He could see the car in the garage, the door still standing open as if she had been surprised by something, and he had a good idea what that something was. Inside, there were two men laying on the ground, blood pouring across the wooden planks from head wounds. He didn’t see anyone else. Shifting back into human form, he edged toward the bathroom and eased the door open, but it was empty and seemed unbothered.
Whirling around, he spotted the overturned coffee table. She had managed to get into the cellar, but was she still there?
“Autumn?” he called out, but there was no answer. He grabbed the small flashlight from a shelf by the fireplace and jumped into the hole, pushing the on button to light up his surroundings.
His gun lay on the floor by his feet. It explained what had happened to the two men above. He thought he had hidden it well enough when he had retrieved it from his house as backup during his previous visit home. It had seemed like a good idea to have it in case he were faced with multiple bear shifters at some point. With what had seemed like the passing of the threat, he had forgotten about it and was now glad he had.
Still, where was Autumn? Turning around, he could see the steel of the doors usually hidden beneath a false stone panel. It looked like the rest of the dirt and rock floor, but it slid sideways to expose another exit and somehow, she must have found that too. He could only assume that she had done a bit of exploring after he had left, and who could blame her for that?
He jumped into the exposed hole and worked his way down the narrow tunnel beneath it. It was completely dark. The small flashlight barely lit up the area around him, much less the darkness beyond. He knew there was a light switch that would bath the entire place in light, but he was afraid that if he did and she was down here still hiding from someone, it would expose her. He knew this underground maze well. He had traveled through it many times when he was a boy, his father wanting him to have a good feel for the twists and turns.
Now, it felt like he could feel his heart beating directly against the stone walls of it as he slipped through it, listening for any sounds. There were only three paths to the maze, but two of them wound around back onto the others, leading nowhere. The third lead to a small cave in the woods behind the cabin. It wasn’t big enough to hide in. It wasn’t much more than a dip in the ground hidden by some foliage that grew there, but it was enough to hide that it was a way in and out of the maze that connected it to the cabin.
In the tunnel, there was a section where all three paths intersected. Just beyond that was an iron gate, and only brute force or the correct combination for the lock was going to get anyone through that. It had been a good idea for her to come down there, but there was no way to elude someone unless she managed to double back and get back up to the cabin so she could make a run for the car.
He stood still, waiting and hoping.CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENAutumn-12
Autumn’s heart raced in the darkness of the tunnels. She had been lucky even to get down here. The last thing she had expected upon her arrival back at the cabin was to be jumped by men in the garage. She had tried to shift, but it meant getting out of the car first, and they had her blocked. Then the sting of something pinching her neck, followed by seizures as her body convulsed with electricity.
“Stop, stop!” she had screamed at them. “I’m pregnant. Stop!”
A voice that filled her with terror rang out from behind them. The current stopped long enough for her to catch her breath and focus on the man standing there in the shadows cast by the sun shining through the open doors.
“You’re what?” Trevor asked angrily. “Boy, you don’t waste any time, do you, you little whore? You’ve only been gone about a month and you’re already deflowered and filled up with some man’s bastard? Who is he? A human? Have you really allowed yourself to be defiled by a filthy human?”
“It’s none of your business,” she spat at him.
“Oh, it’s all of my business. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have some worthless little Omega run away from marrying you? Surely you didn’t think I would allow that to go unpunished.”
Autumn thought about shifting again, but there were three of them. They’d tear her apart. What was she going to do? There was nowhere to run, no one to hear her scream. She was trapped.