Lion's Share

by Rachel Vincent

  Abby grabbed my arm, and I followed her line of sight to see the kitchen window standing open just a fraction of an inch. “What about that one?”

  “I can’t fit through.”

  “I can.”

  “No.”

  “Jace—”

  “No.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and lifted one russet eyebrow at me. “You’d really rather break the glass—vandalizing some poor dead guy’s property—than let me climb through a window and open the door for you?”

  Damn her and her faultless logic.

  “Fine. But don’t touch anything,” I insisted, and she immediately started tugging on the fingers of her right glove. “And leave those on.”

  “They inhibit my fine motor skills.”

  “That’s my condition. Take it or leave it.”

  Abby rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She reached up and slid the glass panel open, then peered through the bottom of the window, gripping the sill in her clown gloves. At five foot nothing, that was the only part she could reach. “I need a boost.”

  A boost. There was probably no way to accomplish that without touching her.

  My heart pounded as I wrapped my hands around her hips, achingly conscious of each point of contact, and I was suddenly glad I was wearing gloves. After my utter lack of willpower the night before, I wasn’t sure I could trust myself with any more skin-to-skin contact.

  Abby glanced at me over her shoulder and her hair brushed my face. “Sometime this month, Jace.”

  But that time, I recognized her words for what they were—a distraction from her rapid pulse. Whatever she was thinking had triggered a physical response she wanted to hide from me, and it was probably a good thing I couldn’t read her mind.

  Yet I wanted nothing more in the world than to know what she was thinking and how I fit into that.

  My hands clenched around her hips involuntarily, and Abby’s soft gasp nearly broke me. That was the sound of unexpected pleasure, and it belonged in a much more intimate time and another place.

  A time and place we would never be in together.

  God grant me strength…

  I lifted her, and got a face full of red curls, and they smelled like sweetened strawberries.

  With a nearly silent groan, I realized that from that moment on, I would mentally associate fruit-flavored desserts with the feel of her hips in my hands and her hair against my cheek.

  Abby braced herself against the sill, then crawled onto the kitchen counter. “Okay, just give me a sec,” she called as she lowered herself onto the kitchen floor.

  I lost sight of her when she rounded the corner, and a second later, something scraped the interior of the back door.

  “The door’s padlocked from the inside,” she called, and I probably wouldn’t have heard her if not for the open kitchen window. “Whoever this guy was, he really didn’t want anyone getting in.”

  “Or out, evidently.”

  “Yeah.” Her voice sounded strained. “I’m gonna have to open a window for you instead.”

  Before I could reply, her footsteps echoed to the left, and I followed from outside the house.

  Something clattered to the floor.

  “What was that?” I called through the thick back door.

  “Sorry!” Abby whisper-shouted as she appeared behind a grimy bedroom window.

  “I thought you went in first to avoid vandalism.”

  She unlocked the glass pane and slid it open. “This place is a wreck. There’s crap everywhere.”

  “What happened to your gloves?” I asked as I climbed through the window.

  She shrugged, and a long red ringlet fell over her left shoulder. “They won’t stay on.”

  I swallowed another growl. “You’re supposed to be helping this investigation, not hindering it.”

  “We’re in, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, and now your scent is all over the windowsill.” I leaned forward to sniff the metal latches. “And on the locks too.”

  “Sorry.” And she truly looked remorseful. No, she looked guilty, as if she’d committed a much bigger breach than a little scent transference. Maybe she was serious about her training after all.

  “This is why you need some experience before you start investigating crime scenes. Just be more careful next time.”

  “I swear.” Abby shoved her hands in her pockets and glanced at the bedroom door. “But it may be a little late for that in the kitchen. And the living room. Also the bathroom.”

  “What?” I sidestepped her and walked through the house, sniffing furniture and walls. Her scent was everywhere except the second bedroom. Even worse, so was Robyn’s, thanks to the jacket Abby wore.

  “How the hell did you have time to touch the whole damn house in five minutes?” I demanded on my way out of the bathroom. “You contaminated the entire scene!”

  I glanced around the living room, ready to give her hell, but Abby was gone.

  “Ab—”

  A sharp cry sliced through my anger.

  “Abby!” Terror ignited my veins like a river of fire, and I raced through the small house, glancing through every doorway. The rooms were all empty. Abby didn’t answer.

  On my frantic rush for the back door, I noticed that the cellar stood open at the end of the hall. Damn it! “Abby!”

  I ran through the doorway and down the rickety stairs. Her scent was on the doorjamb and the stair rail, along with those of at least half a dozen humans. Blood had been dripped on nearly every step, but the scent was dull. It had been dry for days, at least. Maybe weeks. “Abby!”

  The overwhelming scent of blood hit me halfway down the stairs. It was mostly old and mostly shifter. Specifically, stray. And it had come from many sources.

  I found her around the corner from the staircase, frozen in shock. Her pulse was racing, but she looked uninjured. There was no one else in the cellar, but it had clearly seen frequent, recent use.

  Against one wall stood a scarred wooden table, ringed with an obviously hand-carved groove all the way around the edge. The table was stained with old blood and still sticky with fresh blood. To the right stood another, slightly cleaner table covered in barbaric-looking tools. Lined up against one wall were several fleshless, cougar-shaped mannequins.

  But none of that was the source of Abby’s fear.

  I followed her terrified stare to the wall above the bloody table, where a framed corkboard had been hung.

  The board was covered with photographs of Abby.

  SIX

  Abby

  Nonononono…

  There I was, in the top left photo, walking through the quad at school. The leaves were still green and I wore shorts. That picture was from early fall.

  He’d been watching me for months.

  “Abby.” Jace tried to tug me toward the stairs, but I pulled free. My gaze was glued to the corkboard. I couldn’t stand to see the pictures, but I couldn’t make myself look away.

  Bottom row, fourth from the left. I was in profile at a register in the dining hall, paying for three sandwiches and a cardboard tray of bacon. Robyn had always wondered how I ate so much and never got any bigger, but whoever’d taken that shot knew about shifters and our high metabolic rate. That’s why he’d—they’d?—been following me.

  “Abby. Look at me.” Jace stepped in front of me, his hands on my arms, but I stared over his shoulder, still searching the photos for an explanation. For some motivation that would explain why we’d found some kind of creepy Abby-stalker-board in the basement beneath the scene of a murder.

  I’d come expecting to have to cover my scent upstairs, but I’d never been in the cellar. If I had been, the whole thing might have gone down differently. Maybe I wouldn’t be in so much trouble.

  Maybe Jace wouldn’t want to get rid of me.

  In a picture at the bottom left corner of the board, I stood in the parking lot next to Robyn’s car, my pack hanging low and heavy on my back. Mitch and Olsen stood to eith
er side of me, and Danielle was bent over the trunk, arranging luggage.

  My eyes watered. I hadn’t seen any of them since the day that picture was taken, no more than five hours before Mitch, Olsen, and Dani had been slaughtered. Before Robyn had been dragged through the woods to a disturbingly furnished hunter’s cabin for no reason other than that she was my friend. She was bait, intended to draw me to the scene of my own murder.

  Fear cooled my skin like a cold wind. My teeth started to chatter. How could I have missed so much? I was supposed to have everything under control!

  I’d known since the day I’d killed the hunters that they’d been watching me. Their leader, Steve, had actually signed up for my psychology class just to get close to me. He was the one who’d suggested the campsite, luring us into his very backyard.

  I’d fallen into his trap and my friends had paid for my mistake. Now their ghosts were haunting me from a full-color, glossy four-by-six photograph.

  But some of those pictures were taken after I’d killed Steve and his friends. Two of them were taken during finals, just days before.

  A strangling sound caught in my throat.

  Jace took me by the shoulders. “Abby.” That time, when I tried to move away, he pulled me into an embrace, his body pressed the length of mine—a physical shield against a visual horror. “Don’t look,” he whispered into my hair, gently guiding my head toward his chest.

  My temple grazed his collarbone. My arms slid around him. I inhaled deeply, and in spite of all the blood—both old and new—the only scent I registered was Jace’s. He smelled like the forest in winter. Like soap and coffee. And like something wonderfully, indefinably masculine.

  He felt like strength, security, and power.

  I relaxed against him, letting his scent and the feel of him eclipse the horrific implications of that repulsive stalker-board.

  “I’ll take it all down.” The steady thumping of his heart intensified, and for a second, I thought I could feel it through his shirt and my jacket, but that was impossible. Right? “You won’t have to see any of it again,” he whispered. “Come upstairs with me.”

  But when he let me go, his gaze snagged on mine and I got caught on that fierce connection, like a bug drawn toward a light. I knew better than to touch him again, but I couldn’t make myself back away.

  “I never should have brought you here.” His voice was so raw, it hurt to hear. “I’m sorry. You should never have seen this.”

  “It’s my fault.” But I knew before the words were even out that he wouldn’t understand them. I wasn’t giving him a chance to understand. I couldn’t give him that chance.

  Jace’s brows rose. “Believe it or not, I know how to say no. Even to you.” A small smile tugged at one corner of his beautiful mouth, and I was suddenly crippled by the memory of that midnight kiss in the woods.

  I would never get to kiss Jace again.

  All at once, the air seemed too thick to breathe. I was going to marry Brian, and he would want to kiss me, but that would never be like kissing Jace, and every time he tried it, I would remember what kissing was supposed to feel like.

  I was going to spend the rest of my life married to Brian but thinking about Jace. Because that was the right thing to do, and I’d made far too many bad decisions recently. But before that happened, I had to know...

  “Is it hard for you to say no to me?”

  “You know damn well it is.” He stepped closer, and I sucked in a short breath.

  “I’ll try to make it easier.”

  He chuckled, and the sound slid down my spine to pool in more sensitive places. “I don’t think you even know how.”

  That was true. I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that Jace was the only thing in that cellar that didn’t terrify me. As little sense as it made, he felt safe and right. Even though every word he said and every look he gave me shortened the fuse on a bomb that would eventually explode and take us both straight to hell.

  “I’m not doing it on purpose. I just...”

  “I know.” Jace closed the space between us, and his hand slid behind my head. “Some things just can’t be helped.” He leaned down, and I closed my eyes as his mouth met mine. Jace took a slow taste of my lower lip, and when he pulled away I rose onto my toes, chasing him without thought.

  Wrong or not, I needed more.

  I touched my lip, trying to pretend I could still feel his touch, and when I looked up, the heat in Jace’s eyes burned right through me.

  He bent toward me again, and that kiss wasn’t sweet or slow. It was fiery, and hungry, and desperate. It was his hand in my hair and mine on his neck. It was lips, and tongues, and even a little teeth. That kiss was a problem—no use pretending otherwise—and no wrong in the world had ever felt more right.

  Finally, Jace tore himself away from me and stepped back, panic alive in his eyes. As if that kiss might never have ended at all if it hadn’t ended right that second.

  My heart beat so hard, my chest ached. Everywhere he’d been touching me a second before felt suddenly cold and aching. I wanted nothing more out of life in that moment than to rise onto my toes and kiss him again.

  “There. Now we’re even.” He was breathing too hard. His eyes were dilated and his fists were clenched, as if he wanted to reach for me but was fighting the urge. “You messed up, and I messed up. That couldn’t be helped, but now it’s over. This is over, Abby.”

  I nodded, because he was right. Whatever this was, it had to be over. “Okay. Now what?”

  “Now I take care of that.” He gestured over his shoulder at the bulletin board, and that time, when I stared at the creepy pictures of myself, it was to get him out of my head. To forget what we’d just done. Again.

  “You don’t need to see any of this. Go upstairs and let me—”

  “No.” I frowned, still staring at the board. Something was…off.

  “Just let me clean this up, and you can...”

  I didn’t hear the rest, because he’d just identified the problem without even knowing it. “This shouldn’t be here,” I murmured, still scanning the pictures.

  “That’s why I want you to go upstairs.”

  “No, this shouldn’t be here now,” I insisted. “That bulletin board is proof of stalking, which would tell any cop worth his badge that what happened here was more than an animal mauling. If those pictures were hanging when the police came, they would have taken them as evidence.”

  “You think someone put these up after the cops left?”

  I shrugged. “Or someone put them back up.”

  “Maybe they left a signature.” Jace leaned over the table, careful not to touch it. He inhaled deeply, then moved down the length of the wood, taking in all the scents. “There are too many to distinguish. Strays. Several of them. And at least half a dozen humans. A couple match the scents from the bedroom—they probably belong to the occupant. I assume the rest belong to the police.”

  “Wouldn’t cops have worn gloves?”

  “Good cops would have. Assuming they recognized this as a crime scene. But if the pictures weren’t here when the police were, they probably just saw this as some hunter’s man cave.” He shrugged, forehead furrowed. “I have no way of knowing which scents belong to the good guys and which belong to the bad guys.”

  “But the cops couldn’t have touched pictures that weren’t here.” I leaned over one end of the table and sniffed the nearest photo, bracing myself against the wall to keep from brushing the gruesome surface of the wood. Something acrid and artificial burned all the way up my nose and into my throat. “Chemicals. These weren’t printed. They were processed the old-fashioned way.”

  “There’s no darkroom here,” Jace said, still studying the pictures. “They were brought from somewhere else.” He pointed at the image of me and my friends by Robyn’s car. “Is that the day of the camping trip?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, that confirms it. This is the same group who went after you in the
woods. We didn’t get them all.”

  “We” hadn’t gotten any of them. I’d killed all three of the hunters who’d slaughtered my friends, albeit against orders. By the time Jace and his men had arrived, there’d been nothing to do but clean up.

  And be there for Robyn.

  “I have to update the council.”

  Panic shot up my spine like electricity along a wire. “If you tell my dad, he’ll call me home.”

  “And I’ll comply. They’re hunting you, Abby. You need to be as far away as possible.”

  “You wouldn’t send any other enforcer away when there’s a killer on the loose. You need every set of claws you can get.”

  Jace crossed his arms. “Don’t try to paint this as a gender issue. I’d send any untrained enforcer someplace safer if he was being specifically targeted. Even the guys aren’t bulletproof.”

  “Okay, but if I’m being specifically targeted, won’t they just follow me? I mean, if they know where I shop, eat, and get my hair cut”—I pointed to each picture as I described it—“don’t you think they know where I’m from? And do you really think I’m safer with anyone else than I am with you?”

  His left brow rose. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

  But I wasn’t just blowing smoke—my Alpha was truly a force to be reckoned with, and his hesitation said he damn well knew it. “Jace, you’d be sending me home to an Alpha twice your age who has a third of your strength.”

  “We’re talking about your father.”

  “Who knows his weaknesses as well as his strengths.” I crossed my arms over my shirt, mirroring his stance to drive my point home. “How many challenges have you lost since you took over the Appalachian Territory?”

  He didn’t have to answer; if he weren’t undefeated, he wouldn’t still be in charge.

  My father hadn’t been challenged in twenty years.

  “Besides, two of my brothers are here, and they’d take a bullet for me.” Not that I’d let them. “And I promise that what just happened...” That kiss. “...won’t happen again. So, don’t use that as an excuse to send me away. Please, Jace.”