“. . . that you’ll never come out,” he finished for me.
“I guess I need to get online, get my résumé together.” I sighed.
“Maybe not. I need someone to run my business office. I hate the office. Jackson’s doing it now but I need him out at the job sites. You’d be helping me out. I can swing your previous salary,” he offered.
He didn’t smile at me but his eyes lit up with delight that went straight to my core. I blinked hard and my mouth gaped open. To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I was shocked, excited, and hopeful all at the same time.
“You could make your own hours. You’ll get health benefits,” he said, finally gracing me with a warm, devilishly handsome smile. His gaze was warm and inviting and my pulse spiked. That smile was just for me. “I know the type of crowd you run with.” He was teasing me, and I didn’t hate him for it. In fact, I kind of liked it.
“Do you mean it?” I breathed, a little girl’s hope in my voice.
“Yes,” he said, irritated. “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, but he waved my appreciation away.
“Now, let’s talk about this body.” The teapot whistled behind him and he waved me away again, shoving off the counter to make me tea. He poured a cup for me and a cup for himself, digging in my cabinet for the box of tea bags as I told him about the scene.
“That isn’t like the others, is it?” he asked as he got the sugar for him and the honey for me. When was the last time I’d had tea? I couldn’t remember.
“No, it wasn’t,” I said as I took the honey from him. “This one was very public. I think he wanted me to get a good look at him, wanted me to find him.” I took a sip of my tea, letting the warm liquid coat my throat and wash away the anguish I’d carried around with me all day.
“Why?” he asked, getting the milk from the fridge. I dug the DVD of the hotel video from my bag and handed it to him.
Striding into the living room with his teacup in hand, comfortable, like he lived here, Dean slipped the disc into the DVD player. He watched in fast forward, leaned in toward the television on the couch with his elbows resting on his knees with the teacup nestled in the palm of his hand.
He paused the video frame as the werewolf turned in the hallway and snarled at the camera. Dean growled at the screen, standing and taking a large step toward the television. The threatening sound made my skin burn, and his power scorched across the room as he raged at the man on screen. I sat on the arm of the chair beside him and waited for his wolf to subside.
“I was gonna have Jade run it through her nifty computer programs and see if she can get me a name,” I said.
The harshness of his growl diminished at the sound of my voice and his shoulders relaxed as he breathed deeply next to me, rolling his shoulders.
“That’s a good idea,” he said, the growl still lingering in his voice, making his words rough. He turned to me and the mix of ice cold Caribbean blue and olive-green mixing in his iris should have made me nervous but I felt more comfortable with his wolf than I was willing to admit. There was something else I needed talk to him about.
“Kurt believes Jade’s his mate,” I said, shuffling my feet as they dangled from the arm of the chair. I glanced away when my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. His eyes watched me too closely and I wasn’t sure why that made me nervous.
“She is.”
“How do you know that?” I asked, folding my arms over my chest in a little protest as I met his eyes.
“The Pack can feel her pull on him. It’s the mate bond,” he said.
“Well,” I said in an almost snotty tone. “Some of us don’t run on instinct and magic. So she might need some clarification.” About halfway through that statement, I realized I wasn’t talking about Jade anymore.
“Really?” he mocked. His tone carried a predatory purr as he arched a dark eyebrow at me. “I think you run on instinct a lot.”
A tingling in low, dark places flourished in my belly as his voice wrapped around me, and through me. I crossed my legs to try and stop my arousal, or maybe to hide it.
His nostrils flared and a twinkle of knowledge lit his eyes as they shifted completely from the deep olive-green he was born with to the strikingly gorgeous Caribbean blue of his wolf. My breath caught in my throat and my muscles tightened under his gaze. I wanted to squirm but I couldn’t seem to turn my eyes from his. My skin hummed as his gaze traveled over me from top to bottom.
I refused to move. He wasn’t my dominant and I couldn’t let him win. I couldn’t let him know that he got to me.
Taking a step forward, he closed the distance between us but I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I wanted to run my fingers up over his chest and down his muscled arms. I wanted to feel all that hard flesh underneath my fingertips. My eyes went wide as I realized the frustrated desire lighting his eyes matched the yearning, making my legs weak and my toes curl. I took a sharp intake of breath that scraped my lungs, like breathing in fiberglass.
He cleared his throat with a soft growl. I averted my gaze and he turned his back on me, his shoulders heaving up and down as he panted.
Chuckling softly to himself in a sad, incredulous chuckle I didn’t understand, he snatched his phone from his back pocket. This wasn’t fucking funny. I couldn’t go through this again. I wouldn’t put Patrick through that again. Dean’s head was bowed but the tension in his shoulders and the white-knuckle grip he had on his phone was clear. He wasn’t okay, either.
“Kurt,” he said without a greeting. “Dahlia is out of work early.” Dean’s voice was a rough rumble as he spoke. “Is Jade around?” His fingers on his left hand flexed and relaxed at his side as the muscles across his back tensed. “Can she come? Dahlia’s got something.”
I took a deep breath and filled my nose with the scent of him. He was angry, aroused, and sad. The whole situation made my chest ache.
“I’ll be out in my truck,” he said with a heavy, resigned breath. He shoved the phone back into his jeans.
He stood very still for several moments breathing in and out, clenching his fingers into fists at his sides. Just as abruptly as he’d turned his back on me, he glanced around my living room. “Kurt left my keys here somewhere,” he growled to himself.
“There’s a set hanging on the peg in the kitchen by the door,” I offered.
He moved around my house hurried and cautious, avoiding anything that could touch his skin like it would burn him. He went out of his way to avoid me. I couldn’t say why but that hurt. I wanted, and needed, him to acknowledge me.
He passed by me with hard, even steps into the kitchen, maintaining his distance. The jangle of keys filled the uncomfortable silence between us as he grabbed the set from the peg with a jerk and headed back my way. He didn’t stop or even slow as he breezed by me, where I still sat on the arm of the couch.
“Dean,” I whispered, knowing that he’d hear me. The house was too quiet for him not to. He stopped dead in his tracks with his hand tight on the doorknob. He wanted out bad, to be anywhere but where he was. And, for some reason, I didn’t want him to go.
“What’s going on here?” My voice quivered over the words and my jaw tightened. His neck and shoulders clenched. He turned, slow and tension-filled, to face me. When he did, he finally met my gaze and my body tightened. I felt the impact of his eyes like I’d been struck by lightning. My synapses sizzled with the pain-filled heat of his gaze.
“I don’t know,” he forced out.
I could smell the lie as his adrenaline spiked, sending the heady, rich smell of his musk into the air. His power prickled at the edges of my aura and specks of crystal blue danced in his eyes as I stared at him, matching him glare for glare. The tension in his body and the liquid change from olive green to crystal blue showed how close h
e was to shifting. It was too close to the full moon to push him more. I nodded and let him reach for the door.
Jerking the knob, Dean swung open the door and almost ripped it off its hinges in his rush to leave. Amblan stood on the other side, her key in her hand to slide in the lock.
“Hey,” she said, frozen as she stared up at Dean’s hard jaw and stiff shoulders.
“Amblan,” he said, strained as he slid by her and marched down the stairs and across the walk.
She shut the door behind her and slipped her keys into her pocket. “What was that all about?”
“Nothing,” I sighed. Better to admit nothing than complete and utter confusion.
“Horseshit! He doesn’t look at you like there’s nothing going on.”
“Am,” I whined.
“I’m just sayin’, be careful. Patrick’s a little stuffy but he loves you,” she chastised.
“Not now, Am, I’ve had a rough day. Why are you here in the middle of the day anyway?”
“Left my laundry upstairs. What happened?” she redirected.
“Lost my job today,” I whispered.
“Oh, Honey, that’s horrible,” she said, plopping down on the sofa beside me. “What happened?”
“I guess I was late one too many times,” I said, forcing a smile across my lips.
“It’s okay, we’ll do this together. You won’t have to worry about anything.” She patted my leg and smiled at me. The light in her eyes was so sure, so positive.
“It’s okay, really. Dean offered me a job.”
She narrowed her gaze on me, like I stood in the center of a search light.
“Don’t worry. Really, this is good. You know I can’t sit around here and do nothing. I have a job, benefits, everything’s taken care of.” I tried to reassure her while convincing myself.
“Uh huh,” she groaned, her lips pursing in disbelief. “Like I said, be careful.”
“Stop worrying,” I said.
“Yeah, yeah. You take care of everybody else. If I don’t worry about you, who will?” she teased.
“Go get your laundry.”
“Fine,” she said, getting to her feet. “But get your stuff. We’re going for burgers. This conversation made me hungry.”
“You’re always hungry.” I laughed.
“Then you shouldn’t be surprised.” She trotted up the stairs to the laundry room and I slumped back in the sofa. I shouldn’t go out with her, not with those Strays on the loose but I couldn’t sit here either and think about Dean, Patrick, or Danny. At least for a little while, I could forget over burgers with Am.
Heaving myself up off the sofa, I grabbed my bag and waited for Am to get down with her laundry. Strays, werewolves, and vampires be damned. I was going out for burgers with my friend.
“Shut the door,” Jade whispered as she sat down and fired up the command center. Kurt was upstairs and if she didn’t want Kurt to hear it, it must have been about Jackson.
I did as she asked and came over to the computers, plugging in my iPod and switching it to Slayer, blaring the death metal in the tiny space.
“I heard you had a busy day,” she said.
“You have no idea,” I said as I plopped down next to her. Dean didn’t say anything to them over the phone but Jade’s Maserati had been parked in front of my house a long time before she and Kurt came in the house.
“Anything you wanna tell me?” she asked as she caught a glimpse of me out of the corner of her eye.
“You mean other than the body?” I asked, faking a lighthearted tone that I didn’t feel. The skepticism on her face crinkled her brow as she pursed her lips and narrowed her green eyes on me.
“Yeah, beside the body,” she demanded.
Yep, Dean told them.
“Nope, not a thing,” I said, focusing on the screens as I handed the DVD to her. “There’s one clear shot of this guy and we need to find a name to match the face.” Keep it business and I can forget just about anything, even being shit canned.
“Fine.” She sighed and I heard the disappointment in that sigh. She queued up the last frame of the DVD and worked her magic. The computer blazed to life, running the killer’s facial features through the recognition software.
Jade swiveled in her chair to face me with her arms crossed over her chest and a devious glint in her eye. “So, on a completely separate topic, I’ve found something irregular.” Spinning back to face the computer screens with a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, she brought up another screen of numbers. The list looked like a bank balance sheet.
“What’s this?” I asked, intrigued, as I leaned over her shoulder to see the screen better. She hated that. That’s why I did it.
“Jackson’s bank records.” A proud little grin lit her eyes as she turned to face me.
I was too close and she jumped back. Straightening to my full height, I gave her some space with a stupid grin on my face. She rolled her eyes at my childish antics and continued typing.
“You’re such a good little hacker,” I mocked, patting the top of her head.
“I know,” she replied with an egotistical lilt and a sarcastic smirk. “Do you see this entry here?” She pointed to a line on the screen.
“The $5,000 deposit?” I asked, sitting beside her in another swivel chair as she enlarged the screen.
“Yeah,” she said, scrolling down the page. “It’s then promptly followed by a $5,000 wire transfer out.”
“So?”
“Well, this pattern has been going on every month for about 18 months and the funds are being transferred to three separate accounts. An account in the Caymans, a Swiss account, and believe it or not an IRA.” She snorted in disgust.
I didn’t know werewolves had retirement accounts. I also didn’t know they thought that far ahead. I started tallying the numbers up in my head and froze.
“That’s $90,000. Where is it coming from?”
“I don’t know. All the deposits I’ve seen are cash deposits,” she answered, flipping through another page of his bank records. “I also haven’t been able to crack the Cayman account yet. There hasn’t been any activity on the Swiss account but that Cayman account is a real bitch. They have so many stupid firewalls it gave me a headache last night.”
“I appreciate it,” I said. Spinning round and round in the chair like I was six, I rolled what she’d said around in my mind. “Where is he getting 90K?”
“I don’t know, and the cash deposit thing is really bugging me,” Jade said as she glanced over to monitor the facial recognition program on the other screen. “He doesn’t even deposit the funds at the same branch. They’re coming from all over town so I can’t track his activity,” she bit out.
Jade frustrated was a good thing. She’d try harder, push farther, and dig deeper, annoying everyone in her path.
“Do you think I’m over reacting now?” I asked, still spinning in the chair. Jackson was doing something that he shouldn’t. I felt it in my gut. Catching him might keep someone I cared about safe.
“No, I don’t. I also think Kurt should know. Kurt and Dean,” she chastised. “Now that we know something’s wrong,” she snuck in as she caught my uncertain glance out of the corner of her eye.
I was in no hurry to see Dean again. Every time I was near him, I felt on edge and off balance. No matter how uncomfortable I was, she was right. They needed to know something was wrong in the Pack.
“Let’s call him down,” I said, resigned. I wasn’t going to get any sleep again tonight. That didn’t matter, though. I didn’t have anywhere to be first thing in the morning anymore. A huge weight lifted from my being. For the first time that afternoon, I didn’t regret being shit canned. Not too much, anyway.
Jade called Kurt down and we explained our susp
icions to him. He studied me carefully, straddling the chair next to Jade, his back rigid and his jaw tight.
“What made you suspect him?” he asked.
“He rubbed me the wrong way,” I admitted with a shrug.
When I’d first met Kurt, he was solid but not very dominant. He couldn’t beat Jackson in a fight but now as I watched him, he carried some of Jade’s confidence and some of her chutzpa. When I glanced back at Jade, she seemed to have some of his serenity.
Kurt grabbed his phone from his pocket. He stood and headed upstairs. Halfway up the stairs, he said, “I think you need to come back over here. There’s something Dahlia and Jade want to discuss with you.” He was quiet for a long while before he answered. “That’s a while from now. It’s important,” Kurt insisted. “No, Gaoh. I’m not questioning you,” he said defensively. “Yes, Gaoh.”
He trudged back down the stairs, his heavy boot falls stopping for a brief moment. He probably needed to wipe the confusion I heard in his voice from his face, before he turned the corner and rejoined us.
“Dean said he’d be here later, after Patrick was awake,” he said. There was a question in his voice that I wasn’t about to fathom an answer.
“Don’t worry, Kurt, I think it’s more because of me than because of you,” I said and patted his shoulder as I passed him in the doorway. He sighed in relief as I climbed the stairs. “Let me know when you’ve got something, Jade,” I yelled down the stairs. “I need to take a bath,” I said under my breath.
“You can’t wash him or the Pack off,” Kurt said in a low rumble that I was sure Jade couldn’t hear. Kurt’s head peeked around the door and he met my eyes. He knew why Dean was avoiding me. If I didn’t want to acknowledge it, Kurt would. Hell, if I let him, Kurt might make me actually face whatever was going on and deal with it. I couldn’t let him do that.
Sliver of Silver (Blushing Death) Page 13