Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

I almost didn't even feelpain as my fist connected with Cal's face the second he stepped into the house.

Quin and Julius rushed to get between us, which was probably a good thing because if they had let me get my hands on him, I would have choked the life out of him.

He lost my mate.

Felix was gone.

And it was all Cal's fault.

Purple bruising was already spreading around his eye as he hung his head. "I totally deserved that. One hundred percent."

"What the fuck, Cal?" Julius yelled. "You were supposed to keep him safe."

"Where were you during all this?" I asked, glaring at Julius, my hands still balled into fists and rage coursing through my veins, begging me to rip something apart.

Our youngest brother hung his head too. "I fell asleep, but I called you the second I woke up and saw the note. I had no idea they left."

Quin still had his hands on my chest. "Nero, breathe. This is bad, but killing Cal won't help us find Felix. And I really hate to be the one to say this, but Felix is a grown man. Cal didn't kidnap him and make him go back to his apartment."

"No, he just let my mate get taken."

I pushed forward, lunging for Cal again, but Quin held me back, and for a second, I was shocked at his strength. He was holding me back all on his own.

"I know. He's also going to help us get him back. I know you're beyond pissed right now, but I'm going to need you to pull it together so we can find Felix."

Quin's words poked the smallest hole in the bubble of rage that was filling my chest, and I deflated a little. The important thing was finding Felix. If we didn't, or if it was too late to save him, I could kill him then. Quin was right. For now, I needed Cal.

I pulled a breath into my lungs through clenched teeth. "Fine. But I swear on everything you hold dear, Caligula, if he's hurt, I'll pay you back in kind tenfold."

Cal's head snapped up at the use of his full name, and it spoke to his level of remorse for the role he played in my mate's kidnapping that he didn't say anything about it.

Good.

He should feel like shit.

I felt like shit.

I felt ready to burn down the world until I found him. Maybe my grandmother's choice to name me Nero was fitting after all. If I had to burn all of Seattle to ash to find Felix, I would, and until he was safe in my arms again, I wouldn't care about any collateral damage. Felix was the only thing that mattered.

"What do you know? Do you have anything I can work with?" Julius asked.

"I've got this." He held up a blue-and-red jump drive capped with a stylized Spider-Man head.

"What's that?" Quin asked.

"It's the thing we went back to Felix's for. He said he needed it. After I chased his kidnappers down the street, I went back inside to make sure they hadn't left anything behind, and I saw this on the floor in the living room. Felix had told me we were looking for a Spider-Man flash drive. That's what this is, right? Figured I'd better grab it before they figured out he didn't have it on him."

Julius snatched the drive from Cal's fingers. "Smart. I'll get to work on this ASAP, but I doubt it's going to help us find Felix. Anything else?"

"How about a plate number?"

"That'll do. You come with me. Quin, you make Nero some tea or some shit." Julius grabbed Cal's arm before he could protest and pulled him down the hall.

"Guess it's just us." Quin lowered his hands from my chest and took a step back. "I've got something a hell of a lot better than tea. Come on."

Quin headed past the stairs and into the room he'd converted into his study. The space was all dark wood and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with antique books and airport paperbacks. Quin's tastes in reading were eclectic. On the opposite wall, he had an array of fancy bottles of bourbon, whiskey, and scotch. He rarely let us sample from his private collection, but he grabbed a bottle with an old man on the label.

"This is some of the best and most expensive bourbon on the market. If I give you some of this, do you promise to sip it like a gentleman instead of chugging it like a Neanderthal?"

I knew shit all about the fancy stuff he drank, but I had a feeling a little alcohol might take the edge off my anxiety over Felix, so I nodded. Hopefully, the plate number Cal had managed to get would give us something to go on. If not, I was ready to search every inch of the city until I found my mate. Quin's suggestion to sip the amber liquid in the glass he handed me made sense. If I was going after whoever had taken Felix, I needed a clear head. Not that a single glass of bourbon, even if it had been the cheap stuff, would have done much to impair my judgment. Hell, I could probably drink a bottle of bourbon on my own and not feel anything more than a slight buzz. Sometimes shifter metabolism was a pain in the ass.

Quin settled into one of the high-backed leather armchairs he'd positioned near the gas fireplace and nodded for me to take the other. I didn't want to be still. I wanted to be out looking for Felix.

"Sit, Nero. Seattle is too big for you to tear apart brick by brick on your own. We need more information so we can target our search and bring Felix home."

Reluctantly, I let my ass hit the chair.

"Can you feel him through your mate bond?" Quin lifted his glass and took a sip, sighing and closing his eyes.

I'd been trying since I'd gotten the call from Cal that Felix had been taken, but everything felt fuzzy like it did when Felix was asleep. Cal had said he was unconscious when the assholes who'd kidnapped him fled, so maybe he was still out.

"I know he's alive, but he's not conscious. I can't feel any of his emotions. He's there, but the connection is weak." I took a drink from the tumbler in my hand. Quin's fancy alcohol was wasted on me. It was too smooth, and the lack of burn as I swallowed did nothing to distract me from the regret that pulsed from my heart through every inch of my body. "I should have claimed him. Then I'd be able to get a better sense of where he is."

After orca shifters fully claimed their mates with a bonding bite, we earned the unique ability to almost be able to see through our mate's eyes during periods of stress or high emotion. Scientists thought it was an evolutionary trait that came from our ability to use echolocation in our whale forms, but the science didn't matter to me. I thought I'd have plenty of time to fully claim Felix. Now, I might be too late to ever get that chance.

"We're going to find him." Quin's tone was matter-of-fact.

"I know we will, but will he be alive when we do?"

"Have a little faith. If there is a way to track him down digitally, you know Jules can do it. And Cal—" Quin held up a hand when I started to protest. My rage over Cal's decision to take Felix out of the house and then to let him out of his sight was still too close to the surface for me to look at the situation rationally.

"Cal, for all his faults, is good at what he does. If he wasn't, he wouldn't have had the foresight to memorize the car's plate number when he realized he couldn't catch up. He fucked up, of that there is no doubt, but he will make this right. You know he will. None of us want to see you suffering when it's been forever since we've seen you as happy and relaxed as you are with Felix."

"Sitting here feels like giving up."

"It's not. It's showing patience. The second we have information to act on, we will."

"We? You're coming with us? I thought you didn't like to get your hands dirty."

Quin's answering laugh was tinged with bitterness. "Which is funny since I'm the only artist in the bunch." He set his glass on the carved mahogany table next to his chair and held up his hands, turning them to show both his palms and the backs of his hands. "My hands are always dirty."

Maybe I never looked at Quin's hands because I was too distracted by the bespoke rest of him. Custom designer suits, handmade Italian leather shoes, accessories from French fashion houses with names I couldn't pronounce if I tried. Everything about Quin was expensive. For the first time, I actually studied what he was showing me. His fingernails were cut short and neatly trimmed, but his cuticles were raw, and the edges of several nails were stained. There were faint paint splatters on the backs of his hands and a healing red cut along his palm. There were nicks and scars dotted among the paint.

He flipped his hand over and ran his opposite thumb along the healing wound. "Gouged myself with a chisel working on a marble bust." He smiled. "Turned out great, though. The buyer had no idea they weren't getting the real one, which I saw safely returned to the private collector it had been stolen from."

I wasn't sure what to say, and luckily, I was saved from having to say anything when Julius ran into the room, Cal hot on his heels. I was on my feet in an instant.

"We found him." My brother was beaming. "He's being held in an old warehouse on Harbor Island. One of the other warehouses is being turned into luxury loft apartments, and they had cameras. I was able to tap into them and saw the sedan parked behind a warehouse a little further out."

"Who owns the car?"

Cal shook his head. "It's registered to a Marshall Owens."

"What do we know about him?" Quin asked.

"He died last year, and the car is likely stolen," Cal responded.

"So we still don't know who has him? Who's behind all this?" I wanted to go get Felix now, but if we pulled him out without taking care of whoever had taken him in the first place, the threat would still hang over his head.

Cal's smile was terrifying and feral. "Not yet, but we will find out when we get there, and I promise, they won't be an issue for long."

As Quin and I stood to follow Julius and Cal out of the study, the doorbell rang.