Moon Dance (16 page)

“
Where am I?” she
said.

“
That’s not important.” He
began dragging her across the basement.

Dana didn’t want to walk,
but he was strong, and she didn’t want to be dragged either. “What
are you going to do with me?”

The man briskly released one
of her hands from the handcuffs. “Anything we want.” And then he
secured the other handcuff to the pole.

Now, she was just like the
other women here, naked and chained up. What the hell was going on?
“Cole,” she said.

The man raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, Randall brought you in here. Enoch’s been telling him he
should have killed you when he had the chance, but I can’t say
we’re sad to have you.”

Okay, then. So, this man
worked for Enoch. Then… then she was still pretending to have been
captured by Cole. She needed to stick with the plan, even though
Cole had never indicated to her something like this would
happen.

Could he have known and kept
it from her? Maybe Cole wanted her naked and chained in a basement.
Maybe that was all Cole had ever wanted from her.

She was already afraid, but
now she was even more afraid. What had she gotten herself into?
She’d agreed to this scheme to help the SF, but she’d also agreed
because she wanted to be alone with Cole, because she wanted to
have an adventure.

Not this kind of
adventure
, she thought to
herself.

Cole wouldn’t hurt her. She
trusted him.

But maybe she was crazy to
do that. Cole wasn’t exactly the most trustworthy man on earth,
after all. And she still remembered the way he’d kissed her and
touched her earlier, even though he knew it was hurting
her.

Maybe he wasn’t as concerned
about her well-being as she might have liked.

* * *

Cole fought to find
consciousness. He knew that he was lying down
someplace
… someplace soft. Was he in bed?
Had he been sleeping?

No. He sat straight up, opening his
eyes. He remembered everything. The tranqs. Dana.

He was inside an RV, lying
on one of the beds. That made sense. Enoch had always liked to move
around. They were a transient group after all.

Cole stood up. He wasn’t
tied up or otherwise harmed. He moved through the RV to the door,
expecting it to be locked. But it opened under his hand, and he
stepped outside.

Okay, if he wasn’t being
held prisoner, why the tranqs?

“
Morning, sunshine,” said an
amused voice.

Cole whirled, and there he was. Enoch
Borden. Enoch was wearing a white tank-top that showed off the
tattoo on his shoulder. The tattoo was a picture of a wolf snapping
the neck of an antlered buck.

“
Enoch.”

“
Cole.” Enoch was grinning.
“How the hell are you?”

“
Uh… a little groggy. There
a reason that you tranqed me?”

“
Just being cautious,
brother. I had to take your cell phone too, of course. Sorry about
that. We left ‘em back with your car. I’ll get you another
one.”

So, the SF wouldn’t be able
to find them by tracking the phones, then. Great. Enoch was smarter
than Cole had given him credit for.

Enoch held out his arms.
“Well? I haven’t seen you in years. Come here.”

Cole forced himself to smile, stepping
forward.

Enoch pulled him into a bear
hug. “So fucking good to have you back.”

Cole hugged back. Enoch was
always too touchy-feely for his taste. Cole wasn’t much for hugs.
But Enoch was all about the brotherhood of wolves and other
nonsense, so Cole went with it.

Enoch pulled away, resting a
meaty hand on each of Cole’s shoulders. “So, you had a change of
heart after you saw what we did in California?”

“
I did,” said Cole. “It’s
amazing, really. I couldn’t believe how well you managed it. You
killed them all. And no one even suspects wolves.”

“
That’s the beauty of it,”
said Enoch. “And we’re not done. We’re going to level those pigs at
the SF, just wait. Well… you’ll be part of it.”

“
Absolutely,” Cole
said.

Enoch let go of him. “You
want something? A beer maybe?”

“
Sure,” said
Cole.

Enoch swung open the door to
the RV. “I don’t know where the hell Angela is right now. I’ll just
run in and grab it for you, okay?”

“
Um…” How to put this
without raising suspicion? “Dana Gray?”

Enoch swung back around,
rolling his eyes. “Oh, fuck, man. There you go again. You’re like a
broken record.”

“
No, it’s not like that,”
said Cole. “I’m just curious. I went to quite a bit of trouble
kidnapping her in the first place. I’m just wondering what happened
to her.”

“
We put her in with the
other SF whores.” Enoch jumped up into the RV. His voice was
muffled as it filtered out from inside. “Looks like all we got is
Schlitz. That a problem?”

“
No, that’s
fine.”

Enoch reappeared with two cans of beer.
He tossed one to Cole.

Cole caught it. Great. Now,
the thing was going to be shaken up, and it was going to explode
all over him the minute he opened it up. And on top of that, Enoch
had sidestepped the whole issue of Dana, which meant that Cole was
going to have to bring it up again, and that was probably going to
make him look even more desperate. Damn it.

Enoch clapped him on the
back. “Have a seat, brother.” He pointed at a table, which was set
up under and awning that jutted out from the RV.

Cole allowed himself to be led over. He
sat down and set the beer on the table.

“
I’m going to go see if I
can hunt down that sister of yours,” said Enoch, grinning. “Make
yourself comfortable.” He turned and walked off.

Great. Now Enoch was gone.
Where the hell was Dana?

Cole surveyed his
surroundings. It looked pretty typical of one of Enoch’s camps.
There were five or six RVs set up in an arc. Enoch and his men were
all transitory, never really setting down roots. Cole used to
travel with them, after he’d escaped from the SF the first
time.

A few hundred feet away,
there was a crumbling farmhouse. It looked like half of the thing
had been burned away in a fire or something. That probably meant
that they were camping on somebody’s land. Someone who was either
part of Enoch’s inner circle or who worked with him
occasionally.

Enoch knew better than to
trespass just anywhere. Most of his camps were carefully planned
out. They looked pretty settled into this one. There were tables
set up, fire pits surrounded by chairs, and a few tents out beyond
the RVs. Near the tents, a makeshift kitchen had been set up, full
of camp stoves and dishes. A few coolers sat nearby. The people
without RVs, who slept in the tents, probably used the
kitchen.

Ruefully, Cole opened his
beer.

White foam bubbled up over the lip of
the can.

Cole sucked it away.

He didn’t see Dana anywhere,
and he didn’t see any sign of her or any “SF whores,” whatever the
hell that meant. He’d hoped—for a few minutes anyway—that maybe
Enoch had just left her back there in the trunk of the car. Seemed
like something Enoch would do, figuring that if Cole really didn’t
care about Dana anymore, it wouldn’t matter if she were
abandoned.

But after Enoch’s comment
about the SF, Cole had a different idea, and it seized him with
frozen terror.

Enoch didn’t like the SF,
and he’d killed an entire headquarters worth of SF employees. What
if Dana was dead?

The thought of it made Cole
cold and shaky. He’d started this business to save her, to keep her
from getting hurt, and if he’d actually gotten her killed, he
wasn’t going to be able to live with himself.

Enoch returned with Angela in
tow.

When she saw him, Angela’s
features broke into a huge grin. She ran for him.

Cole stood up.

She threw herself in his
arms. “Hey there, Cole.”

He hugged her back.
“Hey.”

She pulled back. “You look
good.”

“
You too.” He couldn’t help
but smile at her as well. Angela was his half-sister. She and their
other half-sister Donna, who went by Deedee, were the only children
of their father Jimmy who’d left Hunter’s Moon Farm before the
crazy bloodbath two years ago. He’d met Enoch through Angela and
Deedee.

“
Glad you came to your
senses, and you’re back with us,” said Angela.

Cole shrugged. “Yeah, well…
here I am.”

Angela sat down at the
table, and Enoch did too.

Cole took a long draught of
his beer and followed suit. “Where’s Deedee?”

Angela and Enoch exchanged a
glance.

“
What? Is she okay?” said
Cole.

“
She left about a year ago,”
said Enoch.

“
She decided she didn’t like
sharing,” said Angela, shrugging.

Angela and Deedee had been
attached at the hip after they left the farm when they were
teenagers. Since they’d been raised in a community where all the
women were married to Jimmy, they hadn’t seen much reason not to
both get attached to the same guy, at least that was the way Cole
had always figured it. Anyway, Angela and Deedee had both been
Enoch’s girlfriends.

“
Good for her,” said
Cole.

Angela glared at him. “God,
you’re so conventional.”

Cole arched an eyebrow at
her. “Really? Me?”

“
She keeps in touch,” said
Enoch. “She helps us out with some things now and then. I wish her
the best.”

“
Me too,” said Angela. “We
miss her, though. Enoch misses her. He feels deprived to only have
one pussy at his beck and call.”

“
Eew,” said Cole. “Can you
not talk about your… in front of me?”

Angela giggled. “It’s so
easy to make you uncomfortable, Cole.”

“
No, he’s right,” said
Enoch. “We should shut up about ourselves. Everything’s same as
always with us. What have you been up to, Cole?”

“
Nothing,” said Cole. He was
wracking his brain for some way to bring the conversation back to
Dana and the “SF whores.” So help him, if Dana was dead, he was
going to—

“
You’ve got to have been up
to something,” said Enoch. “I know you, brother, and you’re not
exactly the type to just settle down somewhere.”

Cole drank more beer. “I’ve
been out in the sticks. Staying off the radar. Getting in touch
with nature. Nothing exciting.”

“
It’s just good to have you
back,” said Enoch. He turned to Angela. “Didn’t I tell you he
wouldn’t be able to stay away? Didn’t I say it?”

“
You did, babe.” She beamed
at him.

They both grinned at him.

Cole took another drink of
his beer. Fuck it, he was just going to have to do it. “So, Enoch,
uh, I just gotta ask. What do you mean by SF whores?”

Enoch clutched his chest.
“You will not let this shit go, will you? You’re still wondering
where she is.”

“
I’m curious,” said
Cole.

“
Man, you’re not over that
bitch at all.”

“
I’m as over her as I’m
going to get.” Cole glared at him. “What’d you do with
her?”

Enoch sighed. “Look, some of
the guys were getting antsy, and I let them take a few of the
bitches from the SF. Keeps ‘em, you know, calm.”

“
You mean you captured women
from the branch out in California?”

“
Yeah,” said Enoch. “So,
they’re the SF whores, and they’re around here somewhere. She’s
with them.”

Shit. What the hell was
happening to Dana? Cole gripped the beer can tighter. The metal
dented. “You’re okay with this, Angela?”

“
Well, we were going to kill
them,” she said. “The way I see it, they’re lucky.”

“
I figured,” said Enoch,
“that if you captured her, you were probably planning on, you know,
having your way with her, if you haven’t done so already, so I
figured that was the best place for her.”

“
Yeah,” said Cole slowly.
“But I wasn’t planning on… sharing her. Guess Deedee and I have
that in common.”

Enoch rolled his eyes. “Oh
for fuck’s sake, Cole.”

Cole forced himself to stay
calm. “Seriously, Enoch. I don’t want your guys thinking she’s open
season, if you know what I mean. I’m a little possessive about
her.”

“
Sure, you are.”

“
Well, do they know that?”
said Cole.

Enoch sighed. “I’ll make a
call, okay?” He dug his phone out of his pocket. “No one will touch
your precious Dana.”

“
Thank you.” Cole upended
the beer into his mouth and swallowed the rest of it.

* * *

“
What’s your name?”
whispered one of the other naked women to Dana.