Moon Bound Read Online Free Page A

That’s not— Fuck. Where the hell is she, Steven?”
    Fear had started to seep into Cole’s voice and Steven tried not to let it crank up his own anxiety. They’d find her. They had to. “The note didn’t say where she was, just that she needed me. I’m assuming she’s at your parents’ house because she knows that’s the first place I’d look for her. I’m getting ready to go there now.”
    Does she still need me?
    And if she did, what would he do about it? What could he do about it? Nothing had changed.
    “Why the hell did she send for you and not me?” Cole asked.
    Good question . “Are you two fighting again?”
    Cole huffed. “We’re always fighting about something, you know that. We talked two weeks ago. She was in Philly, getting ready to go to work. She didn’t mention anything out of the ordinary. We don’t talk as much as we used to so I only called her three days ago and haven’t been able to reach her.” Cole took an unsteady breath. “What if the Mal caught up with her? What if—”
    “Jesus, Cole. Chill. You sound like a fucking old woman. Pull it together.” There would be time to fall apart later. “The letter was postmarked two day ago.”
    “Two days.” Now Steven heard anger in Cole’s voice. The guy’s mood swings were almost as bad as his had been. “ Vaffanculo . I’m gonna strangle her. Steven, I can’t lose—”
    “No. Just shut up.” He didn’t want to hear the words, didn’t need a reminder of the past. And he knew telling Cole to do anything usually made the man do the exact opposite. “You know Bella. She’s probably gotten out of whatever fix she got herself into but I booked a flight out tonight. It leaves in two hours. I should be at the house by one a.m. Where are you?”
    Cole took a few seconds to answer. “New Orleans. I’ll take the next flight out.”
    “What are you doing in New Orleans?”
    Cole paused again. “ Congress .”
    Shit. Something was going down.
    As king of the lucani , the position he’d inherited when his father and older brother had been killed, Cole had never held congress , a meeting of the leaders of the American versipelli . It was too dangerous for them all to be in the same place at the same time.
    Why now?
    No. Not my business. Not anymore.
    “Can you take the time?” he asked Cole.
    “No. Congress is in less than a week and it’s fucking hard to hide five-hundred fucking shapeshifters in this fucking city!”
    Steven had to laugh. In the world he lived in now, it was a ludicrous statement. Sometimes he wondered—
    No. He couldn’t afford to think about what could have been. “I’ll find her, Cole.”
    What the hell he’d do with her afterward was something different. Because nothing had changed.
    Cole sighed. “Steven…”
    There it was again, that tone in Cole’s voice. The one that made pain ooze from every pore of Steven’s body.
    Vaffanculo , he missed Cole. And Bella.
    Cole sighed again. “I thought you two weren’t talking. Hell, I specifically told you not to talk to her.”
    Yeah, he had. And Steven had listened.
    Idiot .
    “When was the last time I listened to you?”
    Cole’s snort sounded slightly amused. “Yeah, fuck you, ceffo . You never listen to me. Just… Shit, don’t screw with her head. Find her, bring her to me. She needs to be with family.”
    That dig cut him off at the balls. “I am family.”
    The silence from the other end of the phone was deafening. “I know that. Damn it, Steven. Don’t…” Cole sighed one more time. In resignation. “Just find her. And put her on the first fucking plane down here. And Steven…you be on that damn plane, too.”
    * * *
    Four hours after he talked to Cole, Steven walked out of Philadelphia International Airport, picked up a rental car and headed northwest.
    Rush-hour traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway hadn’t changed since he’d been here years ago. The bumper-to-bumper crawl made it difficult for him to concentrate on anything but