by Lisa Childs
“About you,” he replied. “A lot of people think that, given his particular wounds, you’re responsible for that poor man’s death.”
“That’s bullshit,” Warrick said, irritation fraying his nerves. He didn’t have time for this—not with Reagan still out there—ready to kill again. “Until that night, I’d never seen the man before. I had no reason to kill him.”
Sebastian shrugged. “Some members of packs have been known to go rogue and attack innocent humans.”
He couldn’t deny that happened. He’d had rogue cousins; ones whose hunger for humans had endangered the whole pack. His father had dealt with them…like Warrick needed to deal with his father’s killer.
“I wouldn’t attack an innocent,” he assured him. And he would deal with the other members of his pack who had or would. Now that his father was gone the responsibility to enforce justice had fallen on Warrick.
“You came to Zantrax to kill a man,” Sebastian reminded him. “And a man has died.”
“I didn’t kill that man,” he insisted. “I haven’t killed either man.” Yet.
Sebastian glanced toward Kate’s table again. “Maybe you should just leave it at that. And leave.”
The second alarm sounded its warning; he had no choice anymore. He had to leave. The bar. Not Zantrax. He couldn’t leave the city yet. But he rushed from the club, jostling patrons as he hurried out.
On the concrete stairwell leading from the basement to the street above, he began to turn. Hair poked through his skin as his bones shifted and changed shape, tearing his clothes. He reached the street on all fours, his face close to the ground. And, carried on the cool midnight breeze, he picked up the scent he’d been trying so hard to track. He had caught only the faintest trace of it that night outside Kate’s apartment. And intermingled with the other scents, he wasn’t able to fully distinguish it like he was now.
His nostrils flared as he tracked it from the door of the club to the alley behind it. His enemy had been here. Perhaps the night that Kate had found the body. Warrick had been too concerned about her that night, after her terrified scream, to notice if Reagan had been there then.
Given the strength of his enemy’s scent, Warrick suspected Reagan had been to the club even more recently, though. Maybe tonight. Maybe he had been one of those men who’d watched Kate or who had watched Warrick watch Kate.
Either way, he’d been too close to her. Stalking her before he attacked again?
*
Kate had interrogated this man before and like then, she suspected he wasn’t being entirely truthful with her. If only she could have brought him down to the department…
But since he was her best friend’s husband, Paige’s office in the back of the club had to do. With no windows and brick walls, it was similar to an interrogation room except for the flowers on Paige’s desk and the sophisticated oak-and-leather furniture. Kate perched on the corner of her friend’s antique oak desk while Dr. Benjamin Davison sprawled over the leather couch.
The last time she had questioned him had been in his office at the hospital and in regards to his ex-wife being stalked. Paige had insisted he hadn’t been responsible, and apparently she’d been right. But still Kate thought he’d known more than he had shared with her then.
She suspected the same now.
“So you had already destroyed the animal’s remains when I called that night?” she asked.
He nodded. “I didn’t realize that the dog could have been evidence, so I tossed its carcass in the medical waste incinerator at the hospital.”
She bit the inside of her cheek to hold her temper in check over his wanton destruction of evidence. “But when you met me in the alley that night, you saw the body in the Dumpster. You didn’t think that—” she couldn’t keep calling it a dog; it had been so much more than that. And Ben knew it, too, increasing her frustration with him “—that thing could have inflicted that fatal wound?”
“I’m not a coroner, Kate.”
No, he was a brilliant cardiologist—world-renowned even, but instead of referring her to a vet, he had chosen to work on the animal himself. That was one of the reasons she’d cornered him when he had showed up at the club with his and Paige’s adoptive daughter, Addi. After Paige had taken the child home, Kate had asked to speak privately with Ben.
“It’s too bad you’re not,” she said. “The coroner’s having trouble figuring out just what is responsible for the wounds on Bernie Wilson’s body. Dr. Peterson’s never seen anything like that before.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” Ben said with an involuntary shudder of revulsion.
Goose bumps of unease lifted on her skin. “How is it a good thing that the doctor can’t figure out who or what killed that man?”
“I mean it’s a good thing he’s never seen anything like it before,” Ben clarified. “Then no one else must have died that way.”
She shuddered over the gruesome, painful death poor Bernie had suffered. “Fortunately not yet,” she replied. “But if we can’t figure out what killed Mr. Wilson, we won’t be able to stop him—or it—from killing again.”
“No other bodies have been found?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“So maybe that thing did kill him,” Dr. Davison concluded, as if her case could be solved that easily. With no evidence. If anyone had known she’d tried to get help for that thing after shooting it, they would have teased and harassed her for being too sensitive—or for being crazy. And they’d already been treating her as if she was crazy over shooting Warrick.
But she had wanted to save that thing, so she had called Ben before she’d called in to report finding the body. She’d figured if anyone could save the thing, he could, and she’d trusted him to help her. After all, he was her best friend’s husband. But because he’d also once been Paige’s ex-husband, Kate didn’t particularly like the man. She should have known better than to trust him. After Dwight, she should have known better than to trust any man. Maybe it was more Dwight’s fault than Ben’s that Kate suspected he was lying. Because why would he bother to lie about some animal?
“What breed was it?” she asked. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.” She shuddered, remembering its eerie, glowing eyes and its enormous size. It wasn’t like any dog she had ever seen before. Hell, it had been bigger even than the wolves at the zoo—maybe bigger than the grizzly bear, too.
His broad shoulders lifted and fell in a slight shrug. “I don’t know, Kate,” he said. “I’m not a vet, either.”
“I should have taken the thing to one,” she conceded. But she hadn’t known where to bring it, and she had wanted it to have immediate medical attention. So she’d called Ben. But it had died anyway…
Or had it? Ben had conveniently destroyed the body so that there was nothing left to prove it had ever existed or that she had ever shot it. Just like after she’d shot Warrick and he had disappeared…
But she knew he was real.
And tonight her friends had seen him, too, at the bar. He hadn’t stayed, though. Despite trying to ignore his presence, she had known exactly when he’d left—when he had slipped out right before midnight.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if a vet had worked on it,” Ben assured her. “The animal still wouldn’t have made it—not with that GSW. It was fatal.”
“All gunshot wounds aren’t fatal though,” she said, thinking of the scars on Warrick’s chest and the old and new ones on his shoulder.
“Fortunately not.”
She wholeheartedly agreed or she would have never known the intensity of the passion she’d felt with Warrick James. But how had that beast died from a bullet to its flank and Warrick had survived a bullet to the heart?
She narrowed her eyes and studied the cardiologist. “In the past few months have you operated on anyone with multiple gunshot wounds?”
He nodded. “Zantrax can be a dangerous city. You know that better than most. You investigate all those reports about
shootings.”
“Just the major case ones,” she said. “So I see more of the fatalities than the survivors.”
“Thankfully there are more survivors than casualties,” he remarked with the arrogance of a man—of a surgeon—who was good at what he did and knew it.
She was good at her job, too. Or at least she had been until she’d shot Warrick James and his body had disappeared. “You have to report all gunshot wounds, though,” she reminded him. “Fatal or not.”
“The hospital calls Zantrax PD over anyone who comes into the emergency room with a GSW,” he said. “Just ask your friend Renae.”
The morning after Kate had shot Warrick in the alley, she had asked Renae about any gunshot victims, but the trauma surgeon hadn’t treated any the previous evening. That was another reason Kate had been so convinced he hadn’t survived and another reason her coworkers had been convinced she was crazy. They hadn’t found him at any of the area hospitals or clinics. How could someone have been shot as many times as she’d claimed to have shot him and not seek medical attention?
“I’m asking you, Ben,” she said. “Do you remember treating anyone, a couple of months ago, who had two bullets in his shoulder and another in his heart?”
He whistled as if stunned, but no actual surprise flashed through his dark eyes. And his handsome face remained tense and guarded. “I would have remembered treating someone with those injuries,” he replied—which wasn’t a real response. “I always remember the ones who don’t make it.”
“You’re saying a man couldn’t have survived those wounds?” But she had seen the scars on Warrick’s shoulder and chest from the bullets she’d shot into him. He even had a new wound on his shoulder…where she had shot that beast—in his right front flank or shoulder.
She tensed as shock gripped her.
No. It couldn’t have been…
It wasn’t possible.
But then, according to Ben, it wasn’t possible that Warrick was still alive—that he had survived his injuries. She had been wondering who Warrick James really was.
Now she began to wonder what he really was…
Chapter 8
Warrick rubbed his jaw, the bones aching as he returned to his human form. While outside dawn had broken, here the blinds were drawn, blocking out those first streaks of sunlight. He had been out all night, following the scent of his enemy to every place Reagan had been.
And he had been all around Zantrax. Back in the bank vault. In the alley behind the club. Under the city in the secret passageways. Outside Kate’s apartment. Everywhere that Warrick had been. But never in the same place at the same damn time that Warrick was.
Except for that night Kate had shot him. If only she had known what Reagan had done…
He grinned. It wouldn’t have mattered to Kate; she still would have shot him.
“Damn you, Kate,” he whispered, not wanting to awaken her—just wanting to protect her. “If you would have let me kill him, you wouldn’t be in danger right now.”
“She was right to stop you,” a deep voice spoke from the shadows of Kate’s bedroom. “You would have regretted killing an innocent man.”
His heart hammering against his ribs, Warrick vaulted toward the bed, but it was empty—the sheets left in a tangled heap. Had there been a struggle? Or were the sheets like that because it was how he and Kate had left the bed days ago and she hadn’t made it?
Kate was a slob. But she was also a fighter. She wouldn’t willingly have let this man in her bedroom. Unless…
No, not Kate.
“Where is she?” He turned to the man who remained in the shadows. “What have you done with her?”
“Nothing,” Reagan replied.
“If you’ve hurt her—” Emotion rushed up and choked him, so that he couldn’t spit out the rest of the threat.
“I haven’t even seen her,” Reagan claimed.
“Then why are you here? In her apartment?” In her bedroom? And where the hell was Kate?
“I’m here because I need to talk to you.”
Warrick shook his head in disbelief. “How did you know to find me here?”
“Just the same as you’ve been tracking me, I’ve been tracking you,” Reagan replied. “I know everywhere you’ve been and everyone you’ve seen.”
Sebastian had been right about his enemy being a danger to Kate. Reagan had figured out how much Warrick cared about her—more than he wanted to—more than he’d thought he could.
“I knew you would come back here,” Reagan said, confirming all his fears. “To her.”
“I came back here to protect her from you.” But he probably would have protected her more if he’d kept his resolution to stay away from her. But no matter how much he knew he should, he couldn’t. She drew him as if there was some invisible cable connecting them. He could get only so far before it retracted and pulled him back to her.
“I am no threat to her,” the killer insisted. But his muscular build and empty soul reeked of danger. “I am no threat to you, either.”
Warrick snorted in disgust. “You really have no respect for me—to think I’m stupid enough to fall for your lies.” He leaped across the distance separating them and clasped his hand to the man’s throat. “Now tell me what you’ve done with Kate.”
Fingers clawed at his hand, loosening his grip. “I’m telling you the truth. I haven’t even seen her—well, she hasn’t seen me,” he corrected himself, “since the night that she shot you in the alley.”
“If you are really no threat to me, why did you run off that night?” Warrick asked. “Why did you leave me lying there, bleeding?”
Reagan shuddered. “I knew you would not die. She didn’t have silver bullets.”
“But I did.” After a fruitless night spent tracking Reagan, Warrick had left the gun in a safety deposit box at the abandoned bank. He kicked himself now for locking it away when he needed it and those silver bullets now. But he’d figured he would meet up with his brother there and have the key handy to unlock the box and fire that gun.
“It’s gone,” Reagan said.
“What?” He silently cursed himself for slipping up and revealing that he didn’t have the weapon on him.
“They’re gone now. The gun and the bullets. You won’t find them when you go back to the place you’re staying,” Reagan matter-of-factly informed him, “the place I was staying when you first tracked me to Zantrax.”
While Warrick still carried the key to that box, Reagan was so strong that he probably hadn’t needed it to tear apart even the reinforced metal.
“You took the gun?” Warrick tensed, bracing himself for the bullet that would end his life.
But Reagan brandished no weapon. “I threw it out,” he claimed. “I only kept the bullets.”
Warrick readjusted his fingers, tightening his grip on Reagan’s throat.
Nearly choking, the man gasped, “I—I just want to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.” He’d had enough of his excuses and lies.
“You need to listen to me,” Reagan insisted. “You need to let me explain…everything.”
“You think I believe you came here to talk?” God, he really did think Warrick was an idiot—with good reason. He had been one because he’d once trusted this man. “You’re stalling while something happens to Kate.”
“I wouldn’t hurt her. I wouldn’t hurt you,” Reagan insisted. “I’m not your enemy. I’m your—”
“Don’t say it!” Warrick shouted. “Don’t even think it. You and I are nothing to each other.” But they had once been more; Warrick had once idolized him. He had loved him. Now nothing but hatred filled him. “You’re not going to get away this time.”
Because Kate wasn’t there to stop him. Where the hell was Kate?
“This time I’m going to kill you.”
Reagan shook his head, trying to break Warrick’s hold. “That’s why I took the gun. You can’t kill me like this. Not with
your bare hands.”
“I can tear you apart, so you can’t run away again. I’ll find another gun. I’ll get more bullets.” He would have to call Uncle Stefan again, and the pack leader would think him a fool for not always having the weapon on him. But he hadn’t dared to carry it around Kate, hadn’t wanted to give her a reason to shoot him again. And while he’d wanted to protect her, he didn’t need the gun to stop Reagan from hurting her.
He only needed it to kill him.
“Then you’ll shoot me?” Reagan asked. And the pain that flashed in his dark eyes wasn’t physical.
But Warrick hadn’t considered that he could hurt him emotionally—not the way that Reagan had hurt him. He hadn’t thought his brother cared. Had he been wrong?
He closed his eyes, and that image replayed in his mind—of Reagan standing over their father’s body. The man was a soulless killer. He couldn’t be hurt; he could only hurt.
“I have to kill you,” Warrick insisted.
“For justice for the pack?” Reagan asked. “Or for vengeance?”
Warrick wanted neither now. “Because I can’t let you do any more damage.”
Reagan gasped for breath then lifted his arms and broke Warrick’s hold on his neck. The man was a formidable fighter; until that night in the alley Warrick had never overpowered him before. Reagan outweighed him and outmuscled him.
But he didn’t strike out; instead, he kept his hands raised, as if Warrick held a gun. “You need to let me explain—”
But Warrick was beyond explanations. He was too worried about Kate. So he launched himself at Reagan. The man deflected his blows, but like that night in the alley, he didn’t fight back.
What the hell game was he playing? He didn’t want to physically hurt Warrick—just emotionally destroy him by taking away everything and everyone that mattered to him? How could Reagan have known—before Warrick had even realized it himself—that Kate mattered most?
More than his pride and his honor—Kate mattered.
“Where the hell is she?” he growled. She should have been home by now…unless someone had done to her what had been done to that homeless man. Mauled her and tossed her body into a Dumpster. He shouldn’t have trusted that damn playboy vampire to protect her. He should have protected her himself. “What have you done with Kate?”