by Terry Spear
Then she didn’t hear the wolves behind her. Not running toward her anyway. They were suddenly moving away from her, back toward the safety of the house.
Duncan reached her, brushed his body along hers in greeting, and kept running after the two wolves. The other wolf that had been following him dipped his head slightly at her, almost smiling, and she wondered…
It couldn’t be Duncan’s brother, Cearnach, could it? How did he get to her rented villa? They’d missed him at the airport! A taxi. He must have realized they were in trouble.
Her uncle finally reached her and nuzzled her face, catching his breath. As much as she wanted him to rest, she knew they needed to kill as a pack. Together, she and he followed Duncan and his brother into the house, where Duncan began fighting one of the wolves who had chased her, and Cearnach was battling the last of the wolves. Another wolf was waiting for Duncan and Cearnach to wear down before he got into the fracas. That coward Sal.
Damn Sal that he cared more for his blasted money than for werewolf lives or human life, she thought, as she glanced at Kenneth’s dead body.
Duncan growled and bit at the big alpha male that had driven the truck. Cearnach was seeing to the other. Her Uncle Ethan had Sal pinned to the floor, not killing him, knowing they needed to get the money out of him.
Cearnach and the other wolf crashed into a table, a porcelain lamp falling and smashing to the floor. Then the wolf yelped and Cearnach stood over the dead man, panting, then shifted his attention to Duncan, ready to lend aid if his brother needed it.
Shelley would have helped Duncan, but the two wolves were snarling and running into tables and couches, their attacks so vicious that she knew if she got in the way she’d get trampled by the much bigger males.
The wolf turned his back on Duncan and tried to escape. Fatal mistake. Duncan leapt on him, ripping into him, and killed him.
Shelley knew Duncan wouldn’t have let the wolf live, not after he had tried to kill her, his mate, his to protect. Even if he had only wanted to leave and save his own skin at that point.
Duncan glanced at Shelley, making sure she was okay, that his brother was fine, and that Uncle Ethan wasn’t having any difficulty with Sal. Then he loped into another part of the house. Within minutes, he was stalking back into the living room, wearing a pair of jeans too short for his tall height. Lamps and candy dishes were broken all over the floor. Chairs and couches were overturned. Kenneth and two dead wolves, who had reverted to their human forms, lay sprawled on the floor nearby.
“Enough,” Duncan said to Sal. “It’s over. You’ve taken a wolf clan’s money, which you will return. You will also return monies owed to the many others you stole from.”
Sal growled.
“If you do this… although it kills me to make such allowances because I’m certain she’s as guilty as you are, we’ll consent to allowing your mate to live. She’ll be penniless, but she won’t be dead.”
Shelley located Sal’s bedroom, found a closet full of women’s clothes, and willed her wolf’s form to shift into her human one. Then she pulled out a pair of fancy pink sweats trimmed in rhinestones. She wondered if these were Sal’s mistress’s clothes or Carlotta’s. She hurried to dress.
Uncle Ethan and Cearnach remained as wolves, able to attack easier with lethal effect if Sal gave them any more heartburn. Sal had shifted and was now sitting in a bathrobe at his desk in his office with a spectacular view of the beach and pool. Shelley could imagine him accessing and transferring his money with a touch of the keyboard while gloating over the gorgeous view.
Sal snorted and crossed his arms, giving Duncan a steely-eyed glower. “You can’t get the money out of a dead man.”
“Perhaps not.” Duncan motioned to a painting of Carlotta on the wall. “But I have no qualms about going after your mate. The Feds have already stated that they don’t believe she was involved in your crimes. Whether she was or not, she’d have access to the money.”
Shelley thought Duncan was bluffing about Sal’s mate knowing how to get to the money. How would he know for sure?
Sal shook his head. “My mate loved the thrill of the game. Loved wining and dining men with money, wrapping them around her little finger, getting them to agree to grand investment schemes. The greedy bastards were asking for it.”
“She didn’t entertain my brother,” Duncan said hotly.
“Unfortunately, no. If she had, she would have known he was part of a wolf pack and would have left well enough alone.”
“We’ll get our money one way or another. As your mate, she’d have access to all the money, all that has been stolen and in your custody and that which she has control of in the States.”
“I spent a lot of the funds,” Sal said, as if that would get him out of the grave he’d dug for himself.
Neither Duncan nor Shelley believed it. He couldn’t have spent the billions he had purportedly absconded with.
“This reminds me of a time I was in a night class teaching, and all of a sudden all the electricity went out,” Shelley said. “No storms around, nothing to have caused the sudden electrical outage. The next morning I read in the paper how a man had stolen money from a bunch of lawyers, doctors, a judge even, a big-time business man, with a deal that was too good to be true. So all these high rollers invested in his get-rich scheme. Just like yours.
“The thing of it was, ten years earlier, he had murdered his wife, saying she’d just up and decided to leave. Right in the middle of helping her daughter with wedding preparations. He had a mistress and wanted to get rid of his wife. They never found a body, so the police could never pin a murder on him. Everyone knew he had murdered her. The men who had invested in his fraudulent schemes. Even his grown son and daughter knew he’d killed their mother.
“They even went to that show that looks into unsolved murders. But they couldn’t find enough evidence to prove he’d done anything wrong. So disgustingly, he got away with murder. Then a decade later, when he was going to trial for embezzlement and tax evasion and having stolen so many of the local prominent citizens’ money, he couldn’t deal with it. He ran his car into a telephone pole. Killed himself outright so he wouldn’t have to face imprisonment.”
Mouth agape, Sal stared at her. “You think I should commit suicide?”
“Others you’ve ruined financially have done so because of how you’ve destroyed their lives. Their only crime? Believing in your get-rich-quick schemes. Do you feel remorse for any of it? No, you’ve got your beach estate and other residences all over the world, a mistress, God knows how many more, and you’re looking to have another she-wolf for a mate. Do you think Carlotta will be happy about that when she learns of it?”
Sal turned a little gray. For a moment, she wondered if he felt bad about that.
“So after you give up the money, why not do everyone a favor?” Shelley continued.
Sal stared at his computer, a picture of a hammerhead shark prowling the sea filling the screen.
A shark. A predator who was like an eating machine. Who ate the little fish and grew and grew and grew. Who didn’t care about anything or anyone but himself.
“Why did you do it?” Shelley asked. “You were wealthy already. Why would you cheat so many people, make them lose everything they had?”
“They were greedy. None of them had enough. They wanted easy money. They made for easy targets. I wasn’t always well-to-do.” He shook his head. “My dad did the small scams. Taught me everything he knew, then died in a barroom brawl. I wanted to prove that I could do what my dad taught me, except on a much grander scale.” He finally lifted his head and looked Duncan in the eye. “You won’t hurt Carlotta.”
“I give my word,” Duncan said. “She won’t keep any of the money, though. She won’t benefit from your ill deeds or her own. She won’t be hurt unless we learn she’s continuing your scam.”
Uncle Ethan nudged Shelley’s hand. She reached down and petted her uncle’s head, barely breathing, waiting for Sal to
touch the keyboard.
“Wire my clan’s money to my brother, Guthrie, who’s in charge of finances. Then, you’ll be wiring the rest of the money to this account and sending an email with attached files containing the information about the accounts you stole from and the amounts,” Duncan said, hovering over Sal. He glanced over his shoulder at Shelley. “The college where you worked also.”
Then as she and Duncan watched Sal work his magic, Duncan used Sal’s phone to call Ian. “Ian…” He hadn’t gotten anything else out when she heard whooping and hollering in the background at Argent Castle as if some huge celebration was taking place.
Ian laughed, then shouted over the din, “Hell, Duncan, what did you do? Guthrie just gave me the word. The news is spreading like wildfire through the pack. We’ve got our money back. Guthrie has already transferred it to another secure account.”
The sound of all the laughter brought home to her how much this meant to Duncan’s pack. She felt caught up in the overwhelming joy with them. For her college, too, and the staff that would also be celebrating once they knew the money had been returned.
“Just a little wolf persuasion, Ian. We’ll be home soon,” Duncan said over the phone.
Ian said, “Expect a warrior’s welcome.” Then the connection went dead.
“What about all the bodies?” Shelley asked.
Cearnach had disappeared, she realized, and she peeked out of the office door to see that he was hauling a body out the door.
“My brother will take care of them. We can’t let anyone find men that have been killed by wolves,” Duncan said.
Her Uncle Ethan hurried out after him and disappeared into Sal’s bedroom. Then he returned, dressed in a pair of shorts, and helped Cearnach with the remaining bodies. More shark food.
“Show me the balances of each of your accounts,” Duncan said to Sal. When they were all zeroed out, he said, “How do you want to handle this?”
Sal opened a desk drawer and pulled out a gun.
Afraid he’d use the weapon on Duncan, Shelley’s heart lurched. But instead he kept the gun in his lap, pointed at the desk, looked at Shelley, and offered her a bittersweet smile. “I don’t believe your mate will allow me to drive off to locate a telephone or electric pole to run into.”
Every muscle tensed, Duncan was ready to grab the gun, not about to let Sal use it on Shelley or himself.
Sal turned to Duncan. “We could fight wolf to wolf, but it would be no contest. I’d be better off fighting your mate.”
“No deal,” Duncan said.
“I didn’t think so.” Sal raised the gun and pointed at his head.
Bang!
Not expecting it to happen so quickly, Shelley was so startled when he actually pulled the trigger that she jumped and gasped. Sal slumped over his keyboard.
Duncan touched Sal’s neck, feeling for a pulse, waited, then nodded. “Dead.”
They left him there for the police to find.
The time had come for Shelley and Duncan to go to his home in the Highlands. She hoped that she fit in with the rest of the pack and that her Uncle Ethan wouldn’t stir up all kinds of trouble with Duncan’s family.
Which… she was certain he would.
Chapter 21
After the wire transfers and getting plane tickets for the return to Scotland, Shelley, Duncan, Cearnach, and her Uncle Ethan finally arrived in Edinburgh in the morning after an all-night flight. Then they drove for several hours from the airport to Argent Castle.
Exhausted from not being able to sleep on the plane like everyone else was able to, Shelley had gone to bed as soon as she arrived at the castle with the others. She barely noticed that Duncan’s room was so darkly decorated. All that mattered were the big bed and climbing into it, enjoying his masculine smell on the sheets where she promptly drifted off to sleep.
Shelley woke to the sound of something clanging in the distance and realized that it was already late afternoon—and she’d slept for some hours. She rolled off the high mattress—thinking that if she ever got pregnant, she’d never manage by herself—and looked out the arrow slit of a window. She saw a group of men sword fighting, and boys nearby practicing their skills. Everyone was decked out in kilts, no shirts or sashes, just muscled backs and chests and arms as they swung their swords at each other. Her heart did a few triple beats.
She threw on a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, and tennis shoes, and then rushed through the hall and down the stairs. She didn’t want Duncan to give her any lessons in sword training while everyone was in the courtyard, but she did want to get a front-row view of Duncan battling with his clan. How long would they be at it?
She was afraid she’d make it to the inner bailey in time to see them quit for the day. They might not practice all that often.
She flew through the great hall where Ian’s mate, the werewolf romance writer Julia Wildthorn, was speaking with Duncan’s cousin Heather. Shelley had met Heather briefly when she first arrived—so sleepy that she had barely greeted anyone, though they were all smiles and welcoming her to the family. There was talk of a great feast and celebration, a Highland wedding, though werewolves didn’t get married, and the return of their money had everyone in high spirits. Except for Shelley, who’d barely been able to smile and nod before she fell asleep on her feet.
They both looked over at her a little in surprise because of her abrupt appearance as she dashed through the room, not bothering to wish them good morning or anything.
She bolted through the door as she heard Julia say, “She’s worried about Duncan’s training.”
No, not worried. She just wanted to see him fight with men who knew how to wield a sword better than the pirates had on their afternoon cruise in the Caribbean. Well, maybe she was a little anxious, too.
She stalked across the inner bailey, trying not to distract anyone and hoping to observe them unobtrusively. Being wolves and wary of their surroundings, several turned to see her approach and smiled.
Her whole body instantly warmed. She wasn’t used to being around a whole pack of male and female wolves. Even though she was already mated to Duncan, several seemed to appreciate having another female wolf in the pack.
Duncan was fighting Ian farther away, concentrating so hard that neither of them noticed her. Cearnach sauntered over to have a word with her. Guthrie stopped in his fight with another man and watched Cearnach approach her, a small smile on his face. She loved how Duncan’s family had taken her in as if she were one of their own.
“The only one who fights better against Ian is me, lass,” Cearnach said, wiping the sweat off his face with the back of his arm. “Duncan will be all right.”
She’d loved how he had come to Duncan’s and her uncle’s aid on Grand Cayman Island, instead of waiting at the airport for them. She swore he’d worn a small smirk ever since he’d caught sight of her at Sal’s house. She’d been a distraction in Duncan’s mission to return their money, but she had aided him by leading the other wolves off until Duncan and her uncle could kill off the first two wolves.
“He showed me a little of his skill fighting pirates in the Caribbean,” she said, wincing when Ian swung so hard that she could see the shudder of the impact race up Duncan’s arms.
“Pirates of the Caribbean, eh?” Cearnach said, watching his brothers battle it out. “He never said anything about it to any of us.”
“He won. I have to admit when he was fighting four at once, he was a bit outnumbered.”
Cearnach raised a brow as he continued to observe Duncan and Ian. “He’s a warrior at heart,” he admitted. “We couldn’t have been more surprised to hear that he was not only planning to bring home the clan’s money, but also a mate—who he swears is not all wolf.”
She glanced at Cearnach, wondering just what he meant by that. Certainly she was all wolf. A royal. Barely any human roots at all.
He smiled in a way that would have had all the women he encountered swooning at his feet.
“He said yo
u were part mermaid.” Cearnach let his gaze drift over her. “He made us all curious about what made him think so.”
She smiled and looked back at Duncan and realized he’d become aware of her talking to Cearnach. Duncan looked ready to take Cearnach on next and stalked toward them.
Cearnach only grinned. “I believe my younger brother wishes a rematch.” With that last comment, Cearnach went to join Duncan in battle.
Ian and Guthrie came to stand on either side of Shelley as if in protective big-brother mode. She really found it endearing. Ian said, “Cearnach is just being Cearnach, but Duncan is too enamored with you to see that he means nothing by his flirtations.”
Shelley sighed. “Duncan has my heart, no other.”
“Aye, and in time, Duncan will know that he has nothing to worry about where you are concerned.” Ian offered her a knowing smile. “Worrying about you will keep him on his toes.”
Guthrie laughed. “Duncan’s temper will keep Cearnach on his toes. He fought vigorously against you, Ian, wanting to best you as always. Now that he knows his mate is watching and Cearnach had the audacity to speak with her alone, he’s fighting more aggressively than I’ve seen him do in a good long while, especially after having been out here for an hour in training already.”
Maybe Duncan could show her some moves once everyone finished their training, if he could demonstrate some private place where she could practice a little. She really would like to see what it felt like.
“We want to thank you for helping Duncan to have our money returned,” Ian remarked. “This was the first time we were able to pinpoint where Sal had ended up, and when he learned we were after our money—well, we couldn’t have done it without you. We understand that your mother and other uncles will be here within the month and are looking forward to their arrival.”
“Thanks, my laird.”
It seemed odd to call him that, and Ian quickly said, “You’re family. Call me Ian, please.”
“Thanks,” she said, but she still couldn’t call him Ian, not when so many referred to him as their laird. “I’m sure they’ll love it here and I will, too.”