Reach for the Sky (Wolffe Peak Book 1)

by Gwen Knight

  A long, drawn-out moan sounded from the floor. Wyatt leaned over his desk with a cocked brow and stared down at his beta. “Lesson learned?”

  Bale groaned and rubbed the back of his head. “Quite emphatically.” Picking himself up, he righted the chair, then plopped back into it, a sullen expression twisting his face. “And I’m fine, thank you. Your concern is overwhelming.”

  “Are you bleeding?”

  He touched his hand to the back of his head and winced. “No.”

  “Then shut up.”

  Sky’s dulcet voice piped up from the corner of the room. “Are you seeing double? You hit your head pretty hard. Do you remember your name?”

  Bale blinked and then slid a coy smile in her direction. “Ah, querida, your concern is touching.”

  Wyatt kept his eyes on his second, his jaw tight. “He’s fine, Sky. Bale, go fetch the others. The sheriff should be here any moment now. Wait downstairs until he arrives. Then bring them all up. I’d like a few moments to speak with Sky. Alone.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath and glanced his way, her teeth nibbling at the corner of her lip.

  Bale gave a terse nod and rose from his seat, the humor wiped clean from his face. He left the room, and Wyatt indicated that Sky should sit.

  “I don’t know.” Her mouth pursed. “What if you decide to push me over?”

  He cut her a sharp glance. “Bale’s used to it.”

  She placed her arms on the armrests and eased into the seat. “Your beta is used to being pushed around by you? Good to know.”

  He cursed and grabbed a pencil from the corner of his desk, idly spinning it between his fingers. “That’s not what I meant.”

  A twinkle of playfulness sparked in her eye. “I know.”

  Wyatt stared. She was beautiful. There was something open and honest about her. And after all she’d been through today, he admired her ability to keep things light. Admired. That was a word he wouldn’t have thought himself capable of. There were so few in his life whom he held in high regard. In one night, Sky had wormed her way onto that short list.

  He lowered the pencil down onto the desk and faced her with brutal honesty. Keep it business. “When Shane arrives, he and my first three will join us.”

  Fear whisked across her face, but she merely nodded.

  “There are things I need to know. If we’re going to stop this bastard, I need all the information.” He silently applauded himself for maintaining a calm and steady voice. It seemed he could be nice when the situation arose. Not that he’d ever felt the need to do so before tonight.

  Her hands shifted into her lap where she clasped them together and gave another terse nod.

  “That means we might have to discuss things that are hard for you to talk about.”

  Another nod. She glanced down into her lap, a stray lock of hair slipping over her shoulder. Her vulnerability punched Wyatt in the gut.

  “I’m not going to apologize for having to ask you the hard questions. This is important.”

  A fourth nod.

  “Damn it, say something. Don’t just sit there nodding,” he growled. All right, so he’d run out of “nice”.

  “I get it, Wyatt.” She cleared her throat and lifted her head. “You don’t need to coddle me. I won’t break.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He glanced at the door and gestured for his men to enter.

  “Ah, chère, glad to see you a little more alert.” Axel sidled up next to her and squeezed her shoulder before taking up his usual post against the far left wall.

  Harley entered next, a giant grin tugging on his mouth as Bale followed behind him. The moment Wyatt’s gaze met Bale’s, he groaned. Whatever had transpired between his men downstairs, Bale and Harley looked a touch too smug for his liking.

  “Sky!”

  Her head snapped up, and she rose from the chair. “Shane!”

  The two embraced. Snarling, Wyatt returned to his computer with the hope of striking that particular image from his memory. His wolf demanded blood, fangs gnashing at the sight of another man touching his mate. Get it together, boyo.

  “One big happy family, eh?” Bale laughed as he strode into the room.

  “Enough. Sit.” Wyatt gestured toward the empty seats. He sure as hell wasn’t going to be the only one sitting. Normally, he was content in his strength, but everything about tonight had him on edge.

  A pile of folders rested in Shane’s lap. At first glance, Wyatt counted four. Three were gray, the fourth a pale blue. Seemed the local enforcement color-coded the offenses.

  “Sky, the floor is yours.”

  Her pained cornflower eyes knocked the breath out of him. It took effort, but Wyatt softened his gaze and offered a small grin.

  Sky blanched at the sight of it. Clearing his throat, Wyatt swallowed the smile. He’d never admit it aloud, but he knew the effect of his scars, so rather than submit her to them, he turned and took up Axel’s previous post.

  “It’s all right,” Shane whispered. “Start from the beginning. Pretend you’re talking to me.”

  She nodded, her messy ponytail bobbing at the back of her head. “It started after my mother’s funeral a little over a year ago.” Her tenuous hold on the armrests broke, and she brought her hands together in her lap, once more.

  “Her mother was a member of the Pacific Coast Pack,” Shane informed them.

  She nodded, her gaze burning a hole through the floor. “The official cause of her death is still unknown. And right now, unimportant.”

  “Chère…”

  She shook her head. “I don’t say that for your sympathy. My mother and I were not on speaking terms. I hadn’t seen her in over ten years.”

  Wyatt shifted against the wall. He hadn’t had a chance to go through her personal file, and he had warned her he would ask questions. “Weren’t you part of the same pack?” It was impossible for two pack members to go so long without speaking.

  She flicked a glance his way. “When I left my pack at seventeen to attend university, my mother refused to speak with me. She felt I had turned my back on them all. I’ll spare you the tiresome details, but eventually, my pack exiled me.”

  Wyatt shook his head. “Can’t gloss over that, darling.”

  She tensed, eyes blazing. “I’m not your darling, and it isn’t important,” she said. “My alpha thought my place was with the pack. I was expected to mate, and when I refused to pick someone, he claimed I didn’t have the pack’s best interest at heart. I was told under no uncertain terms that I was no longer a member. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been managing fine on my own.”

  “Really.” Wyatt’s sardonic tone drew the attention of the group back to him. “Doesn’t seem that way to me. You know, stalker and all that.”

  “Listen, you pompous—”

  Bale cleared his throat. “All right. So you mentioned your mother’s funeral.”

  She threw Wyatt another glare. “After the funeral, I returned home and buried myself in my work. I’d been making such progress with Congress, and—” She shook her head. “That’s not important either. A few days after the funeral, the phone calls started.” Her voice wavered, and she pressed her hands to her cheeks as though to will away unseen tears. “I didn’t think anything of them at first. I thought it was someone from my old pack having a laugh at my expense. It started off as nothing more than silence, but then…”

  “Then?”

  Pain flickered across her face, and Sky turned away. “At first there was only heavy breathing, but then…” A shiver rippled down her spine.

  Wyatt tensed. This didn’t sound right, at all. “Sky?”

  “There’s one particular call I’ll never forget.” She cleared her throat and lifted her head, her gaze lost beyond the window. “It started with panting. I panicked and demanded to know who it was. I—I thought it was someone from my pack. The harassing phone calls hadn’t started until I returned from the funeral, so it had to have been one of them, right?”

  L
ogically, it made sense. Wyatt made a note to check out the alpha and arrange a conversation.

  “And then I heard a soft grunt and a long exhale. I—I heard shuffling in the background. And then…” Her breath hitched. “His moans still haunt my nightmares. I should have hung up the phone, but I was stunned. I sat there, frozen, and listened.”

  “Are you saying he…?”

  She broke, her head dropping forward. “I didn’t want to believe it at first. But then he called again. And again. And every time it was the same.”

  Wyatt’s hands fisted at his sides. What kind of a sick bastard masturbated over the phone? Oh, right, the kind who carves out little girls’ eyes. And didn’t that thought make him all warm and tingly inside? And murderous. Very, very murderous.

  “I did everything I could think of. I reported the phone calls to the police. Shane suggested I record the calls for evidence, and I did, but nothing useable ever came from them. He attempted to track the calls, but again, nothing.”

  “Burner phone,” Harley piped up.

  Sky turned around. “A what?”

  “Prepaid cell phones,” Wyatt grumbled. “Untraceable unless a credit card is attached to them. Of course, if you’re using a burner phone, you wouldn’t attach your credit card to it.”

  Her gaze connected with his, free of contempt this time. “How do you know that?”

  He shrugged. “Go on.”

  “After that, I did the only thing I could think of. I changed my phone number.”

  “Did the calls stop?”

  “For a while,” she admitted. “I thought I was safe.”

  “But?”

  “But then the letters started.”

  Harley pushed off the wall and strode across the room as though he needed to pace in order to think. “What letters?” Wyatt watched as the former FBI agent within rose to the surface. The man all but vibrated with excitement, as though he missed the game.

  “Small notes,” she whispered. She held Wyatt’s gaze, and though he wasn’t the best at offering comfort, he nodded and forced another small smile. “He would slip them under my door. It got to the point where I couldn’t sleep at night, terrified he would break in. The police started doing hourly patrols. They suggested I install a security system, and I did. It even included a camera, but somehow he knew about it. All the tapes they collected, they never caught a glimpse of his face. The only thing I knew was that he was a werewolf. I could smell it on the letters.”

  “These letters…” Wyatt turned the conversation back to them. “What did they say?”

  A furious blush painted her cheeks. “I—I’d rather not repeat them. If you need to read them, Shane has them. I turned them over to him, and his people came and did a sweep of my house. They fingerprinted the door, the stoop, the letters…nothing. They never found a single piece of DNA.” She choked on her next sentence and dropped her head, severing the connection between them. “Until they found his semen on my windowsill.”

  Unadulterated rage swept through Wyatt. Murder, yup, with a side of castration.

  “They ran his DNA, but it didn’t generate a hit, so there wasn’t much more the police could do. At first, Shane assigned a patrol to drive by hourly. But that only lasted so long. He learned their schedule and would come between their shifts. So Shane started staying with me.”

  Wyatt snarled. “With you, as in—”

  “As in on my couch, you ass!” she hissed.

  The sheriff’s tight gaze flicked to Wyatt, his brow lifted as though confused by the purpose of such an inane question. Not that Wyatt had a logical reason beyond the personal satisfaction of learning they weren’t sleeping together.

  “Eventually, we decided it would be best if I moved, so I did. I bought an unlisted two-bedroom house, and Shane moved in permanently.”

  He shivered with rage. Well, wasn’t that a jolly piece of news. The friggin’ sheriff lived with Skylar. He’d noticed the man’s scent there tonight, but he’d thought it nothing more than visits. “Good to know the local law enforcement takes such a personal interest in their cases.”

  Shane blinked. “Excuse me?”

  Sky lurched from the chair and bore down on him. “Listen, buddy. You said you would ask questions, and I agreed, but leave Shane out of it, all right?”

  Wyatt’s gaze flicked down to the finger she’d jabbed into his chest, above his crossed arms. For a moment, he was tempted to drag her into his chest and show her how badly he wanted to leave Shane out of it. His good sense returned, and, instead, he curled a lip and warned her in a dark voice, “Step back, Sky.”

  “No! You’ve been nothing but a condescending asshole. And I’m sick of it. You can insult me all you want, but Shane has been nothing but supportive. It was his idea for me to move, and once I did, I’ll have you know the letters and calls all but stopped.”

  Now wasn’t that an important bit of information. Wyatt’s gaze slid to the sheriff, whose cheeks still burned from Wyatt’s implication.

  Bale’s hands curved over Sky’s shoulders and guided her back. “Calm yourself, querida.”

  “I’m calm,” she bit out with a final growl before returning to her seat. “I lived in peace for a few months.” She shot each of them a glance. “And that’s all.”

  “Until tonight,” Wyatt stated. “Except that isn’t all. Is it, Sheriff?”

  Shane fiddled with the folders in his hands and finally shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sky. I should have told you sooner, but I didn’t want to frighten you more than you already were.”

  She frowned.

  “Get on with it,” Wyatt growled impatiently.

  The sooner this was out in the open, the sooner they could find this bastard and ram his head onto a pike.

  Chapter 9

  “I shouldn’t be discussing an ongoing case such as this,” Shane stated as he pushed up from his seat with a deep sigh. “But Sky’s safety is more important.”

  “And if you’re caught?” Wyatt rumbled from across the room.

  “Well, the position of sheriff is electoral, so I assume come next election, I wouldn’t win.” His comforting brown gaze slid to hers. “But I think this case requires special care.”

  “I bet,” Wyatt muttered.

  Lips set in a grim line, Shane strode across the room and pointed to a whiteboard. “May I?”

  No one spoke, which Shane took as an affirmation, and he wiped clean the board. “At this point, we have three victims.”

  Sky shuddered. Victims, such a visceral word.

  The dry erase marker squeaked against the board as Shane wrote out three names: Barbara Jackson, Erica Marsters, and Jody Anne Davidson. Next came their pictures. Sky sucked in a sharp breath, her heart palpitating at the sight of the three young ladies. Wyatt had mentioned that they resembled her, but never in her wildest dreams…

  “Sky?”

  It wasn’t until Bale whispered her name that she realized she had risen from her chair and approached the board. Her fingers hovered above the last picture.

  “Blonde hair, blue eyes,” she repeated Wyatt’s comment from earlier in the night.

  But it went beyond that. All three—four, if she included herself—bore the same facial structure and skin tone. It was downright eerie to see so much of herself reflected on a foreign eight-and-half-inch glossy photo.

  “Barbara Jackson was found two months ago, at the bottom of Humming Creek.” Shane brushed against Sky’s shoulder and drew the woman’s picture down. She stood in a crowd, embraced by two other women, all with bright smiles. “Her case was treated as an isolated event. Her wounds were consistent with a long fall. The condition of her, ah…” Shane cleared his throat, “eyes was assumed to be a result of wildlife. It wouldn’t have been the first time a carrion bird got to a body before us.”

  “Eyes.” Sky glanced over her shoulder, her gaze skipping from Shane to Wyatt. She shivered at the sight of him, inclined against the wall with his burly arms crossed over his chest, and turne
d back to Shane. Shane was safer. Shane was docile and comforting. Wyatt scared the hell out of her. “What happened to her eyes?”

  Shane grimaced.

  “Man up,” Harley called from across the room. “This is part of the job.”

  “What would you know about it?” Shane shot back.

  Wyatt pushed away from the wall and strode toward the whiteboard, his gaze roaming over the women’s faces. “Harley has experience with this sort of work.”

  “What sort?” Sky whispered.

  “Stalkers, serial killers, drug cartels, you name it, babe,” Harley piped in.

  Shane tilted his head. “CIA?”

  “FBI.”

  “Great, a Fed.”

  “Former Fed, thank you. Can we return to the issue at hand? I believe Sky asked a question. And this time, don’t punk out, Sheriff.”

  With a pinched expression, Shane turned back to her. “When we arrived on scene, the victim’s eyes had been removed.”

  She froze.

  “Were there any marks on the body to suggest trauma around the eyes?” Harley pressed.

  “There were marks. The medical examiner couldn’t conclusively determine the source.”

  Sky’s stomach churned. A wave of nausea slammed into her, but if everyone else could hold themselves together, so would she. “But these photos…”

  “Once a body is identified, families of the victims often provide us with personal information, such as photographs, that can be released to the public.” Which was how they knew the victims were all blue-eyed. Sky nodded and digested that information.

  “And as I previously stated,” he continued, “it was assumed to have been the work of the wildlife. Until Erica Marsters arrived on the scene.”

  Shane tapped the middle photo, attracting Sky’s attention. She felt as though she was looking at her future visage. Slight laugh lines crinkled the corners of her eyes and mouth, her blue eyes sparking with a hint of wisdom. The woman had to be in her late thirties and was drop-dead gorgeous.