Hunted by the Feral Alpha Read online

  Maybe he really had planned to let her go after they got what they wanted. But that had all changed now.

  Because now she could see his face. The dark expression on his perfectly sculpted features sent a terrible chill rolling up her spine. He had a nice face that was vaguely familiar, like she’d encountered him before. She might have even called it gorgeous under different circumstances.

  Except the circumstances weren’t any different. It didn’t matter that he had dark blonde hair that looked like it hadn’t been trimmed in months hanging over his forehead. Or that his piercing black eyes were equal parts penetrating and captivating.

  He was going to kill her.

  Sophia could sense it in his gaze as he brooded next to her. It was the only thing that he could do at this point. She’d seen their faces. It was too dangerous to let her go now, whether he wanted to or not.

  The really scary one was in the driver’s seat. He was somehow more terrifying without the Freddy Krueger mask than he was wearing it. The guy was good-looking too, but she wouldn’t ever want to be alone in a room with him. The crazed expression on his face made her think he wanted to violently rape her and slit her throat, but not necessarily in that order.

  Scenery whipped by as Sophia tried to puzzle through her options. Even if she wanted to throw herself out of the car and take her chances with the pavement at eighty miles an hour, that wasn’t possible. The interior handle on the door closest to her had been ripped off, leaving only a piece of jagged metal in its place. Likely to prevent the exact escape attempt that she was contemplating.

  Her only option was to sit there like an idiot and wait to see what they would decide to do with her.

  She thought the man beside her would have a bigger reaction to the watch. Maybe hit her, or something. At least yell or threaten reprisals. But he just sat there and stared out his window and into the night, all quiet and brooding. It was almost as if she’d surprised him by trying to get away. And not the pleasant kind of surprise.

  “What’s the plan, Hunt?”

  Sophia saw a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye as the man beside her shifted in his seat. So that was his name—Hunt. It didn’t really sound like a name, but his involuntary reaction made it clear that was what they usually called him. Hunt sounded more like a last name than a first one. But why would they call each other by their last names? That was something that prison inmates did, if she correctly recalled her days of binge-watching Prison Break on DVD.

  Or soldiers.

  That was when it clicked in her mind. Sophia had been too terrified and overwrought to notice it before. They all kept their hair short and closely cropped to the sides like most guys in the military. She’d spent enough time in Washington with her dad to recognize the look. There was something about being in the service that made people carry themselves a certain way. A particular bearing that translated to every occasion, even when they were dressed in street clothes or business suits. You could always see the subtle differences, even if the military days were long over.

  Hunt still hadn’t answered the question. She wondered if that was because he didn’t have an answer.

  “We get to the cache, set up a new base and regroup.” Hunt almost sounded tired. A hint of what almost felt like sympathy moved through her and she quickly tapped down on it. He was her kidnapper, not her friend. Let him be tired. Let him catch fire and burn to death for all she cared.

  “What about the girl?” The driver caught her gaze in the rearview mirror and the smile he flashed was feral. “We can still kill her.”

  Her heart beat harder in her chest as she waited for Hunt to respond. It hadn’t taken long for her to figure out that he was the one in charge.

  “She’s officially missing, now,” the quieter one spoke up from the passenger seat. “It’s blowing up on all of the national news stations.”

  “Let me see.” Hunt reached for the smartphone that the other one was holding. A moment later, she heard the insistent tones of a female newscaster from the speakers. Light moved across Hunt’s face in the dark as the video played.

  “A search is underway tonight for Sophia Reynolds, daughter of presidential candidate and Tennessee senator, Jack Reynolds. According to police reports, Sophia was taken from the family’s DC townhouse while her parents were away at a campaign event, almost forty-eight hours ago. Senator Reynolds has been quoted as saying that he has not been contacted by the kidnappers for ransom, but suspects the involvement of a terrorist group. In a statement today, Senator Reynolds has vowed to use all the resources at his disposal to ensure his daughter’s safe return, but will not negotiate with terrorists. Anyone with information on Sophia Reynolds’s whereabouts is asked to contact local law enforcement or their nearest FBI field office…”

  “He won’t negotiate with terrorists, huh?” The one driving gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white.

  Hunt violently tossed the phone toward the front seat. It struck the dashboard before tumbling onto the floor.

  “He’s setting it all up.” Hunt’s teeth practically ground together as he spoke. “Plausible deniability. He’d rather we kill her than have anyone find out that his hands are soaked in blood.”

  “That’s not true!” Sophia regretted the words as soon as they flew out of her mouth. The sudden weight of their combined attention was heavy enough to suffocate her.

  “We could put it to the test.” She met the crazy one’s eyes in the rearview mirror and his glowed with a dark and terrible light. “Maybe if we send him an entire hand, we’ll get a response.”

  “Enough, Savage,” Hunt bit out.

  Savage. That was fitting.

  Savage turned to glare at Hunt before returning his attention to the road. “The fuck? We just done with OPSEC now?”

  “You gave up my name not ten minutes ago, remember.” Hunt sounded more exasperated than angry.

  Savage had the grace to look slightly abashed. “Oh, shit. Sorry.”

  “It’s fine.” Hunt scrubbed his face with the palms of his hands. “We’re past all that now.”

  The quiet one turned slightly backward in his seat, face solemn. “Are you certain? Perhaps the senator will—”

  “He won’t.” Hunt’s voice was sharp. “You heard that news report. The senator is pitching this like some kind of terrorist plot. He’s not going to give up any information about Project Alpha and implicate himself. He’s willing to sacrifice his daughter to keep his secrets.”

  “You gonna take care of it?”

  “I will.”

  They were talking about killing her, she realized with a sort of painful numbness. She was locked in a car, flying down the highway at eighty miles an hour with three men who were planning to kill her.

  Her heart beat faster as the car took the next exit on some deserted country road. The exit wasn’t big enough to even have streetlights as they came off the highway, much less a gas station or any signs of a population. Adrenaline rushed through her as her vision narrowed into painful focus. Nothing else mattered except saving herself. Even if it meant sprinting off into the mountains of West Virginia all alone.

  She just had to survive.

  The pavement on the road turned into gravel. She could hear it crunching under the tires and the car rocked slightly back and forth over the uneven surface. Darkness loomed outside the windows. It was foggy and the headlights created little clouds of illumination that only served to highlight how penetratingly dark it was out there.

  As the car rolled to a stop, her heart jumped up into her throat. Savage cut the lights, bathing the interior of the car in pitch black.

  When Hunt’s hands wrapped around her upper arms, the reaction was pure adrenaline. She kicked out at him with her leg, but he easily dodged her and used his weight to pin her lower body to the cracked leather seat. Someone else grabbed her arms and pinned them against the cool glass of the window behind her.

  Sophia froze when the cold barrel of a
gun slid up against her neck.

  This is it, she thought. This was how she died.

  “Stop fighting and I’ll make it quick,” Hunt said, his breathing coming just a trace harder from the struggle. “I’m sorry.”

  He did sound sorry, which just made it worse. She wished he would just act like a true sociopath, taking sick pleasure at the thought of putting a bullet in her. She could handle the physical torment, but it was the emotional one that threatened to overwhelm her.

  “Get her out of the car.” She couldn’t see Savage but his voice echoed in the dark interior. “You don’t want to get blood all over the seats.”

  She was about to die and he was worried about getting stains on the leather. Fucking asshole.

  They dragged her out of the car. She tried to fight their hold on her arms and legs but it was like trying to push against walls made out of granite. Her knees hit the gravel when they let her fall to the ground. Each tiny rock and pebble sent a separate spike of pain shooting up her legs. The interior lights of the car had come on when they opened the doors, making the car look like a beacon in a dark ocean. It was like a scene from the Godfather, all moody and foreboding. One of them pushed her to face away from the car so she was turned to the darkness, staring into the abyss that was about to consume her.

  She felt a hand grip her neck and then something hard pressed against the back of her head. She knew it was the barrel of a gun.

  “Wait!” she cried. Her voice was high-pitched, reedy and frantic. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Ignore her,” Savage snapped. Sophia knew if she got out of this that his voice would haunt her nightmares. “Just get it over with.”

  But she could sense the hesitation in the hand that gripped her neck. Hunt was the one that she might have a chance at convincing.

  “Please, I won’t tell anyone about you. Just let me go and it will be like none of this ever happened. Your names, your faces—I’ll forget all of it.”

  “You can’t trust that,” Savage growled. “She’ll say anything to get us to let her go.”

  He wasn’t wrong. She would claim to be a reincarnation of Princess Diana if it meant getting out of this alive. “Maybe I can help you.”

  “Help us how?” Hunt’s voice was heavy with suspicion, but at least he was still listening.

  Savage made an exasperated sound that she tried to ignore. “The information that you want from my father. Whatever it is you’re hoping to get out of him. Maybe I can help you get it.”

  Sophia didn’t really believe that what they wanted actually existed, but the meaner one was right. She would say pretty much anything at this point.

  “We’ve already tried leveraging you for information.” Metal moved up under her hair and she could feel the cold on the base of her skull. “That’s how we ended up here.”

  “I know my father better than anyone. He’s absolutely scrupulous with record-keeping. Every citizenship award, report card, or finger painting I ever did as a kid is filed away somewhere.” Tears were streaming down her face. It was almost impossible to speak with any kind of certainty when she was fighting back desperate sobs, but she tried her absolute best. “If the information you want exists, then I can get it for you.”

  “She’s stalling,” Savage said, but even he didn’t sound completely convinced of his own words. “This is total bullshit.”

  “What if it’s not?” The quiet one’s voice was pitched like it came from far away. She got the feeling that he wanted to separate himself from this as much as he could, even if he wouldn’t put a stop to it. “Maybe she can help. You said yourself that we’re out of options.”

  “You must be dreaming of prison bars.” Savage’s voice was dismissive. She sensed the movement as he shifted closer to Hunt, who still had a gun pointed to the back of her head. “You can’t believe a word she says.”

  “What do you have to lose?” She was practically begging.

  A hard hand on her back shoved her forward so she had to catch herself with her hands. Bits of gravel embedded painfully into her palms. Savage followed her down and leaned in close enough to hiss angrily into her ear.

  “What do we have to lose? Our lives, our freedom, any chance of succeeding in our mission. Everything. That’s what the fuck we have to lose.” He grabbed a handful of her hair and ripped her head painfully to the side until she let out a small sound of pain. “You just want another chance to contact the cops. You wouldn’t help us even if you could.”

  “Please,” she whispered. But she wasn’t talking to Savage; he was already a lost cause. It was the other two that she still had a chance of convincing. “You need me. There isn’t any other way.”

  Silence descended for a long moment and she waited for it to end with the sound of a gunshot aimed straight into the back of her head. Her shoulders tensed in painful anticipation. This was it, she thought. It was all over.

  Hunt sighed. “Get off her.”

  Savage let her go with a muffled curse. She heard him stomp away, feet kicking up a cloud of gravel and dirt that rained over her still-outstretched hands. She didn’t dare look to see where he had gone. Just because Hunt hadn’t killed her yet didn’t mean he wouldn’t change his mind at any moment. It was still too early to say for certain what he would do.

  She was still painfully aware of the fact that there was a gun pressed to her neck.

  “Tell me about these files,” Hunt commanded.

  “There are filing cabinets in our townhouse and in his office back in Tennessee—”

  Savage interrupted. “We searched the townhouse when we snatched her and Stone has already been through their place in Tennessee, and even made a clone of the hard drive in the senator’s work computer. Nothing. She’s useless.”

  “I’m not done,” she snapped. “My father keeps some personal files at his office in DC. Have you searched there? Everyone’s on vacation this week, so it shouldn’t be hard to get into.”

  “He’s not that stupid,” Savage scoffed. “He wouldn’t keep evidence of his crimes locked up in his office where anyone can find them.”

  Sophia turned to glare up at him, forcing herself to ignore the barrel of the gun pressing into her skull. “And maybe that sort of thinking is exactly why he would. You haven’t searched there yet, have you?”

  “No,” Savage groused, glaring at her.

  “Anywhere else?” Hunt pressed. “This is your life we’re talking about, so think hard.”

  She did try to think. There was no doubt in her mind that they were searching for something that simply did not exist. But sending them on a wild goose chase bought her more time to keep breathing until the police finally caught up with them.

  “We have a storage locker in Tennessee. It was taken out under my mom’s maiden name and my dad never had that changed after she died. We keep some antique furniture, family heirlooms, stuff like that there. If he wanted to hide something away that’d be the best place.”

  Hunt shifted his position slightly and the crunch of gravel under his boots was loud in the silence. She could tell from the subtle way he shifted back that this was the first he had ever heard of a storage locker. She’d been in it a dozen times and it contained nothing more incriminating than some old photos of her dad wearing bell bottoms back in the ‘70s.

  “Give me an address.”

  She wasn’t born yesterday. “I’ll take you there.”

  When she mounted the courage to finally turn and look at him, Hunt was staring down at her. The look on his face was assessing, as if he could read truth or falsehood on her face. The storage locker was real enough even if she knew he wouldn’t find what he wanted there. She tried to infuse as much innocence into her expression as possible.

  The men all exchanged looks over her head, but Sophia couldn’t tell anything from their expressions. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Hunt let out a long sigh.

  “Here’s the plan,” he said. “We’re going to split up. You two head to
DC and search the senator’s office. I’m going to take the girl and check out this storage locker.”

  “What if this is all bullshit?” Savage ground out through clenched teeth.

  “Nothing’s changed if she’s lying. The only difference is she’ll get a bullet in her head tomorrow instead of today.”

  Sophia didn’t like the sound of that.

  Concern was etched into the lines of the quiet one’s face, though she got the feeling it wasn’t concern for her specifically. He gripped Hunt’s shoulder. “May I speak with you privately?”

  Hunt didn’t seem happy about the request, but motioned to Savage. “Watch her.”

  Savage took the gun and kept it aimed on her. “No problem.”

  “Don’t shoot her.”

  “You’re no fun.” Savage laughed, and it was a truly terrible sound.

  The two men walked back toward the car. They were still close enough for her to catch bits and pieces of their conversation.

  “—I know what I said, but this is what’s happening now.”

  Hunt’s voice traveled better on the air. She could hear him more clearly than the other man’s quieter tones. The bigger man had replied but she couldn’t make out any details.

  “It’s this or I just put a bullet in her head right now. Tell me which you’d prefer.”

  Another response, soft like a whisper.

  “I’ll be careful. It’s only a couple of days. I can lock her in the trunk if I have to.”

  The two men slowly walked back with a crunch of gravel. Sophia was hauled unceremoniously to her feet.

  “We’ll take this car, in case it got made,” Savage said.

  To her surprise, Hunt’s hand on her arm propelled her away from the car and into the darkness. He must have cat vision, she thought, as they walked a few yards down the gravel road. As her vision slowly adjusted, she saw a narrow road lined with thick trees that could go on for miles.