A branch cracked to her left and she spun.
There was a soft snort to her right and she jerked around again. Fucking bastard was playing with her. Get a grip, she told herself. This was what he wanted, what he enjoyed. Ollie forced herself to freeze, a deep breath building in her lungs. Claire Rawson could be out there alive, he could still be waiting to kill her.
But right now, while she was jumping at every shadow, she was doing exactly what he wanted. What he needed. Fear would make her run, startle. If she wasn’t careful, she could end up another victim tonight.
Ollie closed her eyes with a whimper. Part of her would rather die than make this choice, but she couldn’t give him what he wanted. Whether this kept Claire alive or killed her faster, Ollie didn’t know. She shook her head.
“I’m not playing this game. I’m done.”
Then she turned and walked away, heading back towards her house. She made it a handful of strides when a girl screamed. A long, ragged sound, filled with raw pain. No. Ollie turned and ran for the sound, stretching into every stride until the wolfhound inside her leapt up, filling under her skin. She shifted, the dog pouring out of her, and suddenly she was running on four legs instead of two. Her lean, whipcord body made short work of the distance between her and the agonized scream slicing through the night.
The sound had turned wet by the time she broke through the thicket to see a large, black wolf shaking at the woman on the ground. The rotting stench of silver poisoning filled the small clearing, thick enough to choke. He couldn’t have shot her here because Ollie would have heard the gun. She dashed into the clearing just as the wolf turned and bolted, disappearing into the shadows.
It took everything inside her not to go after him. To stop and shift back to human next to Claire Rawson’s body. She checked for a pulse. Still alive. Oh, thank God. Ollie whispered a silent prayer for the girl as she dug out her phone, pleading with every god out there that Claire Rawson would get to live. Just let us save one. With shaky fingers she called for an ambulance, her free hand wrapped in the woman’s bloodstained grip. In the end, all she had to do was look at the young girl’s eyes to see that she didn’t have a chance.
A sob lodged in her chest as she bent and lay her forehead against the other woman’s while Claire took her last breath.
“I am so sorry,” Ollie whispered.
But sorry didn’t bring Claire back.
***
He shook off the adrenaline at the front door, kicking his boots free of dirt before he twisted the bronze handle and let himself inside. Bosley gave a gruff bark, spooked. The golden retriever came running down the hall, body stiff with threat, barking the entire way. Right up until the dog recognized him and then melted into a wave of wiggles and wags. Dean Winters patted his jean-clad thigh and laughed as the big-headed brute slammed his muzzle up under his hand, greeting him with kisses and happy wooing barks.
Dean set the gun on the table. He’d have to clean it before bed, put the silver bullets back in their special case. Make sure everything was tidy. First, though, the dog needed some attention.
“You were a good boy, eh?” Dean leaned down, giving the dog a thorough pat down. The golden melted under his touch, rolling over to beg for a belly rub. Dogs were simple. They knew masters, knew how to beg. Submission came easily.
“It was a good hunt tonight,” Dean told the golden, grinning as the dog licked eagerly over his chin. The wolf had run, blindly. Desperate. He’d savored her yelps as she bolted through the forest. Loved watching her crumple when the first bullet had ripped through her flank.
He didn’t normally shoot to maim. What was the point?
If he were going to hunt, he liked a clean kill. Old habits died hard after all, and his dad had always liked the animal as intact as possible. But seeing her stagger, desperate to keep running on three legs, and something had clicked inside him. A quiver of anticipation. When he’d finally forced her to shift back... Dean shook his head, his breathing shallow as he forced himself to stand. Eyes bright with the memory.
And then that Hound’s face. Perfect.
Dog and man grinning, they headed down the hall, his boots making soft thuds against the hardwood. Animals stared back at him from the walls, their glass eyes peering out of dead heads mounted down the hall. He paused in front of a grizzly and reached a hand up to cup the bear’s muzzle. That one had been a right fucker to kill.
A shot straight through the heart. The beast had crashed to the ground only feet from him, blood smeared into the dirt. It was talent to get a clean shot on an animal that big.
“Should get you out soon,” he told Bos. The dog could use some practice. It’d been awhile since he’d cleaned out the rifle and taken Bosley down to the pond. The ducks were almost always out this time of year. Good autumn weather making them feel comfy in the water. “Bet you get that thrill when you see those ducks.”
He rubbed the dog under the chin as he plopped down in the old recliner, the house silent around him except for the pat-pat of Bosley’s tail hitting the floor. They dog sat beside him, tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth. “Bet you just get the shivers when you hear the gun crack and see the birds fall out of the sky.”
Dean curled a hand through the long honey-colored fur as anticipation rolled through his gut. The look on that Hound’s face. He grinned. That had been worth it. Taking Clare Rawson all the way out to the Hound’s home had been a pain in the ass, not even the kind of kill he liked to make, but to see her face. Oh. That had been rich, right there. A grin slid over his face, hard and predatory as he glanced down at the dog slumped against his chair.
“You should have seen her. Flinching at every sound, scared shitless.” A shiver danced through his veins at the memory, anticipation heating his blood, and Dean leaned back, his legs spread wide to ease the arousal pressing at his jeans. He’d almost shot her then.
She’d been so scared. Whipping her gun back and forth, startling like a spooked hare every time he’d purposefully put a paw on a branch to make it snap. Then she’d decided to stop, just like he’d known she would when her brain finally kicked in past her fear. It wasn’t terror yet, not the blind, all-consuming fear that he would slowly train her to feel. No, she still had too much control yet for that. But they’d get there.
Holly Lawrence would be a long hunt, with him harrying his prey right into the ground. The anticipation tasted sweet on his tongue, like raw sugar cane, and he savored the flavor of it. The memory of her gray eyes burning with fear, suddenly going hard, angry. The way she’d jerked herself around as if she could just waltz away and head back inside, as if she didn’t have to play.
Dean laughed at that, leaning down to kiss Bosley on his furred head. “Bitch,” he murmured against the soft fur. He’d taught her that lesson real fast. Like with dogs, you had to be hard and firm to get the lesson through their thick heads, show them who was boss. Killing Claire Rawson like that, just when Holly Lawrence had thought she was getting smart, that’d been like taking Bosley by the scruff and shaking him out so hard he pissed himself.
Scared them right the first time.
Dean closed his eyes, reveling in the quiet, the solitude. The peace that came after a good hunt. This was what it was all about. Just him, his dog, and the night air making the room cold. Now he just had to figure out how to keep breaking her. His fingers drummed against the armrest, Bosley’s tail whacking the ground in time with their tempo. What he needed to figure out, he decided, was what was going to make her sweat the most?
What he needed was something to change up his game. An image of the man with her in the woods flashed in his mind. The carefully restrained wolf. An alpha. There was a whole pack to choose from. He’d never picked more than one from any given area, but this, he could make it more personal. Then a new idea wormed in on the heels of that thought, a dark virus that injected itself deep, and Dean leaned forward, a wicked grin on his face. Suddenly eager.
Bosley squirmed closer and pres
sed up against his knee, floppy ears dangling as the dog shoved his drool-wet muzzle under Dean’s hand. It would be the most intense hunt he’d ever had to pull off. He’d have to be careful. But Ms. Holly Lawrence definitely made the game more fun, more interesting. Challenging.
And Dean liked a good hunt.
Chapter Five
Dawn leaked over the sky in ugly golds and red, as if the sky were bleeding from sick, puss-filled wounds. Holly leaned back against a tree, her shoulders sagging under the weight of the night. She hated mornings like this, the hopeless, defeated drudge of a new day. Her partner, Sawyer, stepped up next to her, the lioness looking every bit as exhausted as she felt. “Nothing like another dead body to make a sunrise look like shit.”
Sawyer smiled at that. “Looks like the moon threw up.”
Ollie grinned.“A shitty night makes a grisly day.”
Sawyer stuffed her hands in her pockets and angled her head in the direction of the sun. Ollie watched as it slowly inched up over the horizon, the silhouette of the trees slowly coming into color. On an average day, when she let Star out to romp in the field, it was pretty. She liked to bring out her morning coffee and see the sun wake up and shake out the first few rays. The morning air normally revived her. Today, everything about it just felt sickly.
“For the record,” Ollie started, speaking to her boss before Lennox Donnelly even made it out of the bushes. “I wasn’t out here looking for him. I was letting the dog out to pee before I went to bed.”
“He’s making this personal.”
“Yeah. I got that. I figured it out when he was fucking with me while waiting for her to die.” Ollie fisted her hands at her side. Damn, but she hadn’t seen that one coming. She’d figured out he was playing with her, but it wasn’t until later, with the ME on scene, that things had really started to sink in.
“He didn’t shoot her here.”
Lennox shook her head. “No. He parked his car in a meadow a mile west of here, behind a small stand of trees. It would have been hidden from the main road, but easy to back in and out of. She was bleeding heavily there already. The bloodhounds tracked her to the clearing...she must have run her heart out.”
And the more she ran, the more the silver ate at her blood. Killing her. “I never heard her cry out. If he hadn’t howled—”
“He chased her here, he wanted you to know.”
Lennox’s shoe scuffed dirt, and she blew out a long, slow breath. Almost hesitant, not like her boss at all, and Ollie turned to look the red-haired Hound in the eye. “What are you not telling me?”
“He wanted you to find her alive. To be there when she died. He made sure she’d die, a stomach wound like that—” Lennox gave her head a small shake. A gut wound, with silver already eating through her veins, yeah. Claire Rawson had never had a chance. “I think it’s why he howled. To get you there in time. To make sure you watched her die.”
So Ollie would have one more nightmare to haunt her. She wondered if he’d stuck around to see her hold Claire Rawson’s hand as the girl had taken her last breath. Like a demon in the bush, had he waited? Probably grinning the whole time. Laughing over another victory. He always came back to the crime scene. He’d have been there, watching. She knew it all the way down to her soul. And once again he’d gotten away.
Lennox laid a hand on her shoulder. “There’s nothing more you could have done.”
“Keep saying that.”
Sawyer twisted to look at her, but Ollie shook her head. “Go ahead, both of you. Just keep saying it, but it feels like I should have done more. I know him, and he still got the best of me. Still made me jump. If I hadn’t—”
“Hell.” Lennox shoved a hand through her hair and stepped away. “You are way too close to this case. I keep telling myself to take you off it, but damn. You’re good at your job, Ol. And you’re right. You know him, which is why he’s fucking with you, because he knows you, too.”
Lennox stepped closer, shoving into her space, and Ollie automatically started to move away, yielding, when her boss caught her by the arm. “You also beat him. It might not feel like it to you, but to men like him, they take that shit personally. You beat him. He wanted you dead the night that Rosalie Myers died and you got away. That galls him.”
She knew that. When Ollie was honest enough with herself to admit it, she knew the knowledge that she’d gotten away, that she escaped his hunt, drove him mad. It ate at him. That’s why this was personal now. That was why he messed with her. She’d beaten him, so now he was upping the ante. “But how many have to die before we beat him for real? Why can’t he just come after me?”
“God. I hope no one else.” The words came raw from Lennox even as Ollie saw the truth in the ridgeback’s eyes. There’d be another body. More bodies than either of them really wanted to imagine.
The Hunter after all, was just getting warmed up again.
Lennox scrubbed a hand over her face. “And I don’t want him coming after you, either, Ol. That’s too much like tempting fate.”
The thought of another moon, another photograph of a girl who’d die on the next full moon was almost too much. Ollie lifted a shaky hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. She was tired of the smiles of women who’d die by the end of the month, tired of making phone calls to people who’d lost loved ones. Tired of it all.
“Some days you wonder why you chose to be a Hound,” Lennox said, voice soft. Out of the corner of her eye, Ollie saw Sawyer flinch.
“No.” Ollie shook her head. “Some days, I’m exhausted, and I’m tired of losing, but I don’t rethink my job. I don’t regret begging Brandt to send me to you.” She fixed her boss a hard look. Determined. “He thinks he chose me, but I chose to hunt him first. It’s just that right now he’s winning, and I hate it.”
What she really wanted was to shoot something. To watch the bullets tear through paper and imagine it was the Hunter. “I hate it. But he’d still be killing whether I was doing my job or not. I don’t wonder why I’m a Hound. I know why. It’s to catch assholes like him.”
That made her boss smile. “Good. That’s what I want you to remember. Because we are going to catch him.”
A Hound whistled from further up the field, and the three of them turned to see a pair of lion-shifters standing at the edge of the Enforcement tape, the men watching Lennox with tired eyes. Ollie smiled. “How long have they been waiting?”
“They drove. They didn’t want me running around half-cocked after this bastard any more than they wanted you to.” Lennox’s lips twitched in a small smile and Ollie grinned back, her gaze drifting to the woman’s rounded middle.
She waited for her boss to say it, but she didn’t. Fine. She’d ask first. “When are you going on leave?”
Lennox snorted. “When I’m too big to roll out of bed without help? I’m pregnant, not an invalid.”
She touched the slightly round pooch of her belly. “Besides. You can barely tell.”
“Yeah. Tell that to your men. They look like they want to eat your Hounds for dragging you out here.” Lennox’s lovers were lion-shifters, not exactly known for patience. And they’d seen Lennox through a killer of her own, seen her nearly die. Ollie was sure déjà-vu made it harder for them.
One glance around assured her there was nothing more to do here. No reason to keep them waiting. Ollie took a deep breath and started to head back down the field, her boss and partner trailing after her. She was whipped, ready to crash, but she still had a phone call to make, and an angry man to meet at the morgue.
“They worry about you, too, you know,” Lennox said softly.
“I’m a big girl. Haven’t you taught them anything yet? Big girls can take care of themselves.” That drew a laugh out of Lennox, a rich happy sound which, for the first time that morning, made something seem bright. Hopeful. Ollie glanced at the rounded belly, the miracle growing within. “Are you guessing it’ll be a Rhodesian ridgeback or a lion?”
Either way, the kid was going to b
e a shifter.
“I’ll take either,” Lennox said, leaning over to kiss both men softly on their cheeks.
“Ridgeback,” Kanon said with a grin, the dark circles under his eyes crinkling as he smiled. “Boy, though. Girls are too much of a hassle.”
Tegan gave a grunt of agreement. “Especially if they’re anything like their mother.”
“You both are ones to talk, considering we met while I was trying to arrest one of you and threatening to handcuff the other.”
Ollie shook her head at the banter, the way both men dragged Lennox into hugs, first one and then the other. “Take her home,” Ollie called as she strode away. When Lennox looked ready to protest, she added, “I’ll handle the morgue, Sawyer can wrap up here. Everything else can wait. The pack has processed what it can.”
“You need sleep.”
“And I’ll get some. But the Sanctuary Falls alpha deserves to know now rather than later.” And Claire Rawson’s family deserved to know.
“You don’t have to be the one—”
But Ollie shook her head before Lennox could finish. She wanted this. And something in the way Caine Morgan had let her take control that night, had helped her, even after she couldn’t tell him what he’d wanted to know. He wouldn’t appreciate someone else calling him. More important, what little truth they could reveal, she wanted to be the one to give it to him.
Even if it was only what he’d known all along.
***
Caine stood outside the morgue, back braced against the brick building. He hadn’t bothered to shave. Then again, he hadn’t bothered to sleep. His back tensed as he watched the car approach, the sleek black sedan sliding into the STE-marked spot up front. He’d waited all night, phone in hand, knowing he’d get the call today. Knowing he’d have to tell the Rawsons that their daughter was dead.
Sadie Hart Page 4