by Amanda LeMay
He seemed to relax a little, his ragged breaths slowing as his hand found mine.
“So sorry, Jessy, sorry I just sat there. But...I figured Dain had time to get here. Bobby didn’t want you. Always talking ’bout Dain, always wanting one night with Dain. Always sayin’ ‘just once’. You showed up and Bobby freaked.” DJ’s fingers trembled as they skated over his bleeding lips. “Saw GW pull you from Dain’s truck and I knew—Bobby wouldn’t rape you. He’d leave that for later...for GW.”
Dain’s big paw landed on my thigh, his eyes intense with a question. He wanted an answer. I looked at my dad, whose face held the same question, his brows arched high in worry along his forehead.
“No.” I reached out and stroked my hand over Dain’s silky, black fur. “He didn’t rape me.”
Dain’s nostrils flared, then snorted. What he smelled all over me wasn’t only sweat or blood.
I threw a glance over my shoulder. “That was by his own hand.”
Dain’s entire body seemed to relax as he exhaled a long, slow sigh of relief.
Yeah, I know how you feel.
DJ drew in another hitching breath, shivered in my arms, and mumbled through his bloody, swollen lips. “Bobby hates you, hell...just hates women. He flirts. Acts like he loves them, but he don’t. And he don’t have sex with them anymore, either. He loved to watch GW screw ’em. Hated when GW would go off on his own with some chick. Pout. Like GW was going behind his back. Then he’d work out his crazy shit by beating the hell outta me.”
“Listen, DJ, I’m not judging you on who or how you want to have sex, but letting Bobby beat you like that...why the hell didn’t you tell someone?” I shook my head in confusion.
“It didn’t start out like that.” DJ flinched as more tears seeped down his cheeks and across the bruises and open cuts in his face. “It was a game we’d play. We weren’t hurtin’ nobody else.”
“Until now.” I said sharply.
DJ cringed and tried to roll away from me, but I held him firm.
“Don’t move, you’re just gonna hurt yourself, stumbling around.”
He swallowed hard a couple of times before speaking again. “How’d you get away? What happened to them...Bobby and GW?”
“They’re dead.”
“Who...what killed them?” He swallowed again and tensed up, like he was waiting for someone or something to attack him. “I thought I heard...”
“A wolf.”
DJ’s hands clamped down on my arm as his body went rigid with fear.
“It’s okay.” I reached behind me, snagged his denim jacket Bobby had stripped off of him, and wrapped it around his shoulders. “You’re gonna be okay. Nothing is going to hurt you. I’m going to get you some help.”
“My phone,” He croaked out as more tears fell from his swollen eyes. Every bump on him had changed to varying shades of deep burgundy, purple, and blue. His hand fumbled at the jeans that lay across his lap. “My phone...here...my pocket.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
RALPH BODOLF NODDED toward the big, leather wingback chair across from his massive, mahogany desk. “Have a seat.”
I did, and the chair closed in around me, swallowed me in great, brown metal-studded wings, leaving me with no choice but to look straight ahead. Even with Dain’s big, leather jacket covering three-quarters of my body, I hadn’t stopped trembling. The shivers came in waves as those two voices in my head carried on a debate consisting of two lines of dialogue: it could have been so much worse and I know.
I couldn’t agree more.
Now, if I could just stop trembling.
And go home.
And burn my dress.
And shower with a can of cleanser and a steel-wool pad.
And tell Dain I love him more than anything.
Ralph Bodolf closed the door behind me and moved around his desk to settle in his huge, leather swivel chair. The office was a dang library, stacked with legal books decorating three walls. It looked more like a man’s cozy den than a place where he interviewed clients.
Ralph sat forward and folded his hands together on his desk. His resemblance to his brother, Gunner, was remarkable. They both had the same lime green eyes, same body build, same handsome good looks. He wore a black and silver wedding band on his left ring finger that had me wondering for a second if he’d been a Breeder who had retired and taken a mate. Many Breeders chose to mate later in life, as younger ones came into the breeding program. Not that age had much to do with it. Like humans, males could sire offspring well into their old age, especially Breeders. Most wolves aged so slowly that even though the male sitting across from me looked no more than forty at the most, he might actually be more than a century old, with lots of years left to live.
Plenty long enough for him to have dealt with more crime than most human lawyers would ever see in their short lifetimes.
“This room is safe,” he stated quietly. “No one can hear our conversation and there are no two-way mirrors or video cameras. Any and all information that finds its way into the sheriff’s hands will be only what is necessary, without exposing our kind. Do you understand?” His eyes were kind, considerate, and sympathetic.
“Yes.” I inhaled my first deep, calming breath since this entire ordeal had begun.
Like his brother, Ralph Bodolf gave off the unmistakable aura of leadership. Being the second born gave a male with alpha potential a more varied choice in life. He might spend his life serving his older brother, or go out and find some other form of leadership that didn’t clash with his brother’s alpha responsibilities or decisions. He might also move to another pack or build one of his own. Gunner and Ralph Bodolf seemed to have worked out their roles in Comfort quite well.
“From what I could smell, there’s only two bodies buried out at that old barn. Danby gave up the location where Bobby and Gilbert buried most of their victims, way out in the hills off Medina Highway. We’ll leave that to the Kendall County Sheriff’s office to deal with, and with a little help from this,” he tapped the side of his nose, “they’ll be laying quite a few missing people to rest here pretty damn quick.”
“Why didn’t the sheriff pick Bobby and GW up before this happened? I mean, if you noticed they were doing something and people were missing...didn’t you tell them? Clue the sheriff’s office in?” It was something I had puzzled over, riding back to Ralph’s office in his car.
Ralph looked down at his desk as if asking himself the same question.
“It isn’t for lack of trying. The rash of disappearances started happening when Bobby moved out there to GW’s folks’ place and they went on for about two and a half years across several different counties. It all stopped right after DJ hooked up with them. I’ve been around long enough to know sometimes shit just doesn’t happen the way you want it to. Believe me, I shared my suspicions with a few of the officers, but we couldn’t prove anything. Those two sons-a-bitches were damn smart.”
“Bobby had barely started with me. If DJ hadn’t sent Dain a text and tried to distract them by running off...” I choked on the words.
It might’ve been so much worse.
Still, even though DJ did the right thing in the end, he was as guilty as Bobby and GW.
“He may have saved a lot of other people from dying out there, but I’m not totally convinced he wasn’t involved in what was happening. He got scared and paid the price for it. From what that boy told me before the paramedics hauled him away, he’s lucky to be alive.”
“Yes, he is.” I shuddered at the thought of how badly Bobby had beaten him. “Bobby used him as a whipping boy and who knows what else.” And DJ let him.
“It’s not your fault he was hurt. None of what happened is your fault.” He stared at me thoughtfully. “He could’ve told someone, turned Bobby and GW in, but he chose not to.”
I nodded, knowing he was right.
He cleared his throat. “You and Dain...you planning on a mating ceremony any time soon?”
I loo
ked down into my lap. Another wave of shivers traveled through me.
Did Dain still want me? Would he have second thoughts now? Each time he looks at me, would he be reminded of what he’d done to save me? How he had killed? Of what Bobby did to me and what he didn’t do? Another shudder rolled through me and forced out a sudden sob I couldn’t hold back.
“I know what you’re thinking, and you can just back that pony up right now.” Ralph said softly, but firmly. “That male loves you. Hell, he’s already mated to you, doesn’t matter a lick you two haven’t gone through the pack ritual yet, and nothing—not one damn thing—will ever change the way he thinks or feels about you.”
I smiled through my tears, hoping he was right.
“Being the pack lawyer and working with the sheriff over in Bourne, I’ve learned a lot about why people do what they do to one another and I’m gonna tell you right now, what Bobby and GW did to you had nothing to do with you. You are not to blame and taking it personally will not help you get past this. There was already something wrong with those two boys well before you ever came along. Some people are just born evil.” He sat back in his leather chair. “GW and Bobby weren’t always partners in crime. They were rivals in high school and mostly stayed away from each other. That is, until Bobby took GW’s little sister out one night. I don’t know the details, but the next day GW beat the hell out of Bobby right in Sanders’ big hay barn. I tried to get Bobby to press charges and go to the damned doctor for his injuries, but he just smiled, and the next thing I knew, Balfore Sanders had kicked Bobby out of his house and Bobby was living over at GW’s.”
“How long ago was that?”
He looked up at the ceiling for a second. “Come March, it’ll be three years.”
“Bobby was bitten.”
Ralph leaned forward slowly, his palms laid out flat on the big desk as his bright green eyes locked on mine.
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes, absolutely. Bitten on the right shoulder. The scar was well healed. He said it happened on the night of the full moon when he’d taken some sixteen-year-old girl out in the middle of nowhere. He was attacked while they were having sex.”
He sat back in his big chair with a thoughtful look on his face. “GW’s sister would’ve been sixteen back then.” He moved his wireless mouse and after a few clicks, he looked back at me. “Yep. The night before GW kicked Bobby’s ass was a full moon.” His face softened as he shook his head slightly. “Jessy, a wolf bite doesn’t make a man a killer, and it doesn’t explain why GW went along with him. Whatever it was that made those two boys do what they did was already there before Bobby was bitten. It’s important you remember that.”
I drew in a deep breath, which set the shivers off again.
“I will.” I needed to get past this, mate with Dain, and live out the rest of my life with him. Even though I would rather forget what happened out at that barn, I had to remember that none of what I’d lived through was my fault. And damn, if that wasn’t going to be hard as hell.
“Are you ready to tell me what happened?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Now, you start wherever you feel most comfortable, though I do understand none of what you are about to tell me is in any way comfortable, it might be easier if you just tell me what happened rather than me going down a list of questions. Once we’re finished here, I’ll run you on over to the sheriff’s office in Bourne so you can give them your statement.”
I swallowed, trying to clear the lump that had formed in my throat. “Okay.”
I let it spill out of my mouth as if the entire account were only commentary on a horror flick I had seen and hated with every fiber of my being, but knew I would relive in my darkest dreams for quite some time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
IF I WERE SUFFERING from an all-night drinking binge and had just finished purging my guts of whatever poison I’d happily and stupidly consumed, I’d probably feel a hundred times better than I did right then.
And, much like suffering through a massive, energy-draining, hangover, my senses seemed ten times more acute than normal. Each sound amplified and echoed off the walls: the receptionists’ typing, an officer shuffling papers on her desk, the screeching slide of metal drawers from a filing cabinet opening and banging shut. The odor of coffee left too long, the fact that someone in the office had smoked a cigarette in the last couple of hours, a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich stashed at a nearby desk, the stench of Bobby’s sweat and semen through Dain’s heavy leather jacket—all combined, made me sick to my stomach.
I glanced down and fingered the leather-covered buttons.
Might have to burn this as well.
Which was too bad, because I really loved that jacket.
I’d called 911 from DJ’s phone and while I waited for them to arrive, my dad and Dain had slipped outside, leaving only when the sheriff had arrived with lights flashing, sirens blaring, and a load of deputies.
Dain and Dad ran home, cleaned up, dressed, and called Ralph Bodolf to let him know what had happened. Ralph sped out to the old barn and whisked me away while the sheriff’s men investigated the crime scene and the coroner came out to remove two bloody bodies—Bobby Sanders and Gilbert Witherby.
There I sat, on a hard plastic bench in the Kendall County Sheriff’s office.
The sheriff was kind enough to wait until my dad, Maygan, and Dain arrived before pulling me into an interview room. When I finished giving my statement, Ralph led me out to a bench to wait while he talked with Maygan and my dad. Dain had tried to cross the room, but one look from Ralph and he sat back down, his mouth tight as he glared at the floor. Maybe it was protocol to keep interviewees apart.
All I knew was the male who sat across from me, rigid as a marble statue, refused to meet my eyes.
He would need time.
So would I.
At least I wasn’t trembling any longer.
I took a deep breath. The still-tender skin beneath my breasts stung a little. Bobby had slapped that leather strap across my rib cage with all his might. Twice. I’d have a bruise that would heal much sooner than the mental bruises he’d left on me.
A woman had taken pictures. Another woman had swabbed a sample of semen from my back.
I’d sell my soul for a nice, long hot shower and a good, stiff wire brush.
It could have been worse.
I know.
A chair squeaked across the room and Dain was at my side in three long strides.
The clerk at the desk stopped typing on her computer. “I’m sorry, but you’ll—”
Dain cut her words off with a dark glare, sat down next to me, and took my hand, lacing his fingers with mine.
Those beautiful eyes of his locked on mine. His handsome face blurred as my eyes prickled with hot tears. His strong arms surrounded me. His fresh, clean scent overpowered the sickening odor of Bobby’s bodily fluids that still clung to my skin and hair.
“Jessy. My Jessy,” he murmured as he held me.
I leaned into him as the tears poured out and down the front of his shirt, and kept telling myself I was okay. I lived. It could’ve been so much worse. I might’ve ended up as one of those people that lay dead and decaying in that old barn, or out in the hills somewhere.
I was damn lucky.
And I would keep telling myself that until it didn’t hurt so much.
How long would it have taken Dain and my dad to find me if DJ hadn’t sent that text?
How severely would Bobby have hurt me?
How long did he plan on keeping me alive?
I was powerless.
Defenseless.
Completely exposed to whatever he wanted. And if it had gone his way, Bobby had every intention of killing me.
How the hell did I get myself in that situation?
All these questions and more raced through my brain as my heart searched frantically for answers that jumbled and tumbled through my head. Shaking uncontrollably, I co
uldn’t catch my breath. My hands flew around, fumbling for something to hold on to.
“Jessy.” Dain lifted me gently onto his lap. “Sweetheart, you need to breathe.” His fingers lifted my chin, forcing me to look at him. “C’mon, Jess, slow down. Breathe for me.” Tissues wiped across my eyes and beneath my nose as I gasped for breath. More tissues, then his warm fingers slipped into my hair and held me so I couldn’t pull away.
“Tell me where to start to help you stop hurting.”
Praying I wouldn’t see anything but love on his face, I locked my hands around his wrists and held him there as I whispered, “Kiss me...please.”
And he did kiss me, softly, gently, tenderly.
Incredibly sweet, full-lip kisses that took my breath away as they gave me life.
Dain’s mouth dragged me back from the swirling vortex I’d almost sunk into and he didn’t pull away until my ragged breathing evened out.
“You called me ‘sweetheart’.” I sighed into his mouth.
He looked away, then took my hand and kissed it. “Slipped out. I know you hated it when...” His voice trailed off not wanting to say his name.
“It’s different when you say it. Besides, he never called me ‘sweetheart’.”
Dain smiled. Then it faded as his face grew sad and solemn.
He whispered, “You didn’t have to watch.”
I whispered back, “Yes, I did. It was wolf justice. Plain and simple. And when you stand before Gunner, I’ll be right by your side.”
We would both have to stand before the alpha wolf and give an account. Hopefully, Gunner would be lenient in whatever punishment he saw fit to give Dain. Under certain circumstances, killing a human was punishable by death. In self-defense or protecting the pack, it was another story. Still, unless the human was holding a weapon, they were considered harmless. And Dain had killed two unarmed men.