Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2), Sam Hall [leveled readers .TXT] 📗

as concerned. I took a step towards her, then another when her face suddenly smoothed over, and she said very precisely, “They were prescribed for me, as I suffer from atrial fibrillation. They stop my blood from clotting.” Except her eyes, when they stared up at me, were wide open and frankly terrified. She stank of it, her fear, her breath coming in rapid pants.

“Why do I think if I took you to the hospital and had them run some tests on you, they’d find you fine?” I asked. She just stared mutely at me. Occasionally, the muscles around her mouth would twitch, but even when she parted her lips, no sound came out.

“She’s been coerced,” Aidan said with a frown. “But who?”

“Nancy.” Micah’s arm crossed his chest, his expression damning. “You heard your cousin before. Bridge said she could push Selma hard, turn her into whatever she wants. She was trying to make a lesbian nix into a heterosexual heir.”

“That’s why she wasn’t a good replacement,” Aidan said. “She always smelled off. Not bad, but not something I wanted to get close to.”

I crawled onto the bed, Selma scrambling back, but I shook my head, and when I told her to stop still, she did. She was trembling when I reached out, pulled her blazer and shirt to one side, then the other, looking for mating marks. I checked her wrists, her calves, but she wouldn’t let them bite her there, I realised. Maybe she wouldn’t let them bite her at all, maybe she did the biting.

“Have you found your mates?” I asked more gently. Her answering nod was slow, hesitant. “Some of them?” That was a much firmer response. “Guys, I need you to turn around,” I said as I stared into her eyes, seeing the fire there that was kept artificially banked, but by who? Nance? If it was her, why the hell hadn’t she done the same to me or Dad?

Or had she? I thought about the time I’d coerced her on the steps into not revealing I was a nix. Had I been successful, or was she just playing possum?

“Show me your mating marks,” I said, pushing my will into the words.

Her fingers moved to the hem of her skirt at my words, the movements as she hiked it up jerky and rough. But there they were, three neat bites on the inside of her thighs, which might not be from all of her mates. She may have marked others instead of them marking her, but I couldn’t ask, could I? Her hands jerked her clothes back where they were supposed to be, her whole body shaking.

“It’s OK,” I said, reeling back my dominance, and she seemed to settle at that.

“I need to get back. I walked out of an important meeting for this.” All of Selma’s composure snapped back into place as she got off the bed, smoothing her hair and clothes. She held out a hand to take the packet of pills in Micah’s hand, but he just shook his head. “I need my medication. I could die without it.”

“Then you’ll have scripts and supplies at home,” I said. I walked over and peered at the label. “From the pharmacy over in Berkefeld.”

She dropped her hand, hissing in irritation, before turning to Aidan.

“I’ll be terminating the lease here. Discretion was the key element to this arrangement, and that appears to have been lost. I’ll remove all of my stuff and have the keys back to you by the end of the week. The security deposit will be in my account within three business days, or I’ll pursue this further.”

“Of course,” Aidan replied, looking shamefaced now.

“So Nance didn’t know about this place? About your mates?” I asked as she turned to go.

Selma didn’t answer me, but she met my eyes openly.

“Get out of town. Take your men, get in the car, and get the fuck out,” she said, the swear word sounding weird in her prim tones. “If you stay here, you won’t like the end result.”

“Are you threatening me?” I asked, stepping up to her, but her flinch didn’t bring me any pleasure. She didn’t answer, just turned and stalked out the door.

Micah came and stood by my shoulder.

“We got some answers. Why do I feel like it’s just resulted in more questions?” I said.

“We need to go to this chemist, make sure this is a legit script,” he replied.

“And find her mates. If Nance doesn’t know who they are, they may not have been coerced.”

“And find that camera,” Micah said. “Your dad paid someone to put it in here. He had to know what this place was.”

When we turned to face Aidan, he looked stricken.

“That’s something I might be able to help out with, but we’ll need to go back to the office.”

Chapter 10

“So what will I owe you for this?” I asked as we walked back into his office. “Seems like I’m racking up quite the stack of IOUs.”

Aidan shook his head before falling down into his chair, sighing as he logged into his computer and clicked around until he found what he was looking for.

“This is all the scheduled maintenance completed on the property,” he said, turning the monitor towards us. “Most of it’s the usual stuff. Plumbers when she remodelled the bathroom, electricians when they put in the downlights, the builder who subdivided the property.”

“Who actually owns it?” I asked, peering at the screen, but shock washed through me when I read the text.

“You do now, I assume,” Aidan said. “The estate hasn’t been settled, so I wasn’t authorised to say anything, but your father, he liked to invest in the town and had an impressive portfolio worth a great deal. Saying he owned half the commercial property in town wouldn’t be a gross exaggeration. So when he told me he wanted to add some extra security—”

“You OK-ed it,” I finished for him. “The work was carried out by Beck’s.”

“They set up all the codes and added security