Fate’s Reaping

by Becca Fanning

  “Angie.” The voice on the other end of the line was plain, unconcerned, maybe even bored.

  “Walt,” she said into the speaker. “What’s the latest?”

  There was a sigh at the other end from her lawyer, Walt Shoemaker. He was good at what he did and he’d helped her out of a nasty situation once before when she was younger. She trusted the man, cared for him, but something about that sigh set her on edge.

  “Angie,” he said again. His voice was exasperated. “It’s the same as yesterday. And the day before. There’s nothing I can do until the trial. Maybe if the killings would continue, but…”

  Angie grimaced, a sudden surge of guilt running through her unchecked. Somewhere, deep inside of her, some place she’d never admit to having – she had wanted there to be another murder. She’d wanted someone else to die so Marcus could be cleared. But since Marcus had been arrested, the serial killer had gone quiet – and Marcus had taken the complete blame for his murders.

  “But what about the notes?” she asked, leafing through a stack of notes written in a blocky, exact font.

  Another sigh from Walt. “Like I said, the police believe he’s set these up to be mailed out on an exact schedule. It’s ludicrous, I know, but…”

  “I bet there’s one in the mailbox right now,” Angie said. “That has to count for something…”

  “Angie,” Walt said, his voice firm. She stopped talking. “I think I need to go back to New York until the trial. I’ve done all I can do here.”

  “I have money, Walt,” she told him. “I can increase your pay.”

  “It’s not the money, Angie. I have other clients, other cases I could be working. Right now we’re just spinning our wheels. Until the trial, we’ve done all we can do.”

  “So he just has to rot in jail while they keep pushing the trial back and back? How is that fair?”

  “It’s not, Angie. It’s not fair at all,” he told her, the hardness in his voice gone. She could almost hear the regret, though that didn’t make her feel any better. He was abandoning her. She would be all alone. “But until then, it’s what is going to happen. I need to go. My flight leaves this afternoon.”

  “Okay,” was all she said.

  “Angie?” he asked. When Angie didn’t answer, he said, “I’m not leaving you alone. I’m going to help when I can. When we get more information, I’ll fly right out. Drop everything I’m doing.” She almost slammed the receiver down but didn’t, yet she still didn’t say anything. “Angie. Do you remember when I was there for you, back when you were younger? When you were having those problems with Jonathan Hall? I’ve been there for you, Angie. And I’ll be there again. You have to believe that.”

  “I do, Walt,” she finally said. “Thank you. Call when you can.”

  “Goodbye, Angie.”

  “Bye, Walt.”

  The phone clicked off and Angie sat there for a few moments before she put the receiver back up. She felt strangely alone, strangely hollow, like Walt wouldn’t be there to help her when she needed him to be. But she knew that was ridiculous. All of those years ago when she’d been blackmailed by her ex-boyfriend, Jonathan Hall, Walt Shoemaker had been there to help her through the legal mess.

  Of course, Walt hadn’t known that Angie had been using illegal money from Jonathan Hall to fund all of her projects, and now he certainly didn’t know that Jonathan Hall was dead – but he knew enough to help her with this.

  She sat back in the chair and thought of Jonathan Hall. Dead. He had tried to kill her. He’d tried to destroy her career, tried to kill Marcus, tried to win her back over. And now he was dead.

  D. E. A. D. Dead. And why don’t I feel any guilt for that? What has happened to me?

  Angie didn’t have all of the answers. Hell, she didn’t want to. Her life had been a strange and dangerous roller coaster, starting illegally when she worked for Jonathan Hall, culminating in Mayor Copeland’s attempt to murder her, then being kidnapped by rogue FBI Shifters, and now being tracked by a serial killer while her Shifter boyfriend – that could turn into a bear, of course – rotted in jail, framed for the murders.

  So, no, she didn’t have all of the answers. She never would. What she did know was that she finally felt as if her life was getting on track with Sheriff Marcus Stone, and then it had all been ripped out from underneath her. She felt alone, confused, and utterly scared.

  But I won’t let it end like this. I won’t. I love Marcus.

  She put her hand to her stomach and knew that there was a life growing there, a life they’d conceived together, even through all of their problems.

  She went outside and locked the door behind her.

  “Ma’am,” a gruff voice said from beside her. She jumped. She hadn’t even heard the man walk up to her. He towered over her, his golden eyes glinting brightly in the early morning light.

  “Branson,” she said, making sure the door was shut tight. “Let’s go see Marcus.”

  The other Shifter – Branson, her bodyguard – nodded, and then he led her down the driveway and together they went to see the only man that mattered in Angie’s life.

  SNEAK PEAK Mate’s Harvest Chapter 2

  The man staring back at Marcus Stone was unrecognizable. For a split second, Marcus wanted to lash out at the man. Then he realized he was looking at himself in the mirror. He collapsed onto the bottom bunk with a sigh, running his hands through his long hair.

  His eyes were as bright as they’d ever been but they looked out from a tired and worn face, accompanied by long and unkempt hair and a dark, brown beard that resembled his pelt after he shifted. He looked wild, almost feral but he couldn’t complain about that. It kept most of the other prisoners at bay.

  He could complain about how worn he looked. He’d lost track of the days that he’d been locked up – first in the Haven County jail, then transferred to a more secure facility with others like him.

  No, not like me, he reminded himself. I’m not a killer. I was framed.

  But I am. How many people have I killed over the years? How many lives have been snuffed out because of me? How many more before I’m done?

  He growled and the man in the bunk opposite him shuddered and turned his eyes away from Marcus. Marcus stared at him for a few moments before turning his attention to outside of the bars.

  It wasn’t prison, far from it. But it was worse than the small county jail, worse than the Sheriff’s Department back in Charming. His cell was modest sized and contained four bunks. Two were occupied by men Marcus had no desire to interact with. The third was his and the fourth was empty. The man that slept on the bunk above Marcus’s had tried to talk to him the first day he’d been transferred but Marcus had glared at him and ignored him. Since then, the man had mostly given up talking to him. The third man wouldn’t look in his strange, golden eyes.

  Marcus stood up and stretched, walking over to the bars. After he’d been locked up, he’d tried to stay in shape. He’d begun each morning with a set of pushups and set ups, then pull ups on the top bunk. After a few days of being locked up, depression had settled over him. His thoughts of a quick release had faded away. As they did so, so too did his desire to keep himself in shape. He’d stopped working out. Stopped shaving. Stopped doing anything but wallowing in self-despair.

  The only thing that kept him going was Angie’s visits and knowing that she was working as hard as she could to get him out. But those visits had started to come less often. The last time he’d seen her had been just over a week ago.

  Why isn’t she coming back?

  He knew the answer to that. She wanted nothing to do with him. He was a convicted killer, even if those he had been convicted of killing weren’t because of him. He’d still killed – including Angie’s own ex-boyfriend. Marcus had done it in self-defense, of course, but…

  I don’t blame her. The best thing she can do is steer clear of me. Make a life for herself. Let me sit in here and rot, let me sit and think of everything I’ve done. Stay a
way, Angie. Stay away and keep our child safe. Don’t tell our child what I’ve done. What I am. Please. Keep our child safe.

  “Back it up,” Marcus heard from in front of him, then he felt a flare of pain in his knuckles. He growled in pain and surprise, backing up as he did so. One of the guards had come close to the bars, had rapped his nightstick against Marcus’s fingers, which had been wrapped absently around the bars. He glared at the man but backed up just the same.

  “Open on four,” the guard called. There was a delay, then an alarm sounded and the bars slid to the side. “Rec time, scumbags.”

  Marcus was the last to leave the cell. The man across from him gave him a nervous glance and scuttled out in front of Marcus, hunched over as if in fear that Marcus might snap and attack him. The guard glared at Marcus and Marcus glared back, wiling himself to stand tall to the man but knowing he was failing miserably. Marcus felt almost as hunched over as the man in front of him.

  The yard was packed with most of the prisoners – nearly thirty in total. It wasn’t much, and most prisoners were only there for a few days before being transferred to other facilities after their trials ended. For whatever reason, Marcus’s trial kept getting pushed back – he didn’t know if he’d ever see the inside of a courtroom.

  I could rot here forever.

  The sun was high overhead, beating down mercilessly. Most of the prisoners sat underneath little tents made out of torn scraps of clothing, trying to keep as cool as possible. Marcus made his way over to a set of bleachers, completely abandoned on the far side of the small yard. He liked the loneliness.

  He sat down and stared straight ahead, already zoning out. Sweat was pouring down his face and back, staining his clothes dark, yet he hardly noticed it. The sun was burning down on him but he could only think of Angie and what had happened between them.

  Marcus barely heard the men walking up next to him. There were three of them – Marcus only noticed when the first one said something and brought him out of his trance. He glanced over at them. They were three men he hardly recognized, though he knew one of the men – most likely the leader – had been in there almost as long as Marcus had been.

  “Gonna make me ask again?” he said.

  Marcus grunted and looked away from the three men towards the guards. There were no watchtowers here, only two guards that watched the entrance and exit of the yard to the jail proper. Both were doing their best job to look the other way.

  “Listen to me, freak,” the man said. Marcus turned back from the guards and knew they would be no help. He’d done his best to avoid trouble while in jail – but it had found him.

  “What?” he growled, if a little weakly. “What do you want?”

  “We’ve heard something about you,” the man told him.

  “That I’m a killer?”

  The man elbowed one of the men next to him. “We’re all killers here, friend.”

  “I’m not your friend.”

  “That’s true,” the man said, narrowing his eyes at Marcus. “We heard you’re a cop.”

  “You heard wrong, then,” Marcus said, turning from the man. He didn’t want to get into an argument with the man – he just wanted to sit down, enjoy the heat and try to keep his mind off of what a miserable excuse his life had been.

  “You’re a cop,” the man said, raising his voice. “We don’t like cops.”

  “I haven’t been a Sheriff for a long time,” Marcus said offhandedly. There was no use denying it now. These men had made up their minds, no matter what Marcus said. “Now leave me alone.”

  “We don’t like cops,” the man repeated, and suddenly they were moving in towards him, much faster than Marcus would have expected. The man on the left had a sock with something in it – probably a bar of soap, just like he’d always seen in the movies. The man on his right was unarmed – but the leader, the speaker – had a small prison shank.

  Marcus leapt up. But he was slow, slower than he would have ever thought possible for himself to be. He’d barely gotten his feet underneath him on the ground when the sock hit him squarely in the temple, dropping him to one knee and the other man collided with him, taking them both to the ground. Marcus longed to shift – he hadn’t in so long he didn’t know if he could remember how – but he knew he couldn’t even if he had wanted to.

  Marcus brought his hands up to protect his face as the sock came back down. Marcus felt a flash of pain on his forearm, then he lashed out and snatched at the sock. He managed to grab the soap inside of it, yanking hard, hard enough to pull the attacker onto the dusty soil. The other man was raining blows down on him and Marcus rolled over on top of him.

  He brought a fist down on the man’s face, breaking his nose in an explosion of blood, twisting his body around just in the nick of time as the shank came sliding in. It had been aimed at his ribs but his twisting motion had been enough to divert the attack – he felt the blade rake across his ribs but slide mercifully away from his body instead of inside it.

  The man with the sock was getting to his feet and Marcus kicked his leg out as he got to his feet, aiming it directly at the man’s knee. There was a crack and a scream of pain as the man’s knee went the wrong way and he collapsed to the ground.

  The man with the shank was regaining his balance and swinging in again. Marcus turned and grabbed the man’s wrist with the shank in it with both hands, stopping it inches from his chest. The man’s eyes went wide as he forced the blade down, closer, closer to Marcus’s heart. Marcus pushed with all of his might and the man’s eyes started to widen even more as Marcus turned the man’s wrists around, pointing the blade back at him.

  Then Marcus was pushing the blade towards the man and it was growing closer, inches from the man’s shoulder. “Please!” he begged, yet Marcus couldn’t stop himself even if he had wanted to. The man screamed in pain as the shank sank into he left shoulder, just below the collarbone. Marcus pushed deeper, deeper –

  And then he felt an explosion of pain in his right side, an explosion that felt like his ribs were breaking. He gasped for air, falling to the ground, and he realized that he’d been shot with nonlethal shotgun pellets. He gasped for air, finding that he couldn’t breathe.

  He fell into the dusty, bloody dirt, then there were boots flying at his body, his chest, his bruised and cut ribs, his face, neck, legs, everywhere a foot could find.

  Then he was being pulled upwards, heavy arms underneath his armpits, his feet dragging limply behind him.

  “You done messed up, freak,” one of the guards spat. “Looks like you’re gonna be locked up in solitary.”

  “I didn’t…” Marcus coughed, spitting the blood from a split lip. His head felt foggy. “I didn’t start that.”

  But the men didn’t seem to care. They hauled Marcus through the gate, into the facility. They yanked him bodily past empty cells. He’d found his feet but he was stumbling, barely able to keep up with the two guards pulling him through the building.

  He’d never been in solitary before. He almost smiled. Being alone with his thoughts wouldn’t be so bad.

  Then he heard someone scream, “Marcus? Marcus! What’s happening?”

  He felt his neck jerk around, almost as if someone else was controlling him, and he saw Angie on the other side of the bars.

  He’d never seen anyone that looked so beautiful.

  He opened his mouth to say her name, to tell her how much he loved her, and that he needed help… But he couldn’t seem to get the words out. The guards pulled him past her, through a large, gray metal door, and it slammed shut behind them and Angie disappeared from view.

  ~~~ You won’t believe how this trilogy wraps up in Mate’s Harvest, available here!

  Also by Becca Fanning

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