Rescued Read online

  They cleared the back gate and ran into the cover of the woods before collapsing onto the ground beside Roxie.

  “That was close. Stupid bootlace,” Rose said as she rolled to a sitting position and checked around the rock to see if anyone followed. “We have to get to the car and get out of here.”

  She sniffed the air. Blood. Fresh blood. She glanced toward Roxie and read the fear etched on her face. She followed the girl’s stare to Marty, still lying on the ground, blood streaming down his back. “Marty?” She touched his shoulder. No movement. She sprang to her knees to assess the situation. Her eyes followed the blood trail to the black object protruding from his back. The handle of a knife. “Marty. We need to get you back to the house. Can you walk?”

  “Pull it . . . out. Need . . . to . . . shift.” He strained to get the words out.

  His breathing was ragged and labored. The shifting process would speed the healing of wounds with the help of the extra red blood cells Were beings carried but to shift now would mean revealing their secret to Roxie.

  Rose was always skeptical when it came to disclosing information so personal to humans who may not be so understanding but she had to move fast. Marty could die. She took hold of the girl’s upper arms and stared directly into her eyes. “Roxie. Do you trust us? Do you believe we truly have your best interest at heart?” She searched the girl’s face for the slightest sign she understood.

  “Rose, I trust you guys more than anyone I’ve ever known. How can I help? Just tell me what to do. I’ll do it.” Tears welled in her eyes but she swiped them away with the back of her hand and took a deep breath. Her eyes drifted to Marty, lying so still on the ground.

  “Roxie. Roxie, look at me.” Rose gave a slight shake to get her attention. “Turn your back and no matter what sounds you hear, don’t turn around.” Any number of questions or protests could present themselves but the girl only nodded and turned her back as instructed.

  Rose dropped to the ground and leaned close to Marty’s ear. “Are you still with me? Marty? I’m here. Don’t you dare leave me.” Her adrenaline pumped faster and boosted her resolve. Her mate would not die.

  His breathing was shallow. He had to shift now to speed the healing process or she would surely lose him.

  Rose wrapped both hands around the handle of the knife and gripped it tight. “Stay with me. Here goes.” She heaved hard on the knife. A slushy, sucking sound accompanied the exit of the blade from Marty’s back.

  “Need . . . shift,” he echoed with a faint groan.

  His voice was strained and weak. Rose was afraid he had lost too much blood to have the strength to shift. She turned him onto his back as gently as possible, tugged his boots off, and tossed them aside as she reached for his belt buckle. With belt, button, and zipper aside, she stripped his jeans from his legs, and dropped them and his boxers with his boots. She tugged his shirt over his head and knelt beside him. “Marty, can you hear me? Everything’s ready. Go ahead.” She waited. He didn’t move. “Marty? Go ahead and shift. You’ll heal faster.”

  The life slowly faded from him before her eyes. Her heart lodged in her throat. There was no sign of movement and little breathing. Her mind filled with visions of their time together. She wanted more. Not her old life . . . alone, without her new-found mate.

  She leaned down to bring herself face to face with him. “Marty, I need you to shift. Now. I need you to live.” She closed her eyes and blinked away a tear. “I need you.” She touched their lips together. Her chin quivered.

  His arm twitched. With that sign of hope, she leaned closer. Her lips touched his again and again. “Marty,” she breathed his name as she rubbed their cheeks together. “Find the strength. You have to shift.”

  He inhaled a short breath. His eyes blinked half open. A low growl vibrated from his throat.

  Rose sat back on her heels as he found the strength to stir a bit on the ground. His hand moved and grasped her knee. Her hand covered his and she leaned down for another kiss. He growled again, rolled over onto his belly, and dragged himself to all fours as the shift began.

  Several minutes passed before the transformation was complete. Rose watched as the two and a half inch stab wound started to knit together and the blood flow slowed. Silky, caramel colored fur replaced Marty’s skin. Rose wrapped her arms around the neck of her mate and nuzzled against his warm fur as he lapped at her cheeks with his tongue and dried her tears. “You did it. I’m so glad. You’re gonna be fine now.”

  The rumble deep in his throat eased her fear a bit. Her inner animal ached with the desire to shift and run through the countryside with him but Roxie was still with them and needed her protection. A quick glance around found the girl stiff as a board. Most likely, with fear from all the strange sounds she had heard in the past few minutes.

  She whispered close to his ear, “We need to get to the car. Another shift will do you good. Can you do it now and get dressed?” She stroked his head and neck as she nuzzled his face and inhaled his scent.

  He stepped back and nodded only to lunge forward and rasp his tongue over his mark on her neck sending blinding desire surging throughout her body. He lowered his head and prepared to shift back to human form to speed the healing of his wound with the rush of cells needed to complete the transformation.

  He rolled to his side and gasped for breath as the transformation completed. Still weak from the blood loss, he struggled to regain his senses. The double shift helped heal the wound but the blood loss zapped a major portion of his strength.

  “Get dressed. They’re coming.” Rose reached for his clothes but no movement from Marty raised new concerns.

  “Rose. Take Roxie and go to the car. I’ll be along. I just need a minute,” his voice was hardly audible.

  Her heart pounded in her chest. “I am not leaving you, Marty Brown.” She shook the dried leaves out of his boxers, slipped his feet through the leg holes, and yanked them to his waist.

  She gathered his boots and wrapped the knife securely in his jeans and shirt. She reached for Roxie’s shoulder, turned the girl toward them, and stared into her eyes. “Roxie, you are about to see something you’re going to find unbelievably strange to go along with all the other odd sights and sounds you’ve experienced tonight, and I will explain everything to you, later. But right now, I need you to take these and keep up with me. We have to run. The compound guards are looking for us. They’ll be here in a few short minutes, so we have to move fast. Do you understand? She trusted Roxie to follow directions.

  Monumental fear blazed in the girl’s eyes along with stout determination. “I promise I’ll keep up. I’ll do anything. Just don’t make me go back in there.” She clutched the bundle to her chest, glanced toward the compound, and gasped with renewed fear.

  Several flashlights searched the grounds around the pool and picnic area inside the fenced yard. It was only a matter of minutes before the search expanded outside the fence and into the woods where they were hiding.

  “Rose, look!” The frightened girl gasped and pointed toward the compound.

  “I know. Let’s move.” Rose slung her backpack over her shoulder, stepped over to Marty, and lifted him as easily as if she had lifted a ragdoll, although he outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She met the astonished gaze of her female companion and shrugged a bit. “I promised I’d explain everything, and I will but for now, we need to put some distance between us and them.” She nodded toward the security team inching their way toward the back gate.

  “Follow me.” Rose started out at an easy pace to make sure Roxie could keep up. When it was obvious she could, Rose picked up her steps a bit. The girl was a real trooper. She stumbled and fell several times but always righted herself and caught up. Rose came to a stop as they neared the road and checked both ways before they started across.

  Roxie ran ahead to ope
n the car door. Rose eased Marty’s limp body onto the back seat and settled him in for the ride to the house. She fished through his jeans pocket for the key, closed the backdoor, and went to the driver’s side of the car as Roxie slid into the passenger seat. She looked over her left shoulder at their patient. “Rose, he looks bad. I can’t even tell if he’s breathing or not.” Her hands shook so hard she had trouble fastening her seatbelt.

  “He’ll be fine. He just needs some rest.” She started the car, pulled out onto the road, and sped to the house where Oscar and the boys could help access the files from the hard drive contents of the doctor’s computer and she could care for her mate.

  Chapter 26

  The car skidded to a stop on the lawn by the front door. An emergency call to Oscar a few minutes earlier had the group of men gathered at the door ready to help in any way.

  The men each grabbed a door and sprang into action. “Get him inside, guys. Rose, do we need to do any recon?” Oscar barked out his instructions while he checked out the road to make sure no one followed.

  Rose’s heart still slammed into her chest at an accelerated rate. She strained to draw in sufficient oxygen. How did this happen? If I hadn’t taken so long replacing those stupid screws on the laptop. If my stupid shoestring hadn’t got caught in the stupid crack on the stupid windowsill. If I’d . . .

  “Rose.” Oscar placed a hand on her shoulder and drew her attention from Marty’s limp body as Garth and Daily carried him inside. “Are there any loose ends we need to tie up at the compound?”

  Rose struggled to draw in a breath. She wanted to erase the past minutes and go back to where Marty was not hurt and near death. She paused for a few seconds and retraced their steps in her mind. “Blood. There must be a trail of his blood from the window to the spot in the woods where we met Roxie. I have the knife, but I need to go back and clean up the blood.”

  “Daily and Garth are already on it. I need you to help with the situation here.” His words were low and even. He directed his focus to Rose but nodded toward Roxie who stood slumped against the car still holding tight to her bundle.

  Rose took a deep breath. She had to grab hold of the fact she couldn’t do everything. Oscar and the team would see to the details at the compound. Her priorities had to be Marty and Roxie. Marty was inside, healing in the safety of their bed. She longed to hold him while he regained his strength but Roxie needed her. How much was the right amount of information to give their new companion? She took a deep breath.

  “Roxie, come on. Let’s get you inside.” She put her arm around the frightened girl and steered her through the front door and into the kitchen. She regarded the room as the one in every house where healing took place. If she’d learned anything from her parents, it had been that the best times happened around the table.

  “Where are we?” Roxie asked, surveying her surroundings. “I mean I know this is a kitchen, but where? Who lives here?”

  “I don’t even know where to start. First, I need to go check on Marty. I’ll only be a minute. There are soft drinks, bottled water, and sandwich fixings in the fridge. The bread, chips, and other snacks are on the counter. Help yourself. I promise I’ll be right back.” She put her bravest face on to try and reassure the girl everything would be okay.

  Roxie smiled. “I’ll be fine Rose. Go. Check in on Marty. Tell him I said get better. Although I don’t know how he could possibly be alive. There was so much blood. I thought he was dead when he fell to the ground in the woods.” She stared into space and mumbled.

  Rose stepped into the hallway and made her way to the bedroom she and Marty shared. She eased the door open. Her mate’s near lifeless body lay on their bed. Her heart weighed heavy and sank low in her chest. Memories from the past hour flooded her head. The sucking sound made by the knife as she dislodged it from his back, the smell of his blood, and his struggle to change forms in order to boost the blood cells needed for healing were sights and sounds she would never forget. The vision of Marty in cat form. The soft, smooth feel of his fur when he nuzzled her face with his. She ached to run with him.

  Her hand covered her mouth. She fought back a sob. What had she done?

  Marty lay slumped on his side. Still. So still, his chest barely moved when he took a breath. It had been an hour. Why hadn’t he come around? Had the blade done so much damage, he would never wake up? She tiptoed to the bed, knelt at his side, and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. Sleep was best now. He needed to heal. She needed him to heal.

  “Come back to me, Marty Brown. We need to go home soon.” Home. Home, so they could begin their life together. But first, she had to complete the job. She prayed there was sufficient evidence on the doctor’s hard drive to end this nightmare, so Roxie and the others would be safe.

  Roxie. She had to clarify some things for the frightened girl. “Sleep, mate. I’ll be back.” She brushed her lips against his and turned to shed some light for the confused young woman waiting for her.

  Rose stepped into the kitchen. “See anything interesting?”

  Roxie sat in the chair at the laptop watching the surveillance of the grounds at the compound. She stood with a start and tipped over the chair, sending it clamoring to the floor. “Oh. Rose. I didn’t mean to snoop. I was just- how’s Marty?” She stammered on.

  “He’s asleep. His breathing is slow but steady, so he should be good as new in no time.” She pointed to the laptop, righted the chair, and patted Roxie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about snooping. That’s part of everything I have to fill you in on, so we may as well start with the cameras. You know Marty and I are private investigators hired to find some missing people, right? Well, we teamed up with some others hired for the same reason so we could combine resources and solve all our cases sooner.

  We found out in Memphis that the people you were living with were selling the blood you all were donating and gathering other medical information on you as well. One of our guys got into the clinic where you donated and got a peek at Wendy’s file. There was a transplant list matching her blood type to people willing to pay for . . . new organs. Kidneys and such. There was also a list of people wanting to adopt newborns.” She paused to let Roxie absorb the news.

  “There were so many pregnant girls at the facility. Some came there already pregnant to learn parenting and family living skills but there was really no nighttime supervision. Several girls told me they became pregnant after they arrived.

  “I thought it was strange there were no birth control classes or posters warning against STD’s like other schools and clinics. There were only classes for adoption prep and how you could enrich your baby’s life and the lives of some unfortunate couple not able to have children of their own.”

  Roxie glanced back at the laptop screen and then into thin air. “So, I was right? Those weren’t normal appendectomies last week, were they? I knew something was weird about those oversized scars.”

  “I won’t be able to say with any certainty until Oscar can access the files from the doctor’s computer hard drive. Maybe you could help with names and such.”

  “Just let me at ‘em. Whatever you need, whatever I can do to help, I will, Rose. Nothing is more important than stopping these freaks from hurting anyone else.” She huffed out a breath and shook her head. “They promised us all better lives. They never said we had to pay with our blood. I can’t believe I was so stupid. Now I’m back to square one. I have nothing. No place to stay. No clothes. Nothing.” She held her head in her hands and mumbled under her breath, “Why?”

  “I’m glad you’re so willing to help and don’t you worry. We would never kick you to the curb.” Rose paused again. “Roxie. You said you were told Jeremy left the compound and went back home to his dad.”

  Roxie looked up, already shaking her head side to side before the words cleared Rose’s lips. “I would bet my life he did not go ba
ck to that man, Rose. He had scars all over his back from the beatings he took almost all his life. He was just like all the rest of us . . . he just wanted to belong somewhere and be happy.” She rested her head in her hands again.

  “You must be exhausted. We can finish this after we all get some sleep if you like.”

  “No. No way. If I can help find Jeremy, I’ll stay awake all night, all week if I have to.” She finished off the diet cola, tossed the empty can in the trash, and reached for another.

  “I’m glad to hear you say that. I can’t sleep now either and I’d just as soon get into that hard drive.” Oscar entered the kitchen with Nelson close behind.

  “Is he still sleeping?” Rose was worried about Marty even though he would heal good as new courtesy of his inner cougar. But he was her mate, and that’s what she did. Worry.

  “Yeah, the wound has almost healed. He needs rest now more than anything to regain his strength,” Nelson answered.

  “The wound has almost healed?” Roxie raised her head and looked at the group. Wide-eyed, mouth opened.

  Rose lifted a finger to her lips and glanced Nelson’s way. Roxie would certainly question the miraculous healing considering the gaping wound she had seen in Marty’s back.

  “Oops. You didn’t get to that part yet, did you? Sorry.” Nelson’s shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. He offered his hand in greeting. “I’m Nelson and I want you to know you’re in the safest place on earth right now. No one is going to hurt you here.”

  “I think she knows by now she can trust us and we would never harm her but I’m sure she has questions.” Rose added.

  “I do have questions, lots of questions, but even with the major weirdness I can say for sure, I don’t feel threatened here in the least.” Roxie stared at the soft drink can she fumbled between her fingers.