by Michelle Fox
"I wasn’t talking about them." Kane wiped sweat from his brow and looked at his phone again. Still no messages. Where was he? Hoping to stall things, he yelled out, "And besides, I’m armed, and now you’re out in the open." Not willing to risk his head, he put his gun up and let loose one shot. Unfortunately, even his keen senses weren’t able to do much blind. The bullet went wide.
"How many bullets you got left, Sheriff? How many extra clips do you carry? By my count you’re on your last clip and only have a few more bullets before you’re out. Feel free to keep wasting them. It makes my job easier."
"Job? This is a job for you?"
"Of a kind. Some would say it’s a calling." Boots scuffed on the ground, sending little bits of gravel skittering across the road.
"Don’t come any closer," Kane said, infusing his voice with as much authority as he could muster. "I will shoot you."
"You can try, Sheriff, but you’ll miss because you can’t risk exposing your head to get a visual on me. I’ve got my rifle trained on your cruiser and I’m just as fast as your wolf is."
Kane looked at the brush in front of him and considered running for it, but that would mean leaving the men in the cruiser behind. Spotting the side mirror, he grabbed it and pulled with all his strength. The metal groaned and bent before finally snapping free. He then raised his hand up, flashing his gun over the hood and causing the shooter to take a shot. As fast as the man had boasted he was, Kane had no problem evading the bullet.
Mirror in one hand, gun in the other, Kane army-crawled to the back end of the cruiser. Raising up the mirror, he tried to get a look at the shooter, but all he could see was the man’s elbow and a bit of his thigh. The angle wasn’t right, and he saw more of the cruiser’s back window than anything else. Ducking down, he looked under the car, thinking to target the shooter’s feet, but his boots lined up with the cruiser’s front tire. Kane didn’t have a shot.
Damn it. Where’s Tao?
Kane slumped back on the ground and then made a quick decision. Cocking back his arm, he heaved the mirror into the woods, wanting to make it appear as if he’d made a run for it. While that drew the shooter’s attention, he jumped to his feet and took aim with his gun.
The shooter saw him, though, and raised his rifle at the same pace as Kane’s. They both shot. Kane’s bullet flew past the shooter’s shoulder, while the shooter’s bullet hit the passenger window. Again.
"Oh no," Kane groaned softly. Sure enough, when he ducked to avoid the shooter’s next shot, he caught sight of another bloody head with empty eyes and the neck at an odd angle. The other man hadn’t stayed down and had paid the price for it. Damn it.
"Why are you killing them?" he shouted, angry, not just at the shooter, but at his own inability to protect them. "They’ve done nothing to you."
"They were interfering with my hunt, trying to take my kill from me." There was a click as the shooter reloaded his gun. "And they made good target practice."
Anger pushed Kane to act. Jumping up, he aimed for the shooter once again, determined not to miss, but before he could take the shot, a large, moving blur rammed into the man, throwing him to the ground. Kane blinked until his eyes could make sense of the action.
The blur was Tao.
Chapter Nine
The men tumbled to the ground, striking each other with fists. The rifle lay abandoned on the street. Kane ran out and grabbed it, figuring Tao could hold his own against pretty much anyone. He popped the trunk and dropped the weapon inside for safekeeping.
When Kane shut the trunk, he found another blur had joined the fray. This one he recognized as Leo because of the long blond hair. Within seconds, the two brothers had the shooter subdued, pinning him to the concrete. He didn’t stop struggling though, and finally, Leo just hauled off and punched him in the face, rendering the man unconscious.
Tao looked to Kane. "You okay?"
Kane nodded. "Yeah. Who the hell is this guy?" Lowering his voice, he said, "He knew I was a wolf."
"He did?" Tao asked.
Everyone looked down at the shooter. Tao and Leo cocked their heads at the same time.
"Huh." Tao nudged the shooter with his toe, but that didn’t provide any answers.
"Weird," Leo said. "Do you think…" He gave his brother a meaningful look.
Tao shook his head. "How would they know about us? Find us? Glen Vine isn’t a pack town. It’s not teeming with shifters."
"Who’s they?" Kane asked, but no one answered him as Kai arrived, driving Tao’s big, extended cab pickup.
He pulled over to the berm and parked the vehicle. Jumping out he brushed his long dark hair out of his face and said, "I see things are going according to plan. The wind told me we were favored today."
"The wind talks to you?" Kane asked.
Kai nodded. "It talks to you, too, but you don’t listen." Walking over to where the shooter lay unconscious on the ground, he bent down and studied the man. "Bad energy here," he said, waving his hand over the man’s body. "His kind definitely needs to go."
"He’s a kind? What kind?" Tao squatted down next to the shooter and stared at the man. He looked like any other human. There were no tattoos that might denote a gang affiliation. Nothing except a regular guy who had, for some reason, been hell bent on murder.
"A hunter," Kai said as if that explained everything.
"You really think so?" Tao asked. He came over and sniffed the air around the shooter. "He doesn’t smell like one."
"He attacks like one," Leo said. "He was obviously targeting Kane."
"What happened?" Tao asked Kane, his voice calm and steady.
Kane ran his hand through his hair, flustered. "I don’t know."
"Start at the beginning," advised Kai with an encouraging nod. He had a mess of eagle feathers and sticks in his hair, which made him look like he’d been rolling around in birds’ nests. The guy was a bit of a kook, but he made sense...sometimes.
Kane nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Charlotte ran into those two guys at Java Jump." He jerked his thumb toward his cruiser, where Dylan and Stan were slumped over and still. "They were talking about hunting wolves and had her all upset."
"Did they hurt her?" Leo’s hands clenched into fists.
"No, but something happened at Java Jump, and she lost control of her wolf and ran. Somehow, they found her and started shooting at her. They grazed her leg."
Tao’s expression grew dark. "Is Charlotte okay?" The three brothers looked at Kane, anxiety stamped on their faces.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Almost good as new." Charlotte emerged from the woods and swept a hand over her body. "Although I keep hearing guns going off everywhere. What the hell is going on out here?"
"We're trying to figure that out," Tao said. "Did you see anyone or anything?"
She shook her head. "Just Kane and the guys who shot me." She looked over to the cruiser and caught sight of the bullet-riddled safety glass. Stepping toward the car, she peered into the backseat, the color slowly draining from her face as she did so. "Oh." Her voice came out small and full of shock. She looked to Kane, who went to her and drew her away from the car.
"It's best not to look," he said. The two men would haunt him for the rest of his life. They should've been safe. He should've been able to protect them, but he'd failed. All because he was a werewolf. Damn. Was being bitten ever going to be a good thing?
"Well, shit." Her eyes wide, she met each of the men's gazes in turn. "Are you guys okay?"
"So far," Tao said. "Kane was just filling us in on what happened." He motioned for the sheriff to continue.
Kane nodded and cleared his throat. "Well, I caught up to them and put them in the cruiser to stew while I looked for Charlotte. I got her home safely, came back out here, and," he waved helplessly at his car, "this happened."
Kai pulled a bullet out of the shooter’s belt and sniffed it. "Smells like silver."
"Silver?" repeated Leo, his golden eyes going wide.
"That’s not good,"
Tao said, his voice still calm.
"What does this mean?" Kane asked. "What do I put on my report?"
"There won’t be a report." Tao said. "This never happened."
"We don’t need humans mixed up in this," added Kai. "It’s not their business, it’s ours."
"That’s against the law," Kane said. looking at each of his fellow wolves in turn. They didn’t share his legal concerns, though. He could see it on their faces. "I need to arrest him and charge him with murder."
"That will not solve the problem," Kai said, calm in the face of Kane’s agitation. "It will only put more of us in danger."
Kane stood up and stepped away from the brothers. This wasn’t what he'd signed up for. Why was everything a lie when it came to werewolves? First, Charlotte, then his mom, and now this. When did it end?
"We’re past the law, Kane. This has nothing to do with humans," Tao said, his voice remaining slow and even.
"Then explain it to me."
"We’re his prey," Kai said.
A chill went up Kane’s spine. "What the hell does that mean?"
Tao laid a reassuring hand on the sheriff’s shoulder. "What he means is this man is a hunter, and he wants to kill us."
"What is a hunter? You keep using that word like it has a different meaning." Kane looked at the shooter, wondering what his true agenda was.
"There are hunters and hunters. This man is from a group of hunters who know what we are. They’ve sworn to kill us all, " said Leo.
"How did he find us? We didn’t even exist a few months ago." Kane scratched the scar that remained from the bite that had turned him. Even with his super werewolf powers, the wound had scarred, and sometimes even tingled and itched. Nick had come at him from the shadows. Looking back, it was obvious the wolf had targeted him specifically as there'd been no reason for him to attack. And damned if he hadn’t caught a break since being bitten.
Looking down at the shooter, Kane wondered if something like their current situation was why Nick had come after him. Had he known he would need someone to throw cases and hide evidence? The thought made Kane's stomach hurt.
Tao shrugged. "I don’t know. Hunters seem to have a sixth sense about us. I sometimes wonder if they have their own magic."
"This one isn’t going to be an issue, at least," Leo said, nudging the shooter with his foot.
"If I can’t arrest him or report the shooting, what will happen to him? And what do I do about these two?" Kane pointed to Dylan and Stan. "Not to mention my cruiser is all shot up."
Kai looked at the men, his lips pursed and his eyes dark. "I will deal with them. Don’t worry, Sheriff." He walked over to the cruiser, his gazed locked on both men. He pulled on the door handle and when it didn’t open, he asked, "Can you unlock the car for me?"
Kane clicked the button on his key chain that would unlock the cruiser. "And the hunter?"
Tao ran a hand through his dark hair and sighed. "We’ll have to figure out a way to keep him from bothering us again."
Kai opened the back door of the cruiser and ducked his head inside. Coming back out, he said, "Yep, they’re dead. Smells like silver in there, too."
Tao heaved a big sigh. "Well, let’s clean this mess up." He nodded to Leo, who went to Tao’s truck and pulled out a blue tarp.
"What are you doing?" Kane asked.
"Whatever we do, we keep humans out of this, and that means no dead bodies." Tao helped Leo spread out the tarp, and the two brothers quickly moved the bodies out of the cruiser and onto the blue plastic. Working together, they rolled them up tight and then carried them over to the back of Tao’s pick-up.
"People are still going to see the bullet holes," Kane protested. "And those men deserve a decent burial."
"I’ll take care of it," Kai said. Raising his arm, he punched his fist through the back passenger window. Shuffling around to the other side of the cruiser, he did the same on that side. With a nod to Kane, he said, "See? No bullet holes now."
Kane just gaped at the man, at a loss for words. Jagged cubes of safety glass covered the ground, and his cruiser looked ready for the junkyard.
"Easy, Sheriff," Tao said, clapping him on the shoulder. "Kai's right. The less humans know, the better."
"My cruiser," Kane growled. "It's ruined." He'd scrimped and saved for five years to save enough in his budget to buy the thing. It was only a year old and far too young to have so many bullet holes.
"It's fixable," Leo said, his smile encouraging. "It'll be good as new after a few days in the body shop."
Kane looked at the three brothers, his eyes wide. "And what do I tell everyone at the station? My cruiser’s trashed, and their truck is stranded? What do I say?" Kane could just see it now. Someone would find out the truth and he would lose his job. He’d never had to lie before. Now everything depended on it.
"Tell them you took the men into custody, which is true, right? And you also went into the woods to see if they’d really hit a wolf, which is also true," Tao said.
Kane nodded, relaxing a fraction.
"When you came out, someone shot at you, took the men and ran. That’s all you know." Tao laid a hand on Kane’s shoulder. "That’s all you need to say."
"Let the humans run in circles trying to figure it out. It’ll keep them busy and not seeing anything important," said Kai.
"They’ll be found, eventually, but not here. Out of town somewhere. We’ll figure something out so they can get back to their families. This is just a stop-gap while we deal with the hunter." Tao looked at the men’s truck and frowned. "I don’t want to leave that here. Kai, go see if the keys are in the ignition."
Kai ambled toward the truck and gave a thumbs-up. "The keys are there."
"Good," Tao said. "We don’t have to dig through dead men's pockets for them." He nodded to Kai. "Okay, here’s the plan. Kai, you take the truck out, far away somewhere and ditch it. Wolf it back home."
"Got it," Kai said.
"Leo and I will take the hunter and stash the bodies somewhere until it’s safe for them to be found," Tao said.
Kane just blinked. He was a cop. Police procedure was everything, and this whole thing was now so far off the books it was in outer space. "Well, if we don’t want any more witnesses, I suggest we get moving. We can’t leave people lying in the road without raising questions." Kane looked down each end of the road. So far, it was empty, which was a small blessing, but one he knew they couldn’t count on. "And someone probably heard the shots and called them in. I might not be the only cop here for long."
"Yeah," Charlotte said with a nod of agreement. "That’s why I came out. I heard all the gunfire. I can’t be the only one."
"Well, then, let's not waste time," Leo said. He bent down and grabbed the hunter by the armpits, hauling him up to his knees so he could drag him over to Tao's truck.
Kai sidled up to Kane and, leaning in, the eccentric brother said, "You should really learn to listen to the wind."
"Why? What did it say about me?" Kane asked, humoring him.
"Fate is stirring inside your soul." Kai whirled a finger in the air.
"Did it say anything about the shooter?"
Kai nodded. "It sang to me this morning that there was a shadow over us."
"And from that you knew this hunter guy was looking for us?" Kane frowned.
"Not until I saw him," Kai said, seeming unaware of how little help the wind had been.
"I don’t get it," Kane said.
Kai patted the sheriff on the shoulder. "You’re not supposed to. Just listen to me. I’ll keep you out of trouble."
Chapter Ten
As it turned out, Kai couldn't keep any of them out of trouble, no matter how many promises he made. A shout from Tao caused them to both turn. Kane’s stomach clenched at what he saw. The shooter had woken up and caught everyone unaware. He battled both Tao and Leo, his fists moving so fast they were a blur. It was way faster than any human should be able to move, and recalling what Tao had said, Kane r
ealized the shooter may not be a shifter, but he was more than human.
Pulling his gun, Kane yelled out, "Freeze or I’ll shoot!" To Charlotte, he said, "Get behind the cruiser."
She shook her head and stayed where she was. "I’m a wolf, too, remember? Super strong and everything. I don’t need to hide."
"She’s right," Kai said.
Meanwhile, the shooter had ducked behind Tao, slamming his fists into the big man’s kidneys. Leo came up behind the shooter and did his best to knock the man out with another punch to the head, but he seemed to sense the hit coming and twisted away just before it connected with his temple. Everyone was so intertwined and moving so fast that Kane didn't dare pull the trigger. All he could do was watch and hope for an opening.
The shooter then came back with an upper cut that Leo tried to dodge, but he was too late and the shooter's fist slammed into his chin. His head snapped back, his blond hair swinging with the force of the hit. Leo staggered back a few steps and then fell, unable to hold his ground.
The shooter returned his attention to Tao, who had spun around to face him. They grappled and, for a long moment, were evenly matched, but Tao’s strength began to prevail. With a roar, the big alpha grabbed the shooter’s shirt and lifted him up until his feet were dangling in the air.
That turned out to be a mistake because it just allowed the shooter to kick at Tao’s stomach and chest. His feet slammed into Tao's gut, forcing the air from the big alpha's lungs. With a grunt, Tao dropped the man, pouncing on top of him and doing his best to bang the shooter’s head against the pavement. The sound of groans and expletives filled the air as they grappled with each other. Kane kept his gun at the ready, looking for a clear shot, but not finding one.
"Aren’t you going to help?" he asked Kai, thinking one more brother might tip the fight in their favor.
Kai shook his head. "It’s pointless."
"We should do something," Charlotte said. She stepped forward, only to have Kai draw her back.
"She’s right. We can’t let him get away," Kane said, not liking that once again he was stuck in an out-of-control situation. He was torn between ditching his gun and jumping into the fray, and staying where he was. Weapons were an upper hand in most fights. Even if a shot hadn’t presented itself just yet, it would eventually. He’d broken up enough fights and busted enough gang members to know that.