Following the tracks on the ATVs hadn’t been that hard. What had been hard was seeing spots where there were body sized impressions in the ground like he’d dropped her periodically. How much more could one person take? If it had been me I’d have been ok, but Lottie was smaller than I was, she was fragile. Not that I’d tell her that to her face, she’d probably glue my balls to my thigh.
“We’re best getting off here,” Elijah said quietly as we got closer to the tree line. “The trees are far enough apart to drive through, but if he hears us he might do something to her.”
Nodding in agreement, I hopped off the vehicle and walked quietly through the frost-covered grass. It was cold, fucking freezing in fact, and I wasn’t sure what sort of clothing Lottie had been in when he took her.
When someone’s taken there are the obvious worries, ones that occur to everyone whether they’re involved or not. What I hadn’t realized until now, though, were the not so obvious ones like what clothing she had on, if she even had shoes and pants on, shit like that. Hypothermia hit quickly, and exposure to a temperature as cold as this with little protecting you from it? Would we find her in time to stop that?
Would we even find her in time to stop him hurting her?
Just then, a body materialized from the trees making me reach for my gun.
“It’s only Jackson,” Elijah told me, tapping me on the shoulder as he walked past. He was right. Eric Retter was only about five-feet-nine inches tall, but my cousins were all six-foot-four and over. Retter was also built like a weasel in comparison to the big bear standing in front of me right now. “How’d you get here so quickly?”
The night was a clear one and it was a full moon, so I could see his eyes sparkling as he looked in my direction and lifted his chin at me.
“Yo!” Looking back at his brother, he muttered, “Got here about half an hour ago and decided I needed to walk off the journey so I took a wander around. Saw someone headed this way carrying something over their shoulder and figured I’d check it out.”
As he spoke, I waited for his twin Marcus to come out of the trees too, but it didn’t seem like anyone else was around. “Marcus with you?”
Shaking his head, he turned back to face the direction he’d come from. “Nah, he had shit to do last night, so we drove separately. Wanna tell me what’s going on?”
Waving me forward, Elijah quickly told him what had happened, with Jackson’s jaw turning to stone the further into the story he got. He’d known Charlotte’s issue with Eric, but hearing the full details and realizing how unhinged he was now, it made things very different.
When he was finished, Elijah motioned for us to start walking. “Story time’s over. From now on, we need to be aware, quiet, and sneaky mother fuckers. We don’t know what he’s carrying, so be ready to defend yourself, ok?”
Defend myself? I wasn’t going to defend myself, I was going to fucking kill him.
We’d only been walking for about ten minutes when Noah and Madix joined us, neither of them saying a word. We might not have been trained, but we weren’t stupid – we knew what to do.
A rustling to our left sounded as we passed a thick area of bushes, making us all stop and crouch down. Instead of Retter coming out of there, though, Kari appeared.
“What the fuck?” Noah hissed quietly, looking over at me sharply.
Looking back at us, Jackson whispered, “Who’s that?”
Pointing at me, Noah replied, “The chick who’s been trying to get his attention.”
Rolling his eyes, he turned back to watch her as she looked around like she was waiting for someone. Without taking his eyes off her, he held his hand out with his index and middle finger pointing down and started moving them like they were walking. Then, he made the gesture for talking and waved me forward.
Guess I was going to speak to her then. Getting up from my crouch, I walked toward her, calling out, “Kari?”
Spinning around with her hand on her chest, her face went from relaxed to like she was crying. “Levi, oh thank god. I got lost and was so scared.”
Making it look like I was searching the area around us, I looked back at where I’d just come from with a look of disbelief on my face. We’d watched her clearly waiting calmly, and what was she doing on our land in the first place?
Turning back to her, I forced a smile onto my face. “Sorry to hear that. If you walk that way, you’ll hit the field that leads you down to my parents’ house. They can call you a cab.”