At Full Sprint (A BBW Shifter Romance) (Last of the Shapeshifters) (15 page)

“Miles!” she screamed, digging into her purse for her phone. She saw them drag Miles out of the car, haul him around to the van. Her eyes connected with his over a distance of perhaps a hundred meters, and the tendrils of dread squirmed in her chest, wrapped around her heart, and squeezed.

He was thrown into the van, the doors were slammed shut, and the dusty, shabby thing drove off, huffing out puffs of bitter, brackish exhaust.

With her phone in her hand, roaming service connected, Circe realized that she didn’t even know the number for the police.

And that was when she noticed that a second van was coming straight for her. Her gut instinct told her to run, and she double-timed it to the stands, but the van pulled in front of her.

“Argh!” she cried, slapping it with her palm in frustration. More hooded men poured out, surrounding her.

“I’ve got the police on the line,” she said, holding up her mobile phone. “Leave now and you won’t be caught.”

But they ignored her, snatching her phone away, and putting a foul-smelling hood over her head.

Blinded by blackness, she was forced clumsily into the back of the van, and felt her arms bound behind her.

The van lurched off.

Circe struggled to fight the onset of panic.

*

This was probably the most precarious situation Miles ‘Cheat’ Cohen had ever been in.

Or, at the very least,
off
the track.

With a blindfold on, mouth gagged, and hands cuffed tightly behind his back, he knew that all it would take was to simply shift into his cheetah form, and the cuffs would slip off his paws, and the blindfold would fall down around his neck.

But he couldn’t be sure if he was alone yet or not, and if he wasn’t, the moment he started to change they’d probably put him down for good.

Miles wondered if this was to do with his off-season extra-curricular activities, or if it was to do with the fact that he was a shapeshifter. He was fairly certain he hadn’t been kidnapped for ransom… who would they ransom him to?

“Miles Cohen.”

He moved his head up toward the source of the sound. South African accent with a bit of Sierra Leone inflexion… probably to do with his sabotage.

“Or as they call you,
Cheat
. Right, bru?”

Miles mumbled a swear into the rag tied around his mouth. His blindfold was then violently yanked downward, and in his face was a shiny metal switchblade, brandished by a tall and tanned man with stringy arms and a nasty smirk.

“Fank yeo,” Miles said through the gag, and he looked quickly around, but there were no details to take in. It was a plain room without windows, lit only by a single bulb dangling from the center of the ceiling. Stinging sweat trickled down into his eyes.

“You’ve been a busy boy, ay?” the man said, and he pushed the blade against Miles’ cheek and sliced through the gag.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Miles said, spitting out bits of thread still stuck to his tongue.

“No? You sure about that, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s too fucking bad then, bru, because bad things are going to happen to you. You’re going to start regretting what you’ve done soon, eh?”

Miles upped-and-downed the man. He was fairly solid, but nothing he couldn’t handle. The pistol in his belt was worrisome, and the knife in his hand even more so.

“You know how much you cost, Miles?”

“More than you’ll ever make doing what you do.”

The man began to tick off his fingers. “Cars, jeeps, weapons, not to mention the lost trade, huh? I’m surprised you still come out here, Cheat. You know there’s a network in these countries.” He gestured vaguely around with his finger. “It was only a matter of time before you were screwed.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Come on, bru! It’s the digital age, yeah? Even in a shithole country like Namibia they’ve got digital recordings. Somebody recognized you, my mate. You think a hat and sunglasses will hide your face? You think wearing a hospital mask means nobody will recognize you, huh? It was bound to happen. You come back to Africa for years in a row? Coincides with our equipment being sabotaged? Eh? No other reason for a man like yourself to come back to the land that God forgot, huh?”

“It’s my home.”

The man fingered his knife’s point. “And so we’re looking at you, right? Watching you.” He pointed at his eyes with two fingers. “You’re on our radar, huh? And you’re going to videos on YouTube? You know there are only a couple of providers out here, right? Our buyers got fingers in many pies, mate. They own the cables, they own the most of this whole fucking place, bru. Not just one, but many. We’re watching you, and you’re looking at your videos, showing off your… handiwork. You showing it to that lovely girl, huh? Trying to impress her, Cheat? What, you got a small cock or something that being a race driver didn’t do it? She say no or something? There are other ways to impress a girl, my mate.” He grinned nastily at Miles, before pulling the knife’s edge along his thigh.

Miles thought that he had caught her scent, just on the edges of cognition, but he had doubted himself. Though his sense of smell was heightened even in human form, he didn’t
want
to believe it. But now that this man was intimating they got her too… He had to get out. He couldn’t let her get hurt because of him.

“Actually she wasn’t impressed. She told me I was being stupid.”

“Ah, clever girl then, huh?”

Miles nodded. “Very clever.”

“So she didn’t give you any, huh?” The man licked his lips, smirking.

“No.” Miles returned the sordid smile.

“Too bad for you. Can’t say I blame her, though, yeah? You’re a bit dull, huh?” He laughed then, an annoying high-pitched cackle that clashed with his mean exterior. “Couldn’t get a piece of tail before you died. And you’re a fucking superstar race-car driver! That’s funny, bru.” His face hardened. “You
are
going to die, Cheat. You know that, right?”

Laughing, Miles nodded slowly.

“Ah,” the man said, pointing the tip of the knife at him. “You get it, huh? Not so dull after all? You fuck with us, we take your life.” He snapped his fingers. “It’s going to be painful, too. You ready, my friend? Think you can handle it, huh? Think you’re a tough guy, laughing like you’re not afraid, huh? Well, trust me. You’ll be afraid. This isn’t my first go, you know.”

“So what are you waiting for?”

“Can’t start without the boss, can we? You keep flip-flopping, bru. Smart one minute, dumb as a donkey shit the next. But don’t worry, he’s coming, he’s on his way. You’ll get to put on a show for an audience one more time. Just have to be patient, eh?”

Miles didn’t doubt it, and though he was rather enjoying their chat, he decided it was time to at least attempt to get out of his predicament.

“Hey, my mate,” Miles said, imitating and getting the man’s attention. “Will you do a dead man a favor, then?”

“What’s that?”

“I had a big fucking meal today.”

“Yeah? So what?”

“My jeans are really tight. They’re a size too small.”

The man blinked, but there was a look of curiosity in his eye.

“Will you undo the top button?”

“You a fairy or something?”

Miles grinned and shook his head. “No, I’m serious. It’s killing me. Ate sauerkraut at the hotel today. Don’t know why I ordered that shit. Think it was a bit off, because it’s giving me a lot of gas. I mean, just heaps. I’m bloating,
bru
. It’s really uncomfortable. Just help me undo the top button of my jeans.”

The man looked him up and down, unmoving, but before long a smile parted his lips.

“Come on,” Miles said. “I promise I won’t kiss you.”

“Try anything,” he warned, pointing the knife at Miles. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

Miles nodded like he was bored of hearing that. “I know.” He watched as the man approached him, knife out until it was touching his neck. With his other hand, he fiddled with the button until he got it through the fabric loop.

“Oh, God, thanks,” Miles said, exhaling dramatically. “You ever want to do that when you’ve had dinner with a girl but you don’t know her that well?”

The man laughed. “I wear elastic.”

“Smart man,” Miles said. He looked at him, judging his distance. Less than ten feet away, it would be as easy as a single pounce, and a raking paw, or a clamping jaw.

Miles squirmed in his chair, heard the wood creak. Now was as good a time as any. He kicked backward, felt the chair teeter on its two hind legs before falling back onto the floor with a crash. He started the shift, entering the dizzying state that bridged man and animal. His wrists narrowed, hands turned to paws, and slipped out of the cuffs. His jeans, loose, were easy to pull his legs out of, followed by his briefs, and all that remained was his shirt hanging around his neck and body, like somebody had been playing dress-up with their pet.

Miles launched into the air, springing off his two hind legs, latching onto the stunned guard’s throat. He sank his teeth into flesh, felt the rubber of an artery against the roof of his mouth. He tore, and ripped, and was sprayed in crimson while the man let out a strangled, gurgling gasp before collapsing to the floor, holding uselessly onto his neck, knife still in his hand. Miles growled at the man angrily, loud enough so that somebody would hear, and he waited behind the door.

When it inevitably opened, he dispatched the next thug with ease, weaving through his legs to climb up onto his back and rake at the side of the man’s neck. He tore out into the corridor, low and in the shadows, shaking the shirt off his head.

He caught a smell carried on the arm of a breeze. His heart filled with black dread.

Circe!

*

Circe glared. The guard seated opposite her, hilariously wearing sunglasses despite the hour, seemed to be nodding off. She watched as his head dipped lower and lower, and the grip on his gun, an assault rifle the best she could fathom, loosened, so that his hand slid down the barrel before resting on one of the grips.

They had tied her up and left her in the room, and only one man with an accent she guessed was South African had given any orders: “Don’t touch her until after we’ve killed him.”

She wasn’t about to wait that long. Though the thought of them murdering Miles weighed heavily on her emotions, she wasn’t about to let it distract her, either. She had to save her own skin before she could indulge in any sort of sadness.

And, besides, Miles was a cheetah and no doubt had been in trouble before. She had to believe he’d find a way out!

What she didn’t expect to feel in addition to her fear, worry, and near-panic, was anger. It brewed inside her. Miles had made her a fucking target! Why hadn’t he told her all of that sooner? She was incensed, being swept up in this. She was innocent to the whole affair, and it was patently obvious that they had taken her too as a means of getting to him.

What could they possibly want to know? Did he have a team, a crew? Surely once he told them he worked alone, they’d let her go, right?

It dawned on her then that they might not. They might never let her go. If kidnapping was something they did so lightly, was getting rid of risk that big of a step upward?

She began frantically then to move her wrists as much as possible trying to loosen the knot. Doing her best not to make any sound, she attempted to pull her hands through, but realized she’d never manage short of breaking her own thumb, and that was definitely not an option. She continued to wiggle her wrists, growing ever more confident that her guard really was asleep. When he started to snore, it only cemented her conviction to escape
right fucking now!

Realizing that loosening the knot was not going to work, she ran her arm up and down the sides of the back of her wooden chair. She found a rough patch, and twisted, her waist painful, so she could rub the rope binds up and down against it.

Her progress was painstaking, and she had soaked her top through with sweat, and her muscles were constantly on the verge of cramping. But she could feel the rope beginning to fray, and kept at it frantically.

Then, just like that, the rope snapped. It didn’t even make a sound, but her arms shot out to the side, catching her by surprise, and she almost toppled the chair forward. Standing up, she looked at the guard and his gun. She could take it easily, but she didn’t know how to use it. Wasn’t there a safety? She’d have no idea where to look. Plus, there were more men outside, anyway. It would be foolish.

She went to the window instead, and saw a rusty handle that would unlatch it. Testing it lightly with just a finger, the metal creaked, and she knew that she’d never get the window open without making a sound. It was barely large enough to crawl through, too.

“Fuck,” she mouthed. But there was no other option. She picked the chair she’d been strapped to off the ground, and placed it immediately in front of the snoozing guard. That would slow him down.

Counting to three in her head, she took three quick breaths and opened the window. The metal hinges groaned. The guard woke. He got up, tripped over her chair immediately, his gun clattering onto the floor.

Circe climbed out of the window as fast as she could, fell onto the hard, sandy ground beneath it, and then set off running into the night, throwing a glance over her shoulder to see the guard in pursuit.

She’d never outrun him.

The icy fingers of fear wrapped around her throat.

She couldn’t breathe.

*

Miles’ cheetah crept through the house they were in, sticking to the shadows, darting in and out of cones of light from the overhead bulbs. He could smell Circe acutely, and was following the scent, weaving through the corridors of the shabby cement household.

The taste of human blood was pungent in his mouth, and made him sick to his stomach, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He had to get to Circe!

He found a closed door, behind which her smell was stronger, and so climbed onto two hind legs and managed to turn the doorknob with his paws. The door creaked open, and inside he saw two upturned chairs, a gun on the ground, and the window wide open.