Maybe it was
that few personal affects appeared anywhere.

“Do you live here year
around?” Maybe this was a kind of safe house.

Dante set down her suitcase.
“I’ll answer that. Yes. And before you ask, Trax is OCD so don’t make a mess or
he may have to spank your ass.”