Dual Release by Tara Nina Page B

Whole families were moving into these groups and building new lives. Hoarding supplies, relocating and prepping as if the world were coming to an end. It was a little too creepy in her opinion.
    According to a recent news report, a gang was suspected to have infiltrated one of these compounds and taken it over. But authorities weren’t able to find it. So far it was mere speculation by the media. Looking around at the barbed wire and the occasional shadow of a person perusing the perimeter, she’d bet money it wasn’t a figment of some overzealous reporter’s imagination. Nope. Her gut instinct screamed they’d landed in a bad situation instead of a group of harmless families trying to survive.
    She handed him the binoculars. “You can get a better look if you use these.”
    After a few moments of helping him adjust them to his eyes, she leaned back in the seat. Her eyes hurt from what she saw. What was she going to do and how was she going to get Cait out of there alive? They didn’t have any training for something like this. Hell, they were paranormal journalists, not gangland survivalists. Those guys had guns. She and Cait didn’t. Her heart pounded and her stomach churned. This wasn’t good.
    Should she try to pull the car out of their hiding spot and drive back to the nearest town for help? What if they saw her? Would they chase after them and catch them before they reached help? Her head ached from the bevy of questions torturing her thoughts.
    It’d been a while since she’d checked the cell phone for service. Maybe she’d get lucky and could call for help, otherwise she had no idea what they were going to do. Jenny flipped onto her knees and leaned between the seats, trying to find the device she’d tossed in the backseat in a moment of frustration. She found it, shot upright and hit her head.
    “Damn,” she grumbled in pain.
    Dour caught her as she clumsily attempted to return to her seat. His warm hands circled her slender waist and steadied her. Holding the phone where she could see it, she saw there was still no signal. It was the last straw. She flopped into his lap, landed hard on the binoculars and started to cry. The events of the night overwhelmed her. She and Cait had done a lot of crazy things but nothing as dangerous as this, nothing that meant the difference between life and death.
    “Your brother and my best friend are hostages,” she gasped between sobs. “I have no clue how to save them and no way to call for help.” She leaned into him, letting the tears fall as she curled into a ball in his lap.
     
    He wiggled the binoculars out from under her and placed them on what Jenny had explained to him earlier was the dash. The lass had a right to cry. Och. If he weren’t a man, he’d be crying as well. Life had taken a truly odd turn. One minute he’d been sleeping off a drunken night. The next he was brushing stone and dirt from his face, being told he’d been cursed, getting into a brawl and losing his brathair to a creature called a van. And now he was holding a crying woman.
    If he weren’t so damn confused, having a beautiful woman in his arms would be a fine turn of events. Had he really been cursed? Considering where he was at the moment, trapped in a thing called a car that ran without horses, being cursed was the only answer.
    He doubted their older brathairs had gone to such elaborate lengths to pull a prank on them as they had so many times before on their elders, especially on Ian. Swapping out Ian’s favorite handmade quivers for some he and Donnell made cost Ian a prize buck and almost earned them a firm hand from Gavin. Instead, they’d mucked stables for a week, even though Gavin thought it a fine lesson for Ian. He should’ve checked his weapons before the hunt. The memory brought Dour a moment of joy.
    The lass shifted in his lap, bringing him back to reality. He couldn’t help but inhale her scent. Her hair smelled of strawberries. He liked strawberries. Dour