“That man took her. The one she was trying to fall in love with, because you said we had to break up.” Frank was leaning against the wall for support, slurring his words.
Fury ripped through Tate, and he pushed forward, grabbing Frank’s shoulders and pinning them against the wall. Frank’s head lolled, his eyes rolling in his head. “Make sense! Who took her? Give me a name.”
“The actor. The older guy. You said she had to break up with me, so she told me she was just going to make herself fall in love with someone else. She’s been seeing him for weeks now. That scumbag. She was at the mansion, and I followed her into the woods, and he said something about how she had to go with him, and she said no…I don’t remember, she was yelling, something stung me…” He made a loose, flapping gesture with his hand, and Tate saw a small dark spot of blood on Frank’s jeans, like he’d been jabbed with a hypodermic needle.
Tate’s vision swam with rage and panic.
“Hamilton Hooper. I’m on it. Putting an APB out now.” Loch sprinted from the room.
Hamilton. That bastard.
He’d been hanging around the grounds of the Beaudreau Mansion, volunteering to help. Megan always found a reason to disappear when Hooper was on the grounds. Why hadn’t Tate noticed it sooner? Because he’d been so preoccupied with Frank, thinking that it was Frank that Megan was sneaking off to meet.
Megan had come to town several weeks ago to meet one of her cousins. She’d come home wearing tiny diamond stud earrings, and Tate had worried that Frank had brought them for her. Now, he realized that she’d gotten them at the jewelry store. Hamilton had very likely bought them for her then.
Tate rushed out of the room, and found Loch in his office. His phone rang. It was Kyle.
“Have you found her yet?” he asked.
“No. We looked in all the bathrooms, and we’re looking throughout the building and the grounds. Everybody’s looking for her and Schuyler, but nobody can find them.” Kyle’s voice was shaking with panic and anger.
“I’m with Loch. We think Hamilton Hooper took her, and we’ve put out an APB. Keep looking.” Tate hung up.
“Deputies are on their way to his house,” Loch said. “I called the jewelry store. He didn’t show up for work today. His mother doesn’t know what’s going on with him, and my deputy says that woman is so confused that she doesn’t know what decade it is.”
“What do we know about Hamilton?” Tate demanded, pacing.
“We don’t have much on him after he went to Hollywood. He was picked up a few times for soliciting young men for sex in restrooms, and for public sex in a park. He was never arrested for anything violent.”
Loch quickly typed something into his desktop, then he frowned and turned the screen towards Tate.
Loch had called up a copy of Hamilton’s driver’s license, but something looked off.
“Wait a minute,” Tate said. “I don’t think that’s…”
“I know,” Loch said unhappily.
Loch clicked a few keys and the picture enlarged, filling the screen.
The man in the picture wore glasses. The nose with the familiar bump was there, the mouth shape was similar, and he looked kind of the same, but still…
Tate shook his head, and now the panic inside him was full blown.
“Loch,” he said. “That’s not the same man. It looks a lot like him, but it’s not him. The man who’s here in town…it’s not Hamilton Hooper.”
*
Megan felt as if she were floating underwater. The world was swimming. A spot on her outer thigh stung and ached. Her hands were bound behind her back, and they stung and itched. That meant she’d been bound with copper wire, and she couldn’t shift. As a wolf, she could defend herself. Trapped in her human form, she was helpless.
She heard heavy labored breathing next to her and twisted to her side, and her heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach. Schuyler was lying next to her. They were covered with a canvas tarp.
What was happening?
She frantically started kicking at the tarp, freeing her face.
Thick tendrils of fog wrapped around her memory, but it was starting to come back to her now. Frank had come to meet her at the Beaudreau mansion, and she’d realized that she couldn’t make herself fall out of love with him any more than she could make herself fall in love with Hamilton. She’d snuck off to meet Hamilton for weeks, she’d kissed him, but no matter how hard she’d tried, it wouldn’t work. She wanted to love him, just so she could get over Frank, but she couldn’t.
So she’d gone to find Hamilton at the grove where they always met to break things off, but her timing couldn’t have been worse. He’d been acting strange, all panicky and jumpy. He had asked her to leave town with him, to go on the run, but he wouldn’t tell her why. She’d said no. Frank had followed her, and she heard him shouting, and then she’d seen a strange-looking contraption in Hamilton’s hand. A tranquilizer gun.
He’d shot Frank with it. He’d shot her.
The last thing she’d heard was Schuyler’s furious voice, yelling as if from a million miles away.